Part 14 (1/2)

”Nothing new, I suppose, but so vehement. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was seducing Anthony.” Jennifer laughs now, fingering the beads of her pearl strands, adding, ”It's not that I don't trust him, necessarily-he is a man-just that I keep his leash very short. I read that the number-one predictor of infidelity is opportunity.”

Suzanne looks anew at Jennifer, seeing in her broad face a woman more self-aware than she'd noticed before. Jennifer is one more person, Suzanne thinks, whom she has misjudged or at least misunderstood.

”I'd better find Petra and get her out of here before she talks to a potential donor.”

Jennifer's hair swings at her shoulders as she nods. She touches Suzanne's shoulder. ”Thank you for coming, and thank you for getting her out of here before she does any damage.”

Getting Petra into the car is easier than Suzanne expected. Petra has gone docile with a turn in mood, though now she is crying and her tears are fierce.

”Honey,” Suzanne whispers, ”if it's not such a big deal, why are you so upset?”

”She's a stupid woman. Stupid and fat,” Petra exclaims before going submissive again. ”I'm sorry. I just drank too much on an empty stomach. The performance and all. We were really good, weren't we?”

”Yeah.” Suzanne grins. ”We were really good. Really, really good.”

”We rocked!” Petra high-fives her. ”We were awesome!” The American slang or the champagne exaggerates her ordinarily slight accent.

After Suzanne maneuvers the car through the narrow driveway and into its s.p.a.ce, moving the gear to park park, Petra slides herself out of the car and totters toward the back door. She points to her shoes. ”I'm not actually drunk. I'm just tall.”

”You are definitely too far from the ground.” Suzanne slams shut both car doors and then follows her friend inside, where she a.s.sumes not only Adele but Ben is deep in sleep.

Twenty-five.

The quartet's performance now part of her past, Suzanne returns to work on the concerto. She works the way she used to, the way she worked when she still believed the world was hers for the taking if she just tried hard enough.

But still it is not enough. Working with Alex's score, her hands and mind in his measures of music, was supposed to keep him close to her, in her. But the harder she seeks him, the more remote he becomes. She cannot find herself in his work, not even herself as violist. Maybe he knew you as little as you knew him Maybe he knew you as little as you knew him. As she works, grief reverberates in her ears, an inaudible sound felt rather than heard. Grief not that she has lost him but that she is losing him always, over and over. It is the sensation of abandonment, of being left alone and not knowing in what form you will survive it.

She tries every theoretical approach she learned at Curtis and through her own studies, and she tries the more personal, remembering Alex's reactions to other concertos. Once, in Seattle, they heard Va.s.sily Primakov play Chopin's first piano concerto. Flawed and brilliant, the work has been criticized since its premiere for its elementary orchestration. ”But the piano itself!” Alex said, eyes lit with excitement.

But that does not apply to his viola concerto-the solo line is not enough.

The best concertos are relational; their very subject matter is is the relations.h.i.+p between the soloist and the rest of the orchestra. She doesn't want to write a second-rate piece of music, and she doesn't want Alex to have conceived of one. There has to be a key, she thinks, to open the door between the brilliant and difficult viola score and the rest of the instruments. the relations.h.i.+p between the soloist and the rest of the orchestra. She doesn't want to write a second-rate piece of music, and she doesn't want Alex to have conceived of one. There has to be a key, she thinks, to open the door between the brilliant and difficult viola score and the rest of the instruments.

Again and again she wants to throw down the work. Yet she continues, clinging to the belief that she will restore Alex to herself, that if she follows him around enough corners, she will reach the end of the maze and find something of him to grab. Then she will understand-the music, the person Alex was, the person she was with him, what she is without him.

She also knows, when she lets herself think about it, that she works because she fears Olivia. Suzanne does not want her life undone. She does not want Ben hurt more, and she does not want to lose him. Her life may not be the life she wanted, but it could be much worse.

Or perhaps it is the challenge that keeps her working: the old ambition, the deep desire to compose and now, at last, a chance to start that part of her life, to be alone and see in what form she will survive it. So she comes back to the work every morning and most nights.

It is midmorning on a very hot Tuesday when she breaks through. It is the most mundane of moments. She is sitting in her living room, cross-legged in shorts and a tank top, her hairline and back damp with sweat because they cannot afford to run the air conditioner all the time. She is eating grapes, slowly because they have seeds.

Understanding doesn't come in a single flash, but it does develop quickly, building like a strong wave. She stares at the score and in her mind hears what is missing from the concerto: an elegiac echo against the viola line. Alex left s.p.a.ce for it but left it unwritten, almost as though he foresaw his own death. Holding the dead and the missing in her mind-her mother, Charlie, her baby, Robert Schumann, the Adele born with hearing ears, but mostly Alex-she writes for the orchestra an elegiac line, a subdued but emotion-saturated voice to accompany and answer the viola. Less than an equal conversation but a clear voice that she allows to snake among the double reeds and the cello. Mostly it will be carried by the ba.s.soon, that comic tragedy of a tone, an instrument like a man with the face of a clown and a heart aching with unrequited love.

There is more than one solution to every musical conundrum, yet Suzanne believes she has found Alex's true intention, or something very close. It solves for her the mystery of a concerto written by a man who found most concertos distasteful. The viola does not perform a virtuosic solo, though virtuosity is required, but is the stronger half of a duet before the crowd of the orchestra. The central voice is witnessed, and it is answered. She spits out a grape seed and nods.

Twenty-six.

After Suzanne completes her work on the concerto and sends it off to Olivia, she returns to full-time practice. When playing alone, she finds a new lightness and pleasure in her instrument, its look and feel, smell and sound. She plays whatever she feels like, including some frothier baroque tunes, some Roma dance music, Debussy, moving from one thing to the next according to mood or whim.

With the quartet she practices portions of the regular repertoire, and the members discuss their next moves. Anthony is working on the marketing of the Black Angels Black Angels CD and has accepted some invitations that suggest the quartet's swelling reputation. They agree to a performance in Montreal and to appear at festivals in Salt Lake City and Austin. As they consider their future programs, Petra continues to advocate for the Ravel quartet and Anthony shows signs of softening on the point. Domestic bliss has made Daniel unusually easygoing. ”Sounds good,” he says a lot, regardless of who is proposing what. One day Petra suggests a Christmas CD, just to see if he's listening, but he catches on and grins, giving Petra what can only be called a bear hug. ”I'm not quite that far gone. Linda has made me happy but not stupid.” CD and has accepted some invitations that suggest the quartet's swelling reputation. They agree to a performance in Montreal and to appear at festivals in Salt Lake City and Austin. As they consider their future programs, Petra continues to advocate for the Ravel quartet and Anthony shows signs of softening on the point. Domestic bliss has made Daniel unusually easygoing. ”Sounds good,” he says a lot, regardless of who is proposing what. One day Petra suggests a Christmas CD, just to see if he's listening, but he catches on and grins, giving Petra what can only be called a bear hug. ”I'm not quite that far gone. Linda has made me happy but not stupid.”

The news arrives by certified letter when Suzanne is home alone, practicing. She is playing Hindemith and eyeing the angle of her elbow crook when the doorbell rings. Her arrangement of Alexander Elling's Viola Concerto, Op. 1, has been accepted into the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Inst.i.tute. If she accepts the invitation-and they hope she will-there will be breakouts and rehearsals, a.n.a.lysis and feedback, instruction in the business of composing, dinners with other aspiring composers. At the end of the grueling week will be a full public performance of ”the work.” Compliments of Olivia's industriousness and cunning, Suzanne will hear the composition, fully orchestrated.

She rereads the letter, her body tingling. It is the sort of letter she fantasized about receiving when she was younger, when she still thought she might make her way as a composer as well as a performer. It is Alex's piece that has been accepted, she understands, and the weight of his name is heavy. But the concerto is her work. too, in its interpretation and execution. Suzanne wrote the second line, did much of the orchestration.

Yet when her excitement slides away, soon, the emotion gripping her is cold, quaking fear. Not insecurity or stage jitters but true fright-the terror of free fall. Olivia may be trying to destroy her, beginning with her marriage, but only beginning there and ending in something even larger and darker. That night Suzanne wakes over and over, each time in a sweat, seeing every hour the clock pa.s.ses at least once: eleven fifty-eight, twelve sixteen, one forty, two ten, two fifty-six, three twenty, four o'clock. She rises for the day shortly after five, exhausted but relieved to be out of bed, away from the twisted sheets, away from the sound of Ben's even breathing as he sleeps through the hot night.

Her eyes and skin are scrubbed raw by the insomnia; her logic is untrustworthy. Fortunately there is no practice scheduled. Not good for much else, she decides to make breakfast for the others. She'll need to tell them about Minnesota, but not today. She'll think about it more and make the announcement when her mind is working more swiftly. Now she concentrates on the simple work in the kitchen. She brews coffee, relieved by its smell as it begins to drip. She cuts into a pineapple, slowly, rendering it into matching cubes. She slices apple, squeezing lemon over the slices so they do not brown. She washes blueberries and blackberries, cuts up a kiwi. Next she mixes pancake batter, stirring in cinnamon and walnuts to make the recipe her own.

An hour or so later she is eating the food with Ben, Petra, and Adele. Suzanne smiles at everyone, foists seconds, pushes fruit, but only Adele seems happy with the breakfast. Ben's aloofness is at its most marked. He and Petra do not look at each other and only occasionally look at her. Petra and Adele sign a little but not much. Petra looks haggard, as she often does these days. Her eyes are shallow on her face but shadowed by dark spots where they meet her nose. Underneath are bruised circles. Her normally straight back slumps as she sits. Suzanne feels fatigue pull on her own spine so lifts her posture and pulls back her shoulders, refusing to curl into the deep tiredness she feels.

When Petra returns from taking Adele to the summer camp at her school, she suggests a long walk. Suzanne begs off to practice a little and then nap, but her friend presses. ”Please.”

They cut down the 206, keeping tight to the left side of the road until they can peel off into the woods surrounding Mountain Lake. The day is hot but not so humid as it has been, and walking feels good.

Suzanne quickens her step. ”Let's make it feel like exercise,” she says. ”Maybe we'll outpace the mosquitoes.”

They find the path that circles the lake. It's a workday for most people, and they pa.s.s almost no one. A middle-aged woman jogging, two young guys fis.h.i.+ng the lake with simple line poles, a man running a border collie.

Suzanne waits for Petra to talk-there must be something behind her uncommon invitation-but Petra just walks on. They cross the mucky section on the lake's far side, near where an icehouse sat until it was taken down last summer.

”This lake was put here for ice; did you know that?”

Petra shakes her head. ”I should come here more. It's nice.”

”Back when I was trying to run, I came here a lot. Petra,” Suzanne starts, thinking she should talk to Petra about her drinking, which is beginning to take an obvious toll on her physically as well as emotionally. But she is so tired herself she is afraid she will get it wrong, and she is in no position to give anyone advice about how to live their lives. Maybe Daniel can say something to Petra, can talk to her about how he stopped and how he feels.

”I was up all night,” Petra whispers.

”Me, too. Full moon?”

Petra shakes her head. ”New moon, totally dark.”

The path takes them away from the lake and then back around, up a long hill. The path widens considerably, though the foliage is thick on either side and in places obscures the lake below. Suzanne feels the climb in her hamstrings, her gluteal muscles, her expanding lungs. Maybe she will start running again, when she gets back from Minnesota. It feels good to be moving, to be breathing a little hard, to be outside.

As the path narrows near its end, where it will drop them back near the 206, Petra asks, ”Have you talked to Ben much lately?”

”Every day, Petra. I talk to him every day.”

”I mean really talk to him. Mr. Aloof.”