Times of Trouble Read Online Free Page A

was
appropriate, since it was the last of Schubert's ‘Last
Sonatas’.
    Mum looked just as
she always did after cleaning herself up from gardening, with her
freshly applied mask of makeup. Even when on school holidays and
facing a crisis, she still saw no reason to dress down. I'd
cheerfully wear track pants every day for the rest of my life, but
mum thought that was vulgar. She dressed carefully each day in a
dress suit, or short sleeved shirt, skirt and cardigan, stockings
and sensible heels. Her slim, short frame had been the same size
for my entire life, and some of the clothes she wore were nearly as
old as me. Her long fair hair was always carefully wrapped into a
bun, the flyaways plastered to the side of her head with hair
spray. I never understood where she found the motivation. Or why
she felt the need to look like a librarian.
    We barely spoke on
the way. On our last long walk, mum told me she too was mourning
the loss of my career as a pianist. My first reaction was outrage.
How dare she tell me she was sad? How was that meant to make me
feel better? But as she kept talking, I realised she wasn’t sorry I
failed. She was just sorry I wasn’t going to be happy. She wanted
me to live my dreams as much as I did. I felt then that mum and I
were in this together, and maybe everything would be ok. The day
after, I finally worked up enough courage to place an ad in the
local paper for people wanting piano lessons. Eventually I had a
couple of enquiries, and two students soon became three, then five
and then eight. It wasn't exactly a full time job, or even part
time really, since the lessons were only half an hour each a week.
And it wasn't the job I wanted; it was just the only option I
seemed to have.
    I hoped after
teaching my first lesson, I would feel some satisfaction at guiding
a new pupil around the piano. But I hated it. I absolutely hated
it. I had no patience with my students. I had no concept of how
difficult it was for a beginner to play the piano. And to top it
all off, I didn't even care if my students never got any better.
Listening to them clumsily prod and trip over the keys just gave me
a headache. I looked forward to the end of each lesson, so I could
go back to my bored stupor. All these students would have to be
called this afternoon. How embarrassing to cancel their lessons
because I didn't have a piano. But we had nothing else of real
value to sell, so I had done the only thing possible. Sold the
goose that laid the golden egg (if you could call $25 for a half
hour lesson a golden egg).

    I stood by the car
waiting for mum to get out, but she seemed to be stalling
again.
    'I can see how
difficult this is, mum, but how bad can it be?’
    I’ve never been a
patient person and now I was getting to the point where I wanted to
shake her and see if the words just tumbled out. Eventually she
stepped out of the car and started walking so briskly, I had to
trot keep up.
    ‘ Ok Ellen. A few
months ago, I got a very strange email from an address I didn’t
recognise. At first I thought it was spam, and I almost deleted it.
But luckily I didn’t, because god knows what would have happened if
I had.’
    Visions of Nigerian
email scams, and suckers sending thieves their bank account details
over the internet, flooded into my mind. Please don’t tell me mum
had fallen for something like that?
    ‘ Can't you tell it
any quicker ...’
    ‘ Yes, yes, I’m
getting there. So, the email was from an address I didn’t
recognise.’
    She’d already said
that.
    ‘ What did the email
say?’
    Much to my surprise,
she'd brought a prop. She pulled a sheet of paper out of her pocket
and handed it to me. She had printed the email.
    The first thing I
noticed was the subject line: ‘Ob La Di Ob La Da’. And I
immediately knew, just as mum must have, who this email was from.
The message was short, but the implications of what it said caught
in my throat: ‘Except it doesn’t. I need somebody. Not just
anybody’.