Sweet Memories by Lavyrle Spencer Page A

Eve. In the afternoon she washed her hair, took a bath, filed her nails and rummaged in Amy’s room for some polish with a little more pizzazz than the colorless stuff she usually wore. She came up with something called “Mocha Magic” and grimaced as she painted the first stripe down a nail.  I'm simply not a   “Mocha Magic” girl,  she thought, but completed the single nail, held it aloft and assessed it stringently. She fluttered her fingers and watched the light dance across the pearlescent surface and decided—thinking in Amy’s current teenage vernacular—what the heck, go for it!
    When all ten nails were finished she wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing. She imagined them glistening, catching the lights while she fingered the neck of her violin.  I'm a conservative person trapped inside the body of a Kewpie doll,  she decided, and left the polish on.
    She put on a beef roast for supper and pressed her long, black gabardine skirt and the collar of the basic long-sleeved white blouse that completed the orchestra “uniform” worn by its female members. The blouse was made of a slick knit jersey, and there’d be no sweaters to hide behind, no bulkiness to disguise the way the slippery fabric conformed to her frame.
    She was at the piano, limbering up her fingers with chromatic scales, when the shopping trio returned.
    Jeff was bellowing her name as he opened the door and followed his ears to the living room. He reached over her shoulder and tapped out the melody line to “Jingle Bells,” then sashayed on through the living room with two crackling sacks on his arm, followed by Amy, also bearing packages. By the time the pair exited to hide their booty, Brian stood in the opposite doorway, his cheeks slightly brightened by the winter air outside, jacket unzipped and pulling open as he paused with one hand in his back pocket, the other surrounding a brown paper sack. His eyes were startlingly attractive as the dark lashes dropped, and he glanced at Theresa’s hands on the keyboard.
    “Play something,” he requested.
    Immediately she folded her palms between her knees. “Oh, I was only limbering up for tonight.”
    He moved a step closer. “Limber up some more, then.”
    “I’m limbered enough.”
    He crossed behind her toward the davenport, and her eyes followed over her shoulder. “Good, then play a song.”
    “I don’t know rock.”
    “I know. You’re a classy person.” He grinned, set his package down on the davenport and drew off his jacket, all the while keeping his eyes on her. She pinched her knees tighter against her palms. “I meant to say, you’re a classical person,” he amended with a lazy grin. “So play me a classic.”
    She played without sheet music, at times allowing her eyelids to drift closed while her head tipped back, and he caught glimpses of her enraptured eloquent face. When her eyelids opened she focused on nothing, letting her gaze drift with seeming unawareness. He had little doubt that while she played, Theresa forgot he stood behind her. He dropped his eyes again to her hands—fragile, long-fingered, with delicate bones at wrist and knuckle. How supplely they moved, those wrists arching gracefully, then dropping as she weaved backward, then forward. Once she smiled, and her head tipped to one side as the pianissimo chords tinkled from her fingertips while she inhabited that captivating world he knew and understood so well.
    Watching the language of her hands, her body, was like having the song not only put into words but illustrated as well. He sensed that within Theresa the music acted as bellows to embers and saw what passions lay hidden within the woman whose normally shy demeanor never hinted at such smoldering fires.
    By the time the song ended and Theresa’s hands poised motionless above the keys, he was certain her heart must be pounding as heavily as his own.
    He laid a hand on her shoulder and she jerked, as if waking up.
    “That’s very