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Show 4-2 She had given lessons when I was a baby and Father was just beginning to work and we were poor. But she hadn't enough patience for teaching, she claimed, and hated to hear miserable playing ruin glorious music. Gradually, her students dwindled down to nothing and we all were relieved. She didn't even teach me, for which I was grateful. I loved to hear music but had no talent for playing and hated to disappoint her. She played with fire and energy, swaying and moving with the sounds she made. She forgot everything when she was playing. Father once said that if Mother were forced to choose between her music and her family, there would be a long pause before she would reply. And even then, he said, he wouldn't want to bet a month's salary on her answer. Mother had had two groups of friends before the war. One group was all women, friends from school and from the Academy she had attended before she and Father were married. These women played and sang together, but mostly talked, sitting in our living room, their voices low and earnest. They seldom laughed and looked anxious and serious when I peeked down at them from the stairs. Sometimes they read articles from the paper outloud or passed around books and papers for everyone to read. Some of them were writers, some teachers, some musicians. Mother called them her friends. Father called them the Valkeries and always went across the street to my grandparent's house on the nights they came. Sometimes I went with him. He was very polite to the women and I think he respected them, because he told me once that he hoped I would have their intelligence and honesty when I grew up. I liked them too because they treated me as an equal, talking to me seriously about school. One of them, Ruth, had first showed me a book of maps, one she had been given for Christmas. As she slowly turned the pages, reading |