It is the first full day of ASTA summer music camp and the first day of rehearsal with our new string quartet. My dad came up with the idea. He says now that I’m eleven years old and Steph is nine, it’s time to play with musicians our own age, instead of performing only with older kids. So he put together the quartet—two violins, a cello, and a viola—and chose two other girls in my grade to join us.
Steph and I will play the violin parts, of course. Miriam is a natural as our cellist. Besides officially being my best friend, she has been taking lessons with my father for more than three years. A gifted musician—she really does have strong, sturdy “cello hands,” as my dad noticed the first time he met her—she has made quick progress on her instrument. We already spend as much time together as my parents will allow, and this will give us an excuse to spend more.
For the viola part, my dad chooses Joanne. I don’t know her well. Among the four of us, she is the least advanced, having played for less than two years. She is from the other side of East Brunswick, where the homes are a little bigger, a little farther apart, a bit more luxurious than the houses on my street. Later, when she invites me over, I’ll see that her house is as neat and beautifully decorated as I imagined it to be, with a living room that kids are not allowed in and curtains we are not permitted to touch when we look out the window to check if our ride home has arrived. In contrast, Miriam’s house smells faintly of diapers and Clorox, and her living room couch is always covered with laundry from her five younger siblings. My house is orderly, but the walls are scratched from my mother’s wheelchair, and the first thing you see when you walk in is her mechanical chairlift.
Joanne comes from what I think of enviously as a “normal” family. Her dad tells jokes and always has a camera in one hand; her mom is pretty and stylish. She has two older sisters, which to my mind is an amazing stroke of good fortune, the next best thing to having a healthy mom. I’d give anything to have someone to help shop for clothes and give advice about rock bands and boys. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to go to a restaurant or a store with a family like Joanne’s, without people stopping to stare at my dad when he talks, or at my mom in her wheelchair, shaking their heads with pity while shushing their preschoolers who point and ask, “What’s wrong with that lady’s legs?” No wonder Joanne is so worldly and confident, the opposite of me. If we weren’t both studying music, it’s not hard to imagine that our paths might never have crossed.
Our first quartet rehearsal at ASTA is in a basement room that is as cramped and airless and hot as a dungeon. It is intended as a practice room for one person, and most of the space is taken up by a baby grand piano. We’re squeezed in tight. My dad is too busy to coach us and dispatches gentle old Mrs. Graffam, a teacher he has known for years, to instruct us instead.
Without him watching over us, we are free to giggle and joke. Mrs. Graffam—Miriam promptly dubs her “Mrs. Grandma”—hands us our first piece: Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Emperor” Quartet no. 62 in C Major, second movement. The melody is familiar—it’s the tune used for the German national anthem—and the piece isn’t difficult. I give the other girls a beat, and we play through the opening theme. I see Joanne and Miriam trading a look that is as pleased as it is surprised. We try once more, but Stephanie starts laughing at something Miriam says, and soon we have all dissolved in a fit of giggles. By the time we’re done with rehearsal it’s lunchtime, and we head off down the path to the cafeteria.
One of the quartet’s earliest rehearsals. Left to right: Joanne Lipman, Miriam Simon, chamber music coach Katherine Graffam, Melanie Kupchynsky, and Stephanie Kupchynsky.
We find a table together at lunch, where we amuse ourselves by trying to invent the most disgusting concoctions possible. Miriam starts with a glass of milk, then adds ketchup; Joanne pours in orange juice and Coca-Cola; I contribute mustard and Russian dressing with a dash of pepper and grated cheese. When we’re done, we have a foaming mess the color of pond scum that Joanne dares the cute boys at the next table to drink, while the rest of us look on, squealing with glee. Before the boys—John the cello player and Michael, Paul, and Jonathan, all violinists—have a chance to retaliate, we escape through the back doors of the cafeteria, running so fast and laughing so hard that we can hardly catch our breaths.
We sit together again at dinner, and at every meal after that, and at the concerts we are required to go to at night. For a whole week at ASTA, I forget about laundry and wheelchairs and feeling left out. I even forget that I am Mr. K’s daughter. It’s a relief to not be the only person carrying around a violin. I’m surprised at how much I have in common with girls like Joanne. During our free time we play pranks and make up nicknames for people. At night, after lights out, we whisper on walkie-talkies—me and Miriam on one, Joanne and her roommate on the other. For the first time since I can remember, I’m just like everybody else.
I am swimming up through a sea of sleep, fighting to break the surface. In my dream I hear an announcer giving the weather forecast, but his voice is distorted, the words barely recognizable.
I sit up abruptly, fully awake.
“Jerry!!!! Jer-ry!!!” My mother is calling for my dad, but he is not answering.
What time is it? Where is Daddy? The TV in my parents’ bedroom is turned up all the way, the volume deafening. I look over toward my clock; it’s almost midnight. I start to get up, to go see what she needs, when I hear feet pounding up the stairs. My father.
“What the hell eez going on? Turn down that goddamned television! You weel wake up the girls!”
“I turned it up because I got tired of yelling. Why didn’t you answer me? I’ve been calling and calling you! I can’t stand it when you ignore me.”
“Jean, goddammit, eet’s the end of a long day. Everyone wants something from me. Can’t I have a moment of peace without you nagging…” The door slams, muffling the sound of their voices.
I lie down. If I cover my head with the pillow I can’t hear anything. In the darkness, the door to my room opens and I feel Stephanie slide into my twin bed beside me. I scrunch over to make room for her, and wordlessly we fall asleep, our arms around each other.
For as long as I can remember, my mother has focused on what she can do as opposed to what she cannot. She taught me to read fluently before I entered first grade. When I was out of school for three weeks with bronchitis once, she homeschooled me so vigorously that I was well ahead of the class when I returned. She is a ruthless enforcer when it comes to practicing the violin.
But as time wears on, I notice that she is getting weaker. Her limited energy is increasingly consumed by her preoccupation with her disease. She has no reserves left and no energy to spare for mothering me, much less nine-year-old Stephanie. Steph will never stop craving love, attention, and nurturing, and searches for it from anyone who will give it to her. I’m just the opposite, shutting down that area of my heart and learning to make do with what I get from my dad, my sister, my violin, and myself.
My father isn’t equipped to relate to Steph and me the way a mother could. One morning when I’m in seventh grade, a dreary winter unexpectedly turns to spring, the weather unseasonably warm and sunny. All the girls at school will be wearing shorts, and I decide that I will, too. I’m in a good mood as I serve my mother her usual breakfast of coffee and Special K on a tray in her bedroom, then clear the breakfast dishes in the kitchen.
“Daddy, hurry up! I’ll get in trouble if I’m late again!”
My dad comes racing into the kitchen, buttoning up his suit jacket and knotting his tie, exuding a cloud of Aramis and hairspray. He grabs a cup of scalding hot instant coffee and begins to pour it from one cup to another to cool it, gulping it over the sink. We follow the same routine each morning, with my dad dropping me off at the junior high school on his way to work. I hate being late, having to walk in front of the whole class to my desk, wilting under the scrutiny of the pretty, disdainful girls already in their seats.
I suddenly feel my dad�
��s accusing eyes on me.
“What are you wearing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Those shorts are too short. You can’t wear them to school. Go change!”
“But, Daddy! They’re not too short! And I’ll be late…”
“No daughter of mine weel go out of house wearing shorts like that, like a harlot. Go change!”
“No! I want to wear these!”
I rarely defy my father. But honestly, must I always be the class dork? All I want is to look like the other girls.
THWACK!
An angry, red, hand-shaped welt appears on the pale skin of my thigh, where my father has slapped me.
I look at him in shock. Sobbing, I run to my room and throw myself on the bed. My father follows a few minutes later. He has calmed down. But when he sees the telltale mark on my leg—all five fingers and a palm—he sits down next to me and rubs the spot until his handprint is obscured. Soon it’s a shapeless patch of bright red spread out like a messy inkblot across my pallid skin.
I can tell he is ashamed of himself. He will never do it again. But he doesn’t apologize. I do.
“I’m sorry, Daddy!” Steph cries.
On a Tuesday night not long afterward, our quartet is working on a new piece, Haydn’s Quartet in D Major, op. 64, no. 5, better known as the “Lark.” It’s quite a bit trickier than the “Emperor” quartet movement we’d cut our teeth on last summer. But my dad still can’t understand why Steph has such a hard time figuring out how to count rests—the part where a musician doesn’t play.
“You dragging like dirty rag across rests!” he yells. He stomps from one foot to another for emphasis, to illustrate how her playing lags behind everybody else’s. His heavy galumphing isn’t helpful as she tries to navigate the delicate, prettily latticed music composed with eighteenth-century royal drawing rooms in mind, but I don’t dare point that out.
We struggle even more when we move on to the hardest passage in the piece, a series of triplets all four of us have to play in unison. It seems just about impossible for us to get it right. Every time we try, it feels like we’re jumping off a cliff: we start off linked together as if we’re holding hands but quickly fly apart in midair before we crash-land in a heap.
“Violin and viola not together! Sounds like huge spot of mud on white dress!” my dad says. My dad often refers to Joanne only as “viola” and Miriam as “cello,” as if that were actually their first names.
We try again, but the passage is still a muddy mess. You can see my dad’s mouth moving as he searches for yet another way to explain himself. Finally, he looks squarely at Steph. “You steek to viola like flea to dog’s tail!”
Time is running short. We have already played a few local concerts, with me performing a solo and the quartet running through a few simple tunes. Most are small events, at schools or at hospitals, where the patients are appreciative but in truth happier when we stop playing Haydn and perform what my dad calls slush music—easy, old-fashioned songs I enjoy, like “Begin the Beguine” and “Over the Rainbow.” But now we’re preparing for our major debut, at a national teachers’ convention in Philadelphia.
When the day finally comes, and we pile into the van that my dad has arranged for us, we’re so keyed up that we barely speak all the way there. At the Holiday Inn on Penn Square, just down the street from the Liberty Bell, teachers in suits and dresses are swarming through the lobby, some carrying instruments, a few looking bleary-eyed and hungover, all sizing each other up. The four of us set up nervously in the Thomas Eakins room, named for the Philadelphia-born realist painter, an ironic choice given the industrial-drab box we find ourselves in. The acoustic wall tiles are gray. The wall-to-wall carpet is of indeterminate color. There are no windows.
My dad sweeps in, directing us where to put our instrument cases and our coats, telling us to go ask somebody else where the ladies’ room is, and ordering us to get our keesters into our seats for a quick rehearsal. He turns straight to the passage that has given us so much trouble during our practices. Some curious passersby in the hallway stop to listen, a few of them edging toward the seats.
“Remember,” he says, turning to Stephanie. “Like flea to dog’s tail.”
By the time we’ve finished warming up, every seat is taken. Someone has sent out for more chairs.
“Breathe, everybody,” I whisper to the other girls. “This is going to be fun!” None of them smiles back.
Not long before, my dad had taken Steph and me to climb Mount Katahdin in Maine. Daddy loves mountain climbing almost as much as music. He spent weeks getting us ready—poring over maps, packing up the snakebite kit, and slathering waterproofing gel on his old Korean War boots and baking them in the oven overnight. But once we got to the trail, he took off ahead of us, practically running up steep ledges as Steph and I scrambled to keep up. “Daddy, wait for us!” we called. But he didn’t.
“You can do eet yourselves!” he called over his shoulder. “No turning back now.”
That’s how I feel now, with my dad off stage and the other girls looking at me expectantly. We’re ready; no turning back now. Nodding my head, I signal the start of the Haydn.
I can feel how nervous Steph is. She and Joanne play alone for the first few notes. Steph’s bow is wobbling. I suck in my breath and hold it, trying to will her to be calm.
But my dad is right. We are ready, and after the first few measures we settle in to doing what we have done so many times before. The music flows. The audience seems to recede into its seats, and even my dad fades into the background. We stop thinking about the crowd and focus on the music and on one another. I only have to nod slightly, or glance up from the music to lock eyes for a millisecond with the other girls, and we all lean in to the music, or play softer or louder, or dig in to a passage together. We really are breathing together. We really do feel the music as if we share one brain. Picture a school of fish, or a flock of migrating birds all moving seemingly effortlessly in sync. Okay, it isn’t exactly effortless. But it is at least as miraculous.
When we get to the end of the piece, we all exhale at once. This is something none of us has experienced before, a secret bond that we’re sure nobody else can understand. The audience is cheering, but it barely matters to us. We’ve discovered something even better: the indescribable pleasure of playing together. For us, it is our earliest exposure to the magical feeling of interconnectedness that sometimes happens when musicians perform together, when everyone onstage becomes one not just with each other, but with the composer and his music, the audience, and transcendently beyond.
When it’s all over, my dad hugs each one of us in turn. He plants a kiss on Stephanie’s cheek. Then, before he heads off to his next meeting, he presses a twenty-dollar bill into my hand and points us toward the hotel restaurant. “Go celebrate,” he says. “You earned it.”
6
Academic Overture
JOANNE
Mr. K was always yelling at students for being mahnyiaks. But in seventh grade, I began to wonder if he was the one who was nuts.
I suggested as much at dinner one night. “He’s gone off the deep end,” I said. “Absolutely insane.” My sisters just nodded. Mr. K had become a frequent topic of dinner conversation—and sometimes, as my sisters got older, of amusement as well. But this time he had gone too far.
We were wolfing down our meal because all three of us were rushing off to orchestra rehearsal. My mom had joined a gourmet-cooking group not long before, and the Hawaiian Medley frozen vegetables and canned fruit-cocktail appetizers were gone, replaced by exotic dishes like cheese fondue and teriyaki chicken with pineapple. The vegetables she cooked were fresh rather than frozen now, but Michele still couldn’t stand them and still snuck them under the table to feed to Skippy.
We talked all at once as we ate, cutting each other off and plowing right over each other’s sentences. Usually, just the girls talked—my mother and the three of us daughters. My dad couldn’t get a wor
d in edgewise. He had very little to add to our typical girl-world conversations, most of which made him squeamish. Every once in a while, he would interrupt us, saying, “Can’t we get through one meal without discussing bodily fluids?”
That night, though, we had more important things to discuss: namely that Mr. K had pushed us way too far. It was one thing to set high expectations; it was another to expect the absolutely, completely, incontrovertibly impossible. I had been promoted to the high school orchestra just months before, along with the other girls in my quartet. Both of my sisters were already big shots in the group: Michele was co-concertmaster and Ronni the principal flute player, leading the section.
The problem was, the music Mr. K expected us to play was insane. At the first rehearsal of the year, he handed out mimeographed parts for Johannes Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture. The music terrified me. I stared at the vaguely shiny sheets of the viola part, held together at the edge by translucent Scotch tape blotched by fingerprints. I may as well have been looking at hieroglyphics. There were strange notes, strange key changes, and unexpected rhythms. It was fiendishly difficult, well beyond the level of anything I had ever played before. Even for Michele, who had performed the piece with the All-State Orchestra, and Ronni, an All-State flute player, it was a challenge.
Mr. K had been making our quartet practice the piece together during our Tuesday night rehearsals, pushing our usual Haydn off the agenda while we diligently tried to perfect some of the trickier string entrances. Academic Festival Overture has a great booming melody—you’d know it from the antic parade scene in the movie Animal House—but underneath that big brass line there’s a whole lot of mystifyingly difficult string playing darting in and out.
Strings Attached Page 9