At Ease

by Jeff Ross

  There was no way I would be able to do this. There was that tricky part I’d messed up on before. My hands were sweaty. How was I going to keep my bow steady?

  I found that I was tipping, almost falling over. I grabbed my violin at the last second before it slipped from my arm.

  I felt Alisha’s hand on my shoulder before I saw her or heard her voice.

  “Are you okay, Will?”

  I shook my head. “I’m really dizzy,” I said.

  Sung was still on the stage, but she was no longer playing. She was just standing there, her bow in one hand, violin in the other. The audience was clapping. She bowed, and as she left the stage, I could feel everyone looking at me. Whispers flicking through the crowd. Snarling faces exposed for a second before hands went to mouths and secret words were spoken.

  Everyone was talking about me.

  Everyone was looking at me.

  Everyone was waiting for me to perform.

  I tried to spot my group, but they were somewhere beyond my vision.

  “Can you perform now, Will? Do you feel up to it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think I ate something bad. My stomach feels awful.” I hiccupped and tasted a sampling of the contents of my stomach shooting into my mouth.

  “You don’t have to perform right now, Will,” Alisha said. “It’s just a fun thing we do so everyone can get to know one another. So we can all hear one another play.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not a big deal.” She rubbed my shoulder, which made me feel even worse. Because now it felt as though everyone was watching me being comforted by Alisha, who, if they wanted to believe it, was the only reason I was even at this school.

  “Do you think you can make the afternoon class?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, dying of embarrassment. “I need to go home.”

  “Okay, Will. I can take you home,” Alisha said.

  Mr. Powell was by my side as well. “Are you not going to perform?”

  “Not today, Charles,” Alisha said.

  “We’ll get you on the list for tomorrow then,” he said, grabbing my arm.

  Alisha shot him a look, which I spotted out of the corner of my eye. “Will can perform when he’s ready,” she said as she walked me from the cafeteria.

  * * *

  When we entered my apartment building, I told Alisha I had to go lie down. She turned to knock on her father’s door.

  “Can you not tell him?” I said quickly.

  “I was going to ask him to look in on you,” she said. “Your parents won’t be home yet, will they?”

  “No, but I’ll be fine. I just need to lie down.”

  “Okay. I might just stop in and say hi though,” she said.

  “But then he’ll ask why you’re here and…” I inhaled, my hand on the railing. “I don’t want him to worry.”

  Her eyes dropped and she nodded. “Okay.” She took a step toward me, reaching again for my shoulder. But I didn’t want to be comforted. I felt like an idiot. And now that I was away from the school, all I wanted to do was go back. To be with everyone else. To get on the stupid stage and play the stupid piece.

  “Are you certain you’ll be all right?” she asked.

  “I really just need to lie down. My parents will be home soon anyway.”

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I waited and watched her drive away, then went upstairs and lay down on my bed. I knew what was happening to me. I mean, I could tell everyone that it was something I’d eaten. That I had dizzy spells sometimes. I could make up any number of excuses. But in the end, it was pretty simple.

  I went to the Internet and searched out stage fright. That’s all it was: stage fright.

  It happens to everyone, I told myself.

  Which, once I started reading, I discovered was entirely true. And it could happen for a million different reasons. Self-confidence cropped up a lot.

  As in lack of.

  Fear of judgment. Of making a fool of yourself. And, of course, fear of failure.

  I began to wonder if Jon had the right attitude. Don’t care. Just get up there and do it because it doesn’t even matter.

  By the time my mother got home, I had confused myself with advice. Meditate, watch something funny, practice the piece to death, breathe, tell yourself you can do it, run up and down stairs, do jumping jacks, imagine your incredible success once you have performed perfectly.

  But how could that happen? With my sweaty hands and quivering stomach?

  “Will, you’re home,” my mother said, standing in my bedroom doorway.

  “Yeah, it ended early today,” I lied.

  “How was it?”

  “Good,” I lied again. “Great,” said the ultimate lying machine.

  She hugged me, holding on for a moment. “I am so proud of you. It’s great to see you coming out of your shell.” She held me away from her. “You are going to be such a success, Will, I just know it.”

  The thing was, I hadn’t known I had a shell.

  And that I hadn’t come out of it.

  Maybe that was the problem. My shell had been broken and all I wanted to do was put it together again so I could crawl back inside.

  Forever.

  Eight

  There were two days of private practice after the incident. Two days where I worked quietly in a room. Talked to Mr. Powell and a couple of other instructors. Two days during which no one asked me to do anything in front of anyone at all.

  Two great days.

  “You need to adopt my way of thinking,” Jon said. It was Friday morning, and we were pawing through the donuts and bagels. There was a carafe of coffee at the end of the table, and some of the kids were filling white cups.

  “What way is that?” I said.

  “Stop caring,” he said. “It makes everything so much easier.”

  “Will,” Olivia said. “First of all, don’t listen to him. Second, you know your piece. Pretend those people aren’t there. That’s my advice. Get up and play and pretend no one is there.”

  “I felt dizzy before. That’s all,” I said.

  “Sure,” Olivia said, bringing out her phone as she stood up. “Don’t feel dizzy when we perform, all right? My future is on the line too, and, unlike some people, I do think it matters.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Dani said, getting to her feet. “Just relax. Just breathe.” The two of them left on that note.

  And that word rang through my brain: just.

  What a horrible word. And about as inaccurate as any word can be. Think of the times you use that word. It’s just another mile. It’s just a broken heart. It’s just a scratch.

  It’s just a performance.

  “Mr. Neises.” Mr. Powell was standing behind me. “I’ve put you on the performance schedule for the final day. I am sorry you didn’t have much time to prepare before. But that tends to be the nature of these performances. They just happen.” He smiled. “This time, you will be able to prepare yourself. Would you like to go first?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Though what I was thinking was, Of course not. There’s no way I can do this!

  “I’ll put you on first.” He patted my shoulder. “That will be much easier.”

  I went to speak, but nothing came out. I knew I couldn’t say I would likely eat something bad right before the performance. The only way out of this was to say I was too nervous to play. To explain everything that had been happening to me. To let everyone know I would never be a true performer because I couldn’t actually perform.

  “Nothing to be nervous about, Will. We’re all friends here,” he said as he walked away.

  Which also wasn’t the point. And besides, Mr. Powell was wrong. We weren’t all friends.

  Cathy had made that abundantly clear. The adults were just too dim to notice.

  Jon and I stood up and headed toward the practice room. “So, do you think she likes me?” Jon said.

  I star
ed at him. “Olivia?”

  “Olivia, of course. We’ve already been over this. I thought you might have given my situation a bit of thought.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Did she catch onto your Swedish hip-hop thing?”

  “I tried to talk about it yesterday, but, yeah, after some more research I realized she just got that from some author she likes. It’s entirely possible that she has never even listened to any of it. Just hit the thumbs-up. But I feel as though I’m zeroing in on her center.”

  “Her center?”

  “What is at the core of Olivia. Where it is we’ll connect.”

  “Where is that?”

  “She seems to be into all this crazy philosophy stuff. Like the meaning of life and the reason we are here.”

  “Are you sure you have the right person?” I said. Not that I didn’t think highly of Olivia. But she didn’t seem all that invested in the world, never mind discovering the nature of her existence. Unless, of course, the meaning of life could be found on the tiny screen of a cell phone.

  “Yes. Of course I do. So?”

  We had arrived at the doorway of the practice room and could see Olivia and Dani setting up inside. “Do I think she likes you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have no idea,” I said. We stood there for a moment and watched her type away on her phone, never looking up. Not even moving the rest of her body. Just her thumbs.

  Jon slowly shook his head. “Man, she is something else.”

  Nine

  “Poise,” Mr. Powell said.

  We were in the lecture hall, and he was, again, on the stage.

  “Presence.” He made a fist and shook it at us. “Performance. The three Ps.” He stood up straight and performed an elaborate, full-bodied bow. As he came back up, he brushed his hair back into place. “Bowing is not the most difficult thing to do. However, if it is done incorrectly, you can appear overly confident or smug. Or, possibly worse, meek. The bow is important, as is the handshake. When you come out from the side of the stage, you must be prepared to shake the first violinist’s hand.”

  He put his hands together in prayer before him. Then, with his right hand, he pointed toward Cathy. “Cathy, could you help me with a demonstration?”

  Cathy leaped to her feet and walked with pure determination to the stage.

  “Can you go over to the side of the stage, then pretend you are coming out at the beginning of a performance. I am the first violin. The conductor always comes out with the soloist. Go ahead now.”

  Cathy strode off the stage, turned and came back. She took Mr. Powell’s hand and shook it.

  “Not bad. But not perfect,” Mr. Powell said. “First of all, you are the soloist. You are the star here. The first violin knows this. Yet, because you came out this way, from the right, the audience will see my hand on top of yours.” He took Cathy’s hand again. “This is called having the upper hand, and because you do not have it, the audience is not with you. They have come to see a performance. The first violin is here all the time. Right?”

  “Okay,” Cathy said. “So what should I do?”

  “You must demand to come from the left side of the stage.” When Cathy returned, this time from the left, we all saw that it was her hand on top now. I had never thought about this before, but she did, in some ways, seem more in command.

  “A little bow, Cathy,” Mr. Powell said. “You don’t want to seem as though you’re above it all.”

  Cathy bowed slightly.

  “The audience has now ceased their celebrations in regards to your appearance before them. They are waiting for you to perform.”

  I could see that Cathy believed this. She was dying to have people waiting for her to perform.

  Mr. Powell pointed to her. “This is poise, people. Poise is how you present yourself. In control. Calm. Ready. If you have poise, you may then have presence. If you have presence, you will have your audience. You will have control of the stage. You will give a performance. Thank you, Cathy.”

  Cathy sat back down with her group. She gave a little laugh when someone said something to her. She glanced in my direction, looking very pleased with herself.

  “Performance is not just what you play and how you play it,” Mr. Powell said. “You must have a presence, a command of yourself and your audience. This is very important in auditions as well. The judges are looking for someone who commands their attention. Not just with their playing, but with their whole being.

  “Poise, presence, performance. I cannot stress these elements enough. If you are not confident, you will not look confident, and people will not hear what you are playing. Not really hear it. Do you understand?”

  There was some conversation, but mostly we all just stared at him. I doubt many people in the room had ever considered what it meant to hold the attention of an audience. I know I hadn’t.

  “Okay then, practice. Set up a chair for the first violin. Someone be the conductor. Take turns. Feel what it is like to come out there with poise.”

  Olivia went first. She seemed fine. She bowed well, had a firm handshake. Jon jokingly tripped, tried to give me a high five, then sat on Dani’s lap.

  None of us laughed.

  When it was my turn, I felt mostly fine. But then, as I stood before the mock audience, I became nervous again. I could feel my heart rate picking up. My hands got clammy.

  It was ridiculous.

  It wasn’t even real—but all I could think was, Everyone is looking right at you.

  “You did fine,” Dani said.

  But I didn’t believe her. Even in this pretend situation I was losing it.

  How was I going to perform for the Juilliard people?

  “You’re going to be great. Don’t worry,” Dani said.

  Don’t worry, they say. It’ll be fine, they say.

  Just do it, they say.

  * * *

  That afternoon I recorded a professional audition tape. I did the Paganini and a Mozart. The Mozart took two takes, the Paganini only one. I didn’t feel any of the anxiety, likely because I was standing alone in a sound booth.

  Mr. Powell was in the recording studio when I came out. He shook my hand, holding it between both of his. “That was remarkable. Everything was perfect on this end. Did you like it?”

  “I guess.”

  “He guesses,” Mr. Powell said to the engineer. “Play that back for him.”

  The engineer hit a few buttons and the sound of my violin filled the room. I heard a couple of spots where the tone wasn’t quite right. Once I even nicked the D string by mistake. But it wasn’t enough to redo.

  “Perfect,” Mr. Powell said. “Will, if you can perform like this for the Juilliard people, the world will be your oyster. Do you understand that?”

  “I guess. Sure.”

  “You need to know.” He made a fist and gave me a light bump in the chest. “You need to believe.”

  * * *

  Mr. Jorgensen was waiting for me on the porch when I got home.

  He was not all smiles.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.

  “What?”

  “The problems,” he said. He began coughing. “Don’t play dumb. Alisha has been here. She told me about your…” He waved his hand around. “Issues.”

  “I don’t…”

  “I should have made you perform, I guess,” he said. “Put you in those little festivals. But no, that would have been useless. That would have been worse. People would have pulled you away. They would have told you how great you are and danced you out like their pet monkey.”

  I sat on the railing. The evening buses were lined up outside the apartment. I scanned the street, trying to locate an accident or construction area to explain the traffic snarl.

  “You get nervous,” he said.

  I looked at the ground. “Yes.”

  “Why are you looking down? This isn’t something to be ashamed about. My god, everyone gets nervous, and usually for dumber reasons
than pouring their heart out in front of strangers.”

  “Why?” I said. “Where does it even come from?”

  “I have no idea! It doesn’t make sense. It’s just something that happens. But it’s all inside. I was nervous as anything around Alisha’s mother when we first met. I couldn’t eat. I could barely sleep.”

  “That’s girls.”

  “It’s not just girls, Will. Every time I got on the stage to conduct, I felt as though I was going to show the audience my dinner. But I never did.”

  How, I wanted to ask. What was it that saved you? How did you control yourself? But instead I said, “I’ll be okay.” And I figured I would be. While I was away from the stage, I couldn’t even imagine the nerves I’d been feeling. It seemed stupid to me that I couldn’t just get up there and do it. I could even convince myself that I would. That the next time it would be no big deal. That how I was feeling at this moment was how I’d always feel. That I was fine. Brave, strong, ready to perform.

  “Everyone has to deal with this in his or her own way,” he said. “It’s not something I can teach you. You have to find your reason. It has to come from inside. That’s the only way to defeat these nerves. This anxiety. You have to find control. Do you understand?”

  Sometimes, Mr. Jorgensen could sound angry. I knew he never was, but it sometimes sounded that way. This was one of those times.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  “You will,” he said. “You’re stronger than this.”

  Ten

  I was excited to return to the school on Monday. It seemed as though everything would be new. The nerves would be gone. I’d be fine.

  We practiced for half an hour Monday morning, then took a break.

  We’d nailed the Fugue. The Adagio remained unforgiving for Olivia and Jon—although, since Jon had brought me in on his little secret, I wondered if his ineptness was a ploy to make Olivia feel better about herself. After all, if he stumbled, it wouldn’t just be her screwing up.

  “We can perform this no problem this afternoon,” Jon said. “Piece of cake.” He was staring at Olivia, who had just messed up again.

  Whenever Olivia slipped up, Jon made a racket with his cello and put it aside, wiped fake sweat from his head and talked about how it was challenging or tricky.