Strings Attached

by Joanne Lipman

  Miriam looks pale, as if she wishes she were anywhere but here. I wait for her to make her excuses, to say it is time to go home and to call her mom in her noisy, boisterous, normal house.

  “Hello, girls,” my mom greets us as she sinks into her parked wheelchair. “You must be Miriam. I’ve heard so much about you!” She smiles warmly as she grasps Miriam’s trembling hand. As quickly as we can escape, we hurry off to my room and get out my Barbie dolls.

  To my surprise and relief, Miriam doesn’t run home. Within a year, she is taking cello lessons with my father. In time, every one of her six younger siblings will take music lessons with him, too.

  As I advance, practice sessions with Daddy are sometimes stormy. He runs me through bowing and vibrato exercises until my brain is numb with boredom and my hands burn with pain. He yells constantly.

  “Bow away from you!”

  “Violin up!”

  “Are you deaf?”

  To correct me as I play, he smacks at my wrists and elbows with one of his conducting batons.

  Crooked bow? Whack.

  Straight pinky on my bow hand? Slap.

  Elbow in the wrong position? Jab.

  Lately, no matter how hard I try, I never stand up straight enough for Daddy while I play. So one day when I come down to the studio for my lesson, he takes my music stand and sets it on top of a box. It’s so tall, my music now perched so far above my head, I have to lean over backward, my spine arching like a gymnast’s and my violin pointing almost straight up to the ceiling, to read the notes.

  “Better,” he says.

  The music stand stays on the box for months. It hurts my back and strains my eyes, but my posture is perfect.

  Rhythm reading—figuring out complicated combinations of beats—is another trouble spot. It isn’t my strongest suit, and my dad’s sense of rhythm is even worse. As an orchestra conductor, he stomps and waves his baton so wildly that no one can figure out what the beat is anyway. Substitute a fly swatter for the oversize baton he favors, and there wouldn’t be an insect left alive for miles.

  In his studio, I can tell he’s all wrong when he counts out the rhythm, even if I’m not sure what is right. At times I learn a new rhythm through some inner intuition of my own, powered by the sheer force of Daddy’s frustrated, unhelpful shouting.

  “What’s the matter weeth you? Can’t you count to three?!”

  Intonation poses another whole set of problems. Daddy sits at his piano banging the off ending note with a single finger, over and over again, shouting “Sharp!” or “Flat!” Then he sings what I’m supposed to play, but his singing is awful and out of tune and makes things even worse. I say nothing, just try harder.

  “You’ll thank me later,” he says.

  I rarely fight him, and I’m usually fairly quick to learn something new. Sometimes that is enough. Often it isn’t. But nothing I go through in a practice session can compare with Stephanie’s struggles.

  Steph is five years old when Daddy decides she’s ready for lessons, too. Creative and smart, sensitive and affectionate, Steph is a natural performer—just not on the violin. Nobody can top her when it comes to taking a bow at the end of a performance. At her beginner orchestra concert, misunderstanding my dad’s instructions, she alone stands up after each piece, bowing with a grand flourish each time my father turns to the audience to acknowledge the applause. I am mortified as I watch from my seat in the front row, but the audience loves her, laughing and clapping.

  But Steph is neither detail oriented nor coordinated. She has inherited my dad’s lack of rhythm, along with his fierce stubborn streak. During her lessons it is always a challenge for her to remember which way to curve what finger or wrist, all while trying to learn to read notes and listen to what she is doing. Nothing about the actual technique of violin playing comes easily to her, from creating a sound to sight-reading new music to simply standing still long enough to practice. She is miserable as Daddy shouts and screams through her practice sessions.

  Unlike me, Steph can be reduced to tears instantly, though that carries no weight with Daddy.

  “Sorry, Daddy!” she cries during her lesson one night. I try not to listen, but their voices are so loud that I can’t help but hear my father’s yelling and Steph’s muffled sobs through the closed studio door. “Stand steel and focus!” Daddy is shouting.

  The door slams. My dad comes stomping up the stairs holding a broken violin bow in his hand. His usual baton hasn’t been aggressive enough to prod her into doing as he demanded. He used the violin bow instead. Then he whacked her so hard with it that it splintered.

  I can hear Steph wailing downstairs, but my dad isn’t paying any attention to her.

  “Goddamn cheap bow,” he mutters as he clomps up the stairs. “They don’t make them like they used to.”

  Of course there are times when I don’t want to practice, even want to quit. On one or two occasions I mention this to my father.

  “Melanie, time to practice!” Why does this always happen right in the middle of my favorite TV show, or when I reach the best part in the book I’m reading?

  “I don’t want to do it now, Daddy!” I venture.

  “Come on, eet’s time.”

  “Do I have to? Why do I have to?”

  “You haf to practice so you’ll get better. You want to be good at the violin, don’t you?”

  “Daddy, I don’t think I want to play the violin anymore.” My words fall like a bomb into our living room.

  Silence. Long silence.

  “Well then, eef you don’t want to do the things I want you to do, don’t expect me to do the things you want me to do!”

  What things? I wonder. I soon find out. My father does not speak to me for two days. The longest two days of my life. The pain of those days is worse than any spanking I ever receive.

  I get it. I play the violin.

  As I begin to practice on my own I develop some coping strategies. Like memorizing my entire lesson quickly and putting a book up on the stand where my music should be. When I hear Daddy’s footsteps in the hallway, I grab my Nancy Drew mystery and throw it under my bed, then start playing again furiously. I am amazed he never seems to catch on or to question the loud thwack of my book hitting against the wall as he approaches my room.

  Different techniques are tried to get me to practice more, and more effectively. Setting the kitchen timer is one of the first tactics my parents use. Of course, I try the old move-the-timer-ahead trick, reducing my sentence from forty-five minutes to maybe ten. Mission accomplished. I’m lounging in the dining room on the bright plastic seesaw Stephanie got for Christmas—that season’s hot item, the “swervy curvy topsy turvy tipsy skipsy doodle. The all-day toy!” as the ads call it—when my father bursts in.

  “What are you doing?” he demands angrily. “Why aren’t you practicing?”

  “I’m done. The timer rang.” Technically not a lie, though I had helped it along quite a bit.

  “You just started. How could eet ring? Deed you touch eet?”

  Caught! My brain freezes. I’m afraid to lie and afraid to tell the truth. A spanking is now unavoidable.

  One August evening when I am eight years old, Daddy takes me on a trip to Princeton, New Jersey, to meet Dr. Philip Gordon, a composer friend of his. Dr. Gordon had written a piece called Three Preludes for String Orchestra for the high school string ensemble, which it had performed with great success a few years back at the Music Educators National Conference in Washington, D.C. Now my dad has asked him to write a piece especially for me.

  In order to write music for an eight-year-old, Dr. Gordon has requested that I come to his house and play for him so he can see for himself what I am able to do. According to Dr. Gordon, who was interviewed for the Home News newspaper in February 1971, he faced the task with some trepidation because “what do you write for such a little girl? Her emotional scope must be limited, and she plays on a half-size violin that’s not big enough to produce any volume.”
But he said that when I met him, “she threw her arms around me and kissed me,” and that my performance as a musician won his respect. “Oh, I was so impressed with that little girl. She plays with such a flair, tosses her bow up,” he said.

  My childish recollection of the evening is slightly different. Of course we get lost several times on the way to Princeton. As Daddy has promised me repeatedly, Dr. Philip Gordon is not the kind of doctor who gives shots. He’s a soft-spoken, older gentleman, sweet-tempered and not at all scary. His wife, Julie, who has a handicap that impairs her walking and reminds me of my mom, gives me cookies and milk after I play, while my father and Dr. Gordon confer. Daddy is pleased with the whole endeavor, and within a few weeks there is a new piece of music for me to learn. A very challenging piece.

  For the next several months I am immersed in my Concertino. At first, my progress is painfully slow. The tonalities are much more modern than anything I have ever played before, and it’s hard to figure out how the piece is supposed to sound, since there aren’t any recordings for me to listen to. My dad seeks help from his long-time friend and colleague Chris Cornell, a gentle violin teacher who I know as “Uncle Chris,” to coach me. He brings in one of his advanced students, Stephanie Haun, who is already one of my favorite babysitters, to help, too. My mom spends a lot of time banging out notes on the piano with one finger to help me find the pitches. Even when I practice alone in my room she’s listening, always ready to correct my intonation from her wheelchair, screaming out across the house “Sharp!” or “Flat!” as the case may be.

  As the performance draws near, my practice sessions increase to upward of two hours a day. Not only do I have to master the musical and technical challenges and memorize the piece, but I also have to learn how to fit it all together with its orchestral accompaniment. That’s the most difficult part. Playing alone in my room is much easier than stopping and starting and having to count the rests—the beats when I’m not playing but the orchestra is—and then figuring out when to start in again at the right time.

  My parents argue constantly. There is no way my mother will be able to attend the concert, all the way in Atlantic City, at a national music educators’ conference. I’ll be performing with the junior high school orchestra; the beginner orchestra, of which Steph is a member, will play, too. My dad is conducting both, of course, plus giving a lecture demonstration beforehand. He’s too preoccupied to even think about transporting my mom in her wheelchair.

  “Jerry, I can’t miss seeing my babies perform in Atlantic City. I’m their mother!” she pleads one night at dinner. But my dad remains firm—it’s simply too big an ordeal to get her there—until she lashes out in anger: “If I can’t go to the concert, then I won’t let them go, either!” It’s an empty threat, but the fact that this causes such tension and pain between my parents is not lost on me. Along with my own feelings of excitement and fear, a hefty dose of guilt is mixed in, a cocktail of emotions that will become my companion for life.

  The morning of the concert dawns with a snowstorm and freezing winds whistling down the streets. My parents insist that Steph and I wear snow boots; we can change into our concert dress shoes later. I put mine on along with my Sears-best yellow polyester dress with lace sleeves and lace stockings. Somehow in the confusion of our departure, Stephanie’s brand-new Mary Janes are left behind. In the sea of scrubbed faces, suits and ties, hair bows and frilly dresses, poor Steph’s muddy brown clodhoppers stick out across the cavernous room. Daddy is mad, and Steph cries, but there is nothing to be done about it. The show must go on.

  At the hotel ballroom, every seat is taken. I stand onstage, looking out at the grown-ups in their metal folding chairs, with overcoats and hats piled on their laps, stomping the snow from their feet. The carpet is a garish riot of big diamonds and stripes and starbursts that makes me dizzy if I look at it too hard. I focus on my dad instead.

  He’s standing on the podium, speaking directly to the audience. He describes how difficult it was to teach me the music and even tells the audience about Hoppy. Hoppy is my good luck charm—a tiny frog made of seashells that I had gotten at the beach one summer, when my mother could still travel. The frog usually sits on the piano in Daddy’s studio. But now Daddy turns toward me and pulls Hoppy from his pocket, placing him reassuringly on the edge of the stage, where I can see him.

  I just want it to be over, so that all the tension in my house will go away, too. But being onstage is not uncomfortable for me, and I don’t have enough experience yet to know you’re supposed to be nervous when you perform. Besides, I’m as ready as I can be. It seems as if I have done nothing but practice this piece for weeks, and I know it so well that I barely have to think anymore when I play it. To be honest, I’m getting a little tired of my Concertino.

  Daddy likes to say that you have to strive for perfection in order to achieve excellence, and he may have gone overboard this time. Still, as I play before the crowd, I’m glad he did. Before the last chord has stopped ringing, my senses are flooded with the swell of applause, a glimpse of my dad glowing with pride, and an overwhelming feeling of relief mixed with satisfaction, a brand-new emotion that makes my head feel light. On the stage, through the applause, I hear his words replaying inside my head: True happiness can only be achieved through hard work. I’m starting to think I understand what he means.

  PART II

  I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.

  —MAURICE RAVEL

  5

  The Viola

  JOANNE

  Nobody had any reason to have any faith in my musical ability. At ten years old, my track record was awful. I had already given music lessons a try once. After epic bouts of whining and begging, my parents finally gave in, and when I was seven years old they allowed me to take piano lessons with Mrs. Hubbard, who came every Tuesday to teach my sisters. She was exotic, Mrs. Hubbard, with unruly dark red hair swept back into a disheveled ponytail, dark red lipstick, and armfuls of bracelets that jangled while we plunked out our scales. She dressed in flamboyant gypsy skirts in bright colors, and when you sat next to her on the piano bench and looked up at her face, you’d see the light catch on the downy trace of whiskers on her chin. Her clothes and her scent and her manner all spoke of bohemian living and Greenwich Village jazz clubs and unfiltered cigarettes smoked at dim café tables during poetry jams.

  She always caused a frisson of excitement when she walked in for our piano lessons, the screen door banging behind her. We were a no-frills family. We didn’t go for lots of jewelry or flashy clothes or perfume. Our house was functional and orderly and spare; we hadn’t yet given in, as we would in the coming years, to the siren song of lime-green shag carpeting and metallic wallpaper. I was still wearing my sisters’ hand-me-down dresses—did I ever hate that brown jumper with the ugly felt gingerbread appliqué—and the sight of Mrs. Hubbard in her flowing riot of colors never ceased to fascinate.

  For all her loud jewelry and gaudy colors and wafting perfume, Mrs. Hubbard was unfailingly gentle. She never yelled or called us “idyot!” or asked if we were “deaf!” She never told us we sounded terrible or disciplined us for not being prepared. She never banged a stick to keep time. She never even insisted that we practice. My parents didn’t remind us to practice, either—they figured that was up to us.

  Perhaps that’s why, a year after I started lessons, I was so surprised when my parents suddenly told me I was done. No more piano for me.

  “You never practice,” my mother said. “We aren’t paying for lessons.”

  “But I want lessons!”

  “Then you should have practiced.”

  “You didn’t remind me!”

  “I shouldn’t have to.”

  My dad, interjecting: “Nobody ever told you life was fair.”

  And that was that. No piano. No talking back. No discussion.

  After a year of lessons, I still couldn’t read a note.

  So there were no great expectat
ions when, in fourth grade, the letter from Mr. K arrived. I had scored well on the school-wide music aptitude test, it said. I should consider taking up a string instrument the next school year, when I could get lessons in school for free. My parents were skeptical—that test must have been pretty easy, they shrugged—but they agreed to let me give another instrument a try.

  We decided on viola pretty quickly. I liked the sound of the instrument, and it was appealingly unpopular in a neglected runt-of-the-litter kind of way. More to the point, I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t allowed to play violin because there was no way I could compete with Michele, who was not only five years older but also demonstrably talented. Neither of the other two instruments Mr. K taught—the cello and bass—would fit in the trunk of my mother’s green Plymouth Duster. Viola it would be.

  A viola is sort of like a violin but bigger. And lower pitched. And clumsier. And more embarrassing. You’ve probably heard of famous violin players like Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern and Jascha Heifetz. You’ve probably never heard of any violists. Violinists play the melody in great symphonies. Violists play the background notes, if they’re playing at all. Student violinists get kicked around by every kid above them in the social pecking order. Violists get kicked around by violinists.

  Q: What’s the difference between a violin and a viola?

  A: The viola burns longer.

  Q: How do you get a dozen violists to play in tune?

  A: Shoot eleven of them.

  Q: What is the definition of “perfect pitch”?

  A: Throwing a viola into a Dumpster without hitting the rim.

  The viola has been around in one form or another for more than five hundred years, dating back to the invention of the viola da braccio in sixteenth-century Italy. For most of that time, it’s pretty much been a joke. Most charitably, it has been called the “salt in a meal: it’s not the main ingredient, but it’s indispensable.” More frequently, it is referred to as “neglected,” “ignored,” “awkward,” and “the butt of the orchestra.” The viola is an underdog, the least prestigious instrument in the entire orchestral repertoire. A step above a monkey grinder. Maybe not even.