The Rehearsal

going to have to taxi.”
    “I won’t tell your mother,” the saxophone teacher says to Isolde, returning at last from her memory. “I know you’re going to keep the taxi fare she’s given you.”
    “How do you know I don’t charge a taxi fare?” Julia says.
    The saxophone teacher laughs. “I’ve seen your car, for starters,” she says. She starts chatting about the music, speaking mostly to Julia. Her big hands are spread open as she talks, turning her impression of the concert over and over like a potter at a wheel.
    Isolde nods and smiles. She darts a look at Julia, and wonders if Julia had been preparing the offer for some time, sitting silent in the gray dusk of the stage-glow and all the while preparing how best to phrase the question. Do you want a lift home? I’ve got my car here. It’d be no problem.
    “It’s not a popular configuration,” the saxophone teacher is saying. Isolde keeps nodding wisely, trying to mask the shrinking sensation in her pelvis, which registers as part exhilaration and part dread. What did the offer mean? Isolde almost imagines the older girl leaning in across the gear shift and the handbrake and reaching out an ink-stained jeweled hand to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear. She almost imagines it, but in a fleeting shock of panic she snuffs out the thought.
    “Pretty inspiring stuff,” the saxophone teacher says in conclusion, slapping the armrests in a jolly way and standing up to join the inching exodus. “Pretty inspiring stuff.”
    Saturday
    “Cheers for the concert,” Julia says to the saxophone teacher after they have shuffled their way out of the auditorium and through the marble foyer into the cold. “It was incredible. I’ll be thinking about it all week.”
    The saxophone teacher draws the belt of her leather jacket tighter around her waist. “I’ll see you Monday, then,” she says to Julia. “And I’ll see you on Friday,” she says to Isolde. She looks lonely all of a sudden, standing stiffly on the gritty Town Hall steps with the crowd pouring out on either side of her. She is backlit by the reddish velvet light of the foyer behind her, and it strikes Isolde that she is rather pretty. She registers with something a little like triumph that the saxophone teacher is now the outsider, looking down at the girls with a halting expression as if she wants to detain them further but she is uncertain how.
    “Sounds good,” Isolde says, and gives a little wave. Julia smiles, and then the two of them turn away from her and walk out into the night.
    Sunday
    Mrs. De Gregorio clutches her purse in the crook of her lap while she sips her tea. She sits with her knees together and her thighs elevated a little because she is resting her heels against the crossbar of the chair and only her square toes touch the ground. Her breasts almost reach her lap, and as she sits down she wedges her purse into the gap where her body hinges. The saxophone teacher thinks how very strange it looks, Mrs. De Gregorio curving herself around her purse in this protective way. From where the sax teacher is sitting, she can see only the twin-balled golden clasp peeking out from beneath the soft acrylic bulge of Mrs. De Gregorio’s breast.
    She smiles. “What can I do for you, Mrs. De Gregorio?”
    “I’ve come about my daughter,” Mrs. De Gregorio says, and as always the saxophone teacher marvels privately at this woman’s performance, this single unitary woman who plays all the mothers so differently, each performance a tender and unique object like the veined clouding on a subtle pearl. “This might seem like a bit of an odd errand,” the woman says, “me marching in here like this to ask you such a personal question, but lately at home we’ve noticed a few changes, and—” Mrs. De Gregorio looks down into her lap and sighs. “She’s just become impossible ,” she says at last.
    “Let’s start at the beginning, then,” the saxophone teacher says briskly, tugging down her shirttails and smoothing flat the wool of her jersey as if she means business. “First of all—why the saxophone? Why did you choose this particular instrument? The saxophone has connotations, as you know. A saxophone is not a piano or a flute. A very particular type of girl gravitates toward the saxophone, and quite frankly it’s the type of girl who is not very likely to keep the peace. Why did you choose the sax for your daughter?”
    “Oh, it was her choice,” Mrs. De Gregorio says,