The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt Read online

  Dedication

  Once I told a class of Natalie Babbitt’s that she had inspired and encouraged me as a writer, as a friend. “Why, then,” said Natalie crisply (joking, of course), “haven’t you ever dedicated a book to me?” Well, this is it, with deep affection.

  To Nat from Pat

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to three people—

  To Sally Bagg for years of earnest and enthusiastic talk of music and its drama;

  To Jane Carnes for a quiet place to write and the nurturing that came with it;

  To Jason Melanson for the young unfettered wisdom that many of us have forgotten.

  Epigraph

  We all know that art is not truth.

  Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

  —Pablo Picasso

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Other Books by Patricia MacLachlan

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother’s jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. Bus number twelve is her favorite place for watching, inside and out. The bus passes cars and bicycles and people walking dogs. It passes store windows, and every so often Minna sees her face reflection, two dark eyes in a face as pale as a winter dawn. There are fourteen people on the bus today. Minna stands up to count them. She likes to count people, telephone poles, hats, umbrellas, and, lately, earrings. One girl, sitting directly in front of Minna, has seven earrings, five in one ear. She has wisps of dyed green hair that lie like forsythia buds against her neck.

  There are, Minna knows, a king, a past president of the United States, and a beauty queen on the bus. Minna can tell by looking. The king yawns and scratches his ear with his little finger. Scratches, not picks. The beauty queen sleeps, her mouth open, her hair the color of tomatoes not yet ripe. The past president of the United States reads Teen Love and Body Builder’s Annual.

  Next to Minna, leaning against the seat, is her cello in its zippered canvas case. Next to her cello is her younger brother, McGrew, who is humming. McGrew always hums. Sometimes he hums sentences, though most often it comes out like singing. McGrew’s teachers do not enjoy McGrew answering questions in hums or song. Neither does the school principal, Mr. Ripley. McGrew spends lots of time sitting on the bench outside Mr. Ripley’s office, humming.

  Today McGrew is humming the newspaper. First the headlines, then the sports section, then the comics. McGrew only laughs at the headlines.

  Minna smiles at her brother. He is small and stocky and compact like a suitcase. Minna loves him. McGrew always tells the truth, even when he shouldn’t. He is kind. And he lends Minna money from the coffee jar he keeps beneath his mattress.

  Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. But this is only one life. Someday, she knows, she will have another life. A different one. A better one. McGrew knows this, too. McGrew is ten years old. He knows nearly everything. He knows, for instance, that his older sister, Minna Pratt, age eleven, is sitting patiently next to her cello waiting to be a woman.

  “Unclothed Woman Flees from Standard Poodle,” sang McGrew, reading the headlines. “Boa Constrictor Lives in Nun’s Sewing Basket. Sit down, Minna Pratt,” he sang on.

  “Hush up, McGrew,” said Minna. “A mysterious woman just got on the bus. Number fifteen.”

  “Mysterious how?” sang McGrew, ending on a high note just above his range.

  “A fur cape, gray braids, one earring,” said Minna. “That makes seventeen earrings total on this bus.”

  “Emily Parmalee just got her ears pierced,” said McGrew in his speaking voice. “She’s meeting us at the bus stop.”

  Minna snorted, but not unkindly. Emily Parmalee was the catcher on McGrew’s baseball team. She was, like McGrew, small and squat, with an odd sense of humor. Often she caused Minna to laugh so hard that she had to lie down on sidewalks or crouch in soda shops. Minna smiled, thinking enviously of Emily Parmalee, rushing toward womanhood faster than Minna, her ears already past puberty.

  The bus jolted to a stop and Minna leaned her head against the window and thought about her lesson. Minna never practiced, except for the short times when everyone was out of the house. When no one was there, she could play bad notes without anyone calling out or McGrew humming them in tune as a guide. Minna never needed to practice, really. She could, in the presence of her cello teacher, Mr. Porch, summon up the most glorious notes; pure, in fact, surprising even Minna. She played beautifully for Mr. Porch, mostly because she wanted to make him smile, as somber as he sometimes was. Also, she felt sorry about his name. Porch. Verandah might have been better. Or even Stoop. Porch was a dismal name. For a sometimes dismal man. McGrew called him Old Back.

  Someone pulled the bell cord and it was their stop. McGrew folded his newspaper under his arm, reaching over to the seat across the aisle to snatch The Inquirer, forbidden at home even though it had the best headlines. Minna propped her cello on her hip and pushed through the crowd.

  “Pardon. I’m sorry. Excuse.”

  The beauty queen woke up, closing her mouth and gathering packages. The past president of the United States put Teen Love and Body Builder’s Annual carefully between the pages of his Atlantic Monthly. The king scratched on.

  Emily Parmalee was at the bus stop with the shirt of her long underwear worn on the outside and brand-new holes in her ears.

  “McGrew!”

  “Emmy!”

  They always greeted each other as if they had been lost on the prairie, smiles and exclamation points. A matched pair of luggage, thought Minna.

  “Hallo, Emily,” said Minna. “I like your ears.”

  Emily Parmalee grinned.

  “I’ll have feathers within the month,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Minna pulled her cello up the steps to the conservatory. The sky was gray, with low clouds, like in an old painting.

  “I’ll be forty-five minutes today, an hour at the most,” Minna called.

  “That’s all Old Back can take,” said McGrew, sitting down and taking a very black banana out of his jacket pocket.

  On this dismal day Minna Pratt, cellist, climbs the steps to her dismal lesson with her sometimes dismal teacher, Porch. Outside sits McGrew with a dismal banana. And Emily Parmalee, who does not yet have feathers. Dismal is all Minna can think of. A dismal life. But she is wrong. Old Back Porch has a surprise for her. The surprise is not Mozart. The surprise is not dismal. It is Lucas, tall and homely and slim with corn-colored hair. With blue eyes, one that looks off a bit to the side. And with a wonderful vibrato.

  TWO

  Minna paused before the great wooden door of the conservatory and looked up for good luck to where the gargoyles rested, gray and ominous and familiar. Then she pushed open
the door and began the walk up the three flights of stairs. There was an elevator, but it was self-service, and Minna had nightmares of being stuck there between floors with no one to talk with, nothing to count. Alone with her cello. Minna, of course, would not practice.

  TV ANNOUNCER: “After three days and two nights of being stranded in an elevator, Minna Booth Pratt has emerged, blinking and looking rested.”

  MINNA: [Blinking and looking rested.]

  TV ANNOUNCER: “A record, ladies and gentlemen! Seventy-two hours in an elevator without practicing!”

  [Applause, applause, cheering.]

  Sighing, Minna paused at the first-floor landing to look out the window. Below were McGrew and Emily Parmalee, slumped over like half-filled travel bags, singing. Minna pulled her jacket around her, the chill of the old building numbing her fingers. Far off she heard an oboe playing Ravel, a sound as sad and gray as the building. She walked up the last flight of stairs, slowly, slowly, thinking of yesterday’s lesson. It was Bartók, bowing hand for Bartók staccato; swift, short bows, Porch’s hand on her elbow, forcing her wrist to do the work. When she got it right, he would smile his Bartók smile: there quickly, then gone. It would be early Haydn today. High third finger, she reminded herself, digging her thumbnail into the finger, forcing it to remember. After Haydn it would be the Mozart. The Mozart. K. 157. The number was etched on her mind, and Minna stopped suddenly, her breath caught in her throat. The Mozart with the terrible andante she couldn’t play. The andante her fingers didn’t know, wouldn’t know. And then the wild presto that left her trembling.

  Minna shook her head and walked on. Today was chamber group, three of them, with Porch, the fourth, playing the viola part. Called chamber group by all but Porch, who referred to it as “mass assembled sound.”

  Minna would be late. She was always the last one to arrive, no matter what early bus she took. Everyone would be there, Imelda and Porch; Orson Babbitt with his tight black curls and sly smile. Minna pushed the door open with one finger and they were tuning, Porch scuttling sideways like a crab between music stands with an armful of music. Imelda stopped playing and laid her violin on her lap, one foot crossed primly over the other, her black braids slick as snakes.

  “It’s three thirty-five,” she announced, glancing at the clock. “And you’ve got only one sock.”

  “That’s in case you care,” said Orson, making Minna grin.

  Imelda was touched with perfect pitch as well as other annoyances. She pronounced varied facts even when not asked. She could recite the kings of England in order, backward and forward, the dates of major gang wars, important comets, what mixtures produced the color mauve. Imelda: fact gatherer, data harvester, bundler of useless news.

  “It’s WA today, Minna,” called Orson from across the room, Orson’s name for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Orson played second violin with a sloppy serenity, rolling his eyes and sticking out his tongue, his bowing long and sweeping and beautiful even when out of tune. “If you must make a mistake,” he had quoted, “make it a big one.” Was it Heifetz who had said it? Perlman? Zukerman maybe?

  “Tune, tune,” said Porch briskly. He turned to Orson. “And is there a word for today?” Orson was the word person, spilling words out as if they were notes on a staff.

  “Rebarbative,” said Orson promptly. “Causing annoyance or irritation. Mozart’s rebarbative music causes me to want to throw up.”

  Porch sighed. Orson preferred Schubert.

  Suddenly Porch brightened, looking over Minna’s head.

  “Ah, good. I’d nearly forgotten. There is an addition to our group. A newcomer.”

  Everyone looked up. Minna turned.

  “This is Lucas Ellerby,” announced Porch, beckoning him in. “Lucas will play viola with us from now on.”

  The boy paused at the doorway. His hair fell over his forehead.

  “Imelda and Orson,” introduced Porch. “Minna Pratt, too.”

  Minna smiled. It sounded like the beginning of a nursery rhyme she half remembered:

  Imelda and Orson and Minna Pratt, too,

  Set out in a gleaming bright boat of blue. . . .

  “Lucas will play viola next to Minna,” Porch went on. “I’ll play first with Imelda. Trying hard not to be rebarbative.”

  Lucas smiled for the first time.

  “That bad?” he asked.

  Orson looked up quickly. There was a silence while Lucas unlocked his case and took out his viola and bow. Finally Imelda spoke.

  “Have you heard the fact,” she asked, her eyes bright, “that the great wall of China is actually visible from the moon?”

  A fact, thought Minna. A mauve fact might follow.

  Lucas sat down next to Minna.

  “Yes,” he said simply. He smiled a radiant sudden smile at Imelda as he tightened his bow. “Wonderful, yes? A fine fact.”

  Minna watches Lucas’s long fingers curl around his viola, one leg stretch out, one slide back to hook over a chair rung. There is a grand silence as they all stare at Lucas. Minna does not fall in love quickly. Most often she eases into love as she eases into a Bach cello suite, slowly and carefully, frowning all the while. She has been in love only once and a half. Once with Norbert with the violent smile who sells eggs from his truck. The half with one of her father’s patients, a young man who made her breathless with his winks. When she discovered he also winked at her mother, father, McGrew, and the car, she slipped backward out of love again.

  “Scales first,” said Porch. “Old, familiar friends, scales. G to start.”

  They played scales, staring at nothing, no music needed because Porch was right . . . the scales were old friends.

  “Now,” said Porch, “let’s begin with something we know. Mozart, K. 156. Presto, but not too presto.” He raised his violin. “An A, everyone.” They played an A, Orson making gagging noises.

  Old Back lifted his bow.

  The great wall of China, thought Minna. A fine fact.

  “Ready,” said Porch.

  I wish I’d thought of that fine fact. Then Lucas would have smiled at me.

  “Here we come, WA,” said Orson softly.

  “High third finger, Minna,” whispered Porch.

  And they play. They begin together and Minna holds her breath. Often they stumble into the music, Porch louder, counting; Imelda scowling and playing too fast; Orson snorting in rhythm. But today is different. They begin on the same note and play together. In tune. Minna looks at Porch and sees that he has noticed the difference, too. Lucas’s hand vibrates on the strings. They all hear the strong, rich sound of his vibrato. Lucas peers at Minna and grins. And suddenly Minna realizes that she is smiling. She has never smiled through an entire movement of WA Mozart. Ever.

  “Splendid, splendid,” said Porch, gathering up the music. Could they be finished already? One entire hour? “You are a fine addition, Lucas.”

  Imelda was smiling. Minna and Orson were smiling. Even Porch smiled.

  “Tomorrow,” instructed Porch, “the K. 157 andante. And the mimeographed variations. Practice! You, too,” Porch said to Minna.

  In the coatroom, Lucas locked up his viola. His jacket lay behind the case and he stepped around it carefully, gently picking it up, his hand covering the pocket.

  Minna felt she must say something.

  “You have,” she began. She cleared her throat. “You have a wonderful vibrato.”

  Dumb, thought Minna with a sinking in her stomach. It was like saying that he had a lovely skin condition. Or both his legs ended nicely below his trousers.

  Lucas nodded.

  “I got it at music camp,” he said solemnly. He looked apologetic, as if it might have been a mild case of measles, or worse, homesickness.

  Lucas put on his jacket, then pulled a frog from the pocket. The frog was quiet and friendly looking.

  “I saved him from the biology lab,” explained Lucas. “I’m going to put him in the park pond. It’s warm enough now.” He looked at Minna. �
��Want to come?”

  “Yes,” said Minna quickly before he could change his mind.

  Together they picked up their cases, Minna hoisting hers on her hip, Lucas’s under his arm. In the hallway Lucas pushed the wall button, and it wasn’t until the door opened and closed behind them that Minna realized she was in the elevator. The walls were gray with things scribbled there. The floor was littered with gum wrappers. There was a half-eaten apple in the corner.

  The elevator started down, and Minna put out her hand to steady herself.

  Lucas looked closely at her.

  “Elevators can be scary,” he said in a soft voice.

  There was a terrible feeling in Minna’s chest. The elevator seemed to drop too fast. There was a loud whooshing sound in her ears, and she looked at Lucas to see if he had heard it, too. But he was smiling at his frog. It was then that Minna knew about the sinking feeling and the noise in her head. It was not the elevator.

  The door opened at the ground floor.

  TV ANNOUNCER: “After three days and two nights, listeners in the vast audience, Melinda Booth Pratt is about to emerge from her elevator an accomplished cellist. With a vibrato. Accompanying her is Lucas Ellerby. Food and drink have been lowered to them, along with cello music. And flies for their frog.”

  Outside there was a slight breeze. McGrew and Emily were still sitting on the stone steps.

  “This is Lucas,” said Minna. “My brother, McGrew, and his friend Emily Parmalee, a catcher.”

  Lucas smiled. McGrew smiled. All this smiling. Emily Parmalee turned one earring around and around in her ear thoughtfully.

  “We’re going to put Lucas’s frog in the park pond before the bus comes,” said Minna.

  Behind them the street musicians were beginning to play: a flute on the far corner, Willie, tall and bearded, by the steps playing Vivaldi in the dusk. Willie was Minna’s favorite, playing whatever she wanted on his violin, giving her back her money.

  They walk down the street, Minna and Lucas with two instruments and a frog between them, McGrew and Emily Parmalee behind, shuffling their feet. The street is crowded but strangely hushed except for the swish sound of cars passing cars. Lucas says nothing. Minna says nothing. Only McGrew breaks the silence.