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Afterward, he’d speak to me sternly about what he called the problem of your confidence . It was important, he’d say, to look people in the eye, to speak clearly, to accept a compliment with a smile. As a performer, I’d have to get used to interacting with strangers. I’d have to get used to male attention. And I’d have to learn to dress—was there someone who could help me? My mother, perhaps, or a sister? Would I be offended if he, himself, made a few suggestions?
    He was speaking to me as my teacher, of course, but also as a friend.
    “A little bit of lipstick never hurt a girl,” he said. “Not that I’m suggesting you should paint yourself like one of Herr Brahms’s whores.”
    He apologized for his language. He only wanted what was best. He was trying to protect me, the way Clara’s father tried to protect her, but did Clara listen? Did she? Could I understand how much Clara’s father had loved her, how he would have done anything to save her from the life she lived with Schumann, reduced to a common hausfrau, wiping the mouths and asses of brats? I must find a man who would be prepared to offer everything, but only from a distance. A man who would look out for me. Who would ask almost nothing in return.
    Kissing my fingers, untucking my shirt.
    How can you play if you can’t lift your arms?
    We were at it again, two hands, four. The room echoed with our longing. Still, I wouldn’t let him hold me. In the end, I’d always get up, step away.
    For art is about desire, is it not, and never its consummation?
    “I am beginning to think,” the piano teacher said, “that you are incapable of passion.”

12.
    F OR SEVERAL YEARS, THERE was a man who was in love with me. L—had gotten divorced after discovering a cache of e-mails from his wife’s lover, and he’d call me (not too often, of course, for I was married to Cal) just to see how I was doing, talk about books, exchange manuscripts-in-progress. We’d talk about love and relationships, marriage and friendship, true friendship between women and men, which we both agreed was absolutely possible, why not? Not only possible. Necessary. At a literary conference, drunk on wine and success, I told him about Cal, our separate rooms, our separate lives. L—followed me up to my hotel room…
    …where I left him standing outside the door.
    All night long, my chest and belly ached with what I thought was virtue.
    “I don’t see how you can stand it,” he said the next time we spoke.
    The last time.
    “It’s not so bad,” I said.

    “Then something’s wrong with you,” he said, and I hung up on him.
    Shortly after my divorce, I heard from him again, a brief e-mail in which he said he’d been sorry to hear about Cal and me. He’d recently remarried, someone we both knew, a woman who writes about horses. She, too, he said, was thinking of me, would keep me in her thoughts. Both of them had been through it themselves. Both of them knew how tough it could be. So how was I doing? Probably okay. But I shouldn’t hesitate to drop him a line if I ever needed a listening ear.

13.
    “G OING THROUGH A DIVORCE, ” Ellen had said as we’d carried Cal’s boxes out to the garage, “is like going through chemotherapy. You have to expect to get really, really sick. The difference with divorce is that you know you are going to get better.”

 

    Self-Portrait: Gaela Erwin *

14.
    T HE SECOND TIME I experienced déjà vu, Heidi was two years old. It was October, a Thursday morning. I’d just started at the university, teaching classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Each Tuesday, I made the six-hour round-trip commute from West Palm Beach, arriving home just in time to tuck Heidi in for the night. On Wednesday nights, however, I’d stay over in Miami. I’d check into my hotel room by six P.M . I’d write until one or two in the morning, sleep in until eight the next day, when I’d start to prep my graduate seminar.
    This was the longest block