Between the bug swats and the slippery sweat, I couldn’t seem to get comfortable. Nature didn’t intend for music to be made under such debilitating conditions. Looking to my right, I was about to bark out an angry rant to the flutist next to me—certainly a generally sympathetic listener on the topic of inhumane performing conditions. But I never got the words out, because I was startled to notice that he was intently staring at my bare knees: inspecting them, really.
He reached down and gently brushed the skin above my knee with his forefinger.
“Is your skin always like this?”
“What do you mean? Like what?”
“Smooth, like porcelain. I’ve never seen such soft skin before. Sorry. I just had to touch it.”
I stared at him. How very observant he was. I smiled, and, encouraged, he repeated the question.
“Is your skin always like this?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
Finally. Someone had noticed. In that very instant, I was tenderly and unabashedly connected to my mother, her wonderfully curved legs, but more specifically her very special knees. I looked nothing like her, but we must have shared a wondrously rare, recessive gene: the skin above my knee.
Judy began singing “Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen, and I was jarred out of my musings on the Butler family genetic helix. The song floats over the subject of suicide.
As if a strong magnetic force had pulled me down, all at once my head dropped onto my soft knees. I rubbed my forehead into the skin as I sobbed. The orchestra played on.
Relathered by my tears, the Jergens lotion I had applied earlier in the day (the same brand my mother always used) gave off its sickening scent, snapping my head upright again like a whiff of smelling salts. I rejoined the orchestra, Suzanne, and Judy as she sang:
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind.…
Jolting me from my Danbury reverie, our car veered sharply away from a doe that was too close to the road. The Taconic was too narrow, really, to accommodate cars and families of deer. As Siegfried concluded, my friends took up their earlier topic again.
“What about your mother? You’re a bit older, right? Did she dote on your kids?”
“Not really.…She had some health problems when my kids were young, so we missed all that. But she sure makes up for it now, because she can’t seem to keep her nose out of my daughter’s love life. No boundaries at all. My daughter says her grandma should write a how-to book on all the right things to do to nab a husband, a step-by-step tutorial on exactly how to get someone to love you. Forever, of course.”
A thin pamphlet on love would do. I closed my eyes and saw her pass Danbury.
Now, Mother. Now you can turn. And here is how: your hands are on the steering wheel at the ten and two positions. You must grip the wheel in a determined yet relaxed manner. You see the first of many large green signs ahead of you. You depress the brake pedal with your foot, which is connected to your lovely calf, which in turn resolves at the soft skin above your knee. You slow down gradually, and over the next five miles, you prepare to make the turn that will deliver you to my door. As you come up to the last of the green signs for the exit you’ll need to take, you pass by. You’ve managed to brake in preparation, but you don’t turn. Instead you accelerate and drive southward, past the 59th Street Bridge, past the Midtown Tunnel, and proceed to all points south.
I gaze into the distance, straining, and my eyes bore into the back of your head. Startled, I remember that my father always had the wheel when you took road trips. My father drove by all the signs.
We entered the 2:00 a.m. light traffic flow coming down from the Bronx. The rough city roads shook me.
“Marcia, should I take I-95 into Manhattan and then drive into Queens by the Midtown Tunnel? Or the 59th Street Bridge? What’s the best way?”
Feeling groggy, I bolted forward in my seat.
“Those are both left-hand turns. Is that okay with you?”
“Of course.…Either is fine. But which is shortest?”
“Oh, the 59th Street Bridge. That’s the straightest shot. There’s no toll. And fewer turns.”
You careened right by my house. And I was standing very still with my eyes closed; standing and waiting for you; singing to you. And listening.
What does love look like? Is it Kirsten’s voice? A turn signal on a car? Is it a black-and-white dress? Is it the back of your head? A vacuum cleaner? Is it Shalimar perfume? Is it Isolde’s words? Is it a Camel cigarette? Whitney? A child whom I aborted? André Watts? Vikki Carr? My knee or your knee? Is it glass? A poem? Is it the entire length of I-95 and the East Coast of the United States of America?
Kirsten sang:
Do I alone hear this melody…
168 Hours
For freelancers, opportunities for big concerts are limited to three times a week: Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon. Many orchestras plan their seasons without consulting one another—wouldn’t it be nice if they did? So there is a lot of overlap between concert series. And you need to make as much money as possible, so as a musician you never say no to a gig. Ever. So here goes…
You wake up on Monday and go into your studio, warm up, and start one new reed. Adelweird taught you to start one new reed a day—and you still follow his laws of oboe playing. One new reed a day, and you won’t, in theory, have reed problems. Unless the cane is shitty.
Then you head out for a 10:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. rehearsal for the upcoming Friday night concert. That afternoon at home, you practice for about an hour on the music to be performed during the Saturday night and Sunday afternoon concert set.
That evening you play a Broadway show—Phantom of the Opera.
On Tuesday you have a double rehearsal, 10:00–1:00 and 3:00–5:30, for the Saturday-Sunday concert set. You play a different Broadway show that night: Beauty and the Beast.
On Wednesday you practice your concert music in the morning and start a reed. You work on the reed started that Monday, hoping it might be okay for one of the concerts. You play the matinee of Beauty and the Beast, and then you play The King and I that night. You use older reeds for the Broadway shows because you are saving the good ones for the concerts. Also, playing older reeds is easier on the “chops” (mouth).
On Thursday you have a rehearsal at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. for the Friday night concert. That morning, you start a new reed and continue to refine and work on the others. At this point you’re playing the new reeds in the rehearsals to see if they’ll be good enough for concerts. Two are promising. You have Thursday night free.
But the weather changes, and it starts to rain. It has been dry and sunny all week. Weather and humidity drastically change the reeds, including those you’ve been making and playing on. So instead of relaxing on Thursday night, you start three new reeds so that you’ll be prepared if the ones started earlier, during dry weather, don’t work.
On Friday it’s still raining, so you rise early and check out all your reeds, and you practice a little. You have a 10:00–1:00 dress rehearsal for the evening concert. Then you go home and rest for a few hours. You play the concert on a reed that is good but not great. Tully is a nice hall, but you are not crazy about the way the reed sounds there. It sounded better in the rehearsal studio. Oh, well. No one notices, really: it is just an internal comfort level. You are a perfectionist and have the inner critic from hell, as most musicians do.
On Saturday you drive up to Connecticut, where the weekend concerts are. You play a rehearsal in the morning, a dress rehearsal in the afternoon, and then the concert at night. You rotate the reeds because you don’t want to use up the really good one in the rehearsals unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Truly exhausted after the concert, you drive home and try to sleep late on Sunday morning.
After Sunday breakfast, you drive to Connecticut for the 3:00 p.m. repeat concert and decide at the last minute to use a different reed bec
ause the weather has gone dry again and everything has shifted. The traffic back to the city from Connecticut is horrendous, and you don’t get home until 8:00 p.m. But you eat dinner and go into the studio at 10:00 p.m. to start a reed.
The next morning, Monday, you have a day off—but not really. You need to gouge cane and make reeds and practice for the music coming up this week. And you get a last-minute call for a Broadway show that night: Miss Saigon.
Your answer is yes. Always.
The Fallen
THE LADY SANG, but not for me.
In 1999, Jinx was diagnosed with tongue cancer. My mother swarmed to her like a drone to a queen. That scene of so many years ago at Bellevue Hospital, when Jinx was laid out in a suicidal coma-sleep, was replayed in Miami Beach. Now years later and wide awake, Jinx accepted all the kindness and attention finally coming her way. With frequent phone calls, a few visits, and lots of money—all the usual hallmarks of a concerned family—my mother came to the rescue of her twice-fallen yodeling Heidi.
Cancer seemed to be the great leveler. I would have traded places with Jinx in a nanosecond, just as I would have at Bellevue. I would have taken on a deadly disease if that were the perfect accompaniment for my mother’s aria. Sitting in the corner of Jinx’s living room during one of my many visits to Florida while she endured her treatments, I wore the dunce cap of a hidden sister, listening to a one-sided phone conversation. As I eavesdropped, it was clear that Jinx was lapping up the attention, but she never once mentioned my presence. Clearly it was best for me to remain invisible, offstage.
After a few months, I gingerly broached the elephant in the room.
“Jinx, this is all feeling pretty weird. The last time I was in Miami, I was sitting right there when Mother called. You didn’t even acknowledge that I was in the same room with you. And you’ve done this from the beginning, ever since you got sick and they showed up. Can’t you say something to Mother? You know I haven’t heard a word from her in seven years. Can’t you stick up for me? It feels as if you’re hiding me. I really don’t get this.”
I was at the pay phone in the backstage area in between the matinee and the evening performance of Beauty and the Beast. Ratty sofas were scattered throughout the backstage catacombs of the theater, and directly after the matinee I usually made a beeline for one of them and took a nap for an hour. Waking that afternoon, I’d headed for the pay phone in a corner by the ladies’ room and made my daily check-in call to Jinx.
“I’ll bring it up, but not now. It’s not the right time.”
“But when?”
Her tone began to change, reminding me of her defiance toward my father, years ago.
“I don’t know. It’s just not the right time. That’s all.”
“But she’s admitted to all the stuff Father did to you; all that stuff she wouldn’t talk to me about. She denied it all to me. And now, suddenly she’s on board—but for you.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. I felt her weighing her options. Jinx was crafty. I’d seen her work this new system during the last few months of her illness. I heard her tell one person one thing and another person something completely different—parents and friends alike.
Silence.
Uncomfortable, I broke in with additional propping up.
“I’m happy for you; don’t get me wrong. This is what’s supposed to happen in families—somebody gets sick, and the troops gather. But why can’t you stand up for me? Why?”
“Marcia, it’s not about you. This is about me, and I will talk to her when I’m ready. I’m just not going to rock that boat right now.”
“But what do you have to lose? You’ve got them in your pocket now. Why not, for God’s sake?”
“Marcia, stop it! I’m the one with the cancer!”
She was screaming now. I didn’t dare raise my voice, because I was in the theater at a public phone. But I couldn’t let it slide. She had to understand me.
“I know. I know you have cancer. But I stood by you, and I don’t have a family now because of that. I sacrificed everything for you. It’s been seven years now. Don’t you see that? You must see that.”
“Well, now I’ve got them, and I’ve got to do this the way I want. Because they owe me.”
I considered her reasoning and her very nature. A woman who had been brutally thrown away by her parents at a young age couldn’t be expected to know or understand anything about loyalty. I knew about true loyalty. I was the one who went back and back—with Steve and Bruce and my mother and my father. And now with Jinx.
“They owe me.”
She repeated her simple defense, and suddenly it all made sense. As a sober adult, Jinx still lived on the fundamentals of “getting over” and “getting back” and certainly settling scores. As money and attention came her way, she headed, zombielike, in that direction. Once, I was in her corner, sacrificing the bout for her. Now she was ill and could safely cast me aside and head for the gilded majority, who happened to be the parents we both longed for. And they really did owe her. How could I argue with that logic? Who could blame her?
Standing in the corner, hanging onto the pay-phone box, I let myself slide down onto my haunches and quietly cried into the phone. She reiterated her intended revenge.
“They owe me. And they’re going to pay.”
“But don’t you see? If you just say something, then she would know that I’m here, and then I would have a chance, too. Mother would accept me if it came from you. I know she would.…”
I heard her sigh heavily, with exasperation. Then I heard the roar of a wounded animal.
“Marcia, shut the fuck up!! Grow up and just leave me alone.”
The phone went dead. Without thinking, I called her back, but she didn’t give me a chance to utter a word.
“You bitch, fucking leave me alone. Don’t call me again.”
Decapitated again, I redialed. The line went dead with that unnerving fast beeping signal. She’d yanked the cord from the socket.
Sitting on the floor, deep in the catacombs of a Broadway theater, I turned again into a corner where two walls met at ninety degrees. I wasn’t really certain who was the mother or the child in my relationship with Jinx; we vacillated with an influx of support and need, depending on our specific vulnerabilities, throughout the last seven years of our relationship. As I silently wept the bitterest tears known to womankind, every nerve in my body went horribly numb, and a sense memory came up, choking my throat closed. I saw Jinx as my mother snapping yet one more cord away from me. Another mother who was killing me or simply turning her back on me for reasons I still could not yet fathom.
I sat in my ancient yet familiar crouched position and listened to the dressers and wardrobe ladies in the next room talk about their gardens and their husbands and their wonderfully simple lives. Actresses and makeup artists quietly walked past to use the restroom. I heard their bladders being emptied and their hands being washed. The towels being pulled down, the trash-can lid creaking open and slamming shut. A few of the orchestra ladies brushed their hands over my hair as they passed me on their way out.
I heard the announcement: “Half hour, ladies and gentlemen. Half hour. It is half an hour till the eight o’clock performance. For this performance, so-and-so will be in for so-and-so. So-and-so will be in for so-and-so. Half hour, ladies and gentlemen, half hour. It is now half hour.”
I had a show to play. Still shaky, I stood up, slipped into the ladies’ room, emptied my bladder, washed my face and hands, and entered the pit. I called in the performance.
Back at home after the show, crawling into my bed, I prayed for a deep sleep to release me. But my eyes would not close, and my mind would not quiet down. I was without a mother and father, and now I was without a sister.
Space
Seated inside a prestigious church on the Upper East Side of New York City, you prepare to begin a concert marathon of music called the St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach, telling the story o
f Jesus’s death on the cross. You’re not religious, yet religious content is immaterial to the profundity of the music. Nearly three hours long, the work requires you to play all three instruments in the oboe family: the oboe; the oboe d’amore, pitched a third below the oboe; and the English horn, pitched a fifth below the oboe. And yes, you have to make different reeds for each instrument.
For weeks, you prepare. You make lots of reeds in order to get exactly the right ones—those that will hold up and have the endurance necessary to perform this marathon work. Because it has numerous solo arias for the oboe, the Passion gives you a prominent voice. It’s like playing a concerto, many concertos, over the span of a three-hour concert. You want to put your own stamp of artistry on it yet at the same time be in service to the master composer of all time: Bach.
But there’s the endurance issue that worries you—and worries every oboist. Your mouth, your embouchure, which is the position of the mouth around the reed, has built up rigid, strong muscles over time, and you can surely play for long periods. But it is just muscle, after all, and you do get tired on occasion. And that is not a happy sensation, especially during a concert. The St. Matthew Passion tests the endurance of all oboists.
You are now into the performance at about the two-and-a-half-hour mark. Jesus, hanging on the cross, has died a few minutes before. Your right arm begins to go tingly and numb. The heavy weight of the English horn and the position of your right arm cause this. You are about to play the big chorus with bass solo and orchestra, which is one of your favorite sections. But your mouth is extremely tired, and you are very worried that you won’t be able to get through the piece. Or even hold up your instrument.
The music restarts; you begin. The whole orchestra, and the chorus and the soloists, must sense the strain of the evening. Then, what feels like a cloud of energy begins to gather at your feet, milky and vaporous. And as you play, this cloud spreads across the floor and envelops the whole orchestra. And you are aware that not only do you have the energy required to play, your mouth also feels as if it is not even on your face. Your right arm is suspended as if by an invisible sling. And as you play and notice these unusual sensations, you look around the orchestra and imagine that every person playing is buoyed by the same incredible energy and life force. And you’re hearing all the notes, every single note, being played and sung by everyone. But not only that: you also hear or sense all the spaces between the notes.
The Skin Above My Knee Page 17