I waited, holding the cab door open. Oscar leaned in, exhausted, letting his forehead fall against mine. I closed my eyes.
“Hey, kids!” The voice behind Oscar was older, male, but as I leaned out to identify the source of it, a light flashed in my face. A camera? It turned off before I stopped blinking, but the photographer seemed satisfied—a short, bald guy, I saw now. He waved, shouted “Thanks!” and vanished toward the Wing Club entrance.
Oscar squinched his eyes shut. “What the actual—”
“These things attract photographers,” I said quickly, hoping he couldn’t see how shaken I was. “It’s fine.” I squeezed his wrist. “You’ll be fine.”
He straightened. “Okay. You’re right. See you back at the ranch, then.”
The photographer snapped another shot of him as he strode back into the club, bouncing more with every step.
Rattling home in the taxi, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the darkened window, eerie and pale. This version of myself was easiest to look at. All that fuss over my outfit and hair, and for what? Half a champagne glass, zero tiny food items, and a graceless exit with the glitterati watching.
I don’t want to do this.
This life isn’t for me.
The realization came as a shock of relief, like taking off a scratchy sweater and letting the air hit my bare skin.
Not this. Try again.
I could breathe.
The house felt crypt quiet when I shut the door behind me. But as my ears adjusted to the thick silence, the world grew gradually noisier.
I could hear the hall clock ticking. I could hear the AC growling. I could hear the city outside and the neighbors arguing and . . .
I could feel my piano waiting.
I sat. Lifted the keyboard cover. Tried the pedals, one, two, three.
I thought for a second. And then, tentatively, quietly, I played it.
My Amberley audition.
Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A Major; Bach’s Fugue No. 24 in B Minor; Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1—one tiny rebellion. They’d wanted something virtuosic for the third selection. I’d picked something I liked instead.
The piano still felt cold beneath my fingers, but I kept playing, buffeted by the memories I’d been blocking out for the past three months—the sweet orange oil smell of the audition room, the stage lights flooding the blind screen in opaque yellow, the three vague shadows beyond, the bench still warm from the last auditioner. I remembered exactly how I’d rushed that glissando, flubbed this B-flat, how there had been a voice in my head whispering, “Is this good enough? Is this good enough?” like every time I played. I remembered a real voice, Arnold Rombauer, saying “Thank you,” in dismissal. Flat. Bored. Faintly irritated.
And I felt once again what I’d felt then, hearing that verdict—relief.
It was an ax coming down. It was an answer.
Tonight, here, now, I muddled through to the Debussy. I missed a few notes. And then more. And more, and more, and more, my fingers falling over themselves, begging me to stop.
I did. I gave in, slumping.
A floorboard creaked behind me. Oscar stood leaning against the doorframe, listening, his expression deeply peaceful. He straightened as I turned, clearing his throat.
“Back already.” My voice sounded empty.
“I was worried about you.”
I looked down. “You heard me play?”
“The last piece.”
He sounded thoughtful more than friendly. Slowly, he strode over to stand beside the piano. I waited for him to lie: “You play beautifully.” Or “I can see potential.” Or “There’s plenty of work out there for a good accompanist!”
But he stayed silent, watching like he finally understood.
I felt my shoulders relax. This, his silence, was as much a gift as Arnold Rombauer’s dismissal had been back in April—an acknowledgment of what I already knew, of what Mom had always known.
Oscar walked behind me, lightly touching my fingers. “Your hands are small.”
He didn’t say it like he was trying to make excuses for me. More as a simple observation. Almost an endearment. Or maybe a reason to touch my hand, turn it over, run his fingers along each of mine.
My heart beat faster. “Mom’s are small too. They say it’s part of why she’s such a brilliant musician. She had to work harder—change the traditional fingering in difficult pieces to suit her own hands, which makes it sound fresh, I guess. Unexpected.” I drew a shaky breath. “I always thought that was what it took. Working as hard as she did, practicing the same number of hours, in the same schedule, the exact same . . .”
I touched the keys but didn’t press them.
“The thing is . . .” I started to go on, but my voice clenched.
Oscar sat on the bench next to me.
“I love music. I love experiencing music. But the second I start to play, something sort of shuts off inside me. The joy evaporates—I feel like a machine. But I mean, a machine would at least be technically adept, right? I miss notes and lose my place and scramble to get back, no matter how many times I practice. Mom and Alice and everybody else, that doesn’t happen to them. Which makes me wonder what’s different about me? What’s missing?”
My hand rested against my throat, as if to soothe the raw knot rising in it.
“And if it’s not hard work and dedication,” I went on, gritty, “then, I mean, maybe it’s my soul. Maybe I don’t have the soul for it?”
I’d never admitted it before, out loud or otherwise, but there it was. Giving up piano hadn’t felt like a redirection or even a failure. It had felt like an admission—that I was lesser. That I was empty.
I caught a distorted glimpse of myself in the fallboard and forced my eyes away.
Oscar stared at the entryway. “Do you know what I thought, the first time I saw you? My very first impression? I thought you were a ghost.”
I let out a surprised laugh. “I knew it. I looked—”
“You looked beautiful. You looked otherworldly.” He turned to me. “And I keep seeing it. You try so hard to be what other people need you to be, but then there are these moments where you’re just . . . no bullshit. It’s like your body’s not there, and you’re pure emotion, whatever the emotion is. Embarrassment or sadness or . . .” He frowned as if heartbroken himself. “I think it’s why I can’t stay away from you.”
He stood, and I wanted to pull him back to me but stopped myself, my hands falling weakly into my lap.
Then I felt him walk behind me again. His body grazed my back and lowered—settling behind me on the bench. I slid forward to make room as his legs swung over, framing mine.
“I keep thinking about . . .” Oscar’s warm breath swept my neck, shooting shivers along my skin. “How much I’d like to see you like that, pure emotion—but happy. I . . .”
His arms crept forward, around me.
“I want to be the one to make you feel that.”
I waited for his fingers to move onto the keys, to compose something for me, the Happy Ruby Suite. But his hands landed on my knees, covering the green fabric of my dress and then slipping under, cool against my bare skin.
“Can I try, Ruby? I . . . I really want to try.”
“Okay,” I said, my own whisper shaking hot, as his fingers tingled up my thighs and higher. Then he kissed my neck and I couldn’t say anything at all.
Higher still. And even more under.
My nerves skittered and settled.
This is new. It should be scary. After all, my prior experience consisted of a few underwhelming kisses from a Wildwood boy or two. But the scariest thing right now was how relaxed I felt. It was like I was alone in my room thinking about Oscar. But better. And better.
I let my eyes fall shut, my mind quieting to a sweet hum as I leaned against him and let h
is mouth find mine—maybe not pure emotion, not completely, but closer with every touch.
20.
the sky was ferociously blue, a brisk breeze softening the sun’s blaze. It looked and smelled like France here.
“I feel like a bad influence.” I glanced behind us, seeing only a docent and an elderly woman meditating on a bench. “Encouraging truancy.”
“I told you, it’s a sick day.” Oscar spun. “Cough-cough.”
“I just hope you don’t get caught.”
“What, here? In the year of our Lord eight hundred and seventy-eight?” Oscar kneeled to read a placard poking out of the monastic herb garden: Pimpinella anisum.
I stepped back, scanning the low-arched pink colonnade, tiled rooftops, square stone tower, cheerful little fruit trees, remembering the last time I was at the Cloisters—Mom, Nora, a swirl of adults, starlit, bleary. Visitors were sparse today, so I could do what I used to do as a little kid—imagine something parallel, better.
Me and Oscar in a world apart.
The thought started to unravel in a dangerous direction. I remembered last night—how far we’d gone before pulling back with effort, our chaste good-night, returning to our separate rooms, neither of us sleeping at all. How he’d waited on the stoop this morning to tell me he was playing hooky today, there was no way he’d get anything productive done. And now, here we were, free to do . . . whatever we wanted.
Oscar was watching me. I reached for him. His hand slipped into mine so easily now, like we’d been meant to fit together all along.
“I love it here,” I said. “There are a handful of places in New York where you feel like you’re somewhere else completely.”
“Your courtyard,” Oscar said.
“Yeah, that’s one.”
“It sounds like you’re desperate to get out of the city.”
“Not exactly.” We glided through the walkways, footsteps echoing. “New York is magic. These places where the wall between worlds seems thin is part of it. It’s probably the same in Paris or London or . . . anywhere with actual history, but still. I like it here.”
“I do too.” I wasn’t sure whether Oscar meant New York or the Cloisters or right here with me, but the glint in his eye told me he meant it as a compliment. He nudged my shoulder. “New York’s got history.”
“I mean, yeah, for America—”
He motioned grandly. “The great Ruby Anna Chertok was born here.”
“Hmmm, a common fallacy. The correct answer is Charleston, South Carolina.”
He stopped mid-skip. “Wait, really?”
“Yeah, my grandparents live there—well, near there, on Wadmalaw Island. My mom was visiting and . . . whoops! Six weeks early. I spent the first four months of my life there. Mom stayed a while so her stepmom could help take care of me.” I felt a wave of sadness chased with guilt, missing Grandma Jean way more than Mom. “Win teases me about it. Calls me a Southern belle.”
“I’m a pseudo-Southerner too,” Oscar said. “No wonder I like you so much.”
He curled a finger around one of the belt loops of my shorts and gave a tug.
Would it be acceptable to make out in the middle of a model monastery?
“They have the unicorn tapestries here.” I motioned to the stairs with a smile. “If you want to see them.”
“I want to see them.” Oscar laced his fingers into mine.
As we walked up the stairs, a tourist with a tight red perm started down, her broad husband trudging behind her. Her eyes flew right to Oscar and me and widened. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then shut it.
I turned my head casually away. But then she veered to us—impact in three, two . . .
“I’m sorry, but I have to say it,” she launched in, staring daggers at Oscar—at our hands, locked together.
I held my breath. This couldn’t be happening. Not in New York.
“That getup is too! Much! It is so nice to see young people dressing up for the museum.”
Oscar grinned, stepping back to give her a better look at his suspenders. “I dress like this all the time!”
“Good for you,” she said, then patted him approvingly on the back and continued along her way, glancing back at my outfit in apparent disappointment.
“Jesus,” I muttered as we started to climb again. “I thought . . .”
“What?” Oscar eyed me.
“Nothing.” That tourist wasn’t racist, but now it felt like maybe I was. “You’re so charming all the time. With total strangers. It’s like you’re setting out to dazzle them.”
I’d said it to cut the tension, but Oscar’s frown deepened. “I am. I have to.”
We got to the top of the steps. I watched him, confused.
He sighed, turning our hands over to look at them together. “I need to give people a quick impression of who I am, what I’m about.”
Before I could ask why, the answer hit me like ice water—
Because he was a seventeen-year-old black man. In America.
I didn’t say anything, just squeezed his hand.
He squeezed back, silent a beat. Then: “I live in a, let’s say . . . affluent neighborhood. My parents get pulled over every other week, I get tailed taking our beagle for a walk, so . . . I have to short-circuit whatever people’s assumptions are going to be. It doesn’t even always work.”
“Don’t you ever run out of energy?”
“No.” He looked startled. “I can’t, it’s the only safe way to operate in spaces like this.” He nodded upward, but I knew he didn’t just mean the Cloisters. I thought about how his accent changed slightly when he spoke to my dad. Did he change it for me too?
I opened my mouth, not even sure what to say besides, “God, I’m sorry,” but his eyes had already darted to the side, distracted. His hand slipped gently from mine, holding on at the fingertips, his body propelled around the corner, as if under some spell. He was taking us the wrong way.
“Hey,” I started, but then I heard what had drawn his attention—singing. “Oh! There must be a concert.”
We followed the sound to the chapel, where five voices filled the eaves with rapturous music. There were no seats in here, a sprinkling of visitors standing frozen as museum displays while they listened. The singers wore casual clothes. We’d stumbled into a rehearsal.
Oscar stood behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I leaned against him, letting the sound cocoon us. I couldn’t see his face, but I sensed his eyes were closed. One note rose above the rest, plaintive, and we squeezed each other tighter at the sound.
As the singers finished, the chapel echoed with their final notes, then fell into the usual humdrum footsteps, coughs, conversation.
Oscar didn’t say a word until we’d walked back outside. Then he drew a lusty breath, like the air smelled cleaner now that he’d heard that.
* * *
• • •
“What’s this neighborhood?” he asked as we walked back to the subway.
“Washington Heights.”
“Should we explore?”
“If you want to. We’ve pretty much seen what there is to see here.”
“That was my first thought too.” Oscar was looking at a mother and two kids on the opposite corner. “But people live here.”
“Yeah. A lot of people. This being the city and all.” I pulled out my phone. “Why don’t I see what else there is around—?”
“No, it’s cool.” His eyes were troubled. “Another time.”
“There’s actually a lot,” I said, holding up the map on my phone. “Morris-Jumel Mansion? Apparently haunted?”
I glanced up but he was already walking into the subway tunnel, MetroCard ready. Before I ran down, I scanned the street, desperate to see what had caught his attention—the half-scrubbed club posters clinging to a brick wal
l, the smell of chicken on a spit, music trickling out a second-floor window, its bass notes shaking the panes . . .
The downtown A train was pulling up when we made it through the stiles. As we settled into our plastic seats and rumbled south, one of the vocal lines of the song from the Cloisters got stuck in my head. I hummed it to get it out.
“That voice of yours.” Oscar stretched his arm behind my neck. “You sing to yourself a lot.”
“It’s because I’m alone a lot. It’s annoying, isn’t it?”
“I love it.” His hand draped lazily over my shoulder.
I nestled in. “Mom used to tell me I had a singer’s musicality. But I think it was her way of discouraging me from playing the piano.”
“I don’t know, she might have a point. Did you pick out the tenor voice just from listening back there? Or can you remember all of them?”
“Um . . . no? I can’t pick out . . .” I leaned away, laughing. “I’ve heard that piece a million times.”
Oscar looked delightfully blank.
“It’s di Lasso. One of his polyphonic masses?”
“Do you have a recording at home?”
“I can’t believe it—finally something you don’t know!”
Oscar gave a tight shrug, smiling even bigger. “There’s a ton I don’t know.”
The train car stopped, letting people off and on. Oscar scooted closer to make room for a woman with a toddler in a stroller. I glanced down to see his foot tapping a frenetic beat against the floor.
I touched his leg and it stopped. My hand stayed there, on his thigh, and I watched, gratified, as the tension in his eyes softened into something warmer.
He was anxious. Trying to hide it.
“Are you thinking about your piece?”
“I should be.” Oscar laughed. “No, I’m thinking about how I’m seventeen and I’ve got old men calling me ‘maestro.’ It’s . . . a trip.”
“You know how many people would kill to be called ‘maestro’?” I shot him a playful glare. “Old men. Women, any age. And people in their thirties, forties . . .”
Night Music Page 16
