Read Online Two-Part Inventions by Lynne Sharon Schwartz - Free Book Online Page B

never seen a room like it before.
    It wasn’t the furnishings alone that made it so different. It was the atmosphere; it was not familial. There was another purpose, another principle, animating the life lived in that room. Everything in it was designed to please just one person, to allow him to carry on just as he wished. It was the clear air of solitude she was recognizing, and also dedication, though she had not yet defined those qualities for herself. She simply felt them, like smelling or tasting something with closed eyes, and though it can’t be identified, it elicits a glimmer of recognition.
    Richard Penzer returned holding a small bronze bowl full of coins and distributed several in each of their canisters, dropping quarters in one by one with a clinking noise. “I hope this helps your cause. But why not sit down for a moment? I’ll bring you some cookies and . . . what do you drink? Juice? Milk?”
    Suzanne perched on a straight-backed chair and the other three lined up gingerly on the edge of a navy blue velvet sofa while Richard went back into the kitchen.

    â€œMaybe we should go,” whispered Alison. “My mother said—”
    â€œShh,” Eva whispered back. “I want to see what he does next. This is an adventure. He gave us more money than any of the others.”
    When Richard came back with a tray, Suzanne was sitting at the piano, her hands moving on the keys but making no sound. The music on the rack was by someone she had never heard of, Béla Bartók. Maybe it was a woman—her mother had an old Aunt Bella who lived in the Bronx. Richard Penzer passed around the peanut butter cookies and poured the juice into glasses, then went over to Suzanne. “Do you play?”
    â€œA little. I take lessons.”
    â€œDo you want to try it?” As if to encourage her, he sat down beside her and played some arpeggios, then a few notes from Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song.”
    â€œOh, I know that,” said Suzanne. “But we only have an upright.”
    â€œGo ahead, then. Don’t be afraid.”
    â€œNo.” She got up from the bench. She wouldn’t, not in front of the girls. The music was from another part of her life, her real life that had nothing to do with these girls. They might even laugh at her. It was as if she were two different people, the one who played the piano and the one who went ringing doorbells with them, and the second one was a distorted shadow of the first, a role she had to play because she was a child and that was what children had to do. The piano was something only she could do. Yet here in this room the Two-Parts of her were both asserting themselves, and she didn’t know what to do with them, how to reconcile them. This man wasn’t like the
aunts and uncles her father made her perform for, who didn’t really understand the music, merely admired her dexterity, as if she were some sort of acrobat. He was different, he seemed genuinely interested. She had a dim sense that this room and this man came from her future, while the girls, with their petty intrigues and gossip and collection boxes, would soon drift into the past.
    â€œOkay, maybe not right now. But you can come back and try it anytime you want. Just ring the bell,” he said, smiling over at her, as if the others had vanished and they two were alone.
    â€œYou wouldn’t dare,” said Alison after they were back out on the porch, nibbling the last of the cookies and climbing over to the next house.
    â€œI might,” said Suzanne nonchalantly. “He seemed nice.”
    â€œThat’s because there were four of us,” said Eva. “You don’t know what he might do alone. We can’t tell anyone we went inside. It has to be our secret. Did you see those crazy paintings? I went up to the bathroom on purpose, to look in the bedroom. There’s this enormous bed with a purple cover. Lots of books. And more