Part 5 (1/2)
”Can't you at least sit in different seats?” Suzanne asks as she approaches.
”We just can't get enough of each other,” Petra says, patting the empty chair.
Suzanne sits and looks out to her right, where she can hear but not see a small brook on the other side of a boxwood hedge.
”A viola player and a cellist are standing on a sinking s.h.i.+p,” Petra says. ”The cellist calls for help, says he can't swim.”
Suzanne finishes Petra's joke: ”'That's okay,' says the viola player, 'just fake it like I do.'”
Petra lifts the outsized bottle of wine leaning against her foot and tops off Suzanne's gla.s.s, though it is still nearly full. ”Keeping it close so we don't have to get up and down just to stay liquidated.”
”Hydrated,” says Daniel.
”And so I don't have to talk to those women. It's not like I even want anything to do with their stupid husbands, and if I did they should thank me. If one more of them says how ironic it is for a musician to have a deaf child, I'm going pistol.”
”Postal,” says Daniel.
”Right,” says Petra, ”homicidal.”
The timbre of her laugh straddles the border between lighthearted and reckless. Suzanne knows, from experience, that this means Petra is a couple of hours into her drinking. She knows it's why Petra didn't come home, why she wanted to meet at Elizabeth's. Suzanne angles her chair so she can see the group of kids Adele is playing with. Adele seems to have given up trying to lip read-something difficult in groups and impossible with moving children-yet she appears happy in the company, handing toys back and forth with a boy her age, smiling.
”What do you think, Suzanne?” Daniel's off-center gaze suggests that he has drunk plenty of wine as well.
”We're recycling the argument over performing Black Angels Black Angels,” Anthony says.
Suzanne shrugs. ”I'll play anything.”
”Even Tchaikovsky?” Anthony exaggerates the lift of his eyebrows.
Suzanne smiles, though she feels as though she is watching them from far away. ”Let's not get carried away.”
”We know your theories,” Petra says to her. ”Romanticism yes, sentimentality no.”
”My theories?” She wonders if Petra is angry with her or just wined-up and in the mood to quarrel with anyone. She reminds herself that Petra's arguments are rarely personal, but her friend's sentences have sharp points tonight, and her voice is pitched higher than usual. Theories Theories is a word they usually reserve for Ben-a shared defense disguised as mild disdain. is a word they usually reserve for Ben-a shared defense disguised as mild disdain.
”I think we should play the Black Angels Black Angels.” Daniel speaks without looking at any of the others. ”If we can't do something, say something, about what's going on in the world, then what use are we?”
Petra shrugs. ”Either way. There's always a war somewhere, no? Besides, this isn't my country. I have the luxury of being an observer.”
Suzanne listens to their arguments but continues watching Adele at play. Adele interacts through objects-handing the other children found leaves and flowers, accepting a bubble-blowing wand. Suzanne wonders if she will always have to give to fit in, and how that giving will change as she grows up. She imagines Adele with the implant, almost hearing, learning to speak but still noticeably different. She wonders whether Adele will be more fully accepted or instead rejected. With the implant, she'll be neither hearing nor deaf but instead an inhabitant of the one category children will not tolerate: indefinably different. Suzanne is not sure adults accept that kind of difference much better than do children, even as she hopes that children are nicer these days than they used to be, that better parents have made better kids.
Anthony waves for her attention. ”Suzanne, what do you think?”
She sips her wine, which tastes too much of its cask. ”Here's my opinion, then. The contribution of art to society is its existence more than its content. It's not the job of art to comment on current events. It should matter, but it should inspire by existing, by exploring what's beautiful, what's timeless.”
”Oh, my G.o.d, you sound exactly like Ben.” Petra's words slur and she blinks frequently, her expression p.r.i.c.kly. ”I think I'm going to puke.”
Years of experience with her drinking father tell Suzanne that it's useless to reason with Petra now, but she is tired of one-way niceness, of covering for Petra with Adele, of defending Petra and Ben to each other, of always being the grown-up. ”You wanted to know what I think, and that's what I think. Take the Holocaust, the role of music. What was miraculous wasn't people writing music about how awful the camps were. What was miraculous was the people in the camps playing Bach, saying, You can't take this away from us You can't take this away from us, saying, This is beautiful no matter what This is beautiful no matter what.”
”So no music can ever comment on the world? Just itself? That's masturbation.” Petra says the word too loudly, and a nearby couple look over their shoulders, the woman s.h.i.+fting them away.
”Let the rock stars protest war,” Suzanne says. ”People actually listen to them anyway.”
Petra looks straight at her and pauses before she says, ”You're such an elitist.”
”If you're mad at Ben, Petra, then argue with him. But, sure, I agree with him on this. We live in a culture that doesn't value what we do. To meet it halfway is to give up. If holding up the best music ever written as a great human accomplishment makes me an elitist, then I am a sn.o.b, a monk in the tower protecting the books from barbarians.”
”You're self-absorbed, that's what you are,” Petra says. ”When's the last time you thought about the war or even anybody else?”
Suzanne's anger expands and then fast shrinks back into the small, dull pain of feeling alone in the world. It's what you are left with when the person in the world who best knows you dies, something that has now happened to Suzanne twice. Next, she thinks, she'll lose Petra and then Ben. Being without them would make her even more alone than she is when she is with them.
Anthony's wife strolls toward their group carrying two small plates and forks. Jennifer wears thin gold jewelry that seems too delicate for her st.u.r.dy frame. She holds a law degree that she's never used, and her family's money is no longer looked down on as new money-it's been three generations, and even in Princeton people no longer care very much where money is from so long as it is plentiful and tastefully spent. That the money is spread thinner now is a more serious problem and the reason the quartet is always under pressure to become more reliably profitable.
Though Jennifer dictates to Anthony most of his life, from where he dines to what brand of s.h.i.+rt he wears, in front of the others she waits on him as though she is a well-dressed servant. She hands him a plate holding cake with sliced strawberries and asks if she can bring him coffee. He stands to give her his chair.
Watching the children play, Jennifer explains her child-rearing notions as though they are all gravely interested-as though Daniel and Suzanne are parents and Petra is a by-the-book mother instead of who she is. Jennifer tells them she has plans to market her ideas in the form of a chart she's designed to track her own children's behavioral progress and quantify their rewards and punishments.
”It's like a game for them,” she says. ”Each child is a different color of cat, and the chart looks like a board game except it's vertical and magnetic so you can put it on the refrigerator. Very colorful. Their pieces get sent back s.p.a.ces for particular offenses-like three s.p.a.ces for whining-and they also receive surprises along the way, such as a trip to Thomas Sweet for a day without sibling rivalry.”
Suzanne pictures her life on the board, her childhood ambitions punished with poverty, her adultery with pain, her need to fit in with shunning. Her cat would fall backward right off the chart.
Anthony, who may or may not approve of his wife's meting out of childhood's pleasures, smiles. ”Jennifer's research suggests there's a national market for this kind of thing.”
Petra leans over, tipping her low-slung lawn chair to a dangerous angle. ”Great,” she breathes into Suzanne's ear. ”Now children in all fifty states can hate her.” She rights herself, pus.h.i.+ng off the gra.s.s with her hand.
Suzanne smiles, relieved to have her best friend back on her side, if only because they now face a common enemy.
”I don't understand.” Jennifer points to the rather flat piece of layer cake she's just taken a bite from. ”The recipe was three pages long, describing every test the kitchen made. I followed it exactly. I even beat the eggs and sugar over simmering water until the mixture reached exactly 110 degrees. I have a new thermometer-the good kind.”
”You took your cake's temperature?” Petra smiles at her.
”It looks delicious,” Suzanne says quickly. ”Ben always prefers a moist fallen cake to one that's cooked too long.”
Daniel nods. ”It looks great, Jennifer. I'm going to get a piece later after I finish my wine.”
”The gla.s.s or the bottle?” asks Petra.
”That's not the point.” Jennifer looks at Anthony, then Daniel, searching for support. ”That's not the point. If you follow the rules, you're supposed to get what you set out for. A recipe is a pact.”
”Like music.” Anthony rubs his wife's rounded shoulder with his free hand. ”You can't give an audience a pleasant beginning and then hit them with something they don't understand. Same thing with marriage.”
”I suppose you think life works that way,” Petra says, her words loose but her face clamped. ”Follow the rules, advance three s.p.a.ces, collect your reward. Americans who were popular in high school always think like that.”
Dusk lurks above them and then settles, as though the darkness is not a declining of light but a tangible thing losing alt.i.tude. Once lowered, it leaves Suzanne slightly chilled. Adele sits with another child, a girl whose mother, Linda, is a widow.
”She's beautiful,” Daniel says of the woman, who stands beyond the girls.