Answer:
Two or three months had gone by without any mention of my being a
prodigy again. And then one day my mother was watching The Ed Sullivan
Show6
on TV. The TV was old and the sound kept shorting out. Every time
my mother got halfway up from the sofa to adjust the set, the sound would go
back on and Ed would be talking. As soon as she sat down, Ed would go silent
again. She got up, the TV broke into loud piano music. She sat down. Silence.
Up and down, back and forth, quiet and loud. It was like a stiff, embraceless
dance between her and the TV set. Finally she stood by the set with her hand
on the sound dial.