Music for Wartime (29 page)

When the Mikes showed up the next morning—Mike Langley, the gay blond one, and Mike Cho, the young straight one who, in a fit of bravery, had slapped his arm around Celine that summer and called her his “half-breed half-Asian half sister”—she was in a frenzy of breakfast preparations. She had covered the kitchen table with pitchers of orange juice and milk and plates of fruit and toast, and over at the stove she was working on “eggs with stuff,” which she was sure had a fancier name somewhere in the world. It occurred to her, as she hugged them both and showed them their rooms and ran back down to stir the browning vegetables and sausage, that filling the air with the smell of onions and peppers and mushrooms and meat might have been, in some way, an attempt at compensation for the hollow welcome of an empty and under-decorated house.

The Mikes sat at the table fidgeting and ate huge plates of eggs. Mike Langley was in his twenties, and this had been his third summer at Marlboro, but Mike Cho was only eighteen. She had suddenly wondered, in the midst of all the arrangements for this week, if she should perhaps be calling his parents. Langley had picked him up from Juilliard this morning and driven him west in his little Honda. Despite their enormous talent, both had been noticeably intimidated that summer by both Celine and Gregory, and she hoped this week would put them at ease.

She was displeased with how frequently she found herself checking the clock, how busy her hands wanted to be. “There’s a used bookstore in town,” she said, “and a coffee shop, if you want to drive in. I thought we could all go out to dinner tonight, or we can order pizza. And tomorrow’s the day Julie comes, from Deutsche Grammophon.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Langley said. “Don’t tell me.”

“You can pretend she’s my sister, and she’s visiting from Canada. My blond sister, ha! But she’s going to love you.”

Julie was thrilled by the prospect of the quartet, especially since it involved Gregory, who was already on the label. But Celine hoped, from a sort of motherly perspective, that Julie would fall so in love with Mike and Mike that she’d develop independent relationships with them.

Gregory had, apparently, just let himself right in the front door, because there he stood, duffel bag in one hand, violin case in the other, his thinning hair still bleached from the summer, his face unshaven. He put his things on the floor and hugged everyone. Celine held her wooden spoon out awkwardly behind her back so she wouldn’t get grease on his coat.

“Quite a display you have out front there.”

“We were wondering!” Mike Cho said. But then he straightened his face, clearly worried he’d made a mistake. “Was it your dog?”

“A girl on a motorcycle.” Celine went back to the stove and started cracking eggs into the new batch of vegetables and sausage. Too many eggs, probably, but she couldn’t stop herself from cracking one more, and then one more. She told them the story, as she knew it, and about the recent additions. “I haven’t been out yet this morning. How bad is it?”

Gregory considered while he poured a mug of coffee. “I’d say it’s
sprawling
.”

She turned from the stove, relieved to have found a topic of limitless conversation. “Okay, here’s the issue, then. Pretend you’re advice columnists, and I’m depending on you for a moral answer: What do I
do
? I can’t take it down. I can’t live with it forever. I can’t move. I can’t ask them to make it more tasteful. It’s selfish, I know, but I’m not okay with a shrine on my lawn. Not forever.”

“Could you plant a shrub in front of it?” Mike Langley asked.

“That’s good! But maybe—no, it’s too close to the street. There’s only a couple feet of room. And in winter you’d be able to see right through anyway.”

“You should complain to village hall,” Gregory said. “They probably own the land by the road for putting in phone poles, right? They wouldn’t want that on town property. Separation of church and state.”

“This is a town that erects a life-sized Last Supper on the green for Easter.”

“I want to see it again,” Mike Cho said. “We’re creative people. We should be able to come up with something.”

When he stood, Mike Langley followed him, leaving Celine with a pan of eggs she was about to serve Gregory, and Gregory with an empty plate. She scraped the eggs onto the plate—a mountain, really—and handed him a fork. “You can carry this, right?”

“I thought I’d stay here and chat with you and enjoy my coffee.” He looked straight at her and didn’t blink, and she saw that it was a challenge, or at least an offer.

“It’s so nice out!” she said. “And we’ll be sitting all day. Let’s get some exercise.”

And so he followed them all out the door, eating his eggs.

It was worse than she’d imagined. The flowers were spread over at least twenty-five square feet, all the way out to the street and all the way back to the oak, but three times as long as that—a carpet of white and blue and pink. They had jammed the plastic stems so far into the earth that it was botanically bizarre—roses and tulips and carnations that blossomed only three inches above the ground. The stuffed menagerie had expanded, as well. A plush moose and what looked like an off-brand Cabbage Patch doll were now slumped near the base of the cross, like winos at a bus stop.

Mike Langley clasped his hands behind his neck. “I’m
offended
, aesthetically,” he said. “This is possibly the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Celine shook her head. “So tell me, then: Am I a bad person? I
do
feel sorry for them. But that doesn’t mean they can have my lawn.”

“You’re a good person,” Gregory said. He was circling the scene with his eggs. “They can’t make a shrine on your property.”

Mike Cho suddenly grew excited. “Could you mow the lawn and just chop them all down? And then it would just look like your lawn people did it.”

“I don’t think these are the kind of folks who would assume anyone had lawn people. Which I
don’t
, except when I’m out of town. And it would ruin my mower.”

They all found themselves straightening things, just as Celine had the day she’d first found it. “Are you even religious?” Mike Cho asked. “Are you, like, Christian, or . . . ?”

“Not since I was fifteen. I love sacred music, though. I love masses, and I love requiems. The Verdi
Requiem
might be my favorite thing in the world, even though I don’t believe a word of the text. Is that weird?”

Mike Langley poked a fake tulip with the toe of his shoe and said, “I think
weird
has just been redefined.”

Back in the house, Celine toasted more bread and refilled everyone’s coffee and started another batch of eggs. “Look at you,” Gregory said. “You’re Snow White, feeding all the little men.”

The Bartók went beautifully, as if a day hadn’t passed since Marlboro. Of all the groupings that summer—cello with piano, cello with flute and harp, cello with clarinet and alto—this string quartet had been the one that instantly justified itself, that proved revelatory. Rehearsals had left her sweaty and exhausted and jubilant. It had been a long time since she’d felt that way about any collaboration, and it had been at least a year since she’d felt she was making any progress, musically. She knew the Mikes must still be wondering what on earth these two experienced, successful musicians could want with two young kids. They didn’t understand yet what they were bringing to the equation themselves: fire, energy. And marketability, to be quite honest. It was an interesting concept, one that Julie from Deutsche Grammophon thought would sell nicely. “The music press will
love
it,” she’d said. “Because it’s about teaching, and it’s about a meeting of the generations, and it’s about Marlboro.”

Gregory was a subtle leader, so subtle that Celine found herself not just listening to his first violin but watching him closely for any twitch of the mouth. When he looked back at her, just as when either of the Mikes caught her eye, it was with the unapologetic stare of collaborating musicians. There were musicians who never looked up from their hands or their instruments, but she’d seen quartets of straight men gaze at each other like they were making love.

They finished the Allegro and Prestissimo movements and stopped to talk about balance. “You have amazing acoustics,” Gregory said. “We could record right here.”

She looked around the room, at the high ceiling and bare walls, the bare floor, the couch and coffee table crammed into a corner, the empty and cavernous fireplace. “It comes from having no furniture,” she said.

Mike Langley raised his viola bow tentatively in the air, asking permission to speak. The Mikes would both have to get bolder, be willing to argue with Celine and Gregory. “Should we come up with a name?” he asked. “Before your Deutsche Grammophon person gets here? Would that help?” No, it wouldn’t, particularly, but Celine didn’t want to shoot him down.

“I’m sure Marlboro Quartet is already taken,” Mike Cho said.

Gregory laughed. “No one has dared for a very long time.”

“The May-December String Quartet,” Celine offered. “Because two of us are so damn old.”

The Mikes both looked horrified, and confused about whether they should protest. “She doesn’t mean that,” Gregory said. “She’s only forty. What she means is the two of you are so damn young.” How Gregory knew her exact age, she had no idea. She wondered if he’d been googling her. “The Happenstance Quartet,” he offered. “The House in the Middle of Nowhere Quartet. The Get Your Cross off My Lawn Quartet.”

Langley raised his bow again, but this time it was in triumph, and Celine was thrilled with his confidence. “The Cross-Purposes Quartet.” He didn’t need to spell out the various meanings. It was perfect, just like the quartet itself.

And when they played the Allegro again, lo and behold, it had a more solid shape, a stronger arc. They knew who they were.

That night, the Cross-Purposes Quartet drank mulled wine in the chairs they’d pulled in front of Celine’s fireplace. Gregory had gone knocking at half the front doors on the long, twisty road until he’d happened on an old man with a woodpile and a generous heart. The other three had watched, laughing, from the front porch as Gregory pushed an actual wheelbarrow back up the driveway.

Celine had left the room when Gregory opened the flue, afraid bats or mice would tumble out. She’d never had a fire in this house, but now that it was roaring along pleasantly, she imagined she might do it again sometime this winter. She might even invest in a real poker, rather than the barbecue fork Mike Cho was using to prod the logs.

“What if you moved it?” Mike Langley said, out of nowhere. “You could just transplant the whole thing one house down, in front of some other tree, and when they see it they’ll assume their minds are playing tricks.” He was joking, but she actually considered it for a second.

“I bet they’ve got an album full of photos with your house in the background,” Gregory said. “That’s something else—if the city does own that property, and you tear the shrine down, could these people sue? They’d have proof.”

“Oh, God. Take that back.” Celine found that she was looking at Gregory’s shoulder, his Adam’s apple, anywhere but his face. How strange, when it had been so comfortable to lock eyes during rehearsal. He wasn’t terribly handsome, but he didn’t need to be. He was a perfect example of what her grandmother had always said: After forty, you look how you deserve to. Here was Gregory, whose eyes were creased with laugh lines, whose arms were taut from music, whose habit of leaning forward into every conversation was a sort of invitation.

But Celine was absolutely not interested, and three years after the split from Lev she was fully and finally settled into her decision to be on her own. She had bought the house, and she had told her well-meaning friends that no, in fact, she did not want to be set up. It was a lot like naming the quartet. She’d decided who she was, and this was what allowed her to move forward.

The conversation had turned back to religion. “I’d call it half-assed Buddhism,” Mike Cho was saying. “Like, pretending to be Buddhist in front of our grandparents. There was a lot of shoe removal. That’s all I really registered: a lot of OCD shoe stuff.”