Girl, Unstrung

by Claire Handscombe

  “That’s ambitious,” Mr. Giovanni says when I tell him. Something in his voice or the slightest arch of his eyebrow makes me think that maybe ambitious is code for crazy or even impossible. He clearly doesn’t know me very well yet, doesn’t know that with my special sauce of talent and hard work and determination I can basically do anything. “It’s a hard piece,” he says. “With all that tricky double stopping.”

  “I’m almost there with it,” I say, which is almost true.

  “Okay,” he says. He’s still holding the paper, still sucking on the end of his pen. He still hasn’t signed his name. He’s about to do it when he lifts the pen off the paper again and asks, “you don’t think it would be better, you know, just this once, for your first one of these, to play a piece you know really well?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” I ask. I don’t mean fun, exactly. I mean challenge. But they’re basically the same thing anyway.

  “Okay,” he says again, and this time pen meets paper and he actually signs.

  “Thank you,” I say, taking it from him before he changes his mind, but what I mean is watch me. Watch me dazzle you.

  Nine

  Right after dinner that night I head back to my room to start my new practice régime. We’re at mom’s this week, and at her house we are binge watching Malcolm in the Middle on Netflix, but I don’t have time for that.

  “Great! More space for me on the sofa,” Rosie says, and I think about staying just to get her back for that, but I need to be strong. Real artists don’t compromise.

  “Do what you gotta do, honey,” my mom says. She’s making real popcorn in the pan, the way I like it, with a clear lid so you can watch the kernels implode and jump into life. She says it lightly, not in that passive aggressive ways some mothers might. She’s in acting, like dad; she understands sacrifices for the sake of art.

  Upstairs, I pop my viola case open. I choose the bow, my favorite one, the one with a bit more weight at the front, with a slight indent where my thumb has worn it down. I run it across the cube of amber rosin I keep in my case: it’s sticky and helps the bow to better grip the strings and make a smoother sound. But it can be messy and that’s why after each practice and each orchestra rehearsal I wipe my viola off with a chamois cloth before I put it back in its velour-lined bed. We all have routines like this at orchestra. Woodwind players have to shove a cloth down their instruments to wipe away the spit. (Gross, if you ask me, much grosser than rosin, which is made of tree bark and smells like pine trees.) Sometimes the flautists use cigarette papers on the keys to blot them when they get sticky. They shine the body of their flutes with a cloth, too. I’m never jealous of the woodwind players – the spit thing alone, come on! – but there is something really cool about the shininess of the flutes, the way they catch the light on a stage, the way that light seems to travel from one end to the other in one smooth motion.

  I play my scales, major and minor, but halfway through the arpeggios my left wrist starts to cramp. I’ve already done my two usual hours of practice today, plus two hours of orchestra, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Am I going to have to do some kind of weight lifting to get the strength in my arm up? I hope not. Where am I meant to find the time for that?

  I lay my viola down on my bed and stretch out my wrist, back and forth, back and forth. I draw circles with it, spread my fingers out, massage the inside of my wrist. Next to my viola, the phone on my bed lights up with a notification. It’s Katie. She must have sensed us talking about her the other day. A disturbance in the universe—we used to joke about that. That, or my mom contacted her and told her to text me.

  The text, imaginatively, says hey. I wait for more. My left wrist is still cramping; I can’t go downstairs and risk being mocked by Rosie for not even making fifteen minutes into a practice session. I might as well text Katie back. Hey yourself, I write, which I admit is also a little lame. How’s things? She writes. How’s your new school? Does she actually want to know, or does she just want to brag about how great LACHSA is? Hard to tell, so I don’t really know what to write back. And then I realize I also don’t know what to write back because I don’t know what the answer to her questions is. How are things? How is my new school? Fine, I guess. Orchestra is good. Freshman algebra is good. Other classes are okay. I don’t have a ton of exciting new friends, but who cares, right? School is just a thing to get through between orchestra rehearsals and viola lessons. Do I miss Katie? Do I miss sitting cross-legged on her purple bed making lists of the ten cutest boys in our class? (Purely hypothetical; she doesn’t have any more time for that stuff than I do.) Do I miss eating rolls of raw cookie dough even though we promised our moms we wouldn’t and then lying on our backs, clutching our stomachs and moaning about how sick we felt? Sure. That must be why my cheeks are wet and I’m sniffing. Well, either that or the pain in my wrist.

  I miss you, I type. Come over to my mom’s on Saturday?

  I have rehearsal, she texts back. Too quickly, like she’s mad, like she’s been waiting to cut me off. But then the little dots in the app tell me that there’s more. But maybe after?

  Ten

  At my mom’s that Saturday afternoon, Katie and I watch a movie and paint our nails, just like old times. We’re well into October now, so it’s time to switch from the bright yellows and pinks of summer to the darker reds and purples of fall. (Winter is for navy and white.) It’s like nothing’s changed with Katie and me; these have been our routines since forever. But of course plenty has changed. We don’t see each other every day. I don’t know who her friends are. We don’t know every detail of each other’s lives anymore. I miss that.

  “So how’s LACHSA?” I ask her, when the credits to High School Musical 3 are rolling. We’re each sprawled out on a squishy grey sofa in the TV room. I’m using my mom’s technique of looking at the screen, not directly at Katie. I want to know the answer to my question, and also I don’t, but mostly I don’t want Katie to feel like she has to hide things from me.

  “It’s,” she says. And then she pauses for what feels like a long time. From the corner of my eye, I can see her curling the strand of her hair that’s fallen out of her pony tail around and around her finger. “It’s intense. That’s probably the best word for it.”

  “What are some other words?”

  “Crazy. Hard. Fun. Competitive. I know you love competition, but this is different. You can never be sure that anyone’s really your friend. Because no-one really wishes the best for anyone. Everyone’s always waiting for someone else to trip up so they can get ahead. Even me.” She looks ashamed when she says this, like she might cry.

  “I find that hard to believe,” I say. “You always want to best for everyone.” We did this test called Myers Briggs one time, and she came out an ENFJ. Which apparently is the type of person always looking out for others. I wasn’t surprised. Sometimes I think our friendship has only lasted as long as it has because she’s way too forgiving and much kinder to me than I deserve.

  “It’s true, though,” she says. “It’s the atmosphere there. It brings out the best in people’s talents and hard work. But the worst in their character.”

  Katie’s always been a sensitive soul. I can imagine that’s hard for her.

  “I don’t think it’d be a very good place for you,” she says quietly, like she knows I’m going to be mad but she also knows she has to say it. “I’m sorry.”

  I am mad, so she was right to be worried. But I’ve also missed her, and I don’t want to fight. I’ll fight with her later in my head.

  “Okay,” I say. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  We do – we focus on picking out our next movie—and my anger fades. But long after she leaves I’m still thinking about it. Not a good place for me? LACHSA is the best place. The only place I’ve ever wanted to be. I’m going to need to practice my heart out so I can prove Katie wrong.

  Eleven

  It’s October 12th, the day of the recital – the Look How Gre
at The Kids At This School Are, Your Kids Could Be This Great Too showcase.

  I’m ready.

  Mom took me shopping for a dress, and it’s jade green and a little shiny and it falls just above the knee and I love it. She French braided my hair for me, too, and I wonder if that makes me look too little-girly, but I love her hands in my hair, love the undivided attention she gives me as I sit on the floor in front of her and she threads strands of my hair together. I pulled out a couple of strands toward the front to soften the hairstyle, and she frowned. “

  “Won’t those get in the way when you’re playing?” I admit I didn’t think of that, but I shrug.

  “It’ll be fine,” I say, and it probably will be.

  I know the piece by heart; the music will only be there for reassurance. I’m fourth on the program, and that gives me tons of time to get nervous, and also to look around the audience on their plush blue chairs beneath the mahogany-framed pictures of famous alumni and notice swoopy-haired Tim. I swear my stomach registers him before my eyes or my brain do; it immediately and predictably ties itself into a knot. I’ll show him, I think, clenching my teeth. I’m so much more than Thom Cassidy’s daughter. I’m so much more than the girl who didn’t get into LACHSA.

  Mom passes me a tissue when it’s my turn. She knows from past experience that I need to wipe my nervous, sweaty hands. I wonder, not for the first time, if putting rosin on the tips of my fingers would help with their grip on the strings, too. Now is probably not the time to experiment, though.

  The girl before me introduces me when she’s done with her clarinet piece, using the words I wrote. It’s weird, writing about yourself as if you’re someone else.

  “Clara Cassidy is a freshman. She’s played the viola since she was ten and has toured extensively with Pasadena Junior Orchestra with both her viola and her violin before that.”

  It makes me sound so professional. Apart from the Junior part. I wish the PJO had a better-sounding name.

  Then I’m on the stage and I’m playing. My fingers are doing what I’ve trained them to do over so many hours, the fingers on my left hand positioned exactly on the fingerboard so that exactly the right pitch oozes out with every steady bow stroke. I sound good. I can feel myself smiling. My viola teacher is always telling me to smile when I play, and I always want to say, there’s so much else to think about, my face is the least of my worries, but I can tell that somehow the smiling relaxes me, makes my playing even better. It’s over too quickly. I bow and go back to my seat between my mom and dad; they always come to these things together, in some grand show of unity. It’s hideously awkward but today I don’t mind. I’m glad they’re both here, that they both got to see me do that.

  “Great job,” my dad whispers into my ear over the applause for the next player I’ve just introduced. “You looked like you were enjoying yourself up there.”

  “I was,” I say. He puts his arm around my shoulder, gives it a squeeze. I wait for the inevitable pun.

  “Another string to your bow,” he says. There it is.

  THERE’S ALWAYS A RECEPTION after these things, too, as if to underline the point: not only will this school nurture your children’s talents and possibly make them into prodigies, we also have great cheese! And also some grapes! We wander to the room where there’s Diet Coke and sparkling cider for the kids, much more interesting drinks for the parents, all prettily arranged on silver trays. Mr. Giovanni meets my eye after getting his champagne and walks over to us – he’s sorry, I expect, that he ever doubted me.

  “That was wonderful, Clara,” he says. “Wonderful.” He introduces himself to my parents and I hold my breath. I wait for the backtracking when they say their names and Mr. Giovanni realizes he is supposed to know who they are. But there’s no backtracking. Not even a vague flicker of recognition.

  “You have a very determined daughter,” he says, and they laugh at the suggestion that this could possibly be news to them. And talented, I mentally add. Will my dad to say it. He doesn’t, but that’s okay. Anyone can be talented. That’s just an accident of birth. It’s what you do with the talent that counts.

  That’s when, out of the corner of my eye, I see swoopy-haired Tim, looking even hotter than normal in a blue shirt that brings out his eyes. He’s not supposed to be back here; this part is just for the performers and their families and donors and potential donors. Not for the riff raff. Who do we even think this school is for?

  “Thom,” he says, coming toward us. I hate the way people do this: call my parents by their first names as if they know them. Dude, he might be on your TV all the time, but he’s not your buddy. Did he say you can call him Thom? How do you know he doesn’t prefer Thomas?

  But my dad, being my dad, chilled and polite and always just so nice to everyone, stretches out his hand.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Big fan,” Tim says. Can’t people, just for once, come up with something more creative than that?

  “Thanks.” How does my dad put up with this crap?

  “Do you mind?” Tim says, and before my dad has a chance to ask do I mind what, Tim pulls out his phone, reaches his arm out for a selfie. “Big fan,” he says again. Then he walks away.

  It’s like he hasn’t even seen me.

  Twelve

  “Call Juliette for dinner,” my dad says the next night after poking around at the roasted chicken to make sure it’s cooked right through. The whole house smells like thyme and rosemary, and the skin looks so crispy I could die just thinking about eating it. I open my mouth to yell for my sister, and he says, “Not like that. Go to the basement and speak live a civilized human being.” My dad is normally pretty chilled, so who knows what’s up with that. Our weeks with him were always a little more relaxed, a little rougher around the edges, more takeout pizza and fuzzier bedtimes. Until Ebba, of course. Now there’s a scented candle in the downstairs bathroom and we eat at the same time every day and there are always flowers on the dining room table. They look nice enough, but honestly, they’re a little impractical sometimes and we could really do with the extra space for, you know, actual food and food-related things.

  So I make my way to the basement, where Juliette has her own mini dance studio, complete with a barre and wall-length mirrors. I open the door and climb down the first couple of steps. The music from the Nutcracker’s party scene is playing on a tinny iPhone. I can see Juliette from this angle, the back of her, and the front of her reflected in the mirror. She’s standing with her hands lightly on the barre, and she’s sticking her tongue out a little, deep in concentration. Her left foot is pointing out, and her right leg is up in the air at an angle. And next to that leg is Ebba, giving her instructions.

  “Okay, now point that right foot. Good. Much better. Now turn your heel inward a little. No, inward.” Juliette is struggling; her tongue is poking out further. Ebba moves to stand behind her, takes her right foot in her hand, turns it slightly, so slightly it’s almost imperceptible to the naked eye, certainly to the naked eye of a non-dancer. That’s what Ebba and Juliette call us: non-dancers. Which is a bit offensive, actually. I don’t go around calling people non-musicians or tone-deaf idiots. Not out loud, anyway. Not to their faces.

  “See?” Ebba says, and Juliette nods. Then she smiles at Ebba widely and gap-toothed, and my heart pinches. They’re two peas in a pod, there at the barre. Two brunettes with buns. Juliette has mom’s coloring, and Ebba... well, let’s just say that dad has a type. The way Ebba is holding her foot, like a precious glass slipper, it’s – tender, is the word that comes to mind. Which is weird, because that’s a word we only ever use in the context of steak in this house. I back away, up the stairs, close the door gently. For some reason, I don’t want them to know that I’ve seen them.

  “Well,” dad says. “Are they coming, or what?”

  They? Did he know that Ebba was down there too? Did he send me down there just so I could witness their beautiful moment of step-mother step-daughter interaction?


  “Did you send me down there on purpose?” I ask.

  “With the purpose that you would call them for dinner,” he says. “Yes.”

  “No, I mean – so that I would see them practicing together.”

  “I wish you’d give her a chance,” he says, which sounds like he’s not answering my question, but of course, he is.

  “I’m always perfectly civil to her,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “You’re not.” I know he’s thinking of the other day when I pretended not to hear Ebba when I got back from orchestra. She asked me how it went but I decided it was the TV I was hearing and I went straight to my room. “You’re not always perfectly civil.” He’s taking knives and forks from the silverware drawer, crashing them together like cymbals to underline his point. “And even if you were, she deserves a lot more than that, okay? A lot more.”

  Dad looks at me, waits for me to make eye contact. I don’t want to, but the silence is so excruciatingly awkward that eventually I can’t bear it anymore and I do, just to get out of the moment.

  “What does Libby say about her?” he asks. I’m about to ask if he’s been snooping through my phone for her texts, because that’s not okay, but something in his eyes tells me not to go there. Libby was always trying to convince me that Ebba’s really great, not just talented and beautiful abut also kind. It got so bad that I had to ask her to stop. She probably thought she was being subtle, slipping it in under the radar, sending e subliminal messages. Say hi to everyone! Tell Ebba I miss her. Or, I’m reading this novel Ebba recommended. I love it, she has such great taste in books. Or, Ebba said this really wise thing to me once... In the end, I was like, look, Libby, I know you love Ebba, but I just don’t really want to talk about her. I saw the little dots on my phone start and stop, start and stop. Who knows what essay she was composing to guilt me. You could do a lot worse for a stepmom, you know, is what she eventually sent. But okay. I won’t mention her again unless you do. Which means I can’t complain to Libby about Ebba now either, because that puts the subject back in play.