by Ireland Ann
Lucy is the first to jump to her feet, applauding furiously, cheeks high with colour. “Brava!” she cries, greeting the next generation with fervour. Tears stream down her face, and she doesn’t bother to wipe them away.
Armand seizes Trace’s wrist as she passes, and for a moment she can’t tear loose. His grip leaves bite marks in her skin.
Skip up the stairs to the stage where Manuel presses a clammy arm around her shoulders and guides her to the microphone, and she is facing an audience again. Her whole body quivers, legs bending like grass in the wind. “Speech!” someone yells from the back of the hall — must be Armand. What can she say? Not the usual crap about being surprised and shocked and undeserving, because the truth is, the moment her final chord died in the upper reaches of the auditorium, she knew she’d nailed the performance of her life.
A stranger marches to centre stage from the wings, young guy dressed in a collarless jacket, hair shellacked.
“Last year’s winner, flown in from Rochester, New York — Terence Church — will present the award,” announces Manuel, stepping aside.
The applause jacks up another notch.
This Terrence person drops a check for twenty grand in Trace’s moist, open hand, then he gives her something else, a note that unpuckers in her palm. Neat handwriting advises: “Don’t spend the money on real estate. I got shafted due to sub-prime rates, and now I’m homeless.”
“Trace, stand here, will you?” someone cries, pushing her to the centre of the huddled group.
She stands, pocketing the strange message, and stares into the shooting stars, a hundred cameras zapping, and feels practically epileptic. Her folks will be at Billy’s house down the road. He’s got Internet. They’ll be sitting around his kitchen table drinking elderberry wine, her dad in his flannel shirt, her mum in overalls. She waves to them, to everyone.
“Isn’t she fabulous?” someone asks.
Lucy agrees, of course. The girl is being swarmed in the lobby. Cameras are raised high for optimal views while Trace stands almost still in the middle of the fuss, except for one hand running over her velvety skull. The young men bunched in the corner are semifinalists, girding themselves to congratulate this teenager who blew them away.
“Must be her mother.” A man grabs the sleeve of a friend, and they pull back, making room for Lucy who is pressing through the crowd, a wide and slightly chaotic smile on her face. When she reaches the girl, she leans over to brush her lips against the smooth forehead. At the same moment Trace reaches to seize Lucy’s wrist, holding on for dear life.
That’s when Lucy allows herself to imagine what it would be like to hear her own name called, to be the one to trot onstage, skirt swishing. She feels the stairs cant under her feet, the sudden lash of light as she reaches centre stage. The scene erupts in her mind: how the twins pick up the phone and yell, “Yeah, Mum!” Then Mark’s voice enters: “When will we see you?” Judges pump her hand, and a rigorous schedule of recitals is being discussed.
Trace lets go, washed into the sea of well-wishers, her small head bobbing like a cork.
Give me just another minute, Lucy pleads, but it’s too late, for reality sneaks in and with it a distinct sensation of relief.
Or this is what she tells herself.
Toby stands in the corridor, arms splayed against the wall, lower vertebrae pressed against concrete. It’s always the back and shoulders that cramp after performance.
So the girl from the western island wins. She’s younger than he was in Paris, but she held it together. Something he didn’t manage to do, not then, not now.
In both cases he played who he was at that moment. It was messy, but you could also say it was true.
Volunteers hustle down the corridor for final cleanup, looking frazzled this late in the day. They offer twitchy smiles, as if Toby might suddenly bark at them or start singing hymns — but one thing he is not is crazy. Dropping his arms, he leaves from the rear door of the hall, pushing past a group of students lounging on the steps, wreathed in cigarette smoke. They fall silent as he passes. He’s someone to watch, all right.
That could only be one man perched on the ledge next to the tree, spine erect, as if to slouch were to court death. Jasper balances a cardboard tray on his lap while lifting a gravy-smeared fry to his mouth. Jasper — who thrice-washes spinach leaves, slices minute amounts of fat off his pork chop, and winces if he spots Toby downing a Smartie — is devouring an order of the deadly poutine.
Glancing up, Jasper says in a measured voice, “We need to talk.” He shifts to make room on the ledge.
“Later,” Toby answers skittishly. He gets the feeling that if he sits down next to Jasper he’ll never leave.
The instrument is right where Toby left it by the window in the green room, his name printed on a tag, a volunteer standing guard outside. The room is neutral now, nerveless. He plucks the guitar out of its case, tunes, then jumps right into the piece that fell apart onstage. Here comes the section where focus temporarily vanished and the Ramona story muscled in. He feels the tightness in his gut return. Klaus with a girlfriend all these years? Beyond impossible. And why did Jasper choose such a moment to spill the news, right before he needed to walk out onstage? Hands falter for a bar or two, but his mind clamps down. There will always be life going on at the margins. You must incorporate the jet buzzing overhead or your lover’s intent at sabotage. Music is not an orchid under glass.
He finishes playing, wipes his palms on his pants, and looks up, alert to a rustle at the doorway.
“Brilliant, my friend,” says Jon Smyth, poking his head in. “I was going past and heard you. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” says Toby. He feels calm now, like a man who’s just loaded up on carbohydrates.
“Come visit us in Texas. We’ll get you a concert and a class to teach.”
Toby rises to his feet. “I’d like that.”
“Put on your dancing shoes. Manuel’s booked some Brazilian band for the after-party. Lots of girls decked out in feathers.” Jon offers a salute before disappearing.
Outside the building, Jasper has pitched his tray of chips and is checking his phone for messages. Toby stops a short distance away and stands, watching. Jasper’s closely trimmed hair is showing grey, and his skin glows as if buffed by a chamois. How seldom does Toby stare like this. It’s always the other way around, Jasper watching Toby.
He steps into Jasper’s field of vision, and the man glances up and starts talking. “You played reasonably well, not that I’m an expert. Here and there some stumbling, but —”
“There’s a party,” Toby interrupts, and Jasper tips his head back, a frown settling on his face. “Brazilian music,” Toby continues. “Lots of dancing and carrying on.”
“You know I can’t bear noisy nightclubs. And as I’ve said, we need to talk.” Jasper pats the space beside him.
“Later,” Toby promises for the second time, hiking the strap of his guitar case over one shoulder.
Jasper starts to rise, then stops, nodding vigorously, as if it were his idea to put off the conversation.
“Sure you don’t want to tag along?” Toby asks.
“Quite sure.”
The two men hover, not quite ready to part.
Toby notes something strange in Jasper’s expression — not love or fear, and not the familiar furrow of concern. This is something remote and cold.
The unsettling moment is interrupted by peals of laughter, and Toby looks up to see Lucy grip the winner’s hand as the pair dashes toward a waiting taxi where Portia waits.
“I should go,” Toby says, nodding at the women. Now Jasper will say, “Come home with me.”
But Jasper says nothing, so Toby trots toward the cab, guitar case tucked to his side. He feels his lover’s gaze drill into his back; who will he be without this fretful stare?
A buffet table, picked over by the ravenous musicians, is set near a raised podium where the singer and band make a deafening r
acket. The over-amped bass guitar pulses to the edges of the make-do club that’s taken over a floor of a warehouse in St. Henri. Scattered helium balloons bob near the ceiling. Is that a fog machine belching smoke? The singer sports purple ostrich feathers fluting above her bustier as she leads the band in samba beats. Spotting the newcomers, she beckons them in with a baton that rains confetti.
Someone is shouting: Armand, shirt untucked, leaps around the middle of the crowded dance floor, his face a grimace of joy or maybe pain. Who are all these people? Students and federation members and half of the concert audience jam the club, mixed with others who look as if they wandered in from another party.
Toby hates crowds, doesn’t he? Yet after a short hesitation, he presses through the mash of dancers, led by Portia, who pressed next to him in the taxi and now keeps a vise grip on his forearm while shouting something about a virtual conservatory. “We will enter each other’s studios with the click of a mouse!” she informs his assaulted ear. Finally, she lets go and launches into solo dervish spinning, both arms extended over her head, chin tilted high. She starts slowly, then works up speed, a long chiffon scarf fluttering in her wake.
Jasper would hate this din, would insist that “deafness lurks,” not understanding that ears need to be tested, to be crammed with noise after days of delicate guitar plucking. And what was that expression cast into his face a moment ago? Something new, something frozen and unforgiving.
Toby unbuttons his collar and finds the beat in his hips and shoulders, while Trace climbs onstage and fits a tan-tan drum between her knees. Manuel Juerta hangs nearby, arms folded, looking pleased with himself. When the singer tosses a fistful of candies into the crowd, everyone lunges. That’s Hiro in his muscle shirt, reaching for a chocolate kiss. Javier, minus his jacket, shimmies across the floor, eyes shut in some sort of trance. That must be Lucy sidling up to the stage, wearing her baseball cap with visor spun to the side.
Portia glides past, scarf unfurling, and as it trails across Toby’s face it clings like film, and for a moment he can’t see or breathe. Pawing clear, he rips into a dance, fists pumping.
It’s as if they’ve all been released from prison.
Copyright © Ann Ireland, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Michael Carroll
Design: Jesse Hooper
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ireland, Ann
The blue guitar [electronic resource] / Ann Ireland.
Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-4597-0588-3
I. Title.
PS8567.R43B58 2013 C813’.54 C2012-903864-4
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
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ALSO BY ANN IRELAND
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When Japanese pianist Mr. Takahashi moves into sisters Jean and Collette’s Toronto neighbourhood, he sends their adolescent lives into a tailspin. Their enchantment with the larger-than-life Takahashi lingers on into the sister’s adulthood. This mutual infatuation creates a mounting tension between the sisters that culminates at an extravagant family party. Originally published in 1985, A Certain Mr. Takahashi won the coveted Seal Book Award and was shortlisted for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award.
Exile
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Latin American writer Carlos Romero Estevez is rescued from a cruel military dictatorship by a benevolent group devoted to aiding oppressed writers. Carlos believes that his new life in Vancouver offers the promise of freedom and the companionship of powerful friends. All is not as it seems, though, and gradually Carlos realizes that his new life in exile is, in fact, another type of prison. Exile was shortlisted for both the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
Visit us at: Dundurn.com
Definingcanada.ca
@dundurnpress
Facebook.com/dundurnpress
