Sight Reading

by Daphne Kalotay

  She fought the thought away—ridiculous, really—and tugged the thick plastic from the carpet, watched the carpet roll slowly open like a yawn. The winding vines of orange, blue, and pink, the bold stamp of what looked like golden butterfly wings, the deep red flowers filling the border . . . Hazel found it comforting, something familiar and lovely in yet another new place. She patted down the edges and made sure it was straight.

  Ah, there. The carpet really was beautiful. Her parents had given it to them as a wedding present, and laying it out turned anyplace into home, no matter where in the world they had landed. Yet each time she unfurled it, desperate for it to work its magic, the same thought crept up: there was something petty in her lugging the carpet from here to there, something wrong with such emotional investment in a mere object.

  But that was why beautiful things mattered: their ability to alter the space around them—though to say it probably sounded shallow. Nicholas had no need for the carpet. He could spend weeks with nothing on the walls, claimed not to have noticed the apartment’s scratched floorboards and dirty bathroom tiles. Even the mediocre piano (Nicholas said it sounded tinny but would do) didn’t bother him. Well, it was just temporary, until they found something better. In the meantime, she wasn’t even going to bring the cat here; she had left him at her parents’ house, chasing birds from window to window.

  For now, she concentrated on dusting, washing, getting things off to a good start. The crate with their photographs and pictures hadn’t yet arrived, but she still managed to fix the place up, wiping down the windows, rearranging the furniture. It felt good to keep busy, keep her mind off things. Only when she went to hang the antique mirror did she again think of the woman at the hospital.

  It was from stress, Hazel told herself. Yet it was hard not to wonder. It had happened right after she dropped Jessie off at the day care area, while Hazel’s father was still up in the ICU. In the waiting area outside the playroom, on the other side of the glass partition, there was a woman sitting reading, her blond hair in a bandeau just like Hazel’s. But then the woman put down her magazine—and it was Hazel. Same wide-set blue eyes and pink-lipsticked mouth. Looking right past Hazel, she gave a little wave to someone in the playroom, then stood and smoothed her skirt.

  The sight had stopped Hazel in her tracks. But the woman just turned and headed down the corridor.

  Only now did it occur to Hazel that the woman must have been waving at Jessie. The thought nearly took her breath away. Ought I to ask Jessie? But no, that would just be confusing. Anyway, sometimes people just look very alike. Just because someone looked identical and was even wearing the exact same skirt with a butterfly pattern on it didn’t make her the exact same person. But she wasn’t even really there, Hazel reminded herself—it was just some momentary mental glitch, from being overtired, from traveling with a small child, from worrying about her father (who was back home now, recovering just fine).

  Yet she knew what people said about doppelgängers, what they might portend. Which was why she hadn’t mentioned it to Nicholas. She didn’t want to worry him. Anyway, it wasn’t real—just some sort of mirage, from a tension headache, probably. No point in telling Nicholas.

  By the time he returned with Jessie, Hazel had cleaned the refrigerator, wiped down the kitchen shelves, oiled the cabinet doors, and lined the drawers with contact paper. She looked up from where she was crouched over a stain in the linoleum to see Nicholas with Jessie asleep on his shoulder. He winked at her and went to put Jessie down in her bed. When he came back, he sniffed the air and said, “Smells like lemon.”

  “Orange,” Hazel said. “Even the walls were grimy. I had to disinfect them. How was it?”

  “Jessie was an angel.” And then, “I invited some people from the department over tomorrow evening. I thought you’d like to meet them.”

  Hazel felt her lips pursing. “You did what?”

  “Just a small gathering, nothing special.” The way he said it, lightly but defensively, made it clear that he was fully aware of what he had done. After all, this was not the first time he had inflicted a roomful of guests on her at the very moment their home was in shambles and the fridge empty.

  “Nicholas, you know I’m not prepared to entertain! Look at this place!” Hazel stood up and, instinctively, began to look for the feather duster.

  “It doesn’t have to be anything posh. We’ll just buy some cheese and crackers and some drinks. Please don’t get upset.”

  “How can you tell me not to get upset? I’m the one who has to get everything ready.”

  “That’s not true. I’ll do it.”

  “Oh, you will?” Hazel nearly laughed. “Do you have any idea what needs to be done? Have our dishes even arrived yet?”

  “We can buy paper ones.”

  “Paper ones!” Hazel felt a familiar tension climbing the back of her neck. She tore open another cardboard box and found it full of cooking utensils. How like Nicholas to have left it sitting here for weeks.

  “Just cocktails,” he said now. “So my new friends can meet you.”

  Annoyed as she was, Hazel felt that old warmth rise inside her, knowing that Nicholas wanted to show her off. But then she recalled that her one box of clothing she had sent by ship, to save on the cost; it wouldn’t arrive for another two weeks. Anything elegant—her silk dress and sling-backs and the skinny chain belt—was either down at her parents’ place or crushed in a trunk somewhere on the Atlantic. She had packed for Boston too practically, no heels or blouses or festive skirts. Even Jessie’s toys hadn’t yet arrived. Her head throbbed with the thought.

  “Really,” Nicholas said, “you won’t have to do a thing.”

  “Ha!” Hazel began plucking implements out of the cardboard box. In moments like this, it was clear Nicholas didn’t understand a thing—about her, about life. She would have to work very hard to make the apartment presentable by tomorrow night. Why, she wasn’t even sure that the kitchen was in full working order. Yet already in the back of her mind she had begun planning a light menu: Wheat Thins and good French cheese, some carrots and celery with homemade dip. A tomato and mozzarella salad. Mixed nuts with the big silver nutcracker—oh, good, here was the nutcracker, at the bottom of the box. There was so much to do.

  REMY WAS STILL IN HER FIRST YEAR OF VIOLIN LESSONS WHEN MRS. Sylvester called on her parents, explaining that they should invest in private lessons and music camp and eventually a better instrument, since their little girl had talent, and talent was not to be ignored.

  Her parents regarded her with an astonished pride, as if they had won some lottery they hadn’t even put in for. “Have you practiced enough?” they began asking daily, though already Remy had calloused fingertips and a purplish streak where the violin rubbed her neck. That summer she attended orchestra camp, her first time apart from her parents for more than a few days. She was one of the youngest; the older violinists already knew how to play vibrato and didn’t have to reach up on tiptoe to feed coins into the pay phone to call home. At camp’s end, everyone was given a record cut with the orchestra’s final performance, the Khachaturian on one side, Mozart on the other, and at home Remy listened to it over and over, amazed that sounds she had created had been captured in the grooves of black vinyl.

  By then a private teacher had been hired, a tiny Estonian woman named Mrs. Lepik, whose violin captivated Remy. Its scroll, unlike Remy’s simple swirl of brown wood, had been carved into a small head; looking up over the neck beyond the peg box was the chiseled face of a man with a short-brimmed hat and curly beard. Remy wondered what it would feel like to be Mrs. Lepik and always have that little man behind her hand peering at her.

  “I’m glad you not a whizzy kid,” Mrs. Lepik announced at Remy’s first lesson. “This way you grow up normal, much better.”

  Remy would have preferred to be a prodigy, actually, to more easily fulfill Mrs. Lepik’s demands. She was to commit all pieces to memory and play not just straight scales but their relative mi
nors. Her sheet music was ordered from a shop in New York, since only specific editions by specific publishers would do. Mrs. Lepik was exacting and could spend weeks on a chosen topic. Much of Remy’s first lesson was devoted to proper posture: feet firm on the floor, no unnecessary movement. “No, too stiff! Bend a little the knees. Not so much! No sway, just little bouncy in the knee.”

  The following weeks were spent on using the full length of the bow. “Bow is as important as left hand! Maybe more important! Fingers create pitch, but bow allows you to sing.” On her violin with the old man watching, Mrs. Lepik demonstrated perfect control even at the very bottom of a stroke. Even when she played very slowly, the bow didn’t slide or angle or tremble at all. “We must create illusion, one long line that never end!” Yet as soon as Remy had mastered this long, smooth, never-ending bow stroke, Mrs. Lepik switched to staccato, and Remy had to play her scales and arpeggios with staccato bowing, to learn a down-bow staccato as controlled as her up-bow. . . .

  Her life was practice, lessons, and rehearsals, seasons marked by recitals as much as holidays. Her memories were pinned to specific pieces—the winter of Waxman’s “Carmen Fantasy,” the spring of the Haydn quartet. School was simply the place from which she dashed every afternoon to her parents’ van, which delivered her, with two other students, to the town where the All-State Orchestra rehearsals took place. By high school she was making a small salary playing in pit orchestras for musicals nearby. And so a split occurred, the sense that, while school just got in the way of things, her real life was elsewhere. All her energy was spent moving toward that other place. Her life was one of perpetual preparation.

  “REPETITION NEED NOT BE BORING,” JULIAN SAID TO REMY. HE HAD BEEN her teacher for the past four years and could say this sort of thing without hurting her feelings.

  “You’ve got a lot of repeated phrases here”—he pointed to a section of the Bach partita she was preparing for her senior recital—“so you’re going to have to find ways to keep them interesting. When things become too familiar, we lose interest.”

  “I made the repetitions softer,” Remy said, “like it says in the score.”

  “Yes, but that, too, becomes predictable once you’ve done it a few times. How about making some of them louder?”

  “They’re marked piano!”

  “It doesn’t matter what the score says if it’s not helping the music come to life.”

  Remy recalled Mr. Elko saying as much. She hung her head—at being someone who always followed instructions, always did what she was supposed to do.

  I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

  She, too, wanted to live brilliantly. Freely, decadently, like Oscar Wilde. Like Samantha, who always managed to have fun and though she wasn’t even the most beautiful student here had somehow—through her confidence, her carriage, her long blond hair—convinced everyone that she was.

  But decadence was impossible for a serious-minded musician. The long hours of practice were the very reason Remy excelled, why she might, with luck and more hard work, succeed. No, she was no Anne-Sophie Mutter—but one needn’t be a celebrity to be a success.

  Samantha, on the other hand, barely even practiced her viola anymore since deciding to go for a degree in music therapy. Though she was younger than Remy, she had already had an affair and an abortion and was moving to New York straight from graduation. How would it feel, Remy wondered, to be that carefree? What would that sort of letting go feel like?

  “If you’re uncomfortable changing the dynamics,” Julian said, reaching for his pencil, “then let’s change up the fingerings. That’ll help alter the sound. Nice haircut, by the way.”

  “Oh—thanks.” Remy reached up to where her curls ended. She had cut them short, impulsively, into a bob. She was tired of being (as she had been, so pointedly, at the jazz club with Samantha) the girl no one noticed, the one with no real haircut, no real style at all.

  But the haircut hadn’t made her feel any different. Peter, a clarinetist who lived on her hallway, said it made her look French—but he was probably just hoping Remy would make out with him again, as she had at a party last month. Just the other day he’d played Remy a tape of a late Beethoven quartet and then declared, “Now you’ve been deflowered.” The comment had bothered her enough that she had nearly slept with him, just to set him straight. But she’d had her conservatory flings (brief ones were all she had the energy for) and didn’t desire anything like that with Peter.

  “Here, give this a try.” Julian set his pencil down.

  Remy sighed at the new fingerings. The piece wasn’t just for her senior recital; it was also for her audition for Conrad Lesser. He had retired from touring and was offering a summer course for a few select students. Julian said it was an opportunity not to be missed. But no one knew exactly what Lesser might be looking for. Besides the Bach partita and a Brahms violin sonata, Julian had Remy preparing two different études and scales in all keys—not just straight scales but in thirds and sixes and tenths, and with every possible bowing combination, exercises Remy hadn’t practiced since her second-year exams. Julian said Lesser might be a stickler for the basics.

  “Was that a sigh I heard?”

  Remy nodded wearily.

  “No time to get antsy. You’re almost there. You just need to keep focused.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  I can resist everything but temptation.

  Remy brought her bow to the strings and tried the new fingerings.

  THE PARTY WAS A SMALL AFFAIR. AND YET AT FIRST HAZEL HAD trouble keeping track of who was who. For one thing, Nicholas had consistently referred to his department head as “Jack Sprat” so that now, meeting him and his indeed plump wife, Hazel could not for the life of her recall their actual names. And then there was the gray-haired man named George or Frank; Hazel heard both and didn’t know which was correct.

  “Nice apartment,” George or Frank said, after Hazel had taken his coat. She told him thank you, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to take any credit for the place. She had managed to neaten it up (washed the floors, polished the table and chairs, put Jessie’s few things out of sight, in her room, where she was now asleep), but without Nicholas’s books or Hazel’s framed pictures, and Jessie’s set of toddler furniture not yet arrived, the place looked only partially inhabited. “The conservatory found it for Nicholas. Since his appointment was so last-minute.”

  Mrs. Sprat was fitting herself into a chair near her husband. “Yeah, so, it’s all a big cover-up,” one of the younger men was saying—the heavyset, sloppy-looking one with the cracker crumbs at the corner of his mouth. “Nobody’s talking, though.” He was leaning back in their one good armchair, going on about some local scandal involving a city councillor. He didn’t work at the conservatory. His name was Gary, and he was a freelance journalist. A few weeks ago he had written a fawning article about Nicholas, with two misquotes that Nicholas maintained were much better than what he had actually said. This evening he had already managed to mention, as if in passing, having met President Reagan and Isabella Rossellini—but Hazel could tell that “met” might be an overstatement.

  “Mollusks,” the other young man, Yoni, declared. “Spineless, the lot of them.” He was slim and dashing and had an Israeli accent. Two girls, both of them skinny and slim-hipped, sat on either side of him on the couch. Students from the conservatory—though Hazel detected a girlfriend-y air. Something about the way they reclined there, the alignment of their bodies with his: Could they both be his girlfriends? They looked absolutely comfortable, as though they sat on that couch all the time. Perhaps they did sit there all the time. Her pulse hastened with the thought. This wasn’t at all what she had pictured for the party.

  “But won’t someone leak the truth?” Frank or George asked. He was pushing all of his tomatoes from the tomato-mozzarella salad over to the edge of his plate. Hazel’s heart sank while Gary the newspaperman began talking about press leaks. “The
re’s bound to be something about it in the Herald.”

  A debate began about responsible journalism while Hazel served a bit of the mozzarella salad to herself, to see what was wrong with the tomatoes. “Do you think any of it will come back to haunt City Hall?” Nicholas asked, beside her on the love seat.

  “Nah.” Gary took a dismissive gulp from his wine. “That’s not the way it works.” Nicholas often collected people like this, loud, boastful ones from some field he didn’t know enough about. He thought Gary brilliant simply because he wrote for a newspaper. Hazel hadn’t dared point out that the article about Nicholas, overboard in its flattery, was full of lazy journalistic quirks. No, all the love and admiration she had for Nicholas would never be enough; he needed to hear it from some guy with a journalism degree.

  “Your wife’s a looker,” she had overheard Gary tell Nicholas after she had been introduced. And though it had pleased her to hear it, and to hear Nicholas say, “I think so myself,” she couldn’t help recalling the way Nicholas had been early in their courtship: so bowled over, he could barely speak. Sometimes he had even fumbled his words, not nervous so much as overwhelmed—with happiness, it seemed, and a sense of his own luck. Back then, he had just begun to seriously pursue composing, and there was a sense of discovery about him. Weekly concerts, church choruses, friends’ debuts, Nicholas’s own premieres . . . All were a pleasure to Hazel, just as England itself suited her—the museums and high streets, the Bergamot tea and crumbling biscuits, the sound of church bells and the charming accents around her. The very fact that people weekended in Spain, in Paris, as casually as a Virginian might drive to the mountains . . .

  Gary was still holding forth on political corruption in Boston. Mr. Sprat said jokingly, “See what kind of a place you’re moving to, Hazel?”