by Sally Mandel
The last few times he’d come to Washington, Mr. Balaboo had stayed with a friend in Georgetown. The hotel life was getting to him, too. Poor Mr. Balaboo. First David, then me. I left a note on my pillow for David, threw a couple of things into a shopping bag, and waited in the living room of our suite for the ambulance. I could hear it coming, the high whine that sounded like a child crying. I made the medical team be quiet on account of David. I could see that they recognized me, but they didn’t make a fuss and got me out of there in no time.
Mr. Balaboo was waiting at Emergency with a sleepy-looking woman who turned out to be Dr. Berke, the head of OB-GYN at St. Francis’. She reminded me of Eleanor Roosevelt, which was reassuring.
Look, the details aren’t important. They tried hard to save my pregnancy. Everyone was incredibly kind. It didn’t become news until much later that I had ever been pregnant. The press knew something had happened, but since they couldn’t get the true scoop, they used their imagination: I’d OD’d on painkillers, I’d had a lumpectomy, I had a severe anxiety attack—one paper even said David had beaten me up, but I sued the bastards and made them pay for that fairy tale.
But I lost the baby. It was a girl. She would be four years old this month. I still think about her a lot. For a while, I didn’t imagine I’d ever get over it. But of course you do, more or less, even if you don’t forget your whole life long.
They kept me in the hospital for a week, mainly because Mr. Balaboo thought I needed a rest. I would wake up every day, look out at the gray sky, and wish I could go back to sleep so I wouldn’t have to feel anything. Mr. Balaboo brought me CDs for my Discman, which was a help as long as I didn’t listen to Chopin or Bach. Something about those two twisted my insides. And then one morning he showed up with the best present—David. I had just finished not eating my breakfast and was lying there trying to decide if I would (a) stare out the window, or (b) stare at the TV with no sound on. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door open and there he was, shiny and clean-shaven and dressed in a V-necked sweater and jeans. Whoever made up that saying “a sight for sore eyes” knew what they were talking about. Mr. Balaboo gave me a little wave from behind David’s shoulder.
“I’ll be out here,” he said, and closed the door.
David came over to the bed and sat down next to me. He reached out and stroked my hair. “My poor Bess,” he said.
“I lost our baby,” I said.
“Is there any pain?”
I couldn’t answer that one, just put my hand on my heart to tell him, Yes, here.
He took my hand. “They’re going to let you out tomorrow,” he said. “Would you like to go back to New York?”
“David, do you think we did it? By making love. Do you think we killed our baby?”
“The doctor says no.”
“You asked, too?”
He nodded. “She told me that people ordinarily have intercourse straight through. I don’t want you to think about that anymore. I want you to think of the future now.”
Tall order, I was thinking. But there he was, looking like his old self, his body relaxed and his face calm.
“You seem well,” I said.
“I’m sorry for what I put you through,” he said.
“You couldn’t help it, David.”
I saw his eyes go dark for a second, like he was revisiting that terrible place, but then he blinked and it was gone. “Let’s go home,” he said. “We’ll get back to the music if you’re up to it. Can you do that, Bess?”
“If you’re there, I can do anything,” I said.
He leaned over and kissed me. I felt like he’d just reached into my chest, taken my broken heart in his hands, and put it back together again.
I was better when we first got back to New York—except for a daily crying jag, which usually hit me when I first woke up and remembered that I was no longer pregnant. David and I were sleeping in his bed, but although he was affectionate, there was no sex. I didn’t care. I was having enough trouble getting a grip without unleashing that part of me. Besides, my hormones were all screwed up from the miscarriage. I wasn’t even interested.
Mr. Balaboo wouldn’t let David schedule any concerts, which I thought was wise given his recent meltdown. What we did was work every day on new music. It was therapeutic for both of us. David started feeling confident again. Without consulting Mr. Balaboo, he volunteered us for a benefit concert at Alice Tully Hall.
I was nervous about it, and so was Mr. Balaboo.
“After you fall from the log, you must get right back on,” David told me from across the pianos.
“I think you mean horse,” I said.
“Of course you can forget how to ride if you don’t practice.”
“Okay, David,” I said, “we’ll do the concert. Just don’t let yourself get worked up.”
“I’ll be perfectly fine,” he promised. “If I give you any trouble, put a little Valium in my toothpaste.”
His sense of humor had begun to return. Well, not exactly his sense of humor; but somebody’s. I took it as a good sign. But the stronger David got, the shakier I became. I had lost a lot of weight and I was sad all the time. Not just about the baby, but about David and how things had changed between us. It was not my idea of a complete relationship, sleeping in the same room and never fucking even if I didn’t feel like it. Just the fact that I didn’t feel like it was depressing in itself.
At least the concert went off all right except I thought David was too hyper afterward. He was talking to the backstage fans in choppy little sentences and his eyes looked haunted. My old friend Mrs. Edelmeyer kept shooting him funny looks. After all, she’d been watching him for years and was as much a Montagnier expert as anyone.
“How’s David?” she asked me, taking liberties as usual.
“Fine, why?”
“He’s acting peculiar,” she said. “You sure he’s all right? We have to keep an eye on him since the Washington fiasco.”
Enough already, I thought. “Will we see you at the piano series next fall?” I asked sweetly. She wasn’t that thick, just wished me well and moved along. But her observation had made me nervous. I saw David talking to Patty Kopec, a friend of Itzhak Perlman’s. Patty’s head cranked around to me with a look that said, Whassup with him? I wanted to tell her how David had gone someplace else now and I couldn’t get him back. How I missed him and our baby.
I knew what the rest of the evening would be like. I’d haul David away from the crowd so he didn’t get too agitated. Then we’d go straight back to the apartment, wash up, climb into our opposite sides of the bed, and shout good night across the vast desert of white linen. I just couldn’t face it. When Jake, Pauline, and Angie showed up, I asked them if I could please take them for a drink someplace.
They gave each other a group Uh oh look.
“Just for a nightcap,” I said. “I need a break from the scene.”
Yeah, I know, everybody is hearing drumrolls. The famous episode. Look, at least I didn’t trash a hotel room like Johnny Depp—but he probably didn’t do it anyway. If there’s one lesson to be learned, it’s that you can’t believe what you read.
We went over to Eighth Avenue to a little bar I like called Monkeyshines. Corny name, but maybe that’s why the snooty types stay away. Walking over, Jake talked about the wildlife preserve. He’d obviously found his life’s work, being near the water and feeling like he was making a difference.
“I feel guilty about spending so much time out at Ben’s,” Angie said. “The apartment goes empty for days, whenever I don’t have class. He’s throwing money away.”
“Ben’s paying for two places?” Pauline asked. Even after all these years, she still hadn’t gotten the hang of Angie’s conversation.
“David’s got it to throw away,” I said. But I didn’t want to talk about him. I felt uncomfortable having left him, even though Mr. Balaboo said he’d make sure David didn’t hop on any planes for Ita
ly or anything.
The bar was overflowing with people, which suited me just fine. They looked like locals—artists, unemployed actors, off-duty cops, a real assortment. We found a table for two in a back corner and jammed ourselves in tight. I ordered us a round. Then I ordered another. I socked the stuff back in a big hurry and waved to the waiter.
“You sure you want another, Stallone?” Jake asked me.
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
“Bess, you’re upset,” Pauline said.
“You got that right,” I said.
“Let’s take her home,” Angie told Jake.
“I don’t think so,” I said. My vodka arrived and down it went, smooth as an oil slick. I tapped the guy at the next table. “I haven’t felt this good in months,” I explained to him.
“Aren’t you Bess Stallone?” he asked. He had a ring through his eyebrow.
“That looks great. I want one of those.” I turned to Jake. “Got your Swiss Army knife?” He always had one in his pocket. “Let’s give me one like this gentleman here.” I took the hoop out of my ear, gold with a diamond in it. David had bought the pair for me in Rome. “Use this.”
But my neighbor had passed the word around and the next thing I knew, a piano was produced from behind a crowd that had been using it to lean on.
“Come on, Bess, play something!”
“Sure!” I shouted. “Great thinking! Where’s that vodka?”
So the next thing, I was sitting at that old upright piano banging away all the old favorites—Billy Joel, Madonna, the Beatles, the Stones. “Reminds me of Amadoofus!” I yelled to my group.
“How about some Beethoven?” somebody called out.
“In a minute,” I said. It was hotter than hell in there, especially in my long gown from the performance. Plus I was plenty drunk by then. “Gotta lighten the load,” I said, and started to strip. The crowd was screaming, “Go, Bess!” I got down to my underwear and when I was comfortable began playing a semi-rock ’n’ roll version of the Pathétique Sonata. It works pretty well with a boogie beat, or at least it seemed that way in my trashed state. Roll over, Beethoven. And over and over.
Anyhow, I knew Jake was trying to get at me through the crowd. He made it finally, but not until a lot of flashbulbs went off.
Well, you’ve probably seen the photos. They were everywhere including on the Internet, with cool captions like Bare Bess Flies Solo, and How to Misbehave without Dave. I deserved them all. Furthermore, I never found that earring.
When I woke up with the beat from Ravel’s Bolero splitting my head, David was standing over me shaking the Daily News in my face.
“Get up,” he said. I hardly recognized that cold voice.
“No,” I said. “I don’t feel so hot.”
He reached down and yanked the covers off me. “Put on a robe,” he said.
I felt like he’d dumped ice water on me. I did as he said and followed him into the kitchen.
“How could you do this, Bess?” he said. “All these months building a career for us, and you’ve gone and spoiled it in one idiotic night.”
“I was just letting off steam. It was so damn hot in there.” I peered at the photo. There were some advantages to my recent lack of appetite—at least my tits weren’t hogging the picture.
“Listen,” David ordered me. “‘Bess Stallone, half of the famous piano duo with David Montagnier treated a West Side bar to a rollicking ragtime rendition of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”’”
“It was the Pathetique,” I said.
“How do you expect that we’ll ever be taken seriously now?” I saw that he couldn’t have cared less if I’d peeled off the last layer and danced naked on top of the piano. It was the music he was freaked about.
“It’s hard enough in this country,” he said, “trying to convince the musical establishment that a two-piano team has something important to offer. You’ve turned us into a joke.”
He ripped the photo into shreds and spun around to face the window like I was too repulsive to even look at.
“I’m sorry, David,” I said. “I was feeling bad. I just needed something … something fun. I needed to laugh.”
He turned and spit his words at me like they were poisonous darts flying out of his mouth. “You with your needs. Music requires sacrifice. Did you expect an ordinary life? We tried that and look where it got us. We got so obsessed with one another that we completely lost our focus.”
“It was never ordinary,” I said.
But he didn’t hear me. He just kept shooting holes in me. “It’s not possible to get away with it, Bess. The world notices. And then you went and got pregnant, for Christ’s sake! And here I was thinking now that you’ve miscarried, we’d have a chance to recover the ground we lost.”
“You were happy I lost our baby?”
“I was ecstatic,” he said.
I was on him, fists pounding at his chest. He grabbed my hands, his face like chalk, his eyes sick and dark. “We were so close to perfect,” he said. “We were better than Vronsky and Babin, better than any of them. We could have made a contribution.” He held my hands up in front of my face. “These fingers are God’s instruments! You dragged them through shit!” He squeezed them hard, twisting.
“You’re hurting me. David, stop.”
But he only tightened his grip. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. Suddenly David started to shake. He dropped my hands and held his own up beside his face as if he didn’t trust what they would do. I’ve never seen anyone tremble all over like that, so that it was visible to the naked eye.
“David.” I didn’t dare touch him.
He didn’t say another word, just gave me one more look with some tortured stranger’s eyes and left the apartment. I never saw him again.
Chapter Seventeen
It took me a while to pull myself together. I don’t know how long I sat on the floor where my legs had crumpled under me. Then my hands started to throb real bad. I didn’t want to look, but I made myself and saw that they were already starting to swell. I got up, filled the kitchen sink with water, dumped in all the ice cubes from the freezer, and started soaking my fingers. I must have been thinking something, but I don’t know what it was. I don’t even know if I was feeling anything, except maybe shock. It was hard to stand there by the sink with my knees all wobbly. I finally had to drag a chair over because my legs just wouldn’t hold me up.
Gradually, my head began to clear. It was just a really bad fight, I told myself. We’d get past it after a while. We’d lost a child. We’d lost our relationship, or maybe misplaced it. We were each trying to find our way through our own personal crises. On top of that, the concert life takes a tremendous toll on performers. Look at that two-piano pair from Belgium—nobody knew to this day what became of them. They simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Look at Moskvy and Nordstrom, Terese, wherever she was, and poor David Helfgott. What made us think we’d get off scot-free?
By then my hands had turned into blue lumps. I took them out of the water, wrapped them in towels, and stood staring out the window. The smell of lemon hung in the air. I thought about David’s face and what I saw in it before he left—the rage, yeah, but also the terror and despair. I phoned Mr. Balaboo, which was quite a trick. I had to use my pinky.
Then we waited. Hours dragged by without a word from David. It got dark, and a cold November rain started falling. We paged Phillip, but he hadn’t heard anything. Nobody had. At midnight, Mr. Balaboo called the police. Ordinarily, they make you wait longer before they consider somebody missing, but given David’s prominence and what Mr. Balaboo called his “fragility,” the cops went into action. We insisted on complete secrecy, and got it, at least for those two terrible days.
They checked out the hospitals, the hotels, the bus terminals, the airports, and train stations. Finally, first thing the following morning, they tracked him to a twenty-four-hour rental-car office in upper Manha
ttan. He’d taken out a four-wheel drive after midnight and asked for a map of New Jersey and points south. I didn’t believe a word of it.
“He went north,” I said. “Get Phillip.”
“You can’t go anywhere, Bess-dahlink,” Mr. Balaboo said. For the first time in history, the part in his hair was uneven. It looked like jagged lightning across the top of his head. “You should be in the hospital.”
I’d refused to go for X rays if it meant leaving the place that tied me to David, even if the thread was stretched to the snapping point. “I’ll pack my hands in ice and wrap them in plastic bags. We’ve got a cooler: Come on.”
I was wild to get out of there and follow David north to the mountain house. I knew he was there. The police got in touch with their buddies upstate. One cop car followed along behind us at a discreet distance.
Mr. Balaboo kept trying to get me to wear my seat belt, but then I couldn’t rock back and forth. I felt if I didn’t move, I’d go out of my mind. The one thing I did do was keep on popping the Advil Mr. Balaboo said I had to swallow to reduce the swelling. As it was, my fingers felt like they’d just been unloaded from the banana boat.
It was noon by the time we got to the road that led back to David’s house. I could see tire tracks in the mud.
“It could just be the police,” Mr. Balaboo said. “They must have gone up there right away.”
I didn’t say anything, just kept rocking as Phillip took us up the long drive. It had been raining there, too, and ice caked the edge of the track. There were patches of snow back in the woods. A couple of police cars were parked in front of the house but no sign of an SUV. I couldn’t get out of the car. I started crying.
“I’ll go on in, shall I, honey?” Mr. Balaboo said. “You just stay here and rest a while.”
“Oh, God,” I said. I swear the only thing that kept me from going nuts was the back of Phillip’s head. I stared at it and for some reason it comforted me.
They were in there for what seemed like a long time. When Mr. Balaboo came out, he was holding an envelope, just a plain number 10. He got in the car and handed it to me. It had my name on it in pencil in David’s handwriting.
