I Bring Sorrow_And Other Stories of Transgression

by Patricia Abbott

  Could the placement of an object invite intimacy? I eye the jars of moisturizer, eye cream, and exfoliant, angled on our neighbor’s sink after a visit from Kerrie Bauer, and doubt it.

  Number seven: a lot of the conversation used as illustration here highlights Kerrie’s seventh bad trait. She makes excuses. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” is a phrase she uses whenever I point out that someone’s feelings might be hurt.

  “I was just trying to help,” or, “That’s just me,” are two of her favorite defenses. A recent fender-bender was the other guy’s fault even after an eyewitness refuted this notion. The hurt feelings of her secretary after Kerrie’s six-month evaluation spread virally was met with, “I didn’t hire her; she was a legacy.”

  Her go-to defense for everything is, “Well, that’s the way I was raised.” She was, apparently, taught to be mean, petty, a bit of a racist, and vindictive, although I’ve never seen these traits in her brother, Brad, who works with mentally challenged kids, or her sister, Sister Marguerite.

  Number eight: Kerrie manufactures information to back up her points. She lies, to be blunt. She’s able to do this without skipping a beat. For many years, she claimed it was Martha Stewart who recommended a combination of salt and vinegar to remove carpet stains. I took her at her word. When she quoted the ADA as saying that water picks were actually more effective than electric toothbrushes, I bought one at once. When she said that sociologists had data proving most men urinate sitting down, and, in fact, sitting improves the strength of their stream, I sat. When she told Max, our son, that seventy-five percent of the National League batting champs routinely took a pitch, he took one—even when his coach was flashing the hit sign. Her advice is often sound, but she’s convinced she needs to back it up with the words of an expert.

  “You want me to pee sitting down so none of it lands on the floor. Admit it.”

  “That would be an added bonus, but, really, I’m thinking of what’s best for you.”

  “I won’t be one of those men who scuttle into a stall, afraid other men are eyeing them.”

  “I won’t be following you into any stalls. But at home…”

  “I have my own bathroom, and I clean it myself.”

  A shrug. “Of course, there’s the powder room to consider. A plumber told me stray urine is responsible for much of the mold under bathroom floors. Don’t you have a mold allergy?”

  Number nine: you’re going to wonder why I took so long to get to this one. Kerrie murdered her mother. She doesn’t know that I know this, but I do. It was back in the first decade of our marriage, after Max was born but before Ella. Kerrie’s mother, an annoying woman to be truthful, and one who hadn’t shown much interest in her daughter from birth on—well, who would with the other two headed for heaven—was diagnosed with a debilitating disease and came to live with us. There was no one else to take care of her, and not enough money to pay for a suitable facility. Kerrie took a leave from her law practice to get her settled in, gave the situation a two-or three-month trial, and when things didn’t work out, covered Helda’s face with a pillow. It was surprisingly quick due to the breathing issues her mother was dealing with. I watched from the stairway—knowing in my heart that she’d spotted me there. I believe this to be Kerrie’s only murder, but I can’t be completely sure.

  Every so often in the months following Helda’s death, I’d see Kerrie looking at me curiously. Did she wonder why I didn’t confront her? What good would that do? I was saving up the clout the knowledge earned me. In those early years of our marriage, her other bad traits weren’t so blatant. I felt sure I would eventually get my dick in her mouth or at least beat her at backgammon.

  Number ten: I’m more and more convinced Kerrie is getting ready to kill me, so I guess this would qualify as something I hate about her. She’s mentioned several times that my job seems to be in jeopardy. My days at home too?

  “Studies show that men over fifty are rarely creative in business,” she quotes from one of her specious sources today. “Those who have absorbing hobbies fare best in retirement.” She is mopping scattered drops of urine from my bathroom floor as she says this. Being unsteady on my new knee is understandable, no? I like the view of her on her knees and prop myself to observe better.

  “Perhaps you should begin thinking of a second career.” Kerrie scrubs every inch of tile with my new toothbrush.

  “Say, while you’re on your knees,” I suggest, shooting up an eyebrow. She shoots back that look. “Well, it could be therapeutic,” I finish lamely. I watch as she puts the brush back in the holder, giving me a smirk.

  It is this tenth item that brings me to the decision that I must kill her first. If she divorces me, I lose seventy percent of the income I’m used to. I’ll also lose my children. In a divorce…well, Kerrie looks very good on paper—the woman who, despite her lucrative and demanding law practice, is a Girl Scout Leader and coaches Little League. Also, she keeps a spotless house, is a gourmet cook, and a powerhouse intellectually. Who could wrestle custody or alimony away from someone like that?

  A bit later, as I’m holding her head down in the tub of water she’s just filled for my bath, I remember something that makes me loosen my grip. I’ve taken on too much with this method of murder given our respective conditions. Why didn’t I opt for poison? Why didn’t I plan it carefully instead of jumping into it? Impetuosity had always been one of my worst traits.

  I will fail in this attempt since Kerrie’s hoisted weights at her gym for ten years, uses a rowing machine when the river’s too frozen for competition, lifted me from my bed daily over the last month. And I am easily overturned these days, much like a table with uneven legs. Like old Humpty Dumpty on his wall.

  This lapse in concentration insures my downfall, and in less than thirty seconds our positions are reversed and she looms over me. As I struggle fruitlessly—my feet can’t make purchase with the wall tile, my ass sticks annoyingly to the tub’s bottom, and I have put on enough weight to make me clumsy—it occurs to me that Kerrie must view this as one more competition, one last chance to best me. Beneath the roiling bath water, I can hear her chastising me for not trying hard enough, for splashing water on the newly clean floor, for trying to position my dick in her mouth, for filling the bath water with the flatulence brought on by my fear.

  But I do have her full attention now, if only for a minute or two more.

  I Bring Sorrow to Those Who Love Me

  Serious study of the cello begins with Bach’s Cello Suite No 1.

  Prelude

  When he first spotted Nanette de Fiore, she was seated in one of the practice rooms at Oberlin College. From his oblique perspective, the instrument seemed to be playing itself, its shadow falling sharply on the white walls. Only a few smudges suggested a presence behind it.

  Her hair looked sculpted, drawing attention to a perfect skull. Her neck was long and delicate, her back perfectly straight—cello-like. A pair of unfashionable ochre cat-eye glasses teetered mid-nose. It was the glasses that pierced his heart.

  Once recovered, Eli realized her bowing technique needed work; there was too much tension in her wrist, producing minute but discernible breaks in the music—the skittery sound he’d heard disparaged by musicians at his home in Northampton.

  “Look, would you mind if I corrected your position?” he asked when she paused.

  “More experienced people than you haven’t found my position wanting.” She squinted up at him and suddenly seized the tottering glasses, stashing them in the music stand. Her scowl singed from across the room.

  Back away, a voice in his head warned him.

  Ignoring both her comment and the voice in his head, he continued, “And, while we’re at it, I really don’t care for your thumb placement.” He moved closer. “Make a ball of your hand—like this.”

  He demonstrated, and when she didn’t move, he took her hand—her
very cold hand—and closed it, placing the correct part of her thumb in the proper place between the frog and the grip.

  Eli Hauser didn’’t play the cello. He wasn’t even studying music. But both of his parents were in a chamber group—violin and viola—and he recognized good technique. He’d been raised in the company of fine cellists.

  Reluctantly, Nan drew the bow across the strings. She looked unconvinced for a split second, but then, liking what she heard—a smooth, continuous sound—she looked up and smiled. “How long have you been playing?” She drew the bow again and grinned.

  He paused, wondering how to answer that without losing the slight edge his role as teacher had won him. The door to freedom lay only twelve feet away, but he turned his back on it.

  ***

  Allemande

  Nan was so devoted to the cello that it was difficult for Eli to lure her away in the following weeks. Ignoring interested glances and even explicit overtures from other girls on campus, he hung around Nan’s practice room as if it were a hive and he, a drone. He admired, resented, and misunderstood her commitment to the cello, lacking devotion to any pursuit himself. Except, perhaps, to Nan.

  His situation reminded him of his childhood, the years when he was dragged across the globe to stand in the wings or wait with non-English speaking child-minders in hotel rooms while his parents performed in the great concert halls. Perhaps he’d been trained for this task—standing and waiting—and nothing more.

  “Is she good?” he asked his mother when his parents came to the campus to give a recital. Mother and son were standing outside a practice room, eavesdropping, while his father took his afternoon nap.

  His mother frowned, patting his shoulder. “Ah, Eli. Well, she’ll never be a soloist, certainly. But she might find a position in a second, or perhaps third tier orchestra. Or with a good regional chamber group.” She listened a bit longer. “She has a certain feeling for the music. Bach’s Suite No. 1, I see.” She nodded approvingly. “That’s a good starting place.”

  Was her judgment too harsh? Her son knew about harsh verdicts.

  At age twelve, Eli awoke one morning to find his violin missing. In its place was an expensive camera, one he’d been privately coveting for months. He never asked about the missing violin, and no one ever mentioned it again. In fact, when he saw his former teacher at a recital, each of them averted their eyes—as if deeply embarrassed by their joint failure. Neither of his parents suggested he try piano or clarinet—something he expected but dreaded, which probably meant he lacked the proper feel for the music, rather than a specific skill. This was a criticism his parents leveled at many of their private students just before dropping them.

  His disappointment was eventually soothed by his proficiency with the new camera, and he turned its lens toward his parents and their coterie. A lucrative business took shape before he’d finished high school. His musical knowledge, his eye for placement of musicians and their instruments, his intuition of what would please, guaranteed success. By his senior year, he was designing flyers and taking photos for professional programs.

  “Hey, you.” He’d crept into Nan’s practice room between movements. “I have tickets to a concert at Severance Hall.” He waved them in front of her eyes. “Tempted?”

  “Yoyo Ma?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  And later that Friday night, for the first time in the many months he’d pursued her, she gripped him as enthusiastically as she did her cello. He pushed down the tiny knot of panic that swelled inside him. He’d dreamed nightly of those legs opening for something more than her cello.

  ***

  Courante

  Progress was measured. When Nan wasn’t practicing the cello, taking required classes, or attending peer performances, she listened to important recordings on her CD player. Or she studied videotapes of technique. He could sometimes lure her away for a concert or a movie with an interesting musical score. Bergman’s Cries and Whispers was her favorite. But any suggestion of a football game, a Hollywood comedy, or dinner was met with little interest.

  “I can’t spare the time,” she said unapologetically. “I’m hoping to be invited to perform at a church in Chagrin Falls next week. Their regular cellist has mono.”

  Sometimes his patience was rewarded with a quick tryst. But those times were often more depressing than gratifying. He could feel a symbolic chucking of his chin, as if she were saying, “There now, that’s done. Off to rehearse.”

  He also sensed a certain rhythmic quality to her sexual performance—as if she were mentally playing her instrument while permitting entry from his.

  “Has she improved?” he asked his mother in his junior year.

  “Oh, yes,” his mother said. “Nanette’s doing nicely.”

  “So she’ll be invited to play with a good orchestra or chamber group after all?”

  His mother shook her head. “She wouldn’t be a candidate for a position at a major orchestra, I’m afraid. Times being what they are.” She listened for a minute, droopy-eyed.

  “Still working on Suite 1, is she? My goodness.”

  “Sometimes I imagine, or even hallucinate, that her hand and the bow are one,” he said, squinting. “Do you see it?”

  He’d read hallucinations were not necessarily a sign of mental illness, and he clung to this hope.

  “See how they seem to merge on the forward movement?” He nudged his drowsy mother awake. Nanette’s effect on him was seismic. He could feel a shift in the room.

  “See what?” his mother said, not really listening to him—as was so often the case.

  He wondered if Nan knew she wasn’t first-rate. Had her new instructor, a Korean named Dr. Seung, warded off high expectations?

  “So is this Seung any good?” he asked Nan later.

  “We are very simpatico,” she said.

  He wondered if that meant she was sleeping with him. It was unlikely she’d risk the purity of the student-teacher relationship with a dalliance though.

  If her hand and the bow were one, shouldn’t she be first-rate? Shouldn’t perfect unity with her cello mean something? It was only when she stepped away from her instrument, out of its orbit, in fact, that he saw her clearly, without the tremor of cracked spacings—a concept in art that explained the phenomenon. Cracked spacings occurred when a painting was split after completion, leaving impressions of the original composition in both halves. Nan without her cello seemed incomplete—a loss of the centaur moment. Her hands looked bereft without a bow, a fingerboard. All of it.

  ***

  Sarabande

  They married soon after her master’s degree was complete.

  “You understand?” she said on his proposal. “You understand how it is?”

  He froze, expecting some distressing confession to pour from her mouth.

  “You understand the music will always come first.” Her foot tapped rhythmically on the floor.

  He nodded, relieved. This was how it’d always been, and in some way he was drawn to it; he wasn’t sure he’d know what to do with a surfeit of devotion.

  Eli was often on the road, following classical musical groups and occasionally a pop one with his camera. He placed a photo in Rolling Stone and another in Spin. He had a gallery show in Chelsea, another in Chicago. Overnight somehow, they became affluent—not that she was impressed or even seemed to notice.

  “I’m home,” he yelled from the foyer, dropping his overnight bag on the tiled floor. Her one request in their search for a house had been a music room. Here she spent most of her hours.

  He could hear music. The location of the music room insured any piece played would swell throughout the walls of the brownstone. Like her body’s relationship with her cello, her music occupied every crevice of their home. She was playing Britten today. Sometimes it only seemed like she played Bach continuously. Despi
te his weariness with the Bach, he was wary of a change in atmosphere and the possibilities it might signal.

  “Nan,” he yelled again. The music stopped and he heard her sigh. The acoustics were good enough to pick up even a frisson of displeasure.

  “I was nearly finished. Now I’ll have to begin again.”

  For a second, he wondered if she’d forgotten his name. And why did she have to begin again? If she erred, even on a final note, she started fresh.

  “Wait. I’ve brought you a present, Nanny.” Silence. He bounded up the steps and found her fiddling with her pegs. “Did you hear me? I brought you something special.”

  He’d been in Munich for ten days and had missed her every minute. He searched her face for a familiar expression, a sign. Had she noticed his absence? He held out the bright blue bag. When he wasn’t home, did anyone stop her from playing night and day? Sometimes he cursed the thickness of their walls, which hid her obsession from their neighbors. Only an open window gave her away.

  Nan looked up and smiled, finally seeing him. Pulling out the wrapped gift, she opened it excitedly. Usually, he brought home rare CDs or autographed sheet music. Gifts she loved. But this was something special, he hoped. In seconds, she was holding up the music box. Hesitantly, she opened its lid. He knew she was worried that the music would be a violin piece, an instrument she barely tolerated.

  “Can you really abide that screeching sound? I know your mother plays violin, but…” She’d said such things on many occasions. Brought up on the violin, he didn’t hear the sounds she apparently did. Both instruments—when played well—were similarly melodic to him.

  “It’s Dvorak,” she said a second later, the gift-wrap at her feet. She sounded puzzled. Puzzled and a bit annoyed.

  “There’s a shop outside Munich, which has quite a selection. Even Philip Glass.”

  She giggled nervously. “Surely not Glass!” She listened a second or two longer then shut the lid.

  “Thank you, Eli. Very artfully made.”