Heart and Soul (4 page)

“Angie, look up in the sky tomorrow,” I said. “I'm getting a skywriter to put your scores up there.”

“It's nice,” Angie said, “but your news is better.”

I threw Angie a look that said
not yet,
so she didn't object when I turned to Jake and said, “Maybe I won't be quitting music.”

He grabbed a hunk of my hair and tugged. “Whatever you say, Stallone.” I knew he didn't buy it, but at least he wasn't nagging me. As I said, he could be patient.

The sand was jammed with weekenders, so we walked down to the jetty, where you could sometimes actually see Brooklyn, if that's what you were inclined to look at. There wasn't anybody else around except for a couple of surfers who were trying to hitch a ride on the dinky little waves. I didn't realize it then, but after seeing beaches all over the world, there's still nothing that can compare to that hundred-mile curl of surf on the south shore of Long Island.

Anyway, we sat on our driftwood log and as usual, Jake started tossing stones into the water. He had some arm. The damn things went halfway to Bermuda.

“My guidance counselor says NYU will give me a scholarship,” Angie said. I held up my hand to slap her five but she just threw me a pitiful look.

The thing about my sister was, she didn't act like a high-school kid. She was a solemn little thing with eyeballs that looked like they could tell you the secrets of the universe. So when she turned and wailed in this MTV-type voice, “I know Dad's not going to let me do it. My life is so
over
!” I had to chew a hole on the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.

But when I saw her eyes start to fill up, battle mode kicked in. “The sonofabitch
will
let you do it,” I said.

“We can work out a plan of attack,” Jake said, Mister Practical. “If it doesn't cost him anything, we'll find a way to make him go for it.” I put my arm around Angie and gave her a squeeze. She looked fragile, but I could feel her wiry strength.

“The scholarship wouldn't pay for everything,” she said.

“Don't worry, Ange,” I said. “I've got a little trust fund going for you.”

She looked at me like I was nuts.

“No big deal,” I said. “I've just been setting aside a little every week. I figured I'd surprise you at graduation.” I'd only managed to sock away about fifteen hundred dollars, but it was something.

“I've seen your black sweater, Bess,” Angie said. By which she meant I needed a new one, which I couldn't afford.

“Don't be silly,” I said. “The money's just sitting there.” I figured I could maybe shoehorn in a bartending job. It meant getting no sleep but what the hell, I'd do plenty of that when I was dead.

We sat and watched the sea lick the shore. It amazed me that even Angie's crisis hadn't taken my mind off David Montagnier. His music played in my head like a soundtrack and the minute I let my mind drift a little, I was drawn to him again. I could see him standing all in white in the doorway of his apartment with the sun streaming in behind him, lighting him up like an angel.

Jake flung another stone, and with his eye on its trajectory, he said, “So, Bess, are you going to tell me or not?” I knew I wasn't getting off the hook any longer. Besides, I'd always told him everything there was to tell in my life including the episode where I took the rap for Pauline when she started a fire in the girls' locker room. By accident, but she was already on probation and would have gotten chucked out of school. I only got a month's community service and a couple of bruises courtesy of Dutch.

I stood up and started making patterns in the sand with my bare feet. “Okay, it's like this. I've got a bad case. I've never felt this way. It's scary.”

Angie shot a quick look at Jake. The stone he was holding dropped out of his fingers.

“Who?” he asked.

“David Montagnier.”

“David Montagnier,” he echoed. “I don't think so.”

I burst into tears. Angie held out her hand and pulled me back down onto the log between her and Jake. I leaned my head against Jake, breathing in his salty smell. Then I choked out the whole story. It felt good to cry. I hadn't even known I needed to.

“You're going to be his new partner,” Angie said when I'd finished.

“I don't know that,” I said.

“You'll see. Professor Stein's told him all about you.”

“Yeah, a twenty-four-year-old prodigy who can't even play in front of two ushers and a cockroach.”

“Maybe you'll be able to with Montagnier,” Jake said. Something in his voice made me check him out. His smile had a strange twist to it, like he was trying way too hard.

“What?” I said.

“This is going to change your life, Bess,” he told me.

“I don't want to be in love with him,” I said.

“You can't help who you fall in love with,” Jake said in that alien tone.

“He's famous. I'm a nobody from Nassau County. It's totally impossible.”

Jake gave my shoulder a gentle shove. “You got a choice, meatball?” This was more like it.

I wiped the tears off my face. “Fucking guy's got me crying already. I don't call that a great sign.”

After a few minutes, Angie asked, “Was Cinderella Italian?”

“Why not?” Jake said. “Name ends in a vowel.”

That cheered us up. We sat there for a long time with our arms around each other watching the waves sigh up onto the beach. One thing's for sure. Jake was absolutely right—after that, nothing was ever the same again.

I
spent the next week running back and forth between multiple jobs and practice rooms. The usual routine except that I was constantly wondering when and if David Montagnier would call. I'd seen a photo of him at a museum benefit so he was obviously back in town. I neglected customers as I looked for him out the window from my post at the Juilliard Bookstore cash register. And I caused a spectacular collision at Brittany's, a trendy restaurant where the wait staff wore roller skates—some challenge when you were carting a tray full of nachos and some joker wanted to pinch your ass as you rolled by. I was delivering desserts and turned my head to gawk out at Broadway just on the off chance that Montagnier might be passing by. I rolled straight into another waitress. Hot fudge sundaes flew, we did a little roller-derby dance, and down we went. The restaurant gave us a standing ovation. That's what I like about New Yorkers, the warped sense of humor.

Fortunately, I kept the job, which I needed to pay the rent at my studio apartment on West 78th Street. Plus, that week I deposited another twenty bucks in Angie's savings account and I figured if I only ate a container of yogurt for lunch, I could set aside a little more. The restaurant gave you free saltines, and I knew it wouldn't kill me to lose a couple of pounds. I called in for my messages every time I snagged a free minute, and when I got home at night I stared at the ring button on my phone. I mean, what if I was yawning when it rang and was temporarily deaf? I took extremely short showers and made sure to stick my head out to listen every few seconds. I dried my hair beside the phone. But David Montagnier had obviously forgotten all about me. I kept reconstructing my last conversation with him and thought I remembered some clue that he wanted to work with me again. But French people pout a little when they talk and it's sexy as hell. I'd been too busy watching David's mouth to pay attention to what he was actually saying.

Finally, after not hearing from him by Thursday night, I convinced myself that it was up to me to make the first move. I got all pumped and sat down with a pencil to figure out what I would say into David's machine in case he wasn't there. I was not about to screw up, not when there was no prayer of erasing the message once my voice got stuck to that strip of tape. So after a lot of scribbling and crossing out, here's what I wrote down: “
Hello, this is Bess Stallone.
(I didn't know what to call him for one thing, plus there was the issue of the American DAY-vid versus the French Dah-VEED. I figured I'd just avoid the issue.)
I wasn't sure if you wanted to schedule another practice session but next week turns out to be good for me if you're free.
(And the week after that, and the week after that …)
You can reach me at 503-8986. Thanks.
”

Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? With a certain understated dignity? So I dialed his number and suddenly the stage fright rose right up out of the floor of my own apartment and grabbed me by the throat. The last time I heard my voice sound like this I'd just inhaled the helium from Pauline's birthday balloons back in eighth grade: “Hi. This is Stress. Bess! Stallone! … (long gap with heavy breathing, then:) I wasn't sure if you wanted to do it with me … Oh shit, oh fuck. Sorry. Never mind. Sorry.”

My hand was so drenched with sweat that the phone slipped out of my hand, which was probably just as well. I woke up on the floor: I lay there staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling and realized that I'd hung up without leaving my number, but I figured he'd never want to call me after that anyway.

He didn't. Another week went by, during which I fought the need to remain totally trashed in order to forget the phone-machine stunt. When I showed up for my lesson, Professor Stein wanted to know how it went with David Montagnier. I said, “Okay, I guess. How are you feeling?”

“Never mind,” he said with a cough. “Did David want to work with you again?”

I started to feel dangerously weepy so I just shook my head and asked the professor to comment on the ornaments I was experimenting with in the Bach D-minor Concerto. Those are the extra finger turns that early composers like to stick onto some of their notes to doll them up. I think of them as hats, like Easter bonnets. Anyway, Professor Stein gave me one of his hawk looks where his eyes narrow and his nose turns almost purple, but he didn't say anything more about David. At the end of the lesson, he went to the window and opened it wide so he could smoke his cigar. It always scared me how he perched on the windowsill like that, but his wife had made him do it so he wouldn't stink up the apartment and now he couldn't break the habit. Summer street sounds blasted in like the brass section of the New York Philharmonic getting cranked up for Copland's Third Symphony.

“I have a gig for you,” he said.

A psychotherapist had tried to teach me to short-circuit my knee-jerk response.
Take deep breaths. You can choose not to be terrified.
But there it was, the lurch of nausea in the gut, the clammy hands, the dizziness, the sense of impending disaster. I closed my eyes against the explosion of colors but as always, it didn't help.

“Bess?” The Professor climbed out of the window, sat down beside me on the piano bench, and put his arm around me. I didn't mind the smell of that stogy. In fact, it was kind of comforting. “Bess, it's a competition in Boston with $25,000 in prize money. You can win it easily.”

“While I'm lying under the Steinway?” The fireworks had quit popping off but lunch was working an instant replay in the back of my throat.

There was a long silence. Then he said, “I think we have to talk about your future.”

“I know,” I said. “We're wasting our time. I've got to quit.”

Professor Stein sucked on his cigar. Then he got up and leaned against the piano so he could look at me. “Darling, I've never seen anyone fight so hard to beat the
lampenfieber.
” The Professor called stage fright by its German name, which, loosely translated, meant being butt-petrified of the lights at the edge of the stage. “I know you're discouraged but I want you to give it one more try. The Ruggiero's ready and so's the Hindemith.”

I avoided looking at him—all that hope in his face made me feel too wretched. “I've been checking out the bulletin board for accompanist jobs,” I said. “Maybe I could make enough money.” That kind of thing didn't freak me out and it would still be a connection.

Professor Stein jabbed his cigar into an ashtray like he was trying to kill something that was living in there. Then he started pacing back and forth between the piles on the floor. He stopped between Beethoven and Grieg. “That talent of yours, hiding behind some second-rate soprano,” he said. “It turns my stomach.”

“I'd be playing music.”

He put his hands on my shoulders, his old bent and knobby fingers forcing me to look at him. “Humor an old man,” he said. “Just this one last time.”

What could I say? He had invested almost ten years into me. I owed him. Besides, twenty-five grand would sure as hell look sweet in Angie's bank account.

The morning I was supposed to go to Boston, I got a call from Pauline.

“I'm in a phone booth on 79th and Broadway,” she said. “I have to see you. My God, Bess, I
have
to.”

“I'm just running to catch a bus to Boston. What's going on?” Pauline had always been a drama queen. Catastrophe could mean anything from a death in the family to losing her
Soap Opera Digest
on the bus.

“Can I go with you? Let me just ride up there with you.”

“That bad.”

“Oh, shit.” Now she was starting to cry. “I don't have any money.”

“Don't worry about it, Pauls. I'll buy your ticket.”

“But
you
don't have any money,” she wailed at me through the phone.

“The music competition's reimbursing me for my ticket,” I told her. A lie, but how was she to know?

Sniffles, a wet blow of the nose, and then the time's-up recording cut in.

“Wait right where you are,” I said.

Now I was really late, and running in the ninety-degree heat turned my shower-clean self into a sweaty mess. But then I spotted Pauline standing on the corner and didn't care anymore. When you've got a friend who's been around since you were four, who's played in your sandbox and listened to the same endless gripes about your parents and held your hand when your heart was broken and your head when you were throwing up from too many rum-and-Cokes, you just show up.

Pauline had a beautiful athletic body, tall and sleek. Like me, she didn't do so well in school and for a long time she'd just sort of hung around Rocky Beach picking up one crappy job after another. But she was always fantastic with kids and Jake talked her into taking some special ed courses at his college. She loved everything about it, and for the first time she felt like she was good at something besides Rollerblading and jogging. Last semester she was second in her psych class.

Broadway was the usual zany parade, but it was easy to pick Pauline out the way she was standing all forlorn by the phone booth with her arms clutched around her body. She had a big nose and a bony face that had looked strange when she was a kid, like somebody had stuck the wrong head on her shoulders, but now, with her cushiony mouth and green eyes, it all worked to make her striking and sexy.

“Hey,” I said.

She spun around and grabbed me in one of her rib-crushers. “I'm
so
sorry, Bess,” she said. “You're an
angel.
”

“Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Her voice dipped to a whisper. “On the bus. Are you sure it's okay? It would be so
perfect,
having you all to myself.”

“Absolutely. You'll keep my mind off the contest.” And it was true. I'd barely thought about the performance since her call, except for an insane hope she was going to tell me that the world was about to end and I wouldn't have time to play before we blew up.

We hopped on the subway, picked up our tickets at the Port Authority and were on the bus to Boston in no time. It was cool and quiet, and I could feel Pauline begin to relax beside me. She took the aisle seat where she could stretch out her long legs.

“Okay, Pauls, spill it,” I said when we'd pulled out of the station.

She looked at me with eyeballs the size of pizzas. “You remember that time I told Jake his mother was sick?”

We were in the junior high cafeteria having lunch, the three of us. Pauline had suddenly turned pale, set down her burger, and stared at Jake.

“What?” he said.

But Pauline started to shake and couldn't answer.

“Come on, Sabatino,” Jake said. “The food's not
that
bad.”

“Jake, I think your mom…”

Jake was real close with his mother. His father had died when he was little and he was the oldest of the three boys. Now he was getting nervous. He grabbed Pauline's arm. “What about her?” he asked.

“I think she's sick.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked.

Pauline shook her head and I still remember how the tears splattered out onto her plastic plate. “I don't know,” she said.

But Pauline was famous for getting emotional, so we let it pass. Two weeks later, Jake's mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Pauline had made us swear we'd never mention what happened in the cafeteria, or even bring it up with her, and we hadn't, even though Jake and I sometimes talked about it.

“Sure I remember,” I said. “How could I ever forget that? It was weird as hell.”

“It just happened again.”

I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck, not that I had any real use for any of that Shirley MacLaine crap, but still, Jake's mother really did get cancer. “Somebody's sick?”

“No. You remember my cousin Andrea from Fort Lee?”

“Yeah.” I pictured a shorter version of Pauline, similar face stuck onto a stubby frame.

“She's pregnant. She
was
pregnant. There was a shower last week in Jersey and the whole time I was sitting there
dying
because I knew there was something wrong with the baby.”

“What do you mean ‘knew'? How ‘knew'?”

“The same way it was with Jake's mom. It's like I know you're sitting here with me and if I turn away, I still picture you in my brain. Well, there it was in my head. That baby with its right leg twisted up against its shoulder and its foot all screwed up.” She looked around as if there might be a spy and lowered her voice. “He was born this morning, exactly the way I saw him. My aunt called. Everybody's hysterical.” Her fingers tightened around my arm and the tears started again. “Bess, I don't want to know this stuff!”

I put my arms around her, which wasn't exactly easy on a Peter Pan bus, and just held her. I mean, what kind of therapist do you recommend for something like that, an exorcist? After a while, she calmed down and by the time we got to Providence, she was beginning to get into the drama of it all. “It's just the strangest feeling, like not just a suspicion or something but it's in my
core,
this total
conviction.
Do you think I'm some kind of
freak
?”

“I think you're sensitive in a way that other people aren't,” I said. That was safe enough. I sure as hell didn't feel qualified to explain something this bizarre.

“Bess, I love you down to the innermost sanctuary of my heart,” Pauline whispered. “You're always there for me when my soul cries out for help.”

Also when you're knocked up, I could have added. Twice I'd taken her to the clinic back in high school. But God knows she'd have done the same for me. “I'm just glad you caught me,” I said. “Two more minutes and I would've been out the door.”