own discovery that if she plunked down on enough keys at one time, using both full palms and strength from her upper arms, this noise was powerful enough to drown out the sound of her parents hurling insults at one another in the next room.
Lynn would practice for hours a day, composing her own songs after she had mastered the repertoire from her most recent lesson. Her parents did not push her in this direction, nor did they discourage it—it was entirely her own love of the instrument that inspired this level of discipline. They divorced when Lynn was seven, and her father moved to Pittsburgh to work for a sports broadcasting radio network.
By the time Lynn was eight, she had surpassed Amy’s skill level, so she started taking lessons from the woman who played piano for their church’s contemporary praise group. Lynn’s mother had started attending church in the wake of the divorce, and brought Lynn to services every Sunday and Wednesday. Her mother sang way too loudly in services, and raised her hands in worship at times when Lynn did not think it was necessary, or appropriate.
Lynn organized piano recitals for herself and invited The Gunners to her home. Her mother would pour red punch into wax-paper cups and serve store-bought cookies on a plastic silver tray. Lynn would wear the nicest dress she owned. The other five children would seat themselves on folding chairs Lynn had arranged in a semicircle around herself, and they would listen quietly as she played, then applaud when she had finished. Oftentimes, one of the other children would sit at Lynn’s piano bench afterward and paw clumsily at the keys, trying to locate a tune. Lynn would laugh and try to teach them something simple: “Chopsticks,” “Heart and Soul.” At these times, Lynn felt that her friends were the best friends in the whole world. She dreamed that one day she would play on a huge stage, like Carnegie Hall, and be presented with an award and given the opportunity to speak, and she would thank each of The Gunners by name for their friendship and support.
When Lynn was thirteen, the teacher from church recommended her to a teacher at Buff State. She said Lynn was playing at an advanced level and would not find an adequate teacher outside of the university setting, so Lynn started taking weekly lessons with Brent, a tall, slim graduate student from Texas who wore wire-rimmed glasses and his long hair in a single braid down his back. He smelled a little bit like a horse on hot days, and he sucked on butterscotch candies.
When Lynn met Brent, she felt a painful, shivery yearning in her little body.
It wasn’t that Lynn had no interest in her own peers; she was deeply invested in her friendships with The Gunners, but they were like siblings to her—there was nothing even resembling sexual attraction there. And outside of The Gunners, Lynn cared nothing for her classmates or other kids her age. She didn’t need them, she barely even noticed them.
But what she felt instantly for Brent sent her careening after something entirely new, something mega: Lynn wanted sex things. At the age of thirteen, she wasn’t even entirely clear on the logistics, but she knew that’s what she wanted. She felt desire everywhere, most of all in the zoom between her legs, a vibration so fierce it panted and howled against the crotch of her pants.
Life in between her piano lessons became practically unbearable—Lynn could think of nothing else. Inwardly, she hurtled between euphoria and utter despair. She spent long sessions every evening contemplating her outfit for her upcoming lesson. She started to shave her legs. She started to massage her little boobies, having read in Seventeen magazine that this would make them grow faster. She tried to control her wild red curls with pins and a straightening tool and waxy pomade.
The Gunners were routinely swiping liquor from their parents, parents’ guests, older siblings, and occasionally beer from the 7-Eleven when the sweaty, nearsighted guy was the only one working. Lynn took small canteens of her mother’s gin to The Gunner House once or twice a month. More often than this, and more often than she liked to admit, Lynn was sipping from these canteens on her own. Sometimes to make a long day at school less tedious or to make the Christian network that her mother watched in the evenings straight-up hilarious. Sometimes for no reason at all except the simple fact that when she was sneaking sips of booze, she felt, quite frankly, the way a person was supposed to feel. It was like an on button.
Lynn started to sip before her lessons with Brent, too, realizing that it made her more clever and more confident. It made her playing less precise but more colorful.
They were about six months into their lessons when Brent announced to Lynn and her mother that he had been accepted into a PhD program in Cleveland and would be leaving town in May. It was April. Lynn was gutted. She asked her mother how far away Cleveland was.
At the first lesson after learning that Brent would be leaving, Lynn waited for her mother to leave the room. Then, instead of starting in to the passage that she was supposed to play, Lynn wiped her wet palms together and into her thighs. She opened her mouth to reveal herself to Brent. She had meticulously planned out her exact message, and imagined that she would reach the end and Brent would say, Lynn, wondrously, as though she were a mirage, his eyes shining; he would say, Oh, Lynn, yes. But now her message was a collection of words swimming aimlessly in her head, her whole script gone as loose and watery as old Jell-O: too young, but . . . love . . . I know . . . I want . . . Cleveland . . . please . . .
Brent stopped her after she had spoken only a single word, “I—” with a hand in the air between them. He adjusted his glasses and said, “Lynn, stop. I know you think you know what you want, but you don’t.”
“What?” Lynn’s voice sounded to her own ears like a tiny toy. The wild heat between her legs instantly went cool and then dead.
“You think you want me,” Brent said directly but not unkindly. Then he lowered his voice and added, “And I can smell booze on your breath, young lady.”
Young lady! Lynn threw her hands to her cheeks and began to cry immediately, mangled by shame. She shrieked insults at herself inside her head, as though there were two Lynns—one that was completely reasonable and knew all along that she was a child and of course Brent saw her that way, too. And another one that was so stupid it actually thought Brent might share her feelings, the attraction. She couldn’t believe she had let the stupid one edge out the smart one. She couldn’t believe the smart one had let this happen. How could you be so stupid? She screamed at both of them.
Brent retrieved a Kleenex and said, “You’re going to get over this sooner than you think. I promise. But . . . take care of yourself. Okay? You’re an incredible musician already. It’d be a shame if anything got in your way. If you got in your own way.”
He helped Lynn compose herself before her mother returned. But when she did, Brent announced that there had been a change of plans and he would be leaving town earlier than anticipated—that today had been their last lesson.
Several weeks later, Lynn started taking lessons from another graduate student at Buff State, a female Brent had recommended.
Lynn forgot about her feelings for Brent soon after he left—he was right, she recovered from the humiliating incident quicker than she could have imagined—but she did not forget the feelings within herself that had been awakened. She began to explore her own body in private, especially after she’d had a few sips of gin, because alcohol heightened the electrifying sensation that when she touched between her legs she was powerless against her own power.
She began to wonder about the boys who were her friends, Jimmy and Sam and Mikey. She wondered if they had pubic hair yet and what their lips were like and if their penises got hard when they thought about her, or Alice, or Sally. And she even wondered about the girls; she wondered what Sally’s slim body looked like without clothing, if those tiny breasts looked like breasts. She wondered what everyone around her was wondering.
Chapter
