by Kristen Mae
“It’s okay, Bethany,” Professor Yarvik says. “We all suffer from performance anxiety at some time or another. We’ll have you play every week, and before you know it, you’ll be used to having an audience, and your true sound will emerge.”
Bethany trudges back to her seat with her eyes on the floor, her ample chest heaving like a breathing mountain. It’s awful to screw up in front of an audience, but it’s doubly awful for that same audience to witness the humiliation that follows.
“Malory?” Yarvik turns to me. “What will you play for us?”
I had intended to play the Elgar, but after hearing Bethany suffer through a scale, it seems…mean. And anyway, my hands are shaking in empathy. “I think I’ll play the Allemande to the first cello suite, if that’s okay.”
I play as simply as I can, and the class offers a smattering of applause. They don’t seem too impressed.
Yarvik is resting her chin in her hand and studying me with narrowed eyes. She offers a few generic pointers about my performance, mostly that I ought to exaggerate my dynamic contrasts and take time on some of the phrase endings.
Well, what was I going to do? Play something flashy and make Bethany feel like shit?
Six other students play, most of their performances falling somewhere between mine and Bethany’s. One guy, a senior, is really impressive. I can almost see why Yarvik spoke to me the way she did during my private lesson, though I know I only played well for her because I practiced so hard. Probably none of these people are a game piece in a gamble to win a twenty-five thousand-dollar cello.
We pack up our instruments, Bethany latching her case as quickly as she can, rushing to get out first. I hurry down the hallway after her and catch her at the elevator. “Hey.” I touch her arm.
She jumps a little, then tucks a strand of red hair behind her ear and mumbles, “Hey.”
I hate the idea of her going home alone feeling like she bombed. “I get to the practice rooms every morning at eight,” I say. “It’d be cool to have someone to practice with, if you can stand getting up that early.”
“You mean practice together?” She makes eye contact, but only for a moment.
“Yeah, across the hall from each other. Break every half hour for coffee or to complain about aching backs?”
She laughs a little, her round, freckled cheeks turning rosy again. “I could use some accountability.”
“We all could.” I smile.
She fidgets with the strap of her cello case, which she wears like a turtle shell too. I wonder if her cello was expensive, if her parents were able to afford it, if they paid cash or financed it. It had as nice a tone as mine, or close to it.
“You played really well,” she says. “I’m jealous.”
“Oh.” The elevator opens and we step in. “Thanks for saying that.”
“I’d love to be as comfortable as you obviously are with performing. I turn really red every time I play.” She kicks at the floor like a shy kid kicking rocks at recess. “Plus the shaking. I’m sure you noticed.”
“Not at all.”
“Bullshit.”
I look up at her and laugh. “Okay, maybe a tiny bit.”
Later I wrangle my cello into my instrument locker, my head spinning the way it was in my lesson with Yarvik. Am I actually…good? I think back to my cello teacher from back home, how she used to push me, how impossible it was to earn her praise. When I won the competition I entered my sophomore year, she congratulated me, but it felt…conciliatory somehow, almost as if it were an apology on behalf of the other competitors for not having played to their full capabilities. We dove right back into my studies, with no ceremony at all. But she encouraged me to apply for the cello loan; she must’ve believed I had a chance at the Aspen Fellowship. Right?
And now I’ve got Yarvik mulling me over with her squinty, thoughtful gaze, and this guy Garrett wanting to hear me perform and not wanting anything else from me which is so weird for a guy, and then hearing my fellow students play in cello studio…
My stomach has gone all soupy, and I can’t figure out why. It shouldn’t nauseate me to discover I don’t suck; it should make me happy. I head back to my dorm and lie on my side on the bed, hugging Gerta the hippo to my chest, and text Liza: Did you know I’m good at cello?
She replies: Um, fucking DUH, and that makes me laugh, but at the same time I feel a little sick. What other things don’t I know about myself? And then, as if Liza has a special sister telepathy and can sense my discomfort: I knew you didn’t know, though. Dad’s fault.
I shiver. She’s probably right. My father came to that competition my sophomore year, standing in the back row with his chest puffed as they handed out the ribbons—every bit the proud and doting father. But that night while I was trying to fall asleep he came into my room and sat on the floor in the dark, breathing in and out through his nostrils like a penned bull, heavy and impatient and aggressive.
The hostility in his breathing, the way he sat so close and so still, those minutes and minutes and minutes without saying anything, it scared me so bad I froze in place under my covers, hardly able to breathe myself. Finally, after what seemed like hours, he said, “You won because most of them were younger than you and they all made stupid mistakes. There were only two people older than you. They both forgot the notes.”
Tears slid from the edges of my eyes and down my temples, pooling in my ears.
“You won by default,” he said, his voice grown calm and logical. “You can see that, can’t you?”
I nodded, too embarrassed to answer him aloud, lest he hear my disappointment—my tear-riddled, shaky voice. He was right. There hadn’t been any real competition. I’d known, as each performer bumbled, that it would be easy to win. “You’re like your mother, Malory. Very weak, not the kind of person who will leave a special mark on the world.”
Later, I would bitterly regret not defending her.
“It’s okay,” he said, getting up off the floor. “It’s better to be realistic about these things.” He tousled my hair and left the room, whispering, “Good night, sweetie,” before closing the door.
There are tears in my ears again—I didn’t even realize I’d begun crying. I’m still clutching Gerta the hippo to my chest. I wipe my face on her rough yarn and settle myself in for sleep.
Chapter Six
That Saturday afternoon, I’m lying on my bed studying a book from my Twentieth-Century Europe class, a highlighter jutting dutifully from between my fingers. The material is dryer than desert sand though, and despite having drunk two cups of coffee, my eyelids keep trying to slam shut. But then my phone catches my eye—I’ve got a text.
What would you say if I said I wanted to see you in a non-street-performing environment?
Garrett. I set my book aside.
I reply: I’d say I was surprised.
Why surprised?
You didn’t even say hello the other day.
You were working.
That didn’t stop you the first time.
You seemed annoyed the first time.
I stare at my phone for several minutes, unsure how to respond.
“What’s going on over there?” Daphne is at her laptop watching me contemplate my phone. I must be screwing up my forehead.
“I…”
“Is it that guy?” she asks. “The one who gave you the water?”
I nod. I told her the other day about Garrett, how he’d taken an interest in my playing. I did not tell her I was dying to stick my finger in his dimple.
“You gonna go play him a private concert?” She waggles her eyebrows at me.
Rolling my eyes at Daphne, I text back: Well I hope you found my performance adequate.
More than.
I smile to myself and send: Good.
Take a walk with me.
Do I have to bring my cello?
Only if you want to.
I don’t.
A few minutes pass.
Are you in the f
irst year dorms?
Yes.
Meet me outside in fifteen.
I don’t like what my heart is doing, how it’s fluttering in my chest like a caged bird. I should keep studying. Or practice. Or…maybe I just don’t want to give Garrett the opportunity to salute me again.
I text: OK. then set my book and highlighters on my desk.
Daphne’s chewing on the end of her pen. “Tell me.”
“I’m meeting him downstairs. We’re going for a walk.”
“Sweet.”
I brush my hair quickly and secure it in a high ponytail. “Oh…should I try to be…pretty? Should I put on makeup or something?” In the mirror over my dresser I look ghostly pale, a feature highlighted by my black hair and the dark, sick-looking circles beneath my eyes. I can’t tell if I look fragile or dangerous.
“Go how you are. If he doesn’t like it, fuck him.”
“You’re wearing makeup right now.”
“I have terrible self-esteem.”
I dig a tube of lip gloss from the top drawer of my dresser and smear it on, smacking my lips at myself in the mirror. “Oh, for god’s sake, what am I doing? Why do I even care?” It’s not as if a splash of pink will make me beautiful anyway. I grab my key card and a few bucks and shove them in the back pocket of my shorts.
Daphne grins over her laptop. “You’re allowed to want to look pretty, Mal.”
I arrive downstairs first, too early—too quick, too ready. I look eager. I’m about to go back inside when I see Garrett a block away, on the other side of the main road adjacent to the school. The party Daphne and I attended last weekend was down that way, in the neighborhoods where the upperclassmen and grad students live. I wonder if Garrett goes to those kinds of parties. Keggers. He seems too…ironed for such lowbrow debauchery.
He looks serious but relaxed, hands in his pockets as he glances both ways before stepping off the curb to cross the street. He hasn’t seen me yet. I step forward, falter, step back. For a fleeting moment I think I’ll turn around and go back inside, but then he catches sight of me and smiles, and I wipe my sweaty palms on the hem of my shorts and head down the steps to greet him. I can’t remember ever feeling so jittery over a guy.
Up close, he is even more tall-drink-of-water than I remembered. “It’s probably not smart to go wandering off by myself with a stranger, huh?” Idiot. Can’t you just say ‘hello’?
“I’m not a stranger,” he says, his dimple deepening with his smile. “I’m a fan.”
“My only one.”
“I doubt that.”
I shrug like I’m not flattered at all.
“Want to walk?” He tilts his chin toward campus.
The sun is setting now, tinting the air yellow and making the buildings glow. We set off in the direction of the music school, walking beneath the lush canopy of the oak trees lining the main drag that cuts through the center of campus.
“So, are you a student too?” I say, looking sideways at him. “Senior?”
“First year grad.”
“Oh.” He’s a little older than I thought. “What’s your major?”
“Law.”
So he’s probably smart, and definitely ambitious. “What…um, area do you plan to practice in? I mean, what type of law?” I’m not sure I’m phrasing things right.
“Real estate.” His face is impassive, and god, his answers are short. Are my questions lame? Up ahead, a girl approaches on a bike, and Garrett and I step aside to let her pass. “I suppose you’re majoring in music?” he asks.
“And economics.”
“Double major, huh?” He nods like he’s impressed. “Why choose something so different from music?”
There’s a Styrofoam cup rolling around on the sidewalk. I pick it up and chuck it in the trash. Now that he’s asked, I realize I’m not actually sure why I chose such divergent majors. I know that if I continue with music I’ll likely end up an orchestral musician and freelancer, working odd hours and making barely enough money to scrape by. But I’d be artistically fulfilled. If I fail at music and go the economics route, I’ll end up stuffed in a suit for ten to twelve hours a day in an office reeking of paper and printer ink, dissatisfied but financially secure. “I think…I guess maybe because if music doesn’t work out, it’d be easier to do something that’s the opposite of music. Kind of in protest, I guess.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. “Maybe it’d hurt to do anything that felt too close.”
My skin is hot and I wish I could suck the words back into my mouth, but Garrett’s nodding thoughtfully like everything I said makes complete sense. The music building looms ahead, five stories of hundred-year-old red brick. I look up to the fifth floor windows and see silhouettes: two violinists, an oboist, a horn player. From one of the open windows pours the beginning strains of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.
Garrett looks up too. “So you’re double majoring because you’re not confident you’ll make it in music? You don’t think you’re good enough?”
“Oh, well…I mean, I’m a decent cellist, I guess.” I remember Liza’s response from a couple of weeks ago when I asked her if I was good, the Um, fucking DUH, and then the Dad’s fault. I peel my eyes from the window-musicians and glance over at Garrett. He’s still looking up at the fifth floor. “But being good…it’s not always enough.”
“Enough for…?” His voice is neutral, lacking the prickle of overt nosiness. It’s an easy voice to respond to.
“Success,” I say.
“Define success.”
Our faces are a couple of feet apart, but I can smell his breath: wintergreen. “Getting the fuck out of the shithole I grew up in.” Too far. He doesn’t want to hear that. My thumbs work the nailbeds of my fingers, pushing them back one by one.
He nods, though his eyes remain on the practicing silhouettes.
I look up, too. The violinist is running the cadenza to the Mendelssohn now, and I don’t know if it’s the intense chords or the topic of conversation that’s causing my heartrate to increase.
After a few moments, Garrett turns to me and says, “Did you know your name means ‘unlucky’?”
I blink, surprised. My dad used to love to remind me of it, loved to cringe away from me like he was nervous a piano would drop out of the sky and he would end up getting squashed along with me. “How did you know that?” I ask.
“I studied Latin. The root, mal, means ‘bad.’ I looked it up to be sure, because I was curious.”
“You’re a curious kind of guy, aren’t you?”
“You have no idea.” He’s smirking now, and his dimple appears. “So, does the name fit?”
A little shiver crawls up my spine. I feel like he knows, like he can peek through my pupils and into my brain and see the grainy, crackling film of my life: the obsidian window from the old happy house; a pair of inelegant bodies—one hulking, one cowering—scuffling, fighting, knocking things over; two little girls slithering backwards on their bellies under a bed; the plaintive whine of a lone cello ribboning through every scene. I feel like Garrett can see it, hear it, feel it, all of it, every sad, ugly detail.
Unlucky. Maybe the name does fit.
“I’m only eighteen,” I tell him. Who can say at eighteen whether or not they’re lucky? “Ask me again when I’m eighty…if I’m lucky enough to make it that far.”
He gives me a sly smile, then leans in so close that the clean smell of wintergreen makes me self-conscious about my own breath. I try not to exhale. “I want to know everything about you,” he says. “Will you tell me? Everything?”
“You’re intense, man.” I snicker, trying to stay lighthearted, but he’s just set off a cargo ship’s worth of fireworks inside of me. Everything?
“We’ll see.” I’ve already told him way more than I tell anyone else, but everything might be too much. We start walking again—each of us taking that first step without prompting—circling the music building and moving toward the amphitheater on the other side. Garrett links
his hands behind his back as he walks, a mannerism that imbues him with both self-confidence and humility. He reminds me of Daddy Warbucks from the old movie-musical Annie.
“I’m not trying to push,” he says, “but you’re very interesting. I feel like I have to know you.”
I roll my eyes, still attempting to keep things light. “You’re laying it on pretty thick, there, Superman.”
“Superman?” He laughs, his whole face crinkling around the gorgeous, baritone sound.
I grimace, my cheeks heating again. “I…seem to say weird shit when you’re around.”
“But Superman?”
“Please, like no one ever told you you look like Superman.”
“Well,” he says, “you look like Lois Lane.”
“Shut up.” That dimple of his is out in full force. My face gets even hotter.
“But back to getting to know you.” We’ve arrived at the amphitheater now. Garrett sits on one of the cement risers. “Let’s start with the easy stuff. Where are you from?”
“Sarasota, on the west coast.” I kick a pinecone off the riser and sit a few inches from him. “How about you?”
“New York.”
“City?”
“Just outside of it. White Plains. It’s a small town compared to New York City.” He’s got his elbows on his knees, and the sinking sun is casting a reddish glow on his skin. He is so much more at ease than I am.
“So why did you come here?” I ask. “I would think someone like you would go to school in the city.” I’d wanted to audition for Manhattan School of Music but couldn’t afford the application fee much less the trip to perform the audition.
“Someone like me?”
I shift in my spot. “You give off…like, a city vibe.” Worldly, or something, but I don’t say that aloud.
“I’m just here for the palm trees,” he says, gesturing around us at the sabal palms dotted among the old Florida oaks and pines.
“You didn’t really.”