Her father never approved of Alice’s musical skills. He never knew until six months into her lessons. They always stopped before he came home from his office, and Alice would change into her stockings and skirts. They were a hassal for her, so her mother bought her trousers. No one in the household addressed it to him either. He gave her mother an allowance each week so she wouldn’t bother in his finances, so he didn’t didn’t know he was paying for them either. He yelled at her mother after coming home early finding the tutor sitting next to Alice as she played, and her mother sitting in the chair by the piano. Alice only stopped when she saw the fear in her mother’s eyes when she turned back to look at her. The tutor was scared away and antiques and knick-knacks were being smashed around the house. He started his rant about the waste of his own money, his threat about cutting off her allowance, and how unladylike it was for Alice to wear trousers, her mother had settled the argument down, soon he calmed down they came to an agreement; The lessons would stop, Alice would wear skirts again, but she would continue to play the piano as much as she pleased. Her father agreed to this, but cut her mother’s allowance in half. After that, Alice played as much as wanted. Her father would never come into the room to listen, and when company came he sent Alice to her room.

Alice knew, even at a young age, that her mother was too cheery for a man like her father. A man, that she thought, only saw them as accessories in his life. At home they rarely talked to one another, even slept in different rooms. At house parties they would show mild affection towards one another, but there was an emptiness between them and ever since the discovery of her talent, the arguments that would have been settled at the dinner table, took place in the bedroom. With that, yelling, smashing, and Alice cover her ears in the other room when she heard a loud smack and the crying. Alice’s mother did love to hear her play and she felt that it filled the hollow pain her mother, but it did not last forever. She noticed after finishing her mother staring off, fixated on the fireplace across the room. She started wearing more long sleeve dresses with the collars buttoned up all the way. Alice didn’t ask why she did, she only asked what was wrong.

“Just thinking, dear” She said. She wished she asked about what she was thinking of that day. Maybe she would have decided to try other pieces. Faster, less playful sounding songs that her mother liked. The day her mother died she was eight. They all say her death was an accident, that she tripped on top of the stairs and broke her neck down the way. But Alice had watched her climb up the stairs with ease as she played, and at the end of her playing, she heard the step creak, then the loud banging. The maids came in screaming. One came over to shield her eyes. At the funeral, she saw her mother’s coffin descend, surrounded by co-workers of her father that barely knew her.