Chapter Six
Eroica and Mark looked out of place in the burger shop—she in her creamy lace dress, and he in his tuxedo. They should have been in an expensive restaurant eating something fancy. But Eroica wasn’t thinking about that. She was worrying over how she was going to keep up a conversation with Mark Wallace. She had never been good at this sort of thing. She had a strong testimony of the gospel, and she loved to turn the conversation a religious direction. However, her dating experiences had quickly taught her that this wasn’t always a popular thing to do.
She feared that she was a bit of a bore, but she didn’t know what to do about it. She could always talk about music, but on a date, that tended towards boring also. She usually ended up not saying much of anything, which didn’t endear her to anyone, except for those that would rather listen to themselves. So she stared at her burger and fries and wondered how she was going to get through this experience.
“What’s wrong?” asked Mark. “Are you afraid of getting ketchup on your dress?”
Eroica laughed. “Oh, no, Brother Wallace.” She hurriedly began to eat her meal and wondered if tonight was going to be a series of one embarrassment after another.
“You know,” he continued, “Everyone calls me Mark, except you. You always call me Brother Wallace, as if I were some dusty old music teacher. I’m really not that old. My birthday is next month, and I’m only going to be twenty-six. So, will you please just call me Mark?”
“Oh, okay,” she stammered, feeling a twinge of guilt. She knew full well that everyone called him by his first name. But she wanted to remain impersonal with him.
“Well, Eroica, tell me about yourself.”
“Oh no. I think I’ve said plenty about myself already. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Her jaw was set, and she was not going to be pressed into anything.
“Okay. We’ll talk about you next time. What do you want to know about me?”
“Where are you from? Who is in your family? That sort of stuff.”
“I am from Draper, Utah. I live at home, so I do a lot of driving back and forth. My father is a landscaper. He puts in lawns, trees, sprinkling systems, all that. My mother is a homemaker and general peacemaker in the family. I have five brothers and two sisters, so for my mother, being a peacemaker is a full-time job.”
“Big families like yours must be so much fun. Do you get along with each other?” Eroica asked.
“Sure. Luke and Frank both married girls right from our neighborhood as soon as they got off their missions. They both work with my dad, so we see each other all the time. David is on a mission in Austria. He is more than halfway through. Jeff just left on his mission to Taiwan. And Lance is in high school. He works as a bagger in the local grocery store to save money for his mission.”
“That takes care of your brothers,” Eroica counted. “What about your sisters?”
“Daphne and Blythe are my two little sisters. Daphne is twelve, and Blythe is ten. I think my mother despaired of having any girls, so she has a lot of fun with them. Daphne and Blythe have both been taking violin lessons.”
“So,” Eroica wondered, “If your father is a landscaper, and your brothers work with him, how did you wind up being a cellist and teaching at a music school?”
“It’s a silly reason” he laughed. “When I was in elementary school, I had a crush on a girl named Tanya Morton. Her older brother played the cello in the middle school orchestra. I thought that if I learned to play the cello, she would be overwhelmingly impressed. So I told my parents that I wanted to take cello lessons. They were surprised because they didn’t come from musical families. This was all new to them.
“My mother took me to the music store and rented a cello for me, and signed me up for lessons. And I really enjoyed it. Much more than I had anticipated. Well, one day at school, I overheard Tanya talking to her little group of friends. She told them that her brother got up early every morning to practice his cello before school, and he always woke her up. She did not like his scratchy cello.
“Thus ended my crush on her. I continued on with cello lessons and practicing though, and this is where it has led me.”
“That’s amazing,” said Eroica. “So, if you hadn’t had a crush on Tanya Morton, you would be working with your father right now.”
Mark looked thoughtful for a moment. “Oh, I don’t know. I worked with them a lot this past summer. My brothers keep telling me that I can join them anytime that my career falls apart. But I really like what I’m doing, and I think I can be successful at it.”
“It seems to me that you already are successful,” said Eroica. “You don’t need to wait for that to happen.”
Mark smiled at her. She thought he was going to say something else, but he didn’t. He just kept looking at her.
“I guess I had better get you home, Eroica,” he finally said. “It’s later than I realized.”
Their ride back to her home was a quiet one. It was late, and she was tired. Mark pulled into her driveway, and she knew another awkward moment was upon her. She had never liked saying goodbye at the door.
“Thank you, Mark,” she began, “For getting me away from practicing and studying. It was nice to take a break.”
“Speaking of school,” he said, “You are having quite a struggle with cadential six-four inversions in theory class.”
“I know. I always have. I once had a theory teacher tell me to not use six-four inversions. So I try to stay away from them. But you keep making us write them into our assignments.”
“Why don’t you come see me during my office hours and I can help you?”
“Your office hours are during the time that I teach piano lessons.” She wished that he would just let it go at that, but she could see that he meant to help her, whether she wanted him to or not.
“That’s not so hard to work around. When do you have practice time?”
“In the morning,” Eroica resigned. “From ten to twelve.”
“That works fine for me. I’ll come see you there next week, and we’ll make sure that you get an A on the next test. What’s the practice room number?”
“It’s 216B.”
“That’s where all the really good grand pianos are, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, and it’s a lot of fun to practice on them.”
“Okay, then, Eroica,” he walked backed to his car, “I’ll see you next week.”
She stood in the doorway and watched as he drove away. She was glad that they were going to be friends. Harmony and Alexandra were right all along. Mark Wallace really was a nice guy.