The Mozart Season Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘always’?”
    â€œOh, I’m remembering you and Bro David, dancing your little hearts out one summer. You both had blue T-shirts. I think they said ‘Symphony Kid’ on them. You were tiny.”
    I tried to remember doing that; all I could see was bare feet in grass, moving up and down.
    â€œThat dancing man reminds me of somebody. Or something,” I said.
    â€œMaybe you’ve seen him before.”
    â€œI don’t think so. Maybe I dreamed him?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    What we really had to talk about was the competition. Mommy was purposely not talking about it. She knew I’d been to my lesson that morning, and since it was the first lesson after the end of school, it was probably all planned that Mr. Kaplan would pick that day to tell me. Evidently I was supposed to bring it up.
    We were on the bridge crossing the river. Portland has its bridges lit up at night. My mother’s orchestra played in the park for the lighting ceremony of one of them. “Mr. Kaplan told me about the Bloch finals,” I said.
    She didn’t say anything. I listened to the hum of the steel grating. “And what do you think about it?” she finally asked.
    â€œI think somebody could’ve told me about it before.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œSo I’d be ready.”
    â€œReady for what?”
    â€œWhy did everybody wait so long to tell me?”
    â€œSo you could concentrate on finishing the school year, get your projects and things finished. So you could give your energy to the softball play-offs. How much readier would you be if somebody’d told you before? How long before?”
    â€œI don’t know. But I wouldn’t’ve ignored the concerto for so long.”
    She kind of sighed. A Mother Sigh. “Hurry up and study for your spelling test, hurry up and practice the Kreutzer, hurry up and make your bed.…” she said. She looked at me and then back at the road.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
    â€œWhat kind of hurry-ups are those?” she asked.
    â€œMother Hurry-ups,” I said.
    â€œExactly. And what’re they really for?”
    I knew what she was getting at. When we went to see my friend in a horse show when I was about eight years old, we saw some parents leaning on the rail yelling at their kids: “Wrong lead, Sally, wrong lead!” and “Heels down!” and other things. It’s called getting Parents’ Trophies.
    â€œDo you want me to play the finals?” I asked.
    â€œI won’t touch that one,” she said, not looking at me.
    Nobody said anything for another couple of minutes. “How scary will it get, Mommy?”
    She looked hard at the road. “Well, darling, if you want to know, it’ll get very, very scary. That’s all I can say.”
    â€œI’m going to do it anyway,” I said.
    She nodded her head at the road ahead. “I thought you would.”
    My cat, Heavenly Days, was on my bed. Cats spend eighty percent of their lives sleeping. She’s called Heavenly Days because that’s what my mother said when she saw her in the shoe box I brought her home in. Some people in front of a fruit stand were giving away kittens, and they had shoe boxes for them. They were a huge fat lady and a little girl; they were both wearing shorts. They had the kittens in a big cardboard carton. Daddy and I looked at the kittens, all cluttering each other and reaching with their big feet, and squeaking and blinking. There were two gray-striped ones and a calico and a completely black one. On the cardboard box there was a Magic Marker sign: Do You Need Somebody To Love? Kittens Free.
    Daddy and I just stood there looking down into the carton. The completely black one looked at me and yawned and its eyes looked surprised at the yawn, as if it were sending an SOS. I reached down into the carton and put my hand on its back. The lady said, “That