Strings Attached

by Joanne Lipman

  I couldn’t. There was no turning back now, only going forward.

  I plunged in.

  For the first few notes, I was excruciatingly aware of every twitch of my muscles and every throat being cleared in the audience. But very quickly, Mr. K’s words came back to me, pushing away the fears and helping slow my panicked heartbeat. He believed I could do this. He was sure of it. He had confidence in me. I was ready.

  This was the good kind of roller coaster, not the kind that spits unsuspecting kids into the ocean. It was hard work, but it was… fun.

  When the piece was over, a wave of relief washed over me, rushing like white-water rapids in my ears so loudly that it drowned out even the applause. As I bowed to the audience, the way Mr. K taught me, I caught sight of him off stage. He was handing a bouquet of flowers to Ronni, who ran onto the stage to present them to me. I threw my arms around her. As I hugged her tight in joy and relief, I could see Mr. K over the top of her shoulder. He had stepped out from the wings to lead the applause.

  At home just after the concert, my dad snapped the photo of the awkward, skinny girl in the purple dress with the huge smile on her face. She has frizzy hair and glasses, and the color of her dress clashes with the striped brown wall behind her. She is holding a huge bouquet. It is the first time anyone has ever given her flowers.

  The picture is of a girl who has just gotten her confidence back.

  Somehow, despite fainting just before the audition for regional orchestra, I had scored well enough to be named principal violist. Not long after, though, I landed in another youth orchestra, this one conducted—in a cruel twist of fate—by the audition judge who had so effectively tortured me.

  Like the church, student orchestras hone to certain traditions from which they never deviate. They rise in unison at the conductor’s command. They show appreciation not by clapping but by tapping bows on music stands or stomping feet. And at the end of the final concert, the concertmaster presents a gift to the conductor and makes a short speech of thanks. Usually, that last task fell to Melanie. But Mr. K took me aside after rehearsal one day.

  “At the performance, you weel geeve conductor flowers and make speech,” he said.

  “But that’s Melanie’s job.”

  “She won’t mind.”

  “But the conductor hates me!”

  “Exactly.” He nodded.

  On the way home, when I explained the plan to my dad, he broke into a grin.

  “Mr. K is right, Jo. Take the high road,” he said, glancing back at me from behind the wheel of the Olds 88.

  Mr. K’s plan clearly appealed to my father. As a kid, my dad had stayed in the Boy Scouts all the way through high school. He reminded us regularly that he would have made Eagle Scout if only his parents had sprung for the swimming lessons he needed to complete that last badge. Barely a day went by when he didn’t cite the Boy Scout motto “Be prepared.” He believed in hard work and dedication. But he also was a skilled negotiator in business, who understood that graciousness, properly applied, was the ultimate expression of power.

  A few weeks later, when I took my place onstage for the final concert, I was prepared, all right. I quietly slipped off into the wings before the last number, noticing the look of consternation mixed with suspicion on the conductor’s face. When I reemerged, I was cradling a bouquet of long-stemmed roses in one arm. I faced the audience, threw a smile in her direction, and launched into my prepared speech.

  “There is no one else quite like our conductor…” I began.

  I went on to thank her, on behalf of the whole orchestra, for the “unique” experience she had given us. “Personally, she has taught me so much,” I added, looking away from the audience to gaze directly into her eyes. My eyes locked on hers, and I spoke my next words slowly. “She has set an example that I know I will never forget.”

  She shifted uncomfortably on the stage.

  I turned back to the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in acknowledging our conductor. She is really something.”

  I presented the roses to the conductor and gave her a hug. When I stepped back, she was smiling graciously for the audience, but her eyes were wary, like a German shepherd that’s been cornered by a kitten.

  After the concert, my parents came to find me, embarrassing me with big affectionate kisses planted on both cheeks.

  “Good for you for taking the high road,” my mother said.

  Backstage, as I was packing up, Mr. K had a big old mischievous grin on his face. He used a different expression to describe my performance, one that I had never heard before. So later, at the ice-cream parlor for a post-performance celebration, I asked my parents between spoonfuls of a hot fudge sundae with no nuts and extra whipped cream: “What does it mean to be ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’?”

  That year, it seemed like the quartet was performing every week. There were few opportunities Mr. K wouldn’t consider. In my room at night, I carefully cut out and pasted into my photo album scores of newspaper articles, with such notable entries as this one from November 1975: “An ecumenical group of four young girls provided the patients of Villa Maria with a string concert on the eve of All Saints’ Day.”

  I played at funerals, weddings, and every school in town. Once, Mr. K bused the orchestra to downtown Newark, where a hostile audience of inner-city school kids drowned out the music with shouts and jeers. Another time, I played at a New Jersey polka festival where a sleazy promoter tried to pass off recordings of our group as an “internationally famous polka orchestra.” My illicit favorite as a nice Jewish girl was performing the Hallelujah chorus each year at midnight mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church.

  “You just can’t teach children an instrument and then hide them in a hole,” Mr. K explained.

  Most of all, Mr. K made us perform in nursing homes and hospitals. These were well-meaning sorts of places, and they attempted to be cheery, with cardboard cutouts of candy canes and Santa Clauses around Christmastime and jack-o’-lanterns near Halloween. But the decorations couldn’t mask the air of futility that wafted through the halls, an aroma equal parts disinfectant and despair. We had to perform loathsome old-people musical standards that would make my stomach churn—“Begin the Beguine,” “Moon River”—in fluorescent-lit rooms filled with ancient women with thinning wisps of hair and decrepit old men in wheelchairs or leaning on walkers.

  “Slush museek,” Mr. K called it. It made me a little bit nauseous.

  The first time I performed at a nursing home, with the school orchestra, Mr. K stood up from his seat at the front of the yellow school bus as we rolled into the parking lot. He planted his feet shoulder-width apart, blocking the aisle, cutting us off from the door. We were trapped.

  “Seet down,” Mr. K yelled. “You keeds don’t move yet.”

  Whatever we had done, we were in trouble now.

  Then he launched into a speech I would hear him give probably a dozen more times.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said.

  We looked back up at him, puzzled.

  “They going to want to talk to you, and touch you or hug you or kiss”—it sounded like kees—“you.”

  Really?

  “Let them. They don’t see a lot of young people.”

  Mr. K told us some of the patients inside were old and others were sick, near death. Some of them were senile. We might be repulsed by what we saw inside. Too bad.

  “After concert, you weel stay and circulate. And you weel like it.”

  Then he turned and trotted off the bus.

  Resolutely, we filed off, clutching our instruments and taking a deep breath of fresh air before plunging into the sour-smelling, linoleum-tiled all-purpose room.

  As promised, the crowd was needy. No sooner had Mr. K lowered his baton on the final notes of “The Girl from Ipanema” than gnarled hands began grabbing at us like something out of the graveyard scene from the movie Carrie. I shrank away from an old woman clutching at me from a w
heelchair. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. K. He was staring at me, his expression hard.

  With a glance back at him, I forced a smile and approached the old woman. She told me I reminded her of her granddaughter and stroked my cheek. I could see Melanie and Miriam and Stephanie, too, circulating slowly among the old and the ill, Mr. K’s words seared into our brains even as they patted us on the head or cooed at us. The prospect of Mr. K’s wrath was without a doubt much scarier than the old people were.

  We only stayed a few minutes before Mr. K called for us to get back on the bus. But the next time we went to play there, and with each time after that, I could have sworn we stayed progressively longer. The trips would continue regularly for years. Mr. K was always packing us off to some old folks’ home or hospital or rehab center. I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but I began to look forward to the conversations afterward with war veterans and old ladies who reminisced about their lost youths.

  Each time, Mr. K gave us the same lecture, refusing to let any of us off the bus before he said his piece. “They’re going to want to hug you… Let them.”

  On one of those visits, I noticed a new resident among the crippled bodies and gnarled hands. She was younger than the others. Her metal wheelchair was secured with a brake, and her body leaned at an awkward angle against its right armrest. She was Mr. K’s wife.

  MELANIE

  The weeks turn into months; the months turn into a year; and still my mother is in the hospital. I only realize how long it’s been when All-State auditions roll around again.

  When the results are posted, I have to check twice to make sure I’m not misreading the list. There it is, in black and white: I am named assistant concertmaster.

  Second place.

  My dad holds me on his lap in the big brown easy chair in our living room while I cry so hard that my tears soak his shirt and tie.

  I never realized I would care so much about losing an audition. The thought of disappointing him is devastating. Disappointing myself, though, comes as an even bigger shock. I didn’t practice enough, I silently berate myself. I didn’t measure up. I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. I was too sloppy. I didn’t work hard enough. I had no discipline. How could I have been so lazy? I’ve let everybody down. The familiar old cocktail of self-recriminations and guilt overpowers me.

  He holds me for a long time, stroking my hair and saying little.

  “I know you tried your hardest. Shhh. It’s okay, Lastivko.”

  He hasn’t called me that in years.

  I look up at him, sniffling. “You’re not m-m-mad at me?”

  “Mad at you? Of course not!”

  “But I made it last year, and I gave it up.”

  “That was the right thing to do. You ween some, you lose some. You weel audition again next year.”

  He straightens his tie and pats his wet shirt with the handkerchief from his pocket.

  “Now, no more crying. Discipline yourself.”

  My dad surprises me again when he allows me to go to the ninth grade dance with a boy. Michael Grossman is the cutest boy in the orchestra. I’m not his first choice, but I don’t care.

  Michael and I will go on to date all through high school. My dad allows it only reluctantly. “Do not trust heem,” he often says of teenage boys, “but do not let heem know you do not trust heem.” Of course, my dad has a point. Michael and I sneak into the empty auditorium to be alone at lunchtime. Once, I steal the key to my dad’s office while he’s away so we can use it for a make-out session. We steam up the windows of Michael’s parked car, getting caught by the police in both of our neighborhoods.

  Our boldest plan comes when my dad is out of town, Stephanie is away, and I decide to make a romantic dinner at home. We plan the evening carefully. Nothing too momentous—we are not ready for that yet, or at least I’m not—but we’ll have the whole house to ourselves for a few hours, until Michael’s curfew.

  After I make the chicken and potatoes and put brownies into the oven, I decide it would be quite grown-up to have a drink before dinner, like I’ve seen my dad do countless times. So I pour myself a glass of vodka, straight. Michael will be arriving soon, so I figure if I have a big drink it will take effect faster. It tastes awful, but I quickly gulp down about a half cup of my dad’s Smirnoff. Wow! How can people drink this stuff? After just a few minutes, when I don’t feel anything, I repeat the process.

  The next thing I remember, I am lying on the blue linoleum bathroom floor. I open my eyes. Where am I? What happened? Michael is there, and for some reason our music teacher Sandy Dackow, who works for my dad, is there, too. My nose is assaulted by the smell of vomit and burned brownies.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay, you did the right thing to tell me,” Sandy is saying to him. “If she threw up, then she’ll be okay. Do you know how much she drank?”

  Reassuringly, Sandy is her usual self, in charge and quick thinking. I close my eyes as wave after wave of nausea passes through me. I am lucky I didn’t die of alcohol poisoning, though I almost wish I had. Can you die of embarrassment?

  I try to focus on Sandy’s face. She has become not just a teacher but also a close family friend. But she works for my dad; isn’t it her duty to report back to him?

  “Please don’t tell,” I murmur, before succumbing to another surge of nausea and guilt. I don’t think she will. She’ll be just as afraid of his reaction as I am.

  My dad keeps lining up solo performances for me, but the older I get, the more I dread them. I wish I could conjure up the childish fearlessness I used to have, before I was old enough to understand stress and anxiety.

  Orchestral playing, on the other hand, has exactly the opposite effect. It’s exhilarating. I can plug into the energy surging around me and lose myself in the music. It offers an escape from the loneliness of my practice room and the solitary pursuit of solo playing. It’s a way to connect with my fellow musicians, to become part of something greater than me. I’m fourteen years old the first time I realize it. At an All-State Orchestra rehearsal of Wagner’s triumphant Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, just before the climactic cymbal crash near the end, I glance down to see goose bumps rising on my arms. My scalp is tingling, as if my hair is sticking straight up. When the music stops, it takes a moment before I am earthbound again. I am surprised to find myself in a folding chair in a school rehearsal room in New Jersey. I just want to keep doing this, over and over again, for the rest of my life.

  Teaching music is almost as good. I’ve been helping my dad since I was twelve years old. He always enlists the aid of more advanced students to help less advanced ones. At first my job is to help the beginners, putting marker tapes on fingerboards and bows and patrolling through the violin section, pushing down left wrists and helping the kids arrange themselves with their violin scrolls pointing inward so they won’t whack each other with their bows.

  By the time I reach high school, my job also includes demonstrating difficult passages. Sometimes my dad makes every violinist in the orchestra play alone, in turn, and when someone has trouble, he makes me play along.

  “Who eez deaf een first violins?” he yells one day, as he often does. It’s a rhetorical question, but this time a hand is sheepishly raised from the back of the section.

  “I don’t need to know! I just want you to fix eet!”

  My dad beckons me to stand behind Ted Kesler, in the back of the first violin section. Together, we play the passage again and again, while the rest of the kids in the orchestra wait patiently. Ted grimaces, but he is used to this by now. My dad spends extra time on the kids like Ted who he thinks need the most help. He may not show it, but I’ve learned over the years that the underdogs are the ones whose progress fills him with the greatest pride.

  Sometimes I feel as if my dad is testing me, too, to see how much I can take. Once, when the violins are fumbling a passage from Aaron Copland’s “Hoe-Down”—an orchestra favorite—he threatens to pull the piece from the program unless
I stand and play it perfectly. The room goes dead quiet. I can see a cellist crossing her fingers, eyes closed. When I do manage to play the passage to my dad’s satisfaction, I feel as if I’ve scored the winning goal just as the buzzer is about to ring.

  “Who eez DEAF in first violins?” Mr. K solves the problem by having Melanie play along with students, including Ted Kesler (seated at left), while he keeps the beat. In front of Ted sits Stephanie Kupchynsky. At far right, watching Melanie, is Michael Grossman.

  Another time, after a particularly trying rehearsal, my dad tells my mom, “You know, I was pretty tough on Melanie today een front of the whole orchestra. I gave her a really hard time. Probably a leetle too hard. And she never reacted, never got upset. Just smiled and deed what I told her.”

  “Daddy,” I say, looking him straight in the eye, “that was not a real smile. That was controlled hostility!”

  My dad laughs and looks at me with new appreciation. Behind the amusement I can see a hint of pride—and respect.

  You wouldn’t think a mother’s absence, her lingering stay in a hospital, should ever feel normal. But over time, to Steph and me, it does. It’s just the way things are. I’ve already been doing the cooking and cleaning for some time. I tend to my dad’s Qiana shirts the way he likes, hanging them up still warm from the dryer and buttoning the top button to make sure the collar lays properly. I wash and fold my mom’s laundry from the hospital, then return it to her when we visit. I learn to make cheese sauce to cover the taste of the vegetables Stephanie hates. I clean the house each week, then bake brownies as a reward, then yell at Daddy and Steph for tracking crumbs all over my spotless kitchen floor.