Virtuosity

by Jessica Martinez

  “Enjoy yourself?” Diana said, her thin, scratchy voice no louder than usual. She ignored the ticket and held my gaze, her dark eyes simmering. I couldn’t look away.

  “Clark, honey,” she continued, “you can go to bed. I need to talk to Carmen alone.”

  Not surprising. This was the unspoken arrangement of stepparenthood, at least in our family. Clark was a part of all things happy, but serious discussions were between Diana and me. Alone.

  He sighed as he pushed himself out of the couch, relief softening his features. It was better this way. The tension was already eating him alive and we hadn’t even started yet. It seemed fair at least to spare him, but I didn’t want him to leave. He hugged me as he walked by, a too-tight squeeze, and whispered, “Don’t ever scare us like that again.”

  I nodded, clinging to the faded sweatshirt. Unexpected tears filled my eyes and I squeezed them shut. I couldn’t lose before I’d even started.

  He detached himself and left. Diana and I listened to the creak of each step as he retreated upstairs. We were alone.

  “He wanted to call the police,” she said, “but I talked him out of it.” Lines creased the lap of her jade-green dress, and the gold scarf sagged over her shoulders like a deflated sigh. She was still beautiful. Even with her lipstick faded to a muddy pink and the mascara smudged beneath her eyes.

  She pushed herself up into a sitting position and turned to face me. Then she crossed her legs and the top one began bouncing rhythmically. My eyes broke away from her face and locked onto the gold stiletto that dangled from her toe.

  “Well this is impressive,” she said sarcastically. She was never sarcastic. “Lying, sneaking out, showing up at 3 a.m. like you don’t have a care in the world…. You’ve outdone yourself, Carmen.” She shook her head. “Honestly, I’m surprised. It’s a little juvenile, don’t you think?”

  Jeremy thought so too.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, surprised to finally hear my own voice. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  She rolled her eyes, another rarity. She never let me get away with that kind of thing. “You didn’t worry me. You worried Clark.” As she spoke, she took out the gold and ruby clusters hanging from her ear lobes and placed them on the end table beside her mug. “I knew exactly where you were. CSO concerts aren’t exactly raves, so no, I wasn’t worried. At least not about your physical safety.” She waited for me to look her in the eye, but the shoe was just so much … safer. I looked back up at her face, which was now wrinkled with disappointment. “Carmen, what were you thinking?”

  I was suddenly tired, too tired to think. I just wanted it over. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t understand you. The sneaking out was stupid, but what’s worse is the complete disregard for your career. How do you think you’re going to be feeling when you’re walking onstage tomorrow night?”

  She didn’t want an answer. I lowered my eyes back to the glittering shoe, its arc wider and faster now.

  “This is your last performance before the Guarneri. It should be a trial run for you, and based on what Yuri told me yesterday after your lesson, you should be focusing all your energy on figuring out why that concerto is slipping. By the way, why didn’t you tell me that? I’m your manager.”

  The skin on my neck burned and I felt the flush bloom over my cheeks. Had Yuri called her to report how bad things were? Or had she called him?

  “Because I can still fix it,” I said. “I just have to …” What? She wanted a practical solution, but that was the problem. I was being strangled by all the practical solutions to the Tchaikovsky’s descent into the graveyard of overplayed concertos.

  “With your concerto withering before our eyes,” she continued, “I can’t imagine why you would choose right now to become obsessed with the competition. Why does it matter what Jeremy King sounds like? What did hearing how incredible he is do for your confidence?”

  Shattered it, I thought, surprised that I’d forgotten. That part of the evening had slipped from my memory after everything that followed. After he kissed me. Suddenly, everything I’d felt during Jeremy’s performance rushed back—the beauty, the sadness …

  The realization that I would not win.

  Diana turned her face away from me and put her hand to her throat, letting her fingertips rest on her scar, a shiny worm of a line sliding over her voice box. She stared out into the street, deliberating over something. “I heard him play last March when I was in New York.”

  The revelation took a moment to process. She’d lied. She’d come back from that trip and said she hadn’t had time to go to the concert, that there had been some conflict with her schedule. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t want the legendary Jeremy King to undermine your confidence. You’ve always been the best. I needed you to keep believing that so you could win this thing. Now …” Her voice trailed off and she pulled her eyes from the window back to my face. “Well, it’s too late for that now, isn’t it?”

  Her foot stopped swinging. The shoe slipped off her toe and clunked onto its side.

  That was it. She thought I was fragile. She thought that just knowing how good he was would be too much, that I’d shut down and give up.

  “The concert ended four hours ago. Where have you been?”

  I glanced at her view out the window. She must have seen him in the back of the cab. Maybe she’d seen him kiss me. A spark of anger flickered inside me. Why was she asking if she’d seen the whole thing? And what made her think I would just give it up to her? That moment wasn’t hers to poach.

  But it didn’t matter. I was done lying. “With Jeremy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Eating pizza in Millennium Park. Talking.”

  She raised an eyebrow. She had seen.

  “How long ago did you meet him and why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  “I just met him after the concert tonight.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “I’m telling the truth,” I said evenly. No way was she getting the satisfaction of seeing how mad I was. “I went backstage and met him and he invited me to go get some dinner. We just started talking and lost track of time.”

  “Lost track of time? Four hours? You may have lost track of time. He didn’t.”

  “I don’t even know what you mean.”

  “Oh, Carmen,” she groaned and pounded her palm to her forehead. “It’s my own fault you’re so naïve.”

  “Naïve?” Exasperation had crept into my voice, but I couldn’t help it. She was being so vague and dramatic.

  She sighed. “There are things about this business I’ve shielded you from, but I should have taught you to be more careful. Listen to me. People will do anything to win. You think that boy likes you, but he is not just some boy. He is here to win the Guarneri. He is not here to fall in love, though I’m sure he did a pretty convincing job of making you think that.”

  I said nothing. I froze my face. She was wrong. Of course she was wrong.

  But even as one half of my brain repeated it, the other half cartwheeled backward through the evening, seeing a reverse reel of every event, every word and gesture. I flipped through it all, searching for evidence of just how ridiculously wrong, wrong, wrong she was. But there wasn’t any.

  “This competition will be close,” she continued, “but it’s between the two of you. Be smart, Carmen. He will do anything to derail you, including breaking your heart when you are at your most vulnerable.”

  No. The spark of anger inside me blossomed into flame. I wasn’t that stupid. Jeremy wasn’t like that.

  “I can see you’re mad,” she said. “You should be. You don’t deserve to be used. You’re young and sweet and pretty, but your innocence is the problem. And now that you understand what’s going on, you don’t have to let him manipulate you like that.”

  I put my hand on the credenza to steady myself. It was glossy and cool beneath my skin. I felt like I might b
e sick.

  “Listen to me, Carmen,” she said, bringing me back into the moment. She was standing in front of me now and I could see her eyes were red. She brought both hands to my face and cupped my jaw. Her skin was soft and the smell of her perfume was stronger now. “Forget about Jeremy. Don’t call him. Don’t see him. Focus on the Tchaikovsky. We are so close to winning, Carmen. You just …” She dropped her hands. She wanted to finish the thought, but didn’t. Couldn’t.

  I just …

  I nodded weakly. “I know. I understand.”

  She turned away. “Good night.”

  Silently, I went upstairs.

  Sleep was impossible. I should have been obsessing over my first kiss—the softness of his lips, his hand touching the back of my neck, the water-blue shade of his eyes—but Diana had killed that.

  Instead, I analyzed every look and every word that led up to it. As evidence. He was a liar. If I told myself that, it was easy to see how everything that had happened could be woven into that story. That meant Jeremy was in his hotel bed right now, smiling, confident, relieved I was as gullible as he’d hoped, and plotting his next move. I hated him, more than I’d ever hated anyone or anything.

  But what if Diana was wrong? Didn’t I deserve to have this one normal thing?

  I slipped out of my bed and crossed the hall to my studio. My case was open, my chin rest still attached from my last practice session. I picked up my violin and walked over to the window. A light rain had begun, bathing the window in a film of water, and the sky had turned from black to the darkest navy. Morning was coming. How had Jeremy described performing? Flying. Easy for him to say. Maybe he flew; I slogged. Tomorrow, or tonight now, I’d be slogging through lukewarm water on that same stage.

  Unless …

  The idea made the back of my neck tingle and my stomach drop. What would happen if I didn’t take Inderal?

  But you need it! my mind screamed. I did need it. Tokyo. Inderal saved me from that. But I also needed to change something and I was running out of time. Maybe what I needed was to jump, to freefall.

  I put my violin up and played the opening phrase of the sweetest melody I could think of. It was Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending. Smooth and clean, the melody glided upward, lifting me with it. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the words to the poem that inspired the music. I couldn’t. Yuri had made me memorize them, but that was years ago. I did remember the story, though. It was about a bird who flew up and up and up toward heaven until she was too high to be seen.

  Chapter 10

  I have no scars. Not a one. Heidi says the ugly red mark on my neck and the calluses on my fingertips don’t count because they’d go away after a few months if I were to stop playing. She’s right. It seems like a deficiency though, like evidence of living life in a bubble.

  Clark has several, the biggest being an eight-inch purple rope down the center of his knee from ACL surgery. The ski injury has a story behind it that involved a poorly placed mogul, a tree, and a spooked deer. I’ve heard it several dozen times, but never the same way twice.

  My favorite of Clark’s scars is the iridescent pink patch that wraps around the stub of his right pinky. He lost two digits at age fourteen to his uncle’s table saw, but that wasn’t what he told me when I was little. Back then he said he’d accidentally bitten it off in a hot dog eating contest. That really freaked me out. To this day, I’m a slow eater with finger foods.

  Diana has just the one, the mother-of-pearl dash over her voicebox. I think it’s kind of pretty, like a brushstroke. But she hates it. To her it’s a sinister, worm-like reminder of a scalpel digging around in her throat for polyps. As if her scratchy voice isn’t reminder enough.

  Heidi has matching scars—glossy, pink patches over each elbow—from being chased by a dog on roller skates. She was the one on roller skates. Not the dog.

  “I don’t know why you are so obsessed with them,” she said, as I examined the permanently damaged skin on her elbows, not for the first time.

  It’s simple though. I like the scars because I like the stories. Bravery, stupidity, pain—none of them come free.

  “Is it weird that I don’t have any scars?” I asked Diana once over a bowl of Raisin Bran.

  “No, it’s not weird. You don’t have scars because you’re graceful and spatially aware.” She took a sip of coffee and added, “Not to mention young and lucky.”

  “But not a single one?”

  Clark looked up from his newspaper. “It’s because you’re a slow eater,” he said, lifting his four-and-a-halffingered right hand and wiggling the stump. “Get over here and pinky swear to never enter a hot dog eating contest.”

  I laughed. Diana rolled her eyes. Clark shrugged and grinned, mission accomplished.

  Operation Inderal detox was worse than I thought it would be.

  I threw up twice. The first time was in the bathroom of my dressing room. Luckily, my hair was already up and hairsprayed into place so it didn’t get splattered. Also luckily, Diana wasn’t there to see it. If she had been, she might have guessed why I was puking and made me take a pill. I’d intentionally left my pillbox at home in case I chickened out, but I knew she kept an emergency stash in her purse.

  I hadn’t seen her all day. She’d left me to marinate in my shame, or whatever it was I was supposed to be feeling, while she ran errands. That was fine. I didn’t want to talk to her either.

  Clark dropped me off at Symphony Center two hours early, and drove off with his signature double-honk for good luck. He’d be in the audience later. Probably checking the score of the White Sox game on his phone every five minutes, but he’d be there.

  And so would the Glenns. Apparently my grandparents had called last night and announced that they were in Chicago and would be attending the concert.

  I made my way to the dressing room, the same one Jeremy had used, and tried to ignore the trembling in my hand as I reached for the knob. My fingers slid off twice before I managed to grip and twist. This was usually the peaceful part, arriving before the other musicians, feeling the quiet of the auditorium before a million melodic fragments clouded the air. My heart was already pumping too fast, aching behind my rib cage.

  I just had to remind myself of what Dr. Wright had said: Inderal was not physically addictive. But if that was true, then this feeling that my body was about to explode or collapse or both was all in my head. If it was true, this pain in my gut was just neurosis.

  Dr. Wright was full of crap.

  Diana was supposed to meet me backstage with my dress an hour before call time.

  My resolve was weakening. By the time she arrived, I was afraid I’d be begging her for Inderal.

  Picking up my dress from Mei-Ling’s, Diana’s seam-stress in Chinatown, was somewhere on her to-do list between buying pantyhose and going to Northwestern to drop off my music for the judges. (Ten days to go—original scores for all the Guarneri semifinalists were due.)

  I’d performed in the dress only once before, but that was over a year ago. It had needed letting out in the bust, a discovery we’d made thanks to Diana’s fixation with seeing me in performing dresses three weeks early, just in case lipstick stains had to be removed or hems re-stitched. Both she and Heidi had insisted it was too tight, which Heidi reinforced by referring to me as Dolly Parton for several days. So we’d all gone to Mei-Ling’s for a fitting. Heidi had come along so we could work on physics in the car, but spent most of the time writing haikus on the edges of my notebook about hating General Electric (home of her most recently botched job interview), while Diana talked on the phone with her travel agent about the price of flights to Sydney in August. That was the last time I’d seen the dress. I’d brought a spare just in case, but I liked the other one better. It was white, and white seemed like the right color for a fresh start.

  My warm-up inched by. I practiced, I did my hair, I practiced, I started to feel shaky, I started to feel nauseous, I did my makeup, I tried to think about hap
py things like the beach and chocolate ice cream, I ended up wondering if Jeremy would be in the audience, I threw up, I practiced, I paced, I did this windmill thing with my arms to try to force the blood to my fingertips, and then I practiced a little more. Not having Diana there at least gave me something concrete to stress about. Getting nervous about getting nervous was just too abstract to get a grip on, but I could freak out about not having my dress arrive and that felt much better.

  What am I doing? The thought seized my brain every few minutes, and I’d try to smother the panic with some relaxation exercises Dr. Wright had suggested at my follow-up appointment: deep breaths, calm thoughts, deep breaths, calm thoughts, deep breaths, calm thoughts. Dr. Wright really was full of crap.

  At fifteen minutes to go, I started pacing faster, this time in a wide loop around the dressing room: between the coffee table and the sofa, over the ottoman, around the piano, down the mirrored wall, repeat. My legs shook under me, but the repetition was oddly numbing. An image of the polar bears in the Lincoln Park Zoo came to my mind, lumbering pitifully around their cages in the same circuit over and over. Maybe they had anxiety issues too.

  Where was she? Diana was never late, so being late to a performance was completely unthinkable. My stomach still hurt from the puking. Would she be able to tell? I looked in the mirror. Scary. My skin was an eerie greenish-white, my stage makeup even more garish than usual. Glossy red lipstick, green eye shadow over bloodshot eyes—I looked like a circus clown with the stomach flu. I’d taken off my shirt before hair and makeup, and was wearing just jeans and a bra, adding another layer of weird to the image in the mirror. How could Jeremy kiss that face?

  I opened the closet and took out the dress bag holding my backup, a navy blue organza dress with a sweetheart neckline. I was deciding whether I should put it on or go back to the bathroom to throw up again, when the door swung open.