Green, my dear, is not a very good color on you.”

The grandmother said this as she ran a hand over the pearl necklace resting on the slightly blue-tinged skin of her décolletage. When she shook her head the costume jewelry pulling on her ears winked merrily in the light, softening the singsong accusation. The little girl sitting in the chair crossed her arms over her chest and exhaled loudly.

“I wore green yesterday and it looked very pretty. Mommy said so.” The little girl’s feet swung back and forth, patent leather shoes and lacey socks blurring in the grandmother’s vision. The old woman smiled slightly, shaking her head.

“This is a different kind of green. It’s on the inside.”

“Well then it’s not on me, is it?”

“What a linguist! All right, little girl, you enjoy your mood. We’ll talk when you’re finished being so mean.” The grandmother walked away from the chair and sat down at the piano. She plucked out a few notes, and then started playing. She didn’t look at the sheets of music in front of her. This was her own. She’d been a music teacher when she was younger. Something of a prodigy. She could pick up an instrument she’d never seen before and play it as if she’d apprenticed for years.

Soon the little girl was coaxed out of her tantrum and she sat down on the bench next to the grandmother. The woman kept playing for a few minutes, then brought her arm around the eight year old.

“Now. What had you up in arms, hmm?”

The girl didn’t know what ‘up in arms’ meant but there was only one thing she wanted to talk about anyway.

“Alanna got to be Clara this year. I take more classes than she does. It’s not fair!”

Her lip quivered and a sniffle started.

“Oh, and what are you going to be?” The grandmother took her arm back and started playing again, this time Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers.”

“A stupid candy cane. I hate candy canes, they’re mint and I hate mint, too.”

The grandmother pursed her lips and kept playing. She nodded as if she were agreeing with some inner dialogue. “Isn’t Alanna your friend?”

“No.”

“Oh, so that wasn’t the nice little girl who made cookies with us yesterday?”

“I guess.”

“Well why can’t you be happy for your friend? She’s a nice girl and I’m sure she would want you to be happy about her good fortune.” The waltz ended and the grandmother pulled the tiny hands from their crossed position on a little chest and spread them, placing each one on a different key. Covering the small fingers with her own wrinkled ones she pressed them down one at a time in a pattern of beats. She kept the pattern up, repeating it until she let her own hands rise and the girl continued playing.

“I dunno. Maybe I’ll play soccer. Mary plays soccer and she says it’s fun.”

“Well now, and where would your class be without the last candy cane? They need you!”

“No! They only need Clara.

“They only need one little girl for the whole Nutcracker ballet? Wow! That must be some little girl!”

The granddaughter stopped her playing, and the woman pushed her fingers back into place, starting a new pattern of notes. The girl caught on quickly, and soon was playing that rhythm by herself.

“Gramma, that’s not what I meant!”

“Well, good, I would hope you wouldn’t be so silly as to think your part wasn’t the least important…” She looked down at her granddaughter’s hands, nimbly going from one key to another.

“The candy canes are important?”

“Well sure they are! We can’t just have Clara sitting up on stage all alone now can we?”

“I guess not.”

“Now, darling,” the old woman said, the wiry silver of her hair making a halo around her face, “Don’t you go stopping what you want to do because you’re not the best at it. Do it because you like it. If someone else is better, then they are better. You can’t be the best at everything, you have to leave some talent for everybody else.”

“I suppose so, Gramma.”

“Hmm. You suppose?” the grandmother changed the pattern again, making it a little more difficult. The girl quickly picked up the change, still pouting.

“Yeah.”

***

The performance was over. The young woman stepped out from the stage area, eyes sparkling, black gown sliding over lean limbs. Candy canes and sugarplums danced off the stage to get changed into regular clothes. The lights dimmed. Behind the closed velvet curtain, she walked over to an elderly woman in a wheelchair, blinking and winking in the light with her costume jewelry, the mink coat keeping her warm. The young woman’s heels softly thudded on the carpeted floor and she sat down in a chair next to the woman. “How did you like that, Gramma?”

“Oh it was wonderful! You did change tempo a little on the candy canes though, dear, you should be careful next time. What, are you still angry with the candy canes?” The old woman said this with a sly smile, folding the playbill for American Ballet Theatre’s Nutcracker into her purse.

“Green, my dear, is not a very good color on you.”

The old woman threw back her head and laughed.

Marina Wright is a sophomore English major and a Literary writer for Generation.