“The air feels so good,” said Sydney, throwing her arms wide. She glanced at her watch, noting that it was show time on Broadway. What a relief to shed black pit clothes on a hot summer night.
Our arrival on foot flustered the parking valet, who ushered us inside to a loud happy-hour crowd. Sydney and I exchanged glances and ordered chardonnay at the bar. “Oops, sorry,” I said, bumping into a darkhaired man who looked like a model from GQ magazine. He was an analyst at Lazard Freres, whatever that was.
“We’re musicians,” I said proudly.
His eyes narrowed. Musicians?
“Yes,” Sydney chimed in, “classical musicians.”
His eyes drifted over the crowd, toward a gaggle of blond gazelles. He must not believe us, I thought.
“No, honest,” I said. “New York Philharmonic, American Symphony, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, that sort of thing.”
He turned back to us with a confused expression. “But what do you really do?” he said with a sneer, and then immediately made eye contact with someone across the room. Indignant, I tried to answer, but towering blondes were closing in on him, teetering in strappy high-heeled sandals, with designer logos emblazoned on their sunglasses, purses, baby Ts. I looked down at my two-year-old Keds and the fraying crochet of an $18 outlet sweater.
I suddenly felt dowdy, outfitted head to toe in cheap clothing that didn’t quite match. The beautiful women in this restaurant understood this high-class social scene and had money to dress for it. I glimpsed my reflection in a sliding-glass door and suddenly saw myself as hopelessly unfashionable and out of touch.
Sydney got me another drink, and we wove through the smoky bar out onto the deck. At the railing, a model-perfect redhead played with her balding companion’s ponytail, cooing in his ear. Watching them, I tapped absently on my glass.
One happy hour down, one show’s income wasted. Sydney gazed distantly over the water at the sky’s pink embers. In disappointing situations like this she was always attracted by something in the distance. I squinted to make it out what she saw, but the horizon looked empty to me.
The ocean view, however, was familiar, as I had watched the sun set over Gardiner’s Bay near here once. I was visiting my recital manager, Lee, at the time, and I remembered that he lived nearby. Lee came from a different era in East Hampton’s history, when the hamlet was still an outpost for maverick artists after the 1940s. Before Jerry Della Femina, Jaguars, and astronomical summer rentals, Lee and his lover, a painter, had joined these people in an artists’ community named Springs after the Accabonac Creek’s source.
Sydney and I found a pay phone, called Lee, and were soon relaxing by the swimming pool in his backyard with yet another glass of wine. It was a relief to be away from the glitzy crowd and in the company of an old friend. Lee’s lover had died and I suspected he was lonely. The conversation quickly turned to talk of dating. Why weren’t two beautiful classical musicians like Sydney and me married? Lee asked. Were we too picky?
No, I assured him. I liked bald men, short men, men without college degrees. I wasn’t prejudiced. It was just hard for classical musicians to meet anyone eligible, I said.
Sydney shot me a look.
“Well, yeah, the married ones weren’t so smart,” I admitted. Back in my early twenties, men my age lived in squalor, and the ones I met in orchestras were either geriatric or already spoken for. By their thirties, though, responsible guys had jumped ship for a career that could support a family. That left people outside the business, who were difficult to meet and had peculiar notions about us anyway. Outsiders were forever intimidated by musicians, whom they imagined as erudite superintellects.
“Ha! Musicians are more like blue-collar workers than PhDs,” Sydney joked. She had a point. Music performance was a specific craft that was perfected more by practice than analysis. Our colleagues’ narrow focus sometimes made for dull conversation too, centering around dirty jokes, shop talk, and expensive wining and dining that everyone pretended they could afford.
I’d already dated almost every classical musician around my age. Working six nights a week, I didn’t run into the after-work crowd, and even when I found a date, my share of dinner and perhaps show tickets, plus lost income from sending a sub to Miss Saigon, would approach $300.
I had met some nice men in the past, like Peter, a Harvard alum and commercial composer. In trying to tone down my sexual exuberance, I went too far and we never really connected. Tom, the trombonist, was sweet, but I feared being asked to produce ten children as his Catholic mother had done. Fred, the cellist, had been too old and too conservative. He also fell asleep once during sex, pinning me to the brass bed with its bass- and treble-clef signs that he’d once shared with his violinist ex-wife.
For a brief period, my debut recital gave me a more exotic image than the average freelance musician. A dynamic Broadway conductor took me out to dinner but quickly married a beautiful dark-haired composer who wrote a light opera that later made it to Broadway.
Next came a clarinetist old enough to be my father. Then a classical composer who asked me to return a birthday present when no relationship materialized between us. I tried my old boyfriends again, just in case, and then became more aggressive, pouncing on a cute guy in the Raleigh-Durham airport while visiting my parents. I accepted his first-date invitation to drink wine in his apartment, but he was forty-five minutes late. I waited. We drank. I went home. He never called again.
Then there were dating services. Paunchy nerds populated the Classical Music Lovers’ Exchange. The service for bookworms turned up a handwritten note on Harvard letterhead from an insect-studying Indiana Jones character; I chalked up his eccentricity to his fascination with bugs, though there was also that troublesome childhood head injury. We traveled between my place in New York and his townhouse in Boston. Finally, we spent four weeks together on a trip to Central America, where I discovered he rocked and chanted and had a temper that bordered on violence. I ditched him.
Next came a fling with National Geographic’s “Afghan Girl” photographer Steve McCurry. Personal ads turned up a handsome doctor who treated terminal patients with nutritional therapy borrowed from a Texas orthodontist. He didn’t much like the preshow treatment. I didn’t like reading his entry on Quackwatch, which mentioned coffee enemas and two malpractice suits.
I dined alone at bars before the show, but no one was in the pickup mode that early. Post-theater, the crowd was too drunk. Recently, Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart had been asking me out for late-night drinks when he was in town, even though he had recently married. I went and drank in his hotel room, cuddled, and returned home without having sex.
As a final insult after all this lackluster dating, the Hudson Valley Philharmonic had asked me to pose in a wedding dress for our annual calendar, parodying Smetana’s Bartered Bride overture. I stood in the display window of Poughkeepsie’s downtown bridal shop, offering my oboe to passersby. The elderly ladies who worked there swarmed around, pinning back the size twelve gown on my small frame. “Dear, you look so beautiful as a bride, why don’t you get married?” she asked. Hung over, I was too tired to reply.
Sydney and I stayed beside Lee’s pool until late, drinking red wine and enjoying the ocean air and chirping crickets. After saying goodbye the next morning, we drove out to the Hotel Montauket, an old boardinghouse near Montauk Point. We’d try a more downscale approach tonight. After dressing, we went downstairs and ordered plastic cups of white wine from the bar, carrying them outside to watch the sun set over Gardiner’s Bay. I’d heard that Billy Joel hung out here, but we didn’t see any single men. I regretted taking off from all those shows.
Playing “The Bartered Bride” in a publicity photograph for the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Poughkeepsie, New York. (Michele Muir)
“I don’t know what younger musicians are going to do,” lamented Sydney, as we watched the water turn dark. “With my show, I can play out my career, I guess.” Sydney’s hit had already
run for six years and was expected to last for many more.
The sun was low enough to cast a flattering light on Sydney’s skin. She patted her cheeks with both hands, mumbling something about getting her face fixed. She looked exhausted, with a recent weight gain hinting at Betty’s middle-aged figure. She was sliding toward Allendale spinsterhood, and I was right behind her. Between the Chinese Cottage restaurant’s free wine before the show and microwaved nachos after, my mind and belly were growing soft. No amount of effort ever paid off, so what the hell, I thought. I stepped inside the Montauket’s bar for another plastic cup of white wine.
I dropped by Sam’s apartment in the Allendale one afternoon to lend him a little money until he could get to the bank. He often borrowed small amounts from me but always repaid it promptly. I mentioned that Sydney had asked about him.
“Oh, really,” Sam said, in a disbelieving tone I’d rarely heard him use. He picked up the goose-stepping Nazi toy soldier I’d given him as a joke. “Sydney’s cold. She acts like I should treat her like a princess.” I’d already heard the same from other men.
Sydney’s attitude had gotten to me as well. Since she did me favors, some of them substantial, I felt guilty for thinking of her in a bad light. Still, I could no longer ignore the feeling that she expected superior treatment, more because of her appearance than her accomplishments. She was no longer the woman I’d worshiped ten years ago. Now she represented the culture of entitlement I was coming to despise. I wanted to tear away from her but did not know where to start. My habits, after all, were just as destructive as hers.
Meanwhile, Sam had remained enthusiastic about music and worked hard for recognition. His new heart was holding up well, and he looked healthier than I’d ever seen him. Itzhak was finally embracing him on a personal level too, he said, telling me that he’d been invited to bring Sue for a casual dinner at Itzhak’s new brownstone, just the two couples. I already knew the dinner was just a ruse for a surprise party Itzhak was planning.
Grabbing my keys the evening of the party, I took a last glance in the mirror. I’d taken extra care to iron my silk pantsuit from Fowad. With my hair carefully blow-dried and makeup applied, I almost looked like I belonged with Sam’s upscale friends.
I found a cab and gave the address of the brownstone Itzhak had just bought on 70th Street. When I arrived, I joined the other guests on a tour our host was leading. His place was at least four floors, with intricate woodwork and detail worked into every room. He showed off their remodeled wheelchair-accessible kitchen, which looked out over a garden. An elevator connected all the floors, including the basement lap pool. Itzhak’s wife, Toby, must have an eye for design, I thought, since the fabrics and colors worked together seamlessly.
After the tour, I chatted in the living room with Judy LeClair, the Philharmonic’s principal bassoonist. Her husband, Jonathan Feldman, taught in Juilliard’s accompanying department with Sam. John Corigliano noodled on the piano, while composers, musicians, journalists, and a few philanthropic friends mingled.
One of Itzhak’s kids called from the corner pay phone: Sam was coming. In the darkened room, I wondered how Sam would take this party. He didn’t need to cultivate Itzhak, since the two spent days traveling together. What was special about his expectations tonight was that he believed Itzhak wanted to establish a genuine social connection instead of their professional relationship of musical superstar and supporting artist. I heard Sam’s doddering Alice Tully imitation outside, as he climbed the steps with Sue.
“Surprise!” the crowd shouted. The room flooded with light. People jumped from behind the furniture. Sam frowned, glancing down at his special Yankees jersey that Martin had gotten him as a gift from the team, but he quickly forced a broad smile. Trays of hors d’oeurves and champagne flutes appeared. Sam rapped on a crystal glass with a tiny silver pencil from the piano for our attention.
“This is incredible!” he said. “I want to thank the people who were there for me, who helped me through the transplant,” he continued, his voice rising. I flushed as several faces turned toward me. Everyone knew I’d played the martyr role, going by the hospital daily when many of them didn’t visit him once. Margo Garrett, who’d also nursed him, would have liked this celebration, but she wasn’t invited. Neither was Sam’s brother.
“Thank you, all of you who visited me in the hospital,” he said, his voice stronger now. Then Sam ticked off a list of names. People who gave him work. People he hoped would give him work. The very people who had abandoned him.
He did not mention me.
After a round of applause, someone started roasting Sam with songs at the piano. I slipped through Itzhak’s fancy kitchen, out into the humid summer night, and walked toward Columbus Avenue. It hurt like hell.
When I got home, I put on a recording of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony and blasted it. The work was sometimes called his “Tragic” symphony, and although it was written during one of the happiest times in the composer’s life, its dark, brooding melodies and dissonant chords presaged the anguish Mahler would feel only two years later when his young daughter died. This music soothed me, because listening to its emotional depth was far more painful than anything I was feeling tonight.
After the first two movements of the symphony, I opened a bottle of wine and called Sydney, out of habit. She’d just gotten home from her show and came downstairs. She listened to my story of Itzhak’s party with empathy. I felt even more guilty to be considering Sydney so scornfully when she could also be this kind. I wasn’t happy, I told her. I wanted to do something else for a living. Maybe I could go to law school, although I wasn’t sure what lawyers did. Two musicians I knew had done this. However, one Juilliard grad I knew said that Harvard Law had turned her down because they didn’t accept candidates with “trade school” degrees. I didn’t think I was smart enough anyway.
“Why don’t you get an MBA then?” Sydney asked. “It should be a piece of cake after music,” she said, suggesting I look into one of those courses at Kaplan Test Prep. I wondered why she didn’t follow her own advice. She’d been an academic star in high school, and her music career wasn’t exactly front-page news either. But she was encouraging and made me feel a spark of hope.
Sydney and I rode the 1 train, clutching the overhead handles. Tonight we had drunk nearly two liters of the free white wine at the Cottage Chinese restaurant. As the train screeched to a halt in the 96th Street station, I offered her a Breath Asure, a gelatin capsule filled with peppermint and parsley that was advertised to clean your breath from the inside out. Sydney refused.
“Everybody else does drinks before the show,” Sydney said, waving the mints away. “I mean, it’s the only way to get through it.” I knew it was wrong to play inebriated when people were paying $100 to hear you, but here I was, blotto. I’d smelled other boozy musicians in the pit too. At Les Miz, a trumpeter stepped across to McHale’s at intermission, and one of the horn subs frequently took a mid-show “botanical walk.”
We both got off at Times Square, as I’d missed the 50th Street stop in my stupor. We fought a wall of people upstairs, surging through tourists at the turnstiles. My oboe backpack walloped people left and right as we battled north on Broadway. Sydney rolled her eyes and groaned as she stepped into the bike lane. She turned onto 45th at her theater and I staggered uptown. Lurching into my chair at 7:59 P.M., I jammed my instruments together, gave the tuning note, and swallowed a dab of minty toothpaste. I folded the Times crossword on my music stand.
I was too drunk to read. The letters blurred together. I stuffed the crossword in the trash and stared at the empty stand. I’d played this music so many times, my fingers moved on automatic pilot. This was no way for an intelligent person to be spending her thirties, I thought vaguely. Tomorrow I’d find out about this MBA thing.
The following week I waited in a classroom, three sharp pencils ready. Sydney was right, Kaplan was just what I needed to get up to speed. This afternoon I was about to take their fre
e trial exam to analyze my weaknesses for the Graduate Management Admission Test, which was required to apply to business school. An instructor passed out the materials, and I opened my booklet eagerly. Pencils scratched furiously around me.
If it is 250 miles from New York to Boston and 120 miles from New York to Hartford, what percentage of the distance from New York to Boston is the distance from New York to Hartford?
Percentages. We didn’t cover that in music school. Next?
It costs × dollars each to make the first thousand copies of a compact disk and y dollars to make each subsequent copy. If z is greater than 1,000, how many dollars will it cost to make z copies of the compact disk?
Too hard for me. Next? My optimism was draining quickly. I really was too stupid to do anything but play the oboe. I lingered as the room emptied and the instructor tucked the papers into her bag. When she looked expectantly at me, I bit my lip, the booklet dangling from my fingers.
“I didn’t know the math—” I started. I’d earned a D-minus in algebra twenty years ago, my last quantitative course. The instructor glanced at my blank answer sheet, asking my background. As I answered, I imagined her thoughts dancing in a cartoon bubble over her head.
Musicians are good at math. Why wouldn’t you want to be a musician anyway? You do what you love all day long. Know the one about Danny Kaye?
I turned and ran down the steps before she had a chance to answer. Heading west on 56th, I blubbered past the City Center stage door, Carnegie Hall, Patelson’s House of Music. I was already thirty-five. I could never even get into a community college. I’d languish in the pit every night until the show closed. Then I’d be in my forties, unemployed, uneducated, unmarried.
Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music Page 26
