Dead People's Music

by Sarah Laing

  ‘Okay, I guess.’ I think of my last appointment before I left New Zealand; my specialist with his eye light in his hand, his brackish breath surging noisily past his nose hairs, each exhalation like a car passing; me holding my breath so I wouldn’t garlic him, but fearing that my smell was emanating from me anyway. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘A small hemorrhage, to the left of the macula. Very common in someone who’s had diabetes for more than ten years.’

  ‘I’ve had a little bleeding in my eye,’ I say to Esther. ‘Not enough for laser surgery though.’

  ‘Those veins in your eyes can heal if you look after yourself,’ says Esther, taking her record book back to her bedroom.

  As Esther puts away her folder, I look at the photos on the wall, Calypso and Terence watching me, sprinkles caught in their muzzles. There is a yellowing picture of two girls on a stoop; maybe it’s Esther and Klara. They sit apart, one perched on the railing, legs swinging, elbows popped out straight, the other sitting on the bottom step, wearing a white dress, her chin in her hand, her dark hair rag-ringleted.

  There are a number of photos of Esther, in simple tailored clothes, amongst a razzle-dazzle showtime line-up. Women with shiny legs and peacock feathers coming out of their arses, opera divas in tuberculosis gowns, cannibals with grass skirts and bones through their necks. The photos glimmer with the thousand beads Esther must have stitched to their costumes.

  Another series of photos are snapshots, featuring a petite blonde woman, often laughing, her lips painted red, her skirts full. In some of the photos she has flowers woven through her hair. She is photographed on the street, in front of the ocean, in a car, sitting in the bay window. Sometimes she is with a young dark girl, maybe Hispanic or African American.

  I jump as I feel Esther’s presence at my side. ‘Is this Ruby?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘Is she — does she live nearby?’

  ‘No, she passed away a few years ago. I always said to her, look after your own health, don’t worry about mine. I can look after myself. And see, I can. Especially now that I have an insulin pen. Now, when I was younger, I did need her because nobody could sharpen a needle like her.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘She had a weak heart. That’s how I was meant to go, not her.’ There is a crack in Esther’s voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Her niece still checks up on me. I’m grateful for that, since my only surviving family chose to live on the other side of the world.’ Her face sets in an accusing way, and everything that I think to ask her falls out of my head. Esther looks at her watch. ‘Is that the time? I’m meeting someone at Colombia. They’re researching me. Over fifty years a diabetic — I’ll show you my medal on your way out.’

  I slurp my tea quickly, and then take the mug to the kitchen. There’s wheatgrass growing by the sink, a juicer sitting on a stack of recipe books, all with variations on low-fat and diabetes in the title. I hate those books.

  ‘I’ll walk downstairs with you,’ says Esther, clipping leads to her dogs’ collars, strapping a tartan blanket around Terence and a pink wool coat around Calypso. ‘They’ve saved my life, you know. When I last passed out with hypoglycemia, they barked until the super called 911.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I say, twisting my own recently acquired Medic Alert bracelet around my wrist. The one that causes people to think the worst of me, to bite their tongues on their curiosity, or to ask, ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘And I was going to show you my medal.’ Esther darts into her bedroom, coming out with a heavy gold disc, the striped ribbon threading through the loop, a capped man running with a torch up to the pantheon. It says Triumph for Man and Medicine, and on the back, For 50 courageous years with diabetes. ‘I feel bad, having this. It should have been my parents who got medals, not me. I just lived my life carefully.’

  She sighs, pulling on her coat, slate grey, with darts that lend her the figure of a young woman. Hat, scarf, gloves, keys; she locks her doors and the dogs scrabble down the stairs ahead of us.

  We open the front door to a shock of cold, and Esther smiles at me, perhaps for the first time.

  ‘Thank you for coming. It’s been so interesting. I’m heading uptown. I presume you’ll be going downtown.’ She stretches out her hand to shake mine, formal and Germanic.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, feeling frustrated, as I’ve been deliberately sidetracked. I haven’t even mentioned the cello, or got enough information for another Klara-inspired composition, unless I can do something with the photo on the stoop. I wonder whether Esther is anything like Klara, or whether they are as different as my sister and me. Nadia is studying phys ed at Otago; she wants to run a gym. She owns Elton John albums. ‘Shall I come again?’

  Esther considers this for a moment.

  ‘Yes, do. I feel as though we’ve got so much to catch up on. I’m glad your father got in touch again, although it took him an awfully long time. I might have died already.’ She gives me a conspiratorial look, and I wave, turning south towards the 86th Street station.

  Toby’s made it home before me. He waves a bottle of bubbly. ‘Let’s celebrate,’ he says.

  ‘Celebrate what?’ I feel tense, unwilling to drink to an engagement I might renege on.

  ‘I got the job. The creative director, Marissa, liked me.’

  ‘That’s fantastic.’ I breathe out; we can concentrate on this for a while. He’s got a job, he’s got a job!

  ‘They showed me the fridge; it’s filled with all these bottles of milk that she’s expressed for her baby. One of the other creative directors accidentally used it in his coffee one day. Lucky I take mine black.’

  Toby looks happier than he has for a long time. He seems relaxed, buoyant. It makes me realise how stressed he’s been these past months. I’m so selfish. ‘So when do you start?’

  ‘Monday. So you’ll have the room to yourself. You’ll be able to concentrate on your compositions, and I can cover the rent.’

  I squirm at Toby’s generosity.

  ‘Oh, how was meeting your great-aunt, by the way?’

  ‘Good. Turns out she has diabetes too.’

  ‘Really? That’s cool, you can talk about it together.’

  ‘That’s more or less all we talked about. I wanted to find out more about Klara, but we didn’t get onto it at all. I felt too scared to ask, in case she got angry or told me something I didn’t want to hear.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know, like she was a horrible cow?’

  ‘What about the cello?’

  ‘I didn’t go there. If my dad calls and asks, tell him I’m still trying to get in touch.’

  ‘If your dad calls, I’ll tell him we’re getting married. Maybe he’ll send us some extra cash to throw a party.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, forcing my uncertainty into the champagne flute’s narrow opening, the bubbles bouncing up to pique my nostrils.

  ‘So you’re cool with that? Do you want a ring? I can’t afford one now, but once I get my first paycheck …’

  ‘I hate diamond solitaires. They’re tacky.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind. We could go to Tiffanys. Take bagels there, eat our breakfast, then go look at the emeralds. Or the aquamarines. What’s your favourite stone?’

  ‘Toby, can we take this whole engagement thing slowly? Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure we need to rush into this? I’m doing okay as I am. My quartet pays me in cash and half of Brooklyn are illegal immigrants. I don’t think they’re going to catch me.’

  Toby stares at the table, tracing a circular burn mark with his thumb. ‘Ivan was telling me about a mate, Paul, who works illegally for a video production place. His dad died suddenly, and he couldn’t go to the funeral in New Zealand because then they’d never let him back into the US.’

  ‘That’s worst-case scenario.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not all about the visa. You know I wouldn’t enter into this lightly, B
eck. My parents were prize screw-ups. But they were mismatched from the start — we’re good together, you and me. Why don’t we make it permanent?’ He looks up at me, pleading and exasperated.

  ‘We can make it permanent, I just need to have some time to think about it.’

  ‘Fuck, Beck, I don’t understand you. One minute you’re hot, the next you’re cold. What exactly do you want?’

  CHAPTER 17

  Wellington, 1993

  The day of my audition for Victoria, I was up at five in the morning; I’d hardly slept anyway, for fretting. I thought about practising, but I wasn’t allowed to start before six; my father needed his sleep.

  Instead I started my own good luck ritual, the one I’d invented for my London audition a few weeks earlier. I hadn’t heard whether my tape had been successful; it was probably in a mail sack somewhere, as yet unplayed by the admissions committee. I wouldn’t be hearing for another month. In the meantime, I had to secure my back-up plans.

  I pulled the cloth case off my grandmother’s cello and set it down in the centre of my room. Lighting a candle, I ran my finger along its belly crack.

  Let me get what I want, I whispered. Klara, Klara, lend me your gift. I thought about drawing a pentagram in salt, but that was too risky, potentially opening me up to demon possession. And the last clause was dubious too — what if Klara’s gift erased my knowledge of the set piece? Help me be the best I can be, I amended.

  Blood, that was what spells needed. I pricked my finger, squeezed out a droplet and traced blood along the crack. I put my ear to the f-hole and listened.

  You will play beautifully, it said.

  Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it said, There’s no hope. Throw yourself over the Kelburn Viaduct.

  I plucked a string. Buzzzzzzz. Snuffing the candle, I put the cello back into its case and returned it to the wardrobe. I laid out my audition clothes. Ironing was quiet.

  At nine-thirty it was time to go.

  ‘You go sit in the car, Rebecca,’ said Mum. ‘Take some deep breaths. Put some Rescue Remedy under your tongue. I’ll grab your cello for you.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. I took the keys and turned on the radio. Not the Concert Programme, that would only exacerbate my nerves. I tuned the radio to Active, and yelled along to Courtney Love’s fucked-up baby-doll lyrics, making my mouth as big and dirty as possible. I tried not to think about my pieces, which I’d been assembling so meticulously, perfecting each phrase and transition. I tried not to roll my hand on my wrist to practise vibrato.

  My mother came up the path holding the brown cloth case.

  ‘No, not that one!’ I said.

  ‘Well, I opened up the hard case and you had the rented school cello in it,’ said my mother. ‘You should be playing your good cello for your exam. It would be crazy not to.’

  ‘I can’t. I prefer my other one.’

  ‘Why? I don’t understand. I think you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face.’

  ‘I just — well, it’s bad luck.’

  ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. How could your grandmother’s cello be bad luck? She had a wonderful career.’ My mother put the cello into the boot.

  ‘She died, didn’t she?’ I leaned over and clicked the boot back open. My mother shut it again.

  ‘Not because her cello killed her. She got cancer, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I can’t because it’s broken.’ There, I said it.

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘Look,’ I said, unstrapping the case, pulling up the cloth. I pointed at the scar running up the cello. ‘It will buzz when I play the high notes. I’ll never get into music school. I’ll just annoy them.’

  ‘I didn’t see that. Why didn’t I see that?’ My mother’s face had gone white.

  I strapped up the case again, taking it down the path. ‘I’ll get my other cello.’

  We were running late by the time I returned with the hard case. I loaded it into the boot, and got into my seat. The radio had been switched off. I thought that my mother might berate me as we made our way to the audition, but she was silent, concentrating on finding a break in the relentless stream of cars from the Karori tunnel. We made it with a few minutes to spare but my mother drove me down the drive to the door just to make sure. ‘Good luck,’ she said in a reluctant voice, as she reversed back up the hill.

  My mother’s self-control had vanished by the time she picked me up. I was feeling weak and spent, floppy and dizzy from all those nerves and concentration, giddy from the compliments I’d received. Yes, my tone on this second-rate instrument was rich. Yes, my phrasing was lilting and emotive. I had moved them, even in that stripped-back room, school desks lined up like barricades between myself and the establishment. Although I had stumbled on my first scale, my knees shaking, my hands cramped, I had been allowed to start again and that was my only mistake. I wasn’t a gymnast missing the bar, a diver cracking my skull on the board. I had breezed through the sight-reading and the aural examination, and theory seemed straightforward.

  ‘How could you allow your grandmother’s cello to be damaged?’ my mother yelled, red spots on her cheeks, a blood tide rising on her neck. ‘How could you go behind my back to have it fixed? Do you know how much it’s worth? We have it insured for $30,000. That’s more than our car. That’s more than my jewellery. You have the single most valuable item in our property and you’ve damaged it. That’s your inheritance, young lady. Don’t think you’re getting anything more from us. Even if you got into music school, I don’t think I want to pay your fees, knowing how deceitful and careless you have been.’

  ‘It wasn’t me, it was some boys.’

  ‘What boys? When?’

  ‘A few years ago, at Samantha’s place.’

  ‘Years ago? I can’t believe — Samantha, that girl is trouble. She’s too old and not disciplined enough. But that’s beside the point — it was your responsibility to look after the instrument and you’ve failed. What’s your father going to say? You know how funny he is about his mother’s things, treating them like they’re holy relics. He’s going to be devastated, no, heartbroken, when he finds out how you’ve let him down. You’ve let us both down. I don’t think I know you any more.’

  And on my mother went, but I wasn’t really listening. I was replaying the Fauré, the Chopin, the Bach in my head. My fingers were incy-wincy-spidering up my cello’s throat, and for a moment I could see myself in London, in a practice room, my teacher with a sucked-lemon Alan Rickman face, filled with admiration and disdain. I had to get away from my family. I had to leave this city.

  ‘Phone call for you, Rebecca,’ said my father. He had taken the news in silence, absorbing it into his emotional black hole. It was worse than my mother’s response. I imagined the news growing like a tumour in his stomach. I waited for my parents to announce that he would soon be undergoing chemotherapy.

  ‘Hello?’ I said, my heart speeding, thinking it might be London.

  ‘Hi, Rebecca, sorry it’s been a while.’

  Bruno. It was Bruno. I had almost given up on him.

  ‘I was going to call you about the Warhol films, but Mum told me I wasn’t to disturb you while you were preparing for your audition. Now it’s over I figure you might like to come to a gig with me.’

  ‘I’ve still got Bursary to go. Dad won’t let me do anything non-study-related.’ Dad hadn’t explicitly punished me for the cello, but he had grounded me.

  ‘The Verlaines are playing this Saturday. Can’t you make something up? Say that you’re going round to your friend’s to study?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Samantha was now persona non grata, due to her role in the cello break. But there was Megan; my parents thought that Megan was a sensible girl. She didn’t have so much time for me these days, but she did feel sorry for me for still being a virgin. Maybe I could convince her to pick me up as a charity case.

  ‘Well, they’re playing at the student union, I’m going with a couple of m
ates, but I’ll keep an eye out for you, okay?’

  My parents bought the study session line, and Megan collected me at seven in the Honda Civic her parents had given her for her seventeenth birthday. It was too early for the gig, so we went to have a coffee. Megan had been studying hard for Bursary because she wanted to do a double major in commerce and law. She wanted to be rich, to afford sharp suits and trips to Australia. Already she had begun dressing like a banker’s girlfriend, and her boyfriend had bought a half-heart pendant on a gold chain. He was wearing the other half beneath his business shirt. They were only seeing each other on Friday nights at the moment; as much as he loved a shag, he didn’t want to compromise her exam results. Megan wanted to know what my strategy with Bruno was. She told me to act vulnerable and hard to get. ‘Don’t be too contained and up yourself, Beck. Boys don’t like that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I was suddenly anxious to hear this judgement of myself.

  ‘You’re too much of a closed book, and not in a mysterious, alluring way.’

  I thought about what she said. It was true, I was quiet. And I didn’t talk much about what I did, because mostly I played the cello, and other people didn’t understand that. They thought I was snobby and élitist. But Bruno wouldn’t think that, and we did have lots in common. I didn’t talk so much with Megan these days because it highlighted our differences.

  ‘Here, at least wear some of my lipstick,’ she said, fishing around in her purse, handing me the silver bullet. ‘And you know, I’ve been thinking your eyebrows are quite Cindy Crawford. I’m glad you didn’t pluck them like I said.’

  The student union was big and draughty, not filled up with people yet because it was still early. I’d made it through the doors even though I was underage; I wondered whether I could order a drink. You could only buy beer, which I didn’t like much, but it was better than being here alone with nothing to do.