Read Happy Any Day Now for Free Online Page B

multi-armed Hindu goddess with an inspired energy and a divine will you really didn’t want to cross. The pen, in one of her eight hands, was poised. “Okay, who else?” Her eyes lit with a wicked twinkle. “How about Eloise Flint?”
    “How about the head of al-Qaeda while you’re de-scumming the universe?” I snarled. “Eloise Flint. Over my dead body. Or better yet, hers.”
    Acclaimed cellist, five-time Grammy winner for best classical performance, international pain-in-the-ass renowned for her arrogance and her hairspring temper, Eloise Flint had been my personal and professional nemesis for almost half my life. She’d been a classmate and pseudo-friend at the conservatory, but when Charlie dumped me, she moved in on him like a spider on a fly, rendering my humiliation complete and very public. Five years later, she and I had met up again. And I’d had a chance to even the score.
    Marti had heard the story ad nauseam, so she should have known better than to joke about Eloise, but for Marti a good laugh took precedence over the pain of faded heartbreak any day. This time, though, she saw my face and must have deduced she’d gone too far because she quickly said, “Strike the bitch. Bad joke. On the other hand, I was thinking you’d like to include Tim Beckersham, son of the late Florence.”
    That worked. I smiled at the memory of the plump English woman, my intrepid cello teacher who had followed me into the bowels of Bed-Stuy for my after-school lessons. Fiercely determined not to let my talent go under, Florence Beckersham had managed to tack together bus transfers and subway routes and make her way to whatever high-crime neighborhood my mother and I had landed in on our downward spiral. But she was equally committed to connecting with me, the girl who—except for my brief friendship with Brenda—had no one to talk to or be heard by.
    My mother had been depressed and exhausted most of the time. Circumstance had stripped life pretty much to its essentials. Communication beyond the directives—“Take bath now, Judith”—and the interrogatives—“You finish homework? How long you practice?”—had been limited.
    Only while tucking me in at night did
uhm-mah
make time for me. Grace sat on the side of my bed in the room we shared and, as her mother and
her
mother before
her
had, she sang the traditional Korean folk song
Arirang
in an enchantingly soft voice. In winter, tucking the quilt under my chin, in spring, as a fresh tar-scented city breeze blew the sheets-made-into-curtains into ghost shapes in the half dark, she smoothed my bangs back from my forehead and crooned
Arirang
for my lullaby. I lived on that nightly sliver of song, that precious, comforting stroke of affection from my mother.
    Otherwise, it was Mrs. Beckersham who guided my emotional life. Mrs. Beckersham who explained that ignoring the taunts at school would make me a stronger person. Mrs. B who scrubbed away at my lack of confidence and helped me polish the essay that got me into the New England Conservatory.
    After my graduation, Mrs. B and I stayed in touch. Then I moved to Baltimore and she retired to California. The last time I saw her, I was playing a Mozart festival in Berkeley and her son drove her over from San Francisco. Backstage, while Tim beamed, she and I hugged and wept.
    “I knew it from the first, Judith. You were just so special—as a musician, yes, but more importantly as a child,” she’d said.
    Six months later, she was dead.
    “I have Tim’s address,” I said to Marti. “He sends me a Christmas card every year. I remember him as a kid doing his homework at our recital rehearsals. Now he’s a doctor living on the West Coast, so he probably won’t come in for it, but, sure, invite him.”
    “Okay, who else? Charlie Pruitt?”
    “Ah, the Harvard Houdini. Vanished! He said he’d call and he hasn’t.” So much for tracking me down. Nothing had appeared in my mail cubby at the Berenson Concert Hall, and