by Alix Ohlin
By the time we arrived at Mrs. Gasparian’s we were windswept, cheeks red, hair in knots. If she was surprised to see us unaccompanied, she didn’t show it.
“Welcome, my dears,” she said. “Would you like something to drink before we start?” She gave us each a mug of weak tea with a lot of milk and sugar, and we stood in the corner, warming our hands. The piano had been rolled into the living room, and Mrs. Gasparian’s assorted chairs lined up in front of it. Marcel the cat was seated in an armchair, licking himself with brazen exhibitionism. Next to the piano, Mrs. Gasparian stood chatting with a thin, bearded man wearing too-tight corduroys and a sweater vest over a collared shirt. There was also a stout middle-aged lady with curly hair and a younger woman wearing red lipstick and a fancy black dress. We were the only children.
Mrs. Gasparian clapped her hands in welcome, then invited the younger woman to play first. She clicked forward in high heels and played what seemed to me an impossibly complex piece, flowing and moody, and her hair, which was pulled back in a high ponytail, swished back and forth wildly. When she finished, she pulled the end of her ponytail toward her chest, shyly, and began picking at the hairs while the rest of us applauded.
The stout lady followed, a beginner soldiering through a parade march. Mrs. Gasparian watched with an expression of benign neutrality, and then we all clapped again, the stout lady red-faced with relief.
Robin was next. Though I’d been present for most of her lessons, I hadn’t paid much attention and knew nothing about music; I’d taken her progress for granted. It was only when I saw the thin bearded man stiffen, and the young lady scowl in jealousy, and Mrs. Gasparian break into a smile, that I understood something about my sister. She played a piece divided into several small sections—a theme and variations, I can guess now—and I imagine Mrs. Gasparian chose it for the range it offered: one section romantic, one brooding, one violent, one pretty and spring-like. Robin frowned at the piano while she played, as if commanding it to behave. Her performance held the same private quality as it had that first day; again I felt like I’d stumbled into some intimate conversation, as if she were sitting there naked and exposed, and I flushed with an emotion that I couldn’t define. When she finished, the applause was slow and bemused. The bearded man whispered something to the young woman, raising his eyebrows. Robin returned to the chair beside me, not looking at anyone; her eyes were still elsewhere.
“I made a mistake,” she whispered. “In the adagio.”
“No one could tell,” I said.
“Mrs. Gasparian could,” she said unhappily, her mouth pursed.
After Robin, Mrs. Gasparian stood again. “Our final performer, Leo, has a special piece planned.” The bearded man stood, bowed, and sat down on the bench, but did not play. I looked around, trying to understand what was happening. Everyone was still, listening thoughtfully. Robin was preoccupied, going over her mistake. At last he stood again, bowed again, and returned to his armchair. Mrs. Gasparian led us in a round of confused applause, then invited us to join her for cake that she’d baked herself.
Almost no one spoke to us afterward. The others gathered in clusters, making small talk, acknowledging Robin only in sidelong glances. We didn’t think much of it; being ignored by adults was normal to us; it didn’t occur to us that her talent was outlandish and perhaps even intimidating. The bearded man explained his piece to everyone. “It’s about silence,” he said. “Didn’t it make you feel the room?”
“Sort of,” said the young woman with the ponytail. “It was kind of uncomfortable.”
“Exactly,” said the bearded man.
Only the stout middle-aged lady came over to us, squeezing both of our hands. “Your sister is something else,” she said to me ambiguously. “I’m so embarrassed.”
Mrs. Gasparian brought us each a slice of chocolate cake on a plate. When I cut into mine, I saw it was downy with cat hair. I ate it anyway.
6.
When I was fourteen and Robin was ten, Marianne got a job selling perfume to department stores. She began traveling for work, and sometimes she was gone for days at a stretch. While she was away, we looked after ourselves. In the mornings I packed Robin’s lunch and braided her hair and walked her to her bus stop—we were at different schools now. In the evenings I signed Marianne’s name on notes and made Kraft Dinner or grilled cheese sandwiches. Robin set the table and washed the dishes. Then we listened to Marianne’s records or watched TV until bleary-eyed, with no one to tell us it was bedtime. We missed Marianne but we were more relaxed in her absence, less afraid of doing or saying anything that might tip her mood into ugliness. When she came home, she’d bring us tube samples of perfume taped to little cards, and we’d douse ourselves until she held her nose and said, “Enough, you fiends.”
At night Robin and I lay in bed and talked, mostly gossiping about Marianne. We didn’t believe she was always at work when she went away. Sometimes she came home with a mysterious smile on her face, or made us hot chocolate with marshmallows for breakfast, both of which we took as signs she’d been up to something.
“I think she has a boyfriend now,” I said.
“You mean that man who called? He was selling vacuum cleaners.”
“That’s what he said he wanted.”
“Maybe he really was selling them.”
“Maybe she really wanted his vacuum cleaner,” I said.
Robin laughed. She was the only person I could make laugh. I told her stories about people at school: how the science teacher and the custodian were having an affair they thought was secret but wasn’t; how I’d seen the teacher emerging from the supply closet, straightening her skirt. Robin didn’t talk much about her life at school. She never did very well there, because she was like Marianne, paying attention only when she felt like it, learning only what she wanted to, not liking being told what to do. She had difficulty concentrating except when it came to music. And perhaps just as importantly, she didn’t mind being scolded; didn’t care when her report cards noted that she could certainly do better if she tried harder. She lacked the fear that motivated me constantly, whether in the classroom, on the bus, or at home: I was terrified of being discovered and chastised by some nameless authority. I felt guilty of a crime I hadn’t committed yet, and so I constantly atoned. Once another girl stepped on my foot in the hallway at school, and I said sorry. She grimaced. “What are you sorry for? Being born?”
7.
Marianne did have a new boyfriend, a Swiss businessman named Hervé whom she’d met on one of her business trips. At a department store where she was calling on her account, he was buying shoes that cost more than she made in a month. “They were so beautiful,” she said reverently, as though it were the shoes she’d fallen for, not the man. In the picture she showed us, his blond hair cantilevered out from his forehead in a commanding ledge, beneath which protruded an equally monumental jawline; he seemed built of powerful structures, tightly girded and trussed.
The two of them met in Toronto for romantic weekends, Marianne returning flushed and languorous, often wearing some new piece of jewelry that she’d turn around and sell. She was in love, but she still believed in cold, hard cash. During these years of their affair, she was almost always happy, and the mood in our apartment lightened. In the evenings we’d watch movies together—Pretty Woman, The Bodyguard. We never met Hervé, which was fine with us. We didn’t miss the awkward dinners of our childhood, or the obligation of performing for Marianne’s suitors.
Robin finally found the courage to tell her about the piano, only because Mrs. Gasparian said that she must look for another teacher, one who specialized in advanced pupils. “You need more training than I can provide,” she decreed. She recommended someone, and insisted on speaking with Marianne. On a rainy afternoon all three of us went over to her house. Robin played a piece she was learning, stumbling a bit, which rarely happened. I could
see how uncomfortable she was at this meeting of worlds. When she finished, Marianne and Mrs. Gasparian drank coffee in the kitchen, whispering for a while, and then Marianne returned to the living room and picked up her purse. She narrowed her eyes at Robin and said, “If it’ll keep you out of trouble, I suppose it’s fine. Better this than boys.”
So Robin took the bus twice a week to lessons downtown, using Mrs. Gasparian’s piano for practice in between. I spent my time studying and did extra work: math competitions, essay contests, science projects. I needed something to fill the hours while Robin and Marianne were gone. One day my history teacher dropped a flyer on my desk for an American standardized test to be held at school the following month. “This could be good practice,” he said, not specifying for what. I registered, paying for it with essay contest prize money, and took it without thinking much about it. When the scores arrived in the mail, I didn’t even look at them. But I must have done well, because glossy brochures for American colleges began arriving at the apartment. In the pictures, girls in wool sweaters and corduroy skirts walked beneath brilliant autumn trees, while boys in lab coats measured fluids into beakers, their faces intent. Fascinated by these catalogues, I spent hours looking at them, stuffing them beneath my pillow when Robin or Marianne came in.
A letter came from a small school outside Boston, Worthen College, suggesting I might qualify for a scholarship. With my history teacher’s help, I filled out an application and sent it off. I’d never talked with Marianne about what my life after high school would be like; I don’t know if she ever thought about it. She’d never finished high school herself. Anyway, she was busy with her work and her friends and her trips. When I heard her talking on the phone, she said things like, “At last the girls can look after themselves a bit more, I’m finding myself again,” which I repeated to Robin in a mocking whisper while we lay in bed at night. I thought Marianne was selfish and vain and immature. It didn’t occur to me that perhaps she was immature because she’d missed out on her own youth; when I was seventeen and spending my nights poring over college brochures, she was only thirty-five years old.
8.
When a manila envelope came from Worthen, including a letter that offered a full financial aid package, I wrote back straightaway to accept, forging Marianne’s signature with a confidence borne of years of practice. It’s funny how easy it all was. These days college applications seem to take months to complete, with great expense and stress; but in 1993 the process must have been more casual, or perhaps Worthen was just so obscure that nobody was clamoring to get in. In my memory, anyway, a kind of magic took place: a portal appeared, and I slipped through it, simple as that.
I waited until late spring to tell Marianne I was leaving home. She’d cut her hair very short and tufted it into spikes, shiny with hairspray. She ran her hands through it, like a bird adjusting her plumage, and said, “How will you pay for it?”
“They said I don’t have to pay.”
“What, nothing?”
“Nothing.”
She didn’t believe me, I could tell, but couldn’t come up with a reason why.
“So that’s it, then? You’re just leaving.”
She didn’t ask what I was going to study, or what I wanted to do with my life—questions that would never have occurred to her. I could tell she was angry about my rebellion, but she was too used to being the rebellious child herself; she had no words to voice her current position, and was all the more angry at me for putting her in it. At last she threw her hands up in exasperation.
“You and your sister,” she concluded. “You just do whatever you want, don’t you?”
* * *
—
That evening, in the dark, I told Robin. Over the past few months, I’d shared my obsession with her—the college brochures, my dreams of strolling along cobbled walks, kicking autumn leaves—but for her this was all abstract; she was thirteen, and in her entire life we’d never spent a night apart, had never even slept in different rooms. I myself could hardly believe I was leaving. When I explained that night, whispering, Robin said nothing. The room was silent—or, not silent, but full of quiet terrible noises: the sound of our breathing, the rustle of sheets, the hum of cars outside. It made me remember the piece we’d heard at Robin’s first recital, the four minutes of silence, and how awful it could be to listen to a quiet room.
My sister left her bed and padded over to mine, crawled in beside me, and rested her cheek on my shoulder, her tears trickling down my arm. “I didn’t think you would really go,” she said.
I flushed with guilt. “I’ll be back,” I told her. “And you can come visit.”
“That’s not the same,” she said.
I put my arms around her and inhaled her familiar scent, Finesse shampoo and sweat and something else that was unidentifiable but particular to my sister, the smell of her skin. “You’ll be fine. You’ll play piano, you have your friends, you won’t even have time to miss me.”
“I’ll have time,” she said.
She burrowed even closer, her hair tickling my chin and neck. I stroked her back, and we both shuddered with crying.
9.
I left for the US on a Greyhound bus, carrying only a backpack puffy with clothes. I didn’t realize until I arrived and saw the other students that I was supposed to have brought creature comforts: blankets, a bathrobe, flip-flops, the larger apparatus of a self. A dorm administrator took pity and brought me hand-me-downs from her own daughter, who’d recently graduated, so I soon had a quilt with flowers on it, a shower caddy, and a small desk lamp.
“You should’ve come early,” she said. “We have a special orientation for the international students. To help you adjust to American culture and expectations.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” she said, squeezing my hand, then abruptly letting go as if she’d done something wrong. “It’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t worried. I loved the tiny, forested campus, nestled inexplicably on a hillside behind an industrial park. From my dorm room on the fifth floor I could look down on a mid-sized factory with two smokestacks and a horn that blew every weekday at noon and six. Worthen had once been a teacher’s college for women, and it retained an air of modest, slightly shabby, scholarly ambition. Students walked along pathways beneath wrought-iron lamp posts, just as they’d done in the brochures. The two original buildings were lovely Victorians, while the rest—including my dorm—were made of wood and concrete blocks, and smelled of mildew. I didn’t mind. I walked through the early weeks of my classes in a kind of trance, clutching my books to my chest as if someone might try to steal them. But no one would steal anything at Worthen; it was a place where everyone smiled at you and then quickly averted their eyes so as not to cause alarm. The school was full of mild-mannered introverts, male and female, who blushed when they raised their hands. It was uncanny the extent to which I felt, for the first time, at home.
My roommate was a girl from Framingham named Helen, who ran track and planned to study zoology. She wanted to go to Africa and save the gorillas, like Jane Goodall, whose picture she taped to the wall above her bed. When she went out for practice runs she wore headphones and listened to gorilla sounds, hoping to become fluent in gorilla communication. It was how Jane had learned, by osmosis. “She crouched and observed,” Helen told me. “She didn’t even have a formal scientific education at first.” She had Jane Goodall’s biography memorized.
I liked her, though it was hard to get used to sleeping next to anyone but my sister, and Helen snored in delicate bursts, like tiny thunderstorms rolling past. And she soon drifted into a circle of athletes who met for frosty six a.m. runs and ate egg-white omelettes for breakfast; we had little in common except a willingness not to disturb each other.
Most of my classes had been chosen for me in advance, but I liked them all and didn
’t find them difficult; the extra work I’d done in high school served me well. I loved the food in the cafeteria, and when other students complained about it, or talked about missing home cooking, I didn’t know what they meant. “You eat like a stray cat,” a boy once said to me, and he was probably right: the abundance struck me as too good to be true, and I shoveled the food down enthusiastically. His remark reminded me of Robin, how she had pretended to be an animal when she was a child, and I missed her with an ache that flared suddenly and didn’t diminish so much as recede, with willed effort, to a back alley of my mind.
I joined the international students’ association, and once a week we ate pizza in the homes of different professors who all asked whether we needed any explanation of American customs. We didn’t; we just liked the pizza.
On Sunday afternoons I wrote letters to Robin and—nominally—Marianne, in which I tempered my happiness, not wanting to gloat or sound selfish. In return I received postcards from Robin, mostly dumb tourist ones she stole from the dépanneur, showing the cross on Mount Royal or a beaver wearing a Mountie hat, smiling with buck teeth. She said Brahms was giving her headaches and that she’d finally met Hervé. I felt a stab of betrayal: Why had Marianne brought him home now? Was I the only daughter of whom she was ashamed?
I tried not to think about it. I was studying calculus, American literature, and European history. I was equally interested in everything and had no idea what I would major in. I was a hoarder, a collector of facts that I stored in my brain for later use, not knowing what this use might be. In the Netherlands, I learned, 1672 was known as rampjaar, the “disaster year,” because the Dutch were attacked by England, France, Münster, and Cologne. The Dutch had a saying about themselves in that year: the whole country was radeloos, redeloos en reddeloos—desperate, irrational, and past recovery. I loved this idiom, the silly-sounding Dutch words that seemed to balloon, lightly, above the weight of disaster, and I wrote about it to Robin. She wrote back on a postcard of the Quebec flag. Mrs. Gasparian died. She was in the hospital and I didn’t even know.