Read Online The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee - Free Book Online Page A

is”—Amelia hesitated—“I’m quite certain he doesn’t need to work at all.”
    “How do you mean? ” Claire asked.
    “I just know certain things,” Amelia said mysteriously.
    Claire didn’t ask. She wouldn’t give Amelia the satisfaction.

September 1941
    TRUDY IS DRESSING for dinner while he watches from the bed. She has finished with her mysterious bathing ritual with its oils and unguents and now she smells marvelous, like a valley in spring. She is sitting at her dressing table in a long peach satin robe, wrapped silkily around her waist, applying fragrant creams to her face.
    “Do you like this one? ” She gets up and holds a long black dress in front of her.
    “It’s fine.” He can’t concentrate on the clothes when her face is so vibrant above it.
    “Or this one? ” A knee-length dress the color of orange sherbet.
    “Fine.”
    She pouts. Her skin gleams.
    “You’re so unhelpful.”
    She tells him Manley Haverford is having a party, an end-of-summer party, at his country house this weekend and that she wants to go. Manley is an old bigot who used to have a radio talk show before he married a rich but ugly Portuguese woman who conveniently died two years later, whereupon he retired to live the life of a country squire in Sai Kung.
    “Desperately,” she says. “I want to go desperately.”
    “You loathe Manley,” he says. “You told me so last week.”
    “I know,” she says. “But his parties are fun and he’s very generous with the drinks. Let’s go and talk about how awful he is right in front of him. Can we go, can we? Can we? Can we? ” She wears him down. They will go.

    So Friday, late afternoon, he plays hooky from work and they spend the twilight hours bathing in the ocean by Manley’s house. To get there, they drive narrow, winding roads carved right out of the green mountain, blue water on their right, verdant hillside on their left. His house is through a dilapidated wooden gate and at the end of a long driveway, and right by the sea, with a porch that juts out, and rough stone steps leading down to the beach. He’s had coolers filled with ice and drinks and sandwiches brought down to the sandy inlet. The still-hot sun and water make them ravenous and they eat and eat and eat and curse their host for not bringing enough.
    “Me? ” Manley asks. “I assumed I had invited civilized people, who ate three meals a day.”
    Victor and Melody Chen, Trudy’s cousins, wander down from the house, where they had been resting.
    “What are we doing now?” Melody asks. Will likes her, thinks she’s nice, when she’s not around her husband.
    A woman they have never met before, newly arrived from Singapore, suggests they play charades. They all moan but acquiesce.
    Trudy is one team’s leader, the Singapore woman the other. The groups huddle together, write words on scraps of damp paper. They put them all in the empty sandwich basket.
    Trudy goes first. She looks at her paper, dimples.
    “Easy peasy,” she says encouragingly to her group. She makes the film sign, one hand rotating an imaginary camera lever.
    “Film! ” shouts an American.
    She puts up four fingers, then suddenly ducks her head, puts her arms in front of her, and whooshes through the air.
    “Gone with the Wind,” Will says. Trudy curtsies.
    “Unfair,” says someone from the other team. “Pet’s advantage.”
    Trudy comes over and plants a kiss on his forehead.
    “Clever boy,” she says, and sinks down next to him.
    Singapore gets up.
    “She’s your nemesis,” Will tells Trudy.
    “Don’t worry,” Trudy says. “She’s idiotic.”
    The afternoon passes pleasantly, with them shouting insults and drinking and generally being stupid. Some people talk about the government and how it’s organizing different Volunteer Corps.
    “It’s not volunteering,” Will says. “It’s mandatory. It’s the Compulsory Service Act, for heaven’s sake. They’re quite opposite. Why don’t they just call a spade