“I’ll be going, then.” The attorney lifts her barely touched glass and drains the whiskey like a gunslinger in a Western. She slams the glass down on the table and glares at her client.
“I should hate you for making me do this.”
“But you don’t. Goodbye, Angela.” He reaches for her hand and kisses it.
“Go well, old man.”
It’s an odd way to say goodbye, but Phee lets it pass, not glancing away from her grandfather as the woman leaves.
“Why is she mad?”
“Because of what you signed.”
“Why would that make her mad?”
“She thinks I have deceived and tricked you.”
“And have you?”
He sighs. “Drink your whiskey, Phee. It was a good year.”
Chapter Two
PHEE
2018, Seattle
Later, Phee will remember the shooting star framed perfectly in her bedroom window last night, the salt she’d spilled at dinner, the full moon that woke her at the witching hour. But in this moment, she has forgotten all about them. Superstitions are not permitted in her mother’s comfortable kitchen, especially with cookies in the oven and a glass of milk in front of her on the table.
“Not oatmeal for the fund-raiser,” Phee says, even as she lifts another cookie from the plate, warm and buttery, and stuffs half of it into her mouth. Crumbs tumble into her lap, and her huge black dog, Celestine, licks them up at once, leaving a pool of slobber soaking into her jeans. “Bake-sale people never buy oatmeal.”
“You seem to have no problem with them,” her mother says. “And have you still not learned manners?”
“Incorrigible, that’s me.” Phee grins, talking around a mouthful of cookie. “Born in a barn and all that.” Nearly forty years of lecturing, and you’d think her mother would get the message by now that it’s pointless, but Bridgette is not the sort of woman to be easily deterred.
“Make chocolate chip for the sale,” Phee advises. “And those meringue things. Nobody really wants to eat raisins.”
“Raisins are healthy.” Bridgette slaps Phee’s hand as she reaches for another cookie. “In moderation. I have no idea how you stay so thin.”
“Hard work.” Phee stretches, indolent as a cat, then tucks both legs up in the chair beneath her. “Physical labor.”
Her mother makes a hmph sound under her breath, and Phee takes the hint. Push too far, and she’ll end up doing dishes and scrubbing floors for the rest of the afternoon. She did work hard last week. Her eyes are tired. The muscles in her neck and shoulders are tight and her feet ache. The last thing in the world she wants to do is spend her remaining free hours suffering retribution from a fiery Irish temper pushed too far.
Her phone chirps and she ignores it. Probably a text message complaining about one of the recently repaired instruments. If she doesn’t know, if she doesn’t look, then she can’t be responsible. She’s been known to fix things at one in the morning for an overwrought violinist whose instrument is suffering. Obsessive beings, musicians, the whole lot of them.
Phee doesn’t hold this against them. She is every bit as bad when it comes to the instruments in her care.
Her phone chirps again.
“Can you hush that thing?”
Bridgette disapproves of cell phones in general and Phee’s in particular. “When I was young,” she says, “we had freedom. Not at everybody’s beck and call every minute of every day.”
“When you were young, unicorns still walked the earth.”
“Respect, young lady.” Bridgette raps Phee’s knuckles with the wooden spoon, bits of dough spattering onto the countertop, and both of them break into laughter.
“Why, thank you very much,” Phee says, licking the buttery, sugary sweetness off her fingers before Celestine can beat her to it.
“You’ll get salmonella. For the love of God, Phee, please stop that noise.”
Phee rubs her hands on her jeans and picks up the offending phone. Not a text message at all. An alert blinks, baleful and ominous.
She remembers, then, the way the shooting star fell across her line of vision, right to left. The moon. The salt. What’s waiting for her is infinitely worse than an unhappy musician.
“Oh, damn it all to hell and back again.”
“What is it?”
“Heredity.”
Bridgette’s sigh could blow out a candle from fifty feet away. “Still that load of blarney from your grandfather? He was a crazy old man, Phee. Let it go.”
Maybe not so crazy as all that, Phee thinks but doesn’t say. She’s had this argument with both of her parents so many times she knows the script by heart, forward and backward and upside down.
“I promised him.”
“And he’s dead. I’m certain sure he doesn’t care about those old instruments anymore.”
Phee makes a noncommittal sound, and Bridgette flings up her hands. “There is no curse, Ophelia MacPhee.”
When Phee doesn’t answer, her mother sighs again, then asks in a world-weary tone, “Which one is it?”
“The cello.”
Phee scans the news article that triggered her app. A chill crawls up her spine, out of place in the heat of the kitchen.
“Don’t tell me. A dark robed figure carrying a scythe was seen walking down the street where the cello resides.”
“Mom, don’t,” Phee says. “It’s truly horrible.”
“I’m listening.”
Underneath her bluster, Bridgette is the most kindhearted of women, and Phee needs a little bit of kindness right now.
“The girl who plays the cello—Allie—her mother and brother were both killed in a car crash.”
Bridgette freezes in the act of dropping cookie dough onto a baking sheet. “Oh, the poor child. Has she a father?”
Oh, indeed she has a father, Phee thinks, or had one, anyway. Braden Healey, once a brilliant cellist, abandoned both his cello and his daughter and vanished off Phee’s radar almost eleven years ago. She dreams about him at night and runs internet searches for him by day. Always, at the back of her consciousness, a nagging little worry eats away at her.
Something bad is going to happen.
Has happened.
She shivers. The brightly lit kitchen darkens, and she glances up to the window, expecting storm clouds, surprised by a serene blue sky.
“Phee,” her mother says, calling her back to the present. “Tragic and terrible, but an accident has nothing to do with you and certainly nothing to do with the cello.”
“I have to go.” Phee clambers to her feet, stretching out the kinks in her back, waiting for sensation to return to her right foot, which is all pins and needles from being sat on. Celestine licks her hand, and she steadies herself against his solid bulk.
“Tell me you’re not going to dash over to the house of the bereaved and check on an instrument,” Bridgette demands.
“Of course I’m not.”
It’s a shading of the truth, not an outright lie. Phee learned as a very small child that her mother can smell lies, literally, with a little wrinkle of her freckled nose, a flaring of her nostrils. Bridgette has the second sight, although she’ll deny it until the cows come home.
Phee won’t go to the house now; she’ll go Sunday, after the funeral. Take some flowers for Allie, offer condolences, use the opportunity to check in on the cello in person and ask about Braden. She’s done repairs on the cello a time or two, so she can make a case for her appearance.
For now, she has other things she needs to do.
“Bye, Mom.” She drops a kiss on Bridgette’s cheek and grabs up a handful of cookies. “Remember what I said about the oatmeal and raisin.”
“Because you want them for yourself, greedy girl.”
Phee laughs. Under the influence of Bridgette and oatmeal cookies, it’s nearly impossible to feel tragic or believe in mysterious forces at work.
Back at her little apartment above the luthier shop she
inherited from her grandfather, it’s a different story. Sometimes, Phee wonders if his ghost is haunting her. Little noises at night, bangs, and clatters. The random sound of strings from the shop below. On bright, sunshiny days, or even at night when the lights are on, she doesn’t believe in hauntings or curses. But in the midnight dark, or when something horrible has happened to the people connected to one of her instruments, she finds herself sucked into her grandfather’s mystique.
Celestine pokes her with a cold, wet nose, insisting that he is very much real and would like to be fed, thank you very much, so she gets him his dinner and pulls out celery and carrot sticks for herself as a compensation for too many cookies but also because crunching carrots is a fantastic deterrent to believing in the old stories.
She was eighteen the night Granddad laid the obligation on her to guard a group of instruments. “The specials,” he called them. She keeps the book he gave her that night under lock and key, as she swore to do. His version of that was an antique safe. Hers is a beautiful cedar chest that also holds her mother’s wedding dress; her grandmother’s china; the first violin built by her own clumsy, inexperienced hands; and other treasures she has packed away over the years.
She retrieves the key from an old cookie tin full of salt that she stores on the top shelf of a kitchen cabinet, even though she sees no point in it. If some random thief were to break into the chest, pick the lock or splinter the wood with an axe, the old account book would hold no value for him.
Unwrapping the book from the towel in which she swathes it as one more level of concealment, she settles on the floor for what has become an evening ritual. Celestine, done with dinner, oomphs down beside her and rests his big head on her lap.
Thus fortified, Phee opens the first page, suppressing a sneeze as the familiar smell of dust and dry rot irritates her nostrils.
The first page looks as ordinary as her mother’s kitchen, apart from its age. Spidery handwriting, the ink faded to brown, reads:
Client Pledges.
Some pledge. More like “Deals with the Devil,” Phee thinks. The entries should be written in blood. The first is dated 1 June 1822, in the same handwriting as the header.
Thomas McCullough, violin, Derry, Ireland. A check mark after his name means that Mr. Thomas McCullough of Derry, Ireland, is dead, his contract with the violin ended.
She turns the brittle pages with care, feeling the weight of all of the lives marked by this book. The last seven names, on the very last page, are all in her grandfather’s handwriting, but their names are as familiar to her as her own. She tracks their lives on a daily basis, watching for signs of trouble on Google and even the dark web. She’s set up an app to trawl the internet and give her early-warning alerts, the same app that notified her of the upcoming funeral.
There is a check mark next to one of these names, the only one Phee has added so far. She’s made it red and flamboyant to mark that account as done.
Marilyn Browning, violin, Kansas City, 3 May 1963.
“May you rest in peace,” Phee whispers, tracing lightly over the name. The violin sits on a stand here in her apartment, and Phee plays it herself, these days. She’s not prepared to sell it to somebody else.
Of the remaining names, five are violinists. The sixth is, or was, a cellist. The entry might as well be permanently burned into her retinas.
Braden Healey, cello, Seattle, 5 January 1990.
This man-and-cello pairing, the very last of the accounts in this book, has caused her more trouble than any of the others. Braden broke the terms of his contract and went AWOL about eleven years ago, leaving the cello behind.
In the wake of the tragedy that has befallen his family, though, she asks herself if she has really done everything she could.
She could have searched harder. Pressured Braden’s wife. Hired a private investigator. When the first accident happened, the one that destroyed the sensation in his hands, she grieved over him, went soft. Who was she to insist that he continue to play when clearly that ability had been stolen from him?
The cello was in good hands. His daughter made a fine surrogate. Phee persuaded herself that the circumstances were exceptional and it was best to leave everything alone. For almost eleven years nothing has gone wrong, and she’d almost stopped worrying about the curse.
Now another tragedy has fallen, and even though so much time has passed without event, she has to admit that both she and Braden are in violation of sworn oaths to the same old man. According to that old man, when oaths are broken, the curse rolls in.
Phee is a product of twentieth-century America, raised on practicality, responsibility, and hard work. She’s far removed from her Irish-born grandfather and the mythology and magic that he cloaked himself in. And yet, most of the time, she believes.
Musicians, and those who make instruments, are a superstitious lot. The tale of blues musician Robert Johnson and his meeting with the devil at the crossroads is a classic, but he’s not the only one. Similar stories are told about legends of rock and roll like Ozzy Osbourne and Keith Richards. Much farther back in history, violinists Tartini and Paganini were both rumored to have received their unbelievable dexterity from a deal with the devil.
Even musicians who would be appalled at the idea of selling their souls have odd little rituals they perform before every concert, ceremonies of candles and foods and music that closely resemble incantations.
When Phee was eighteen, brand new to her inherited position as luthier, she’d scoffed at the idea of a curse. It was only the oath she’d sworn to her grandfather that held her to the duties, and she bore them relatively lightly.
Until an incident that turned her blood to ice. Coincidence, Bridgette still insists, when she’ll discuss it at all. Phee is not so sure. And now, a new tragedy is connected to Braden and the cello, and Phee isn’t taking further chances. One way or another, she has to get him playing again.
She wraps the ledger book back up in the towel and returns it to its place. In her desk drawer are six hanging file folders, one for each of her musicians, full of news stories and clippings. Braden’s is anemic, full of a whole lot of nothing, but still she reviews what little she has, just in case she has somehow missed something.
The announcement of his engagement to Lilian Hayes. A wedding photo. Last known address. And a Seattle Times story with the headline “Seattle Symphony Loses First Chair Cellist.” There is a grainy photo of Braden, younger, clear eyed, unscarred, and smiling. One hand rests on the cello, the other holds a bow. Phee knows the story by heart.
Braden Healey, first-chair cellist for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, announced his resignation this week following a tragedy that left his hands severely frostbitten and his brother-in-law dead.
Law enforcement reported that Mitchell Conroy, thirty-four, of Colville, Washington, died of a massive heart attack after falling through rotten lake ice at a remote hunting lodge near Colville. The damage to Healey’s hands occurred while attempting to rescue Conroy and administer CPR during subzero conditions.
“We are deeply saddened both for Mr. Healey and for this blow to the music world,” said Yolanda Blaisey, spokesperson for the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. “Braden was a stellar talent and is loved by all of us. We will miss him deeply.”
After that, there is nothing. Braden falls into complete internet oblivion. The orchestra hires a new cellist. There are no more recordings. No more stories. All she’d been able to elicit from his wife, Lilian, was a terse “He doesn’t live here anymore.”
Phee has in her possession CDs of all five of Braden’s recorded albums. She likes CDs better than online music, even though logic tells her it all sounds the same. Choosing the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, she presses play and moves to the bed, where she can lie down and stare at the ceiling while listening to the soul of a man who was unable to die at the same time as his music.
She finds herself weeping for him, for Allie, and for the abandoned cello with an intensity of g
rief that has hitherto passed her over, even at the time of her grandfather’s death.
Chapter Three
BRADEN
Braden Healey, unusually sober on a Thursday afternoon, looks around and wonders, not for the first time, how he managed to wash up here. The pile of dishes in the sink, the unmade bed, this dismal bachelor’s apartment shared with another washed-up loser, where the only thing to look forward to is a brand-new bottle of Jack and the delivery of yet another pizza.
He’s just hung up from the pizza order when the phone rings, loud and startling in the silence. Some question about the order, he thinks, and then he sees the caller ID.
Lilian.
Once his wife, still the mother of his children, Lilian hasn’t talked to him in years. She might as well be living in an alternate reality, even though he lives in a neighboring suburb.
His first, his very first, reaction is hope, because secretly he’s always waiting for the curse to be broken. Lilian will call, and all of the darkness of the last eleven years will be swept away. He’ll wake up to find himself home, with Lili and their kids and the cello, and she’ll have come to understand what music means and . . .
Reality reasserts its heavy-handed point of view.
Lilian is not going to forgive him. Ever. She already had religion in plenty, so it’s not that she’s suddenly found Jesus and is calling to share the love. Something must be wrong. One of the kids is sick, or she’s short on money.
God. Has he forgotten the child support? It’s the one element of human decency he still clings to. If he’s descended to the ranks of deadbeat dad, then it’s time to end his sorry life once and for all. He very nearly doesn’t answer the phone but picks up at the very last second before the call goes to voice mail.
“Lil? What’s wrong?”
The voice on the other end confuses him, pure brass where Lilian’s is reedy and low.
“Braden? Hello? Can you hear me?”
“Ten-four. Loud and clear.” He chases memories into shadowy corners looking for a name and a face to connect with the voice and finally finds it. The face is tight lipped, hard eyed, clearly disapproving of anything and everything Braden. Even back then, when he was the golden boy, beloved of the gods, and not a down-and-out bum trying to drink himself to death in a shit-hole apartment.
Everything You Are: A Novel Page 2
