Virtuosity

by Jessica Martinez

  I’d spent the last two weeks pushing it out of my thoughts. Now that I was being forced to think about it, I had the sudden urge to throw up.

  “That can’t happen again,” she said. Her words were slow and even. “Careers don’t survive more than one of that kind of catastrophe.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said softly. “I don’t know what happened. I just …”

  “I know, honey.” She held out the shiny gold box of truffles again, but I shook my head. “I’ve been thinking about a solution, and I have an idea. Yuri thinks it’s a good one.”

  I waited. A solution. It hadn’t even occurred to me that anyone else could fix this mess.

  “We can’t ignore it. It will happen again, and it doesn’t matter how incredible you really are if you self-destruct onstage.”

  The words sounded rehearsed, and she looked straight ahead at the painting on the wall.

  “Performance anxiety is a real issue for a lot of musicians,” she continued. “It’s an actual disorder, and there are medications available that can help you deal with it. They’re called beta-blockers.” She cleared her throat. “If you’d like, we could get you a prescription.”

  A prescription. A dozen questions descended. Would they make me jittery? Would I play as well? Were they allowed?

  Instead I asked, “Would anybody know?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But what would it feel like?”

  “Just like it does when you’re practicing. Beta-blockers don’t make people better musicians. They’ll just take care of the nerves. That’s all.”

  So simple. That was all I wanted. It wasn’t like an athlete taking steroids to get stronger—I already was the violinist I wanted to be. My mind cycled around and around. I needed this to work. I needed it to be right. But she wouldn’t be suggesting it if it was wrong, if it was cheating. Yuri agreed, she had said.

  I wanted her to look at me, but she was still staring at the painting.

  “Did you used to take them?” I asked.

  Her eyebrows lifted just a little, almost imperceptibly. I’d caught her by surprise.

  “No,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t need them.”

  Of course she didn’t. I should have known.

  Diana had already scheduled the appointment with Dr. Wright. He came highly recommended, she said. I wasn’t worried. Dry cleaners, massage therapists, violin teachers, bikini waxers—Diana thoroughly researched all her professionals.

  “Describe what it feels like,” he said.

  Dr. Wright didn’t look like a psychiatrist. He looked like a first-year med student in his big brother’s lab coat. Why would a psychiatrist need a lab coat anyway, unless he was specifically trying to look more “medical”?

  “Carmen?”

  “Sorry?” I said.

  “The performance anxiety. How does that feel?” His voiced cracked.

  Like someone is squeezing my stomach and pouring liquid nitrogen on my joints, I wanted to say. “Bad,” I said.

  Diana cleared her throat. She sat beside me with hands clasped over her knee. Apparently one-word answers were not going to fly.

  “My hands shake,” I said. “My stomach hurts.”

  Dr. Wright nodded and wrote something down. “Do you generally sleep well?”

  “Besides the violin nerves, she’s a normal, happy, teenage girl,” Diana said.

  Dr. Wright’s timid gaze went from me to Diana to me again. He looked like he was trying to decide whether to ask me the sleep question again, or if he should just give Diana his lunch money.

  “What she needs is a prescription for beta-blockers,” Diana continued. “Her nerves are a pretty typical response for a soloist who’s facing the kind of intense pressure that she’s under. There’s a lot riding on each performance—contracts, competitions, recordings, you know …” Her voice trailed off and she put a protective hand on my back and leaned forward in her chair. “Violin demands a lot from her, but she is one of the best in the world.”

  That was the clincher. Dr. Wright looked down at his desk and reached for a pen and prescription pad. He clearly didn’t want to be the man standing in the way of me becoming the best violinist in the world. Or maybe he just wanted to get rid of us.

  Five minutes later we were back in the safety of the Diana’s Lexus listening to Aida, with a prescription for Inderal tucked into the zipper pocket of Diana’s snakeskin clutch.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  I nodded, but didn’t look at her, didn’t say anything, just kept picking at the callous on the tip of my index finger.

  “I know what you’re worried about,” she said, “but nobody else is going to know. You don’t have to tell anyone. This is between you, me, and Yuri. Frankly, it isn’t anyone else’s business.”

  I nodded. Shame. Finally. It felt like rotten milk curdling in my stomach. I had spent all morning trying not to think anything, but there it was. You, me, and Yuri. What about Clark? If it was really okay, he would know too. But obviously it wasn’t really okay.

  Diana hadn’t lied about what it would be like. She just hadn’t really known.

  The chalky little pills looked more like vitamin C than anything else. I transferred them into a nondescript wooden pillbox and put them in the rosin pocket of my case. They looked completely innocent.

  “If anyone asks,” Diana said, “tell them they’re for cramps.”

  Nobody asked. In the beginning, they worked miracles. An hour after my very first pill, I walked onstage for a performance with the Montreal Symphony with steady hands, in complete control of every movement. But by November, I needed two pills for the same steady hands. And then three. And then not just for performances, but for lessons too. I could justify that, though. Lessons are a type of performance, aren’t they? Yuri’s temper didn’t make it easy either. I needed to be calm to get through each lesson and learn what had to be learned.

  Dr. Wright said that didn’t make sense. At the follow-up appointment, he said Inderal isn’t physically addictive like that. If I felt like I needed more and more, he said, that’s a psychological addiction, and I should just trust that the dosage he’d given me was adequate.

  I left confused—had my psychiatrist just told me I was crazy? It didn’t matter. I knew I needed at least three pills per performance. For now.

  I tried not to think about it, and when I did, I told myself it was worth it. I just had to remember Tokyo and that stomach-wrenching stage fright to know it was. With Inderal, I never had to feel like that again.

  Now when I was onstage, I didn’t feel much of anything.

  Chapter 7

  I leaned against the wall, a cold concrete slab in a basement hallway, and examined my ticket. Series: Virtuosos of Tomorrow, Location: Gallery, Seat: Box B. I’d lucked out. The woman at the will-call window had recognized me and hooked me up with the best seat in the house. I rubbed the perforated edge against my thumb and listened for any noise above the buzz of the fluorescent panels. Nothing.

  My watch read 8:52. Intermission would be over in eight minutes, but it wasn’t time to go up to my seat yet. The timing had to be perfect. At 8:56 I would start my climb up the elegant rotunda staircase, which would still be packed but thinning quickly. People would be hurrying into the auditorium from last-minute concession-stand trips and from the bathrooms. If I could keep my head down through six floors of spiral staircase, I might not be recognized. I needed to reach the sixth floor arcade by the time the house lights dimmed, so I’d have only a few seconds to get to the doors before the ushers closed them.

  The light panel was unnaturally bright. I stared at the stairwell door and tried to tune out the fluorescent buzz overhead, which seemed to be getting louder. I wondered if Jeremy was nervous right now. He didn’t seem like the type. He was probably doing his hair, trying to muss it up just right so it looked convincingly tousled. Or flirting with somebody. There were a handful of
women in the symphony young enough for him to be making an idiot of himself with.

  Lying to my mom had been way too easy. It was sad, really. Not the lying part, but that I was seventeen and she had no reason to doubt me when I said I was going to bed at seven on a Friday night.

  I’d told her with a toothbrush in my mouth. She was holding a tube of magenta lipstick, twisted up and ready to apply. Her hair was pulled up into a sleek French twist and she wore a jade-green silk dress. A gold scarf floated around her shoulders like a sinking halo. She looked beautiful.

  “I’m going to bed early,” I’d said.

  “Good.” Her hand expertly guided the tube of lipstick over her lips and then she pressed them together. “We can’t have you running out of steam tomorrow night.” And then as an afterthought, “Do you want one of my sleeping pills?”

  I took the toothbrush out of my mouth. “No. I’m exhausted.”

  “All right,” she said. “Clark and I are leaving for the art show at eight. I don’t think we’ll be back until late, but we’ll be quiet when we come in.”

  At 8:05 her car pulled away from the house, and by 8:10 I had replaced my pajama pants and tank top with a little black dress and heels. The dress was one I hardly ever wore, since it was too short to perform in. As an afterthought, I twisted my hair up like Diana’s. The effect was not the same. Mine was too curly to be sophisticated, but what did it matter? Nobody was going to see me tonight.

  I stared at myself in the mirror. What was I doing? Deliberately ignoring the part of my brain that was smart enough to ask questions, I applied a layer of red lipstick and turned off the bathroom light. Bravery was what I needed, not rational thinking. I was once again attempting espionage, and after the colossal failure at Rhapsody, that took guts. And insanity. I’d buttoned my red wool peacoat and headed out the door.

  The peacoat was folded over my arm now, and I had nothing to do but listen to buzzing fluorescent lights and think of reasons I should be at home in bed. There was the sleep thing (I really did need a good night’s sleep before a performance), and then there was the possibility that he was as good as everyone said and I’d be too worried to sleep and have to down a whole fistful of Inderal to get myself onstage tomorrow night.

  I checked my watch again. 8:56. Time to go.

  The lights dimmed as I stepped into the empty box, and all the typical auditorium noises—the talking, the coughing, the crinkling wrappers—died with them. Darkness forced every eye to the lit stage. I slid into the chair and ran a hand over the lush fabric, then pulled the edge of the velvet curtain closer.

  The concertmaster rose and I examined my angle while the orchestra tuned. I could see over the cellists’ shoulders and, if I leaned forward, almost read the notes off the last stand of music.

  The concertmaster returned to his seat and silence settled again in the hall.

  I heard Jeremy before I saw him. First came the tap and echo of men’s dress shoes on wood, and then his blond head appeared, bobbing through the field of violin bows on stage right. Again, his height surprised me. He towered over the other musicians. The conductor followed him, taking two steps for every one of Jeremy’s, looking like a little brother tagging along. They reached center stage, and Jeremy came around front of the podium taking a reluctant bow. His well-cut tux looked intentionally rumpled, like the jacket had been rolled up in a ball and then pressed. His hair fell over his forehead and into his eyes, and the thin line of his mouth fell flat. I couldn’t label that expression. It wasn’t boredom and it wasn’t disdain and it wasn’t mocking, but it was something that made me consider all three of those as possibilities.

  Diana mandated a smile from me when I walked out on stage. Not just any smile, but a genuine, confident-but-not-cocky, happy-but-not-hyper, smile. Something for the audience to relate to. It was the kind of thing you had to practice in front of a mirror. Clearly Jeremy didn’t know what he looked like right now, that was a mistake. He had everyone squirming with that sullen look.

  Stage presence, according to Diana, is not an art. Arts have loose rules, no set right and wrong, but stage presence is much more calculated than that. It is a science, a science with formulas that had been drilled into my head—but Jeremy didn’t seem to know any of them.

  The conductor reached out his hand, and Jeremy looked almost surprised by it. He paused, then shook it, then tuned his violin with a few careless strokes and plucks. When he turned to face the audience, the silence turned ugly. His face was grim. People looked in their laps and fidgeted. I fought the urge to do the same. He wasn’t just cranky, he was glaring. And then, at the moment the awkwardness became absolutely unbearable, his face broke into a huge grin. Laughter rippled through the crowd and relief warmed the air. A collective sigh rose from the audience, as if they were all in on some hilarious joke.

  I looked around. Everyone was smiling stupidly and readjusting themselves in their seats, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t feel like cooperating with him. Whatever trick he’d just pulled felt cheap and tacky. Very un-Beethoven. Could he not just play the music?

  Still grinning out at us, Jeremy raised his eyebrows and waited for our attention again. The fidgeting and the rustling melted away, and he had it. He closed his eyes, soaking up the anticipation of the crowd for one more second, and then he did the unthinkable. He flicked his wrist and tossed his violin into the air. It spiraled upward like a fish yanked out of the water, twisting up and rotating toward his body at the same time. I gasped. We all gasped and watched it miraculously land on his shoulder where his other hand was waiting to anchor it. This time the laughter was more than a ripple. It was a wave, surging from front to back and over the entire concert hall.

  I clenched my jaw and stifled the urge to cup my hands around my mouth and boo. Instead, I started working on a list of adjectives I hoped would make the concert review: ridiculous, juvenile, insulting, pathetic …

  The Beethoven Violin Concerto is one of the noblest pieces of music in the violin repertoire, and Jeremy had just opened the concert with all the dignity of a circus seal balancing a ball on his nose. Somewhere, six feet deep in the Rhineland soil, Beethoven was rolling over and pounding his fists in agony.

  Play already, I willed him.

  Jeremy gazed out at us, and I realized my mistake. Box B was too exposed. Sitting alone made it worse. I’d been too worried about being spotted by people in the audience, but now that I was removed from them, I saw the crowd would have at least hidden me. I slouched, hoping the box was dark enough and slid the chair into the curtain’s shadow.

  Finally, Jeremy nodded to the conductor.

  The orchestra began the exposition, and Jeremy’s face changed. The grin disappeared. His gaze fixed itself to the back of the hall, as if he was staring across a misty field.

  I looked down. The faces below me glowed as the stage lights glanced off their profiles. They were in love, and he hadn’t played a single note.

  Did audiences look at me that way? I had no idea. I wanted them to. Except I wanted them to love me for my music, not for gimmicks and drama. But I did want people to stare up at me like that, for anticipation to push them to the edges of their chairs.

  Maybe I had been performing all wrong.

  When I was onstage, the audience didn’t exist. It was safer to think of them as faceless silhouettes in one big anonymous mass, or better yet, not to think of them at all. As Yuri said, “Audience is bunch of idiots.” He’d then pull his face into a sour pucker to accentuate just how much their pea-size brains offended him. “What do they know? You play for composer. Music is his.”

  Diana suggested an alternative to idiots and dead people. “Play for yourself,” she advised. “This is your time. When you’re out there onstage, it has to be about you.” Then, in a slightly less idealistic tone she added, “But for heaven’s sake, as your manager, I’m telling you to smile while you’re out there. Nobody wants to be stared down by a surly teenager.”

  I wanted to protest.
I was a musician, not an actress. Smiling on command made me feel like a pageant contestant, and I wasn’t vying for Miss Illinois. What next, Vaselineing my teeth and taping my cleavage? (According to Heidi, they really did that in pageants.) But sometimes with Diana it was just easier to nod.

  Jeremy lifted his bow to play. I held my breath, and without thinking, started to pray silently: Please God, let me hear something bad. Not a mistake, but a deeper, fundamental flaw. Tight vibrato would be perfect. But the realization that God probably didn’t curse people on request, especially for quasi-believers like myself, kept me from asking for anything else. I didn’t even finish it off with an amen. For all I knew, Jeremy was praying right now too, in which case his request would undoubtedly outrank mine. I didn’t know what religion he was, but if he was even remotely devout, he had me beat.

  Jeremy’s bow glided across the string and the opening notes washed over me. That tone. It made me stop praying for ugliness. It made me think of sweetness, of sunshine and vanilla. It made every worrying thought slip from my mind as it surrounded me.

  We all felt the pull. The notes flew out of his instrument and over us, and it was as if we were being hypnotized. He was casting a spell, but it was with more than just music. The enchantment was the story, and with every phrase he added another layer, another character, weaving us into the piece as he crossed back and forth over the strings, until we weren’t sure where we ended and the music began.

  I couldn’t look away. He was stunning. The violin sat high on his shoulder, and looked impossibly small in his hands. He maneuvered around like it was simple, like it was nothing. The arrogance in his face was gone, and what was left was … calm? How was that possible? Eyes closed, he looked like he was inside the music.

  It was almost painful to stop staring, but I had to. The sound was too much. It just couldn’t be that perfect. Captivating, yes, but not flawless. I closed my eyes and listened. I would settle for the tiniest crack.

  But there wasn’t one. Everything was shiny and perfect.