Part 12 (1/2)
When he opens the door to his h.e.l.l's Kitchen shop, Doug greets her with his full ba.s.s voice. ”Don't tell me there's a problem with the bow. My work is always perfect.”
”It's kind of embarra.s.sing, but I'm here for your other talent. I need you to look into your crystal ball, or whatever it is you do.”
He puts a hand on her shoulder, looking down to make direct eye contact. ”That's not nice, my dear. It's not quackery, and it's not magic. I guess you could call it emotion theory, but really it's about music. Go on back. I'm going to step out for a quick smoke while you tune.”
Alone in the crowded repair room, Suzanne strokes her viola, tightens the E string, rosins her bow. She notes the soreness under the calluses of her finger pads from playing more than usual. She needs to take a couple of light days before the Black Angels Black Angels performance. performance.
When Doug returns smelling of fresh cigarette, he takes a seat on a stool, crosses his long legs, places his hands palm up in his lap, closes his eyes, nods his readiness.
Suzanne almost laughs and tells him he's taking his new vocation too seriously, but she stops before she speaks. She wants him to take it seriously. This is her life: the concerto is the story of her past, the reality she lives in now, the possible ruin of her future. There's nothing at all funny about being here. Being here may save her life, which, when she closes her eyes, she envisions as ancient ruins crumbling in a stony Irish field. She inhales as deeply as her lungs allow and plays the solo voice all the way through, pausing in silence between the first and second movement and again between the second and third. After she plays the last falling note, she smiles because she has never played the composition better. The concerto almost comes together, the answer to its riddle on the tip of her tongue.
”I'll save you a little trouble,” she says to break the silence. ”He's contemporary. Trained in performance more than in composition. Favorite composers Bach and Brahms, though with wide-ranging tastes, except not a fan of serial music.”
”I could have told you all that.” Doug grins, but his mouth falls back into the downward tug of the rest of his face, and the corner of one eye twitches. ”But this is a tough one. Really tough. Shostakovich's last work was his Sonata for Viola, and everyone always says that's fitting because of the viola's timbre, because it's so melancholic. But this, wow, no simple melancholia.”
Suzanne paces along the back wall, examining the instruments and bows set out for repair. The light coming through the barred windows is striped, giving the room an oddly modern look. It is like looking at a new photograph of an old place.
”Many contradictory impulses. A lot of emotion, that's for certain.” Doug rubs his forearm as he looks at her. ”A lot of negative emotion mixed in, but not simply sadness.”
Suzanne's rib cage contracts, an internal wince that she fears shows on her face. Sadness at my absence Sadness at my absence, her mind's voice insists.
”The composer was confused. There's pa.s.sion but also a lot of anger. A serious wound there, but there's control, too, a kind of patience. Brilliant but a bit of the overestimation of the autodidact. You said he wasn't trained in composition?”
Suzanne nods. ”But he was trained in music.”
”So many broken rules. I'm not sure this is someone I would ever want to meet.”
His reading stings as Suzanne hears its truth. The childhood cuts that Alex's ascendancy sealed off but didn't heal. His love sometimes mixing with an anger that turned him cold. His self-a.s.surance bleeding into sheer narcissism at his most manic. His vast musical learning telling him that he could compose without specialized theoretical training.
Fonder memories of Alex rise in her, drowning out the difficult man Doug has described. Alex with his hands in her hair and a smile beginning to curl his lips. Alex walking down Sixth Avenue eating an unlikely icecream cone in midwinter, the prop turning the serious, distinguished man into someone playful. Alex leaning back into a stack of pillows, reading a book in silence but still tapping his foot. Alex weeping openly over a wasted half hour of a weekend in Seattle, now irretrievable. Alex with his baton, about to set loose a perfectly prepared orchestra on an audience.
”No,” she says.
”I could be wrong. I don't often say that, you know, but this really is a tough one. Very hard to decipher, not a straightforward person at all. It's not another collaboration, is it?”
She shakes her head, rueful.
”So who is it? You know?”
It surprises her to realize there is no reason to lie. ”Alexander Elling,” she says, starting to add, ”the conductor” and ”Chicago” and ”who died.”
”I know who the h.e.l.l he is,” Doug interrupts her, his goofy grin winning out again. ”I didn't know he composed.”
Suzanne returns her viola and bow to their case, fastening the locks with a close attention unwarranted by a manual task she has completed thousands of times. ”No one did except his wife, apparently. There's only this piece, and she's asked me to arrange it. He started to orchestrate it, but there's some stuff left to be written. For the life of me, I can't quite get a hold of it.”
”So you came to me as a last resort?”
”Something like that. I thought you could give me some insight into him, or at least the part of him that he put into the composition. Please don't be mad at me. I really couldn't take it right now.”
”Don't take this the wrong way, okay?” His deep voice pauses, and he waits for her to answer by meeting his kind eyes and nodding. ”Don't take this the wrong way because I think you are as beautiful as ever-maybe more so because I've always gone in for the anemic look. Remember that girl Helen, the one I went loopy for? But you look tired to the bone. I thought you were going to fall down while you were playing.” He stands behind her, hands pressing down into her shoulders. ”I'm going to buy you a sandwich, fries and milkshake not optional, and then I'm going to put you on the train, and you're going to go straight home and sleep all the way through until tomorrow.”
She nods her compliance, her relief. Since Alex died and Petra regressed, no one has taken care of her. Once, early in their courts.h.i.+p, she asked Ben if he took her for granted, and he said he did. ”Isn't it a good thing to be counted on?” he asked, waiting for her to say yes.
Exhausted, she tries to sleep through the trip home, but she is bombarded by cell-phone talkers, by music she doesn't like seeping around cheap earphones, by the intercom announcements of train cars and stops. For a moment she envies Adele; in the next she castigates herself for the thought. Better to hear everything than nothing-just ask Beethoven, Faure, Boyce, Vaughan Williams.
On the walk home from the d.i.n.ky, Suzanne takes the slightly longer route down Witherspoon, stopping at the little market, ducking in under the ”Wire money to Mexico” banner to splurge on a tamarind soda for Adele.
Twenty-one.
On Sunday Suzanne and Petra help Adele get ready for Ben's concert. Adele turns from her closet holding a dress in each hand, eyebrows raised. Petra points to the lavender dress, Suzanne to the dark blue one. Adele looks uncertain-a child who likes to please others caught in a bind. With her hands occupied, language is only in her facial expression.
”Actually,” Suzanne signs, ”the lavender one is perfect.”
Adele smiles her relief and dresses. She sits on the bed between Suzanne's knees. Suzanne brushes and gathers her hair, cupping it in her left hand in a loose ponytail as she brushes with her right, releasing the honey smell of baby shampoo. Suzanne is looking not at the silky hair but at the swell of bone behind Adele's left ear-the place the surgeon will puncture with a loud drill, boring a hole straight through, a procedure during which a small error would be devastating. Suzanne's stomach retracts to a tight pit. No wonder Petra took so long to decide.
Suzanne tips her head to kiss the precise spot where the drill will enter Adele's lovely egg-shaped skull. After she secures the ponytail, she spins Adele by the shoulders and signs, ”You'll look absolutely beautiful as soon as you brush your teeth!”
”That's the part I part I always forget.” Petra leans into Suzanne and waits until Adele leaves the room to say, ”Tell me again that it's going to be all right.” always forget.” Petra leans into Suzanne and waits until Adele leaves the room to say, ”Tell me again that it's going to be all right.”
”It's going to be all right,” Suzanne says steadily, though the tight circle of her stomach quivers as it releases with her breath.
”And you'll be there for Adele no matter what I do.”
”You sound like you have a one-way ticket somewhere.”
Petra looks up, alarmed. ”I would never leave her, not that. I don't ever even think that, not even for a second.”
Suzanne runs her hand down Petra's hair, a thicker, lighter version of Adele's, just as silky.
”But I'm not a nice person. I could do something awful that would make you hate me, and that would be terrible for Adele.”
”Petra, you've done lots of awful things, and I never hate you.”
Petra's laugh is a small snort. ”True. But promise me you'll always love Adele.”
”I've already promised you that. The promise is still good.”
Once Adele is ready, they walk down Leigh Avenue and turn up Wither-spoon, walking in their dresses in front of Princeton's most run-down rentals and then the little market. A man standing in the doorway says, ”Que bella!” ”Que bella!” as they walk by, and Suzanne nods at him. Across from the new library, they stop at the bakery for brioche. Petra chooses a chocolate-walnut stick. Adele points to a round brioche with a peach half as its center. Suzanne serves herself a cup of coffee from one of the large thermoses. The sound of the coffee flowing into the cup is rea.s.suring, a reminder that the laws of physics are still in place. She breathes its rich-smelling steam before securing the lid. as they walk by, and Suzanne nods at him. Across from the new library, they stop at the bakery for brioche. Petra chooses a chocolate-walnut stick. Adele points to a round brioche with a peach half as its center. Suzanne serves herself a cup of coffee from one of the large thermoses. The sound of the coffee flowing into the cup is rea.s.suring, a reminder that the laws of physics are still in place. She breathes its rich-smelling steam before securing the lid.
Twenty minutes later they enter Richardson Auditorium holding hands, Adele between Suzanne and Petra, and take their seats near the back of the main floor. Suzanne is surprised: more seats are occupied than empty, even in the balcony. Scanning the audience, she recognizes a few of Ben's a.s.sociates and some friends from Elizabeth's parties, Daniel with Linda, Anthony with Jennifer. Mostly, though, the crowd is the anonymous audience a musician desires: people who have come to listen to the music.
A few more arrive. Ben and Kazuo take their center seats. The musicians file onstage-an orchestrated entrance-stand in place, then sit en ma.s.se en ma.s.se. The lights dim. Hush spreads.
Suzanne watches Adele as the music begins. A deaf child at a concert many adults couldn't sit through, she looks not bored but rapt. Her chest rises and falls slowly with her deep breathing, and her eyes open fully to take in the darkened scene. Since she was a baby Adele has been a serious watcher of people-so serious that her only lapse in etiquette, seemingly ever, is this tendency to stare.