The idea had just now come to her. “A proposition, actually.”
Remy didn’t allow herself to worry about the implications, or that she hadn’t yet worked out a plan. She thought for a moment, took a breath, and improvised.
Chapter 5
AT HAZEL’S BOUTIQUE, A WAFT OF LAVENDER OVERTOOK NICHOLAS like a cloud.
Hazel was behind the counter and looked businesslike in a way that made Nicholas ask, “Is this the right time?”
“Yes, Laura can cover for me. Give me just one second.”
“Of course.” Nicholas surveyed the shop, the ceramic clocks and marble sundials, paperweights embedded with malachite, silk patchworked scarves, batik prints sewn into throw pillows; he had been here just once before, for the grand opening. Hazel stepped out from behind the counter and said, “Here, we can talk in the back.”
Nicholas followed her to the rear of the store into the storage room, where Hazel’s coworker—petite and plump, a pair of reading glasses hanging from her neck like a stethoscope—was fishing through a pyramid of boxes. All along the walls, towers of cardboard and thick rolls of bubble wrap leaned precariously. Nicholas marveled: everyone, even Hazel, had some sort of clutter in a back room somewhere.
“This is Laura,” Hazel told Nicholas while Laura buried her arms in crinkled paper that she began weeding out like great tufts of cotton candy. Barely looking up, her eyeglasses swinging on their beaded chain between her breasts, she said, “I’m looking for more of those paperweights.”
“I can take care of that,” Hazel told her, “if you’ll cover for me up front.”
“Sure.” Laura disappeared back to the other side of the curtain. Hazel peered down at the pile of boxes and, as if after judicious selection, reached into one and pulled out a wrapped paperweight. “Good, here they are.” To Nicholas she said, “Have a seat. It’s good of you to stop by.”
“Well, you’re just around the corner, really.” Nicholas sat down on one of the folding chairs.
“School’s still in session, then?”
“This is the last week.”
“I wasn’t sure you were still going into the office, so I’m glad I caught you at Gary’s.” She said it in a fetching way; clearly she was wondering why he had called her from there. Already Nicholas sensed what Hazel often caused him to feel, that he was supposed to be offering up all kinds of information about his life. She looked at him almost as if she knew what had happened. But there was no way she could know, he reminded himself.
“It was odd hearing his voice,” Hazel continued. “I didn’t recognize it, I hadn’t spoken to him in so long.”
Nicholas smiled and said, “You never could stand him, could you? I always thought it was because he had a crush on you, that you must have sensed it. Or perhaps you two had more in common than you wanted to admit.”
“I doubt that,” Hazel said, clearly offended. “And I doubt I’m the only one to react that way to him.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Nicholas said. “I don’t think Remy has ever taken much of a shine to him, either. I remember a long time ago she was so upset when he spilled something on the carpet. Red wine, I think it was. She tried to pretend it was fine, but for a while there she could barely look at him.”
Hazel opened her eyes wide and looked at him oddly. It made Nicholas uncomfortable, so that he added, as jollily as possible, “Practically banished him from the house.”
Hazel was pursing her lips. What have I done now? Nicholas wanted to ask. Not just Hazel—Yoni, too. He still heard his voice, wondered what Remy could have told him. And now, with Hazel . . . the whole room felt suddenly perilous, the boxes potential avalanches all around them. I’m sorry! he wanted to say. I’ve made a mistake, and I’m sorry! Instead he took a casual breath and said, “So, our girl’s getting married.”
Now Hazel’s face relaxed. Quickly she listed ideas for the wedding—and what they could expect to pay. Nicholas watched the way her hair bounced lightly, so in contrast to the messy towers of boxes behind her.
“And I’m planning an engagement party,” Hazel was saying now. “For the third Sunday in June, since she and Josh will be here. I just have to finalize the time with her. I’ll make sure to send an invitation to you and Remy as soon as I do.”
“Oh, good,” Nicholas muttered. “Very nice of you.”
There it was again, the look in her eye—of concern, of worry—so that he could not but feel she wanted something from him.
“Well,” she told him, “thank you for stopping by. I appreciate it.”
Together they went back to the front of the store, past Laura polishing the collection of glass mobiles. At the door, Hazel said, “I hope everything is okay.” She sounded surprisingly earnest. “I feel like we haven’t spoken in a long time.”
“Yes,” Nicholas said. “The years go by like minutes sometimes, don’t they?”
“Indeed they do,” Hazel said, as if waiting for something. Her face was a different version of the face he had once loved—a pale, creamy one—and her hair lighter, too, as if she were only now being allowed to fully glow.
“Okay, talk to you soon,” Hazel told him.
But instead of saying good-bye, Nicholas heard himself say, “I still see you sometimes when I’m asleep. It sometimes happens in my dreams. Usually we’re still young, and Jessie’s very tiny, just born, and your hair is long, cascading down your back. And then I wake up and for a moment I don’t know where I am anymore.” The words came out in a rush.
Hazel leaned against the doorframe, as if suddenly weak. Quietly she said, “I have that dream, too, sometimes.”
Chapter 6
WHEN NICHOLAS ARRIVED AT THE DAY SHIFT THAT MORNING, the waitress with the heavy walk was fitting herself behind the counter. Shaking her head, she said, “Bad news about Harvey.”
“Oh no,” Nicholas said.
The old man had broken his hip; it took hours before he found help. “I guess that’s what happens when you live alone,” the waitress said. “I keep expecting him to walk through that door.”
Instead the anorexic woman had come in. She wore her hair in two low ponytails, and as she ordered her coffee with hot chocolate, her hair itself struck Nicholas as abhorrent. It was abhorrent that she should try to look youthful, when in reality she was just ill.
“With old people,” the waitress continued, “these are the things that do them in. Here—do you want to sign this card for him?”
Nicholas wrote his name into the card, adding a jaunty line about the twentieth-anniversary party. But his hand was shaking. How could he be so upset, when he barely knew the man? Well, he was still smarting from his conversation—if one could call it that—with Yoni. Hard not to keep puzzling over what Yoni could have meant. Even Hazel seemed to want more from him somehow. And now this. He looked to the mute television screen, where a perky-looking blonde was giving a report on what was apparently a new trend: beauty spas for dogs. Nicholas felt a surge of disgust.
Everything was rotten. And he still hadn’t figured out what to do for Remy.
On the television a little dog wore pink sneakers—four of them—and a matching bow in its hair. The newscaster nodded in conversation with its owner. Normally Nicholas found humor in such things, but today all he saw was one more indication that the world was going to pot. What an abomination, he thought. The crappiness of it all. He had little appetite when his eggs arrived and shifted them around on his plate; by the time he tried to eat them, they had gone cold.
HE WENT TO HIS OFFICE AND WORKED THERE INTO THE EVENING. IT was Friday, a Symphony night—Remy’s last performance of the season. She would be heading there right now. What he would do, to not have hurt her.
He stood, his legs stiff, and took Sylvane’s CD and manuscript from the envelope. He couldn’t help being curious. That at least he could count on; that he knew would be beautiful. He opened to the first page of the score, placed the CD in the stereo, and pressed Play.
At f
irst he was simply reading along as he listened. The opening was sparse, mere daubs of color, the woodwinds lightly touching the air. Then a slow repeated knell rose from the tuba, was caught by the French horn, increased in speed, and was lifted by trumpets until it became a siren skirling. But instead of whirling out of control, the trumpets were absorbed by the orchestra tutti and, after a long calming diminuendo, a lovely air emerged, a flute’s whispered wisdom, one of those runic melodies Sylvane so excelled at. Nicholas pictured a shady bower, a trickling bourn, blossoms dandled by a breeze. Gradually the music’s tracery widened, first into shimmering rills (the tremolo of the second violins), then broad ribbons of sound, and the woodwinds’ counterpoint against the first violins. The sound grew luxuriant, the brass a haunting chorus as the strings came together densely, a jungle of deep green vines. The thick tangle of the vines, the bright voices of the woodwinds . . . It was a gorgeous, luscious jungle, but he was lost.
He began to weep.
For the entire first movement he wept, sobs that tore at his chest. His lungs were exhausted by the time the second movement began. Nicholas became quiet, managed to flip ahead in the score to find his place. At the third movement, he rested his forehead on his desk and simply listened. Sylvane’s music crept up from the dale out toward the glade—the piping of a piccolo, its sunny tinctures. The brass and strings continued to weave their patterns, numinous harmonies, a panoply of voices.
For the finale, Sylvane had done something unusual—quite unlike her signature conclusion, that melancholic swell and gradual fading out that often left Nicholas with a feeling of quiet sadness, some dark effluvium hanging over everything. This time she had used a higher register, so that the sound was lighter, brighter, and there was an angular lilt from the violins, and the clarinets’ sudden bright accents, rooted by the cellos’ modulations. The sound became lucent, as if emerging triumphant from some hidden shadow. Yes, it was as though Sylvane had at last cleared her way through that forest, cleared out the knots and the darkness. What remained was vibrancy, without the lurking danger. Instead there was brilliance. As the woodwinds carried their melody up toward the sky, Nicholas felt his own heart lift.
He opened his eyes. She had done it, after so many years. She had made it through. Nicholas wanted to call out to her, Sylvane, at last, you did it! So much was possible, then.
He listened as the last reverberations died out, the tremolo of the violins like heat glimmering on a desert clearing. I’ve been saved, was his thought. I must tell Sylvane, You saved me.
But first—the thought came to him with clarity—I must make amends.
He stood from his desk. Yoni was absolutely right: How had he let these days pass by? So little time. These people in his life, the people he cared for . . . Only a few hours remained until Remy would have finished up at work. Time enough. Nicholas went to fetch the big, full plastic bag by the door.
AT NESTOR’S IT WAS STILL EARLY AND NOT MANY PEOPLE WERE ON the dance floor. Nicholas spotted Paula easily, amid a small group of young men, and waved.
She looked up from her beer and a made a surprised face, as the others followed her gaze. The young man next to her frowned and said something to Paula, then headed briskly toward Nicholas. Paula called, “You’re kidding, right?”
But the young man had already grabbed Nicholas by the shoulders and was pushing him toward the side door. “We don’t need you here.” He was taller than Nicholas, his bones thicker, his hands large.
“Please,” Nicholas heard himself say. “Pardon me, but—”
“Just use her and then disappear, is that how it goes?”
When Nicholas raised his hands in protest, the man simply grabbed one and dragged Nicholas outside, where the sky was now dark and the asphalt twinkled beneath the parking lights.
Nicholas said, “You’re hurting my wrist.”
“You’re hurting my wrist,” the man whined in a mocking voice, and in one fluid movement wrenched Nicholas’s arm back, twisting his wrist until something popped. Pain leapt from Nicholas’s left shoulder down through his forearm. He heard a cry and realized it was his own.
“Oh my God—stop it!” Paula was there, pulling furiously on the young man’s button-down shirt. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“He won’t bother you anymore.”
“He wasn’t bothering me! Are you insane?” The young man looked offended as Paula added, “God, Nicholas, are you okay?”
With surprise Nicholas said, “I can’t move my arm.”
“José, you idiot.” Paula reached for Nicholas’s arm but stopped when she saw that his wrist, too, was injured.
José put his hand on Paula’s shoulder and said, “Come on, girl—”
“Get the fuck away from me!” Paula’s face was red with anger. José turned, moping, and headed back into the club.
“Shit, Nicholas, does it hurt?”
“Well, yes.” He felt, incredibly, tears in his eyes. “I’m not sure how I’ll drive home.”
“You’re not going home. I’m taking you to the hospital. I think he dislocated your shoulder.” She exhaled loudly. “Jesus Christ. Where are your keys?”
“In my pocket. The left one.”
Paula reached into his pant pocket, swearing under her breath, and followed him to the car. “That creep just confirmed every suspicion I had about him.”
Only when he had sat down in the passenger seat, and Paula had closed his door and taken her place behind the wheel, did Nicholas realize that his legs were shaking.
“What are you even doing here?” Paula asked. “I thought you were through with dancing.”
“I was. But I never thanked you. I saw some wool, and . . .” He took a sharp breath, because a new, searing pain shot through his wrist.
“And you thought of me? That’s sweet.” Paula said it in a way that Nicholas couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.
“That bag of yarn, in the backseat. It’s for you.”
Paula gave a quick look toward the back. “All that’s for me?”
“I hope you’ll take it. I certainly don’t know what to do with it.”
“Are you serious—you really bought all of that for me?”
“It’s New Zealand wool. I remember you said that was the best.”
Paula had reached back to look inside the bag. “Wow.” She gave a loud exhalation and, glancing at his arm, said, “Your wrist is already starting to swell.”
It was red, throbbing. “It’s all right,” Nicholas told her, weakly, because it was all he knew to say.
BACKSTAGE, DURING INTERMISSION, REMY TRIED TO IMAGINE THAT this could be the last time. Next season she might be far away, no longer next to Carole at the front of the second violin section. Well, who knew what might happen. This morning, practicing the violin solo, she had felt something from long ago, from when she was still a girl. Aspiration. A furious wanting. It had stunned her, this determined yearning, so that she had to wonder: What had happened to the girl she had been, the one who wanted everything?
Now here was Christopher, with his carefully teased mustache and serious air. “Did you get my e-mail?”
“I haven’t checked it yet.”
“Just some more information. It looks really good, Remy, it’s an amazing opportunity.”
“I know. I looked up the m.d. again. She sounds terrific.” Thrilling, what could be a world-class orchestra, and directed by a woman.
“I’m telling you, she’s wonderful to work with. And she’s open to all kinds of new music.”
“I appreciate it, Christopher, really.” Remy recalled how she had felt back when she was a student, learning new work every week, that continuous self-renewal. And now, after so many years, she was feeling it again. She had practiced for so long yesterday, the bruise on her neck had developed a rash.
That she could capture again what she hadn’t felt since her student years, that sense of constant discovery, left her with a feeling of hope mixed with dismay. Hope tha
t she might find again what she had sworn all those years ago never to lose: commitment to her own talent. And dismay for what she had allowed herself to become: some lesser version of herself.
“We’d better get back,” Christopher said, and he and Remy returned to their seats.
THE CALL CAME AN HOUR LATER, WHEN SHE WAS LEAVING SYMPHONY Hall. Cybil’s voice through the cell phone was hoarse, explaining that she was at the hospital. “Mass. General. Yoni’s had a heart attack.”
Remy said, “No,” as if she could simply refute it.
“I just left you a message at home. He needs surgery.”
Remy had stopped walking and stood on the sidewalk, feeling lost. Despite the late hour, the avenue was busy, cars crowding past, their lights suddenly alarming in the dark of night. A stormy breeze swept Remy’s long skirt into an angry billow while Cybil said, “If you could come here.”
A taxi was passing, and Remy frantically waved him over. “I’m on my way,” she said, but her voice sounded funny; only when she had shut the taxi’s door and huddled, terrified, back in the seat did she realize that she was crying.
Chapter 7
SHE FOUND CYBIL IN THE WAITING AREA, HER FACE VERY PALE. Cybil explained what had happened, and that Yoni was sleeping now. Though still somehow neat, Cybil looked diminished, like a wet bird.
“They need to do emergency surgery. Normally they would wait until he was stronger, but they think—” Cybil slouched, something Remy had never seen her do. Remy wrapped her arms around her. Cybil whispered, “I’m so frightened!”
Remy clung to her tightly. “Where’s Ravit?”
“Trude’s with her.” Gertrude was Cybil’s sister. “Is Nicholas here?”
“I was going to ask you.”
Cybil shook her head. “I left him a message. Yoni asked for you. Earlier, before they had to rush him in. He really wanted to see you.”
“I want to see him.”
“He looks awful!” Cybil began to cry.
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