Music History

I played arpeggios for Mrs. Aranda, who smelled so good and came to our house every week. She had a giant, blue vase on the stone front porch of her Spanish house past which I'd walk sometimes, a neighborhood away, and a tall, dark son with a different last name, who wore black leather jackets to our school. I learned to play 'Star Dust' by heart, the memory of which remains in my fingers for some mysterious reason long after 'The Poor People Of Paris', Chopin's 'Nocturne', Tchaikovsky's 'Concerto in E Flat Minor', and 'The Paradise Waltz' have all dissolved into dust in my brain. One week I hid in the bookcase when she came, and when caught, refused to play my scales — consistent with my record of practice during the week. We fought to a draw. I never did play the scales, but when she left I missed her perfume and her face. Maybe that day was why a little later in my memory dad was driving us every week to Miss Gilbert's, in a drab duplex in the City, where my brother and I took turns at the upright, half an hour each, while someone we never got to see shuffled in the next room, hidden behind a green curtain, and dad waited in the car. By the time I was twelve my parents gave up, and I never had to come home to practice again and was free to roam the baseball field until the sun went down.