by Ted Michael
“No. I appreciate it, but you’re already doing so much.”
I can tell she means it, but there’s something else too. And I think I know what it is. “I get it. You don’t want to sing this one in front of all your friends. And you really don’t want to lose this contest. But you’re afraid of annoying Bethany, and auditions for Eastman are coming up soon and you don’t want her to give you a bad reference and—”
“Whoa.” She’s almost laughing, but not in a nasty way. “Anything positive you can share?”
“Well, your top range is . . . extraordinary.”
The words come easily, teased out by her openness. But once I’ve said them, we’re silent again. It’s the right word, but I don’t know how she’ll react. Resonant is a musical term. Even clear and warm and rich are terms we can throw about meaningfully, but not extraordinary. It sounds reverential. I’m afraid I’ve just revealed as much about me as I have her voice.
“You need a song to showcase that range,” I tell her, trying to salvage the situation.
“Right. One with lots of sustained high notes so I can really open up. And maybe a pianissimo top A, just to show off.”
“Exactly. You want to win, right? You want people to be floored.”
Belatedly, it occurs to me that maybe she wasn’t being serious—doesn’t believe such a song can possibly exist. She’s wrong about that. Anything is possible in music.
Even though she’s dubious, the corner of her mouth twists upward. I’ve found her weakness, this needs to be the best. “I don’t know about winning,” she says. “I just want to beat Kendra Nielson.”
I’ve noticed Kendra onstage too—petite blonde with an incongruous powerful mezzo voice—but I don’t mention that. “Your nemesis?”
“Moriarty to my Holmes.” She steps around the piano and stands beside me. Runs a finger soundlessly across the highest keys. “So I suppose you know a piece like that, do you? A song so perfect that it might as well have been written for me? One that even my teacher doesn’t know about?” There’s a teasing challenge in her voice, like she wants to believe it. Wants to be impressed by me.
“Yeah, I do,” I tell her. And even though it’s a white lie, I know that with enough time, I’ll make it true.
. . . . .
I peer through the large glass panel in her front door and watch Tamia skip toward me. Literally skip. She kicks something to the side—it looks like a giant sausage—which gives me time to admire today’s ensemble: denim skirt over black tights, a fluffy cream sweater topped off with a red scarf. Very festive. Very Christmas-y.
That’s what happens when we get snow in November.
She opens the door and practically drags me inside. Closes it quickly and shoves the sausage-thing in place. “Keeps the draft out,” she explains. “House is almost a hundred years old, you know?”
“It’s a problem.”
“Sure is.”
I take off my jacket and gloves, and she drapes them over a radiator. “So,” she says, “I got the music you sent. Now I can’t decide whether to thank you or apologize.”
“Why apologize?”
She shrugs. “I meant it when I said I like Schubert, but I never really believed there’d be a song that’s so perfect for me. It must’ve taken you hours to find.”
It did take hours actually, but I don’t want to talk about that.
“That pianissimo top A near the end. . . just sublime.”
My cheeks flush. I never imagined she’d be so impressed. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I can’t believe Bethany hasn’t given it to me before.”
I’m not used to gushy, and I don’t think I can get any redder. “Schubert wrote about six hundred songs, right? It’s a lot to get through.”
“Well, thanks for finding the one-in-six-hundred song, then.”
“It was my pleasure.”
She opens her eyes comically wide. “Your pleasure, huh? Well, then, I match your pleasure with my undying gratitude.” She gives what I think is a curtsy. “Living room’s this way.”
She leads me along a narrow hall that splits the one-story house in half. The kitchen is ahead—someone’s cooking—and there are closed doors to either side. I wonder which of them is her bedroom.
“That one,” she says, catching me looking.
A woman—her mother, I presume—appears in the kitchen doorway. She’s shorter than Tamia, but the resemblance is uncanny. “You must be Cooper.”
“Hi.” I go to shake hands, but she’s holding a spatula and bowl. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. Tamia’s been telling me all about you.”
“She has?”
Tamia’s mother looks amused. “Yes, Cooper,” she says slowly. “She has.”
Tamia grabs my sleeve and pulls me into the living room. Three boys are fighting over the controls for a video game, but she strides over and turns it off. “Rehearsal time,” she tells them. “So sorry.”
They take the disappointment well—at least until they’re out of the room. Then the sound of fighting echoes along the corridor.
I give her a sympathetic look. “Must be pretty tough to have three brothers, huh?”
“Not really. Means I get my own room.”
Tamia closes the door and shepherds me over to the piano. It’s an old Baldwin, probably a family heirloom. The wooden legs are chipped where the boys have banged toys against them. The ivory keys are worn and discolored. I know without pressing a key that it’ll be out of tune.
“My grandfather’s,” she says, watching me. “He used to accompany us.”
“Us?”
“Mom and Dad and me. We used to sing hymns, chorales, folk songs, that sort of thing. I’d sing soprano, Mom on alto, Dad on bass. Grandpa would fill in the tenor and play the accompaniment.” There’s a hint of sadness in her voice.
“Not anymore, though, huh?”
“No. He died, and my brothers aren’t big on music.” She brightens again. “It’s okay, really. Dad always sang flat, anyway.”
I sit down and play an arpeggio, right hand only, just to get a feel for it.
It sounds amazing.
Tamia watches my reaction. “I got it freshly tuned for you—took most of my babysitting money. I know what you snobby pianists are like.”
I try to hide a smile. “What are we like?”
“Oh, you know. Always moaning about having to play on other people’s instruments.”
“Unlike singers, who are always complaining that they’ve got a cold, or a sore throat, or stomach flu, or—”
“Cold hands. Which is why pianists can’t play as well as they usually do. Can barely play a note until they’ve warmed their little fingers on a hot cup—”
“Of herbal tea that they use to restore the natural balance of their vocal cords.”
Tamia snorts. “Exactly. Glad we straightened that out.” She pulls off her scarf and tosses it on the sofa beside us.
“Bare neck. Living dangerously, I see.”
“You have no idea.” She opens up her score with a flourish and nods at the music stand on the piano. My score is already open there. “So, Morgen by Franz Schubert. Let’s do this, Cooper.”
With a deep breath, I begin to play. The piano accompaniment is far more difficult than the other song, but after practicing all afternoon, I’ve got it down cold. Cascading arpeggios fly beneath my fingers, a musical representation of the sun’s rays in the poem. When Tamia enters a fraction late, I hope it’s because she’s pleasantly surprised.
“Und morgen wird die Sonne wieder scheinen,” she sings, her voice as high and pure as sunlight. Every word is clear; her German, impeccable. It’s how I dreamed the song would sound. Even Schubert would have to be impressed.
Toward the end of the song, as the poem’s lovers gaze into each other’s eyes, she really opens up. She lets her voice soar, hangs on to notes that other sopranos would only grasp at. She sings with vibrato, but only a little. She’s
not reaching for these ethereal tones; she’s landing on them. This is Tamia at her finest, and it’s all I can do to keep playing.
The last line of the poem speaks of the happiness of silence. Tamia revels in it. Like a flickering flame being extinguished, she smothers the music until nothing remains but the husks of each word: softened consonants and muted vowels.
And then she is silent.
I keep playing for a few more measures, slower and quieter all the way to the final chord. It’s so small and faint that I wonder if the judges at the contest will be able to hear it. I keep my fingers depressed for a few seconds and lift them at the same moment that I release the sustain pedal. There’s not a sound in the house.
I look up at Tamia. She holds the score to her chest. “I love Schubert.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “Mom always wants me to sing Baroque music: Bach, Handel, that sort of thing. Dad likes Puccini.”
“So you split the difference.”
She mulls it over. “No. I just saw an opportunity to piss them both off.”
“Language, Tamia!” Six quick footsteps and her mother pokes her head around the doorway. “I heard that.”
Tamia does a convincing impression of someone who is embarrassed. Once her mother leaves, we try not to laugh out loud.
“So do you like Schubert?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Course you do. You looked through six hundred songs, right?”
Not exactly, but I’m pleased that she thinks I did. “I like that whole early nineteenth-century period. Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn. I love the chromaticism, the seriousness of it, the way they wear their hearts on their sleeves, you know?”
“Yeah. I know.”
She’s staring at me again, and though she’s smiling, I know she’s smiling with me, not at me. It means so much, that look. It means that she understands, and we can share this. It means that for the first time in years, someone who isn’t an adult truly gets me.
“So, comments? Criticisms?” I ask.
Tamia opens up her music again. She shakes her head. “I feel like we were meant to perform this song.”
“Me too.”
“So let’s just keep going. It’s Saturday, and I don’t need to be anywhere. Besides, it’s a love song—it’ll get better every time.”
I turn away so that she won’t see me turn red. For the next hour, I play again, and she sings again, and our world is music. It’s exactly where I want to be.
It’s dark when we finish. Tamia walks me to the door and watches me pull on my jacket and gloves.
“So I have to ask,” she says. “Why Rice?”
“What?”
“Rice University. That’s where you want to go, right?”
I’m having trouble keeping up. “How do you know about that?”
“I asked around about you. Now stop changing the subject.”
“Okay.” I try to remember my list. There’s actually a real list on the wall beside my desk. “Good music department. Good academics—”
“Hot and humid.”
“I can stand the heat.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “That was a very suave line, Cooper. Nicely done.”
“Thanks. So why Eastman?”
She plays along, even though she knows that payback is coming. “Excellent performance program. Great faculty—”
“Cold and gray.”
“I can be icy too. Haven’t you noticed?”
She steps toward me, narrows her eyes, and arches one brow. She’s wearing eyeliner too, which she wasn’t last time we met. I need another suave reply—something confident and flirty. Only, dueling with words is harder now that she’s so close. “Actually, no. I don’t see that at all.”
We stand at her door. She’s looking right at me, and though I want to look back, something stops me.
“Where’s your car?” she asks, wiping condensation off the glass.
“I walked.”
“Walked?” She makes the word sound foreign. “It’s snowing. I’ll give you a ride.”
She pulls on a bright red hat with tassels, and gloves to match. Everything I own is black, so we’re a study in contrasts. “Be back soon, Mom,” she shouts.
We walk side by side down her path, footfalls crunching on fresh snow, nothing but amber streetlights and the hush of winter. She unlocks the passenger door and I climb in. She hurries around and joins me. The wiper blades cast off the fresh coating of snow.
“Heater takes a long time to get warm,” she warns me.
We pull out onto the empty street, and I give her directions. She sits way forward, almost hugs the steering wheel. “Seriously, though. Why Rice? I figured you’d want somewhere with a better performing program.”
“No. I like the piano, but I don’t just want to play. I need to compose as well. Composing is like, I don’t know, writing poetry without words, or something. One note can change a piece, and it’s up to me to choose the note. To have that control, you know?”
When she nods slowly, I’m tempted to tell her more—the kind of things I’ve never told anyone. How I hear it all playing in my head, and there are times I can’t get it onto the paper fast enough. How no one tries to decode my music the way they do poetry. No one draws conclusions about me and laughs at what they find. No one really thinks about my music at all, but that’s okay. Being left alone isn’t the worst thing in the world.
That’s what I used to believe, anyway. But Tamia is still listening, and I like that she cares.
“I’ve been auditing this music theory class at St. Louis University,” I continue, “and it’s like I’m peeling back the layers of what music is. How it works.”
She mulls this over. “I can tell you how music works, Cooper. You play the piano. Beside you, a girl swoons. It’s really pretty simple.”
I don’t think we’re flirting anymore. Tamia likes me, really likes me, and I don’t know what to do. There’s no musical score for this piece.
“Depends what I play though, right?” I say. “If I play Bach, your mom gets teary-eyed. If I play Puccini, your dad runs downstairs and gives me an awkward man-hug.” Tamia chuckles, but it feels polite instead of genuine. “What I want to know is: What makes Bach, Bach? Or Puccini, Puccini? You get what I’m saying?”
“Yeah. I get it.” But her tone tells me she doesn’t really get it at all.
She asks for my address, but I continue to give her directions. She doesn’t see through it, either. Doesn’t decode the awkwardness until we’re outside my house with the engine idling.
She peers wide-eyed between the wiper blades. “That’s a big house,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“Really big.” She tilts her head and peers at me from the corner of her eye. “Not that big is bad. It’s just . . . big.”
I need to say something, but I’m not sure what.
“You must have a whole bunch of siblings to fill that place.”
When I look at it now, I see it through her eyes: austere and unwelcoming. “Actually, I’m an only child. My parents aren’t even Catholic; they just like schools to be disciplined.”
Her eyes flit between the house and me like she’s seeing us both for the first time. “Well, like I say . . . big is just big. It’s like, you know Kendra Nielson?”
“Yeah,” I say a little too quickly.
She rolls her eyes. “Of course you do. Well, she has a great voice and small boobs. Whereas I have a great voice and big boobs. One isn’t better than the other. They’re just different. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“I . . .” I’m at a loss for words, to be honest. But that won’t cut it. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“What? My boobs or hers?”
Reflexively, I check out her chest. She isn’t lying, but I already knew that. “Um, either. I mean, neither.”
“That’s too bad.” She bites her lip as if she’s shy, but I’m not fooled—from the way her eyes sparkle, I know she’s enjoying this.
“I did it again,” she says. “Filled the silence, I mean. I only do it because I’m nervous.”
“About the talent contest.”
She shakes her head once. “No, Cooper. Not about the talent contest.”
“Oh.” I make the word sound small and unimportant, when in reality it should’ve lasted several seconds. This is a moment, bigger even than a performance at a contest. Trouble is, I’ve got stage fright.
Seconds tick by and the heater hums. I need to say something, do something, but the air feels charged. Every moment, every action is vital, and it’s a kind of pressure I’m not used to. By the time I remember to breathe again, she’s not looking at me anymore.
“Well, I should let you get back,” I say.
She stares out the windshield. “Yeah. I guess.”
I pull on the door lever, but it doesn’t open. Tamia leans across me and her hair brushes against my face. I smell her shampoo. She gives the lever a sharp pull, and the door pops open. Then she turns to me and kisses me on the cheek—just once, quickly, as if I might disappear.
I step out into a few inches of snow, but I don’t feel the cold. I rest my arm on the doorframe and marvel at the beauty of the world. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Sure. Hey, did you really walk to my house tonight, Cooper?”
I’m surprised by the question. “Yeah. Why?”
“It’s almost three miles.”
“I noticed.”
She responds with a close-mouthed smile, as if the thought intrigues her. “I’m glad you did.”
As I close the door, I think to myself: so am I.
. . . . .
Thirteen identical chairs are arranged in a circle. No one sits.
Half a dozen singers walk the perimeter of the small room, nervously adjusting their outfits, warming up their voices with lip trills and scales.
I’m not sure what to do. They can warm up their voices all they like, but the piano is next door and I’m fairly sure I won’t be getting any more practice time on it this evening. I wiggle my fingers, but it feels pointless. Embarrassing too, especially when Tamia watches me, a laugh threatening to erupt at any moment.
