I went out to get some water from the pop machine next to the laundry room. Lenny was in the office, leaning back in his chair with his fingers laced together behind his head, both feet up on his desk. He dragged his gaze from the flickering television in the corner when he heard me come in, the bells on the door tinkling as it swung shut behind me. I slid a five across the counter, asked him for some change. Then I asked him what his wife’s name was.
He narrowed his eyes, cocked his head to one side.
“What did she do now, she forget something? You need anything, you just call me and ask, right? Like I told you before.”
“My room is fine. She does a great job, I just wondered what her name was, so when I see her around, I could say hello, you know, properly.”
“Her name is Petrovich, like my name. You call her that. Mrs Petrovich. But she don’t talk much to the customers, my wife, she is afraid of her English. You need something, it’s better you talk to me. Eleven years since we come to Canada, still she learns nothing in English.” Lenny shook his head, like I should feel sorry for him. Like I understood his troubles.
I took my stack of coins and left. Mrs Petrovich’s cart was parked in the courtyard next to the laundry room doors, and I followed the sound of a vacuum cleaner to a room whose door had been propped open with an old brick. She was inside, and looked a little startled when I waved at her from the doorway. She turned off the vacuum and stood up straight, tucked a stray bit of hair back behind her ear, nervous.
“You need more towels?” she almost whispered it, her eyes fixed on the carpet right in front of her feet.
I smiled wide. “I don’t need a thing. I just wanted to thank you for your hard work. My room is always so clean, Mrs Petrovich. You do such a good job around here.”
She covered her smile with one hand, and shooed me off with the other, shaking her head and blushing, suddenly ten years younger. Turned the vacuum back on to change the subject, waiting for me to leave before going back to work.
Back in my room, I opened my journal and thought for a long minute before picking up my pen.
4:10 p.m. Stress level: medium. Maybe a little bit high for a guy on holiday. Should have kept my mouth shut about the gay thing. What made me think Hector would care if I approved of his lifestyle anyways? Weather: cloudy, with a slow-moving cold front developing over breakfast. Mood: mostly mellow, with a bit of a breeze in my belly in the late afternoon, as my cello lesson gets closer.
The front of Caroline’s house had a sideways grin on its dilapidated face. The front stairs had once been given a thick coat of lipstick red, but now they sagged in a sorry pout, the paint long worn into the cracks. There was a loop of baling wire twisted into an oval noose that I had to lift off a picket in the fence to open the gate, leaving rust rings on my fingers.
I stood on the porch, the bottom of the cello case resting on the top of my boot in the soft spot behind my steel toe, my journal tucked into the warmth under my arm. Two freshly sharpened pencils and a brand new eraser in my coat pocket. I was sucking on some Tic Tacs just in case, as I wasn’t sure what kind of physical proximity might be involved in demonstrating proper cello technique.
I knocked on the door in three separate bursts, but there was no answer. Then I heard the gate squeak open and shut behind me.
“You must be Joseph? Sorry I’m late.”
I assumed this must be Caroline, negotiating the baling wire loop around a backpack and a bunch of dry cleaning. Her dry cleaning bag got caught on the gate and she let forth a stream of swear words which would have made my mother blush, especially coming from a woman no older than twenty-five.
“This place should be condemned. Good thing it’s so cheap.”
She jangled up the walk towards me, wearing what I would estimate at a pound of bangles on each wrist, stacked like slinkies halfway up both arms. Her fingers all rings and black nail polish. She breezed past me, a huge ring of keys adding to the clatter, and unlocked the door, kicking it open with a knee-high boot. Went straight for the thermostat in the hallway, cranked it up.
“Fucking see my breath in here. Can’t play the cello with gloves on. Come on in already, and close the door. Jeezus. I’ll make us some tea while it warms up in here a bit. Don’t worry about your boots.”
She disappeared down a narrow hall wallpapered with band posters, blowing into her hands. She left her coat on, which looked like it was made from the same stuff they make those matching bathroom sets, except hers was dark violet, whereas the set in my mom’s guest bathroom was more light pink, to match the little shell-shaped hand soaps you weren’t actually supposed to wash your hands with, because they were matching.
I followed her into the kitchen, feeling weird for still wearing my boots all the way inside someone else’s house. She came to a brief stop, just long enough for me to get a close look at her. Her face all angles, but somehow prettier than that sounds, a thumbtack of a nose, her lips wine-coloured, with an even darker outline, like a cartoon pin-up girl’s mouth. Eyebrows thinned almost into obscurity. Black caterpillars for eyelashes, and what looked like super fine sparkles winking from her cheeks and chest. She rinsed out two mugs in the sink and lit a burner on the gas stove with a wooden match, blowing it out with a musical shake of her wrist.
“You don’t look like how you sounded on the phone,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“You don’t look like your average cello player, is all.”
“I could say the same thing about you. Let me guess. I look more like the electric guitar type to you? That’s what everybody else says.”
“I was going to say banjo or fiddle, maybe, no offense.”
“None taken. I’m Irish, or at least my grandparents were.”
“I’m half-New York Jewish intellectual, half-Californian draft dodger. I’ve got the therapy bills to prove it. Is that a pack of cigarettes I see in your pocket? Wanna step onto the back porch and have one before we get started? I haven’t had one all day. Work was a fucking nightmare.”
She led me through a sliding glass door and we sat down in a couple of wooden chairs. The back deck was covered by a sighing frame of two-by-fours that supported a leaf-laden section of corrugated plastic roofing. The wooden railing around the deck was adorned with a rusting collection of mismatched metal bits, chrome hubcaps, and painted table-saw blades screwed to its flaking pickets, what looked like a fireplace grate bolted to the handrails, and strung with little Christmas lights shaped like chili peppers and cowboy boots and Mexican sombrero hats. My mother would have called it an eyesore and complained about bohemian renters driving down the property values, but I kind of liked it.
“So, task at hand, then. How long have you been playing the cello?”
I counted on my fingers, tapping them on the knees of my corduroys. “Going on two whole weeks, now.”
“What made you pick the cello? Most of my students are rich little twelve-year-old brats with mothers from the ladies’ auxiliary.”
“It’s my mother’s fault. She’s been all over me lately to get a hobby, and the cello just sort of came along at the right moment, I guess. Traded a car for it.” I lit two cigarettes and passed her one. “But I actually really like it, and I want to learn how to play it the right way,” I added, just in case she thought I wouldn’t be a dedicated student. “Like, proper technique and what have you. Need some direction.”
“That’s what I’m here for. They don’t call me the cello bitch for nothing.”
“Is that what they call you?”
“Among other things. At work I’m the Ice Queen.”
“Where do you work?”
“I’m a check-out girl at Red Hot Video. I only meant to work there for a couple of months, but here I still am, two years later. The customers love me because I abuse them. Porn addicts, they love the verbal abuse. My boss is so scared I’m going to quit that he lets me take whatever nights off I need to do gigs, no hassle, so I can’t seem to leave. One of
my roommates works there too. Beats making lattes.”
“You must meet all sorts.”
“Different versions of the same sort, more like. Business suit or steel-toed boots, they all have the same eyes. You get so you can see them coming a mile away. Our band wrote a song about it. The lyrics are all cheesy titles of movies. ‘Back Door Betty,’ it’s called. You should check it out, I’ll dig a CD out for you before you go. I’m playing electric cello on a couple tracks too. Is that the kettle? We should head in. My nipples are about to leave me behind.”
This last part made me blush, which I tried to hide, so she wouldn’t think I was uptight.
“It’s starting to thaw in here a little. Should be warm enough to pull your cello out now. Bring your baby in, let’s take a look at it.”
I retrieved the case from the hallway and laid it down in one corner of the kitchen. Caroline was pouring boiling water out of a saucepan into a chipped brown teapot. Covered it with a fabric cozy sewn in the shape of a fat tomato and sat it on the counter. She removed all of her bracelets and rings and laid them on the counter.
I brandished the cello in the fading daylight coming through the kitchen window. Its varnish glowed warm and red-brown. I had rubbed every last thumbprint in its finish off with the soft chamois before I had come over.
Caroline was pouring our tea into mugs. When she looked up, she sucked in her breath and reached out to take the cello from me. She let out a long, thin whistle.
“What kind of car did you say you traded for this?” She tilted it towards the light and peered through what I had recently learned were the F-holes.
“Late-eighties Volvo station wagon.”
“Well someone got ripped off, and it wasn’t you. Ebony fingerboard. Ivory fine tuners. I think the back and sides are mahogany. Usually it’s maple.”
“It’s actually rosewood, I’m pretty sure.”
“Rosewood? Never heard of that. It’s a fucking beauty, Joseph. I’ve never seen one like it, ever. Mind if I tune it up and play it a little? Just to see what we’re working with here?”
“I’d love to hear someone who knows how to play it. I mostly sound like a tomcat, so far.”
“Hold this.” She passed me the neck of the cello to hold while she ran upstairs with a thump of her boots, reappearing momentarily with a bow, which she tightened up as she walked.
She sat down on a straight-backed chair and spun the cello seamlessly into position in the semi-circle between her thighs. Elbows akimbo, she lowered her head to bring the strings close to her ear, and thumped her thumb on the first string, cocking her head to one side. Then the next string, then all four. “When was the last time you tuned this thing? It’s still perfectly in tune. That’s weird, for November. Cellos don’t usually like changes in the temperature much.”
“I tuned it this morning, with my new fork. It’s an ‘A’.”
“Well, you did a good job.” She picked up her bow from the kitchen table, drew it towards her belly, her face a serious mask.
The cello sounded up with a sigh, and Caroline’s left hand stretched like a spider on the fingerboard. I had never heard someone play the cello live in front of me, and I could feel the hair on my arms rise up inside my shirtsleeves as the sound thrummed alive in the floorboards beneath my feet. She played a few long low strokes, and then began shaping a melody with her fingers, her right hand a combination of strokes and taps with the bow, effortless and beautiful, mesmerizing, even. I found myself holding my breath, my lips parted and suddenly dry.
Caroline played for quite a while, and I watched her the whole time, her eyes closed, her shoulders moving gently in time with the music. She finished the classical-sounding tune she started off with, and then bent it into what I eventually recognized as a distant cousin of “Smoke on the Water.” I hadn’t heard that song since the summer after high school, doing bong hits in Dave Norris’s mom’s basement suite and playing air hockey. I liked it even better on the cello.
Then the fridge kicked in with a painful electric buzz, and Caroline stopped short, her brows knit into a well-plucked zipper.
“That fucking goddamned bitch-ass of a kitchen appliance.” She passed the back of her bow hand across her face. “I wouldn’t mind so much if it whined in tune, but it’s just a bit sharp to be a B-flat. It’ll stop in a minute.”
I ripped a bit of cardboard from a six-pack of empty Coronas stacked by the back door and used it as a shim to prop up one leg of the fridge a bit, which made the hum disappear.
“Well, aren’t you handy. Why the fuck didn’t I think of that? I’ve been bitching about that fridge for four years.”
I shrugged.
Caroline sat back, spun the cello around, and ran her hands over its rounded back. “This is the most beautiful instrument I think I’ve ever touched. Like playing a stick of butter with a hot knife. What a beauty. You should have it appraised. It’s probably worth a small fortune. Do you know where it came from? It looks older than mine, and mine originally belonged to my grandfather. He played first chair in the Toronto Symphony for years. He’s the one who taught me, at first. He would’ve loved to have seen this. Look at the scroll work on the brass, and the inlay in the back. They definitely don’t make them like this anymore.” She leaned over and pressed her nose against it. “Smells like heaven. Have you smelled it?”
I nodded. I actually had. A mix of beeswax and hardwood and something sweet, like honey or chocolate, which hung in your nostrils for a bit, like warm angel food cake. I felt oddly puffed up with pride, like I had built the thing myself.
“All I know is that it belonged to the wife of the guy I got it from. She died in a car accident a while ago.”
“I’d offer to buy it from you but there’s no way I can afford it. Just don’t ever let it collect dust in a closet, or I’ll be forced to bitchslap you. An instrument this beautiful deserves to be played and taken care of. You have to love it like your wife.”
“I’m divorced.”
“Just as well. She’d only be jealous. This cello is a fucking masterpiece, Joseph. I hope you have house insurance. Don’t ever leave it in your car. I could tell you a million tragic tales.”
I nodded, solemn. She was the preacher, and I was the requisite sinner.
Caroline shook her head, pushed the neck of the cello in my direction. “Sorry, Joseph, I got carried away. You’re not paying me good money to sit there and watch me slobber all over your instrument. Let me go grab mine, here, pull up a chair beside me, and we’ll start with proper body position. We should get down to it, my roommates will be home by four-thirty, and all chaos will break loose.”
I slipped another couple of Tic Tacs in my mouth and sat with my cello between my legs, trying to mimic the relaxed stance that Caroline had just demonstrated. I felt thick-fingered and clumsy, all wrong angles and thumbs. Caroline sat back down next to me, and peered over her strings at the position of my legs and arms.
“Now, straighten up your back, and plant both feet on the floor, solid, like. Good. Now position the neck so it rests against your right thumb, about an inch above your shoulder. Like that, yeah, good. Put the bow down for a minute, though, we’ll get to that bit in a minute here. First things first. Pluck your first string, in open position, with your first finger.” She showed me the same on her cello. “Good, we’re relatively in tune. Now press down on that same string with your first finger, try to make it sound like this.”
I did exactly as she told me, so excited I forgot to even feel self-conscious.
“Good, good ear, Joseph. You’re a natural, see? Now alternate between those two notes, on my count of four … two, three, four.” She tapped the worn hardwood floor with the round black toe of her boot, and I plucked along slow beside her. “Now try the same thing on the next string over.”
We went on like that for quite a while, until I learned the first two notes on all four strings, and then she made me do it while I spoke the names of the notes out loud in time.
The next hour passed by like this, easy.
I could barely force myself to stop and look up when the front door burst open and a scruffy little dog skittered into the kitchen, its whole ass moving in a furious wag.
“Don’t pet the fucking mutt. She piddles when she gets excited.” This from the tall woman who appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing camouflage pants and a black leather jacket. She stomped over to the table and slipped her hands under the tomato tea cozy, pressing them around the still warm ceramic.
Bow Grip Page 15