Center Stage

“Why isn’t she playing?” Someone hissed.

It was Mrs. Zachary, the flaunty PTA shrew that Lydia had always hated. The manicured, diamond-encrusted hand covering her mouth did little to conceal the whisper that practically bounced through the domed ceiling of the hundred-year-old symphony hall.

Three rows behind her, Lydia cleared her throat and forced a grin. With teeth. A bright splotch of heat bloomed across her neck and chest as she stared straight ahead towards the stage, where her fourteen-year-old daughter, Opal, sat at a Victorian-era Steinway grand, her hands curled in her lap like a couple of dead doves.

A full two minutes had passed already. The first minute of silence was uncomfortable but acceptable; people could assume she was engaged in some ritual of preparation, a meditation on the mood and melody of the music that was about to overtake her, a pilot preparing to take flight. The next minute was catastrophic. Maestro Rafael Duarte, as in Rafael Duarte of Juilliard, sat in the fifth row, expression unreadable. This recital was not officially an audition, but everyone in the room knew it was.

Opal needed to perform her best tonight. It could be the singular event that determined the course of the rest of her future. But for some reason, she wasn’t playing.

People started to shift in their seats. Someone coughed. Heads were turning, searching their neighbors' faces, foreheads wrinkling in confusion and concern, glancing around for some figure of authority to step in. Why isn’t she playing? What do we do?

And naturally now, Lydia was beginning to feel the heat of their eyes shift to her. Because she was Opal’s mother. Because she was responsible for the transgressive moment unfolding before them. Responsible for it happening or responsible for ending it, it didn’t matter, but either way, people expected her to do something.

And she had no fucking clue what she was supposed to do.

Opal could have been painted onto the stage, a still life of a teenage girl at the most significant recital of her young life thus far. The symphony hall created a historic backdrop, with its gold-ornamented proscenium framing the dramatic rise of organ pipes. The pipes, along with the intricate gilded molding and Opal at the center of it all, created the illusion of a little blonde bird in a gigantic, antique cage. Her hair fell in a glossy amber curtain down her back, the front strands pinned away from her face. She wore the flutter-sleeved emerald-green dress with black velvet detailing they had purchased at full price from Macy’s a few months prior, the rich color a stunning contrast to the rosy glow of her skin. She was a vision. A wonderful, horrible, blinding vision that shimmered under Lydia’s rapidly increasing panic.

Her mind was a roulette wheel of frenzied, shuffling thoughts: Opal was having a panic attack. Opal was having a stroke. Opal was engaging in some kind of public protest. Opal was entering a state of psychosis. Opal was high on drugs. Opal’s body had suddenly been paralyzed.

Lydia’s motherly instincts roared at her to march right up to the stage, but would Opal ever forgive her if she did that? Sure, there were high-profile scouts in the audience, but who gave a flying fuck about them if something was seriously wrong with Opal? How much more time needed to pass before Lydia intervening became the only possible course of action?

“You got this, Opal!” Someone from the crowd piped up. It was a young voice, one of the other players sitting in the front row. A whooping chorus of agreement rose, and for a moment, Lydia actually felt the audience's shoulders sink in relief. But the shouts quickly decrescendoed back into silence, and the heavy clouds of expectation settled over the rows of creaky velvet seats.

Lydia needed to do something. Right now.

She tugged at her sweater dress’s collar, wishing she’d opted to wear the black linen dress instead. With all of the bodies packed into this room, the air was close and warm, and the weird odors of people surrounded her, the smell of their deodorants and scalps and musty fancy clothes that rarely ventured out of the backs of their closets.

She stood up, and for a moment her vision became static, her limbs weak. A hundred pairs of eyes turned to look at her. She tried to say something, but all that came out was a squeaky exhale, and then she was sidestepping out of her row, heels clacking down the center aisle as she crossed the distance to her daughter.

Lydia could swear that the corner of Opal’s mouth quirked just slightly. It was the face she made when Lydia tried to use slang. Nice try, but you’re doing it completely wrong and I can’t even begin to correct you.

Opal had asked for piano lessons when she was three years old. Three. Most three-year-olds that Lydia knew were still waking up from nightmares about monsters under the beds and crying when their parents dropped them off at preschool. Not Lydia. She put together sentences so unusual and sophisticated that other parents, after speaking with Opal, worried their own kids were delayed.

“Mommy, I need piano lessons so I can learn to play the Sesame Street song. But I think we need to buy an upright piano first. The keyboard is not acceptable.”

Opal’s intelligence mystified Lydia. She did her best to cultivate it, to feed Opal’s curiosity, but sometimes it terrified her. Five minutes ago, she was holding a sleeping baby against her chest, rocking whenever it stirred. Now that baby was a three-year-old that said things like “definitely absolutely not acceptable,” and “I think that’s enough of that,” and even though she still wore pull-ups to bed, she was such a far cry from the sleepy little thing she started as. Sometimes, Lydia felt like every single day she was meeting her daughter again for the first time.

And then somehow a decade had passed, and Lydia had birthed and raised two more children that turned from milk-hungry little monkeys into toddlers and then kids, and Opal was a teenager, and Lydia was a middle-aged woman with bags under her eyes and she hadn’t taken a deep breath in years. She loved her children desperately, wildly. Soccer practices, piano lessons, school pickups, sick days, figuring out what was for dinner again, the forever regenerating pile of laundry, waiting for her husband to come home, clamping down on her imagination of what he was doing with one of his many mistresses.

Yes, she knew about the mistresses. She told herself she didn’t care, even as she lay awake at night, alone in their king-sized bed. Let him leave her alone. All Lydia cared about was her children. All she had time for was her children. She could deal with the affairs and one-night stands, could handle his lies and disrespect. As long as her children were happy.

So she did backflips and handstands trying to give them the childhood they deserved while her husband fucked off to wherever. Sometimes a whole week would pass and Lydia would realize that she was so exhausted, she hadn’t actually perceived any of it. She was a sleepwalker in her own life, and her children were growing up under her nose and she was paying far too much attention and not at all enough.

Every face in the auditorium turned to watch Lydia as she hurried down the aisle. It stretched out before her, seeming to grow even longer as she traversed it. Her stomach roiled.

“Lydia,” she heard someone hiss, saw the hostility in their narrowed gaze. “What are you doing?”

Lydia shuddered as if she could shake off their stares. She just had to make it to her daughter. She tucked her head down and kept going.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Lydia was a good mother. It was the only thing she was good at. Opal was good at everything. Writing, math, music, art, sports. She devoured books like candy, she had an army of girlfriends who copied her style, her haircuts, the way she spoke. She’d had her heart set on Juilliard since seventh grade, and Lydia had no doubt that she would get in.

Lydia was a good mother. She forced herself to be a good mother. And when the crushing fatigue and exhaustion and feelings of inadequacy got in the way of being a good mother, she figured out a way around it in the form of little white pills.

That’s what mothers did. They adapted. The pills were just a temporary crutch so she could prop herself up for her children when they needed her. And they needed her so much. Needed so much of her.

So Lydia needed the pills. And maybe Opal’s nerves about the recital made Lydia jumpy, fraying her already ragged composure. So she had taken more than the usual amount while they waited in the train station. And a few more in the lobby bathroom. And one more right there at her seat. Just to get through the night. To show up for Opal at this most important event of her life. To be the mother that Opal needed.

And maybe it was true that Opal no longer needed Lydia. But Lydia still needed her. She needed Opal now. To grasp her daughter by the shoulders and pull her against her chest, to feel her heart beating against hers and tell her that whatever this was, they would get through it. They always did.

Lydia’s field of vision had narrowed to only her daughter and the piano. And now, Opal was looking back at her, eyes wide and blinking fast, the rest of her body a blur.

Lydia reached the stage. She hoisted herself up onto it quickly and gracelessly—her sweater dress too tight, her heels long-abandoned somewhere back in the aisle—and was interrupted by a deafening, discordant chord.

“Mom?” She saw Opal’s mouth moving.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Lydia breathed, closing the final few yards to her daughter. Opal was standing now, cheeks flushed, open-mouthed, her beautiful face contorting with anger and fear and confusion and, Lydia saw it now, had seen it in her daughter’s face a hundred thousand times since the first handful of pills: pity.

“Mom,” Opal was saying, pushing Lydia’s arms away. “Mom.”

“It’s going to be fine,” Lydia repeated, brushing Opal’s hair, her forehead.

“How many did you take?” Opal whispered. Lydia smiled at her daughter and shook her head.

“I know you can do this.”

But the entire stage was shimmering now, and Lydia noticed for the first time how truly quiet it was. Yes, there was a certain clamor coming from behind her, voices muttering in disapproval, in excitement and confusion. But the air was empty of something that had been present a few moments ago. The music.

Yes, the music, she heard it now. She remembered… She had heard it before, many times. The Liszt piece. Opal’s Liszt piece. She practiced it every evening when she came home from school.

“You’re so talented,” Lydia tried to say, but something was wrong with her mouth and the words didn’t come out the way she wanted them to.

“Mom,” Opal was saying, her voice both stern and soft. “I need you to get offstage now. Please.”

Somebody else had appeared at Lydia’s shoulder, was gripping her arm.

“Mrs. Chapman,” they addressed her. “Come with me.”

“Get off,” Lydia tried to say, yanking herself away. But she was having trouble with her body, her muscles uncoordinated and heavy, and she stumbled. Something dropped from her pocket, clattered to the floor, and exploded. A hundred white sparkles skittered across the stage. Lydia knelt to the ground, fumbling for the orange pill bottle.

“Jesus Christ,” somebody said. The stage seemed crowded now. People surrounded Lydia on all sides, all trying to touch her, to pull her to her feet.

“I need to make sure my daughter is okay,” Lydia struggled.

“Opal needs to finish playing her piece now,” someone said. “Come with me, Mrs. Chapman.”

Lydia lost the fight with her body and let herself go limp. As they carried her offstage, the edges of her awareness crept inward like the closing of an old movie. In the darkening circle, Opal stood tall and straight like a princess. Her hands were clasped in front of her heart. They shook ever so slightly.

“I love you,” Lydia pleaded. Opal’s face closed. Something inside Lydia died.

She watched her daughter turn away, place her hands upon the keys, and begin again.