The Lucy Variations - Hardcover

Zarr, Sara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031620501X ISBN 13: 9780316205016

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company, 2013

Synopsis

Lucy Beck-Moreau once had a promising future as a concert pianist. The right people knew her name, her performances were booked months in advance, and her future seemed certain.

That was all before she turned fourteen.

Now, at sixteen, it's over. A death, and a betrayal, led her to walk away. That leaves her talented ten-year-old brother, Gus, to shoulder the full weight of the Beck-Moreau family expectations. Then Gus gets a new piano teacher who is young, kind, and interested in helping Lucy rekindle her love of piano -- on her own terms. But when you're used to performing for sold-out audiences and world-famous critics, can you ever learn to play just for yourself?

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr takes readers inside one girl's struggle to reclaim her love of music and herself. To find joy again, even when things don't go according to plan. Because life isn't a performance, and everyone deserves the chance to make a few mistakes along the way.

About this title

About the Author

Sara Zarr was raised in San Francisco, California, and now lives with her husband in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is the author of The Lucy Variations, How to Save a Life, What We Lost, Sweethearts, and the National Book Award finalist Story of a Girl. Her website is www.sarazarr.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Lucy Variations

By Sara Zarr

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Copyright © 2013 Sara Zarr
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-316-20501-6

CHAPTER 1

Try harder, Lucy.

Lucy stared down at Madame Temnikova's face.

Which seemed incredibly gray.

Try.

Harder.

Lucy.

She put her hands over Temnikova's sternum again, and again hesitated.

Stage fright: an opportunity to prove herself or a chance to fail. Which wasnothing new for her. It just hadn't been a life-or-death issue until now.

This isn't a performance. Do something.

But an actual dying person in the living room wasn't the same as a Red Crossdummy in the school gym. Lucy tried not to think about Temnikova's skin underher hands. Or the way, from the looks of things, that skin now encased only abody, no longer a soul.

Except the moment wasn't definite. More like Temnikova was not there and thenthere and then not there. Mostly not.

Gus, Lucy's ten-year-old brother, started to ask the question she didn't want toanswer. "Is she ..."

Dead?

"Call nine-one-one, Gus," she told him for the second time. He'd beenmotionless, mesmerized. Lucy kept her voice unwavering, though she felt likescreaming. She didn't want to freak him out. Channeling her mother's dispassionand authority, she said, "Go do it right now."

Gus hurried across the room to the phone, and Lucy looked at the ceiling, tryingto remember the steps in the Cardiac Chain of Survival—what went where andfor how long. Where were her mother and grandfather, anyway? They were usuallyand annoyingly there, running the house and everything,everyone, in it like a Fortune 500 company.

The metronome on top of the piano ticked steadily; Lucy fought off the urge tothrow a pillow at it. Instead she used it to time the chest compressions.

Still ...

That sound.

Tick tick tick tick.

A slow adagio. A death march.

She didn't know how Gus could stand it. Spending day after day after day afterlonely day in this room, with this old woman.

Everything good (tick) is passing you by (tick) as you sithere (tick) and practice your life away (tick).

Except she did know, because she'd done it herself for more than eleven years.Not with Temnikova, but in this room. This house. These parents. This familyhistory.

"My sister is doing that," Gus said into the phone. Then to Lucy, "They want youto try mouth-to-mouth."

When Lucy and Reyna signed up for the CPR workshop at school last spring, they'dassumed their future patients would be sexy, male, and under forty, an ideawhich now seemed obviously idiotic. Lucy swept her hair back over one shoulderand braced herself.

Their lips met. Lucy's breath filled Temnikova's lungs. They inflated anddeflated, inflated and deflated. Nothing. She went back to the chestcompressions.

Gus was speaking, but his voice seemed far away. The order of Lucy's actionsfelt wrong; the backs of her thighs cramped. She looked up at Gus, finally, andtried to read his face. Maybe her inadequacy was engraving permanent trauma ontohis psyche. Twenty years from now, in therapy, he'd confide to some beardedmiddle-aged man that his problems all began when his sister let his pianoteacher die right in front of him. Maybe she should have sent him out of theroom.

Too late now.

"Tell them I think ... I'm pretty sure she's dead."

Gus held the phone out to Lucy. "You tell them." She stood and took it, wincingat the needles that shot through her sleeping left foot while Gus walked to thepiano, stopped the metronome, and slid its metal pendulum into place.

The house seemed to exhale. Lucy gave the bad news to "them." After going overthe details they needed, she hung up, and Gus asked, "Do we just leave her bodyhere?"

Temnikova had dropped to the Persian rug, behind the piano bench, where she'dbeen standing and listening to Gus. Right in the middle of a Chopin nocturne.

"Yeah. They'll be here soon. Let's go ... somewhere else."

"I don't want her to be alone," he said, and sat in Grandpa Beck's armchair, afew feet away from Temnikova's head. She'd been coloring her short hair anunnatural dark red as long as Lucy's family had known her.

Lucy went to Gus and rested her hip against the chair. She should try her mom'scell, or her grandfather's, and her dad's office. Only she didn't want to. Andthe situation was no longer urgent, clearly.

"Sorry, Gus."

Fail.

One of the EMTs said it looked like a stroke, not a heart attack, and there was"probably" nothing Lucy could have done. He typed into his phone or radio orwhatever it was while he talked.

Probably. It wasn't exactly a word of comfort.

While the other EMTs loaded Temnikova's body onto a gurney they'd parked in thefoyer, the "probably" guy clipped his radio back onto his belt and checked offthings on a form. Lucy gave her name and parents' names and the house phonenumber. He paused halfway down the page and rested his finger over one of thecheck boxes.

"You're over eighteen, right?"

"Sixteen."

"Really." He—small and wiry, maybe two inches shorter than Lucy—gaveher a once-over. Their eyes didn't quite meet. "You look older."

She never knew what to say to that. Was it supposed to be a compliment? Maybeshe didn't want to look older. Maybe she didn't even want to be sixteen. Twelve.Twelve had been a good age: going to the symphony with Grandma Beck inexcessively fancy dresses, unembarrassed to hold her hand. Being light enoughthat her dad could carry her from the car to the front door on late nights.Shopping with her mother and not winding up in a fight every time.

"So I've been told," she said. He smiled. There should be some kind of ruleagainst smiling in his job. She said, "Just another day for you, I guess."

"I wouldn't put it that way." He handed her a card. "I'll need to have one ofyour parents call this number as soon as they can. You said she's not arelative?"

His look turned into a stare that lingered somewhere between Lucy's neck andwaist. She stood straighter, and he returned his attention to the clipboard."She's my brother's piano teacher."

Lucy gestured to Gus, who'd been sitting on the stairs, his chin in his hands.He didn't appear traumatized. Bored, possibly. Or, knowing him, simply thinking.Maybe thinking about how if he'd been allowed to go to his school sleepover atthe Academy of Sciences, like he wanted, this wouldn't even be happening. But,as usual, their parents and Temnikova had said no, reluctant to take any timeaway from his scheduled practice.

The EMT blew a breath through his thin lips. "That's rough. It happening righthere, during a lesson."

Where else would it happen? Temnikova practically lived there, in the pianoroom. Gus wasn't your average ten-year-old, fumbling through "Clair de lune" and"London Bridge" while everyone who was forced to listen held back the eye rolls.He had a career. A following. Like Lucy used to have. And Zoya Temnikova hadbeen working with him since he turned four, when Lucy's grandfather flew her tothe States from Volgograd, set her up in an apartment down the street, andhelped her become a legalized citizen.

Her dying at the piano made perfect sense.

Still, it was sad. She'd given her life to their family, and now it was over.

After the EMTs rolled the body out, Gus got up off the stairs and stood next toLucy in the starkly hushed foyer. If he was upset about Temnikova, he didn'tshow it. When Lucy asked, "You okay, Gustav?" all he had to say about the deathof the woman with whom he'd spent so much of his time over the last six yearswas:

"Mom's going to be pissed."

CHAPTER 2

"She wasn't even that old." Lucy's mother, tall and straight-backedat the kitchen island, slapped a flank steak onto the cutting board.

"She was ancient," Lucy said, skulking in the serving pantry between the kitchenand the dining room. Her father had parked himself on a stool at the island, Gusnext to him. The two of them created a handy buffer zone between Lucy and hermom. She'd already gotten in trouble for not calling either of her parents orGrandpa Beck—or even Martin, their housekeeper, who'd been off—untilthe EMTs left. Her defense, which her mother did not appreciate, was, "It's notlike any of you could have brought her back to life."

Now her father said, "Lucy's right. She was at that age when you can goanytime."

"She had a dinosaur neck," Gus added.

"Gus," Lucy said. "A little respect?"

"Sorry."

Lucy's dad took a swallow of his Old Fashioned while her mother whacked thesteak with a mallet and Lucy felt the in-and-out of her own breath. SinceTemnikova's exit, she'd become weirdly aware of her lungs, her heart, everythingin her body that worked to keep her alive.

"Well, it's terrible timing," her mother said. She put a grill pan down on thestove top. While it heated she strode toward Lucy, who took a nervous step back,until she realized the actual object of her mother's displeasure was thecalendar that hung just inside the pantry. "Seven weeks." She gave Lucy a hardlook, pointing at the calendar. "Not even seven. Closer to six and a half."

The winter showcase at the symphony hall.

CPR isn't as easy as it looks on TV, Mom. "Gus'll be ready. He's readynow."

"Of course he's ready now." Her mother went back to the island and putthe steak into the pan. Sizzle and smoke. "But he won't be ready in six weekswithout anyone on him. How am I going to find someone at this time of year? Withthe holidays coming up."

"It's okay, Mom," Gus said. "I'll practice the same amount."

"It's a showcase, Kat." Lucy's dad turned his glass in his hand. "Not acompetition. He'll do fine."

He must have forgotten that fine wasn't in their family's vocabulary. Ifyou were a Beck-Moreau, and you got up on stage for anyreason—showcase, competition, recital, or just to roll a piano stool intoplace—you'd better surpass fine by about a million miles.

Granted, that was more a Beck issue than a Moreau one.

"The Swanner isn't long after, and that is a competition. I'll send out e-mailstonight," her mother said. "After Grandpa gets home and I have a chance to talkto him about it. We'll find out who's available on such short notice. No onegood, I'm sure."

Lucy ventured two steps into the kitchen, placing her body in front of thecalendar. "Maybe Gus could take a little break. Some people do, you know. Somepeople believe it actually helps. And then he could—"

Her mother cut her off. "Lucy, I'm sorry, but you're not exactly the firstperson I'm going to turn to for advice about this."

"Kat ..." Lucy waited for her dad to say more than that. Perhaps even mount aminor defense on Lucy's behalf. But no. Of course not.

"Do you want me to set the table, Mom?" Gus asked.

"I'll help," Lucy said, and followed him into their large formal dining room. Ittook immense self-control to not ruffle his hair. She loved his curls; he didn'tlike anyone touching them.

"Set for four," their mother called after them. "Grandpa's meeting friendstonight."

Given how Grandma's death had gone down, it was no big surprise that GrandpaBeck hadn't canceled his plans and come running home upon hearing the news aboutTemnikova. No surprise, but still cold.

They laid out clean place mats and napkins, dinner plates, salad plates, dinnerforks, salad forks, knives, spoons. No dessert stuff on weekdays. Wineglassesfor their parents. Water goblets for everyone. Even without Grandpa Beck, evenunder the circumstances, they would conform to tradition. Generally, Lucy didn'tmind. It would be nice, though, once in a while, to be the kind of family thaton a crap day like this would order a pizza and eat it in the kitchen. Maybeeven talk about the fact that it was kinda sad and awful thatsomeone who mattered to them had died in their house that afternoon.

"Nice work, Gustav," Lucy said, double-checking the table. She rubbed a butterknife clean of water spots. Martin would never let an unclean knife leave thekitchen.

Gus rested his hands on the back of one of the dining chairs and nodded. Lucywent to stand beside him. She wasn't much of a crier, but, God. What a day.Temnikova was gone. Just ... gone. Like Grandma. Except Grandma wasGrandma. So it was different. But Lucy hadn't been here for that, andnow that she'd seen this death up close, she couldn't help but think about theone she'd missed.

She put her arm around Gus and leaned way down to rest her head on his shoulder."Someday you'll be taller, and this won't be so awkward."

"Oh, is that why it's awkward?"

"Funny." She straightened up, the urge to cry gone. "I'm sorry I couldn't saveher."

"You said that already. It's okay."

"Aren't you a little bit sad?" she asked.

"I don't know," Gus said. "Are you?"

"It makes me think of Grandma."

Gus nodded, and Lucy set her hand on his head for a few seconds until hesquirmed out from under it and took his seat. He put his napkin on his lap, somannered and adult. He'd never had a messy phase. He'd never been sent away fromthe table. He never got crazy. Their parents took it as something to be proudof. Lucy thought maybe it wasn't how a ten-year-old boy's life should look, andshe wished he would get crazy once in a while. A sugar bender. Atantrum. Inappropriate jokes.

But in their house, childhood, like grief, was an episode merely tolerated. Aninconvenience and an obstacle to the real work of life: proving to the world andto yourself that you weren't just taking up space.

No pressure.

She sat across from Gus and flapped her napkin out dramatically, to make himsmile.

Maybe it was good he was such a perfect kid. It left her free to screw up forboth of them.

Intermezzo

A cocktail party at a hotel, eight months ago. Lucy, nervous and ina new dress; one she and her mother had picked out together and agreed on, backwhen they used to agree on at least some things. It was slightly more adult thanthe rest of Lucy's wardrobe. She was about to turn sixteen, and her motherdidn't mind Lucy showing leg as long as the neckline stayed appropriate and theheel low. The dress—silver jersey with ruching that gathered at the leftside of her waist—stopped midthigh. Lucy was supposed to be wearingtights.

But her mother wasn't there to check. She'd stayed home to take care of GrandmaBeck, whose bad cold had suddenly become pneumonia. So Lucy's dad had comeinstead to Prague, for the festival. Grandpa Beck, too, of course, because hebelieved he had to be at everything. Later, Lucy didn't understand how he couldhave left his sick wife behind the way he did.

She was talking to two of the other pianists playing the festival but, unlikeher, not competing: a guy from Tokyo and a girl from a European city Lucy didn'tquite catch over the noise of the room, whose name was Liesel or Louisa orsomething. They were both older than she was by about ten years, both goodenough English speakers to talk about the pieces they were playing, where elsethey'd traveled recently, and where they were going next.

"I think I'm doing Tanglewood this summer," Lucy told them.

It sounded impressive. Not that she wanted to go to Tanglewood. As shehadn't wanted to do so many of the things that filled her time: the concerts andfestivals and recording sessions and competitions that took her around the worldand caused her to miss such massive chunks of school that she wasn't officiallyenrolled anymore. Instead she worked with various tutors from USF. Marnie andcute Bennett and sometimes Allison.

She hadn't even wanted to come to the Prague, which only took fifteen pianistsin her age group from around the world. Out of thousands of applicants, she'dmade it. There'd been a party. Grandma Beck wouldn't let anyone else pick theflowers or the food. Lucy's dad bought her a white-gold necklace with anL pendant to congratulate her, and Gus got all caught up in imagininghimself at the same festival one day. Grace Chang, her teacher, took Lucy outfor a special dinner to strategize a repertoire.

The thing was, Lucy hadn't even applied.

Her mother had filled out the form and sent in the CD.

"I didn't want you to be disappointed if you didn't get in," her mom had said.

Right, Lucy had thought. More like you didn't want to give me thechance to say no.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr. Copyright © 2013 Sara Zarr. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 031620501X
• ISBN 13: 9780316205016
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320