She was a woman well into her 70's. I was 13. I saw her once a week, and paid her two dollars. In the summer she probably missed me,
because she paid me. I can't tell
you how much time I spent under her, blowing bubbles.
I should elaborate.
The brass plaque on her front porch proclaimed: Gladys K.
Norman, Teacher of Piano. I was
about 12 when I told my mother I wanted a
piano, and let her empty my savings account. It was a good down-payment for a nice little spinet. We contacted Miss Norman, who lived
almost two blocks away, and she had to first visit us, so, like a doctor, she
could inspect my instrument in the presence of my parents (since I was a
minor). Miss Norman was among the
first women to get a degree from Penn, and taught not music theory but
traditional piano as a performance art.
When we met, she was legally blind. Her makeup reminded me of my grandmother, at her funeral.
Every Tuesday night from 7th through 12th grade, I'd carry my crescendos and
ritardandos to her house at 6:30 PM.
I'd sit (quietly!) on her sofa, making the victim before me even more
nervous. She really could barely
see; she'd have to press our money to her glasses to see the denominations. But somehow, she'd know when your
half-hour was up, making a note in her book with her favorite, leaky fountain
pen.
Her home was a fascinating place on occasion. I remember the first time she turned
into a fucking nut case. Prim and
proper Ms. Norman was sitting in her stuffed chair beside the baby grand
listening to me crank through The Moonlight Sonata, and a voice came out
of the kitchen. Apparently she
lived with her mother, who had the assignment of laying quietly in the kitchen
on a sofa, while Ms. Norman was working.
Maybe she was duct taped to the sofa, I never really knew. This one night a weak voice squeaked
out of the kitchen, "Gladys?"
It waivered like a note from a piano wouldn't. Gladys popped up so fast, the doilies flew from her chair as
she bolted out to the kitchen, heels clicking on the linoleum, to scream at her
mother. "You know I'm working
and I can't be disturbed!"
Jesus! Her button had been pushed. Once I even incorporated it into my music. I hadn't practiced. The week flew by. There I sat, ready to disappoint. I had just started playing Edvard
Grieg's Norwegian Dance when that
voice floated into the living room and, as my teacher was doing her
"shut up mother" rant, I smoothly transitioned from the top of page
one to the bottom of page two, which she heard as she returned. "Good job," she said. I couldn't believe I got away with it! Then, without missing a beat (music
joke), she smiled and said "Let me hear it again." Too funny.
Every evening in the summer Miss Norman would walk past my
house to the Collingdale swim club - an old woman on an old mission. She'd ease out of the dressing room, a
blind woman without her glasses.
Her bathing suit was so old it probably had T-rex's on it. She'd ease into the pool, and would
swim a few laps (with Neptune as my witness) at a speed no one had seen
before. To document a single
stroke, you wouldn't need a photographer, a painter would do. She would swim in a straight line,
through and over people. Very
slowly a hand would hit your head, then an elbow, then a shoulder, then you'd
know what would come next so you'd move for the woman who was crawling over
you. While she was my teacher, to
my young friends she was entertainment.
For some reason, as she was doing her laps, we would swim under her and
blow bubbles. What can you expect
from thirteen year olds?
In the summer, she'd hire me to cut her grass and keep her
gardens weeded and bushes trimmed.
She didn't pay me by the job, but by the hour. It sounded reasonable.
Every time I started working she'd start playing the piano. It was never a waltz. I don't know where she found this hell
music, but I swear - the piano
creaked under the stress. Strings
hummed in unnatural ways. The
faster she'd play, the faster I'd work. I cut the grass and weeded and raked,
and I got a quarter? Why? Because I'd only worked for 15
minutes. I never earned any money
that folded. Funny girl.
Perhaps what I miss most of all is that, when I mastered a
piece, whether it was one of my first, with the notes written on an index card,
or the seven exhausting pages of Rachmaninoff's Bells of Moscow, whether
I was 13 or 17, mastery was rewarded with a gold star. (Some of you will remember from school
the gold and silver stars, always kept in a little box in the teacher's
desk.) Since she was always a
proper woman, she always wore a dress, always wore makeup, and always had her
bright red hooker nailpolish on.
Sometimes when she put a star on my music, the fountain pen ink on her
finger would get licked along with the star, and the star would have a blue
tail. My little shooting
star. Sometimes it would have a
red tail, if the nailpolish was just right - stars with tails like comets. Each one was an original objet d'art to me, and she never could
see what she had created.
She taught because she loved to, and at the time, all I
could do in response was to supply an occasional set of bubbles. I hope they felt good. She deserved that.
© 2012 John Allison
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