Happy Any Day Now (25 page)

“Yeah, your mom told me you dumped him for the Park Avenue lawyer. The guy who broke your heart all those years ago, which told me, Ivy League or not, the lawyer was a dummy.” Irwin bestowed what could only be described as a fatherly smile on me. “Personally, I liked this Geoff guy up till today. He’s a real man’s man. As to whether he screwed you over, pardon the expression, I can tell you without a doubt he did not. No way.”

Had Irwin Raphael sworn on a stack of Bibles, I would have checked to see if they included Leviticus and all the Psalms, because he’d probably picked them up half price at a fire sale.

“Your mother told him that the upgrade on the apartment had your stamp of approval. She said you were playing house with the old boyfriend this weekend, which is why you couldn’t help us get the new place set up.”

“She said
what
?”

“Something about your being with the lawyer, which you were supposed to be, right? So she stretched the truth a little. No big deal. She told me if the Aussie knew the real setup, he’d never be able to keep it from you.”

Why, that old conniver. She was even slicker than Irwin. Credit, though—she understood what Geoff was and wasn’t capable of. She’d always been a good judge of character, with the notable exception of her ex-husband. If
I’d
ever had the touch, I’d lost it. Irretrievably.

“Oh God,” I said, eyeing a scattering of glass shards on the bedroom carpet. “I accused him of . . . He’ll never forgive me. I need to find him. Right now. I’ve got to apologize.” Even as I babbled my remorse, I knew Geoff couldn’t have any mercy left for me to throw myself on.

“Hey, calm down, sweetheart. This ain’t the end of the world. Besides, he’s long gone. Took off like a shot. Best settle it by phone, anyway. Seriously, I wouldn’t get too close to a guy with that kind of a temper. You could have fooled me. He never came off as a nutcase before.”

“He’s not a nutcase.
I’m
the nutcase.”

“Nah, you’re a Raphael. We’re all very stable. Look at your aunt Phyllis. Eighteen years of therapy and she still can’t drive the Long Island Expressway.” My father winked. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ll have housekeeping clean this up. See, that’s the beauty of living in a place like this. No cleaning. And now that I’ve taken over the cooking, it’s like your mother’s on vacation. She can play keno online all day long if she wants.”

“You cook?”

“Like a Frenchman, though I specialize in Mexican. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, kiddo. But you’ll learn.”

His arm found its way around my shoulders as we walked together out of apartment 6E. I let it be. I was grateful for the support. For a lapsed second or two, I let myself lean against him. It felt good, dammit.

I
’d deal with my criminal of a mother later. Geoff was top priority. I called him from my car. He didn’t pick up, so I left a tearful apology. Not enough, I decided. I needed to present myself at his high-rise so he could see for himself my sackcloth-and-ashes penitence. Halfway there, I decided against it. That was after calling Marti, who’d said, “Wow, you’ve just set some kind of record. Driving two men out of your life in the space of four hours. One goes quietly. One goes crazy. Good job, Judith. No, in my opinion it’s not the best idea, you going to Geoff’s flat. Why not give him a little time to cool off?”

When I got home, I found his message waiting. He could have phoned my cell, so I figured he wanted his response on record and he didn’t want to talk to me.

“Judith . . .” Deep sigh. “Please know I’m sorry about the mirror. I left a message for your mum that I’d pay for the repair, and I got hold of the building’s handyman. He’ll hang her pictures. Of course, I apologized to Grace and Irwin. As for us, if need be, we’ll hash this out at a later date. Right now you must put everything out of your mind except the audition tomorrow. The rest is secondary. Focus. Concentrate. You’ll do yourself proud.”

Typical Geoff. The Aussie with a heart as big as the outback. Sweet, even at the bitter end. And then, for whatever we’d had that we had no more, I buried my face in my hands and wept.

• • •

At eight o’clock the following morning my mother showed up at my front door, Tupperware bowl in hand. I could see my father at the wheel of the Jaguar idling in the driveway. Obviously he wasn’t coming in.

Just as well, because we might have lost whatever gains we’d accrued from our short but sweet bonding experience of the day before. I was cranky after a bad night. My mind racing with reruns of the day before and qualms about the day ahead, I’d grabbed only snatches of sleep, getting up twice to brush up the selections I’d be called upon to play.

I’d expected a longer period of adjustment to the new cello. Cellos have personalities, cellists have idiosyncrasies, and by some stroke of fortune the Goffrillers and the Raphaels fit well together from the start. I had to tweak my technique somewhat, and with me it didn’t give off the dense, luxurious sound Richard had coaxed from it but, if it was different, it was equally sublime. Most of the time. There were a few bumps I wished Geoff had been around to help me smooth out. More to the point, I wished Geoff had been around.

My need reminded me that I’d always taken his got-your-back presence lightly. But lightly was how he’d wanted to be taken, right? Lightly was what we’d both wanted, yes? My confusion had triggered a second cleansing cry earlier that morning. I’d watched the sun come up on my patio and sobbed into my coffee. Not a good way to start a demanding day.

My mother, examining my red-rimmed eyes with her worried ones, made no move to cross the threshold. “Not inside visit today. Only stop to bring breakfast. Just make on new stove.
Doenjang
. You love
doenjang
.” I did love the soup of soybean paste and greens. “Not heavy. No garlic, so you won’t stink at audition.” She pressed the container into my hands. “I know you, Judith. Big deal today, so you get nerves and don’t eat. But must eat. Give you strength to play best.”

“Thank you,
Uhm-mah
.”

What was the use? I could never be cross with her for long. I should have confronted her about the moving violation, but it had been Grace and me against the world for my entire childhood and since our last estrangement the thought of an angry distance between us had made me uneasy.

“Also, I got something from your
ap-ba
,” she said, using the Korean word for “dad.” This was the first time she’d ever called him that. “He want you to put in your pocket for audition.” She laid a chunk of bling on the lid of the soup container. “Money clip. Solid gold. For good luck. See horseshoe? Mean good luck.”

I’d take my luck where I could get it. I held the clip up and waved my thanks toward the Jag. Irwin hesitated for a moment, as if caught off guard by the gesture. Then he waved back. “Tell him I’ll carry it with me.” Oh, why not? What did the wave and a few words cost me? And the payoff was the delight on my mother’s face.

“Very nice. Sure, I tell him.” Her smile narrowed to reassuring. “Don’t worry about nothing, Judith. You do good. Lulu Cho say she have dream about you. You play cello and pig dance to music. Dream of pig very good luck in Korea.”

“So is dreaming of a big turd.”

“What is turd?”

“
Ddong.
”

“Ah-hah-hah.” Grace laughed uproariously, showing gold. “Yes, Korean think good to dream shit. True. My mother, grandmother used to say same. But funny, yes?” She swiped her eyes. “Listen, Lulu Cho very fine
mudang.
Never wrong. You believe. You win principal.”

I nodded. God knows, I was trying to make myself believe.

• • •

“I want you, I want you not.” Leaning against a wall of a toilet stall in the women’s dressing room late morning, I chatted with a hexagonal blue pill, twenty milligrams of Inderal balanced on the Mound of Mars, site of courage, on the palm of my hand. “Yes or no. Talk to me, baby.”

Recently I’d been getting it on with my confidence game. But minutes away from the showdown, my self-doubt had come flooding back.

Tucked in the bottom of my handbag was a full bottle of the meds I’d popped before my last symphony solo to conquer my performance anxiety. Now I stared at the little pill of salvation, weak with desire, murmuring, “Want you. Oh God, do I want you.”

My body was reeling from crashing weather fronts. A hot flash rolled across my chest. Rivulets of perspiration trickled from my forehead, threatening my eye makeup. My hands were ice.

A swallow of serenity was just what the doctor ordered, but I gagged on the idea. Above the flush of toilets, I could hear Richard’s disembodied voice making a last stand.

Drugs are appropriate when the anxiety is deep-seated and untreatable by any other means. That’s not so in your case. Don’t start what you don’t need. Goddamn it, Judith, I promise you—you’ve got what you need.

So playing his fabulous Goffriller mellowed by my tiny blue friend here would be a betrayal, wouldn’t it? I couldn’t dishonor Richard’s memory that way, could I?

And then there was Geoff, proxying for the dearly departed on the Just Say No ballot. When I’d mentioned to him in the synagogue parking lot after the funeral that I was thinking about calling on pharmaceutical assistance for the audition, he’d given me a stricken look.

“But why, Jude? You didn’t need it today and you won’t need it then. You just played that
Thaïs
piece as if it were a lament over the death of God himself, and you pulled that passion out on your own in front of all the celebs. Ach, you don’t get it, do you? You’ve broken the anxiety chokehold.”

“Today was different,” I’d said. “I had no time to think. The vote of confidence was still fresh. But the audition—that’s a whole different game. The panic could sweep back in, Geoff. The pill takes the edge off.”

“Maybe too much so. To be blunt, the night you took it I thought your playing was crap. Yeah, you got through it. But as your aunt Phyllis would say,
Feh!
My opinion? Go commando. Everybody’s strung out at auditions anyway. That’s the point, isn’t it? It’s the quaking on the edge that tips you over into the transcendent.”

Now I slipped the pill into the pocket of my skirt, where it nestled next to my father’s horseshoe money clip. If I felt my luck running low, I could always reach deep down for backup.

I could hear Richard call down, “Brava!” and Geoff—wherever
he
was—say, “That’s my sheila.” Except I wasn’t his sheila anymore, was I? I’d made sure of that.

Geoff. Since his message the day before, there had been no sign of life and no promise of seeing him soon. I wouldn’t run into him in the next few hours because on audition days the concert hall was cleared of extraneous musicians. Only those competing and those judging were allowed on the premises.

A part of me was ready to grab my cell phone and punch in his speed-dial number to hear his rich baritone insisting I was good at this, I knew the pieces, I’d done the work, I wasn’t going to screw up. Then my left brain kicked in, reminding me what acting on impulse had led to the day before. It wasn’t a good time for us to talk about my perceived deficiencies, a subject that might stray into relationship territory. No, I needed to remain focused.

The crowd of contenders did nothing to reassure me. The scuttlebutt was that the principal posting had turned out an unprecedented number of responses from first-class musicians. In a lousy economy, smaller orchestras were closing shop, major ones weren’t promoting so fast, and principal seats were scarce as magpies’ teeth.

There was no way I could tell the exact size of the contestant pool from what I saw milling about in the bowels of the Berenson. Of more than two hundred applicants, sixty had made it to the initial round the day before. Scheduled five or six per hour, given maybe ten minutes apiece onstage to do their thing, they’d been told their fate and had gone back to their hotels to pack or stay another night for their crack at the next level. As the Philharmonic’s associate principal, I’d been able to skip the first cattle call. By now, the herd had been culled, leaving maybe ten or fifteen serious rivals. If I made this morning’s cut, I’d be competing in the afternoon’s final against the top two or three, very likely including Vincent DeGrassi, who’d ambushed me in the hall to say hello and size me up. And psych me out, the ever ambitious Vince.

Musicians are a collegial bunch. Our report cards could read, “Plays well with peers.” There is hardly any backstabbing in the profession, but Vince had a reputation for doing what it took to advance his career.

His cologne—a vapor of cloying sweetness—preceded him. “Hey, Judith.” The smile below the pepper-and-salt mustache was too broad to be true. “I was wondering when I’d bump into you. How long has it been? Jacob’s Pillow, right? Ten years?” He took my cold hand in his warm one. Not a lot of nerves in play for him. “You look great. Burt says you’ve got the big five-oh coming up.” The timpanist was on the party list. “I have to say you look amazing for your age.” The first shot landed wide of the target—he wasn’t
that
much younger. The second found its mark. “Sorry about Richard Tarkoff. Terrible loss. For you especially. Gonna be rough without him out there, huh?”

Very skillful. Under the guise of sympathy, he’d reminded me that my mentor had been on the judging committee when I’d tried out for associate. Up to the final round, candidates played behind a screen and judges were scrupulous about objectivity. However, just knowing Richard was there had given me a boost.

“So sad. I always liked the man. And I think the feeling was mutual.”

No, not really. Richard had thought Vince was a prick.

“He once said, ‘You remind me of me when I was young, Vince. Incredible focus combined with impeccable technique.’”

Richard would never have said that. He was far too modest for self-aggrandizement.

When I didn’t bite, Vince bumped it up a notch. “You heard Cynthia and I are divorcing? No children, thank God, but she’s being a witch about the settlement. A very controlling woman. The quintessential concertmaster.”

He gave me a calculating look before firing his next shot. “There must be something in the air because I heard you and Geoff Birdsall split . . .” He fiddled with his tie, wondering, I suppose, if he’d hit the bull’s-eye.

Slightly off center. I’d known the news would make the circuit. Nothing was sacred in the musical community.

“. . . and that he’s taking it hard.”

That rocked me a little. Geoff wearing his emotions on his sleeve. That wasn’t like him.

I checked my watch. Vince was in the audition slot before me. His predecessor had just been escorted upstairs to the stage. That gave me maybe twenty minutes to get in my warm-up and do my breathing exercises. This conversation wasn’t doing my pulse rate any favors. I’d taken one step toward my escape when he hooked me back.

“I can understand his wanting to move. I’m doing the same thing, trying to put California behind me. Get some distance from the disaster. But London! Jesus. I suppose it’s not such a stretch for an Aussie, but to be away from the—”

My feet, suddenly lead weights, locked me to the floor. Good thing, too, because from the ankles up I swayed like bamboo in the wind. My brain, on the other hand, had braked to a halt at the mention of London. It took Vince’s smirk to jump-start it.

Of course I’d chased Geoff off. Been a bitch. Beyond self-absorbed and into selfish. Taken him for granted. Told him—by words and actions—to get lost. So I could hardly blame him for refusing to wait in the wings while I dallied with my old boyfriend. Geoff wasn’t an understudy type of guy. Okay, I tried to soothe myself, maybe it
would
be better with us oceans apart. Better for him, certainly. For me, right now I wasn’t so sure. Wasn’t sure at all.

I nervously jiggled the cello charm, Geoff’s gift to me. “He’s moving to London.” I tried to make the question a statement, but my voice was vibrato and Vince was sharp. He caught on.