“Do you realize how good you are?” he said, and the gray-green eyes shone and seemed to penetrate her.
“I don’t know. There may be plenty of others like me.”
“Oh, no. You’re special. Believe me, I’ve heard a lot.” Special: the same word her father used, but in Phil’s voice it lost its grating edge. And then he kissed her with his tongue in her mouth and he wanted to go even further, but she wouldn’t. It was too sudden, and especially not in the small practice room where anyone might walk in. He didn’t pressure her. She asked him to play something and he refused. “No, not after that. Some other time.”
In the first few weeks she strained to be bright and entertaining, as if she might bore him. But very soon her pride put a stop to that. If he didn’t like her as she was, well, then, forget it. What was the value of having a boyfriend if you had to work to keep him? No, she would be only what she was, and that would have to do. Let it last as long as it could. She had never known this kind of pleasure, a true friend her own age, someone who cared about the same things and wanted the same things, someone to whom she was not peculiar or eccentric for wanting those things.
For he was a true friend. It was much more than kissing in the back rows of dark movie theaters, or holding hands on a bench in Washington Square Park, or going to parties—she’d never known there were so many parties on the weekends—where they could find secluded places to explore each other, up to the point where Suzanne said no. It was the talking, the exchange of confidences, that thrilled her.
Often they rode home together on the subway. It was a long ride and Phil lived three stops past hers, but if they were in the middle of a conversation he got off and walked her to her street. They talked about everything in their lives. She told him about her family, how her father pressured her relentlessly and—what made it worse—ignorantly about her music, how ever since her talent was discovered she had become a prized possession he could show off for his own gratification. She even told him about the mortifying fiasco years ago when she played so badly for Uncle Simon and Aunt Faye, a scene that even now brought her a shudder of disgust. Phil thought she took it too seriously; he was sympathetic, but clearly to him it was a minor family incident, almost comic. She didn’t tell him about the visit of the Woodsteins and the Newmans from Philadelphia, when she claimed the Rachmaninoff prelude as her own. Richard was the only person who would ever know about that.
She even told him about Richard and what he meant to her, how she would probably not be at Music and Art right now without his encouragement. It almost seemed a betrayal of something precious to talk about Richard to Phil, and yet it was so important a part of her life, she felt he couldn’t really know her without knowing about Richard. She described his house and his paintings, his friends and his music, how until now he had been the only person who truly understood her. And had given her her first cup of coffee, which she had been addicted to ever since. She caught a shadow of jealousy pass over Phil’s face, and that shadow gave her a surprising flicker of delight. Of course, there was no competing with Richard, he was in a class by himself, but she couldn’t explain that.
He told her about living with his aunt and uncle, the gloomy apartment, the heavy meals eaten in near silence, except when he attempted to break it with an account of some school antic, and afterward the silence took over again. Their gloom was like a spreading stain he was determined not to allow to reach him; he must outrun it whenever it threatened to catch up. He did this by going to all the free concerts and staying late at school, getting involved in anything that would keep him out of the house. His aunt and uncle didn’t even like him, he said. Perhaps they thought that having a boy of their own would cheer them up (with a chill, he remembered his aunt saying, “You’ll be our boy,” but he didn’t repeat that to Suzanne). Having a boy had not helped them. If anything, he had made them gloomier.
Suzanne found it incredible that they didn’t like him. At school everyone liked him; he could get along with anyone, never got angry or sullen or ruffled. Nonetheless, he said, his aunt and uncle thought he was worthless; he could do nothing to their satisfaction. But he would show them, and very soon.
He told her about the accident on the Long Island Expressway that had killed his parents and his younger brother, and that would have killed him, too, except he had been stubborn and refused to go. To this day he didn’t know if he had made the right decision. At this Suzanne gasped. Even in her lowest moments she would never have preferred to be dead. Thoughts like that were in a realm beyond her boundaries. He showed her a photograph of his real family, a black-and-white snapshot he carried in his wallet: the four of them on the lawn in front of their house in Great Neck. His parents looked young and happy; his mother was slim and girlish, with her hair in a ponytail, wearing shorts and a T-shirt (so different from chunky Gerda, who wore housedresses); his mother had her arm around Phil and his brother. His father was tall and lanky like Phil, with lots of thick dark hair, and he towered above the others. Phil and Billy were making funny faces for the camera. The photo was taken just a few months before the accident. He couldn’t remember who took it, probably a neighbor. He tucked it back in his wallet and she saw tears in his eyes, but he quickly blinked them away.
They talked about their aspirations. In those they were very much alike. Maybe that was what had drawn him to her, Suzanne thought. Maybe ambition could sense itself in another. They would both be very successful and show everyone, Suzanne because she must—ambition was by now too deeply rooted in her to dig out—and Phil because his aunt and uncle expected so little of him. It was essential to prove them wrong. He wasn’t yet sure what he would do. He had drive and determination in abundance but wasn’t enough of a musician to perform. He would do something in the field, though, maybe sound engineering, something that required skill and memory, a good ear and good hands. But he trusted that she would have a great career as a performer. He would help her get over her hesitations. He would love helping her. He liked helping people, he said, but didn’t add that he liked the powerful feeling it gave him. Nor did he tell her about the grades he altered in Mr. Sadler’s records. For now all he could do was get her into the classes she wanted, or get her tickets to concerts not yet posted on the bulletin board, but later on, he could do more.
It didn’t take Gerda long to catch on that there was a boyfriend, and when she did she insisted on meeting him. So one day when Phil walked her home from the subway, Suzanne invited him in. She had trepidations—he would find her house so dull—but it was better to do it on the spur of the moment than make a plan and suffer anxiety in advance. What she would have preferred was to bring Phil to Richard’s house. She would do that one day. Sitting in Richard’s living room with Richard being his nonchalant, wise, wry self—that was the setting in which she would like Phil to see her.
Gerda was taken by surprise in the kitchen, wearing her apron and rolling out dough for a piecrust. But she quickly removed the apron and assumed her most gracious manner, happily doing nothing to embarrass Suzanne, such as interrogating Phil about his family or fussing over him. She asked only where he lived (Brooklyn was reassuring), what instrument he played, and how he liked Music and Art. As for Phil, Suzanne, not long after, came to understand his behavior with her mother as a performance; he had so many roles at his command. He concocted a blend of deference, courtesy, and innocence—how had he known this would be the perfect approach? He must have a gift for sizing people up instantly, getting their number, as her father would say.
Gerda gave him seven-layer cake and milk, making a little joke about how thin he was, and Phil accepted a second slice with just the right degree of appreciation, admiring but not fulsome. Suzanne said little but watched each of them playing their role so well, awed by their natural adaptation, a talent she lacked. She could be only the one self, which vacillated unpredictably between talkative exuberance and shy reserve—the moods overtook her haphazardly, beyond her control.
When he f
inished his cake, Phil took his empty plate and glass to the sink, thanked Gerda, and said he wished he could stay longer but he had to get home—he had a history test in the morning.
“He seems like a really nice boy,” Gerda said the moment the door closed after him. “Very polite. But you might have given me some warning.”
“He walked me home and it just seemed like a good time. You kept saying you wanted to meet him.” She took a slice of cake. She’d been too nervous to eat while Phil was there.
“So, what about his parents? What does his father do?”
Here it was, inevitably, but at least Gerda had restrained herself until he left.
“His father had a business in Great Neck. Sporting equipment, I think. But both his parents were killed in a car crash when he was nine. So he came to Brooklyn to live with his aunt and uncle. The uncle is an accountant.”
“Oh, the poor boy. But does he have any brothers or sisters?”
“He had a younger brother, but he was in the accident, too. I’m going upstairs. I have homework.”
Once Phil was in her life, the trudge up the hill to the subway each morning, past the stationery store and the movie theater, the Chinese restaurant, the soda fountain, the butcher, and the cafeteria, was no longer a path heading to anomie, but a harmless route to the place where she belonged. By her junior year she was known less as Phil’s girlfriend than as one of the most gifted students in the class. It was taken for granted that she would apply to Juilliard and that she would be accepted, maybe even awarded a scholarship. Life was never easy for Suzanne—she was not built for ease—but for a while it was good.
Philip was a year ahead of Suzanne in school, and in the spring of her junior year, he was already preparing to go to Columbia, where he had a substantial scholarship. That March Elena arrived. From the Soviet Union, though it seemed from out of nowhere. One day she wasn’t there, the next day she was, so different from the others that everyone was immediately whispering about her, except for the few girls who actually tried talking to her. They reported that she spoke an odd form of English—fluent, more or less grammatical, but with so thick an accent that it was hard to understand her. She was tall and thin, her hair very long and blond, fairy-tale golden, and she wore it coiled and piled on top of her head like a much older woman.
In every way she was unlike the other girls. It wasn’t only the wary, canny expression on her face, but also her clothing. She wore skirts and jackets in drab colors, gray-green or black, too heavy for the season, and her skirts were too long—the others were already in miniskirts. Her shoes were brown, more like boots with laces. “Someone ought to set her straight,” murmured Jennifer, one of the more fashionable girls. “Take her down to the Village and get her put together. Or even an Army-Navy store. It’s amazing what you can find there.” She couldn’t be called out of style, exactly, because people were wearing all sorts of odd, patched-together getups. But Elena’s clothes were too ridiculous.
The way she asked directions was noticed, too, for she had little hesitation in seeking help. She wasn’t the least bit shy, they decided, just aloof. She asked as if she didn’t care what they thought of her and her strange accent, or as if she weren’t in a high school but in an office building or some government bureaucracy. “Can you advise me, please, where would be the gymnasium?” or “Where is located the office of the assistant principal, please?” As if she had learned the phrases from a book, but not the right way to string them together. And that extraordinary accent in that low, very adult voice.
Some found her a figure of comedy and snickered, not always behind her back. Other students were intrigued, found her exotic, and wanted to get to know her, as if it would be an honor. But they were put off by her manner: stuck-up, they called it, as Suzanne had occasionally been called as a child by the girls on her block. Meaning, Elena didn’t seem sufficiently grateful for their tentative approaches. They expected her to be humble, and she was not humble. She behaved as though school were a place where she turned up daily because it was required of her. She didn’t realize how privileged she was to be attending this special school to which the others had worked so hard to be admitted.
With all that, they were curious. There were few foreign students, and none from the Soviet Union. Who was she, and how come she had suddenly appeared among them in the middle of the term? It was Philip, with his sources of information and access to file drawers, who found out the facts. Having gotten what advantage he could from Mr. Sadler of the math department, who’d kept his promise about dropping a word to his friend in the Columbia admissions office, Philip now spent his free periods working in the principal’s office and was chummy with the principal’s secretary, who was bored and enjoyed a bit of gossip.
It was a romantic story. Elena’s mother, who was widowed young, was a Russian–English interpreter, often assigned to visiting dignitaries who came through Leningrad. (That might account for Elena’s odd English, Phil suggested; she’d probably learned it from a book, with her mother’s help, but hadn’t had much chance to speak. In the middle of the Cold War, English probably wasn’t a high priority in the schools.) The mother was assigned to translate for a famous American cellist on tour in the Soviet Union; fortunately, some cultural exchanges still survived, despite the icy political relations. The cellist, also a widower, fell in love with his interpreter, married her, and brought her and Elena back to the States. Elena hadn’t taken his name, Phil noted, which showed a sort of modesty—she wasn’t trying to profit from his renown. Her fellow students would have recognized it right away. Though no doubt the connection helped her get into Music and Art so quickly.
Not that she couldn’t have been admitted on merit alone. Back in the Soviet Union she’d been a child prodigy at the piano. Her mother was eager at the chance to leave—who wouldn’t want to get out of there? Phil said—and thought her daughter’s opportunities would be better in the United States. As the story spread through the school, Elena came to be regarded with awe, which made the others keep their distance. She walked through the halls alone and sometimes could be seen chatting with the teachers, especially with Mr. Shukov, the history teacher, who spoke Russian; they would make extravagant gestures while uttering their harsh, unintelligible phrases. An aura of untouchability was cast onto her, compounded of remoteness and vague resentment, a resentment she had done nothing to earn except own the facts of her life.
Phil and Suzanne were carrying their trays through the cafeteria, looking for a good seat, when he spied Elena alone at a table for four, eating a bowl of soup and reading, or pretending to read, a battered, hardcover book. They were too far away for Suzanne to see if the book was in English or Russian.
“Let’s go sit with her,” Phil said.
“You think so? She looks like she doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Of course she does. I bet she wishes people would come over and talk to her. She’s new. We ought to help her out. Come on.” He led the way, and Suzanne had no choice but to follow.
“Is it okay if we join you?” he asked in his most winning manner, while Suzanne, slightly behind him, smiled tentatively and stole a glance at the book. It was in Russian.
“Yes, please, of course,” Elena said, and put the book away. As she smiled Suzanne noticed that her bottom teeth were crooked. Now that she was here with a rich stepfather, she would surely have them fixed.
After that opening moment they all relaxed. Elena was quite ready to talk, not stuck-up at all, though it was something of a struggle to understand her. Even she herself laughed at the mispronunciations Phil and Suzanne discreetly pointed out. But how she’d improved since she’d first arrived a month ago! They should have heard her then!
And so they became friends. Philip possessed the magic touch: Whoever he befriended was rescued from foundering in the chill waters of anonymity and attained the gilded shores of popularity. As it had happened with Suzanne, so it happened with Elena. The other girls, and, soon after, the boy
s, clustered around her. They didn’t call her aloof anymore; she was simply, well, different. She seemed older, as if she had endured more of life, or at least more of life that was notable. She was willing to answer their questions about the Soviet Union but didn’t play on their sympathies or exploit the exoticism of deprivation. Certainly life there was harder; things taken for granted here were not so easy to come by. But of course they knew all that, didn’t they? She smiled as she spoke. Of course they read the papers. The people, however, were not the monsters represented in the Western press.
Her new friends nodded knowingly, but few of them actually did read the papers. They knew about the Cold War, but it had been going on for so long—since before they were born—that it was accepted as an immutable global fact, nothing that touched their lives. Even the Cuban missile crisis of a few years ago had largely evaporated in the mists of adolescence.
They asked her about the famous cellist Paul Manning, now her stepfather, and life in his Park Avenue apartment. He was wonderfully kind, she said, and really not all that rich, at least by American standards. “At home we were required to share our apartment with another family, so this feels like . . .” She searched for a word. “Luxury,” Phil supplied. “Yes, that is right. Luxury.” The other family were boorish people who drank all the time and kept the TV on incessantly and left their dirty dishes in the sink.
Her stepfather was unpretentious and spent most of his time practicing, preparing for concerts. She was happy above all for her mother, who had worked so hard to make ends meet and now could finally rest. There was even a maid who cleaned the apartment, something they’d never dreamed of.
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