Music From Standing Waves

by Johanna Craven

  I scanned through the pages of ledger lines and accidentals. “It looks hard.”

  “You’re up for it. We’ll take it slow.” He took off his watch and sat it on top of the piano. “This will be good for me too. I haven’t done much serious playing since I moved here. This place isn’t exactly a cultural centre, is it.” He plucked carefully through the opening staccato of the piano part. I reached down and flicked open the violin case.

  “Andrew?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Being stuck here is a waste of time for me, isn’t it.”

  “Well… Musically, yes,” he admitted. “You could be learning a whole lot more somewhere else. But you have your whole life ahead of you. Fourteen is still pretty young to be moving across the country by yourself. And you’re not supposed to be thinking about leaving, remember?”

  He hit an A on the piano and waited for me to tune the violin. I finished with an angry down-bow. I didn’t want Andrew to be rational. I wanted him to take my side. To despise my mother the way I did.

  “Andrew?”

  “Mmm?”

  “When Oliver grows up, you wouldn’t make him stay here if it was a waste of his time, would you?”

  Andrew turned back to the music. “Oliver’s one, Abs, I can’t say I’ve thought about it.”

  “But just say you had…”

  “Come on. Let’s just play, okay?”

  We sight-read through the first movement of the Elgar. Slowed for each other in the difficult sections, but did so without speaking, listening to the rise and fall of the melody. The tune passed between the instruments in wordless dialogue; hidden motifs spiralling underneath. Minor arpeggios yearned upwards and I felt myself straining for escape with them. The music made me long for something I couldn’t express. I let the melody carry me.

  Andrew moved his back and shoulders a lot when he played the piano. I watched him in my bars rest, moving with the motion of the music. I wondered if he knew he was doing it. I wished I had the same deep understanding of music that Andrew had. He’d begun to show me there was far more to my pieces than just notes. Each sonata, each scherzo, each study was a product of another time, another place. Another composer’s response to their world. I heard Vivaldi’s religious devotion, Paganini’s love for the stage, the salons of Mozart’s Vienna. I loved to think that for thousands of years, there had been people like me who had been moved inexplicably by sound. People who had spent their lives striving to create beautiful music.

  My tone was richer on Andrew’s violin and my melody line soared above the piano’s wide tremolos. I felt a shudder of excitement down my back.

  “I got shivers,” I told Andrew. “I never got shivers from my own playing before.”

  He turned on the piano seat and smiled. “You’re sounding fantastic. Very expressive.”

  I plucked slowly through the last page again. “I love this bit,” I said. “It’s so dramatic.”

  Andrew nodded. “It’s beautiful, right?”

  I told him about the way the music made me long for things I couldn’t see.

  “That’s interesting,” he said. “It sounds angry to me. Full of confusion and regret.” He smiled. “Don’t you wish you could tell all these dead composers what their music does to you? Imagine being able to move someone like that.”

  I turned to the opening of the second movement. I knew that if anyone was responsible for my love of music, it was Andrew. The dead composers were only along for the ride.

  EIGHT

  I practised in the music room before and after school. On weekends, I used empty caravans at the back of the park. Music gave me a reason to get up in the morning. It gave me a glimpse of freedom that Shipwreck never had. My fingers flew over the strings as though they could think for themselves. I began to believe Andrew when he told me I had talent. Sometimes, I would hear the music as though someone else was playing it, then stop in disbelief when I realised it was me. Surely, the things I could do would be enough to lift me out of this life. I felt a new sense of hope and independence. I could do it without my mother. I didn’t need her.

  I sent for the Arts College application again. “Please Dad, just sign it. Just let me audition.”

  “You know I can’t,” he always said. “You know what your mother would say.”

  I hated how passive my dad could be.

  “What?” I pushed. “What would she say?”

  For all her hatred of my violin, Sarah had never given a reason. Dad couldn’t answer either. He just shoved his hands in his pockets and started whistling so he could pretend he hadn’t heard the question.

  I hid my practice from my mother for months. Then one day, I walked deliberately into the lounge, clutching my violin. I still don’t know what possessed me. Something about standing up to her, I suppose. Something about showing her what I was capable of, despite her. I had just turned fifteen and felt as though my whole life was being whittled and wasted away. I had to make someone pay for it.

  Sarah was in the kitchen slicing vegetables. The knife hit the chopping board with a sharp, glassy crack. I launched into the opening bars of the Elgar. She continued to chop furiously. Finally, she dropped her knife and stood in the doorway of the lounge. Waited until I reached the end of a phrase.

  “So you’re teaching yourself are you?”

  I repeated the phrase slowly. Sarah raised her thin grey eyebrows. She stood behind me and looked over my shoulder at the music. As I drew my bow down, I elbowed her arm.

  Her dark eyes lit up. “Stop it! I don’t want to hear you play any more!” She picked up my violin case and flung it into the hallway. It landed with a thud on the floorboards. “Do you understand, Abigail? No more!”

  My anger erupted. “You can’t stop me! I want to play and I’m going to! And I’m going to the city to study and I’m going to make it to the concert hall!”

  Sarah laughed with a cold, machine gun burst. “You can’t be a concert violinist without a teacher!”

  “I have a teacher,” I snapped. “Andrew doesn’t care that I can’t pay him. He’s been teaching me all along.”

  She pursed her lips until they were narrow white lines. “What does he think you are, a charity case?”

  “I am a charity case,” I hissed. “To have a mother like you.”

  Sarah sucked in her breath and slapped me across the face. My eyes widened in shock. I felt the sting against my cheek, but refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing me wince.

  “I’m not going to stop,” I coughed. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  Sarah reached out and snatched the violin.

  “Give it back!”

  She held it above her shoulder, her long fingers curled around the neck.

  “Mum, please.” My voice caught. The violin teetered beside her head. “Please give it back.” I held out my hand despairingly. “Please.”

  She slammed the violin into the coffee table. Strings snapped out of the pegs and the bridge flew into the air. Shards of wood shot across the lounge. I stared in disbelief. Sarah tossed the violin onto the floor and turned away. The air hummed with harmonics.

  Neither of us spoke. I snatched the broken violin off the carpet and rushed into the hall. Sarah returned to the kitchen and the crack of the knife began again. On my knees in the hallway, I sat the violin back in its case. Tried to lay the strings over the shattered bridge. Tears blurred the mess in front of me. I felt like my mother had smashed my identity. Without my violin, I had nothing. I was nothing. My hands shook with rage. I rushed outside, the case banging against my knee. I didn’t stop running until I reached Andrew’s house.

  He opened the door with a plastic truck in one hand and a towel in the other. Oliver clung to his shin like a barnacle.

  “Hey Abs,” he said. “Are we having a lesson now? Sorry, I must have forgotten.”

  “Can I come in?” I asked, pushing past him.

  “Sure…”

  I threw the case onto the lounge room flo
or and opened the lid.

  Andrew stared at the mess of strings. “What happened?”

  “My mum.”

  “Your mum did that? Oh shit…” He folded his arms and paced across the room.

  “I told her you’re still teaching me,” I admitted.

  “She took it well then?”

  I lifted the violin and cradled it, batting Oliver away from my case. “Can you fix it?”

  Andrew frowned and knelt beside me. “I don’t know, Abs…” He tried to stand the bridge up. “It’s pretty wrecked. Maybe we can take it to the music shop or something.”

  I rubbed my eyes.

  “Hey, don’t get upset, okay?” He touched my shoulder. “Leave it here and I’ll see what I can do. Do you want to borrow my violin for now?”

  I paused, then shook my head. “No. I think I’ve pushed my mum as far as she’ll go.”

  Sarah took her anger out on Nick.

  “What do you mean you can’t afford to move out? Where does all your money go?”

  “Jesus, what is this, the third degree?”

  Dad got involved too. “Your mother asked you a question.”

  “Well how the hell should I know?”

  I was listening to Dvorak in my bedroom. I turned up the volume on my stereo.

  “They pay you enough. Are you even going to work?”

  “Of course I’m bloody going to work. Just fucking leave it alright… Jesus Christ…”

  I heard Nick thunder up to his bedroom and slam the door. I felt sorry for him. Turning off the CD, I tiptoed up to his room and knocked lightly. He was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, headphones over his ears and a cigarette between his teeth. I could hear the song coming muffled from his Walkman. The same song he always listened to. Ah, that damn cold November rain.

  I tapped his knee and he sat up suddenly.

  “You shouldn’t have your music up that loud,” I said. “You’ll damage your eardrums.”

  “Don’t you start.” He tossed the Walkman next to the cushion he was using as a pillow. “What do you want?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing really.”

  “Well in that case you can get out of here.”

  I perched on the torn brown bedspread. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been inside Nick’s room. T-shirts were strewn across the carpet, muddy boots tipped over by the door. A tape deck poked out from under a wet towel. Everything smelled like cigarettes and dirty clothes. I crossed my legs.

  “You know it’s my fault Sarah’s being so shitty to you. She found out I’m still having violin lessons.”

  “I know that,” said Nick. “And I’m unbelievably grateful.”

  I chewed my thumbnail. “Least she didn’t smash your violin.”

  Nick rolled over and tapped ash into a glass beside his bed. He held the cigarette out to me. “Want a drag?”

  I shook my head.

  Nick sat up on his elbows and looked at me for the first time. His eyes were bright blue, like Tim’s. I wished I had them too: Dad’s eyes, not Sarah’s.

  “So where does all your money go?” I asked finally. I wondered if Nick would yell at me the way he had yelled at Mum. Instead, he just laughed bitterly.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “You figure it out.”

  I picked at a loose flap of rubber on my sneakers. “Are you saving up for a secret trip? Because that’s what I’d be doing.”

  “Sure.”

  “Where would you go? I’d go to France and have an amant secret. It means ‘secret lover’.

  Nick snorted. “Who’s been filling your head with this secret lovers crap?”

  “Hayley.”

  He rolled his eyes. “That’d be right.”

  I frowned. “Why do you hate her so much?”

  “I don’t hate her,” said Nick. “She’s just all froth and no beer, that’s all.”

  “What do you mean all froth and no beer?”

  “Never mind.” Nick dropped his cigarette into the cup beside the bed. “Tell you what Abby, if I had the money to go get a French lover, everyone would be hearing about it, but it ain’t happening.” He flashed me a dark smile. “Haven’t you heard about this place? Once you’re in, you’re in for good. No-one gets out alive…”

  I hugged my ankles and peered over my knees at my brother. “I’m getting out of here. I’m going to get another violin and then I’m going to go and become a concert violinist.”

  Nick lay back on his pillow and closed his eyes. “Yeah. So am I.”

  “I am!” I snapped. “Andrew said I’m good enough to go overseas if I want to. And maybe I do.”

  Nick lifted his headphones again. “Well then. Don’t I wish I was you.”

  NINE

  “Someone bashed a hole in the wall of Psycho George’s,” Justin announced.

  “So?” I gestured to him to come inside, but he stayed on my front porch, bouncing around like there was something in his shoe.

  “So we should go check it out. I heard there’s bloodstains in the bath. From where George killed his wife.”

  I screwed up my nose. “That’s disgusting.”

  “My brother told me it’s awesome,” Justin grinned.

  “Go with your brother then.”

  He took my arm. “I thought we were going to hang today.”

  “Yeah. We’re supposed to be going to the movies remember?”

  Without my violin, I felt more like a normal teenager; filling the hole in my life with the mundane and meaningless. I’d painted my nails, watched eight thousand episodes of Friends and finally learned to braid my own hair. I’d spent more time with Justin in the last few weeks than I had all year.

  That morning, I’d spent half an hour in front of the mirror trying to find the perfect going-to-the-movies hairstyle. My head was an elaborate sculpture of butterfly clips and I was wearing my new halter-neck dress that made my legs look ultra-long. The last thing I wanted to do was go traipsing through the filthy old hang out of some throat-slitting ghost.

  “Nick said he’ll give us a lift to Cairns,” I said, flicking my hair with what I hoped resembled laid-back sophistication. “But he’s leaving in, like, five minutes.”

  Justin sighed. “Okay then. I guess so.”

  I grabbed my bag and followed him out of the house.

  “Oh shit!” he laughed. “Check out the sky! It’s totally gonna storm!” He grinned. “Man, how perfect is this!”

  Black monsoon clouds were creeping over the street like bulging potato sacks. The air sizzled with electricity. The hot breeze smelled of rain.

  “Come on Abby, we have to do this. It’ll be awesome. Like a horror movie.”

  “I hate horror movies,” I said.

  “It won’t take long, I promise. I just want to check out the bloodstains. Then we can go watch a video at my place. Come on. Please.”

  I gave an enormous sigh. “Fine.”

  Justin grinned. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious? You might get to meet Psycho George!”

  “No!” I wondered if he knew I was lying. The truth was, I desperately wanted to believe a ghost roamed the deserted house. It made life seem less black and white; as though the world was mysterious and intangible, even within the confines of Acacia Beach. Regardless, scouring someone’s scungy old bloodstained bathroom wasn’t exactly the way I had envisaged spending my Sunday.

  The house seemed to grow larger as we approached; its purple shadows oozing over the street. The sky darkened too; blacker with each step.

  A fat globe of water exploded on the tip of my nose. “I have to pee,” I said.

  Justin ignored me. He pushed aside a mass of weeds to reveal a gaping hole in the side wall of the house. Tendrils of fern tickled my face. Justin scrambled inside as rain began to pelt the garden.

  “Come on.” He reached out his hand. I crawled reluctantly through the hole, jagged weatherboards scratching my shoulders. I stood up. We were in the kitchen. Sink and wooden bench, peeling l
aminate cupboards. Grimy fridge and microwave. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust.

  “Psycho George had a microwave?” A cockroach scuttled across the lino and I leapt backwards into Justin.

  “Were you hoping for some scary paintings or candles or something?” he laughed. “Cos that could be arranged.” He poked my waist and I slapped him away.

  “Just go and find the stupid bathroom,” I said, my voice coming out wobblier than I had hoped. “It’s disgusting in here.”

  He squeezed my arm. “Are you scared?”

  “You know I am! And you’re really starting to piss me off!”

  “Fine. You stay down here. I’m just going to run upstairs. Look for Psycho George.”

  I plonked myself onto the bottom step. Slapped at a spider as it scurried over my bare toes. The storm was growing heavier. I pictured the barrels of grey rain as they ripped across the reef. I looked down. My new dress was smeared with mud.

  I knew I’d been stupid to think anything could ever happen between Justin and I. That we could slide smoothly from being primary school buddies to two halves of a couple. No matter how hard either of us tried to see things differently, I would never be anything but the dorky kid down the street.

  Shutters smashed against the boarded windows. I stood up and yelled into the empty house. “Justin? I’m going home, alright.”

  No answer. I nibbled my thumbnail.

  “Jus?” Rain drowned out my voice. Hesitantly, I climbed onto the first step. It groaned under my weight. I took another step, and another, tiptoeing all the way to the second floor. I peered down the gloomy corridor. The shards of daylight were thin and pale. Shadows danced over the walls.

  “Justin? Where the hell are you?” Gingerly, I pushed against the first door in the passage. The room behind it was an empty shell.

  Justin leapt out and grabbed me around the waist. I shrieked and whacked him hard in the stomach.

  “Fucking hell,” he spluttered. “I was just mucking around!”

  “Yeah well it’s not funny! When are you going to grow up? We’re not little kids anymore you know!”