by Jane Lebak
He said he’d keep that in mind, and maybe as bored with me as I was, he left.
I had a trickle of cars, never few enough to finish my press release, so with Bach glowering at me for my lame defense of his life’s vocation, I thought about what I should have said.
He was right: music wasn’t transferable. When I put down the viola, the music stopped. If I didn’t practice, I’d lose my skill. A painter doesn’t need to practice for the next viewer to see the same landscape, but a friend can’t pick up my viola and hear my music. Even worse, when I pick up my viola, the only music it plays is my own.
I miss my grandfather. My viola was once my grandfather’s viola, and now that was all I had left of him. Memories of long afternoons, me studying in his kitchen while my father’s father played in the living room, the viola’s throaty tenor singing tunes so familiar I knew them without ever knowing them. In that ordinary world I first came alive, first looked up to find the horizons were further than the walls of my home. I could touch fire. I could cup it in my palms, heat and light together, and enkindle the world.
In those days I’d close my eyes and become someone else, and my grandfather and I would play together to forge something between us that was real, that was more than just an old man and a young girl and two wooden boxes, more than just eight vibrating strings.
And that breathless moment when he pressed his viola into my smooth hands with his knobby ones and said, “This is yours; this will always be yours,” and for the first time I found a way out. A way up.
Yet twelve years later my grandfather’s songs were as faint in my mind as the spice of his aftershave, and I’d never hear them again.
Some say violins and violas remember their owners, that they reverberate with melodies of the past. Maybe. Maybe over time the vibrations formed patterns in the wood, and maybe the sound keeps trying to work back into them.
I’d tried so often, to reconstruct my grandfather’s songs brought with him from Greece. As a kid I didn’t need to know their names. They were “that one” and “that other one,” and if he owned sheet music, I never saw it. He must have learned from his own grandfather, only unlike me, he paid attention.
Sometimes when I played late enough that my fingers were inaccurate, alone with the mute on so my mother’s mother wouldn’t hear, I’d find myself hungering to follow one note with the wrong one; in those hours, the “right” notes sounded awkward, and I wondered if the viola wasn’t trying to soothe itself with musical comfort food, longing for the century-old pieces it sang every day under my grandfather’s fingers.
SEVEN
Tuesday morning, as I replaced the mop in Grandma’s closet, I looked up to find my mother and sister, with my nephew in tow. Viv said, “Still living on food stamps?”
I shut the closet. “Better than welfare.”
“Josie, don’t be rude. She’s your sister.” Mom dropped her coat on the kitchen chair. “Where’s your grandmother?”
“Living room.” Mom could have heard the TV if she’d listened; in fact, she had turned before I finished. “Hey, Mom?” My heart thrummed. “My quartet got mentioned in the New York Times.”
I don’t know what I’d expected, but some kind of reaction. Instead she waited, and I just babbled. “We were playing for a wedding, only the bride was late. Like really late, more than three hours. And we kept playing the whole time.”
My mother’s brow furrowed. “Why would that have made the Times?”
Viv said, “It’s in the science section. Shitty Music Fails to Kill Wedding Guests.”
Bitch.
Mom said, “Vivvy, hush. Your sister always wanted to get things done for herself. Let’s hear what she did.”
It was an opening. “It was in the fashion and style section. It was a high-end wedding, and the bride being so late was unusual enough that we got mentioned.”
My mother seemed even more confused. “A high-end wedding hired your quartet?”
Viv said, “Atonal music is all the fad.”
I clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t shoot back a nasty reply.
Mom looked at Viv. “Honey, don’t be jealous just because you can’t do those things. Come on.”
She left to find Grandma. As I realized I was being dismissed, I said, “Would you like to see the article?”
“I suppose.” In the door, Mom paused. “It’s very good you have connections, you know. People are judged by their companions.”
Yeah, but they kept me around anyway.
I got out the vacuum, and Zaden started climbing the pantry shelves. I said to Viv, “You might want to get him out of there.”
“He’s fine.” She folded her arms. “When are you moving back home?”
“Fifteenth of December in twenty-never.” I glanced at the clock. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Grandma’s watching Zaden while Mom and I go shopping.” She waited, but I refused to ask why she needed her Mommy to go shopping. Instead I vacuumed the hallway.
Fifteen minutes later, I returned to the kitchen to find my mother rifling through some envelopes. “Oh, honey, the mail came. Why is the phone company putting your bill in a yellow envelope? You shouldn’t get behind on those things.”
I snatched it from her.
“Don’t be so sensitive.”
I plucked a credit card offer from Viv’s hands. “Thank you.”
Viv said, “Are you as late with the rent as with everything else? Poor Grandma.”
Forcing a smile, I glanced at Grandma, who seemed uncertain. “Grandma’s fine. You’re the one going shopping with Mom’s money.”
Mom said, “Don’t be so negative just because you’ve always been the independent one. I’m buying fabric for a client.”
Viv looked miffed. Busted.
I got back upstairs to find my apartment unlocked and a Matchbox car on my kitchen floor. They’d taken my milk.
I slammed the door and locked it, for all the good that would do. Grandma had the key, and anything Grandma had could be in Viv’s hands in minutes.
Well, except for the apartment. Grandma knew damned well she’d become the unpaid baby sitter the hour Viv moved in.
When the front door slammed, I looked outside as Mom and Viv got into Mom’s silver Accord. I returned to the basement to throw in a load of Grandma and Grandpa’s clothes and take up mine from the dryer. They too had left before I returned, probably taking Zaden to the park so he could unleash his destructive power on the swings.
I trudged back to my apartment, but instead of folding laundry, I played scales. Up, down, up again, all the notes where they needed to go. Then, warmed-up, I launched into some Bach.
Bach is awesome. My instructors all said you should play Bach every day: it’s precise and mathematical even as it’s lively and compelling; it keeps your fingers nimble; and it engages your brain. I’d been learning Bach pieces since Suzuki Method 1, and this morning I started running through them all, sometimes breaking off midway to begin another. I mixed two by accident, the first half of one and a chunk out of the middle of a second.
While playing, I closed my eyes and imagined myself a team with the instrument. Back in high school, I made the mistake of telling Josh the viola and I were best friends, and he wrote back, “Some friends. You aren’t even on a first-name basis.”
I replied, “What good is naming something that doesn’t come when you call?”
Josh said, “Do it anyhow.”
I strung Josh through three emails before finally giving a drum roll and its chosen name.
“Woody.”
He retorted that Woody sounded like my new boyfriend. Or rather, my “bow.”
I never called the viola Woody, not in public. But sometimes the name slipped out: “Come on, Woody, you know that was supposed to be a C-sharp.”
Today, unfortunately, none of the notes wanted to come right. Music might be a team sport, but one of us didn’t have her head in the game.
I shuffled throug
h my music, longing for something slow and powerful and brilliant, but nothing filled all my requirements: I wanted a melody to straighten the twisted mess that was my life, to put everything in the right places, to give back something I never had but still felt stolen.
Needing to play something, make something, I did more scales. Make me forget. Take me away from here.
My cell phone rang. Harrison. I didn’t answer.
Two rings later, I changed my mind. “What’s up?”
“We may be booking an event in ten days. I know you’ll crab at me because it’s short notice, but I want to do it anyway. Can you play on a Thursday afternoon?”
I said, “Okay.”
Silence.
He must have expected a fight, because he sounded tentative. “We could do this playlist in our sleep. No Beethoven symphonies.”
Again I mm-hmmed him.
He said, “Well, okay, then. I’ll talk to you later,” and cut off.
I held on to the silence a few seconds before tossing the phone on the bed. Back came the viola.
It took an hour to two hours of practice every day to stay on top of my skills. My grandparents’ neighbors never complained, although to be honest they may never have heard through the walls of a pre-WWII building. When my grandparents were home, though, Mom said they wanted me to use a mute.
Only now, free to play loud and unmuted, I crouched at the edge of my bed, eyes shut as hard as I could. I tried to breathe deep, too aware of the tension up both arms and across my throat.
I set the bow in its slot without loosening it and left the case open, sheet music scattered on my bed. I covered the instrument with the silky viola blanket I bought Woody last year even though I hadn’t bought a new blouse in two. I imagined Woody thinking, I survived World War I, and I need a silky blanket?
I turned on a Green Day CD for the noise I couldn’t produce myself, and I straightened a couple of things in the apartment. My apartment. Mine. Not my sister’s.
With the kitchen still half-dirty, I turned on the computer to find email at the group account, a thread of messages between a corporate address and Harrison, the whole arrangement conducted in the last hour. On opening the messages, I found an enquiry from the Executive Assistant to the Vice President of Something about a retirement party. Harrison set up a phone call with the secretary, and then a final message, maybe twenty minutes ago, in which Harrison had emailed them a contract. Just like that, we were booked for two hours in the middle of a Thursday afternoon.
Holy cow. That happened quickly.
Based on the email exchange, a corporate gig was little different than a wedding, although my heart skipped at the price-per-hour Harrison quoted—and it stopped when our liaison agreed. Even with the economy in the toilet, some corporations didn’t hesitate to treat themselves to whatever they wanted.
Whether we were worth that much... Um, yeah. Harrison thought we were; them too, or they wouldn’t have paid. But of course the most this executive secretary (or her boss) could have heard were the clips posted online.
The air felt thin. What was going on? We weren’t any different than a week ago, and yet people wanted us. We named a bold price…and clients forked it over. We had a corporate client, and that vaulted us into a different category.
An alert popped up on IM. Josh.
“Harrison called,” he typed. “We added a retirement lunch gig.”
I typed back, “Saw the emails.”
His reply came quickly: “You gonna quit your day job? {grin}”
My reply: “It’s a night job.”
And from him: “If Harrison keeps jacking up the rates, you could buy a Stradivarius viola.”
Or a Starbucks coffee. “I’m fine with mine.”
Then, after a pause, he sent, “What’s wrong?”
I typed, “??”
He typed, “You’re upset.”
I typed nothing at all. Just rested my fingertips on the keys.
His message appeared: “You want to come here? Have lunch?”
And while I was typing out, “I don’t know,” his next message arrived: “I’ll cook for you there. Expect me in twenty minutes.”
I blinked. “Are you sure?”
“Sure. Hang tight.”
He signed off. I re-read the chat trying to figure out where I’d tipped off Josh to something I hadn’t admitted to even myself.
By the time he arrived, holding a white paper bag, I had the apartment straightened via the industrial-strength cleaning power of I-have-a-guest-coming. He’d decided against cooking. “Didn’t want to poi-poison you on the verge of—” He blocked, then backed up and retook it: “Verge of success.”
I’d already started to relax with him near, and I met his eyes with a smile. “You’ve never poisoned yourself.”
He looked worried. “I’ve come close.”
He made me sit at the table, like Princess Joey The First. Out of the bag with a flourish came deli sandwiches and bags of chips. He winked at me, putting some of that performance magic into it so I’d laugh, then produced two packets of Land O’Lakes mint-flavored hot chocolate (ooh, seventy-five cents a packet) and a plastic baggie with marshmallows.
While the tea-kettle heated, he set the table. “Now—” He blocked on the next word, then said, “Shit,” and shook his head. “Now—” He blocked again.
Could I understand why he didn’t want to say it? Yep. I didn’t want to deal with me either. “Now why am I being a unbelievable grouch?”
He shook his head. “Not grouchy. Just—” This time he hadn’t blocked because he didn’t look frustrated. “Tense.”
He laid out napkins, dispensed chocolate powder, and poured water into the mugs while steam frothed up like Vesuvius giving a rumble. The round table barely accommodated two place settings, but it was what I’d found in the apartment on move-in. Any closer and our knees would have touched. The chair legs squeaked on the faded linoleum whenever we moved. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I pushed back to go to my spice cabinet, and he said, “No.” He pointed to the sandwich, so I opened the wrapper. He’d bought me a ham and cheese sub, lettuce and tomato, no pickles, and—
I grinned. “You remembered the oregano! I knew there was a reason you rocked.”
He flushed and looked aside.
We ate without words, just the crinkle of wrappers, the clink of spoons against mugs, the fizzle of whipped cream firing from the canister. But as we ate, I realized: the last time Josh had ordered something, the waiter made fun of him. Yet today he’d ordered two different deli subs with an assortment of condiments, including oregano. Had he stood at the case, staring through the Boar’s Head olive loaf wondering whether he’d make it through the word “pickle”?
My throat tightened. “Thank you. For lunch.”
He didn’t look up, just smiled self-consciously.
I added, “You’re right. I was tense.”
A smugness came to his eyes. I tossed my wadded-up sandwich wrapper at his head, but he batted it away with a “Hey!”
While I cleared the table, he said, “Is it the new clients?”
My eyes narrowed. “I hope they’re deaf. Right now, I can’t even play.”
He frowned. “Have you tried Bach?”
I bit my lip.
“Even Bach won’t help? M-Must be bad.” He frowned. “Hotel C-C-California?”
I flicked water at him from my wet fingers.
He chuckled. “Okay, okay. But it’s got to be bad if Bach can’t help.” He shook his head. “Poor Woody.”
“Hey!” I spun, eyes wide. “I thought you’d forgotten!”
Smirking, he cocked his head, a dare to stop him. “I saved that email. It’s good blll—lackmail.”
“I’ll kill you.” I wrung my hands dry with the dish towel. “You’re right here in my kitchen with all these knives.”
Josh said, “Most of them are a hundred years old.”
I nodded. “Blunt and rusty. It would probabl
y hurt.”
He didn’t appear concerned. “You’d have to t-testify why at the trial, and then Woody would be in the public record.”
My shoulders slumped as I gave a mock sigh. “Well, you’ve got me there.”
When I realized how intently he looked at me, my breath caught. I paid careful attention to draping the towel on a cabinet knob. “Um—so—I don’t suppose you brought your cello.”
By the time I turned back, he was avoiding my eyes.
I brought my viola to the living room, and Josh pretended to be my instructor. First scales, then bow exercises, and finally a few different vibratos.
“You haven’t forgotten how to play.” He looked relieved. “Even though a violist doesn’t need to know all that much to begin with.”
I pointed to my head. “The trouble’s in here.”
He grimaced. “I nnn-know the feeling.”
He asked for my crappy viola, the one Dad picked up secondhand from a student supply shop. I was mean to it, though. I’d stolen its case to house my grandfather’s, leaving it in Grandpa’s century-old coffin case with rusty hinges and bow mite carcasses. As for the instrument, it stretched my strings. Always in plain sight on my book shelf, it had an ultra-shiny Student Viola appearance, plus enough dings to make you think the instrument had a penchant for taking the fight outside.
But most of all, it was a decoy. Mom thought that was the instrument I played professionally, and I let her keep thinking it.
Josh tuned it, wincing at the sound. The strings of a viola are the same as the strings of a cello, only an octave up, so he began one of our standards without needing to do the mental translation I did when playing a violin. I joined.
In unison, we played through. He missed a few notes because he wasn’t used to the viola, but it was otherwise passable.
“Whoa,” Josh said. “You really can fake viola by playing sss-slow and hitting a lot of wrong notes.”
I poked him with my bow, and he laughed.
We used to know a couple of viola-cello duets, and we messed around with what we remembered. Finally I dug out some solo music to play in unison.
