Night Music

by Jenn Marie Thorne

  Liz didn’t react.

  I coughed, waving toward Lilly Hall. “Has rehearsal started? I just landed, but—”

  “Ruby.” Liz crossed her arms over her chest, like she might explode if she didn’t physically hold herself together. “My God. You are not a member of this choir anymore. You missed two weeks of rehearsals—”

  “Oh. No!” She hadn’t understood. I let out a nervous laugh. “I’m not trying to—”

  “I know this is a lark for you, Ruby, and you’re used to getting what you want, but this matters to us. Do you understand that? It’s in our blood. These kids”—she pointed at the Amberley dorms—“get up and practice until they’re exhausted and then do it all over again. They’ve devoted their entire lives to this.”

  “I . . .” I tried to speak, say, I know, I know, I know, but I let it dry up in my mouth.

  I could tell Liz that I’d bled for this too. I’d spent four hours a day practicing the piano for the past seven years, back aching, wrists screaming, fingertips dulled, the rest of what passed for a life falling by the wayside, that it was the great unrequited love of my life, but she’d think I was lying. And what difference did it make in the end, anyway?

  She wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t like them.

  What Liz saw when she looked at me was a dilettante. Nora Visser in miniature—and I’d done nothing to dispel it, had I? I’d dressed up pretty, gone to parties, posed for pictures. Pretended to be someone I wasn’t.

  “You don’t understand and that’s fine.” She sighed as if exhausted, backing away toward Lilly Hall. “That is more than fine. But why don’t you enjoy your life and leave the music to the musicians?”

  Without waiting for a reaction, she swooped inside the glass foyer, nodded to the guards, and took her place in the auditorium.

  Lincoln Center loomed like an Escher painting now, knife-blade edges, blinding glass, monstrous shadows, stairways leading up and down and nowhere at all.

  I staggered to the fountain and sat on its edge while tourists milled around me.

  You’re a tourist too. I smothered that thought while it kicked and flailed. Leave the music to the fucking musicians.

  I looked up at his banner again, Oscar’s illustrated hair blurring into a meaningless swirl. Did he want me here? I had no idea anymore.

  I swiped my eyes angrily dry—sick to death of crying—and Liz stood in front of me. Again. Her arms were still crossed but her face was open in entreaty.

  “I need you to come with me.” She waved me up. “Please.”

  Panic bled through that please. I caught it myself, heart pounding, and followed her across the plaza, almost running. Something was wrong.

  When I walked into Lilly Hall, I saw the orchestra gathered, instruments ready, the choir in their usual seats, Emil Reinhardt pacing in front of them, scratching and scratching his chin.

  Nora Visser popped up from the front row like a jack-in-the-box and Liz continued past her.

  “Here.” Liz motioned to me. “Maybe she can get through to him.”

  “I have sympathy,” Reinhardt called out from the stage. “I do. But—”

  “Five minutes, everybody!” Nora shouted, walking over to clasp my arm. “If we’re not back, use this time on the Mozart.”

  “Where is he?” I asked Nora, too flustered to whisper.

  “His greenroom,” Liz answered, sarcasm tightly coiled.

  Even Nora looked confused.

  Reinhardt’s eyes were softer than Liz’s as they met mine from the stage. “Rehearsal Room B. Second floor. Marty set up a quiet space for Oscar to work . . . but sometimes he won’t come out.”

  “What?” I stumbled forward a step. “Why?”

  “You should conduct it,” Liz muttered to Reinhardt.

  He rubbed his head. “That’s not my call to make . . .”

  The orchestra started to whisper.

  “Let’s deal with this situation,” Nora sang out, walking briskly up the aisle. “And then we can discuss.”

  I’d heard enough to follow Nora into the lobby, nearly outpacing her for once. What was happening here? This wasn’t the Oscar I knew, the one on the phone, the one in the interview. That Oscar had told me that everything was great. That rehearsals were amazing and productive. Had he lied? To me? Maybe two weeks had been too long. Maybe I was the very last person who’d be able to get through to him now. My step faltered on the marble floors. I scanned for the stairwell linking Lilly Hall to the rehearsal rooms.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked Nora, glancing back like he might be trailing us.

  “He should be back from his appointment any minute.” Nora trotted up the steps ahead of me. “But he’s not what we need right now.”

  “This way?”

  She pointed. I kept going.

  “So glad you’re back, by the way! You’ll have to fill me in on your big trip after all this is . . .” Nora sighed, flustered. “Yep.”

  I didn’t want to chitchat, or face her, confront her about why she’d lied to me so blatantly, turned my hopes into a stampede and then steered them straight off a cliff. I wanted to find . . .

  Rehearsal Room B.

  Nora stepped back. And back again.

  I knocked. “Oscar? You in there?”

  My hand shook as I lowered it. A muffled sound came from inside the room—a scrape—a chair being kicked.

  I tried the door. It was locked from the inside. Right. Okay.

  Gathering up all my energy and dubious acting abilities, I knocked again, this time louder. The noises inside the room stopped.

  “Oscar, I’m back! Plane landed, um, two hours ago. Let me in, I want to see you!”

  There was a long pause—and then the door cracked open and Oscar said, “Ruby?” like he’d thought I was dead.

  I glanced quickly back at Nora. She slid soundlessly around the corner. I wished she would go all the way downstairs. Or home. Go home.

  The door swung wider, so I could finally see him. Oscar looked exhausted, wired, wrong. No swagger. No grin. No front. I swore he was thinner than when I left. Older somehow, too. But this was still the face that had filled my mind every second I spent in South Carolina trying desperately to clear it.

  “Hi.” He let out a feeble laugh, as if his greeting had been sarcastic.

  I touched his face, his shoulders, and pulled myself up into a hug. He clung on and stepped backward, leading me into the rehearsal room.

  I’d successfully snipped the first red cord. I hadn’t defused the bomb.

  “So . . . things have gotten a little stressful while I’ve been away, I take it?” I smiled, holding his hand. “I had no idea.”

  He let go. “Did they send you?”

  “They . . .” I glanced at the door. “Told me where you were. I came here looking for you. Like I said, my flight—”

  “I’m sorry, ugh, I shouldn’t have . . . I’m not . . .” He sat in one of the plastic rehearsal chairs. “I missed you.”

  Now there was longing in his voice.

  I sat next to him. “I missed you too.”

  A blizzard of thoughts swarmed me at once, apologies for leaving, confusion over the conversations we’d had, descriptions of the peace I’d found in tiny pockets, my mom showing up and all that that entailed, but none of them made their way past my lips—because all I wanted was to kiss him. So I did.

  In the middle of the rehearsal room, both of us nearly careening off our plastic chairs, hands in each other’s hair, we kissed like the room was filling with water and we were each other’s only source of oxygen, and I kept thinking, Finally, finally, finally I’m home.

  But time was running out.

  “I want to hear your piece.” I kissed his forehead. “Can you play it for me?”

  Oscar knew what I was really asking. He knew damn well I’d
been put up to it.

  Even so, he took my hand, stood up, and walked out with me, passing Nora without a glance, fingers gripping tight all the way to the stage of Lilly Hall.

  The orchestra didn’t applaud his appearance this time. But they snapped to attention when he drew himself up and took the baton.

  And then they played.

  I watched from the wings with Nora flanking me, the great enormous world constricting into one narrow lane, two endless glass walls on either side.

  The orchestra. Oscar. Nora. Me in the middle, fighting to breathe.

  36.

  it took me half the walk home to ask him. We stopped at a busy crosswalk, the city din around us amplifying our own silence, and I tapped his sneaker with my toe.

  “When we talked . . .” Emphasis on the when. “I thought you were doing well.”

  “You were on vacation. I didn’t want to ruin it.”

  Unsatisfactory answer. “So what’s been going on with you? The truth.”

  He glanced up, as if startled by the question. “It’s been happening for a while. Today was bad.”

  “Would you say you’re having anxiety attacks?”

  “I mean, yes?” He swallowed. “I’ve seen the school psychologist a few times. We talked about referrals, prescriptions, but . . . I don’t know. I worry about side effects, given everything I need to get done. Maybe after. But maybe I won’t need it anymore when this is over. I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  “Is this something you’ve dealt with at home?”

  “There have been bad days. Bad weeks. I always got through them. This is . . . worse.”

  I let my hand curl around his arm as we crossed the street. “What is it, three more days until the concert?”

  “Three more days.” He said it like it was a death sentence. “And I’m on dangerous ground now, you know? I have to keep it sunny, easy, charming. It’s the price of admission here. Not angry. Not stressed. Just—”

  “Where is here? Amberl—”

  “Anywhere! It’s a fucking tight rope.”

  I didn’t know what to say, except, “I understand.”

  “No!” He broke away. “You don’t understand, Ruby. You can’t.”

  I watched him. A woman’s bag hit me as she passed. “I . . .”

  Dammit, I was going to say it again. I understand. Like I understood any of this.

  He straightened. Reached for my hand. I let him take it and held on tight.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Don’t. It’s . . .”

  “I’ll be better now,” he said, not confident but trying. “You’re back. It’ll all be fine.”

  Why? Why should anything hinge on me when you won’t let me in, when I don’t understand, when you didn’t even tell me in the first place?

  But I was his girlfriend—it should be my job to make him feel better, however I could. I squeezed him closer as he kissed my temple, ease returning with every block. Two people walking through the city. A happy couple. Normal.

  Then we got to his apartment.

  The walls were a museum installation, a complete symphony, beginning to end in gently waving rows. The rest was an abomination. Every horizontal surface was awash in a sea of discarded composition pages, refuse swimming in its depths. Oscar walked ahead of me, stepping over an empty takeout carton, a greasy paper plate, a trailing pile of dirty laundry, a half-full glass of orange juice, crumpled, matted napkins . . .

  “You can’t live like this,” I said, frozen in the door. “I can’t live like this.”

  Oscar turned back with a sheepish smile. “I’ll clean it, I promise, let’s just get some dinner first.”

  But I’d already started—I had to—frantic, first with the obvious garbage, not bothering to sort things out for recycling, as much as my arms could carry.

  “Do you have trash bags?”

  “Ruby, stop,” Oscar said. “We’ll go someplace else.”

  “It’s no wonder you feel the way you do, you can’t . . .” I dug for a bag in his kitchen drawer, tried to shake it open, dropped the whole pile. “This is . . .”

  I had a sudden memory from a decade ago, Mom in the upstairs hallway, holding composition paper, recoiling as Dad screamed from the study, “Put them down exactly where you found them.”

  “How did you let it get like this?” I leaned over to pick up the rest, tears dropping from my eyes onto the floor, circles of gray on white paper, everywhere paper.

  “Whoa, Ruby, no.” Oscar crouched to stop me. “You are not my housekeeper.”

  “You can’t have it both ways! I can’t be the answer to everything, your entire symphony, and not even know who you are. Not, you know, do stuff like this to actually help!”

  “Why don’t you relax,” he said, rubbing my back. “Go sit on the bed. I’ll do this.”

  I stared at him for one heartbeat. Two. Three. Tears pooling, breath still.

  “Do you remember that day you called me an object?”

  Oscar frowned. Waiting.

  “You were so embarrassed, but it didn’t bother me. At all. Honestly.” My hand started shaking again. I opened and shut it, tight. “Do you know why? Because I fucking am one.”

  I stood. He stayed crouched, watching me with wide eyes.

  I picked up a composition page and waved it at him. “This is all I have to offer. Tidying up. Do you get that? Let me be your Roomba.”

  He stood up slowly, looking like he wanted to laugh but didn’t dare. “You can clean if you want to clean, Ruby . . .”

  “I don’t want to clean!”

  Now I was the one laughing, hot tears streaming past my chin.

  “I don’t want to be your housekeeper, your plus one, your muse, Oscar, I don’t want to sit on the bed and relax anymore. I want this.” I clenched the composition page tighter, staring at all the notes he’d scribbled out. “I know it’s selfish, but yeah. I want to write symphonies. Sing beautifully, play brilliantly, I want to matter! I want to matter to you, enough for you to . . . trust me. On a basic level. For anyone to.”

  I let the paper drop onto the floor again.

  “Or, failing that . . .” And I am failing that. “I just—I want out. Out out out, forever out.”

  Oscar shook his head. “What do you mean?”

  Of course he’s confused. He will never have to understand this.

  I sputtered wordlessly into the ceiling—then shouted, “I want to be a small-town baker!”

  He burst out laughing. “What?!”

  “I want to get amnesia and start over,” I said, my words barely audible through my sobs. “Away from here. A new name, everything. I can’t . . .”

  I started for the door, room spinning.

  Oscar reached for me but didn’t grab hold. “Ruby . . . I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought I was protecting us. Obviously it was a mistake.”

  I turned on him.

  “No, see, here’s the thing, Oscar. You aren’t protecting us—you’re protecting me. From seeing what you’re going through, from discomfort, guilt, from looking hard at myself . . . I don’t even know what. You’re protecting me from reacting. I think deep down you want somebody you can keep over here, who’s got their shit together, who can be your back-up life raft, who can sit nicely and listen . . .”

  “That is not—”

  “ . . . wait to listen when you’re ready to talk, and I don’t know if it’s me. I don’t know if I can give you Mozart love, I’m, like, a baby banging on the keys!”

  “I didn’t ask for this either, you know,” Oscar snapped. “This isn’t why I came to New York! I didn’t want to meet a girl. I wanted to learn, stretch, that was the goal, but I’m just . . . penned in.”

  “By me? By this?”

  “By . . . no.” H
e had his eyes closed.

  “I’m distracting you.” Admitting that made me shrink back. “I’m the problem, Dad was right.”

  Oscar’s eyes flew open. “What about your dad?”

  I opened the door. “I’m going. I don’t know what to do, so I’m going.”

  The door shut behind me more quickly than I’d expected, way too much finality to its slam. I walked shakily up the steps to the sidewalk, hands pressed to my cheeks, wanting to scream again.

  I knew I had no right to break down, not when Oscar was going through a real crisis with no one supporting him. I had no right to do anything, and the shame of it made my eyes dry up. I sniffed hard, pulling my spine straight.

  “Oh, so you’re home now?” Jules stood outside her building, hands tapping hips. “This is how I talk to you now—bumping into you on the street? Feels familiar.”

  I pressed a finger to my temple, spots gathering.

  “I sent you eight texts while you were gone. If you were even gone. Is this why?” She pointed to Oscar’s door, grinning. “No time for your so-called friends now that—”

  Her face dropped. She reached for me.

  “Holy shit, Ruby, you’re crying, why are you crying?”

  “I’m not crying anymore. I’m fine, I’m normal, everything’s fine!”

  “Oh-key . . .” She glanced behind her, then gathered me under one warm arm. “Let’s go inside. Get you some hot cocoa.”

  I laugh-sobbed, plodding along with her. “It’s July!”

  “It’s August. We’ll crank the AC.”

  She led the way to her apartment, through the living room and onto the edge of her pink bed, then crouched to stare at me, eye to eye.

  “Do you want to talk about it? Forget about it?”

  I wiped my eyes. “Maybe start with forgetting?”

  “How about a sleepover? It’s been a while.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “I’ll grab some delivery menus, then.” She started into the hall, then doubled back, poking her head into the doorway. “Hey, so did I tell you I signed up for a 5K? It’s called the Squirrel Run, no idea why, but it’s in the fall and . . . do you maybe want to run it with me?”

  The image of my squirrel friend in jogging gear got a smile out of me. “Send me the link. Sounds great.”