Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman & Melanie Kupchynsky

Author:Joanne Lipman & Melanie Kupchynsky [LIPMAN, JOANNE & KUPCHYNSKY, MELANIE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Educators, Education / Teaching Methods & Materials / Arts & Humanities, Music / Instruction & Study / General
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2013-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

11

“Mr. Jerry”

JOANNE

“E-flat scale.”

Without so much as a hello, Mr. K began my lesson. He sat at his piano, arms folded, a pencil protruding from one balled-up fist, staring at me as I dug into the strings. Upstairs, the after-dinner dishes were clattering as Melanie cleared the table. In the waiting room, my mother was flipping through a magazine. Mr. K didn’t seem to be aware of any outside disturbances. He didn’t believe in small talk during lessons. He never asked how my day was, or if I liked school, or what was my favorite subject. He never asked me anything at all. He just gave orders.

“Flat!”

He sprang forward in his chair to bang the off ending note on his piano.

I adjusted my fingers and tried again.

“Smooth wrist! Again!”

The formality of lessons always made me uncomfortable. I would walk in and hand Mr. K the seven dollars my parents had counted out carefully beforehand. He would stuff it into his pocket without looking at it, as if it were something vaguely distasteful. Then without another word he would begin.

First, he would drill me on scales. He almost always picked the hardest ones, where your fingers had to climb awkwardly all the way up the neck of the viola. When I hit a sour note, he banged the right one on the piano with a single finger, with such force the whole room seemed to shake. Sometimes he would make me just bow on open strings, back and forth and back and forth, teaching me to fluidly move my wrist so there was none of that painful crunching or croaking at the beginning or end of each note.

“More! Again.”

We were interrupted by a knock on the door.

Stephanie peeked into the room and tentatively walked in, handing her father her math homework. I tried to catch her eye. In our quartet, Steph was my kindred spirit: she loved to write stories like I did, and had a wild imagination, and always made me laugh. While Melanie was serious and obedient, Stephanie did a wickedly funny imitation of her dad and cracked herself up with her own jokes. We shared a tomboyish streak and a love of rock and roll. At orchestra parties, we compared our favorite musicians—I knew she was currently swooning over Peter Frampton—and she got headphones so her dad wouldn’t know she was listening to Bruce Springsteen instead of Bach.

She could always make her father laugh, and she would smother him with kisses without embarrassment. When she was a little girl and got too rambunctious, he would gently swat her away. But lately, the dynamic had changed. He seemed to start yelling at her before she had a chance to do anything wrong. She was sullen more often than not, and she cried more easily than ever.

Now, I waited in awkward silence while he looked over the division and multiplication problems she had worked out in pencil on a mimeographed homework sheet. Her brown hair was askew, as if she had been pulling on it while working through the calculations.

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