One more time. A fresh dime slid in.
“Yes.”
His voice had the same intonation but just a bit of impatience now. I could hear him defiantly spit a fleck of tobacco from his tongue. That did it.
“Steve. It’s me. I’m downstairs.”
I waited about fifteen seconds and heard him drag on the Camel and then blow it out slowly, through pursed lips.
“Come up, Woo-Woo. Fourth floor.”
It was that easy, his endearment for me: Woo-Woo. Sprinting across the street toward the building, I saw a fourth-floor light go on. The elevator opened to the loft space, and there stood my old Don Giovanni. A bit older, a lot grayer, and smiling a smile I never wanted to end: all for me. The villain glass eater took the skinny oboe player into his arms, and he smelled so damned normal, like a freshly washed Undy. Not a hint of licorice on him.
I took him in and was sweetly encouraged by his surroundings. The loft appeared surprisingly neat and tidy, with a decently furnished living area, a spare but functional kitchen along one wall, and a sleeping area at the back of the building. Warhols littered the walls, and I remembered he knew Andy. One Miró, surely from the family town house. A Klee propped in a corner. I had been prepared to see empty liquor bottles and a space overflowing with trash cans, a typical habitat for the drunkard I’d left a few years before.
While our arms were still entwined around each other, a small cat crept up and jumped onto Steve’s shoulders and nestled down like a mink collar at the back of his head.
“Woo-Woo, meet Mousetrap.”
Steve was purely, sweetly, and wholly domesticated. Freshly washed clothes, a decent home, sweet cigarette breath, and even a pet! Within the first ten minutes I recalibrated my lists and concluded that this could finally work. Wagner’s murky half-diminished chords turned into the hopeful chord progression of the Munchkins’ song:
You’re out of the woods.
You’re out of the dark.
You’re out of the night.
Step into the sun.
Step into the light…
We hugged and talked softly for a while as the shock of seeing each other began to wear off. We knew to dodge all the difficult stuff. Mousetrap stayed perched on his owner’s neck, occasionally digging his claws in to keep balance as Steve shifted his weight. They had a nice symbiosis going. Mousetrap observed us both with soft cat eyes. And I kept my childlike hands over my eyes, making sure to see no evil.
We were hungry, and it was time to go out for a bite to eat. My insides seized. The ancient worries about his drinking roared back, with memories of trying to drag him out of bars before he got too badly off. As we walked toward the door, Mousetrap remained on his throne, behind Steve’s head.
“Aren’t you going to let him down?”
“Nope. Mousetrap goes with me everywhere.”
“But won’t he run away without a leash? He doesn’t even have a collar.”
“All I can say is his devotion to me is total and complete. Don’t worry, Woo-Woo. Don’t worry so much.”
He winked at me as the three of us took the elevator down.
Once on the street, people passed by, smiling at our odd trio.
“Hi, Steve. Hi, Mousetrap.”
The neighborhood was tight-knit. Who wouldn’t know the guy with a cat wrapped around his neck? Mousetrap stayed glued to his collar all evening as we caught up, eating pasta and sipping club sodas. Ouzo didn’t make an appearance. Not even a beer for a curtain call.
Steve was solidly impotent. All his years of hard-driven drinking and a three-pack-a-day cigarette habit had worked against his vascular system. His penis hung there, valiantly trying but ultimately shriveled, and we ended that first evening drifting off to sleep in a spoon position with Mousetrap above our heads on the pillow like a crown.
What a bonus: a penisless man for a boyfriend. A eunuch. I could take whatever he dished out (and I was still holding my breath), but I’d been released from doing hard time: sex. The pounding inevitability of what men wanted from me, beginning with my father, evaporated. After a few silly, frustrating, and laughable attempts, we let it go and just left it unspoken. Steve was my newly neutered Don G.
A tightly compartmentalized relationship quickly fell into place. We saw each other a few times a week in his area of town, with Mousetrap in tow. I was in the master’s program, still supporting myself as a waitress and keeping a steely vise grip on my progress with the oboe; he was back to blowing glass in earnest. Our puzzle pieces seemed to fit.
Steve knew my drive to make art and had always given me a wide berth around music. Each of us worked hard in tandem during the day, and at night we became soft Grandma and Grandpa, devoted to their cat. We were quite a sight in Tribeca.
Occasionally on the weekends, I traveled out to his studio in Queens, not so far from the old Q100 bus, and watched while he blew. Metals mixed with glass, and the heat worked its wonderful alchemical magic of turning solid to liquid and then back to solid. The process of blowing was like ballet: Steve held the wand in the furnace, then pulled it out, turned it over, then into the glory hole, reshaping it all as the heating and cooling allowed the glass to reveal its own slithery intention. He couldn’t stop until it was finished and he was satisfied with the shape and how all the metallic elements were settling inside the piece. The form then sat in the annealer for a day. The following day, he would examine his work and smash the rejects.
“Go ahead. Throw it in the barrel.”
I was about to destroy works of art, with his blessing.
“Really? Are you sure? What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, I’m not happy with how the two metals merged in these pieces.…I have to figure out a way to keep them separate inside the piece so that they don’t combine into a new color. My timing was off. It’s all about heat and control once I insert the metals into the glass.”
“But are you sure?”
“Just think of it as a bad reed. And don’t worry, Woo-Woo. Don’t worry so much.”
“Okay, if you say so! Here goes!”
Smash! Into the barrel went a dozen pieces from the day before. Those that were spared were placed on a long, carefully lit shelf to be evaluated over a period of days and weeks. Then the final selection went out for sale or exhibition. Very few made that cut. It was similar to reed making: you had to be willing to destroy with no sentiment and start over.
Don’t worry, Woo-Woo. Emasculating a man with a gun-penis complex by smashing his artwork, even with his benign encouragement. Who did I think I was? Woo-Woo. You worry too much.
I walked into the loft one late afternoon, wary because I had not heard from him for a few days. Steve didn’t have an answering machine, but I knew when he usually hit the loft after spending a day at the studio.
It was quiet. Mousetrap trotted toward me, slinking in between and around my legs as I approached the kitchen. His food and water bowls were empty, so I refilled them, and he settled in to his meal. I heard movement, Steve in the back of the loft behind the screen that separated the living space from the bed area. I could see his silhouette as he rose from the bed and began to languidly pace.
“Woo-Woo. C’mere.”
“Steve, what’s happening? Mousetrap was starving.”
“Forget Mousetrap. He’s fine. Just c’mere.”
I turned into the bed area. Red-faced, drunk, smelling of licorice, he stood before me, using his hand to get steady at the brick wall by the head of the bed. Three guns lay neatly in a row on the bed.
“Steve, what the hell?”
Without a word, he roared forward with his arms extended ramrod straight, both hands formed into fists. He punched me hard in the chest with the full weight of his two hundred pounds. I skidded on the wood floor in a backwards, upside-down crab position. Scrambling to right myself, I crawled into a corner of the room and instinctively put my feet up.
“Steve, please. Don’t.”
“Please what? Don’t what?�
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“Please. Just leave me alone.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I just can’t.”
Mousetrap began crying in another area of the loft.
Don G. loomed over me, hands balled up. He was drunk and steady, breathing in and out through his nose, his lips curled around his teeth and sucked into his mouth, as he looked at me with a calm hatred that was inexplicable, because I knew I didn’t deserve it. I’d never seen this particular combination of facial expressions before, and I was momentarily confused more than anything. Maybe this is what the woman of the “hurt” had seen in his eyes. With my legs still in the air, ready for his next attack, I negotiated with him to let me go.
“Steve, I just want to leave.”
“You can’t.”
“But why?”
“You just can’t.”
“What did I do?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. Just tell me, and I’ll fix it.”
“You can’t fix it.”
“Then let me leave, and we can talk about it tomorrow.”
“You can’t leave.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to get it. There’s nothing to get.”
“But—”
“Woo-Woo? Shut the fuck up.”
He came at me with both fists at the end of his arms, again double-barreled. I thrust my feet into his body, throwing him back onto the bed. Guns skittered off and rattled to the floor. He quickly reached for one of them.
Instantly I realized he wasn’t that drunk; his stretch for the gun was much too swift for a truly drunk man. Scrambling to my feet, I raced for the door, taking the stairs down the four flights to the street.
I slammed myself into the same corner phone booth I’d used four months before. Panting and feeling sick to my stomach, I sank to the filthy floor, my legs instinctively bracing against the louvered door. My chest, my sternum, began to ache so badly I thought I might be having a heart attack.
After a few more minutes, I got my breathing under control and looked down at the source of the ache. He’d hit me hard with a double-fisted sucker punch right above the breasts. A quarter-size circle of blood oozed through my blouse just over my right breast and was spreading fast. Curious, I looked down, under my shirt. There, in my skin, was the imprint of a penguin; I had been impaled by its beak.
Steve collected penguins in all forms: glass penguins, of course; ceramic penguins; wooden penguins. While he was in Rikers, I’d hired a metalsmith to make a ring with a small solid-silver penguin mounted on the band and presented it to him the day he was released. He wore this ring on his left ring finger. My gift had been turned on me.
Over the next hour, I sat as if in a passive vigil—unable to move, watching the building. Only one person approached the booth to make a call. He tried to open the door unsuccessfully, as my legs stiffened against his attempts. Eventually he looked down at the floor of the booth, only to see a girl looking back up, bleeding from her heart, motionless. Our eyes met. He blinked and walked away.
Night fell; the booth began to fog up from my breath. For the first time in a very long time, I could not summon up music. I was bone dry.
In the weeks that followed, the wound became infected and simply wouldn’t heal. The stab had been deep, gouging into my flesh. Some form of dangerous bacteria must have been living on the beak tip, and it was as if he wanted me to never forget him and what he could do. He got his wish. That inner wound. My wound. Nothing ever seemed to heal.
Danny
A master’s degree nearly in hand, you’ve practiced like crazy, for hours and hours, making hundreds and hundreds of reeds. People seem to be impressed with your playing, resulting in some well-paying New York City freelance jobs. You gradually rebalance the way you make your living: less waitressing and more concerts. The complete turnaround does not take long.
There’s a brilliant player in town named Danny, whom you approach for lessons. He’s several years older and plays in some very established groups. You love his musicianship, which impresses you as brave and impeccable. He agrees to teach you. You go in for the first lesson with the Strauss Oboe Concerto. You play the first page. He works on it with you and gives you some suggestions. A month later you go back for the next lesson and continue with the Strauss concerto. At the end of the lesson, he asks you if you have ever worked on the Gillet Études. You admit you have not. The Gillet Études focus on one aspect of technical difficulty per étude. One may deal with trills. One will address arpeggios. One will cover all the major and minor scales. Danny recommends that you buy the set and bring in Étude number 1 for the next lesson. You purchase the Gillet Études, and you discover that the first étude is extremely difficult. You can’t play it at all.
But you practice very hard and go in for the next lesson. After you fumble around on it, he reaches over, grabs your oboe, and plays through the étude, on your oboe and your reed, without stopping. Perfectly. He hands your oboe back and says, “Okay, let’s go. Start with the first line.” You begin to play and then start to cry. “C’mon,” he says. “I know the good stuff comes after the tears. I know women. Let’s go. Again.”
You play and cry. He makes you continue, even though you’re blubbering through the reed and the music. You want to run out of his apartment. You feel like a fraud. Who cares about your stupid sound? So what if it’s beautiful? You can’t play the fucking oboe.
Over the next year and a half you study the first twelve études of Gillet with Danny. You fall in love with him and then out of love with him. He never knows about the love part. After a year and a half, you can play Gillet number 1 through number 12 perfectly. Now, Danny says, you can call yourself an oboist. You start over on the Strauss concerto.
Burt
MY MUSIC CAREER had kicked up dust nicely, and I enjoyed an added glow to my work as I began to receive invitations to play high-profile concerts with well-known musicians. Dancing between these disparate venues—being a freelance orchestral player one week and a soloist out in front of an orchestra the next—was a commonplace juggling act for me, much like shifting gears when playing Bach and Stravinsky on the same program.
Racing out the door one day, I grabbed the phone as it rang. Somewhat harried after packing up quickly, I was late, and I hated to be late for any rehearsal.
“Is Marcia there?”
“This is Marcia.”
“Marcia, this is André Watts calling.”
“André?”
“André Watts…the pianist.”
“Um, hi!”
I dropped my gig bag on the table and sat down with a thump.
“How are you?”
“Ah…fine, I guess.”
“Well, the reason I’m calling is I’m putting together a chamber music tour of the United States for next season, and I wondered whether you would be available to join us.”
“Wow. Sure.”
Now I was sure to be late. But I had the excuse of a lifetime.
“Great. Well, let me explain a bit more. I’m programming some wind and piano music. I’ve always noticed and loved your playing when I’ve heard you within the orchestra on concerto dates. Your sound is quite extraordinary. You seem to be a very engaged player—I tend to notice such things through the years, as you might imagine.”
I supposed I could imagine this. André was an icon, a giant in the business. He’d performed with virtually every conceivable orchestra throughout his long career. Not to mention sandwiching in Carnegie Hall solo recital dates, year after year.
“Thank you so much. I’m a bit in shock, I guess.”
“Well, don’t be. Or at least try not to be. I don’t bite.”
We both laughed and managed to pull the tension out of the exchange.
“No. No, of course not! André, I’m thrilled. Just tell me the dates, and I’ll be
there.”
The tour was booked—about ten concerts throughout the United States. During the year leading up to the tour—because such things are scheduled at least one year in advance—André and I got to know each other, enjoying a few leisurely dinners when he was in town. When he was out on the road during that interim time, he called now and then and our acquaintanceship gradually turned into a comfortable camaraderie, almost friendship. Having committed to performing with me, André needed to know the human being behind the instrument, especially with a touring engagement in the offing.
I had long since stopped asking or even hoping my parents would attend my concerts. But André and the halo of his superstardom beckoned, which proved the tipping point for my parents. Suddenly, overnight, I was worth listening to. I became legitimate, soaring above the cream of Katie Gibbs graduates. We were scheduled to perform at the Toledo Museum of Art—in the hometown of Margery Bloor Wenner: Brains and Beauty. They booked their plane tickets to Ohio.
André was a generous and intense colleague onstage. Just before we walked out to perform the Poulenc Oboe Sonata, he would take a quick inhalation and exhalation of breath, then nod to me. For those fifteen minutes, as we performed together, the audience and even the world seemed to fall away, and we were as connected as any two human beings might be. With concentration and attunement so compacted, I imagined the pores on my skin opening to accept whatever came, second after second after second.
Throughout the weekend in Toledo, between social obligations with our relatives and the concert itself, Wotan kept a clear distance from both André and me. He watched me on the stage, vulnerable, at large, yet in my private world. Remaining apart and at the perimeter of the action, he stood with a competitive edge. I’d turn my head, and there his eyes were, like the Mona Lisa’s, trained on me, following me everywhere. I’d dressed in a sleeveless, form-fitting concert gown—perhaps not the best choice of garment. I began to feel sheepish and undeserving, all brought on by my father’s crushing glances. My old negotiating partner was sullying my moment in the sun.
The Skin Above My Knee Page 13
