Want (3 page)

I begin the Etude-Tableau No. 2 in C. It’s a relatively quiet piece, but technically difficult. For the next few minutes I’m lost. I will my left hand to do what it’s supposed to. When I finish, I hear the clock tick like a metronome. I sing a little ditty in my head, “
Tick tock goes the clock
.
Tick tock, tick tock…”
and I wait for his judgment like a gladiator in the ring, wondering if my performance gets me a thumbs up or down, live or die, mercy or none.

A wicked blush burns my ears when I look up just the tiniest bit. He hasn’t moved.
At all.
I have no idea what this means. “Well?”

Arms crossed, eyes narrowed, he looks like he wants to kill someone. Slow as molasses, he draws up his mouth on one side into a sexy smile.

“Well,” he drawls, “you’ve been holding out on me.”

***

I complain to R.J. that night after dinner.

“I suck at composition! I don’t mean to, but I always cram together bits and pieces of other people’s stuff.” I flop onto his bed while he taps away on his laptop. “I got away with it around Mr. Cline, but Isaac will blow a gasket if I pull that crap on him.”

“So don’t.”

“Thanks, R.J.
You’re
so helpful. Glad we had this talk.”

Maybe it’s because I want to get a reaction out of Isaac. Maybe it’s because I like to sabotage myself. Whatever the reason, I decide to use one of the hymns he played last week at church and pair it with a straightforward Alberti bass in the left hand.
Simple and sweet.
I can do simple and sweet, right? Nothing dramatic and no nuances required.

Just before bed, I pull on a long-sleeved shirt over my pajamas and head out to the studio one last time to make sure I’ve got the thing down. R.J. follows and throws himself onto the loveseat to listen. He’s been doing this since we were little, and it’s one of the things that
keeps
us so close. He’ll sit for hours and listen to me play. His friends teased him about it when he was in middle school and high school, but his constant string of girlfriends thought it was sweet.

The third time through the composition, he opens the door to leave.

“Hey. You didn’t tell me what you thought.”

He narrows his eyes. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Sis.”

R.J. is right, of course. I know it the minute Isaac walks into the studio the next morning, Bruins mug in hand.

Sweat collects in unmentionable places, but it has little to do with the heat index.

“Let’s hear it.”

“I don’t think
—
”

“No excuses. Begin.”

I will disappoint him. Mostly, I’m angry that I set myself up to fail. But then, there’s a teeny-tiny, slimy part of me that secretly wonders
What
’s he gonna do?

I hang onto that thought and begin to play. When I look up, he’s not there. His car is gone.

I cry like the sniveling little brat I am.

***

Morning brings buckets of rain and thunder every few seconds. The leaves on the live oaks tremble in the wind with a constant
hussshhh
sound. I want to crawl back in bed.

Instead, Isaac is here and forces me to do Bach’s
Two-Part Inventions
for warm-up. I’m well into the second exercise when his cell rings.

“Sorry. Should take this.” He turns to go outside, but it looks like monsoon season. “Yeah, man?”

I can’t play, so I begin marking up the sheet music. Whoever put in the recommended fingerings is an idiot.

“Wow. Okay. No, that’d be great. Any time, you know that. Uh, yeah, she’s right here.”

At that, my ears perk up. I glance at Isaac, who’s looking at me through narrowed eyes.

“Don’t think that’s a good idea.”

A man’s voice booms from Isaac’s phone so loud I can hear it across the room. “
Hah! You are so full of shit! She doesn’t exist!
” Isaac rolls his eyes and holds out the phone.

“I’m so sorry. My friend needs to talk to you. I’m not responsible for anything he says.”

“Uh, okay.” His phone smells like aftershave. “Hello?”

“Who are you?”

“Um, who are
you
?”

“I am every woman’s dream and what I want to know is: who are you; how old are you; and why Ike had the balls to tell me some little girl in Alabama plays Rachmaninoff better than me? And…go.”

“I’m seventeen. It’s not like I’m twelve.”

“Well then, that makes it much better. Totally trumps my Conservatory degrees. Please excuse me while I scrape my ego off the floor. I’m Dave, by the way. And you have a very sexy voice, anyone ever tell you that? Must be the accent.”

“Uh…”

“It’s okay. I often render women speechless. So, Sexy-and-Seventeen, what’s your actual name?”

“Julianne. Or Juli. Whatever.”

“Uh-huh. And now for the real question: Can you really play Rachmaninoff as well as Ike says?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. He said that?”

Isaac rubs his temples.

“He did. And I challenge you to a duel. Hear that sound? That’s me throwing my glove on the floor. I bite my thumb at you. It’s on, Julianne-or-Juli-whatever. Next time I’m in Mobile, it’s you and me in a classical music death match.”

I giggle.

“Too much?”

“A little.”

“Sorry. Nice talking to you, Juli. Can you put Ike back on?”

“Sure. Here.”

Isaac mouths
sorry
. “Are you done? We’re trying to rehearse here. Some of us take our music seriously. No. I’m hanging up. Later.”

He tosses the phone onto the loveseat. “Sorry. What did he say? No, wait, I don’t want to know.”

“Did he graduate from the Conservatory, too?”

“Yeah. Twice.”

“Piano?”

“Yep, and French horn. Look, I apologize for the interruption. Please continue warming up. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today.”

And just like that, he closes the little window I’d been peeking through into his private life.

***

The next day, Isaac asks me to warm up using Bach’s
Inventions
again.

“I hate these. You know that, right? Mr. Cline tried to make me do them, too.”

They’re meant to give both hands a workout
—
and both halves of your brain. The
Inventions
were also meant to be played
on a harpsichord, which only has one volume. It doesn’t respond to different levels of touch or intonation like a piano, which makes Isaac’s reaction so unexpected.

“For God’s sake, Julianne, you
cannot
expect to make an impression on the panel if you mechanically plunk out the notes. I
get
that you want it to be technically correct.
Really,
I do.” He’s stomping around the studio and waving his arms like a madman. I stifle a giggle. “But you don’t need me for that. I cannot help you if you do not loosen up!” He pounds on the piano with an angry fist.

“But I—” I plan a witty response but don’t get the chance to deliver it.

“No,
you
listen to
me
,” he snarls and points a long finger in my face.

Oh, he’s serious
.

“You’ve
got
to get out of your comfort zone or you’ll never get any further than Mobile. Maybe that’s the problem: you don’t
have
a comfort zone. You look at me with sappy-ass eyes, but I know it’s all an act. Stop. Stop acting and start
being
.”

It’s not funny anymore. My mind and mouth won’t work, but my fingernails gouge into the bench. I hope it’ll suck me in. His nose is an inch from mine, and I’m sure he can smell the fear as it rolls off my body. I’m humiliated, but he keeps going.

“I don’t know what your issues are. Don’t want to. But you’ve
got
to let go. Starting now.” He whips the sheet music away and throws it across the room. I flinch and instinctively let go of the bench to cover my face.

The sheets flutter through the air with an audible crackle from the storm’s static electricity. They land one by one to form a trail on the floor. I stare in disbelief and desperately try not to cry.

Never did I imagine he might be hiding a temper like this. He’s grumpy and withdrawn, yes, but always professional. Sometimes, he even borders on friendly. Never ever out of control. Now, I don’t know what to think.

“There.
Play
. You’ve got this memorized forward and back.” He stands behind the piano with his massive arms crossed again, feet wide apart in battle stance.

Scorching embarrassment creeps up my neck and into my ears. Part of it is fear, but part of it is shame, shame because…
I kind of like it
. The adrenaline tingle is almost pleasant.

What kind of sick freak does that make me?

As if my mind’s betrayal wasn’t enough, my body turns traitor, too, when a tear breaks free and slips down the side of my nose.

“Go ahead. Cry if you want to, if it’ll make you feel. Get pissed at me. Hate me.
Now play!
” He pounds the piano one more time, and I worry he’ll crack the veneer. I’m sure the neighbors can hear. Musicians can be moody. Lord knows I’m the princess of moody, and Mr. Cline and I’ve gone a couple of rounds over the years, but it’s different being yelled at by someone who looks capable of breaking me in half.
Someone who isn’t
her
.

Adrenaline heightens my urge to flee or fight, but neither is an option. My fingers have gone ice cold, and I don’t know whether to submit or tell him to take a flying leap. I know what he’s trying to do
—
draw me out
—
but this is dangerous territory.

I wipe my eyes and blow on my fingers to warm them.
God, if I can’t take this from him, how can I handle a professional panel?
Such a stupid, stupid baby.

I place my cold, clammy fingers on the keys and start again.
Submit or fight back? Is there a middle ground?
I totally overdo it.

Isaac rolls his eyes and wanders off to flip through sheet music.

I finish.

He apologizes.

We move on.

***

The door opens a crack, and I know it’s her. No one else comes to my room in the middle of the night.
Maybe if I shut my eyes really tight, it’ll all go away. Everything will go away.

It’s no good. It never is. I pull my arms over my head and whimper.

***

Bartok. That’s what this sounds like. A jumbled mess of his
Sonatina
and a dash of Piano Concerto no. 2.

I’ve really screwed things up with Isaac and I need to make them right, so I try my hand at composition again. I get up early, inhale breakfast, get dressed and duck into the studio before anyone else stirs. It’s Saturday, so they’ll sleep in. I won’t meet with Isaac until Monday.

I think about what happened in the middle of the night. Most of the time, I can pretend it was just one of my usual nightmares. But today I let the memories and emotions surface like gaping wounds. I want to put it down on paper
—
in music. This scares me, because I have to figure out what my feelings are.

This is why I don’t like to compose. Why I can’t compose?

I’m confused, so I go for that: confusion. At first it sounds like a jumbled mess, but as the measures tick by, there’s structure in the mess. My fingers don’t so much press the keys as skitter across them in a frenetic series of spasms. That part is like Bartok. But the notes themselves are dark. They remind me of another recurring dream I have of running through a dim, brick tunnel. They carry the influence of Rachmaninoff.

And yet, this composition is wholly mine. I haven’t squished together two existing ones. I’m as close to giddy as I can get. I can’t wait until Monday to play it for Isaac. I settle for R.J.

“Please? Pretty please? You’d be
the bestest
brother in the whole world if you’d just give me five minutes. I won’t even tell Daddy that I caught you smoking again.”

When begging fails, resort to blackmail.

“Wench. But you better not make me sit through that ‘Jesus Loves Me’ crap again.” He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand. “That was the lamest thing I ever heard.”

“It’s not. I promise. And it wasn’t ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ Okay, sit there.”

When I finish, R.J. says, “Juli, I—that was incredible.
Kind of random, in a good way.
But…I
gotta
ask, are you okay? That middle part, it freaked me out a little. Again, in a good way, you know?”