Chapter 13: Clara Comes Calling
Clara Crane arrived at Grace Shelter on a Thursday afternoon, and she arrived wrong. She came in a dark coat that cost more than the shelter's monthly food budget, carrying white lilies, and stood in the doorway as if afraid of taking up too much space. Ruth Henderson met her at the desk, took one look at the flowers, and said, very kindly, "Those are lovely. There's a jug in the kitchen. But if you've come to rescue somebody, you might want to leave the lilies in the car."
Clara laughed, startled, and her shoulders dropped an inch. "I've come to apologise," she said. "And I brought flowers because I didn't know what else to bring, which probably tells you everything about me."
Ruth pointed her toward the common room, where Odessa was sitting at the upright with Keisha, working through a scale for the fourth time. Keisha saw Clara first and whispered, loudly, "Miss Odessa, there's a fancy lady here," and Odessa looked up, and for a moment her face closed like a door. Then she recognised Clara, and the door opened again, though not all the way.
"Mrs. Bell," Clara said, coming forward. "I hope you don't mind me coming. I wanted to speak to you myself."
Odessa stood, wiping her hands on her skirt out of habit. "Miss Crane," she said. "You didn't have to come all this way. The gala was days ago."
"No," Clara said, her voice shaking a little. "That's why I'm here. I laughed, Mrs. Bell. Not loudly, not cruelly, but I did, when you asked my father if you could play. I laughed because I was embarrassed, and because everyone else was laughing, and I've been ashamed of it ever since. You deserved better than that room, and better than me."
The common room had gone quiet. Tommy watched from his chair by the piano, arms folded. Odessa looked at Clara for a long moment, at the lilies wilting in her arms, at the earnest, miserable face, and felt something in her chest loosen. She had been laughed at by richer rooms than this, and she knew the difference between cruelty and cowardice. Clara's laugh had been the second kind, and Clara knew it, and had come to say so. That took a kind of courage.
"Well," Odessa said at last, "you're here now, and that's worth something. Sit down, Miss Crane. Would you like tea?"
Clara sat on a plastic chair that wobbled, and Ruth brought tea in mismatched mugs, and for a while they talked about ordinary things: the rain, the shelter's leaking roof, Keisha's scale, which Keisha demonstrated at once, proudly and slightly out of time. Then Clara set her mug down and said, carefully, "I have a proposal, and I want you to hear the whole of it before you answer. The Crane Foundation would like to present you in recital. A small hall, not a gala. Your programme, your choice of music. We would pay you properly, and for rehearsal time, and for a piano that is actually in tune. And there are no strings."
Odessa raised an eyebrow. "No strings? Miss Crane, in my experience, everything offered by a foundation has strings, even if they're tied very prettily."
"I know," Clara said. "That's why I'm saying it plainly. You would not owe us a speech, or a photograph, or your story. You would not have to tell anyone how you came to be here, or smile for a brochure. If you say no, nothing changes between us. If you say yes, we do it your way, or not at all. My father agrees."
Odessa looked at Ruth, studying her teapot with great concentration, and at Tommy, who gave a small nod. She thought about the gala, and the silence after the last note, and how, for one evening, she had not been a woman in a shelter but a musician again. She thought about her wrist, and the fear that one good night had been a fluke. A recital would test that. It would also be the first time in nine years anyone had asked her to play a whole programme because they believed she could.
"I'll think about it," she said. "That's not a no, Miss Crane, and it's not a yes. It's a think. I've learned to be careful with yeses. They have a way of growing."
Clara nodded. "A think is perfect," she said. "Take all the time you need. And Mrs. Bell, whatever you decide, thank you for the music the other night. I haven't stopped thinking about it."
After Clara left, the lilies in their jug on the windowsill, Ruth said, "She seems like a good girl." Tommy said, "She brought flowers. That's points in her favour." And Odessa sat at the piano, alone, and played the opening of the gala piece, very softly, wondering whether she dared to play a whole evening again, and finding, to her surprise, that the wonder felt less like fear than it used to, and more like something she had almost forgotten: hope.