I kicked on some lace flats and scooted down to the third-floor bath for a quick splash of water to help with the death-pallor thing, and—
I turned the handle and the door slammed back in my face. “Oh.”
“Just a sec!” Oscar’s voice rang out. Then the sound of the toilet flushing. And a zipper.
“Oh. No. Take your . . .” I paced away, heart pounding. Then I fled to my room, staring out my window at the white-washed walls of the apartment building across the street until I was sure I could hear the bathroom door open and his steps moving down the creaking stairs.
Why was I embarrassed? This was my home. Mine.
I threw open my door to prove it, and thundered down two narrow flights, only to come to a halt at the sight of Nora, Dad, Oscar all standing around the dining area—Nora perched on her tiptoes, trying to touch Oscar’s hair, murmuring, “You are so lucky, mine just sits there!”
What in the no.
Oscar’s laughing eyes darted to mine, one blink flashing mayday.
“There’s a lock,” I blurted. First thing to pop into my head.
Nora pulled her hand back to gawk at me, and Oscar shifted out of reach.
“On the bathroom door.”
Oscar imitated sheepishness. “I noticed a second too late. Sorry.”
I shrugged, so very breezy. “I didn’t see anything. So.”
Thus descended the heaviest silence in the history of Manhattan Island.
Dad clapped a hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “Shall we get to work?”
And the tableau churned back into motion.
“I’m abducting your daughter for a fundraiser tea,” Nora shouted. “Hope that’s all right!”
“As long as all she drinks is tea.” Dad shot me a wink over his shoulder.
I forced a smile back, deflated by his non-reaction. This was a thing, after all, wasn’t it? After months of stasis—me, switching lanes. But I knew better than to take it personally. Martin Chertok, Greatest Living American Composer, presided over the realm of music, not park teas. If it didn’t involve instruments, it didn’t warrant more than a passing wink.
Nora squeezed Oscar’s wrist as he followed Dad’s slow trudge upstairs. “So glad we nabbed you, Oscar. Can’t wait to see what you dazzle us with next!”
“Great to finally meet you, Ms. Visser,” he called back, his brown eyes meeting mine for the briefest second before he disappeared up the stairs.
I followed Nora out, turning the name “Ms. Visser” over in my head. She’d only been a “Visser” for six years. I’d gone to the wedding, but couldn’t remember what her last name was before that.
“Our newest recruit,” Nora said as a Bentley glided to the curb. “He’s young!”
“Is that a surprise?”
She waved to her driver and hopped in the back, patting the open seat for me to join her.
“Not at all.” She pulled out a lighted compact as we pulled away. “He just seems older in the video, don’t you think? Maybe because he’s got the baton. That does something to conductors. Gives them a little . . . what’s the word . . . ?”
“What video?”
“You haven’t seen it. Stop. Tell me you’ve seen it!”
I winced an apology.
“Ha! So there are limits to Nancy’s magic.” She dropped the compact into her purse and pulled out her phone.
“Nancy?”
“Wait, I’ve got to find this for you . . .” She started feverishly typing, then beamed up at me. “Gravitas!”
“Gravi—?”
“The word I was thinking of.” Her face was buried in her phone again. “Let me see if I can . . .”
We pulled onto the Seventy-ninth Street crossing. Traffic was at a standstill.
“Thank you so much for bringing me,” I put in, strangely jittery. “I haven’t gone to anything like this in forever.”
Nora squinted up. “Not the Cloisters. It can’t have been that long.”
“Two years, I think?”
“Anna kept twirling you, do you remember? Calling you her ‘miniature.’ God, she was so proud of you.”
I didn’t remember it—not like that. I remembered Mom fuming at Dad for not wanting to go out. Her too-sharp smile as she dropped a dress in my lap and told me to forget homework and Hanon, she needed a date. I’d been out of place, gawky and confused all evening, and it had still been a starlit blur of happiness. Our last hurrah.
“I’ve missed you, you know,” Nora said. “Your whole family.”
My throat went tight. “You see Dad, like, every day.”
“I know, and I adore Marty beyond words, but . . . I haven’t heard from your mom in almost a year, can you believe it? How is she doing?”
“She’s . . .” I smoothed my hem. Over and over. “Really good! Busy. Her tour is going well.” All facts that could be easily googled.
“Well, that’s great. She deserves it. Such a talent.”
Nora watched me with taut eyes, like she wanted to go on . . .
But then she shifted, bless her, into a playful wink. “People have been asking about you.”
Oh God. “Me.”
“They want godmother gossip. Whether you’re going to follow in your family’s footsteps, carve your own path.”
Your own path. My body loosened into those words. To do that, to have the option . . .
“Whether you’re seeing anyone.” She nudged me.
I coughed on my laugh. “I’m not. At all.”
“Hmmm.” Nora swiped her phone screen. “Who do I know? Charlie Weatherby’s starting at Yale in the fall. Might be too short for you.”
“It’s really okay—”
“I’ll keep thinking. Oh—voilà.” She handed me her phone, a video already playing on its glossy screen. “Now, come on, you must have seen this. It was trending on Twitter last month!”
I don’t Twitter, I thought, watching as what looked like a school orchestra performance began on screen, shot on a shaky cell phone camera.
“He’s really got something.” Nora leaned against me to watch.
“Who—?” I started to ask, and then I saw him, tossing his head back to grin at the audience, the video finally focusing on his face.
Of course. Oscar Bell.
3.
the camera was moving closer. What were they playing? It sounded like Vivaldi, but . . .
The key shifted, the violins did a funny leap that made my breath hitch, and—it was the same theme, but now it sounded like Haydn . . . or Mozart? Elegant, silvery, impossibly clever.
“What is this?” I asked, but Nora was leaning into the front seat, saying something to her driver, so I pulled my focus back to the screen.
A teensy diminuendo and the arrangement shifted again fearlessly, swelled into a twentieth-century Romantic. Shostakovich? Stravinsky? My brain couldn’t catch up with my ears. It sounded like a storm on the ocean.
“Do you recognize it?” Nora smiled over her shoulder. “This is more your generation.”
“A . . . medley? Different periods of classical music . . .”
“It’s Kudzu Giants!” She bounced back into her seat as the traffic started moving again. “I don’t follow hip-hop either, but it’s a song called ‘Sparkler’ that’s very of the moment. And he’s done it in the style of—”
“Everyone.” I stared.
Nora took the phone and tapped the screen so the title of the video appeared: Variations on a Kudzu Giants Theme. By Oscar Bell.
One point eight million views.
I understood why. It was the quality of the music, the inventiveness, but the audio wasn’t the only reason this had gone viral. It was the visual.
Oscar Bell, jaunty shirtsleeves and a loosened polka-dot tie, natural hair haloing an ecstatic face as he conducted wit
h passionate strokes. His baton wasn’t tidy. He looked like he wasn’t sure what to do with his left hand. He needed work.
But Nora was right. He was music. No separation between him and the piece. It flowed from him, flooding the orchestra, the audience, me in this backseat, staring at a tiny screen—wishing I could grasp it somehow, that invisible element, that perfect confidence. That joy. I wanted to steal it for just an hour, a minute, a heartbeat . . .
“Finally.” The car stopped with a jolt and Nora took back her phone. “Tea time for me time!”
I got out of the car a little shakily, thanking the driver before stepping out onto familiar red bricks. We’d arrived at Bethesda Terrace—a vast, sweeping patio bustling with tea-goers in sundresses, sprinkles on a red velvet cupcake.
Nora pulled one side of her dress straight, nearly falling over in the process. “I should warn you—there are always photographers at these things. Vanity Fair, Vogue, city papers. You don’t mind having your picture taken, do you? It can be a little much.”
“Oh.” I was suddenly mortified by my dress. “Do I look all right?”
“Ruby! You could wear a potato sack!” She winked at a young man holding a clipboard, then cut a line for us through the clustered crowd. “That’s an expression, of course, but do you know—I tagged along to the spring Chanel show and what do you think I saw coming down the runway? Lydia!” she hollered into the distance. A tall woman with buttercup-blond hair swiveled to wave back. “There’s someone you’ve got to meet.”
Lydia’s eyes widened into perfect circles, a little girl spotting a fairy. “That’s not.”
“It is!” Nora beamed, then stood on her tiptoes to whisper to me, “See? Everyone likes you already. Sarah?” She pirouetted to touch the wrist of someone passing. “I thought you were in Malta! Don’t tell me that fell through?”
A glance around the party as Nora’s many friends descended was all it took to explain Dad’s comment about drinking. For a tea party, there sure was a lot of champagne being passed around. A huge banner of sun-dappled oaks competed with the park itself, Bethesda Fountain splashing happily, the mossy lake napping beyond. Everyone here was laughing or on the verge of it, languid bodies, cheery cheeks, like today was the first day of a long-awaited vacation. Conversation rose in waves and—
Someone somewhere was playing the harp. I strained to hear it. It sounded like rain on the roof of my grandparents’ porch . . . and yet the second I tried to pick out the piece, that cozy feeling evaporated. It turned into laughter. Tittering behind hands, a mocking sound.
I stared at the toes of my shoes.
Dad would know which piece it was. I had a ludicrous flash-image of him standing here listening. No wonder he’d ditched that Cloisters party way back when.
No wonder it all turned out the way it did.
A beat of silence fell around me and, looking back up to a wall of expectant faces, I realized someone must have asked me a question.
“Ruby’s studying the piano,” Nora answered, to a chorus of “Ooh!”
“I . . . ah . . .” Pain sparked in my chest. Please don’t ask. Please . . .
That thirty-something woman, Sarah, leaned in. “When can we expect a performance? At Amberley, maybe?”
My eyes lassoed Nora’s. The tiniest line formed between her brows.
She pulled me into a squeeze. “I’m secretly hoping I can talk Ruby into joining our ranks.”
“That would be a treat,” Lydia said. “For us, I mean.”
I breathed out.
“Are you interested in philanthropy?” Sarah asked me.
“Very!” The done thing. Still, it didn’t feel like a lie. “I want to make myself useful. If that makes any sense?”
They glanced at each other as if I’d recited their secret password.
“Quick smiles, ladies?” I turned to see a bald man lifting a camera to his face while everyone drew themselves sideways and taller. Two snaps and done. He asked Nora a question and she pointed to me and murmured something back that made him raise his eyebrows.
My name, I realized. All she’s done is tell him my name.
I was a person of note here. I had a gravity field, lovely things orbiting, glances and chitchat and tiny cakes on trays and everything nice. And why yes, I will have an oolong, thank you very much!
A clinking noise sounded behind us, and a short man in seersucker stepped out of the crowd to give a speech on the organization and everyone’s support and something about “legacy” directed at the older ladies in the crowd. It lasted two minutes, then the party resumed.
“That’s it?” I asked Nora quietly.
“That’s it.” She shrugged. “A reminder of why we’re here, and the river flows.” She floated her purse like a canoe. Then, abruptly, she called out, “If we reach fifty thousand dollars today, Stephen and I will be happy to match!”
A cry rippled through the crowd, then applause, the party’s chatter taking on a new pitch. The seersucker man looked like he was about to pass out from relief.
Nora linked arms with me. “And that is how you get it flowing faster!”
“You’re good at this.”
She laughed. “I am! Just takes practice. When I started, I barely made a peep. But you have to think about the cause. It really is everything.”
She beamed around us, like she had an ownership stake in the park, knew every tree by name.
* * *
• • •
We rode home as the light dimmed over the park, casting boughs and benches and bicyclists in the same golden glimmer. I was catching the sunset through the open window, feeling like maybe I was starting to own it too.
“You really are a natural.” Nora patted my knee. “If you’re interested, start thinking about what your passions are. Where you can have the most impact.”
She couldn’t have meant it, nobody even knew about it, but my mind immediately landed on my trust. I’d always planned to use that money as a down payment on an apartment once my piano career ignited. Now that that future lay dead in the ground, I could find something else to take its place.
I could have an impact.
Hope dug into me, but my hair blew gently in the hot breeze, softening its edges.
“Do you know of any organizations that could use volunteers over the summer? Anything with a teen council, or . . . I don’t even know what you’d call it.”
“Absolutely!” Nora perked up even more. “Well, of course—there’s Amberley.”
My shoulders clenched against the feeling of an elevator plummeting.
“We’re having an event at Wing Club in a few weeks, a young donors’ gala. Everyone there would love to meet the youngest Chertok, all grown up.”
They’d be sorely disappointed. “I think maybe . . . not music.”
Nora’s face fell. “No?”
“Just . . .” I stared at my locked fingers. “Anything else. I’m open.”
“You’ve really given it up.”
“Taking a break,” I lied.
“I understand,” she said quietly. “I do.”
She’d been entwined with my family since before I was born. She’d been privy to everything that happened with Amberley. She had to understand.
“So how do you feel about the environment? Art?”
“Um, yes!”
“I know everybody at the Met.” She winked. “Museum, not opera, don’t worry. Let me think . . .” She scrolled through her phone, then her head jolted up. “Aha! There’s an event, Monday, early evening, nothing fancy—are you free? Please say you’re free.”
She put her hands together, pleading. I couldn’t nod fast enough.
“Nora,” I sputtered as I stepped onto the sidewalk. “This has been so—”
Nora shushed me through the window. “Thank you for coming. Nice to have
some company for a change!”
I watched her roll away. She’d known everyone at that party, kept chatting with them about dinner plans.
She misses Mom.
I crumpled that thought and left it on the sidewalk as I stepped onto the stoop.
The house was dark, upstairs and down. Dad must have been out being Dad and who knew where Oscar Bell was. Probably getting to know the other Amberley geniuses—sparks swirling, earth cracking beneath their feet.
But none of it happened without people like Nora. People to make the river flow.
The house was so still I could hear a clock ticking on the third-floor landing. I climbed the stairs, running my fingers along the built-in bookshelves crammed with first-edition novels and fraying scores and bric-a-brac ceramics, past Alice’s old room that still smelled like her hand lotion, Dad’s study, messier than it should be, Win’s old room, now crammed with empty luggage, all of it quiet, quiet, quiet, until I got to my tidy little bedroom at the top.
The sunset clinging to my skin had faded by the time I changed into pajamas, but I still went to sleep feeling like there was gold in my veins.
Then, at one in the morning—music.
Faint, a trickle of a melody, loud enough to have invaded my sleep. I swung my feet out from the covers, held on to the cracked windowsill, and listened.
The tune was sweet, lyrical. Sad, spiked with hope, straining upward. Like it wanted so badly to be heard.
It couldn’t have been Dad. He was a nine-to-five creative and slave to his sleep schedule. Besides, this was coming from outside. The instrument was tinny . . . a synthesizer? I leaned my head out the window far enough to see a light on in the basement apartment.
The music stopped mid-phrase. The light in the basement turned off.
I slunk back into bed. The house was quiet again, the city broadcasting its usual midnight programming. But that melody wouldn’t leave me alone.
And I dreamed about his stupid YouTube video.
4.
Night Music Page 2