by Toby Devens
I played that and bits and pieces from the two Strauss Dons—Juan and Quixote—as well as I’d ever played them. I gave Bach his glory, nailed all the crescendi and decrescendi in the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Yes, I faltered on the Tännhauser overture—it was in my blood to ride that anti-Semite Wagner too hard. The personnel manager poked his head around to convey the committee’s request that I replay the last two lines a bit slower. I thought it was still off. But the solos that dipped into Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations and the Dvorák concerto, an emotional kaleidoscope, soared and shimmered in all the right places. Sum total, my mother and Geoff would have been pleased. I wanted to think that Richard Tarkoff’s witty ghost and Florence Beckersham’s beautiful spirit high-fived each other in heaven.
A half hour later I learned I’d made it through to the final round.
• • •
It should have been easy. I was charged with lightning from the morning’s competition. And I loved the afternoon’s set, was relieved the committee had chosen the William Tell rather than the excerpt from the Brahms Concerto No. 2, the piece that had sparked a panic attack the last time I’d played it in public. For this deciding round, the screen would come down and I’d be able to make out my colleagues on the judging panel. I knew they’d be tempted to lean over backward, tipping away from me to prove objectivity, but I was familiar with the process, had felt what they’d be feeling, and trusted them to find the perfect balance of fairness.
My two competitors were Vince, whom I dearly wanted to arm wrestle for this position, and a young cellist from Pittsburgh noted for the precision of his technique. The only time I’d heard him, I’d detected a deficiency of heart. An audition for principal anything demanded a grand passion. So it should have added up to victory for me.
Should have. As I began to warm up—disaster. The François Tourte bow, the one that partnered the Goffriller, failed me. There was a tiny eyelet that tightened the horsehairs to an exact tension, and when all was well you heard a faint click that told you, Done. Over time, though, those eyelet threads wore out, and, when they did, the strings didn’t respond. You got zilch, zero. Flabby-bow syndrome was a death sentence. The bow was useless.
Every cellist carried a standby for just such an occasion. Lucky for me, I had my Sartory bow, which had worked beautifully with my trusty Tecchler cello but had never been up against the exalted likes of a Goffriller. Richard’s bow had a particular heft, a sparkling yet adaptive personality that I’d quickly learned would handle whatever I asked of it. My bow, I’d discovered over the years, was more temperamental. It had its favorites. It loved Mozart, but it didn’t have a taste for, say, Elgar. The solo I’d signed on to play in the final was Elgar’s Cello Concerto. So I was worried.
Vince DeGrassi, with an animal lack of shame and a nose for prey in trouble, stopped by to congratulate me on my first round, but really to check me out. He poked his head in the door, baring his teeth in an approximate smile, showing no sign he’d registered my final furious whisper. He had to be playing some higher-level mind game to freak me out. No need. I’d freaked myself very proficiently without any help.
He found me examining the injured bow and could barely contain his joy. “It happens . . .” He smirked, ecstatic it had happened to me, for him, at this perfect time and place. Grrrr, the man made me want to kick ass. I knew I could have kicked his fat one with the Tourte bow in hand. But now?
With no Geoff close by, I conjured up a conversation with him.
Me: “My Sartory bow isn’t as good a match for the Goffriller.”
Geoff: “With all due respect, Judith, based on your recent behavior, you know very little about good matches. Your old bow has worked perfectly well for you for years.”
Me: “But it’s not part of the package Richard left to me.”
Geoff: “Ah, I get it now. You think this gift from Richard—the cello, the bow, the whole kit and caboodle—holds some kind of magic, don’t you? Come on, Jude. You know better. The magic isn’t in some old instrument. It’s in you, luv. You make the magic.”
Then he recited his favorite saying: “The best musicians don’t play cello; they play music. So forget the details, go for the big picture. You’re number one. Rock on, babe.”
Even far away, when called upon, Geoff was . . . inside me, I realized with a shock. Inside me, and not just in the usual place he inserted himself so brilliantly. He’d found his way to my . . . God help me . . . heart, soul, and kishkes. Oh, perfect timing, with him in London forever.
Then Charlie materialized. Not in person. Or even by phone—I hadn’t heard from him since the weekend. He arrived via Teleflora, of course. The bouquet was huge, formal, and symbolic: predominantly yellow roses, our flower, and baby orchids, maybe because they were exotic, which is the way he thought of me, or maybe just because he could afford them, and stephanotis, which I knew from all the bridesmaiding I’d done was the wedding flower. Still, until I read the inscription I thought, maybe (my heart going arrhythmic), Geoff from London. But the typed message was definitely Charlie. He must have ordered it by phone on the fly between hearings, or he’d told his secretary to call it in, because it read:
“Here’s to your success. You deserve the best. The orchestra does too. Sending much love to you, Jew-Jew.”
Jew-Jew.
That launched me into a fit of hysterical laughter that was just what I needed to break the tension. Of all people, after all these years, Charlie Pruitt in his own screwed-up way came through for me.
Second bow came through, too. That afternoon it sucked up to Mama and gave its all.
The Elgar was an intimate exercise shot through with yearning and despair. My adolescent idol Jacqueline du Pré, RIP, had owned the piece. I took my inspiration from her, but in that audition I made it mine. Really mine. With no ghosts haunting it, no pills taming it, the music emerged incandescent, spiritual, painful, and sweet under the striving bow.
“Thank you, Judith” was all Angela said to me before I got shipped back downstairs to await the verdict. But I heard the congratulations in her voice. I could read music, and I knew.
Chapter 39
As soon as the results were made official, I called my mother.
“Aigoo! Principal cellist! I knew it. So sure you win. Everything worth it. The school. The practice. All bring you to today. Very proud, Judith. You never know how proud.”
Irwin hollered in the background, “Me too. Tell her I’m proud too.”
My mother’s joy was expected, deserved. She’d earned it with every stitch she’d sewn at the Slimline Swimsuits factory, every necessity and small luxury she’d denied herself so I could have whatever it took to get me out of the projects and onto the stage. But the pleasure of the old man with the pompadour and the mentholated-cigarette breath, what had he shelled out to own a share in the moment? Except—it rolled in as a wave of visceral recognition—to pay for my first cello and my music lessons, never knowing he’d done that, never knowing how much the checks he’d managed to send had changed my life. Funny how the wave knocked me on my keister.
“Have you told him yet that he paid for my lessons?” I asked my mother, aware I might be opening Pandora’s box, but also that this was a secret I didn’t want buried forever. He was on the far side of eighty. I was coming down fast and hard on fifty. If not now, when?
“Scared to tell. Afraid you be mad,” Grace said. “You okay if I tell now?”
“Yes, Uhm-mah. He should hear that he did a good thing. It’s only fair. And say thanks for me.”
“Okay, but you say thanks yourself sometime, yes?”
“I’ll get there.”
“Soon, Judith. He has pacemaker and two stent. Nobody last forever.”
• • •
My next call was to someone who knew that all too well. When I reported the judges’ decision and
, sniffling back tears, thanked Sarah Tarkoff again for the Goffriller, she said, “The Goffriller didn’t hurt, but the truth is—and Richard used to say this all the time—talent will out. Judith, he’d be thrilled.”
I phoned Charlie. He didn’t pick up. He was in court or chambers or, for all I knew, tending to Kiki or Chloe. I left a message thanking him for the flowers and giving him the good news.
I got hold of Marti at home, interrupting her writing a review of a seafood house in Fells Point. She was so excited by my news that she nearly (as she so elegantly put it) peed herself.
“Champagne mixed with unadulterated glee does that to me. I’ve been hitting the Piper since three, celebrating in anticipation. Because I never had a doubt in Dixie you’d finish off that DeGrassi turkey with a fork to the pope’s nose.” She choked for a second on bubbles or emotion, then recovered to ask, “So no stage fright? No turning into a gelatinous mass of quivering terror?”
“Just the normal pre-big-audition jitters. As soon as I lifted the bow, they disappeared. Honestly, there was nothing even approaching performance anxiety. I think I’ve knocked the son of a bitch out for good. The consensus seems to be that I’m a pretty good cellist. Who’s my subconscious to argue?”
“Now that’s the attitude! You got through this audition, you can get through anything,” she slurred rapturously. “Stop off here on your way home. I’ll break out another bottle and we’ll toast your victory. Oh, hon, those magpies are dancing their mother-loving wings off.”
And then there was Geoff. Or, more precisely, there wasn’t Geoff. Except in my head. Despite my best efforts to play Whac-a-Mole with thoughts of him, they’d been popping up since I heard he’d probably be moving to England. I envisioned him strolling down Sloane Street arm in arm with Deena the harpist, imported expressly for this excruciating fantasy. I imagined him stretched out on a blanket spread against the banks of the River Cherwell canoodling with a thirty-year-old duchess named Lucinda. I kept this craziness from Marti, of course, but she had a mudang’s sixth sense for the awful truth.
“I can’t believe you haven’t called him. Your mother brought you up better than that,” she said later that afternoon, waving her champagne flute, spilling bubbly down the front of her shirt and onto her dining room table. “He hung in there with you, swallowing his pride and a shitload of pain to make sure you aced the audition. Stuck with you through thick or thin, babe or bitch, even after you threw him overboard for Charlie. And you say he can’t be depended on to be around when you need him.”
I took a sip of the champagne, hoping it would dull the ache in my chest. “Well, he’s not sticking around anymore. He’s moving to London.”
“So you’ve told me three times and counting. Good for him. He may be devoted, but he’s not a wimp. You can’t hold on to these men of yours forever, Judith. Now be a menschette. Call and tell him the news. And thank him.”
I ran my finger around the rim of the crystal flute. The last time I’d seen Geoff was when he’d stalked out of my parents’ new apartment. It was going to be one uncomfortable conversation. “It’s nearly midnight in London.”
“Geoff Birdsall hasn’t gone to sleep before midnight since he was six months old.”
I stared at the phone, wanting to share the news with him, most of all longing to hear his voice. Marti gave me a piercing look. “Stop torturing yourself. Call, dammit.”
He picked up on the first ring. “Judith! Good God, woman, I’ve been waiting to hear from you. I was afraid to call in case . . .” The phone magnified a deep intake of breath. “How did it go?”
“I got it.”
There was a whoop at the other end. “You did! That’s smashing news. Well done. Well done. I knew you’d pull it off. You would have done it without the Goffriller, but that clinched it. Yessss!”
He couldn’t contain his exuberance. Imagine, having a friend or whatever who took that much pleasure from my accomplishments. He seemed to have put aside all the bad feelings.
“It’s pretty exciting. You’re in England.” My voice was flat.
That quieted him down. “I am that.”
“I found out from Vince DeGrassi, of all creeps, ten minutes before my audition.” I let that skitter its way across the Atlantic.
“Oh, shit.” He drew an audible breath. “Well, that brilliant plan backfired, didn’t it?
“What a dunderhead I can be, and without even trying. The thing is, you and I weren’t on the best of terms for a sit-down and I thought this . . . uh . . . situation might take some explaining. I was worried it might play with your head right before the tryout.”
“Yeah, well, it’s after the tryout now,” I said, cuing him on.
“And it’s midnight in London,” he countered.
I could almost hear the gears grinding as he considered how he was going to break the news of his defection to me, the poster child for abandonment issues.
“It’s a tad complicated, Jude, and there are lots of details yet to be resolved. How about I tell you all about it when I see you?”
“Fine.” Not fine, but who was I to say so? The next question I did have a right to ask, but it would let him know I cared too much about the answer. Yes. No. Yes. I succumbed. “Which will be when?”
“In time for your party, of course. Ah, Jude, I’m happy it worked out. Never had a doubt, of course. Everything’s coming up roses for you, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” I said. “Yes, of course. It’s been a great day, though I’m glad it’s over.”
There was a pause. Then I said, suddenly swamped by exhaustion and an inability to make sense of all the flotsam churning in my emotional whirlpool, “I guess I’ll let you get some sleep.”
“Now that I know you brought it off, I’ll sleep like a baby. Wonderful news. Good night, Jude.”
Did I want to tell him I missed him? Yes. No. Yes. No. No.
“Good night, Geoff. Safe travels.”
“Nice and ladylike,” Marti said after I clicked off. “Very Aunt Penelope in the parlor with her needlepoint. Miss Manners would give you an A.”
I couldn’t seem to put the phone down, dead though it was. (How symbolic of the way I managed my love life.)
Marti pried it from my fingers. “So? Second thoughts? Or, knowing the way your obsessive mind works, second hundred thoughts?”
I adopted a casual tone and chose my words carefully. All Marti needed was ammunition and she’d be shootin’ advice with both barrels. “Well, I miss him. You know, to hang out with. We have common interests.”
“Common interests. Uh-huh. That’s got to be top of your list, chitchatting about Beethoven’s Ninth and all that.” She managed to snort and smirk simultaneously.
“And he’s fun to be around.”
“Now that’s more like it. Fun is fun, isn’t it? Much better than abject misery. Glad you picked up on the notion before it’s too late.”
I shrugged and emptied my champagne glass in a gulp. “It’s too late already.”
“Could be,” she said. “If so, I guess you’ll just have to suck it up. You’ll survive. You’re good at that.” And she poured us both a refill.
Chapter 40
My party was held on a warm afternoon that promised to stretch sunlight into evening so the band could play on and on in the gilded spotlight streaming through the Belvedere’s Beaux Arts windows.
According to the Korean calendar, my birthday and the celebration of it exactly fifty years later fell on a golden day. June 22 sits at the very beginning of the tenth solar term, which follows the summer solstice, haji. Nothing could be better, Lulu Cho had told my mother shortly after my birth, than for a child to emerge when the earth itself was at the peak of its life cycle, when yin energy was at its height, when all the world was gold.
Fifty years later, as my party guests circulated around the elegant cream and
blue ballroom, my aunt Phyllis looked up from a plate heaped with shrimp to give me the once-over.
“You’re half a century old. Incredible. And I was there when you were born. You were so tiny. Only five pounds, ten ounces. When Grandma Roz saw you in the nursery the next day, she said, ‘I’ve eaten chickens bigger than that.’ And now look at you. Look at this party. It’s amazing you even made it to this point with what you’ve been through, but this . . .” At a loss for words for once, she flourished a gesture that took in the scene.
It was quite a scene, a fantasy of crystal and silver, music and flowers. Not a mai tai or a tiki cocktail umbrella in sight. Marti’s theme was, she explained with a grin, “plain ol’ elegance—think Versailles, only toned down a smidge and without the heads rolling.”
She had arranged hydrangeas and pink roses from her garden, huge bunches of them in baskets centered on the fuchsia-clothed tables. Waiters threaded through the crowd with trays of hors d’oeuvres. On the bandstand, four of my colleagues from the orchestra—keyboard, bass, clarinet, and drums—were going to town on Cole Porter. At the back of the room, a bartender poured wine with a generous hand and gave out bottled Foster’s wrapped in linen napkins, Marti’s little nod to Geoff, whom she was currently championing. I scanned the room for the umpteenth time. His beer might have been there, but Geoff wasn’t. His absence didn’t escape Aunt Phyllis’s eagle eye.
“So it’s over between you and the Australian. You traded him in, and for what? For him, right? That’s the judge over there?” She cocked her head toward a dark-suited figure standing off to one side, tapping furiously into his BlackBerry.
My aunt sent me a pitying look. “You never had a good eye for men, Judith. From college on. First with that one, who left you flat. Then with the rabbi, who was a huge mistake from the start.”