Duet

by gay walley

  And then he either went to or feigned sleep.

  Twenty eight:

  It was only two months later that Duet moved from Oskar’s and returned to her old apartment which she had sublet on a month to month basis, just in case it all fell apart, as Daisy would have expected it to. Oskar’s coldness towards her never diminished, once it began. He had inexplicably turned against her. She had no idea why and eventually she stopped trying to change it.

  She missed him very much, or maybe she missed loving someone. She would find herself, when she was happy over a piece of music or a thought, saying out loud, Os-kar, as if she was a child. She so much wanted to connect.

  She saw Maurice for occasional dinners but she was not interested in him although he kept trying to tell her she could make a life with him. He was apparently still investigating Daisy’s story for her. He said it was not that easy to get the records for the hospital but he had located the site of the hospital. He was still working on tracking down the facts and she appreciated him for that. Someone was on her side. She could have gone herself to Vienna and searched, but she chose not to.

  She should move on. Focus on her life here. A life that looked like it would be filled with loneliness.

  At the office, Paula said, “Why don’t you move to Dubai or Quatar and teach musical composition? Or PR?”

  “Why there?” Duet asked.

  “The money. It’s impossible to make ends meet in New York.”

  “That’s true.”

  Duet rather liked the idea of running away and starting all over but still it would be running away and there was something ignominious in that.

  The handsome psychoanalyst she had met in front of her apartment still called. He seemed to have not found Ms. Right and he, if nothing else, liked talking to Duet. He would ask her probing questions about her aloneness, and what happened between she and Oskar.

  “He pulled away,” she said. “We found out we were sort of tied up together in our pasts. Our families knew each other and that got nasty.”

  “How do you mean?” Alan asked.

  “I can’t go into it,” she answered.

  “That’s the problem with you. You won’t go into anything.”

  Then they’d agree to meet for dinner. She knew he felt Duet was a woman of quality and wanted it to work with her. He actually wanted intimacy, dialogue, unlike Oskar, but still, she found she somehow resisted.

  “You two,” Alan said, “kept a distance even when you were together. You wanted it that way. Colluded,” he added.

  She knew he was right. “Anyway it is Oskar who doesn’t want me.”

  “Maybe he’s scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Losing you. You said he lost his family. Maybe he felt you would betray him like his family did.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s the oldest trick in the book. Pushing you away first.”

  “Yes. So what am I supposed to do?”

  Alan laughed. “Whatever you want to do.”

  And then he put his hand over hers. She smiled pleasantly but she was not yet ready to open a chapter of another kind.

  She signed up for classes on existentialism. Each writer proved that nothing makes sense. We live and we die randomly. There is no redemption to life’s chicanery. The class had a decidedly spiritual tact. It’s all vanity, Ecclesiastes wrote. Apparently even Ecclesiastes was existential.

  She had the feeling she was losing her job. She hadn’t been going in as much and it was no secret to anyone that her heart was not in it. But she knew she couldn’t make a living on art. She had met a friend, a musician, for tea, and they both agreed that it was impossible. You taught. It took years of study to be a composer so that was out. Where was she going to fit in? So within, so without. She did not fit into the normal world with her body, and so she had made a life where she did not fit in the normal world outside her.

  She couldn’t change herself within, so maybe she had felt she could never change herself in the outside world.

  She spoke on the phone with friends. They were getting married. They were having children. They were moving to good jobs in Atlanta or Washington. She was doing none of the above.

  She was alone but she didn’t call David. She couldn’t just keep running to him in a storm. Occasionally he called her. What did she think of his website? She went onto it and saw endless photographs of him. With children in Vietnam, with his daughter, golfing.

  “Isn’t this supposed to be for your construction company?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well how about some houses?” she said. “Some shots of houses?”

  He laughed and moved them to the front.

  “Put photos of you,” she said, “on the contact page.”

  It was this that kept her from going to him. His mind was not keen.

  But, strange as it was, she could not see herself alone forever.

  Twenty nine:

  Two events happened that struck her as irretrievably odd. One was that she ran into Madonna, the young chef who worked and lived at Oskar’s penthouse. Duet was ambling around Papyrus, looking for a birthday card for a child. Madonna was in there too. Madonna called out, “Duet” and Duet nodded and gave her a kiss and hug. She liked Madonna just for taking such good care of Oskar. That thought gave Duet a twinge, it showed she still cared for Oskar. Madonna said, “How are you?” and Duet noticed that even though Madonna’s mouth was smiling, her eyes were not. In fact, Madonna looked sad.

  “Madonna,” Duet asked, “Everything okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “How’s Oskar?”

  There they were standing amid a plethora of cards of people jumping off bicycles, or up into the sky, smiling, smiling, smiling, as if the world was one big playground.

  “He’s doing great,” Madonna said. “Has a lot of friends over for his dinner parties. He likes to entertain eccentrics, oddballs, rich and famous, you remember that?”

  “Yes.”

  Duet wasn’t sure what to say next, didn’t want to seem intrusive, and then Madonna took her arm and said, “Don’t take it all personally. Oskar can be strange, you know that. He doesn’t like people to get close.”

  Duet wanted to say “What do you mean?” but felt that would be unfair to Madonna. Oskar was her employer. Duet nodded to Madonna, feeling more alone and sad because, in truth, she had not understood any of it.

  When Paula came to Duet’s apartment to see her, Duet thought Paula had put on a lot of weight. Then she got it. “Are you…?”

  Paula smiled. “I am.”

  “By Lars?”

  “I am.”

  “Wow. Does he know?”

  “No. Nor will he. He’s probably going to jail and I don’t hear from him so

  why should I tell him?”

  “Boy,” Duet said. “We’ve gone to some strange places with these dates we found.”

  “It’s Lars who is going to some weird places, honey. And I know he feels he is alone, and what’s even odder is that I don’t want to tell him that he is not alone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I may keep the child. I may not. I don’t know yet. So why should I tell him I had a child that I gave up? And there is some peculiar thrill I get at having his baby and then giving it away.”

  “Why on earth would you get a thrill from that?”

  “I know it is just another one of his nightmares. I call it tit for tat.”

  Duet looked at Paula. “I don’t like that thinking, Paula. Talk to a shrink. Keep the kid. It’s not him you’re screwing, but yourself.”

  Paula listened.

  “And let’s go shopping,” Duet said, “for clothes for the baby. It’ll be fun.”

  Which they did do a month later, on Madison Avenue. Duet said, “Yeah at these

  prices I wouldn’t tell Lars either. I would find myself a Saudi Prince and tell him the kid is his.”

  Paula laughed and Duet had this feeling
, strange feeling, that Paula would keep the child. At least Duet would be an aunt.

  Weeks later, after working hard and getting nowhere with her musical compositions, getting nowhere on being paid for her freelancing, and getting nowhere with her nights alone, her buzzer rang. She looked down the stairwell and there was Maurice running up her stairs a bit more urgently than usual. He put his briefcase down and stood there, expectantly, as if she had some answer for him.

  "What is it?" she asked. His urgency made her nervous. Had he finally come up with something about her family?

  "What is it?" she asked again. “Are you alright?”

  "I told Adele," he said. "I told Adele about us."

  But there is no “us.” What is he talking about?

  “I told her I had met someone whom I can’t get out of my mind and who is the kind of woman I want to be with."

  “She must have been delighted," Duet said, sarcastically. It seemed so destructive, she thought. She had trouble believing that he actually felt that passionately about her when she did not about him, and yet part of her knew he was telling the truth, as delusional as that might be.

  "I had to. I can't go on living this double life."

  "I'll get you a scotch," she said, stalling for time. She took the bottle off the sideboard and went to get ice, thinking this is it, he’s arranged his life so he is alone too.

  He stood at the kitchen door.

  "I am moving out," he said.

  "Moving out?" She turned to him.

  "Yes, I have a place anyway, as I told you." He smiled, a bit miserably.She stared at him. “I can show it to you now,” he said. “I have a car downstairs…”

  “Why?” She meant why would he do such a thing, leave his wife, have his own place, but he thought she was asking, Why would she want to see it.

  “Maybe you’ll like it and want to come stay a bit there with me. Eventually. You never know.”

  No, she thought. I don’t want to live with you.

  “We’ve never even been lovers,” she said.

  “That can be remedied.” He smiled yearningly at her. But she didn’t want to remedy it. She also found it curious that she did not think at all about her terrible inner design with him. She knew he would hardly care less. It was she he loved, just as her father predicted a man would one day feel.

  "Where is your apartment?” she asked.

  They walked to the couches. "In Riverdale," he said. "In a beautiful section. With a view. You can compose and I'll work. It'll be good."Oh god, she thought.

  Suddenly he stood up. “Come on, it’s a great night. Let’s go for a drive.”

  And because she couldn’t think how to answer, she caved in and trailed after him down the stairs.

  The apartment had casement windows over the Hudson River which was totally enchanting, as well as French doors and old fashioned arch ways between the rooms. She began walking through the apartment, checking it out, as if she was a buyer. The apartment was warm, she had to admit, with a fireplace and a bedroom that looked out over the water. She could not believe the number of books on Mahler in every room.

  He was fiddling with the stereo system while she looked at the bedroom, and suddenly she froze…

  “Maurice, what is this?”

  He raced to her.

  “Oh that’s Alma.”

  “Alma Mahler?”

  “Of course. It’s a lifesize doll of her. I had it made up based on

  various photos.”

  But he had said he hated Alma Mahler. She looked at him, terrified.”Alma” was wearing the same jeans Duet wore, the same pink t shirt.

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “I know,” he said, “I know. You two could be confused for each other.”

  On the car ride home, she looked out the window and thought, he is mad. Mad about Mahler and mad about me. And I must be mad to even be talking to him. But Kokoshka, the artist who had commissioned the original lifesize doll of Alma, had been a genius, witty, passionate. Why is it I’m considering Maurice as crazy?

  She had dinner with Maurice the next night at the Gramercy Tavern, because she was lonely, but she still did not have the least attraction to him. He didn’t complain about her coldness. He seemed to be content if she simply happened to bump into him. But still she had to get him off the scent.

  So she explained that she had a certain physical aberration. That’s why she does not want to make love with him. He listened, raised his eyebrows and said, “Well.” That was the end of it. He asked her if her build hurt her in any way and when she said no, then he seemed to just forget it. “When you’re ready to make love with me,” he said, “just tell me. I won’t push you. I don’t care if you have four arms,” he lied. “I love you.”

  She nodded, excruciatingly.

  “I’ll wait for you,” he said.

  Then he went back to being busy focusing on his work, Rosenzweig whom he was studying, the books he was reading, history, and moving out of his own apartment. He was ecstatic for any second he spent with her, be it a concert, or sitting outside having a glass of wine in the sun.

  As they sat at an outdoor café with the traffic of Second Avenue going by, he said, “My wife never liked the sun. We could never go anywhere warm.”

  To Duet, that seemed grounds for divorce. She said nothing and he just sat there thrilled to be with a woman he loved in a sun dress, sunglasses, basking in the summer day. His life was changing for the better. He would have a partner when she finally realized that he would love her no matter what.

  And so two months later, she decided upon a relationship blanche where she would spend some time up in Riverdale. In some desperate moment, she had agreed to try to discover what it’s like to be with someone who is devoted to and cares for her. She would try, she said.

  So she and her dogs came to stay temporarily in his apartment on a tree lined street, in a pre-war stone apartment building that overlooked the Hudson and New Jersey.

  Maurice convinced Duet that she didn’t need to work so he got her to quit her job, with the caveat that he would help her reestablish herself if things didn’t work out. He thought she should work primarily on her music and he would pay for classes where she could study composition. She loved those classes and sometimes had to sit down in the coffee shop in Alice Tully Hall, in the sun, next to Julliard, and catch her breath and wonder, How did she get this lucky?

  Sometimes she met Maurice in the city for a concert or he came home and they went to the local trattoria at the end of the street since she had never been interested in cooking. The waiters knew them and she always ordered the same meal and Maurice would vary his selections and they never seemed to run out of conversation. They talked about music, "Shopenhauer saw in music an idea of the world," books, "Montaigne said women should hold out as long as possible, men want to seek," and what she was working on musically in her class. “You know the composition instructor does not admire Mahler,” she said. “He thinks because he only worked in the summers he did not spend enough time honing his work.”

  Maurice said, ”Nothing could be more ridiculous. We should get you out of that class!”

  She was studying the British composer Arnold Bax, whom she had come to love. She was also doing some new compositions of her own. “You’ll hear them later,” she said. “What about your job?”

  And then he would tell her how the other lawyers at the firm never read novels, some liked opera after he had educated them, and he’d tell her a bit about the case he was working on, always leaving out enough details because of confidentiality so that she couldn’t follow the actual conflict. They'd walk home, the sun gently going down on the Hudson, and they'd sleep in different rooms. He loved her body so it was difficult, this platonic arrangement, but she joked that it built his character, and, in some way, she found this asexual relationship mildly erotic. It was because of what they talked about.

  In the mornings the sun came into the apartment and she and To Be and Not to Be would sit on a
banquette near the window and Maurice would read the Times and comment that he didn't know why he read the Times every day since it was an anxiety inducer, and she would read a book, always looking for ideas she could incorporate.

  “What music is the paper touting?” Maurice asked. “Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture?”

  “Don’t you hate,” she answered, “when you go to a sublime concert and then they do an encore that is a frippery like the one-minute waltz… You lose the whole beauty of what came before.”

  Maurice chuckled in agreement, and then she turned to look out at the river and then at her ever attentive dogs and thought, Maybe safety is enough.

  There were changes for him, too, in this new domesticity. He used to have to wear his earphones at home but Duet liked listening to all the new music he was continually buying so he played his new cds out loud in the apartment, filling the rooms with new sounds, and she loved learning about music she did not know. And it made him feel closer to her. His music was infusing her. In fact, it was hard to separate what parts of their relationship was not interweaved with music, the beauty out the windows, language, ideas, or compositions.

  And her work was changing, deepening. He would listen, as soon as he got home, to what she had written. She had never had stability and time before. This was some kind of paradise she had landed in. True, she no longer had her scat attentions of different men but she had the jazz station on the radio during the day. She had books to read when she was lonely. And she had her brief exchanges with a 92 year old neighbor who still played tennis. She had the daily interactions on the elevator, the repartee with the owners of the Greek coffeeshop nearby. "You know who live the longest?" "No, she answered."The Greeks," the owner said, pouring her coffee. "And you know why? Olive oil and sex." She smiled and asked,"Sex with Greeks you mean?" "Of course," he answered.

  Sometimes she stopped on the walkway and talked to the old people on their walkers with their dazzling smiles. Once they realized she saw them as people, they became positively young. There was a kind of inner motion to her every day now that was profound if she was willing to feel it. And then she would come home to such silence, not the pounding of things to do, and she could hear the music in her own work. It was coming back to her.