Somewhere along that clean ascent, the boy who had wanted the keys learned to guard the keys instead.
Seeing Jack in the lobby—sandy hair, freckles, hand near the fallboard—had triggered in Harrison not contempt but a kind of alarmed recognition. Curiosity, he had called it. Experiment. Hope without preparation. The words had come easily because they were the words adults had once almost said to him, and because repeating them felt like joining the winning side of an old argument.
Then the cream card. Then Ms. Blake. Then Chamber B.
Harrison had stood in that doorway and heard a child play with more listening than many professionals managed in a lifetime, and something in him that had been filed under "youthful exaggeration" sat up and demanded to be counted again.
He went home that night to a quiet house where his wife, Margaret, was grading papers for her literature class at the community college. She asked how the auditions had gone. He told her about Jack—about the sweater, the backpack, the apology he had offered too late and perhaps too carefully.
Margaret listened the way good teachers listen: without rushing to make the story tidy. "You thought he was out of place," she said.
"I thought the piano was out of place for him," Harrison corrected, then winced. "Which is worse."
"Will you do anything about it besides feeling bad?"