May/June 2013

Every note was a treasure, a gold flake making its way downstream “Kalie, have you practiced your flute yet?” My mother’s voice squeezed under my bedroom door and rang in my ears. “Not yet…” I answered. I knew what was coming next. “Well, do it now. Dinner’s in twenty minutes, and I know you want to watch TV before you go to bed, so you’d better get practicing or you’ll miss your program.” I let out an exasperated sigh and slammed my book shut. I didn’t argue with her, but I wasn’t going to practice willingly either. See, both my parents are musicians. My mom’s a singer and plays a little piano. She’s been singing since she was a little girl. She had her first performance on open mike night at the Candy Bowl downtown when she was nine. Everybody loved her, and she made her first record when she was twenty-six. She met my father at the recording studio, playing guitar and mandolin for her song, “Bridge to Nowhere.” I’ve heard the story of how they fell in love so many times, I’ve memorized it by now. It always ends in the studio, with my mom telling me, “It was love at first sight, naturally. Eight years later we got married, right there in that studio on the very day my second album was released.” Then she and my dad exchange loving looks, and then she says the last line, which is the one I dread the most: “And now, here you are, going to carry on in our footsteps!” But I think they got their hopes up a little too high. Because, to tell the truth, the one thing I hate most in the world is playing my flute. My parents decided that four was the appropriate age to get me started on an instrument, so they took me to a bunch of concerts with different instruments like guitars and pianos and violins and stuff. I think that the only reason I picked the flute was because that was the only concert I wasn’t napping through. It looked easy for the performers up there on stage. They just blew into their instrument and—voila!—out came a chorus of beautiful, soothing tones. Unfortunately, playing the flute really isn’t that easy. I couldn’t get my lips into the right position, and even when I could, when I tried to blow a note, it came out sounding like, well, someone was blowing air through a piece of metal. Which is to say, incorrect. My parents encouraged me throughout all my toil and tantrums. They never gave up hope in me, but sometimes I caught them exchanging worried glances back and forth. When I saw those glances I knew that I would never be good at the flute, no matter how hard I practiced. I would never perform on stage in front of an audience, and even if I got the chance, they would probably boo me off stage. Sorry, Mom, I thought sadly, sorry, Dad. I guess your daughter’s just not turning out what you want her to be. With a groan, I slouched off my bed and took my flute case down from the shelf. I opened it up, rubbed the red velvet lining for good luck like always, and then took out the shiny silver pieces of my flute and carefully assembled them. Then I went and stood in the corner of my room reserved for practicing, ignoring the numerous posters of famous musicians I barely knew the names of, all of them wearing weird-looking wigs, with slogans like, “Beethoven Would Have Applauded for You!” I snorted. Fat chance. I stood in front of my music stand and flipped through my book of tunes. I scanned the pages, reading the names off out loud. “Sweetwater Serenade,” “Angel Promenade,” “Fairy Ring,” “The Velvet Slipper Tune.” I had attempted to play them all, failing each one worse than the last. Finally, I decided on “The Velvet Slipper Tune,” just to get it over with and because it looked like it had the easiest notes. I raised the cold metal of the flute to my lips and tentatively blew the first note. It sounded too breathy and kind of high pitched. Whoops, I had gotten the fingering wrong. Frustrated, I positioned my fingers right and began to play the tune, greatly aware of the fact that I sounded a bit sharp. Who cared? Not me. Not bothering to fix the problem, I played on. The end of the piece was a little wobbly, but whatever. There. It was over with. And just in time, too. “Ka-lie! Din-ner!” my mom called up the stairs. She rapped on the ceiling below my bedroom with the broom handle, then fell silent. I hastily disassembled my flute and tucked it away in my case, rubbing the velvet as customary. Shoving the case back on the shelf, I clomped downstairs and into the kitchen, where my mom was just serving my dad chicken pot pie. I plopped down in my seat and spread out a napkin in my lap. I held out my plate expectantly, and my mom put a piece of pie on it. I stuffed my face and washed it down with milk, and had already finished my first piece by the time my parents were halfway through theirs. “How did practicing go?” my dad asked expectantly, as he always did during dinner. “Oh, fine, you know,” I said, serving myself another piece of pie. But it hadn’t been fine, and I had a feeling he knew it. “Would you like to give us a concert after dinner?” “Would you like to give us a concert after dinner?” my mom asked, daintily spearing a piece of chicken on her fork. It wasn’t just a question, that much I knew. It was my doom. Guiltily, I nodded. Just wait until they heard how awful I was, not that they didn’t already know. But every time I