As I sat down to play, I thought about what the actual CD would look like, the flat disc of plastic, neutral as a large coin. I began the Schubert. I thought about the nectarine, and about my mother, and about the orange chemical. And then I stopped playing, brought up short at the phrase that had appeared in my dream. Suddenly I felt all the sadness that I had tried to close out in England, that I had put aside after my mother’s good test results had started. I had not been able to explain this sadness to Bernard, nor to admit it to my mother, nor to share it with Freddy or my father, nor, much of the time, to see it myself; but it came washing out all over the piano that day. The Schubert is not exactly a sad piece of music, but it has enough sadness in it so that it could lead me to my own sadness in that sad season. It was the most incredible release, to play that piece, to say at last all the things I had not been saying. I played it from beginning to end without pausing, and when I stopped, I found tears on my face. I wiped them off quickly, before anyone else could see them.

“Well,” said my agent, delighted and ironic. “I see we’re finally getting someplace. Where the hell did that come from?”

“I’ve been practicing,” I said helplessly.

“You keep practicing,” he said to me.

• • •