A guy with short blond hair, who’s sitting next to the long-distance-cute boy, stands up, too. He points his bow in the air like it’s an extension of his arm, and everyone starts playing the same note. At first I look at Cass like, That’s it? They’re just gonna play the same thing for an hour? But then there’s silence and the blond boy sits down again.
Anton yawns loudly, and somebody shushes him. Probably Jenkins. I don’t bother to turn around.
The man in the suit lifts his baton, and the musicians all lift their instruments. There’s silence, silence … and then an explosion of sound so loud I flinch and Cass grabs my arm.
I’m not a gushy person. Casablanca never chokes me up, not even the ending. When I was a kid, I didn’t cry when Bambi’s mom died. I laugh in the face of that commercial with baby ducks crossing the street in tiny yellow rain boots. I roll my eyes in the greeting card aisle at the drugstore. So what happens next I’ll never be able to explain.
There are at least fifty people on that stage, but through my wet eyes I can see only one: the boy with the wild black hair, playing the violin like the world’s most beautiful madman.
{2}
Ben
When we reach the codetta, my fingers burst into flames.
The notes on the page zoom up through my eyes and twist through my synapses and bubble in my blood and explode from my fingernails and become something bigger. Something enormous. From a flat, black-and-white grid of thirty-second notes to music. Music that’s actually deserving of this place. This golden temple, where all the greatest geniuses of the last century have come to worship. Fritz Kreisler. Leonard Bernstein. Billie Holiday. And me.
And then, there’s a sound. Something else.
It pinches my ear like a beesting, and my eardrum throbs and swells and puffs up to a thousand times its size. All I can hear is that note. Before he even plays it, it’s hanging in the air, threatening. Then it happens, and it’s everywhere, creeping across the stage, wet and sticky and stinking.
I can’t let him ruin everything. If I don’t stop this, we’ll be just another run-of-the-mill orchestra butchering Mendelssohn on the sacred floorboards where Duke Ellington made his debut.
The second movement begins, and it’s there again, waiting in the air. I can hear it — he’s tentative. It’s not even like he botches a phrase or his intonation is off. His bow grazes the strings too delicately, and he comes in like a shadow. He’s not sure. I look up and see the landscape of quivering bows, wavering lips, twitching wrists all around me. No one is sure.
Except me. I’m sure.
Never been more sure in my life.
So my fingers ignite and slide up the strings, and I play like I always do. Like I’m in my room, playing for no one. I crack myself open and pour everything tender and passionate and vulnerable out into a pool across the stage to counteract all the nerves and terror, sweat and fear. I can’t make everyone sound right, but I can turn the notes on the page into music. That’s what I always do. That’s what everyone counts on me to do.
And then I stop thinking.
Because once you start thinking, that’s when you’re really screwed.
* *
After what seems like no time at all, the audience stands and applause surrounds us. Dean Robertson puts down his baton and nods approvingly. Sweat mats his sideburns. He’s obviously impressed, and it’s extremely tough for students to impress him. Then he looks right at me and winks.
And everyone sees him. Amy and Kelly and, I think, Jun-Yi are staring, and I shrug and look down, because you shrug and look down when someone compliments you in public. That’s what you do — you try to look small so no one hates you for being big. But I know I nailed it. Robertson knows I always nail it. Everyone knows I always nail it. I’m not being cocky or an asshole or whatever. It’s just the truth.
Carter won’t look me in the eye.
He knows he fucked it up.
* *
The applause lifts us into the wings, up a few twisty flights of stairs and into the greenroom backstage, filled with folding chairs and cracked-open instrument cases littered like empty oyster shells.
Claire comes in as I’m zipping my Brooks Brothers concert jacket into a garment bag. She grabs my hand.
“Ben! That was stunning,” she says. “The Mendelssohn! God, you’re incredible.”
Her hand. It’s cold and slight and fluttering. An icy moth. She lets her nerves get the best of her, and she told me she sometimes takes an Inderal before she performs. I can’t take any of that stuff — won’t take it, don’t need it. I’m always calm when I’m on. My mom once said “eerily calm,” which sounds like a serial killer, so I hate that, but I know what she means. I promise I’m not a serial killer. I’d like to take that whole story back, actually. Have it stricken from the record. Because it makes me sound insane and I promise I’m not.
But I’m always, always calm onstage.
I grip Claire’s hand with both of mine and warm it up. We stand there, still and silent for a minute in the room full of noise. I know she has a crush on me. Jacob told me when we split a cab home after chamber music class. But I’ve noticed it, too. There’s this beam of light projecting from her eyes when she looks at me. Tiny clues are everywhere. You don’t have to ask girls how they feel. Just watch the light shooting out their eyes like a laser pointer and you have all the clues you need to be telepathic. I should write a book about how to become a superhero. I should write a kids’ book about a violin-playing superhero who can read minds and fly through the air on the back of a giant Stradivarius. I should —
“So?” she asks.
“The last section of the first movement, right before the coda.”
“What about it?”
“Carter lost it. He was so tentative you’d think he was sight-reading.”
“Did Robertson notice?”
“I don’t think so. The second movement was fine. The third was whatever. The first was a mess, and it was all Carter. He only gets to be the concertmaster once this semester, and he completely blew it. He’s just not a leader. He almost messed up my solo on top of it. You’d think he just saw the music this morning. If anyone’s going to get cut this year, it’ll definitely be him. I’m calling it now.”
“I didn’t notice anyone else up there but you, to be honest.”
Her eyes are laser-beaming all over the place, and it’s making me nauseous. I let her hand go.
Claire runs over to hug Jun-Yi. I carefully pack up my violin. I’m cleaning the chin rest and wiping down the strings — sweat erodes violin strings, and my hands sweat a lot. I’m cleaning and cleaning, and I notice a dab of sweat crystallizing on the neck, so I do the whole thing over again.
Carter is staring at me.
They’re all staring at me.
“I think it’s clean, dude,” he says, laughing.
I try to roll my eyes at Claire, but she’s on the other side of the room, talking to Iman.
Once everyone else has left, Jacob and Iman and Claire and I talk about splitting a cab across town, and I make them all laugh with my old-timey cab driver impression. I try to convince them that the best idea in the world is to go get grilled cheese at Brooklyn Diner first (which is confusing, because the diner isn’t in Brooklyn; it’s right around the corner). Or maybe we could take a walk in Central Park, or if they want to just hang out at my place or whatever, we have every movie channel, and basically anything in the world to eat, and —
Just as we’re walking out the door, Robertson calls me back. He’s leaning on the edge of the piano. I tell everyone to go ahead.
The door shuts and we’re alone.
“Great work today, Ben,” he says.
“Thank you.” I want to say more, but I keep my mouth shut. I’ve gotten pretty good at that at Brighton.
“You’re auditioning for the
Sonata Showcase?”
We have a bunch of performances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center every year, but there’s only one Sonata Showcase: the staggeringly important end-of-the-year concert that only twelve students in the entire school are asked to do. You and a partner (violin sonatas are always for two — usually a violinist and a pianist) get to play at Lincoln Center in front of the entire faculty. Last semester two third-years played Brahms’s Violin Sonata no. 3 and got a full-page review in the New York Times. As a second-year student, getting into the Sonata Showcase is practically impossible. But if you do, it means universal respect from the upperclassmen. The first-years treat you like a god. Overnight you go from being lucky to be at this school to them being lucky to have you.
So I say, “Yep. Uh, yes. I’m auditioning.”
“Good. Which piece?”
“Kreutzer. Basically because of you. Because of that thing you told me after rehearsal.”
“How you’re able to tap into a depth of emotion in your performance that most violinists — even at the professional level — can never attain. Love and pain all at once.”
“Yeah. Well, I thought the piece would help me get more comfortable with that. Do you think it’s a smart choice? I mean, I know you’re not supposed to help us, but I thought especially the third movement would be —”
“With whom?”
“Claire Prescott. You know her? Of course you do. You know everyone. Anyway, we met at music camp when we were twelve, and now that we’re both at Brighton we’ve gotten back in touch. We’ve been wanting to work on something together ever since —”
“The opening passage is a land mine. It needs to be fluid. Elegant.”
“I’ll get it.”
“As I said, great work today.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I wait for more instruction or feedback, something, anything, but that’s it. He looks at me like he’s wondering why I’m still standing there. I try to access my superpowers and read his mind. There’s a flicker of something, but I can’t figure out what it is. Approval or indifference or a mixture of both. But he wants me to audition for the Sonata Showcase. He’s wondering about me. He’s not just a conductor — he’s the dean of students, so he basically controls who succeeds here. And he’s choosing me. I want to do fifty laps around the room and punch the wall and eat a thousand grilled cheese sandwiches.
Instead I run down the stairs and onto the sidewalk, through the program-clutching women and cane-carrying old men, to catch up with my friends.
* *
I forgot.
Their parents were all waiting for them. Because when you play Carnegie Hall, your parents are supposed to take off work and come and see you, even if it’s in the middle of the day. No big deal. There’s leftover Chinese food in the fridge and my favorite recording of the Kreutzer Sonata waiting for me at home.
Mom works until ten on Tuesdays, and Dad’s got a board meeting with the Upper East Side Neighborhood Council about the new grocery store they’re trying to put in, and Milo has his French tutor after school. So with no one waiting for me after the concert, I walk along Fifty-Seventh Street to look for a cab, running Kreutzer in my mind.
Don’t get me wrong — my parents care and everything. When I left this morning, there was a note from Mom on the kitchen table: “Yessss! I’m so proud of you, honey! So sorry we couldn’t be there this time.” I’m a born-and-raised New Yorker, and I made my Carnegie Hall debut when I was eight, with the City Youth Chamber Orchestra. My parents have been to probably three hundred of my concerts in the last nine years, not to mention countless rehearsals and lessons and auditions, so it’s not exactly a big deal for them anymore. I guess it shouldn’t be a big deal for me, either.
My brain is too busy buzzing from the performance, anyway. I don’t think I’d ever want to take drugs, but I can’t imagine they’d be any better than the floating, fluorescent high I get from playing a concert and getting it right and being recognized for the billions of hours of work I do by someone who matters. Like, really matters, for my future. I’ve got it all mapped out: First, I need to be the best in my year. Then I need to be the best in the school. Then in the country, the world, the universe. Today it feels like I can really do it.
Then I look up and realize I’m home — Lexington Avenue and Ninety-Sixth. At least I didn’t walk the wrong way, look up and find myself at the Seaport. That’s happened before, as my mom loves to tell her friends: “Sometimes I think Ben’s brain is just a tangle of violin strings.”
“Beethoven got lost all the time and he wrote nine symphonies, nine concertos and a billion sonatas,” I always shoot back.
When I get home, I head straight for the kitchen. I don’t even take off my jacket. I pile a plate with lo mein and home-style tofu, brown rice and electric-green broccoli with this gloppy, delicious garlic sauce, and stick it in the microwave.
Then I text Abby and Carter and Veronica and Hadley, my grandma in Queens and Claire, even though I know she has her private lesson at seven. But no one’s answering. I call Fred at Virtuoso to see if their new cases are in yet. They aren’t. I make up a few more questions; do they have any chin rests with gold hardware? And do they have any gold Pirazzi E strings? Even though I know they do. But I need to keep talking to people, as many people as I can, or else the buzzy Carnegie Hall energy will stop, and I don’t want it to. Not yet.
The microwave beeps. I take the plate into my room and shut the door. The smell is incredible. It’s like French fries married a sesame seed and exploded all over the place. I take a giant monster bite so big it makes my jaw hurt, then run over to my laptop and hook it up to the stereo system my dad got me for my birthday.
I turn on Isaac Nadelstein and Malik Vasilyev playing Kreutzer, my audition piece for the Sonata Showcase. There’s the tricky opening phrase Robertson was talking about. He’s right — the violin starts abruptly, playing two strings at once, rolling the bow, creating the illusion of a piano chord. The bow articulation is going to be a complete bitch as the piece picks up momentum. Keeping my stamina up until the end will be rough. I have to keep my fingers light and airy and quick. If I seize up or get a cramp, the piece will fail. I listen. I chew.
I know Kreutzer. Most classical musicians do. Violin Sonata no. 9. Opus 47. Beethoven originally wrote it for George Bridgetower to play, but they got into a huge fight about some woman Beethoven was probably sleeping with, and at the last minute he removed the dedication and changed it to Rodolphe Kreutzer, a violinist he barely even met. It’s kind of funny, because Kreutzer didn’t even like Beethoven’s music that much to begin with. And this piece is almost like a massive argument — it’s complicated, erratic and forty-three minutes long. I heard Joshua Bell and Yuja Wang play it at Lincoln Center a few years ago, and I’ve listened to the Nadelstein–Vasilyev recording a billion times. I’ll make it through the technique. It’s about getting past it, so I can clear my brain enough to feel which notes get joy and which get pain. Which notes explode and which ones shudder. I put the first movement on Repeat. Staying in tune and in tempo with Claire will be tough when my hands are already exhausted.
Stop it. Stop thinking about technical stuff. I rub my face with my hands. I need a blank slate. I grab my violin and play the opening passage. And play. And play.
* *
“Sweetie? Ben? Ben.”
“What?”
“Honey, it’s almost eleven.”
“And?”
“And it’s pitch-black in here.”
Mom’s right, sort of — it’s dark except for the cool-blue light from the computer screen. And the car headlights dancing in patterns on the wall. And one red pinprick of light on the stereo. So it’s not exactly pitch-black, but it’s too dark to see the music. I don’t remember the sun setting.
Again. Again. Again.
My eyes burn when she snaps on the ov
erhead light. I groan and rest my head in the crook of my arm until my eyes adjust. She’s doing that Worried Mom thing she’s so good at, busying herself by picking up crumpled tissues and fluffing my pillow and straightening the sheet music on my desk. Worrying makes her feel like a better mother.
“I’m fine,” I say, hoping she’ll shut the door and let me work.
I love my mom — she just drives me completely freaking crazy sometimes. She wants me to sleep eight hours a night and be the best violinist in the world? It doesn’t work like that. Every minute you don’t spend practicing, someone else is. She’s a labor and delivery nurse at City Medical Center, no better or worse than any of the other nurses there. She doesn’t understand.
I look up. She’s still in her blue scrubs. She’s been delivering babies all night. God, I feel awful for snapping at her. She’s just trying to help. She’s still smoothing imaginary wrinkles out of my comforter. Smoothing out my life by proxy.
“Thanks, Mom. I’m okay.”
“But you didn’t eat any dinner, honey.”
“Yeah, I did. I had that leftover Chinese.”
She points to the overflowing, untouched plate on my desk. The lo mein looks all pasty and congealed, and the broccoli is wilted and brown. Wait, I remember eating it. Didn’t I eat it?
“I can make you a sandwich. There’s blackberry jam from the farmers’ market and —”
“I’m fine. Not hungry.” I play the opening passage again.
“What are you working on?”
“Kreutzer. Beethoven.”
“Please go to sleep soon. Don’t do this tonight. Your eyes are all red, and tomorrow’s your early day.”
“Okay,” I say, even though I have no intention of sleeping. She gives up and shuts the door. She knows I’m barely listening. There’s nothing she can do.
It’s quiet. I play the ache. I play the land mine.
{3}
Dominique
“Rock Hudson. Your turn,” I say.
Someday, Somewhere Page 2