Night Music

by Jenn Marie Thorne

  She grabbed Oscar’s hands and shook them. He laughed.

  “Until your symphony premieres, that is. You’ll wear a tux for that, yes?”

  She turned to Dad. He shrugged, smiling like an impassive god, his feet kicked up on the corner of his desk.

  “But for this . . .” She crouched to dig into a Louis Vuitton duffel bag on the floor, her voice trailing off.

  As I leaned forward, curious, Nora reached for me. “We probably should give them some breathing room, actually. Do you mind?”

  Her arm was linked in mine and pulling me out of the room before I could even process what was happening. I glanced back at Oscar, but his eyes were locked on the bag like it was Pandora’s Box.

  Nora sighed musically once the door shut behind us.

  “There. Thanks. I get a little funny in tight spaces.” She paced the hall, smiling brightly and rubbing her hands like we were waiting to go into a party. “I think I’m more nervous about this interview than he is!”

  “Why?”

  Her eyelashes fluttered for a second before she answered. “This is just such a big moment for him. And I care. You know how I am, I just . . . internalize things.”

  I glanced back at the closed door, then whispered, “Why is she asking Oscar to change? He tried on like ten different outfits this morning, trying to get the right mix. He’s . . . good.”

  “That is adorable. Oh my God.” Nora pressed her hand to her lips. “He’s got a great sense of style, doesn’t he? This is just . . . interviews are a special beast. That’s why we’re lucky to have Nancy. Oh! Speaking of which—would you be up for an interview?”

  “I . . . what? What would I have to say? About anything?”

  “We could give you talking points.”

  “And I would . . . recite them?” I goggled at her.

  “Hmmm . . .” Her eyes drifted. “Maybe one of the outdoor shots—”

  The door opened and we both spun around, but only Nancy walked through, a vague smile planted on her face. “He needs a minute.”

  Nora’s smile went very tight. “What about Ruby? Helpful?”

  Nancy shook her head, not looking at me. “It’s great overall, but I think it undermines this particular appeal.”

  I stared between them with creeping embarrassment. “No interview?”

  Nora glanced at Nancy. Nancy didn’t react.

  “You’re off the hook,” Nora said. “So thoughtful of you to offer, though.” I hadn’t offered. “I love the way you’ve been doing your hair lately, you know. So chic.” It was in a ponytail.

  I let her squeeze my hand, once, tightly. Her fingers were clammy.

  We stood leaning against the gray fleur-de-lis wallpaper until the door opened, and a strange parallel-universe version of Oscar walked through.

  No jacket. No bow tie. Black jeans, a blue hoodie, a white T-shirt, a sleeveless Washington Wizards jersey. He looked like a basketball fan. From DC.

  I felt my brain flipping through scenarios, none of them even remotely adequate. What were they thinking?

  “Perfect.” Nancy patted him on the back and started to lead him to the elevators.

  Under Nancy’s touch, Oscar’s shoulders drew in, almost imperceptibly.

  “I am . . . confused,” I said.

  “Don’t be!” Oscar shot me a smile as he walked by, but his eyes didn’t make it to mine. It was like he didn’t want me to look at him. “It’s cool, Ruby, I’m fine.”

  I started to follow, but Nora held up her hand.

  “Like I said, sweetheart, we’ve got it covered, but thank you! There’s food in the lounge, if you’re hungry. Strudel!”

  I was too thrown to argue or force myself into the elevator with them, so I turned back to the office. Dad was sitting in the same spot, moving a glass paperweight from one side of his desk to the other.

  “What the hell, Dad.” I shut the door behind me. “He doesn’t look anything like himself.”

  Dad grunted. “He will at the concert. This is just one of those things.”

  “Why would he even go along with this?” I turned, dizzy. “Because this Nancy person said so, and that’s it? Fall in line?”

  Then I looked at Dad, realizing. They’d been alone for a good ten minutes.

  “What did you say to him?”

  Dad flipped through loose pages on his desk, chopping them into a neat stack. “I told him it was all a pile of shit, but part of the job is shoveling it. I said the PR people want a Cinderella story and that’s what we’ve got to deliver. He asked me if I’d do the same thing and I said absofuckinglutely.”

  Hearing Dad curse, I flinched, as unnerved as if he’d started speaking in tongues. He sounded so angry. And yet he’d apparently been the one to talk Oscar into going on television in someone else’s clothes.

  “You wouldn’t be asked to do the same thing, though, would you?” I pressed him, my uneasiness growing by the second. “What, would the board make you wear a yarmulke and grow payote? It isn’t the same—”

  “They would if it meant increasing the endowment,” Dad snapped, his eyes landing hard on mine. “This is a school, a nonprofit, but it’s a business too. Without money, all of this goes away. And I mean forever.”

  “And how does dressing Oscar in a costume bring in money?”

  “You’re being glib, Ruby.”

  “No, I’m seriously asking. And why do they need money anyway? Look at this place!” I motioned to his oak-paneled office, the hall beyond with its Persian runners and glass-boxed original scores. “They get tuition money, they get NEA funding, right? And all those black-tie donor events . . .”

  Nora, making the river flow. Nora, sweating down to her fingers.

  “We’re located in the center of Manhattan, with incredible competition for dollars, people are getting their pockets emptied by shady hedge fund managers left and right, and the margins are . . .” Dad growled, pushing himself standing. “Listen, I need to get down there to support Oscar. When you want to have a grown-up conversation about this, I’ll be happy to fill you in.”

  I stiffened into a statue as he breezed past me.

  Out in the hall, he glanced up at the descending numbers, held the elevator door while I jogged to join him, then stepped inside and jabbed the lobby button. “Honey, why don’t you wait in the lounge? You don’t need to get wrapped up in this.”

  I’m his girlfriend.

  But I still got out at the lobby and watched the numbers go up again as the elevator went to the fourth floor without me. They must have been filming in Nora’s office suite. I glanced behind me, seeing another ATV crew setting up what looked like an exterior shot of the school.

  My phone beeped. A text from Jules. I’m bored. Come be weird around me.

  I could keep vigil in the lounge for however many hours. Eat. Worry for my boyfriend, even if he was smiling, agreeing, cooperating. I could wait to see if Nora talked her sister into giving me a photo op. Oscar’s friend . . . how do you like that for a job title?

  There was no place for me here that made any sense at all.

  I texted back to Jules. On my way.

  * * *

  • • •

  Oscar came home at four, wearing his other outfit, the real one—shirt untucked, sleeves rolled, bow tie shoved into his pocket. I hurried to meet him on the sidewalk.

  “How was it?” I asked, breathless. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded, looking tired. “It was good. Yeah. Shawna was nice. I wish you’d been there.”

  “They wouldn’t let me. Dad said—”

  “I figured. It’s cool.”

  I should have fought. I should have insisted on being there. I should have picked at a strudel in the lounge.

  “You know,” Oscar blurted, his voice more gravelly than usual. “I don’t have a probl
em with that outfit. I don’t feel any kind of . . . judgment toward it or anything like that. If brothers want to dress that way, they should dress that way. But it’s not how I dress. And I’m not trying to shut myself off, pretend that I’m not part of a bigger conversation—I’m just not sure that this is the conversation.”

  “Okay.” I reached for him, then dropped my hand.

  “And yeah, of course I want black kids to be able to see someone who looks just like them. On TV. Being interviewed by Shawna Wells. Conducting an orchestra.” He sounded like he was reciting someone else’s words. “It’s all I want. I didn’t need to be told that.”

  “Oh God, was that Nancy’s pitch?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, which meant yes. “I don’t want to . . . I don’t know what people’s intentions are, you know? I just met her.”

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t sure what to say, except that he was being too nice.

  “Ughhhh.” He lifted his fists to the sky and let them fall. “I can’t even explain this. My thinking is . . . muddled right now.”

  He shook his head, like he was disappointed in himself. Did he wish he’d pushed back more?

  I should have spoken out. Right there in the hallway when he stepped into it.

  But, “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m here if you want to talk it through.”

  “I’m fine.” I took his hand. He squeezed back and let go. “It’s all good, right? Shawna Wells! I’m gonna have to start watching the news.”

  “You hungry?” I asked.

  “Not yet.” He glanced at his door, jangling his keys. “I’ll text you in a bit and we can work or . . . whatever.”

  I grinned at the whatever, but all humor flitted away when I saw his expression—the smile sloughing off, the raw exhaustion underneath.

  “Okay,” I said. “You know where to find me.”

  The sun set, he didn’t text, call, knock. I got into bed and listened for him.

  But I couldn’t hear his music all night long.

  28.

  oscar wasn’t himself up there.

  His movements were forceful, jerky, a tiny bit sluggish. The orchestra looked out of sorts and the newly anointed symphony choir like they’d been dropped into a war zone. Their sixteen voices didn’t float over the woodwinds like echoes from the past. They were performing a completely different song.

  Oscar lowered his baton, slumping. “Have you guys . . . rehearsed this?”

  The choir mistress, Liz, a contralto who used to run the children’s chorus at the Met, stood from the front row.

  “We have,” she said, polite, tightly coiled. “What you’ve given us. There are twenty new bars we’re working through tonight—”

  “I’m writing as fast as I can,” Oscar yelled, and everybody stopped breathing.

  Oscar never snapped. Oscar laughed, teased, encouraged. This voice was a new one. It seemed to shock even him. He stood at the podium, muscles locked tight.

  “Right,” he said quietly. “Right. I apologize.”

  But he didn’t budge. Didn’t lift his baton. Stared at his score while the orchestra shifted and coughed.

  I started to rise from my seat as Dad shot from the wings. I hadn’t realized he was here tonight.

  Dad placed a hand on Oscar’s back and murmured in his ear. Oscar nodded, motioning feebly for Dad to take the baton.

  A ripple ran through the musicians. Martin Chertok—the Martin Chertok, the Once and Future Maestro—was taking the podium once again, lifting his hands like feathers, drifting, settling, until everyone’s instrument was at the ready.

  Oscar walked down the aisle, then stopped to turn back, listening.

  They’d begun at the start of the andante con fuoco. The choir was better this time—the tenors too loud, but that was easily adjusted. At least their voices made sense in the context of the piece. They were approaching something ineffably lovely, dawn rising slowly over a cityscape . . .

  Oscar turned from the stage and started away.

  I jumped from my seat, my arms a roadblock.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Hey!”

  It took a second for his eyes to land on mine. “It’s so off. I need to toss it out, start something—”

  “It’s not off,” I whispered urgently, willing his voice quieter too. “I promise, it’s not. This is the first time they’re rehearsing it.”

  “It’s not what I have in my head. What we have when we’re working.”

  He reached out to run his finger over my cheek, pulling away a stray eyelash.

  “Well, then, I shall sing tonight.” I raised my chin like a prima donna.

  “You always sing.”

  “No, here.” I nudged him. “I’ll sit in. I can be a ringer.”

  Me, a ringer, helping all these pre-professional opera students achieve a better performance. Hilarious.

  But Oscar had turned toward the stage, taking my wrist, leading me straight to the choir seats.

  “Wait wait wait, no no no.” I dug in my heels to stop. “I was one million percent joking! I forgot to say ‘get it,’ but I’m saying it now! Oscar!”

  “Do you mind?” He turned to lock eyes with me. “It’s a good idea.”

  “I mean.” My heart ratcheted to express-train speed. But, oh God, would this really help him . . . ?

  Dad had finished rehearsing that section—concluding a few bars after the brass section picked up the Latin theme—and as he waved for everyone to pause, the orchestra broke into applause. I glanced between Oscar and Dad, not sure which they were cheering, but Oscar was whispering in Liz’s ear, motioning to me. She looked perplexed, obviously, but waved for me to join them.

  The choir scrambled for another chair.

  I waved them off. “Floor is absolutely fine!”

  I sat cross-legged next to the sopranos. The girl next to me scooted her ankles away. Yeppers. I closed my eyes. This would be over soon.

  Oscar mounted the steps, patted Dad on the shoulder, and took the baton back. Dad clapped for Oscar, the orchestra following suit—less rapturously this time.

  But then Oscar raised his hands, murmured, “From the beginning,” scanned the orchestra, found me on the floor, and smiled with such gratitude that his eyes crinkled.

  Then he struck the downbeat and the orchestra began to play. Four bars till the choir and . . .

  It was fine. Not as scary as I’d expected. I knew the soprano line, when to come in. And I reveled in the feeling of the orchestration—everything we’d imagined taking form now, bursting joyfully into the real world. Sitting up here, physically immersed in the music, sound swirled around me the way it had that day in the Cloisters. It seemed to reverberate inside my body, my nerve endings, down to the molecular level. Was this the God thing Oscar was talking about? Dad’s “ineffable”? If not this, then what?

  He continued past the point where the chorus ran out, but his eyes kept dancing back to me every few bars, life returning note by note.

  As we finished up, I scanned the house and noticed fewer onlookers tonight, thank goodness. But I did see a flash of red hair as Nora Visser slid out the back door, glancing back one more time. Right at me.

  “That was helpful,” Oscar said as we waved good-bye to the musicians and made our way through the night-lit plaza. “Having you up there . . . yeah. Thank you.”

  “It really helped?”

  “It did,” he said, with a sideways grin. “You’re my cannon blast.”

  Our arms swung together in counter-time to our steps.

  Across the plaza, a camera flashed. I pulled Oscar so his back was turned. Was Nora seriously going to keep siccing paparazzi on us? Oscar looked behind him, and only then did I realize it was a group of tourists taking a selfie by the fountain.

  I linked arms with him, pretending that I was being playful, that
I was not, in fact, the most conceited person in the world.

  “I know this is important.” Oscar motioned behind him as we left Lincoln Center. “This is part of why I’m here, but I wish I could get this piece finished first. You know? Every second I’m working with the orchestra, I feel like I’m wasting time.”

  “Why don’t you ask Dad? I’m sure—”

  “He said this is a good introduction to the way things work in the professional world with commissioned pieces. So.” Oscar pulled at his face. “Yeah, I have to make it work.”

  I felt my own frustration rising. “But this isn’t commissioned. It’s yours.”

  “Is it?”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I grabbed his arm. “Of course it is. And you’re a student, you’re seventeen, this is—”

  “I have to do what they ask me to do. It’s cool.” He swiped his face, like he was trying to get rid of the last remnants of whatever had come over him back at Lilly Hall. “Will you sit with me tonight? While I work?”

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I sat on his bed. He wrote on the floor, filled a page, tossed it, started again, murmuring to himself. He didn’t ask my opinion, and I couldn’t give one. This wasn’t the moment for it. So I kept vigil. And at some point I fell asleep.

  When I woke up, the room was dark, one corner illuminated by a roving beam. It took my eyes a second to adjust before I saw Oscar holding a tiny flashlight in his mouth, scribbling so fast, his fingers blurred. He would stop—head tilted like he was hearing a ghost—then nod in recognition and compose.

  I grabbed my phone to check the time. 11:36 p.m. The sudden glow made him startle, dropping his flashlight. He laughed, holding his chest.

  I sat up. “Why are the lights off?”

  “I didn’t want to wake you. You looked so sweet.”

  I smiled, rousing myself to pop on the lights for him again. But it nagged at me now, not hearing what he was hearing. Not understanding what compelled him to stay up and get something down—how someone could come up with that something in the first place.