Counting steps was her preshow routine. Compared to her dad’s ritual of walking around the block while picking out orange M&M’s, Andrea didn’t think hers was that strange. She looked up from the last carpeted step of the Isaac Stern Auditorium’s balcony, inhaled the restrained elegance of the white and gold interior of Carnegie Hall’s largest performance space, and choked on it.
Two thousand eight hundred and four red-cushioned seats were arranged around the curvilinear hall with one end in mind: to direct their occupants’ full attention to every mistake she was going to make. Vomit lapped at the back of her tongue. She grabbed Nate’s pendant from her neck. She peered into the small disc’s smooth surface. The only future she saw in it was smudged with cold sweat. She tucked it away and stuck her hand in the back pocket of her jeans. She pulled out the yellow Post-it Nate had stuck on the pendant when he lent it to her. He had also given her a kiss on the cheek. Both, he said, were for luck. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to kiss him back so she didn’t. She unfolded his note.
Breathe.
She took Nate’s advice. Inhaling was easy. Exhaling was not. She wheezed.
Sebastian waved at her from the balcony’s steps.
“See, buddy?” Her dad turned to her four-year-old brother. “I told you we’d find her here.”
Andrea shoved Nate’s note into her pocket.
“One hundred thirty-six?” her dad asked, his wavy auburn hair falling over his brows.
“Thirty-seven.”
Sebastian tugged the frayed edge of Andrea’s Metallica T-shirt. “Why are you up here?”
Andrea swallowed bile and tried to smile. “Just checking out the view. It’s cool, right?”
Sebastian nodded. “Dad got tired going up the steps. He’s old.”
Andrew smirked. “He insisted on looking for you. He’s been wanting to tell you a joke he came up with.”
Andrea ruffled Sebastian’s curls. His wild hair wasn’t the only thing he had gotten from their father. “Let’s hear it.”
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Carnegie.”
“Carnegie who?”
Sebastian giggled. “Carnegie Hall.”
“Good one, Bas.” Freckled four-year-olds were funny whatever they said.
Her dad looked out at the stage. His slate eyes shifted to blue. “This is it, kiddo. We’re finally here. Excited?”
Acid rose up Andrea’s esophagus. She sank into a chair. “Excited is not the word that comes to mind.”
“Hey, buddy,” he said to Sebastian. “Why don’t you see if you can count the seats in this row?”
“But I’m hungry.”
Andrew fished a packet of M&M’s from his pocket. “Here. Don’t tell Mom.”
Sebastian grinned and ran to the far end of the row.
“Don’t eat the orange ones,” Andrew called after him.
“Do they really help?” Andrea asked.
“Better than the red ones.” He sat down. “You should give them a try.”
“I’ll pass. I don’t think Dotsenko would like it if I threw up orange M&M’s all over his stage. I don’t suppose you’d like to come out of retirement and take my place?”
Her father patted her hand. “It’s your time to shine. That scholarship at Juilliard’s still on the table, you know. We can drop by tomorrow to visit the campus if you’d like. I have a feeling you’ll find that their seats have shrunk quite a bit since the last time you were there.”
“I don’t think they’ll want me after tonight.”
“Of course they will. A few of my friends on the faculty will be at the concert. We’ll have to beat them off with a stick after the show.”
“You mean after Dotsenko gives me a whack over the head with his baton? I don’t think he likes me very much. He hasn’t smiled once during rehearsals.”
“He never smiles. That’s just how he is. Look, don’t worry about him. Just focus on your playing and enjoy yourself.”
Andrea wrung her fingers. “I can’t.”
“You were just as nervous before you promoted the concert on the Today show and that turned out great.”
“I played for three minutes. This is a full-length concert. It doesn’t even have intermission.” Andrea buried her face in her hands.
“Kiddo, trust me. You’ll be fine.”
“I’m not ready.”
“Listen to me, Andrea. You’re ready for this. You’ve always been ready,” he said, speaking as though he were declaring something as indisputable as gravity. “No one deserves to be on that stage more than you. You were born to do this. Tonight is when everything really begins. Do you want to take a quick walk around the block to shake off your nerves?”
“I’ll pass. If I set one foot out the door of this place, I won’t be coming back. I think I’ll stick with counting steps.”
Her dad smiled. “Whatever works for you, kiddo.”
Andrea leaned on his shoulder. “Will you hate me if I mess up?”
He put his arm around her and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You won’t mess up.”
—
Andrea’s green silk empire-waist gown matched her eyes and shimmered in the spotlight. She was certain that the audience could see her legs shaking beneath it. Her neck felt worse. The auditorium’s air-conditioning made every hair on it stand on end. She gripped her bow, wishing that it was her dad’s hand.
She scanned the front row. Sylvia’s turquoise dress stood out in the sea of black. She smiled when Andrea caught her eye. Andrea tried to smile back but her lips had iced over. Sebastian’s dimpled grin thawed them. He threw his arms in the air and waved, his legs dangling from his chair. As far as buffers went, Andrea’s parents could not have asked for a more freckled or cuter one between their seats. Her mother’s latest boyfriend, Matt Willoughby, provided extra distance.
A burst of applause swept Andrea back to the stage. Frost snaked up her spine. Anatoli Dotsenko shuffled to the podium. The wiry silver-gray nest on his head bobbed as he walked, the only part of him that acknowledged the audience’s cheers. He bowed at the podium and raised his baton, his mouth set in stone. The brass section responded with the opening fanfare of Shostakovich’s Festive Overture. Winds followed, filling the melody’s sails. The song soared. Andrea positioned her fingertips over the fingerboard and waited for her section’s cue. Her knees knocked against the back of her instrument. Dotsenko flicked his baton her way. She drew a breath and set the music trembling in her fingers free.
Andrea was still flushed from Shostakovich’s crescendo when the orchestra began Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme. She flipped the page of her music sheet. Her ribs squeezed her lungs. Her solo was coming up. She sat on the edge of her seat as the French horn finished a strain. She clasped Nate’s pendant. Dotsenko directed his baton at her. She glanced at the front row and caught her dad’s wink—and lived in it.
The audience vanished. The auditorium disappeared. The stage faded away. Andrea was back in her music room, cradling her quarter-size cello. She was seven again, playing for no one but herself and following no other conductor than joy. She improvised with vibratos and double stops, letting the melody have its way. White light flashed in her eyes. She blinked, telling herself that it was the spotlight bouncing off the music sheet stand. Bright hazel eyes blinked back from the crack ripping through the middle of her musical score, hidden from the audience and the rest of the orchestra. Andrea reeled, her bow moving mechanically over the strings.
The boy in the music sheet took a step back from the crack. He was much taller than the last time Andrea saw him and teetered on the cusp of becoming a man. Time had taken great care in shaping his face, chiseling it into elegant angles. The dark, warm pools in his eyes invited her to take a swim. Only the cello between them kept her from falling in. He sprinted to his desk and scribbled on a notebook. He tore the page and held a question up to the crack.
Name?
“Andr
ea!” Her voice reverberated through the auditorium.
Silence dripped from her cello. Each drop echoed and filled Andrea’s ears. A sharp whistling sound pierced the hush. Andrea looked up. Dotsenko’s steel glare sliced the air and cut cleanly through her rib cage. Andrea stood up and broke apart. Pieces of her soul spilled out and landed with a wet thud by her feet. She dragged one foot in front of the other, counting each endless step away from her cello and the 2,804 pairs of eyes boring a hole in the base of her skull. The future that hung on a silver chain around her neck grew heavier. Its metal clasp bit into her nape. Andrea stopped and turned to the audience. She had overcounted the eyes on her by one pair. Two slate eyes, partially hidden by a curtain of wavy auburn hair, were firmly fixed on the floor.
His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had seen straight through it.
—JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES ON ISAAC NEWTON
San Francisco
Present Day
Andrea is seventeen.
The metal disc dangled from Nate’s neck and grazed Andrea’s collarbone. Nate pressed closer and kissed her. He had gotten much better at it over the past year, she thought. She couldn’t quite recall the exact day they started kissing, but she did remember how Nate had once tried to hold her hand during a Bourne movie and how she had spilled their bucket of popcorn avoiding his grasp. Kissing required only curiosity. Holding hands meant a willingness to be held captive by someone’s fingers. Her hands’ last and only long-term relationship had been with her cello, and since she walked off Carnegie Hall’s stage, she hadn’t dared to hold on to much. Tonight, in the shadows of Nate’s bedroom, she was feeling extra curious.
Nate’s fingers found the buttons of her blouse. They trembled as he undid the first one. “Are you sure you want to do this, Dre?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice quivering as much as Nate’s hands. “Do you?”
Nate’s mouth closed over hers. He unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it off her.
Andrea kissed him back deeper and longer than she had ever dared. When they kissed, she heard the music they both used to love. When they didn’t, she remembered why only one of them continued to play their songs. Nate both soothed and ripped open old wounds. On this night, three years ago, the only passion she had ever known had been extinguished in an icy auditorium. Pressed against the warmth of Nate’s bare skin, Andrea did not care that the heat radiating through her came from a different kind of fire. All that mattered was that here, in this moment, wrapped in Nate’s arms, she felt something other than the cold emptiness inside her. Music had no mass or volume, but the hole it had carved out from Andrea made her feel that she was made up of little more than spiderwebs and air. She clung to Nate to give herself weight. They fell into his bed, a tangle of limbs and need. Andrea fumbled with the zipper of his jeans. Nate tensed, let her go, and retreated to the edge of the bed.
“What’s wrong?” Andrea pulled his blanket over her bra.
“Maybe we should wait.”
“For what?”
“Your first time should be special.”
“It will be. It’s going to be with you. I…I thought you wanted me, too.”
“More than you can imagine. But are you sure you’re ready for this? If we do this, everything will change.”
“I want things to change. I want to change.” She buried her face in her hands. “I’m sick of being me.”
Nate held her hand. “Please don’t say things like that.”
“Say things like what? The truth? Everything I was and could have been ended in front of two thousand people three years ago. I’m a fucking walking joke, Nate.”
“You’re not a joke, Dre.”
“Yeah. I suppose not. A joke’s funny. I’m just pathetic.”
“Come on, Dre, you’re seventeen.”
“So?”
“You haven’t even begun to live.”
“Then let me start. Now. Tonight.” She cupped his cheeks. “Make me feel alive.”
Nate inhaled deeply and cradled her against his chest. “Can you hear it?”
“Hear what?” Andrea frowned.
“Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, okay?”
“Fine.” Andrea shut her eyes. “They’re closed.”
“Good. Now listen.”
“I can’t hear any—” A rhythm drummed in her ear. Nate’s heart was beating faster than his voice let on.
“Can you hear it now?”
“Yes,” she whispered against his skin.
“My heart’s pounded two beats faster since I walked into that classroom in fourth grade and pretended not to notice you trying to smile at me from your seat. It’s been racing for almost half of my life, running toward you. I go to bed every night with a silly smile on my face because I know I’ll be seeing you in the morning. And on the days that I don’t get to see you, every inch of me misses you. If that’s not how I make you feel now, Dre, sleeping with me isn’t going to make you feel any different. I can’t make you feel alive.” He handed her blouse to her. “I…don’t think we should do it. Not like this. Not tonight.”
Andrea did not move or make a sound. Tears burned behind her eyelids and if she breathed, they were going to fall and never stop. She had grown up knowing that two things came to her very easily: music and Nate. She didn’t have to try to be good at either of them. They were her life’s givens, the legs on which everything else stood. She was born with the music inside her and all she had to do was let it out. Nate was just as simple. All she had to do was let him in. But now he pushed her away. Nothing was ever going to be easy again.
She stood up and pulled on her clothes. “You’re right.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “You can’t help me. How can you? I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost my scholarship, my music, and my future. My dad can’t even look at me the same way. Music was all that I was good at. It’s who I was. Do you have any idea how it feels knowing that for the rest of my life, I’m going to have to pay my rent, put food on my plate, and pay my bills by pretending to be someone else? Look at me, Nate. What the hell do I have left?”
Nate gathered her in his arms. Tears rimmed his eyes. “Me.”
—
Andrea hobbled to her front door shortly before noon on Sylvia’s birthday with a second coat of bright yellow nail polish drying on her left foot. Her toes were the easiest part of her to paint a semblance of cheer on. Smiling was harder since she had left Nate’s bedroom the night before.
She opened the door and smudged the polish on her big toe. An elderly, angular man in a gray forties-style fedora, matching suit, and cinnamon wing tip shoes smiled at her from the rubber welcome mat. He stood with his shoulders pulled back, his spine stretched, and his chin up, as though the top of his head was pulled taut by an invisible string.
“Yes?” She balanced on her bare heels. “Can I help you?”
He pulled off his hat and revealed a full head of wavy white hair. “I have a package for a Ms. Andrea Louviere.” An English accent chiseled his words.
“I’m Andrea.”
He narrowed his deep-set brown-green eyes, crinkling the fine lines around them. The wrinkles might have made a weaker face look tired, but on his, it had the effect of making him appear statelier. Like the notches on a handsome antique, each line promised a story. “The cellist?”
Bile churned in her stomach. “No.”
“Ah. I must have the wrong address then. I apologize.” He placed his hat on his head.
Andrea gripped the doorframe. “Wait.”
He stopped and turned. “Yes?”
“You have the right place. I am…was…a cellist.”
“Was?”
“I don’t play anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t see how that is any of your business, Mister—”
“Westin. Oscar Ian Westin. And you’re quite right. It isn’t an
y of my business. I was just curious. It’s an old habit of an old man, I’m afraid. I am sorry if I offended you.” He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out what appeared to be a yellowed letter sealed with red wax. “This is for you.”
Andrea took the letter from him. Must and age filled her nostrils. She tried not to gag. She turned the letter over. It didn’t have a return address.
Mr. Westin adjusted the rim of his fedora. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Louviere. Good day.” He strode down the walkway.
“Hang on,” she called after him. “Who sent this?”
“Andrea?” Her dad’s baritone drifted from behind her. “Is there someone at the door?”
She tucked the yellowed letter beneath her mint sweater and shut the front door.
Her dad poked his head out of the music room. “Who was that?”
“Just some delivery guy,” she said, trying to keep Mr. Westin’s letter out of sight. “He had the wrong address.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Her music career had ended on Carnegie Hall’s stage, but Andrea knew that every time the postman stopped by or her father’s email inbox pinged, he still hoped to find an invitation for her to perform. She had never seen spam and the Sears catalog crush anyone more. Until she found out what Mr. Westin’s delivery was, keeping it from her dad was the kindest thing to do.
“Sylvia wants sushi for her birthday so I made dinner reservations at Zushi Puzzle,” he said. “You can bring Nate, if you’d like.”
“I’ll give him a call.”
Andrea could have told her father that she had been the one who was craving sushi and that Sylvia was being kind, but she made it a point to keep their conversations short. It was difficult to look directly into his eyes for long. Most people would not have noticed the slight quiver behind his lash line, but she did. She wasn’t sure what it was the first time she saw it. Now she was certain.
Over the years that she had played her cello, she had received a variety of looks ranging from jealousy to awe. The look in her father’s eyes was brand-new. As more people, including Nate, cast it her way in the months that followed the concert, she grasped what it was. Pity, like dust, made eyes twitch. The only difference was that no matter how much water you splashed over it, you could never flush it out.
Love and Gravity Page 5