MY AMBIVALENCE ABOUT continuing to breathe persisted. After the four nighttime strolls, I plodded through the next week, repeating my marital drug-and-sleep schedule. On the seventh day, a Sunday morning, a miracle phone call came to me. An old friend from Mannes had made dozens of calls to fellow alumni and finally managed to track me down. It was David, the aspiring conductor. He was putting together a small chamber orchestra concert in a local church and needed a principal oboist.
The program was to include Siegfried Idyll by Richard Wagner. As we discussed this, my skin went wet with slick sweat, a visceral reaction that unnerved me initially but that I welcomed in the next second. I understood this to be a sign of relief—perhaps release. Written for the birth of Wagner’s son, Siegfried, the music is relentlessly tender yet somehow heroic, reflecting the vulnerable and hopeful possibilities of love between two people and the potential for a new life.
“David, I’m not in shape, just so you know. I haven’t played for quite a while.” Someone had just offered me new life, and I was summoning the courage to say yes.
“I don’t care, Marcia. You’ll pull it together. I want your sound, especially in the Wagner. That’s why I made all these damned phone calls!”
“Okay. You have no idea what you have done for me. But I’ll take it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Marcia.…But the first rehearsal is in five days. Can you manage that?”
A familiar and almost painful stab pushed at me—for what I was about to do and for what I had almost given up. To play those notes; to hear those tight, dense chords; to feel alive through my own breath; and to touch, through my oboe and music, Wagner’s love for his son and wife. This was a privilege I had roundly rejected for too long.
“I can manage. I’ll be there.”
Dropping the phone into its cradle, I walked over to the closet, knelt down, and pulled out the oboe. It was that fast and sudden. And urgent. Kirsten. She’d poked into the surface of my skin, like an old and fading tattoo getting freshly inked. Over the next four days, I played for hours and hours. Nonstop, it seemed. Going through dozens of reeds, trying to get into shape. Trying to recapture my sound, a sound that would do my Kirsten justice.
Mephisto stood back and picked his fights. I ignored his taunts. He was losing me to Kirsten, a woman he had never even met.
The church was on the East Side. On the night of the concert, I walked through Central Park, past the very benches and trees that were shrouded in black just two weeks before. I’d arrived early to warm up slowly, leisurely, without pressure. The audience trickled in, then filled the church; the echoing chatter died down as the program began with a Mozart overture, followed by Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto.
Then it was time for me to take Siegfried Idyll in hand. Nervous, I hoped I could perform with the beauty required of a principal oboist. The orchestra was small, so my sound laid a specific color onto the composite resonance whenever I had an entrance. As the orchestra wove itself through me, I felt a deep jolt from Wagner’s signature harmonic language. So very familiar yet distant: like an old friend recounting a family story I’d known since I was four years old.
The grounding motif of rocking triplets played by the French horns called to me, over and over. Implied in the silent first triplet was a sound that wanted to come through: inevitable. And I was gently buffeted back and forth in the calm yet deep chasm that was reorganizing my shaky world, all inside the tight sphere of this orchestra.
For those two hours, I did not need to be deeply unconscious. My guts dropped down, and the cogs turned over and clicked in, newly oiled by this music. I felt awake and alive with the backstage specter of Kirsten, the prescient savior who’d resurfaced from the deepest part of my deadened heart. She had always been there, spending time on the other side of the earth. My orbit realigned: I was a musician again.
I bit the worm and called Pete, Sal, and Duane from the Village restaurant. They were six-foot-by-two-foot slabs of pure muscle and heart and agreed to help me move out. Mephisto stood back, literally shaking with rage. His oboe-player experiment was over; that lass had fallen lifeless on the grassy midnight grounds of Central Park and in the drab hallways of Bellevue Hospital. With one hundred dollars in my pocket, I took almost nothing with me. As long as I could play the oboe, I would be okay.
Kirsten sang:
Sweet breath
softly wafts—
Friends! Look!
Sound
Your sound, distinctive among New York players, has become something of a calling card. Oboists arrive early for rehearsals, needing to fully warm up in order to play the tuning A for the rest of the orchestra. Through the years, other musicians mentioned that they knew who was playing the oboe well before seeing you. As they came down the stairs from the Carnegie Hall dressing rooms onto that stage or into any rehearsal studio in town, your signature sound preceded your face. It was that distinct and unusual. They described it as European, German. You think of it as just emerging from your heart.
If you don’t love your sound, it hampers your ability to spin music the way you imagine. Sound is like a fingerprint to musicians. To fully and freely express music with commitment, your sound must reside deep in a corner pocket, like a cube of sugar left on the tongue to disintegrate in its own time. You have a sound ringing in your ears all day every day that cannot be silenced. It is your essence—your soul turned inside out, exposing you for the world to notice, scrutinize, and perhaps love.
Gato Redux
IN 1982, LIVING a post-Mephistopheles life in a sublet on West 70th Street tasted like a bittersweet concoction of welcomed solitary confinement and endless loneliness. I had everything I needed, living in the furnished apartment of an actor on the road for a year with a touring musical. I took great comfort from my oboe and Kirsten, always on call in my headphones. Spot, my lucky black cat, although still showing signs of trauma from the rough removal from her equally rough home, quickly made her nest inside the coat closet, curling herself up in a tight, protective ball. But after the first few weeks, she gradually ventured out to laze on the bed with me, watching the pigeons on the windowsill overlooking 70th Street. We spent hours examining their lovely cooing life. I could be a pigeon and enjoy that underrated perching life. But Palsson’s was down the street, and Gato was playing nightly. And Gato’s jukebox “Europa” beckoned with long, sinewy arms.
About a month into my newly single seclusion, curiosity came sniffing. That evening I’d ordered a curry dinner in and was feeling sated and content and very safe. Safe enough to wonder about all the people I knew from my late nights at Palsson’s. Ron and Stella, for example: they’d been my built-in 3:00 a.m. social life, and I was curious.
I heard him—Gato—wailing away before I even opened the door to Palsson’s. Ron, at the back of the restaurant, vaguely nodded to me. Like a junkie, I gave in to temptation, and as my eyes got accustomed to the smoky air, I began scouting for connections—both personal and maybe even medicinal. Once I’d settled myself at the bar with a club soda, a woman I vaguely remembered walked over and offered me a Quaalude. Sure. I accepted the pill and took half, pocketing the other side.
I was not a typical drinker or drug user. I was the cheapest of dates, high even before booze kicked into my blood—one drink would slide down my gullet to leave me instantly weak-kneed. And cocaine was always just a vehicle to drive me to a place of chatty connection with people. These were the accomplices I required to imagine identifying this “love” thing. To pick it out of a lineup: Ah! So that’s it. That’s what they’re all talking about! And for the short time I was with Mephisto, this combination—alcohol and cocaine—seemed to be a raging late-night success. Curious and lonely now, I had been nostalgic for that perfect synthesis of gossamer edginess when I walked out the door of my apartment and headed toward Palsson’s.
Gato played on. A well-dressed couple approached. His shoes: a shiny patent leather. Her lipstick: much too red. She st
ruck up the chatter.
“Hi. Are you a regular?”
“No; not really. I used to come in a lot, but this is the first time in about a month.”
“We just saw a show and then had dinner downtown. We’re staying at the Excelsior.”
“Oh?”
I turned and looked them up and down. It was curious they were telling me all this: not the typical anonymous chitchat in a bar.
“It’s a pretty dingy place, actually.…We were expecting a bit more.”
“Well, it attracts mostly Europeans who can’t afford the Plaza.” I knew the Excelsior Hotel, on West 81st Street, myself, because I’d stayed there a few times when Mephisto and I were at particularly nasty odds and I needed an overnight safe house.
They were silent, not knowing if my comment was a put-down or a disguised compliment on their international élan. Their accents revealed their homeland: New Jersey. Rubes from the countryside.
“You seem loopy. Did you take something? Or is it just the booze?”
My head jerked back in reflex. This was also unusual—to call out someone’s drugged look. They were novices. But about an hour into my half Quaalude, I went along with it.
“I took half a Quaalude. Just relaxing.”
“Oh. Well, we have something to help with that. Want some?”
“Sure.”
They slipped a glassine packet to me under the bar along with a short, cut-off straw. Off to the ladies’ room I sauntered, smug and self-assured, hoping to counter the Quaalude’s loopy effect with some free coke.
About ten minutes later, back at the bar chatting with my new friends, I felt a roiling of nausea come up, very fast and intense. Knocking some chairs over, I ran for the bathroom and jammed myself into an empty stall, my head over the toilet. The curry dinner came up, all orange with bits of spinach floating to the top. Sliding down onto the floor next to the toilet, panting and waiting for the next wave, I broke into a fierce sweat that soaked right through my blouse. I retched for what seemed like an hour, but it could have been just ten minutes.
The Jersey woman came back and helped me up. My feet felt bottomless, with the contrary sensation of no floor beneath them.
“I see you’re a novice. It hits people that way sometimes with the first blow.”
“What do you mean? What the hell was that?”
“Heroin.”
With my arms around her neck, and me bandy-legged, she danced me back to my bar stool. Together they got my bar tab paid and stuffed me into my coat. Out on the sidewalk, the fresh air was not helping much. I staggered to the curb and, leaning against a car, bent over to vomit again but heaved up nothing. The man asked where I lived.
“Oh. Just around the corner. But I’ll be okay.”
“No, no, no! We want to make sure you get there. Come on…let’s just go.”
Not in a position to resist or even walk, I put myself in their hands. Down the street we all walked, arm in arm in arm—old pals, it would seem. The man took the keys out of my purse to unlock the front door of the brownstone. We tag-teamed up the three flights and fell into the apartment. Spot made a dash for the hall closet.
It felt normal and sweet and very kind. They said they would take care of me, and I wanted that. I wanted friends, and in my dazed mind, they became the best of friends—at least for that long, zigzagging walk to my apartment.
Then the evening became a swirl of small resistances and gentle acceptances, each of which floated up and down, according to the heroin’s whim. My impressions held moments of sharp focus before panning back for a gauzy long shot.
As I succumbed, almost happily, to passive sex with her, he remained in the background, pacing back and forth, his reflective shoes glinting in the lamplight. Looking for something, or just looking at us on the bed—a voyeur, maybe. His head zoomed in for a close-up more than once. I felt my eyelids being pulled back as he assessed my state. I couldn’t move or didn’t want to. Maybe I was smiling; I thought I saw him smile back. His movements were fluid and continuous as he roved the living room, me in a four-legged puddle with her. I allowed her to love me and pushed down the questions swirling in my brain: Is this okay? Is this what I want?
Heroin was doing its damnedest to show me a different version of letting go. I was not unhappy. With the help of this new and awful drug, I was a willing prisoner, not wanting to shake clear the lovely film that encased my mind. Except for the vomiting, it wasn’t all that bad. These people were not evil, just strangers. In fact, they were the sweetest of strangers. After all, they had walked me home.
Daylight—two o’clock in the afternoon: the door to my apartment was slightly ajar, and Spot was trying her best to look through the cracked opening. I was lying alone on the sofa, somehow in my clothes but not the same clothes as the night before. A blanket had been neatly tucked over my legs. My feet poked out at the bottom of my body and seemed very far away. I noticed my socks were on upside down, with the heels at the top of my feet. As I tested getting up, my diaphragm muscles seized from throwing up all night. Feeling a need to pee, I couldn’t make my legs move to get up off the sofa. My arms collapsed as I tried to lift myself up, and I fell back down to sleep.
Four o’clock in the afternoon: I came to with a start this time. Spot sat very close to my head, right on my chest, dozing and moving in sync with the rise and fall of my breathing. This was her usual destination when she wanted food: my chest. But the front door was closed now. Someone from the building must have shut it. Not wanting to disturb Spot, and afraid to reawaken the pain in my midsection, I turned my head to look around. The living room appeared in order.
My eyes focused in and out; I was not yet in control of my pupils. I settled my gaze on an object in the middle of the floor about two feet from me. This seemed to be the optimal distance for me to get my visual bearings. I stared. As I looked, confusion set in. What was that thing? The rectangular box was carefully wrapped in a pillowcase, tightly bundled, as if ready to be shipped off in the post. A curiosity. My head started to clear, and I began to study it. Gently releasing Spot to the floor, I reached down to pick it up and set it on my belly. With a quick intake of breath, I knew immediately what it was: my oboe. Wrapped in a pillowcase.
Now I was afraid. Adrenaline jammed into every inch of my body as I shot up from my prone position onto my feet. I ran to the bathroom, urgently needing to evacuate. My abs felt very tender, as if I had been punched. At the sink, water encouraged and braced me, and I lapped it up through my cupped fingers. Glancing into the mirror, I saw her red lipstick smeared all over my face. It was thick and everywhere. My ruby scarecrow face sickened me almost as much as the wrapped oboe, and I heard myself begin to whimper.
I returned to the sofa after washing my face and rocked back and forth with Spot rubbing around me, flicking her tail in my face. Slowly, the next, more intense level of fear knocked me back. Not for my personal safety but for the one thing in life I could not replace: my oboe.
I discovered telltale signs of theft. They had left my keys, so I felt some pretense of security. But a few pieces of jewelry were missing, including a watch that my grandmother had given me. About a hundred dollars in cash that I’d hidden in some socks in the very back of a dresser drawer were gone. They had left some rings that had little value. I couldn’t figure it out.
Throughout that evening, as the heroin left my body and the haze lifted, I took several showers and examined my body for any marks—some sort of road map for what might have occurred over the course of those eight hours or so: maybe a bruise or a sore area. I determined that the man had not penetrated me, or at least I sensed he hadn’t.
But I was a damned lucky trickster. My oboe was intact, with the reeds still in their zipper case: untouched, unharmed. And clearly ready to be stolen. Over the next few weeks I instinctively made a little ritual for myself. Whenever I left the apartment, I wrapped the oboe in the same pillowcase, in exactly the same way, placing it in the exact same location on the fl
oor, not wanting to break the spell that I imagined had been cast upon me.
Cracked open, raw and vulnerable, I reached out to the most remote person in the solar system: my mother. And why not? I had a lucky oboe. I was a lucky girl. Maybe she would join me in my new aura.
My mother sounded tired when she answered my call. I assumed she was tired of the way I portrayed myself to her: a young—yet ancient—twenty-five-year-old soon-to-be-divorced daughter. Maybe she’d had enough of her daughters: their suicide attempts (known and unknown) and their abortions (known and unknown), their professional successes and personal failures, their husbands and boyfriends. I was just three months free of my marriage, and the shame of my sordid lifestyle with Mephisto kept me tightly bottled up. As with my relationship with Don G., I had revealed nothing to her, and she was never curious about any of it. Could I pique her interest now? As mothers go, she was still tantalizing to me, and I hung on to a vestige of hope that I might get under her skin—our skin—and graft us together. Then I would know that “this was it.”
An Omelet
I MET MY mother for lunch at my favorite restaurant—Elephant & Castle. A cozy spot with great omelets and salads, it was pure Greenwich Village. I ordered my usual omelet with goat cheese and basil. She ordered the American omelet. Surely this venue would impress her and pry her open a bit. I was aching to feel even an infinitesimal mother-daughter connection.
“So, honey. How’s everything going? Are you getting some jobs on the oboe? You know, your father and I will always pay for Katie Gibbs if you want.”
She was at it already. I closed my eyes and counted to five. Opening them, I saw her diligently chewing her omelet, gazing over my head onto Greenwich Avenue.
“Things are going okay. I’m playing a bit.”
“But not enough…”
“At the moment, no, not enough.”
The Skin Above My Knee Page 11