Music From Standing Waves

by Johanna Craven

  “Been playing duets with the ranga kid?”

  He laughed. “I hate you for deserting me.”

  “I played in the orchestra,” I said. “Appalachian Spring.”

  “I love that piece.”

  “Me too. I have a CD of it that belongs to you.”

  “Is that where it went? I should have known. I’m never going to see that again, am I?”

  “I’ll give it to you next time I see you,” I said.

  “And when will that be? Ten years time?” He laughed again. “It’s lost to me.”

  A tidal wave of homesickness washed over me. When would I see him again? When would I see anyone I knew again? My stomach turned over.

  “So how’s your boarding house?” asked Andrew.

  I was silent. The more I heard his voice, the more I longed to be back in his basement. The more I longed for things I knew; the rock pool and the beach and my own bedroom with its tatty floral doona cover.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Already? You sure? Do you want to speak to Hayley? She just walked in.”

  “Another time.” I hung up and raced into the bathroom before tears spilled down my cheeks. I pushed open the window. Below, cars and trams jostled each other down the road. Girls in high heels ran under the window and laughed into their mobiles. They were all strangers. I ached for familiarity.

  I picked up my phone to call Andrew back, then stopped. I thought of my inspiring lesson with John. Thought of the exhilarating orchestra rehearsal. I had to move forward. I sucked in my breath. Clicking the keypad, I deleted Andrew’s number. The muscles in my throat tightened. It had to be this way, I told myself. Move forward. Don’t look back. I scrolled through my phone and kept deleting. Hayley, Hugh, Rachel… Justin. Finally, satisfied, I stood up and looked into the mirror. I smoothed my straggly ponytail and straightened my back. There was no way I was going to let the past creep back and mess up my future.

  For my eighteenth birthday, Jess took me out with a group of friends from the College. I danced to techno all night and let a random buy me drinks until he tried to stick his tongue down my throat.

  Jess chased me off the dance floor. “What is wrong with you? Did you see how hot that guy was? And he totally wanted you! Are you a lesbian?”

  She followed me out of the bar and down the footpath. I stopped in a huff at the tram stop. The vodka shots were making the ground wobble. My ears were thumping. Jess took my arm.

  “Honey, it’s nearly two.” She was still talking loudly from the music. “There won’t be any trams at this time of night. We can get a taxi.”

  “I’ll just walk,” I mumbled, marching past the rows of dark shops and glowing Seven-Elevens. I skirted some girls in red and black football scarves who were singing and dancing like morons. A homeless guy had had passed out in the doorway of a souvlaki bar. Taxis wove across the tram tracks like giant yellow beetles. I began to walk faster. Jess ran after me and I gave an inward sigh of relief. I didn’t want conversation, but the city at night scared me.

  “Are you okay?” She skipped to keep up.

  I nodded.

  I wished I had been able to kiss him. I’d planned on it. He had been wearing a white shirt and stood out in the dark. Invented stupid dance moves to make me laugh.

  “Can I stay at your place?” asked Jess.

  I nodded again.

  He had pulled me towards him and pressed his chest against mine. He hadn’t been gentle like Justin. I realised then that I didn’t want some random, sweaty nobody. I wanted someone whose childhood I’d shared. Someone who knew everything there was to know about me. I felt sick. Justin knew me better than anyone and he had chosen Mia.

  “I’m sorry,” I remembered myself spluttering. “It’s not you.”

  The guy had laughed at that. “Yeah, yeah I’ve heard that one before. If it’s not me, then who is it?”

  “Are you mad at me?” asked Jess. I shook my head. I was mad at Justin. Anger shot through me with every step. It was more than anger, I decided. It was hate. I hated him for refusing to stay out of my head. For refusing to let me leave my old life behind.

  We walked in silence back to the boarding house. My feet ached by the time we arrived. I pulled off my heels without undoing the buckles and flicked on the bedside lamp. Clara was asleep on her back, one arm lifted over her head and her red hair cascading over the pillow.

  “Look at her,” Jess snorted. “She even sleeps like a diva.”

  I flopped onto my bed and buried my head in the pillow. Jess squeezed onto the mattress beside me. She rubbed my back.

  “So who is he?” she asked gently.

  My chest heaved with a huge sob. Jess wriggled the doona out from under us and pulled it over our shoulders. I squeezed my eyes shut and launched into the whole saga about Justin. I began with stories of Shipwreck and the rock pool, telling Jess everything up to the night of the ball.

  “And then,” I sobbed. “He had the nerve to ask me out.”

  Jess didn’t speak right away. Her socks brushed against my bare toes. “It sounds to me as though you wanted to say yes,” she told me finally.

  “Why would I want to say yes? I hate him.” The realisation was still new to me. Saying it gave me a sort of power.

  Jess stroked my hair. “Why did you turn that guy down tonight? Was it because he wasn’t Justin?”

  I tried to cough down my tears, afraid of waking Clara. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe.” My hair clung to my wet cheeks.

  “What do you want?” asked Jess. “Do you want Justin to come down here and tell you how sorry he is and that you’re the only girl he’s ever wanted?”

  “No,” I said. “All I want to do is forget about him.”

  In June, I experienced my first winter. Snuggled into flannelette pyjamas, I buried myself under two doonas and listened to the wind howl through the drainpipes. Outside my room, a loose piece of lattice rattled against the wall. Water poured from the gutter.

  Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata.

  I could hear the violent minor thirds in the crashes of thunder and the rippling triplets in the drumming rain. It had been one of my favourite pieces, ever since that hot afternoon in Queensland when Andrew had played it before my lesson. Every time I heard it, I thought of standing in awe on the top step of the basement, my anger towards Sarah getting washed away in the flood of music.

  “That piece isn’t about a storm, Abby,” Clara snorted. “It’s about overwhelming despair and anger.”

  I tucked my doona over my chin. “How do you know?”

  “It’s a fact,” said Clara. “My dad told me.”

  I wasn’t convinced. “But how could anyone really know what was going on in Beethoven’s head when he was writing it? It could be about a storm…”

  Clara sighed. “Whatever.”

  I rolled over. I wondered what Beethoven had been so angry about. Maybe a girl.

  “Your dad called, by the way,” I said, curling up beneath my blankets. “This afternoon while you were at your lesson. I told him you’d call back.”

  Clara groaned dramatically and slid out of bed for the phone. She sat cross-legged on the floor in her silky pyjamas.

  “Hi Dad… Yes… Yes I know. I’m sorry. Yes well my roommate only just gave me the message…”

  I pulled my doona over my head. Clara’s daily conversations with her father always hit me with a stab of guilt. Reminded me of the family I was trying so hard to detach myself from.

  I’d written to Nick a lot. Hounded him to join the twenty-first century and get a mobile, or email address at least. I refused to call him on the home phone in case I stumbled across Sarah. Six months in and I was still waiting for a reply. Still, I thought, the letters gave him something to at least think about doing.

  “Your mum will come around,” Dad had promised as he drove me to the airport. I guessed it had been my mother’s attempt at one final stand by locking herself in her bedroom and refusing to say goo
dbye. With a place waiting at one of Australia’s most prestigious music schools, I had barely given it a second thought.

  I knew I had thrown my dad into hell though. I thought about him every night while Clara rattled off the day’s events to her father. I had heard my parents fighting the night I had told them about the scholarship.

  “You gave her permission without even asking me? How could you do that, David? How could you?”

  “I didn’t realise I needed your blessing for everything I did! You’ve been locking our daughter up in this place!”

  “And now we’re losing her. I hope you’re happy.”

  Dad had started the year by calling me once a week. He’d rattle off a list of questions he had clearly written down before he rang.

  “How’s the weather down there?”

  “School going okay?”

  “Are you eating properly?”

  I’d give one word answers then hang up feeling guilty for not being chattier. The calls had gradually dwindled to once a fortnight. I suspected they’d be monthly by the end of the year.

  I was forced to come out of the blankets for air. Clara was pacing around the dorm, wrapping herself in the phone cord.

  “Yes Dad, I know, I did ask him… But the teacher I have now is fine… But Dad-” Her voice was thin and reedy. “Of course I’m putting in the hours… That wasn’t my fault, the pianist was no good. My unaccompanied piece was fine…”

  I tried to imagine my parents giving two shits how my violin lessons went.

  “So how did your unaccompanied piece go, possum?” I laughed aloud at the thought, then felt a dull ache inside me.

  Clara shot me a glare. She slipped into the bathroom and pulled the door closed around the phone cord. Her voice dropped to an inaudible mumble.

  I clicked off the light and listened to winter.

  TWENTY-TWO

  My last months of high school were caffeine infused, sugar-powered and crammed to the brim with music. I had twice weekly violin lessons and was slowly growing more confident. Critical as he was, John was always careful to praise me and point out my improvement.

  “You are capable of everything I ask of you,” he said as he pushed me harder and harder. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

  They were words I had needed to hear. Every time I pulled my violin out to practise in the dorm, Clara would magically appear.

  “Why are you bowing it like that? Are you happy with that phrasing? Oh wow, Abby, that sounds so nice…”

  John threw countless new composers at me; opening my mind to Nielsen, Reger, Ysaye. Their music took me places I had never imagined.

  I began to pity the teachers of non-musical subjects. To us, anything other than music was just an inconvenience. English essays were scrawled on the train. Maths exercises copied from the back of the textbook. Every second of spare time was thrown into preparing for recitals and auditions. We dreamed of being at the Con and being able to immerse ourselves entirely in the one thing we loved.

  Clara organised a practice schedule for our dorm room.

  “We need to give each other space to prepare for auditions,” she said. “When it’s my turn to practise, I’d appreciate it if you went somewhere else. I’ll do the same for you.”

  I’d announced to John that I was playing an Ysaye sonata for my audition.

  “No,” he said. “Play the Mozart instead.”

  “Why? I played the Ysaye correctly. You just said so.”

  “This isn’t about the notes, Abby. It’s about what the music is saying. What it’s feeling. When you play Ysaye you’re so focused on technique that there’s no emotion in your performance. You need to feel what the composer was feeling. You need to make us feel it too.”

  My final year twelve exam was a literature essay on a book I’d only read half of. Afterwards, Jess and some others went out to celebrate, but I had an extra lesson scheduled with John. I rushed home to get my violin before Clara’s allotted practice time started.

  When I climbed the stairs to the dorm, Nick was waiting outside.

  I stared. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  My brother was slumped against the door, running dirty fingernails up and down his arms. His jeans and t-shirt were grimy and stained; eyes like a polluted sea. He climbed to his feet.

  “Is that how you greet your brother after being away for a year?”

  “It is when you turn up unannounced at my dorm room looking like you’ve crawled out of a sewer. How did you get in here?”

  Nick sniffed loudly. “I waited downstairs til someone buzzed open the door. Then I just came up and found your room number. Easy.”

  I clicked open the door and he followed me inside.

  “How did you get down here?” I dropped my school bag.

  “Got a ride with one of the guys from the farm. Just felt like getting away. I thought you might be happy to see me. Although clearly I was wrong.”

  I snorted. “Please. You’re so filthy I don’t even want to go near you.”

  “Well fuck you too,” said Nick. “Let me use your shower, alright?”

  I gestured to the bathroom. “Don’t use the pink towel. Clara will have a stroke.”

  Nick mooched into the bathroom and slammed the door. The shower spurted to life. I paced around the dorm chewing my nails, listening to Nick’s hacking cough and a loud crash as the shampoo bottles hit the floor. After about ten minutes, he emerged with a towel around his waist and plonked himself on the edge of my bed. Water ran down his wiry brown shoulders.

  “You can’t stay here,” I said. “We’re not allowed to have strange men in our dorm rooms.”

  “I’m not a strange man. I’m your brother.”

  “You’re a strange man,” I said. “You can’t stay.”

  “Where else am I going to go? I’ve got five bucks in my wallet.”

  “Maybe you should have thought about that before you came down here.”

  “I wanted to see you,” said Nick. “So shoot me.”

  Footsteps clicked down the hall. I heard Clara’s keys jangle.

  “Shit. That’s my roommate. Can you just- I don’t know- behave?”

  Clara swung open the door. She looked at Nick and her eyebrows shot skyward. “Well, Abby. You’re just full of surprises.”

  I sighed. “He’s my brother.”

  Nick stood up and began to rifle through his backpack for clothes. His towel drooped, exposing half an inch of arse crack.

  “For God’s sake,” I hissed. “Do that in the bathroom.” I shoved him towards the door.

  “Alright, alright. Geez, this place is a bloody shoebox.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told Clara, once Nick was behind the closed door. “He just turned up. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well he can’t stay here,” she said testily. “If he gets caught we’ll be in huge trouble.”

  “Thanks, genius.”

  “Why is he all dopey like that? Is he a bit slow in the head?”

  I sighed. “He’s using heroin.”

  Clara laughed a little. “Your brother’s a junkie? Well that figures…”

  “What?”

  “Well it makes sense that the College would give you the scholarship. Given that you come from, you know, a broken home.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Okay. Whatever. What am I going to do?”

  “Put him on a plane back to Queensland. And do it quickly before anyone sees him here.”

  Nick stumbled out of the bathroom in jeans and a faded Harley Davidson t-shirt. He threw the towel on the floor and rolled onto Clara’s mattress.

  “Get up!” she screeched. “That’s my bed!”

  “Sorry,” Nick mumbled.

  “You gotta go home, Nick,” I said. “Tonight.”

  “No way. Not going back there.” He climbed onto my bed and closed his eyes.

  “I’ve got practice to do,” said Clara.

  I shook Nick’s shoulder. “Don’t go to sleep. Where
’s your friend? The one you came down with?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Well, call him.”

  “Don’t have his number.”

  I sighed. “I’m calling Dad.”

  Nick sat up. “Don’t,” he said. “Fine. I’ll leave. Just thought we could, I don’t know, catch up or something.”

  “No. We can’t catch up now. I have an audition in two days, a violin lesson in an hour and you’re a total mess. Come visit me when you’ve got your shit together. Then we’ll catch up.”

  “Audition?”

  “For the Conservatorium.”

  Nick smiled wryly. “I knew you wouldn’t come home.”

  “That’s your phone, Abby,” said Clara. “Hopefully it’s the pound come to pick up their stray.”

  I rustled through my satchel. “It’s Dad,” I told Nick, glancing at the number.

  “Don’t tell him I’m here, alright.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Hey Dad.”

  “Hi, possum.” His voice sounded strained. “How are you? How’s the weather down there? School nearly finished? We’re looking forward to having you home again at the end of the year.”

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Well… We’re just wondering if you’ve heard from Nick lately. He’s… Well, he’s not here. We’re not sure where he is.”

  “Nick? Um…”

  My brother glared at me.

  “No,” I told Dad. “I haven’t heard from him. But I’m sure he’ll turn up in a few days. You know what he’s like.”

  I glared back at Nick as I hung up the phone.

  “Well that was wise,” said Clara.

  Nick trudged into the bathroom and grabbed his dirty clothes off the floor. He stuffed them slowly into his backpack. I dug out my wallet and handed him thirty dollars.

  “Take this. It’s all I can afford. Sorry.”

  “That won’t get me back to Acacia,” said Nick. He pushed my outstretched hand away. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just hitch or something.”

  “That’s insane. Let me call Dad back, okay. He’ll send you some money.”

  “No!” said Nick sharply. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want nothing to do with them. And they don’t want nothing to do with me.”