“Mr and Mrs Parker lived in a house next to ours” means the ...

READ THE FOLLOWING TEXT CAREFULLY, AND THEN CHOOSE THE ALTERNATIVE THAT BEST COMPLETES THE STATEMENTS BELOW, ACCORDING TO THE TEXT. 

Mrs Parker died suddenly in October. She and Mr Parker lived in a Victorian house next to ours, and Mr Parker was my piano teacher. He commuted to Wall Street, where he was a securities analyst, but he had studied at Juilliard and gave lessons on the side – for the pleasure of it, not for money. His only students were me and the church organist.

The word “tragic” was mentioned in connection with her death. She and Mr Parker were in the middle of their middle age, and neither of them had ever been seriously ill. It was heart failure, and unexpected. My parents went to see Mr Parker as soon as they got the news, since they took their responsibilities as neighbours seriously, and two days later they took me to pay a formal condolence call. 

I loved the Parkers’ house. It was a Victorian house, and was shaped like a wedding cake. The living-room was round, and all the walls curved. The third floor was a tower. Every five years the house was painted chocolate brown, which faded gradually to the colour of weak tea. The front-wall window was a stained-glass picture of a fat baby holding a bunch of roses.

On Wednesday afternoons, Mr Parker came home on an early train, and I had my lesson. Mr Parker’s teaching method never varied. He never scolded or corrected. The first fifteen minutes were devoted to a warm-up in which I could play anything I liked. Then Mr Parker played the lesson of the week. His playing was terrifically precise, but his eyes became dreamy and unfocused. Then I played the same lesson, and after that we worked on the difficult passages, but basically he wanted me to hear my mistakes. After that, we sat in the solarium and discussed the next week’s lesson. Mr Parker usually played a record and talked in detail about the composer, his life and times. Mrs Parker used to leave us a tray of cookies and lemonade, cold in the summer and hot in the winter. When the cookies were gone, the lesson was over and I left, passing the Victorian child in the hallway. 

(COLWIN, Laurie. Mr Parker. In: PIERCE, Tina and COCHRANE, Edward (eds.). Twentieth century English short stories. London: Bell & Hyman, 1979, p. 48-9. Adapted.)