Young

3 - Fantasie Impromptu

At sixteen, I learned how to play Fantasie Impromptu by Chopin. Even Mom didn't have the skill to play it well. I practiced an hour on weekdays and around three hours on weekends for several months and eventually learned to play it without any mistakes but knew that I hadn't quite mastered it.

It's one thing to go through the motions of playing a piece with technical perfection. It's quite another to pull deep felt passion from the physical enclosure of an instrument. In the first instance, the listener is clapping for you at the end of your performance and declaring what an amazing job you did. In the second, tears are streaming down their cheeks.

It took me a year and a half of hard practice before all the nuances were there.

Annette was the first listener I played for (with the exception of my parents). I attacked the arpeggios with dramatic fury and then closed my eyes and swayed back and forth to the slower reflective passages so that when I came to the final notes I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I glanced over to Annette for her reaction. She was crying quietly and wiping tears away.

"I've never heard anything so beautiful," she said with a choked up whisper.

My parents would have liked me to attend a private college with a religious affiliation but they couldn't afford it. I ended up going to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis along with Paul and Annette. The big city environment with all the people, shopping centers and skyscrapers took getting used to but I loved the energy. Of course Annette was my roommate even though her parents could afford any school she liked. Dad told her to take good care of me as we drove off in her shiny new 1959 roman red Impala.

I studied education as many women did with the goal of being certified to teach elementary school while Annette studied psychology. When I questioned what she would do with a psychology degree she rolled her eyes and told me she was only taking it because her parents demanded that she complete four years of a university education.

"After this I'm going to be a full time model or actress, you'll see," she'd say.

Knowing Annette I was confident that she would eventually fulfill her dream. She'd already done some modeling for a Montgomery Ward catalog and we had cut out the pictures and put them in our scrapbooks.

*

Annette was heavily into university sports as a football cheerleader and would drag me along to after game parties. On one such occasion she approached me in a drunken stupor and threw her arm around me, whispering in my ear, "Veronica, I've found the perfect man for you, come on."

I initially resisted, grabbed her by the shoulders and looked sternly into her glassy eyes.

"You must really be drunk this time Annette. You've never tried to match me up with anyone. You never thought anyone was good enough, remember?"

Her grin faded and eyes cleared so that for a moment she appeared to be completely sober.

"Veronica, trust me, I have a feeling for these things, okay?"

I nodded tentatively and bit my lip as her grin reappeared and eyes sparkled.

We approached a group of four men in letterman jackets. Three of them were very large and slapping each other on the back with bottles in their hands and laughing it up. The fourth had a muscular but sleek build with kind eyes and a gorgeous smile. He appeared level headed and kept the other three under control. Annette grabbed his arm as he turned his attention towards me and our eyes met.

My heart raced and I was filled with feelings I'd never experienced before. It's as if my life up until this very second had been a rehearsal and my real life had just begun. Annette broke the silence.

"Veronica, this is Blake Preston. He's a quarterback for the football team. Blake, this is my very best friend forever, Veronica Morris."

I had often scoffed at the idea of love at first sight yet here it was. I became keenly aware of my yellow party dress, hoping that it looked perfect as I swept the hair away from my face and smiled coyly. Annette always did have a kind of a sixth sense when it came to knowing what I really wanted.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Veronica. Annette talks about you all the time," Blake said.

I felt as if I would melt into the floor as Annette winked at me.

"Say you're right, she does look like Judy Garland. Well consider me the wizard," Blake said with an ear to ear grin.

The wizard? The same wizard who was pretending to be someone he wasn't?

I started laughing so hard that everyone stared at me and then started to laugh themselves so that within a few minutes everyone in the room was roaring with laughter.

Blake and I headed outdoors away from the noise of the party so we could hear ourselves speak and spent the next hour getting to know each other. It's as if I had known him my entire life. There were no awkward silences and the conversation wasn't at all forced.

I learned that he was a second string junior varsity quarterback and eventually wanted to go into civil engineering. I shared my fascination of music and books. By the end of our conversation he'd asked me out on a date to a drive in movie.

A week is an eternity when all you can think about is being with the one who makes you feel more alive than anything imaginable. Blake called me on several occasions and must have noticed how out of breath and flustered I was when I spoke with him. I didn't hide it very well. He sounded so calm, cool, and collected.

So this is how love feels.

I saw a lot of Paul Farnsworth as soon as he got wind of my date with Blake.

"What's so special about this guy?" he'd ask. "Why don't you call it off and save yourself some trouble, you know Annette's going to make sure this doesn't go anywhere, right?"

I smiled cheerfully and put my arm around his shoulder.

"Annette's actually the one who introduced me to him, Paul, can you believe that?"

He froze in a state of temporary shock.

"Don't tell me you're thinking about going steady with this jock," he said in disbelief.

I felt sorry for Paul in a way. Even though he had never said so I knew he had feelings for me that extended beyond friendship. He was my best guy friend and I never wanted to lose that relationship but I never felt the same way about him as he did for me.

"Paul...he might be the one," I said gently.