by Sally Mandel
It’s funny how things that don’t seem to register at the time suddenly rise to the surface. “That little side trip David took in Europe, before we got to Milan? Did that have something to do with Terese?”
“Bess-dahlink…”
“Oh, fuck it. Forget Terese. What can we do for David?”
“I wish I knew.”
“I can’t bear to look in his eyes,” I said. “There’s too much suffering in there.”
“He’s not playing well. He’s lost his confidence.”
“I haven’t noticed that,” I said. What I guess I meant was, I didn’t want to hear that because truthfully, somewhere deep down, I had noticed. “Does he have a psychiatrist?” I asked.
“He’s seen a few but he’s not inclined to think positively toward them. Perhaps. … these things tend to pass off on their own. If we give him some time.”
“He’s wound up awfully tight,” I said. “This morning he was talking to himself in the shower.”
“I thought, with you … He’s never been so happy. You must know that.”
“Yeah, well, the honeymoon seems to be over.” But there was comfort in hearing the truth, even if it was real bad news.
“Perhaps you can persuade him to get help,” Mr. Balaboo said. “I’ve had no luck at all.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Then and there I made a resolution to have it out with David that night. It seemed the wisest thing to do, put all the cards out on the table—the baby card and the mental one, too—and that way at least we’d be honest again, the way we were in the beginning—or at least the way I was.
When I got home, David was sitting at the laptop, scrolling through Nardigger’s reviews, not just about himself, but for other musicians as well. He didn’t even say hello.
“He uses the same phrases over and over, Bess. Listen to this, about Evgeny Kissin: ‘How regrettable that such monumental talent be squandered in an adolescent display of flashy pyrotechnics.’ And two months later, this is Nardigger on Martha Argerich: ‘While Argerich’s monumental talent is undeniable, how regrettable that her displays of flashy pyrotechnics be untempered with mature interpretation.’”
I dumped my jacket on the back of a chair and went to pour myself a glass of water. I wished it could be booze. I called in to him, “The critics are always on Kissin’s case, not just Nardigger. They can’t stand how he makes the public so delirious.”
I went into the bedroom with my water and stood beside David. He hardly knew I was there. “When Kissin’s seventy years old, they’ll start giving him decent reviews.”
“I’ve printed out a whole series of Nardigger’s pieces, starting in 1990. I’m going to send them to The Listener so they can see just what kind of viper they’ve got working for them.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m not so sure you should do that.”
He looked up from the screen. There were splotches of color on his cheeks and his eyes were open too wide. “You used to be supportive, Bess.” Then he jumped up so fast he almost knocked me over. I instinctively put my arms over my stomach. “Don’t you think it’s about time the musicians repossessed some power from these jealous no-talents?” he said, flipping through piles of printouts. “They can still wreck a career with one bad review.”
I took his hand and led him to the living room couch. The only light was from the city outside the windows. I hoped the darkness would calm him down a little.
“We need to talk,” I said.
David’s body was coiled in the corner of the couch, ready to spring. “All right. Fine.” But he glanced at his watch, not that he could even see the dial.
“I’ve just been talking with Mr. Balaboo,” I said.
“What’s wrong? Didn’t the Charleston concert come through?”
“We’re worried about you.”
He was silent, but his eyes glittered at me in the half-light.
“You’re not well,” I said. “This thing with Nardigger … it’s …”
He didn’t let me finish, just hopped up again and started walking back and forth in front of the window. “You think it’s unhealthy to fight back? That’s the trouble with artists. We’re taught to be passive, let the lawyers take care of us, and the agents and the managers, and never do anything for ourselves. That’s healthy? No, Bess. For the first time, I’m standing up for myself and for the rest of us who’ve been at the mercy of the Nardiggers of this world.”
“Please sit down, David,” I said, “and don’t get up until I’ve finished. I can’t talk to you while you’re bouncing around like this.”
He sat, but he kept checking his watch. “Do you have an appointment?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, Bess. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just that there’s so much to do.”
“I want you to see someone about medication,” I said.
He stared at me.
“It’s one or the other. Either you’re way too excited or you’re in a black mood,” I went on.
“Taking care of Nardigger will help that.”
I shook my head. “Just see someone. Mr. Balaboo gave me a name.”
But David leapt up again and turned on me in a fury. “You Americans, forever going to psychiatrists and popping pills. It’s not the answer to everything. I tried medication and it made me into a lunatic…”
I stayed put, hoping that if I was calm I could get him to quiet down. “That was years ago. There are a lot more options now, tons more choices. They’ll just make you normal again.”
That did it. “Normal! What’s normal? Because I give a damn about injustice I’m a crazy man? I’m a creative personality, that’s all. Look at Schumann. If he were alive today, they’d label him bipolar and pump him with Prozac until he couldn’t write another note.”
“Oh, David.” Then I really did start to cry.
He stopped shouting and came to stand in front of me. “It’s been a stressful period, I admit that. Maybe I’m a little irrational sometimes, but Bess, we’re at a crucial point in our careers. We could become respected fixtures in the musical world, or we could disappear forever. We have to prove that we’ve got staying power. I feel responsible for that. I’m willing to work hard for that.”
“David, I’m pregnant.” It just fell out of me. It was the last thing I meant to say and probably the worst possible time to say it. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. I covered my face with my hands to keep from seeing what his eyes did with the news. Finally, after a long silence, I forced myself to look up at him. Even in the dark, I could see that his cheeks were wet. He dropped to his knees in front of me.
“Oh, Bess,” he said.
He wrapped his arms around me and laid his cheek against my belly. “Oh, Bess,” he said again. I can’t tell you what it meant to feel him hold me that way again. All those lonely weeks seemed to melt away and I didn’t want to move a muscle. Just let us stay like this for hours and days and months until the baby comes, and I knew I sounded like Pauline but I sent a silent thank-you to my little girl for bringing the man I loved back to me at last.
Chapter Fifteen
The next day, David seemed almost to forget that we had a baby coming. Every now and then, I would catch him looking at my belly with this puzzled look on his face. But we were so crazed in those days, recording in the studio, rehearsing and performing. It was easier to just keep my head down and shut up. I was preoccupied anyway with complete adoration of my baby. Angie asked me if I was going to have an amniocentesis, but it wasn’t an issue for me. Even if this child had the chromosomes of a warthog, I wanted her. I was in love with her. I never felt lonely. I didn’t even miss sex anymore. And if David was continuing his obsessive campaign to mess up Nardigger, he waged it when I wasn’t around.
Then we were invited to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington. I suppose it should have been the highlight of my career. First
of all, I’d never been in Washington, D.C. in my life. There’d been a tour in high school which I told my parents I signed up for. While my class headed south on the Jersey Turnpike, I was in a Ford pickup on my way to Albany, never mind why. So here was my chance to check out the sights, take a tour of the White House, see the Lincoln Memorial. Instead, all I wanted to do was shop for maternity clothes, which is what I did as soon as we were finished rehearsing. How strange that just a few weeks before, I was pestering David to hang out with me whenever we had a free second, hoping I could light a fire under him. He did ask me where I was going. When I told him shopping, he looked a little surprised, that’s all.
What I remember most about that concert was red. Red all around, like the whole place was the inside of a gigantic raw heart. Mine and David’s and the baby’s and everybody’s who was in pain and feeling too much. I even wore a red dress. We performed mostly the same program that we did in London with the addition of a reverie composed especially for us by the American contemporary Lorna Wiggins. It all went along just fine until the Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, which we’d played, oh, maybe a few thousand times, give or take. We’d got to the crescendo at measure 209 when David lost it. He suddenly seemed to be playing some other music entirely. He stared at me like he’d just had the shock of his life. If you suddenly got pushed onto the subway tracks, that’s how you’d look, with a face screaming Help me!
I didn’t know what to do. I slowed down, which confused the instruments even more. There was a crazy jumble of sounds. I finally put my hands in my lap, at which point David got up, closed the lid to his keyboard, and left the stage.
I remember stumbling backstage, and somebody telling me that I had to go out there and entertain all those people who’d paid good money to come hear us, that there were senators and all kinds of important people there. I think I told that person that even if the Holy Ghost Himself was in the front row, I was out of there, excuse me very much.
Holding my belly all the way, I got back to the hotel suite by telling the cabdriver there was a twenty in it for him if he made it in seven minutes. David was tossing his stuff in his suitcase. I grabbed him and held on tight. He fought me for a minute but then he just went limp in my arms and cried and cried. My beautiful man with all that genius and talent in such despair and he couldn’t even tell me why. All he kept saying was, “It’s all coming apart. It’s coming apart.”
I made him sit on the couch and take a sip of vodka, which calmed him a little. Then I turned off the phone, which had already started ringing nonstop, wrapped a blanket around him, and held on. He was cold, icy.
“What can I do, David?” I asked him.
He just shook his head.
“Do you understand how much I love you?”
He nodded.
“We can fix this,” I said.
He didn’t answer. I looked into his eyes and felt like I was falling down a well into a dark place.
“I’d like to call a doctor,” I said.
He shook his head.
“Please, David.” I forced myself not to get worked up, but I was pretty scared.
“No. Just stay here.”
So I lay there on the couch with him until eventually we both fell asleep.
When I woke up about two A.M., he was on the cell phone pacing back and forth. “Then get me a charter,” he said. “We can be in Milan in a few hours. You’ll book us something for next week. They’ll be happy, you know they will. They loved us in Milan.”
I was wearing a mashed version of my red gown. I wrapped the blanket around me and went over to him.
“What’s going on?”
David put his hand over the mouthpiece. “I’m trying to explain to Balaboo that we have to go back to Europe right away. It’s the only way to erase what happened onstage tonight.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Here, you tell him,” David said. “Tell him to hire us a private jet.”
“Mr. Balaboo?” I said.
“He’s off the charts, Bess,” Mr. Balaboo’s voice said. “He needs a hospital.”
“What’s this about planes?”
“He says everything was wonderful in Milan and that you have to go back tonight. See if you can keep him quiet until I can get the doctor there. It took me a while to get a referral from his old psychiatrist in New York, but we should make it within the hour.”
“Please.” I hung up. Thank God. Mr. Balaboo was staying right in the same hotel, which made me feel a little less panicked.
“What?” David said.
“He’s seeing what he can do. It’s not that easy at two A.M., but you know Balaboo. He’s resourceful.” I felt awful sort of lying to him, but I had no idea what to do. I just wanted him to calm down. “Sit with me on the couch for a minute while we wait, okay?”
He sat. I could see he was exhausting himself, as if he was trying to jump out of his own skin. I was afraid to talk, afraid that whatever I said would only agitate him more, so I sat beside him and massaged his fingers the way he had done for me so many times. He actually began to doze off again, and while he slept I looked at his face and remembered back to when we first met, how he’d taken me for tea at that little place on the West Side near Juilliard, how he showed up in Rocky Beach in his tuxedo, how he set about turning me into a musician with the confidence to perform in the world’s most prestigious concert halls. How he had made me feel worthy of being loved and how he had given me the life that was now growing inside. There had been so many miracles. Couldn’t we just have one more?
David wouldn’t let Mr. Balaboo and the doctor take him away, but he agreed to stay in the hotel with me, until he felt better he said. So we did. He watched TV most of the time and when we talked, it was only about what we were going to eat (not much—he had no appetite) or the weather or the actors in the TV show. I learned very quickly that other subjects got him stirred up, including music, people in our lives, the past, the future, and hardest of all, the baby. He seemed to have forgotten that I was pregnant, and when I brought it up, he became almost wild.
“How could that happen? We didn’t plan it. How could anybody bring a child into this world, Bess? Besides, we aren’t even sleeping together.” And finally, “Are you sure it’s mine?” After that one, I had to excuse myself to go into the john. I cried into the bath towel so he wouldn’t hear me.
He was supposed to be taking medication, but I could never be sure he was really swallowing. He’d put the pills in his mouth and take a sip of water, but I had the feeling he was faking. I felt completely out of my depth. But he wouldn’t hear of going to a hospital and he couldn’t stand for me to be out of his sight. The things that sustained me were, (a) I would have done anything, anything, for him, and if that included living in this hotel for the rest of our lives, well, we’d adjust. And (b) the knowledge that I had a little dependent inside me kept me focused. I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart.
We were in that hotel suite with the gray carpet and raspberry curtains for three and a half weeks. Mr. Balaboo was a brick through it all, flying back and forth between New York and D.C. and giving me breaks to get outside for walks. One of the hardest things was not being near a piano, so Mr. Balaboo arranged to let me practice on the cocktail lounge baby grand, not a bad little Baldwin. We got to know the room service people intimately. I remembered the first time I ever stayed in a hotel, with my mother and sister when we went to a family wedding in Massachusetts. Next to sex, I thought it was about the most perfect experience life had to offer. A bed that somebody else made, a sink that somebody else cleaned, and sweet-smelling soap all wrapped up like a Christmas present. Well, let me tell you, after twenty-five days at the Washington Dorset, I got plenty sick of it.
The last night, instead of sleeping in his own bed, David crept into mine and put his arms around me. I automatically curled into him, just like the old days, and soon we were making love again. It wasn’t t
he same, partly because we were silent and we’d always been pretty talkative, telling each other what felt good and what we wanted. But that night I was afraid to say anything that might put him off or get him upset. Besides, David seemed to be in a dreamy state, like maybe he wasn’t even totally awake. We both came at the same time like we were riding a gentle wave. He whispered that he loved me and then we fell asleep. It seemed like a gift.
But now I come to the really hard time. It’s the part of my life that lives in a dark room where I try to keep the door shut tight. Every time I open it a crack, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain shrieks out, music brought to you straight from hell. But so many idiotic stupid hurtful things have been said. It’s important to me that the truth be told and I’m the only one who can tell it—never mind the media gossips who seem to think they were standing in my panty hose through the whole thing.
Chapter Sixteen
The cramps woke me first thing in the morning. I snuck out of bed so I wouldn’t wake David and headed for the bathroom. As soon as I stood up, about a gallon of water poured out of me. I got a bath towel, stuffed it between my legs, and called Mr. Balaboo. I’m not sure Mr. Balaboo ever really sleeps. He answered the phone at six A.M. like it was four in the afternoon.
“What’s happened?”
“I need a doctor,” I said.
“He’s worse?”
“It’s for me. I’m pregnant and there’s something wrong.”
There was silence. Then, in the kindest voice, “Bess-dahlink. How far along?”
“I’m in the second trimester. I think my water broke.”
“Call an ambulance and get them to take you to St. Francis’ Hospital.”
“I don’t want anyone to know.” The cramps were getting worse. I could feel myself leaking something that was warm and thick.
“Use the name Roberta Schuman. I’ll alert the hotel manager, and then I’ll meet you in the emergency room. Don’t let them touch you until I get there.”
