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audience members had risen to their feet with thunderous applause. Burning with envy, I asked Suyuafterward how she got so good. She told me it was because of her teacher, Dr. William Harold. She said I would have to audition for him, but she thought I was good enough to get into his studio.
    First I had to convince my mother I needed a new piano teacher. Dr. Harold, I found out, charged twice as much as Mrs. Scudder; I would have to attend both a private lesson and a master class with his other students every week, and his studio was in Pacific Heights, two streetcar transfers away. At first my mother gave me a flat-out no. I begged and pleaded with her. I told her I would pay half of my lesson fees from my babysitting money. “What about Mrs. Scudder’s feelings?” she asked me. “You would have to tell her you want to quit taking lessons.”
    I did tell her, at my last lesson of the school year. “I’m so surprised to hear this, Joanne,” Mrs. Scudder said. “I thought you loved the piano.” I had to look away from her slackened face as she pressed into my hand a statuette I hadn’t earned, of a composer I’d never heard of. “I’ve never had a student make it all the way up to Smetana,” she said.
    When I auditioned for Dr. Harold, he didn’t have much to say about my playing except “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” He asked me if I had ever played Beethoven’s “
Pathétique
,” and when I said I hadn’t, I vowed to learn it by heart over the summer and have it ready to play for him at my first lesson in September. Then I got a disappointing letter stating that I wasn’t accepted into his studio, but placed on a waiting list as a “promising candidate.”
    â€œI’m sure Mrs. Scudder will take you back,” said Mom.
    I wasn’t going back. Stoically I practiced on my own for the whole month of June with no prospect of a teacher, until I got a postcard from Dr. Harold, sent from the Aspen Summer Music Festival, where he was teaching and performing, which announced an opening for me in his studio. This was the motivation I needed to work even harder on my Beethoven, but now, on this lazy July afternoon, here I sat with forty more minutes to practice.
    I flipped backward in the music and thumped through the solemn opening minor chords, making them all
forte
, when I knew some were soft. On the next page I sped up on the runs,knowing I should keep a steady tempo but enjoying how flashy I sounded. I imagined myself under a spotlight in Carnegie Hall, with the marquee outside reading PIANIST JOANNE DONNELLY TONIGHT! SOLD OUT!
    I glossed over the fingerings I hadn’t quite worked out. Dr. Harold wouldn’t expect me to be perfect my first lesson. I needed to leave him something to teach me. When I reached the end of the movement, the clock on the mantel read 3:44. I could stand it no longer. I leaped from the piano bench and made a dash for the back door, nearly tripping over the sixty-foot phone cord Mom had installed so she could do her housework while clutching the receiver between her shoulder and ear, delivering to Mrs. Newman up-to-the-minute reports on the progress of her latest sewing project and dinner preparations.
    Mom held the receiver to her bosom to ask, “Done already?”
    â€œI practiced two hours! I need to get out of here.”
    Without waiting for her reply, I dashed toward Masonic Avenue and didn’t stop until I reached Haight Street. I stepped around a guy in a white robe who was painting daisies on the sidewalk in yellow and green Day-Glo paint. He reached out and dotted the top of my shoe with a single petal. I let out a yelp and bunny-hopped away.
    I saw a crowd spilling onto the sidewalk in front of the Tangerine Kangaroo. It had the cheapest coffee, used books and magazines to read, chessboards, sewing kits, a piano, a saggy sofa, and a stage. Anyone who wanted to got up and performed as