Two-Part Inventions (23 page)

She handled the arrangements and became the possessor of a cardboard box holding a plastic bag of ashes—sifted, as the crematorium advised; that way there would be no large chunks of bone. The contents of the bag that arrived in the mail were surprising in their whiteness and fineness; they resembled the small mounds of plaster the workmen had left each day when their house was painted, just before she moved to Mrs. Campbell's apartment. Despite her mother's doubts, she trusted that the ashes were her father's, and she didn't know what to do with them. Joseph had never specified. “Burn me up!” was all he'd ever said on the subject. So she stashed the box in a corner of the closet, behind her shoes. Of course, she would never tell Mrs. Campbell what was back there, and felt faintly guilty about harboring the box. One of these days she'd think of a good place to scatter the ashes. Maybe on a beach out in Brooklyn where they'd mingle with the sand. Or she could go down to the Hudson River during one of her afternoon walks
and dump them in. On weekends she took long walks through Riverside Park, staring out at the river and the ships. It was hard to get right down to the river without crossing the highway. Meanwhile, the ashes remained in the closet, and when she finally agreed to move into Philip's apartment in Greenwich Village, she took them with her.

And soon after that it was more than an affair. Indeed, the opposite of an affair. He asked, he implored; he said it had been fated since high school; he gave his best performances and she couldn't find the will to resist. She was agreeable, as Richard had told her long ago; she went along. She married him. There were no good reasons to resist, and he had been so kind all through this stressful time. She wasn't sure she was in love; the only time she had been in love was with Richard, and even about that she had her doubts. But there was no one she liked better. Philip was so familiar that there could not be the succulent delight of discovery. She did love sleeping with him, though, loved it more than she had expected or known was possible. She gasped with pleasure, she moaned, she felt what women were supposed to feel, didn't she?

Only sometimes when they made love she had a sense that something was wrong. She couldn't say quite what, but it expressed itself as a petulant voice in her head that contradicted her words and acts. Like the voice when she was a young child, insinuating that maybe she wasn't quite real. That old voice had quieted, but this one seemed a more mature version of it, a menacing voice that wanted to undercut her pleasures. She believed the words she murmured to him, the words that said she was happy, that said what she liked or what she wanted.
But the voice inside whispered, Are you really happy? Is this really it? And on the sheets her restless hands would be playing phrases from Schubert or Liszt, difficult phrases.

Philip did everything to please her. (And why wouldn't he? the voice whispered. He wants you.) There would be ease in a life with him, emotional ease, an ease that would leave her free to face the difficulties of work. He knew her, that was the main thing, and what she craved was to be known, in every sense. He knew her talents and he knew her ambitions; now he knew her body. He liked to look at every part—there was no hiding anything from him. While he looked, he spun elaborate fantasies of how he would help her move ahead, but to him they weren't fantasies. She tried not to let herself be influenced by these, but they worked on her cravings like fairy tales on susceptible children. What more did she want? She wanted the doubting voice to cease. She married him despite the voice, and she trained her ears to shut it out.

 

A
S BOTH PHILIP and Mme. Kabalevsky had predicted, a number of small gigs resulted from the contest Suzanne won. A few came from people she'd met at Cynthia's party, and others were arranged by Philip, who had become, tacitly, her manager, even before they decided to marry. She had never sought a manager, didn't need one yet, she thought, despite Elena's urgings. Elena, who had been taken on by her stepfather's manager, was busy touring in the Midwest, but she prodded Suzanne regularly by phone.

The gigs were in local halls in Westchester and Rockland Counties or Long Island, small towns in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Never mind small, it was a start, Phil said. It got her name around. Richard agreed: Play wherever they're willing to have you. That's what a professional does. It would be good for her, Richard said, to get used to the traveling, the unfamiliar instruments and settings, to learn all she could. Suzanne played better in these places than she expected, or rather, her nagging stage fright was more manageable. Along with her talent, she had a streak of condescension born less of snobbery than of naiveté. Such places were too reminiscent of her own origins to be more than mildly threatening. They were
not the kinds of places that figured in her dreams; still, out of pride, she always tried to give her best.

She got excellent reviews in local papers, her name got around, and after a few months, through his growing connections, Philip arranged a recital at a good hall downtown, part of New York University, where he had friends in the music department. With that one “under her belt,” as he put it, there would be many more, he assured her.

On Philip's advice, she rehearsed in the hall twice, so that the place would feel familiar. It was larger than most of the others she'd played in. By the time the Thursday evening arrived, she knew its high ceilings, the severe cream-colored walls with Doric columns in low relief, the rows of maroon plush seats, slightly canted, the balcony. She arrived early and sat in a small dressing room with Philip, suffering the agonies of anticipation. So it was a relief at last to be called by the stage manager.

Despite her visits, she'd never seen the hall lit for a performance. As she entered from the wings, the lights assaulting her eyes were so bright that for an instant she saw nothing but bursts of color like fireworks, low to the ground. She paused, blinked, then moved toward the large dark object in the center of the flaring colors: the piano. The floorboards beneath her feet, waxed to a high sheen, shimmered faintly as if in a mirage, their parallel lines appearing to bend. Lining the rim of the stage were more balloons of color; it took her an instant to grasp that they were flowers in large pots. Hydrangeas, like the ones leading up to the row houses on her childhood block.

Her instinct was to turn and run, but she did what she knew she must—this was what she had worked for all these years. At center stage, slightly in front of the piano, she bowed. Philip
and Cynthia had told her she must also smile, but she couldn't force it. How could you smile out into darkness, at people you couldn't even see? The only way she knew they were there was the clatter of applause. As her eyes adjusted to the light, blobs of heads appeared, patches of bright clothing here and there, but no clear faces.

She couldn't see them, but they were all watching her. Why couldn't she be happily in the audience, too, looking forward to someone's playing music? Why must she be the chosen one, the sacrifice? As they watched her, her dress, a long navy blue evening sheath, simple, sleeveless, with a V-neck, suddenly seemed all wrong, both too fancy and too austere. Her shoes, high heels with a T-strap, were wrong, too. She might trip and fall. But what nonsense was she thinking? Surely Rudolf Serkin didn't think about the fit of his suit or the color of his tie when he went onstage. Or, who knows, maybe he did. Never mind. She must focus on the music. You must know the music so well, Mme. Kabalevsky said, that you don't need to think about it. And yet you must think of nothing else. But those pieces of advice were contradictory, weren't they?

As the coughing and fussing of the audience ceased and Suzanne turned to sit down, she was startled by footsteps behind her. It was the page-turner, a student dressed in black, modest and unobtrusive. The girl glided to her seat to the left of the piano bench. Suzanne had met her before, had seen her backstage a moment ago, and yet her presence onstage felt like a burden. As a student, she herself had been a page-turner on occasion: She remembered well the pleasure of sitting onstage, so close to the music, but knowing the audience was not thinking of her, barely noticed her. Had her presence disturbed the
pianists? That had never occurred to her. It had been a combination of full exposure and extreme solitude, hiding in plain sight, which suited her. Perhaps she should have remained a page-turner.

She must stop these idiotic thoughts and begin. Nothing but the music. She flexed her fingers and placed her hands over the keys. Don't rush, Cynthia said. Take your time. They'll wait. But not indefinitely. Not as long as Suzanne would have liked to wait. She played the opening notes of the Mozart Sonata no. 13. She had learned it as a child with Mr. Cartelli, and for a few moments a cheerful nostalgia infused her playing with warmth. The first few bars went fine, but as she moved into a ritardando, which contained a faint hint of the slow movement to come, she couldn't recall any of the notes ahead. The score was up on the rack, there was no real danger, but it would be distracting to have to read from the music. Never mind
,
the notes will come as their time comes. And so they did. They were in her fingers.

As she was nearing the end of the first movement, something felt wrong in her body. A shudder went through her, then a clutch at her chest and stomach muscles, as if a clamp were gripping them. Panic, her faithful companion. It would spread, she knew from experience. Already her hands were losing warmth. She couldn't remember what was ahead from one measure to the next, but her hands managed to keep going—good hands, they even understood the phrasing and tonalities. But now she was in the second movement, andante cantabile; could the hands alone convey the singing tone that was needed? Because her mind, which dictated the tone, seemed to have floated upward like a balloon, propelled by puffs of panic.
All she could do was let her hands continue as best they could, while she hovered above the keyboard. If only she could stop and flee. Disappear. But there was no stopping now. She had to go on.

She tried to use the old trick that had helped her through bad moments in high school and earlier, when her father had forced her to play for guests. This isn't really happening, she would say. It's not even a dream, just something you must wait out, do mindlessly, and soon it will drift away like smoke. It's not happening, while her fingers continued to play the notes and the lights blazed overhead and the scent of the flowers wafted from the footlights, and every so often the page-turner reached out to flip the page, each flip bringing her closer to the end of what was not happening.

There was no fooling herself—of course it was happening. She was sweating. The wet was seeping under her arms. She could smell her own fear. She was in panic's grip and would remain there for the entire concert, more than an hour and a half. No, she'd never last that long. She was starting on the final movement now, which had a frisky opening: allegro grazioso, but grazioso felt quite beyond her. She'd make a bargain with her panic: If it would let her get through the Mozart, then the Bach Italian Concerto and a selection of Bartók bagatelles, up to the intermission, she'd say she was sick and couldn't do the second half. Panic would win this round. A pity, because she and Cynthia had chosen the program so carefully, for contrast—the second half was the Chopin barcarole and Ravel's
Le Tombeau de Couperin
—as well as to show Suzanne's range, which was unusual for so young a pianist. All that would be lost now. No matter. Please, let me last just until the intermission.

She barely registered the polite but mild applause after the Mozart, and promptly launched into the Bach, an exuberant piece and, mercifully, fairly brief. She could hardly tell anymore how the music sounded—her ears felt stuffed and distant, like the onset of dizziness. The notes and dynamics were correct, but it might sound as if it were being played by an automaton.

She waited during the applause and tried, not too conspicuously, to take deep calming breaths. As before, the applause was not thundering but well meaning and courteous. Of course: She knew so many people in the audience. In the front rows, though she couldn't see them, were her family and friends. Probably some of her mother's friends, too, primed for her first big success. Could they tell how badly she was playing, or was it enough for them that she sat on the brilliantly lit stage and produced the notes? Richard must be out there somewhere. Cynthia. Maybe some of her teachers from Juilliard. Mme. Kabalevsky had said she'd try to come. They would know exactly what was happening. They would know her shame.

And the rest of the audience, the strangers? Who were they and why had they come? Music lovers? People excited by the debut of a new performer? Or subscribers, lonely people who filled their calendars with places to go of an evening, better than numbing television? Maybe tired husbands, fighting off drowsiness, dragged by wives who wanted to swallow “culture” in a few easy gulps, like some of the neighbors she remembered from childhood, who boasted at the canasta table of the wonderful concerts and plays they had attended, never describing them, only listing, as if adding them to a resumé.
Or students such as she had been not long ago, students with buoyant hopes, imagining themselves in her place a few years from now. But they would do better, they must be thinking. How had she managed to get here anyway, or was she just having a bad day?