Tallis' Third Tune

by Ellen L. Ekstrom

  “Tarquin…Tarquin, whatsa matter? Can’t stand up to Daddy?”

  “Maybe you should go cry on Alice’s shoulder.”

  “Maybe you should try to get in Alice’s pants instead of going down on those guys in biology class!”

  “He probably wouldn’t know what to do with a girl if he got her alone in the back seat of Daddy’s big limo.”

  “Hell, if it was that Martin chick that everybody says he’s doing or trying to do, I’d be more than happy to give him some pointers! She’s one stone fox, that Alice! Get it? Pointers?”

  “Like you’re not still a virgin, Frank!”

  “Give me a half hour with her…”

  “I thought Tarquin was more your type.”

  It took all of my willpower to keep from jumping up and taking the stairs by twos to storm the light box and rip the balls off those two idiots. Quinn didn’t need any more embarrassment, however, and I sunk down into my chair, wanting to be anywhere but there, but compelled to stay for Quinn’s sake.

  The professor sat at the piano and started to play, pick up notes that he counted out, and waved his hand at Quinn who resolutely started to play again. But this time there seemed to be no joy or passion in the execution. It was too much; I slipped away, making sure that I smiled at the light crew as they came down out of the box and we passed one another on the stairs.

  Several hours later when I returned to the auditorium and found it empty, I knew that I would find Quinn in the band room, putting the cello away. The latches clicked with a hollow echo and he shoved the cello into his locker, holding the door ajar as he studied the worn leather and canvas case. He stood silently over it, his shoulders sagging. He moved his foot back and for a moment, I thought he would kick the case. It was the door that received the brunt of his anger.

  “It was beautiful the first time,” I said crossing the threshold.

  “Hey!” Quinn greeted softly and his smile was assurance that he survived this skirmish with the professor unharmed.

  “Do you want to go for a walk?” I hinted. Quinn turned from me and switched off the light so that we were in late afternoon shadows. I playfully followed as he went further into the recesses of the locker room, hoping that he’d lure me into a dark corner for a quick cuddle. But he wasn’t in the mood; I could see that by the set of his eyes and mouth – I’d never seen him so unhappy. As I skipped around to face him, I saw the bruise. My shock was apparent as he tried his best to hide the purplish welt and ring around his right eye and down his cheek.

  “It’s nothing,” Quinn muttered before I could demand an explanation. “A difference of opinion.”

  “With a fist?” I exclaimed.

  “Just a guy, that’s all.”

  “The guy in the hallway?”

  “No; another asshole. A matter of honor.”

  “Yours?”

  “No,” Quinn said softly as he kissed my forehead. “Yours.”

  He put on a pair of expensive sunglasses as we left the high school and headed up Center Street past the construction of the new subway. We walked silently hand in hand across the university campus to the Graduate Theological Union where we settled under a gnarled olive tree and sat on the grass despite the coldness and damp of the winter day.

  “Were you there the whole time?” he wanted to know.

  “No. I left after Mister Collins did. You are good, Quinn. Why can’t your father see it and hear it?”

  “Being good isn’t what gets you into an orchestra – being great does. Being good doesn’t get you concert dates. Being good doesn’t get you compared to Pablo Casals. It’s all about being great,” Quinn said matter-of-factly.

  “What if it ruins your spirit? Your passion for music?” I asked.

  Something I had not asked in the winter of 1969 – I knew it!

  “I won’t let him get to me.” Quinn pulled me close and I rested my head on his shoulder. “D’you know, all the while as I went over and over that piece, I was thinking of what you said when we listened to the Tallis Fantasia that night.”

  “What was that?” I asked, snuggling closer when a breeze cut through the plaza and shook the tree.

  “How the music evoked images of moors, a sea, a meadow, standing and looking at a sunset – and you were there in a long, white dress made of lace. It made the session with my father bearable.”

  “Thanks.” A kiss landed on his cheek and I marveled at the stubble of beard against his smooth skin. “A long white dress? Of lace?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s all the medieval stuff you like.”

  “Am I beautiful in it?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Quinn.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want to become a concert musician? Deep in your soul, is this what you want?”

  “Yes – and you. If I have these two things, I have everything.”

  His whisper was like a restorative as I opened my eyes after we kissed and found myself staring at the laptop screen in the Curiosity Shop.

  “But there was something more…” I murmured.

  “What was that?”

  The Proprietress noisily locked a display case and soon was tapping her fingernails on its glass top.

  “He wanted something more,” I spoke up, and started typing.

  “How long will it take you to finish that book? You’ve been working on it forever.”

  “I’m working on two books – one on Joan of Arc, the other on a history of the Fourth Crusade if you want to know.”

  “I don’t. Drink your tea, child, and stop wondering about what people want!” the Proprietress sniffed.

  “I haven’t got – oh.”

  A Wedgewood cup and saucer were before me and the fragrance of Constant Comment was enticing but I ignored it and continued my work.

  The doorbell jangled. “Ah, Mademoiselle Jeanne! Vous êtes bien ces jours? Comment passer les guerres?” the Proprietress greeted. I glanced over the laptop screen and raised my brows at the sight of a girl in her late teens walking through the Shop to my corner. The ash blonde hair was bobbed and she wore brilliant, white silver armor. She was pretty and the round face tanned from her campaigns, her dark brown eyes were expressive and she had a wide but full, rosy mouth. The bobbed hair couldn’t make up its mind whether to curl or not. What surprised me most of all was how diminutive Joan of Arc was.

  She paused by Richard the Third’s table and studied the crossword, murmuring, “A seven letter word for misfortune…hmm, begins with ‘t.’ Ah, that would be your life, Your Grace.”

  “Pardon?” Richard demanded.

  “Tragedy, sir. Tragedy.”

  “Really, Joan!” the Proprietress chuckled.

  Now my favorite saint sat at my table, smiling and pushing the cup of tea in my direction.

  “Quinn wanted you to love him,” Joan said. “And he wanted very much to love you, but as with all love stories, there were insurmountable circumstances, weren’t there?”

  “I suppose…”

  “Of course he did,” quipped Richard the Third, who reached for a PopTart from a vintage toaster that had yet to pop. “He’s an adolescent boy – and what is the one thing boys want from a girl? Well?”

  “A deep subject, Your Grace.” A bearded gentleman in a nineteenth century morning suit and top hat spoke up. The close-cropped beard and accent gave him away. Sigmund Freud winked at me as he entered the Shop with another man – the actor Tyrone Power, I could tell by his smoldering good looks – in tow and they headed for the coffee bar.

  “Must I spell it out?” Richard demanded. “Oh, bloody hell, really!”

  “Watch your language, young man!” Hildegard von Bingen snapped, pointing at him with a pair of pruning shears.

  “Ohhh,” Joan and I murmured in unison. Joan blushed and I could feel my own cheeks burning. The Proprietress rolled her eyes with dramatic effect.

  “Not only that. He wanted respect and understanding.”

>   “Which she gave to him…” The Proprietress chimed in. “And yet, she still doesn’t get it. Alice! Drink your tea!”

  Doing what I was told, I took a sip and immediately began to feel warm and cozy, drowsy even – something I had not felt in a while. Colors swirled around me and I remembered the light-shows: the paisleys and splashes of bright hues, and how happy I felt when watching them…

  Richard had succeeded in claiming the pastry and now sat down to work on the crossword puzzle.

  “What’s a five-letter word for love, Alice?” the king muttered.

  Screwing up my brow, I put a lot of thought into the question. It helped that Sigmund Freud slipped me a note upon which one word was written:

  Quinn.

  “No helping!” Richard spoke up. “Joan! What did I just say?”

  Joan of Arc had been drawing something in one of my sketchbooks and held it up. It was a drawing of a pennant. I recognized it as her heraldic banner to be precise, the Jesu et Marie banner she carried into battle. The banner began to ripple and dance as if a breeze were within its folds – or it might have been the operation of the tea making me think that. Still, the banner continued to wave and the figure of Mary slowly morphed into my silhouette cast onto the bed sheet I was now pinning to a wall in my basement hideaway, the place Dennis and Harry were forbidden to enter.

  I had taken a large cluttered space and made it my own with throw rugs and tapestries from Cost Plus, a day bed that Dennis and Harry refinished as a birthday present and set on a carved wooden platform decorated with gothic trefoils in lozenges, and strewn with overstuffed pillows that were covered in medieval and renaissance patterned brocades. Gauze curtains decorated with stars surrounded and separated the bed from a work area consisting of a drafting table, stool, workbench and my father’s old recliner and bookshelves. The walls were covered in trompe l’oeil skies that went from sunset to dawn on three of the walls, complete with clouds, planets and stars, the sun and the moon. Dennis had set three mirrors into gold-leafed panels like a triptych and placed it on the wall beside a five-panel screen decorated with medieval ladies. The screen gave me privacy from the open stairwell up to the kitchen.

  “Wow!”

  Quinn stood at the door leading into the backyard, an overhead projector in his arms. He set it on the drafting table and looked around, as if he were in another world. “You’re sure this is okay?” he wanted to know.

  “My brother is all for artistic expression,” I said. “We can use this old sheet as a screen for the light-show. You can use the drafting table for the projector and your stuff – it’s the right height.”

  “Is this your room?” Quinn now asked, glancing at the day bed in the corner and my feminine and romantic interior decorations, my attempts to make it a medieval lady’s solar.

  “No – it’s my refuge. I won’t let Dennis and Harry come down here, and they know better not to – one of our agreements. Sometimes I work late on homework, or my own writing, my costume designs, and just crash on the bed. Dennis wishes I hadn’t chosen this room, because the water heater and furnace are behind the wall over there, in the other room. If something were to burst…”

  “I’m with Dennis,” Quinn stated, helping me down so that I could slide into his arms for a kiss. “Thanks for letting me work here. My dad just won’t listen,” he said releasing me.

  “I guess I should count my blessings, because Dennis doesn’t care what I listen to as long as it isn’t too loud after ten o’clock.”

  “If it’s not opera or classical music it must be shit,” Quinn muttered as he took the box I lifted from the doorstep.

  “Is this what I think it is? Are you designing a light-show?” I asked, peeking into the box at the clock crystals and stage light gels, the bottles of food coloring and paint.

  “Yes. You take the liquid and put it in the crystal, set it on the projector and move it in time to the music. Here’s the music.” He handed me a record album.

  “I’ve got the record player – oh, great choice!” I purred.

  Soon Quinn was moving the projector in time to the song Are You Sitting Comfortably so that the room was filled with dancing hues of purples, oranges, greens and blues, reds and golds.

  “Now, let’s make it interesting,” he said and took a light gel and placed it front of the lens so that the background was a vivid purple. He exchanged crystals quickly and bright pastels now swirled and flooded the screen. Another gel was placed in front of the lens: this was a black and white rendition of a knight and his lady from a Victorian faery tale book. Quinn exchanged the crystals in rapid-fire succession until the song faded into the next.

  “Wow!” I exclaimed, breathless. “That was amazing. You’re good, Quinn.”

  “Really?”

  “I think it’s good enough for Winterland or the Fillmore,” I said when Quinn switched off the projector.

  “It has to be great,” he sighed. “If I get this gig it will lead to others and with the money the band’s bringing in, I can save for my own car, get my own bass so I don’t have to keep borrowing Andy’s.”

  “Does your father know about the band?”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Just imagine the screaming when I tell him about the gig at the Keystone. He’ll hit a high C.”

  “Keystone…? Quinn!” I giggled. “You’re not twenty-one!”

  “Andy’s brother made these. What do you think?”

  He pulled an ID card from his wallet.

  “It says you’re twenty-one! Wicked! Oh, I wish I could come with you.”

  “Why not? A bit of makeup, do something up with the hair, and the right clothes, you could pass for twenty-one.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I laughed.

  “It might help to have such a fine looking woman admiring Blackthorne Rose from the front row – and while all the other guys are looking and wondering, I’ll know she’s coming home with me.”

  “Blackthorne Rose?”

  “Names like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles were already taken. So, are you up for it?”

  “Sure!”

  I turned to look in the mirrors and saw myself with an up-do, a glittering a-line sheath of blush-pink in a metallic double knit, silver tights and a pair of knee-high boots in silver leather. I was applying a last coat of mascara and touching up the eye shadow when there was a knock on my bedroom door.

  “Wow! Look at the go-go queen!” Dennis greeted.

  “Trying a new look.”

  “Looks…sexy.”

  “I guess that’s a good thing, but coming from my brother…”

  Dennis handed me the silver handbag on the bed and I carefully dropped in a tube of lipstick, a handkerchief, and my allowance money. Turning away from my brother’s inquiring eyes, I opened up the nightstand and slipped a condom packet into the bag, hoping he didn’t see, hoping he didn’t know I kept a few, just in case. If I were forced to tell the truth under pain of torture or worse, a week’s restriction, I would easily fold and say honestly, no, I was still a virgin. What I was going to do that winter’s night was for myself to know at the time.

  As I grabbed a pale blush shawl of angora and mohair, Dennis pointed to the bed.

  “Sit.”

  “I’m meeting Jenny and Rachael in ten minutes. Quinn’s taking us to a party at Connie’s – you know, the Air Force brat that lives near the high school?”

  “We haven’t had The Talk.”

  “Do we need to?”

  Dennis tugged at the hem crawling up my thighs so that the garter tabs weren’t so apparent. “I wish Mom were here, because I know what needs to be said; I just don’t know how to say it.” His face was pale and his eyes were the darkest and most serious I’d seen them since our mother’s funeral. “Sweetie,” he continued, “if Quinn is putting on the pressure, or making threats to break up…”

  “No!” I squealed. “He’s never pressured me, and he’s never made a threat. What could he possibly say?”
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  “Things like, ‘If you loved me we’d go all the way. It’s how a girl shows her love,’ and dumb shit like that.”

  “Oh, and you’re an expert on this,” I said, trying not to laugh.

  Dennis sat next to me and took my hands. “Believe it or not, before I admitted to myself that I was homosexual, I dated quite a few girls in high school and during my first year of college and did some heavy experimentation.”

  “I can’t imagine you at a frat house beer bust, making the moves.”

  “I hosted a lot of those parties. Trust me, I used all the lines and made all the right moves. Broke a few hearts.”

  “Do you expect Quinn to be like you?”

  “He’s a guy and we all think with…”

  “Sorry! Quinn’s not like that. We’ve talked about it, Denny…”

  “And how did that go?”

  I slid off the bed and went to the vanity to check my appearance one last time. “This is something I don’t want to share with my big brother.”

  “Well Mom and Dad aren’t here, and I think you’d have an easier time with me.”

  “You think so?”

  “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you, but Alice, I do worry.”

  “When have I ever broken curfew, or drank, or did drugs? Have you ever gotten a call from the police?”

  “No, and I count my blessings about that.”

  “Then don’t worry about this.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?” Dennis asked. “How do you know it’s not just hormones?”

  “There isn’t a moment of the day when I’m not thinking about him,” I said softly. “If I hear something or see something that would interest him, or has something to do with a conversation we had, or a book or music we shared, I think, ‘I can’t wait to tell Quinn.’ I love the way he smiles and looks at me as he approaches in the corridor, or the way he says ‘hello’ on the telephone. His friends say he can’t keep his eyes off me when we’re in the same room. And if I could just sit and stare at him all day – yes, I do know – and I know I’m in love.”

  “That will make it all the more difficult to wait.”