by Sally Mandel
Our performance was only okay. I sensed that David was off his game. He got a little tangled up in the Rachmaninoff, which was bizarre since he knew it so well. Nobody noticed except for me—and David, of course, and the reviews were ecstatic. Since they were all in Italian, David had to translate. When he finished reading them to me, he tossed them in the garbage like they were nasty.
“What?” I said.
“They don’t know what they’re saying. ‘Montagnier played with his customary precision’? I played like an amateur.”
“You did not,” I started in. “The Ravel was perfectly …”
He turned on me, actually raising his voice. “Don’t do that! Not you, Bess. I’m going out.”
And he did, leaving me in the hotel room with my heartache and heaving stomach. After a couple of hours, he came back, this time bearing panini in their paper wraps. He looked like such a sad puppy I could hardly be angry.
“I thought you’d appreciate these more than flowers.” There was a plate under a plant by the window. He washed it off and set up a little picnic for us. We had wine and fruit from the basket the hotel had sent up when we checked in.
“I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way, Bess. I’m sorry.” He leaned over and gave me a kiss. Not a sexy one, but sweet just the same. “I count on you to be honest. It’s what I value most about you. Please don’t bullshit me.”
I had to smile even though I wished there were other things he found more valuable, like my tits, except they weren’t feeling so perky these days either. They hurt even when I walked, so I had to fasten my bra on a tighter snap to counteract any jiggle.
“How sad that it’s my character that counts,” I said. I was still smiling, but fishing, too.
“I know this is hard on you, about the sex,” David said. “It’s not easy for me, either. Please don’t think I’m not attracted to you, Bess. I want you as much as I ever did.”
That made me weepy, but I dipped my head so he wouldn’t see. “What’ll happen when you get really horny, David?”
“The energy will go into our music, that’s all. It’ll start to pay off soon.”
I was waiting for him to ask what I would do, and frankly, I didn’t know what I would tell him. I didn’t want anyone else. I was certainly not much interested in sex anyway when I was carting my stomach around in my throat. Still, the time would surely come when I’d be crawling up walls. I looked at David sitting across from me with his legs propped up on the hotel ottoman. He had a dripping gooey panini in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. His face was burned from our walks in the Italian sun and there was something adolescent about his expression. He seemed fragile and hopeful all at once and it was all I could do to keep from throwing my arms around him. I just smiled some more and told him that I was positive that everything was going to work out just fine.
David left Rome a day early to do some “family business,” he called it. Something to do with real estate in the south of France. I didn’t even give him an argument about going along. I still felt completely wiped out, and figured I’d take the day to sleep. Then, by the time I met up with him in Milan, I’d be ready to rock and roll again. And that’s exactly what I did. Sixteen straight hours of sleep. I don’t think I’ve ever done that again in my whole life.
For somebody who’s got this totally complex neuroleptic process going on in her brain, I could be outstandingly dense. It took me until we got to Milan before I realized that it wasn’t jet lag that was making me feel so lousy. I remember the exact moment I figured it out—in a break during rehearsal at the concert hall. I went to the john, half nodded off on the toilet seat, and when I was fixing my hair—I can’t usually comb it because it’s too thick, I just pull my fingers through it—I stared at my face in the mirror. I looked like somebody else.
“You’re pregnant, Stallone,” I said to myself. And it all fell into place: tits the size of volleyballs, nonstop nausea, so zonked all the time I could barely keep my eyes open. My period was so unpredictable I never bothered to keep track of it, but the last time I could remember having it was before the Hamptons party. I’d used an IUD for years and figured it was foolproof. Guess again. I went into a stall and did a little exploration. No string. The damn thing must have fallen out and I didn’t even notice it. I never heard of that happening, but there was no doubt in my mind. I was knocked up, and it had to have been that perfect night of my birthday, and now I had the perfect souvenir to commemorate it. So I stood there grinning at myself. One of the concert hall administrators came in to pee and caught me. She must have thought I was simpleminded, but it was all I could do to keep from telling her. I wanted to find the nearest phone and call Angie. As for David, I didn’t have a clue what to do. A few weeks ago, it would have been simpler. We were sleeping together, and I had a lot more confidence that we were in a seminormal romantic relationship. We were still in something, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what it was. By the time the administrator had flushed the toilet, I’d decided to sit on the news for a while before telling David. It never occurred to me to terminate the pregnancy, and not because I was brought up a Catholic. I wanted this baby.
It turned out that next to David’s presence, pregnancy was the best possible cure for stage fright. It still hadn’t been easy for me to step out onstage, but at that point I didn’t give one shit about the performance. All I cared about was sleep. I longed to get through the music and take me and the baby back to the hotel to bed. I must have looked like some kind of druggie up there. What saved me was what our notes sounded like in that incredible hall in Milan. That place has maybe the most fabulous acoustics in the world. It’s a concrete monstrosity like the London hall, someplace you’d take your airplane to get fixed, but whoa, what happens to your notes—they just soar in there.
Afterward, the crowd pelted us with roses, which was a new one for me. They just couldn’t get enough of the three of us (I’d already started thinking of the baby as a member of the group), and when we sat down together to play our duet—the Bach—I thought they were going to have to call in the riot police.
Ordinarily, after a reception like that, I would have been so sexed up I would have jumped David no matter what. But with the baby and all, I just lay there in my separate bed—David had started reserving two queens as opposed to one king—and thought about the little person growing inside. One thing for sure, it would be able to carry a tune.
The reviews were almost as hysterical as the crowd. David read them to me with satisfaction.
“You see, Bess? It’s working. We were losing our concentration, that’s all.”
“I hope you’re not thinking of making this a permanent deal,” I said. Now that we were pregnant, I needed to think more clearly about the future and what kind of family this baby was going to have.
“For the time being,” David said. “You can be patient, can’t you?”
I just looked at him.
“Humor me, my darling.” He stood beside my chair and held my head against him. “It’s our time to become the best we can be.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll see how long I can hang in there.”
He leaned over and kissed me, then started pacing. He was more excited than I’d seen him in a long time, almost agitated. “Mr. Balaboo called,” he said. “If we can stay in Europe another month, he can line up four more concerts.”
“When did he call? I didn’t hear you on the phone.”
David smiled. “I don’t know how you slept through it. The phone’s right next to your ear.”
Don’t you know why? I wanted to say. Can’t you tell just by looking at me? I was bursting to tell him, but something held me back. And I didn’t tell him, not for a long time.
Chapter Fourteen
We had quite the tour, kind of like the Beatles’ first trip to America. First of all, duo pianists are totally respected in Europe. The attitude in America is that the repertoire is limited, that y
ou can’t really tell how each artist is performing, and it’s just kind of a novelty act. Europeans think a duo demands more from the pianists than solo work. You’re not only performing extremely demanding music, but you’re coordinating it with someone else in what has to be a seamless whole. It turned out that we were just about the hottest U.S. import since blue jeans. We’d never played better. Of course, I felt as if I had support from the little helper curled up inside me. But what a bizarro situation—David absolutely manic, which is I guess how he reacted to celibacy, and me with this huge secret I didn’t know what to do with. I look back and wonder why I waited so long to tell him. I guess I was just too afraid of how he’d react.
While we were away, Mr. Balaboo had been busy making P.R. heaven out of our triumphs in Europe. Everybody wanted us, from the White House to Jay Leno. On the plane home, David plotted our gigs for the next couple of months while I thought about where to find a great obstetrician. Side by side, in row four of first class, the two of us who’d been such passionate lovers only weeks before, and now look.
I wondered where Phillip would be dropping me off from the airport. For all I knew, if David wanted me out of his bed I wouldn’t be welcome in his apartment either. But no, there was no mention of a change there. Maybe David wanted me nearby so we could practice at three A.M. if the mood struck. Before we got out of the limo, David pulled me next to him and held me for a long time.
“Thank you, Bess. You’ve given me more than I could ever have imagined possible. I love you so much.” His arms felt like steel rods. And there was that sharp scent of lemon again. I wanted to kiss him but I didn’t trust myself because the old sex drive was saying, Yo, Bess! Hell-o. Besides which, he was not just the man who had made music possible for me. He’d also given me a child. Talk about love. He didn’t know the half of it.
The next day, I went to see Angie. We met in Soho at Jerry’s, which is to a coffee shop what the Sistine Chapel is to subway graffiti. We settled in a booth across from one another. Angie looked beautiful, rounder with more color in her face.
“I guess I don’t have to ask if you’re feeling good,” I said.
She smiled. “I’m happy, Bessie. School’s going well and now … actually, I’ve met someone.” She broke off.
“Tell me.”
“His name’s Ben and we just barely started seeing one another. But I don’t want to jinx it.”
“Okay, honey, then what about Mumma and Dutch?” Our father had apparently gotten it into his head to start hounding his congressman and the local newspapers about rights for the disabled.
“He thinks he’s Christopher Reeve,” Angie said.
“Is anything happening with his legs?”
“As long as she gets to go to work, she’s happy. She got another promotion.”
I took the leap. Angie meant that things were status quo with Dutch’s condition. She knew what my next question would be and saved me the trouble of asking. I shook my head. “Who ever would have thought Mumma’d turn out to be a career woman? Our Lady of the Apron and Ziti.”
Angie smiled. “Did you know that Pauline moved in with Jake?”
“No. That’s very cool.”
“It’s very dumb,” Angie said.
“Why? Pauline’s nuts about him.”
“True.” She looked at me with both eyebrows raised, little bridges arching over stuff I didn’t feel like discussing. As far as I knew, nobody was aware of the fact that I’d slept with Jake not so very long ago. Now that was dumb. Angie was still staring at me. “So? Are you ready to tell me what’s going on?” she asked.
“A lot.”
“I read about you everywhere.”
“Yeah, next thing I’ll be a centerfold.”
“How’s David?”
“Strange. But that’s not the real news.”
I stared into her face, willing her to figure it out. It didn’t take long.
“You’re pregnant.”
I shoved around to her side of the booth, threw my arms around her, and started crying. The relief of sharing it, especially with my sister, was overwhelming.
“How far along?” she asked.
“I’m not sure exactly. I think it was my birthday. That was the last time we were together.”
“Why? He won’t hurt the baby.”
“David doesn’t know.”
I could feel her body tense, but I wasn’t ready to explain. First of all, the tears were streaming and I was having a hard time not taking great big sobbing gulps. It was quite the scene, but we were in Soho, after all, where people were expected to be a little over the top. At least I wasn’t a crying person with a big silver peg sticking out of my nose.
“When are you planning to?” she asked. She waited a couple of seconds. “Or maybe you aren’t going to keep it.”
“Of course I’m keeping it! I’m keeping it!”
“Well, why haven’t you told him?”
“Because I’m afraid he won’t be happy and I can’t stand it.”
I loved Angie even more because she didn’t say, Oh, sure he’ll be happy. She wouldn’t come out with one of those dopey remarks even if it was in front of her nose on a cue card. We sat in silence for a few moments, me with my head on her shoulder. Then I moved back to my side and I told her everything.
“So what next?” she asked at the end of my tale.
“Know a good obstetrician? I think I’d better get checked out.”
“And you’ve got to tell David.”
“Yeah.”
The doctor Angie found for me confirmed that I was about ten weeks pregnant. I made a pact with myself that I’d tell David when I hit the magic twelve-week mark at the end of the first trimester: In the meantime, I was feeling better and we were really busy, not only performing, but also finishing up a CD. I still got tired, which made it possible to sleep in the same bed with David. Possible, I said, not fun. I often woke up in the middle of the night and lay there staring at his beautiful face, wanting to hold him and make love to him and wishing that he would want me so much he wouldn’t be able to help himself. But even asleep, he looked tense. There was a deep line between his brows and his eyelids were always restless like he was having bad dreams.
I was beginning to have trouble zipping my jeans, but I still didn’t tell him. I would decide on a day, and then something would happen to make me put it off. Like the night we had a jam session after a concert out in Newark. A bunch of guys from the Philadelphia came back to the apartment, mainly strings, and David seemed more relaxed than he’d been since Europe. I had decided I’d drop the news when everybody left. But then somewhere along the line the conversation turned to practicing and memory. One of the violinists said he practiced on planes, without his instrument. He’d just think back over the music and all the choices he’d made over the years about interpretation and it was as good as a regular session.
“I do that,” I said.
“You do?” David seemed surprised.
“Yeah, I can get through an hour-long work that way note by note. It’s a help when you don’t have access to a piano.”
“I’ve never been able to do that,” David said in a real quiet voice.
“No big deal,” I said, but I could see that to David it was some kind of failure. He got up and went into the bedroom, at which point I knew two things—the party was over, and I wasn’t going to tell him about the baby.
The next day, I called Mr. Balaboo and asked him to meet me for a drink at the West Bank Café, which is all the way over on Ninth Avenue where I knew David wouldn’t catch us. If you told Mr. Balaboo seven o’clock, you could count on him being there at six fifty-eight. When I got there, he was perched on a stool at the bar with his little feet dangling. If it weren’t for his gray hair with that middle part, he could have passed for a kid waiting for a milk shake. He took my hand in his dainty monkey paw and kept hold of it, pulling me near for cheek kisses.
�
�Bess-dahlink,” he said.
I ordered a club soda and lime. No booze for my baby at her tender age—I’d already made up my mind that she was a girl. “I’m worried about David,” I said.
He nodded.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“As am I,” he said. Then he was quiet again.
“Lookit, Mr. Balaboo, we’re not plotting to overthrow the government here. You think being concerned is disloyal?”
“All right,” he said. He took a sip of his vodka, which he always insisted on drinking from a champagne glass. “This isn’t the first time David has had difficulties.”
“What kind of difficulties?”
“Mental-health issues.”
“You want to hand me the straight story here, please?”
“He’s had some bouts with depression. Actually, it’s more like manic depression.”
My turn to be silent.
“He’s never told you?”
I shook my head.
“He went on medication for a while several years ago, and then again after Terese left. It was somewhat disastrous.”
I looked around as it occurred to me that this was the kind of conversation every E! network or New York magazine reporter had wet dreams over. I picked up our drinks and moved us to a table in the corner.
“Disastrous how?” I asked him when we were settled.
“Side effects. He became very agitated. His hands shook so much he couldn’t perform.”
I figured I might as well give it a shot. “Exactly why did Terese leave? And where is she?”
Another long silence, then, “Terese was too fragile for the music world.”
“So she had a breakdown?”
“You could call it that.”
“Is she in an institution?”
Silence, then, “Bess, I feel uncomfortable discussing this. You should ask David.”
