Happy Any Day Now

by Toby Devens

  I was perspiring rivers and we weren’t even up to the cello solo that kicked off the third movement. Well, not kicked, glided. And not exactly solo, but it might as well be, with the principal playing the most rigorous top lines and the rest of the cellos filling in the background for a very romantic lyrical effect. The lead part wasn’t particularly challenging in terms of fingering; it was executed at its best, I thought, when instinct and experience took over. I’d been fine with it Friday night.

  As the second movement ended, a few overenthusiastic members of the audience applauded, and Angela smiled at Raffi Shimon, the guest pianist. I was up next. In the silent pause, I could hear my breath huffing shallow and quick. As I leaned forward to grasp the bow, a wave of dizziness swamped me, followed by a surge of nausea. I tried to swallow it back. Couldn’t. Mouth was a desert. Tried again and up jetted a spurt of sour liquid.

  That was the moment I knew I was in real trouble.

  My cello was a David Tecchler built in Rome in 1712. I’d been playing it for twenty years and it took me nearly that long to pay it off. Humidity affects it, of course—it’s wood—but I can count on one hand the times it’s produced a squeak. That’s what I heard on my first stroke. The squeak of a steroidal mouse. I couldn’t see my own eyes widen in panic, but I caught a flash of uneasiness flit through Angela’s. I plunged ahead. What choice did I have? My entry was off, much too brisk. The movement was andante, Italian for walking, not jogging.

  A minute in, my bow slipped on another stroke. I focused on my clammy hands, focused on my clumsy fingering, focused much too much on what I was doing.

  Playing recklessly, trying to distract myself from the terror, I forced myself to look up and out. Second row center, a man was squirming. Somewhere behind him, a cougher erupted at the decibel level of an atomic blast. A white-haired woman on the aisle gave me the fish-eye and scowled. A rustle swept the audience. They knew. Oh, believe me, they knew.

  As my nightmare first solo gave way to the oboe’s, I caught a quavering breath. The squirming man settled down.

  My gaze was still stuck in the audience as Raffi came alive at the piano. That’s when I spotted third row far left—oh God—Irwin Jerome Raphael, his dark-dyed pompadour, scimitar of a nose, soft chin unmistakable even in the dimmed houselights. What the hell was he doing here? And who the hell was sitting beside him? Female. Not my mother. I squinted. Not Sonia Applebaum. Some other floozy he’d picked up. This one with flame red hair.

  Except Irwin wasn’t the bow tie type. He’d taken to wearing bolos in Arizona and I could imagine his closet-hanging polyester neckties splashed with cacti and tropical flora. So maybe it wasn’t my alleged father out there in the semidarkness. Maybe blazer-man was a cardiologist from Towson. All I was sure of was my urgent need to pee, and that the half-moons staining the fabric at my underarms had to be visible from the audience. Oh yes, and that I was light-headed and on my way to passing out. No, not just passing out. I was entirely convinced I was going to die, right there, a few seats away from the concertmaster who knew CPR but would be too late to save me.

  Then, suddenly, my cue for the second and last solo jerked me back into the living, torturing moment. The audience was a sea of faces staring expectantly.

  No turning back now. Trembling, I drew the bow and played. It was awful. Adequate. I had no idea. I just got through it.

  The next thing I knew Angela was waving me up to take the applause. As I stood halfway, as far as my jelly legs could carry me, I thought I heard, of all things, a decent smattering of bravas from the back of the house. Pity praise, of course. If they’d had fruit, they would have pitched it.

  Chapter 22

  “Performance anxiety,” Geoff pronounced at the start of our Monday practice. “You got hit by a blast of stage fright. It happens.”

  “Not to me, it doesn’t. This is a first.”

  I’d fled the scene right after Saturday evening’s concert, trying to get away before Geoff could tag me. I didn’t need him telling me what I already knew: that I’d made a bloody spectacle of myself in front of hundreds of paying guests.

  Minutes before the performance Sunday afternoon, he’d ambushed me. I hadn’t even set foot onstage and I had the shakes.

  His eyes were sharp with alarm. “What’s going on, Jude?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Every musician knows about stage fright; the horror stories abound. But if you haven’t experienced it, you really don’t know.

  “Not a headache, right?”

  No, not an aneurysm. For me, fully conscious, this was worse.

  Onstage, I was a basket case. Same symptoms as Saturday, maybe a little worse. I got through it, but I saw Angela conferring with our concertmaster after the performance. They were sending sidelong glances my way.

  Geoff, stirring his iced tea in my music room, denied having heard anything off.

  “You sounded fine to me Saturday. Yesterday, a mite hurried at the beginning of Brahms, but nothing jarring. As for the panic attacks, you’re a late bloomer, Jude. Consider yourself blessed. I had a problem in my twenties. My first year in Brisbane? I got a case of the woo-hoos that nearly drove me into teaching. Seemingly out of the blue, though my mum was going through a cancer scare at the time and I felt I should have been home in Sydney doing some hand-holding.”

  He added a third packet of sugar to his tea. “I gritted my teeth, ruined a few dress shirts, and pushed through it.”

  Yes, but you’re Geoff. You swim with sharks and skydive out of moving planes. Courage is your default.

  “I was thinking more in terms of Inderal,” I confessed. “Just to get me over the hump.”

  Inderal is a beta-blocker used on-label effectively to control blood pressure, but it also has the power to diffuse the adrenaline rush that makes for sweaty hands and the hyperventilation that sabotages the best players. It’s an open secret that a subset of musicians all over the world pop Inderal preperformance to quell paralyzing bouts of nerves.

  “Happy tablets.” Geoff’s mouth screwed with distaste. “I know musicians who swear by them. Inderal can help get you through a crisis, but it isn’t magic, Jude. And the trick is to begin to trust yourself again without it. Because, personally, I think it flattens one’s affect, and in my opinion a slight edge of anxiety brings extra energy to the music.”

  I sighed hopelessly. “This wasn’t simple stage fright. May I remind you that I hallucinated my father in the audience?”

  “You mistook one old man for another in poor lighting and you’re ready for the straitjacket. The mind in panic mode plays horror film tricks. Speak to Dr. Gottlieb. She’ll give you some behavioral exercises to keep the nerves in check while you dig at the root causes.”

  He put the tea aside and began shuffling through sheet music, selecting my pieces for practice.

  “Hold off a sec.” I swiped the papers from his grasp and rattled off, tremolo, “Maybe we ought to skip today. Because until I get a handle on this, what’s the point of working my ass off preparing for an audition I may never have? In this shape, I can’t see myself trying out. I’ll never make it through the initial round.”

  He retrieved the music. Slowly, patiently, he instructed, “The point is, you will if you tell yourself you will. Fear is all mental, and mind-set can be changed. You’re under a lot of pressure now with the dad in town. And you have other bloke-related issues stressing you out, I expect.” This last was said with broad innocence.

  “Of course, we need to alter the shape you’re in. We need to infuse you with unshakable confidence so when you get before those judges, you’re on automatic pilot. Cool as a cuke.” He handed me my music. “Now let’s get going. The morning’s drive was tough, I’m seriously knackered, and I don’t want to fall asleep on you.” There was a ba-boom beat and he said, “Well, that last isn’t strictly true . . .”

  That had me re
aching for my bow.

  We started with the solo in the William Tell Overture. Not the Lone Ranger gallopy part, but a slow, soulful melody in a minor key. And with only Geoff watching, all was serene. This time, to make sure we wouldn’t be disturbed, I’d muted the volume on the phone in the next room, both the ring and the message center, and quieted my cell. We got through three pieces in ninety minutes with no break so Geoff could go home and catch a nap.

  As we walked to my front hall, I said, “I think I’ll be okay at rehearsal, but I’m dreading the next time I face an audience.” I shuddered. “What if I can never play again? I mean perform.”

  “Oh Jesus. Get to Gottlieb fast. Nip this thing in the bud.” At the door, he turned to me. “You’ll be fine, Judith. You’ve conquered worse.”

  My reaching out was spontaneous. “Right,” I said. “Thanks. I needed to hear that.” And I kissed him.

  No big deal. It was a chaste brush of my lips against the cheek of a mentor who was helping me secure my footing on the next step, at my age the final step up the career ladder. And if that made me completely narcissistic, try this on for self-serving: I still wanted Geoff in my life. In a limited edition, of course. As a colleague, friend, and coach. But not as a lover. Because the bed in my head wasn’t big enough for three, and if Geoff was tried and terrific, Charlie was . . . well, Charlie. Who might be as terrific, given the chance. Besides, I couldn’t resist the old pull.

  I’d told Marti I didn’t know what I wanted. Wrong. Suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted: everything.

  And I suppose that’s what I got when I opened the door and found the old pull himself, tieless, in shirtsleeves, attractively rumpled, standing on my doorstep. “Charlie,” I managed to choke out. “It’s not even five o’clock. You’re two hours early.”

  “Yes, I know. But, Judith,” he said, eyes exclusively on me, “I’ve been out here listening. And you’re wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.”

  • • •

  The next few minutes were a rerun of Rodan vs. Godzilla. Geoff moved forward, assuming a place by my side. An obvious power move.

  I almost laughed as the two men sized each other up. Literally. Geoff unchinked his spine, vertebra by vertebra, apparently having more than the standard thirty-three. As he became six feet four of towering, glowering inferno, Charlie stretched himself to his full height of five-eleven, maybe only ten—he was in his fifties now, the decade when you start to shrink.

  Geoff knew about Charlie, but not vice versa. I introduced them.

  “Pleasure,” Geoff said on the handshake.

  “All mine,” Charlie responded. The judge seemed to be checking this large miscreant for a criminal record.

  “Well, I’m on my way,” Geoff said into the air. But his feet were stuck to the planks of my porch.

  I gave him a mental nudge. “I really appreciate the cheerleading. And that you took the time after your long drive. You must be wiped,” I added, reminding him his nap waited.

  Charlie, too, was eager to get the Geoff show on the road. He leaned forward. “Nice to . . .” he began.

  “. . . have met you,” Geoff finished the sentence. And then they traded places. Simultaneously. Charlie just about leapt to my side. Geoff paused for a moment in the spot where Charlie had been. Long enough to send me a pained look. Then he turned and hurried down the steps.

  That’s when Charlie placed both hands on my shoulders, swiveled me around, and steered me through the front door.

  “Well, that was awkward,” he said in my hall. “He’s the ex-boyfriend, I assume. The newest ex-boyfriend.”

  “Very funny. How did you know?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. He’s also—what, your teacher?”

  “There’s an audition coming up. He’s coaching me. Really, that’s all.”

  “Good. Bottom line is, he’s gone, I’m here.” Men are so competitive. He gave me his bad boy smile.

  I wasn’t falling for it. “Yeah, you’re here two hours early. Not to be inhospitable, but . . .”

  “I screwed with your schedule, huh? I forgot how women hate that. I am sorry. Chloe decided she wanted to be dropped at Georgetown early and I thought, Great, this gives Judith and me some extra time together. I tried to heads-up you. I called, but you didn’t pick up either phone.

  “I figured you weren’t home but you might be by the time I got here. And you were. First thing I heard when I got out of my car was your music. I didn’t want to disturb you, so I set myself up on your patio and got in a little work with you playing in the background. It’s nice out there. Cool in the shade. And with all the flowers, it smells good.” He moved closer. “So do you.”

  Hardly. I was a sweatball from the heat and the tension of watching the two men go at it. Wearing jeans and a tee and scruffy sandals, no makeup and my hair pulled back in a ponytail, I figured I looked about as appetizing as a cheese sandwich, but Charlie stared at me as if I were caviar. He cupped my chin in his hands and kissed me lightly on the lips. A breeze of a kiss, but sparks flew. Then he drew back.

  “I left my jacket, my laptop, and some other stuff on your patio. Let me get them. It will only take a minute.”

  “Stay there and I’ll bring out iced tea.”

  His premature arrival hadn’t given me time to prepare for him actually being in the house. I needed to take this slowly—Charlie in my garden, Charlie in my living room—or I’d get the bends.

  When I got to the patio with a tray of tea and cookies, I found him pacing and mumbling into his BlackBerry. He held up a one-minute finger and I tabled the tray, sprawled in the wrought-iron chair closest to my herb garden, and watched him at work. Shades of Cambridge, when one of my greatest pleasures, one of the world’s most potent aphrodisiacs, was watching Charlie totally immersed in what I knew he loved best, the law, even before he proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.

  “Sorry,” he said when he clicked off. “That’s the downside of my job. It’s not usually quite this intrusive, but I’m in the midst of a major case. One that could set an important precedent. At this level, appellate, you don’t want to screw up. That was my law clerk updating me on some research.” He shrugged, as if helpless to stop the onslaught. “These days, I’m almost never unconnected.”

  Of course.

  He took my hands in both of his, backed away, and just looked at me. The tenderness of his gaze made me flush. “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  “It’s only been a week.”

  “Twenty-five years,” he corrected.

  And if that didn’t make me go all gooey inside, the next bit reduced me to syrup.

  “Before I forget—” He unlatched me, found his briefcase, rummaged through it, and extracted a wrapped rectangle. “Time you had this back in your collection. Go ahead, open it.”

  It was one of those small, thin volumes you pick up near the cash register at card shops or at airport news kiosks. I recognized the cover, an abstract red rose. Love Is a Poem. Charlie had given it to me at the height of our relationship and I’d thrown it back at him at the end. Now slightly bruised, it sat on my palm like a wilted flower. “You kept this all these years?”

  “Wouldn’t part with it.”

  He moved close as I read the inscription. “Before you, these poems had no meaning. Now they articulate feelings much deeper than words on paper. I love you, my Ju-ju. Charlie.” By the time I got to “feelings” my eyes had clouded. “You really were a romantic back then.”

  “Still am. Maybe more so now. When you’re on Lipitor you pay more attention to the workings of your heart.” He patted the book balanced on my hand. “You hold on to it,” he said.

  But I didn’t. I carefully placed it on the glass-topped table and turned into his arms. This time he really kissed me. Hard, soft, hard again. Ben Franklin could have harnessed our electricity to run his printing press.
/>   We had full frontal engagement and . . . liftoff, Houston!

  “Oh God,” Charlie murmured into my sweaty hair and next thing I knew his hand was under my “Musicians Play for Keeps” T-shirt that Geoff, who never played for keeps, had given me last Christmas. I’d asked the Aussie then, half joking, “Is this your idea of a proposal?” He hadn’t panicked but retorted, “You’d run like hell, Jude, if I ever tried to pin you down.” And I’d nodded, thinking he was probably right.

  But it was Charlie who crushed the cotton of my shirt getting to skin and Charlie who managed—much better at it now than in his frantic twenties—to unhook my bra.

  He was right about the scent of the garden. The aromas of mint, basil, and early roses made an intoxicating mix. We clung like two drunks. Then I felt him stiffen, not around his zipper, where the bulge had suddenly collapsed, but head to toe. “Looks like we’ve got a visitor,” he whispered.

  It took me a moment. “What?”

  He disengaged and, backing off, hitched his eyebrows at something behind me. “Were you expecting more guests?”

  I turned to see Marti standing at the break in my privet hedge, having taken the shortcut garden path between her place and mine.

  She carried a shopping bag and wore a highly amused expression.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” she said in that honeyed Southern drawl that attracted gnats. “This is waaay better than HBO.”

  “Oh God,” I muttered as I struggled to rehook my bra.

  I couldn’t blame her for the intrusion. She worked mostly out of her home office, so I never knew when she’d take a break from writing and drop by. If she heard cello music on the wind, she retreated, respecting my practice time. Today, no music and no way of knowing Charlie had arrived early. Besides, she was delivering on a favor. I’d asked to borrow a particular bra that was constructed like a Gothic cathedral, with flying buttresses and suspension grids. I thought it might do the job of holding up my assets in the halter top I wanted to wear for my date with the man she was currently eyeballing with unabashed interest.