Music From Standing Waves

by Johanna Craven

  The front door clicked and Matt wandered back inside, cigarette smoke heavy on his clothes. I kept my eyes shut. I wondered if he would believe it if I pretended to be asleep. He climbed into bed beside me and slipped under the blanket.

  “Abby? You awake?” He shuffled across the mattress and kissed the back of my neck. I felt my muscles tighten.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, pulling away.

  I swallowed hard. “We’re always sorry these days, aren’t we.”

  Matt rolled over. I stared into the dark, listening to his heavy breathing. I could see the blue outlines of the TV and heater.

  Matt sighed loudly and sat up. “There are bugs in this bed, I swear.” He flicked on the lamp.

  “Turn the light off,” I snapped, hiding my eyes in the pillow. I didn’t want him to see I had been crying. He clicked off the lamp. I climbed awkwardly over him and stumbled into the bathroom. I threw the door closed. The tap gurgled noisily. Icy water ran over my fingers. I splashed my red eyes. Julian’s one towel lay in a damp grey heap on the floor so I let the drops run off my face. I peered into the smeary mirror. My eyes were underlined in dark shadows. In my reflection, I could see shades of my mother. I looked away hurriedly and wiped the water off my cheeks with the sleeve of my pyjamas.

  When I got back to the lounge, Matt was gone. The front door swung on its creaky hinges. Drawing in my breath, I pushed open the flyscreen and tiptoed onto the porch. Matt was leaning against the veranda rail, staring into the black garden. The oak tree stretched out over his head like giant claws. He lifted a cigarette to his lips and inhaled slowly.

  “Another cigarette? You’re going to die of heart disease.”

  Matt looked over his shoulder at me. “It’s what I do,” he said bitterly. “I smoke, you practise.”

  I sat on the doorstep and hugged my knees. “Don’t be such an arsehole.”

  Matt blew a stream of smoke into the porch light. An icy silence hung between us.

  “So?” I said finally, my breath a cloud. I wrapped my arms around my body and shivered. I missed the steamy heat of Acacia Beach.

  “So what? You won’t even let me touch you now. How the hell am I supposed to fix that?”

  I stared into the overgrown hedge that crept onto the porch. “I don’t know.”

  Matt smiled bitterly. “You don’t even care, do you. Nothing matters to you any more except this stupid competition.”

  My voice sparked. “Don’t make me feel guilty for working towards something! Just because I’m not doing exactly what you want me to do doesn’t give you the right to criticise my choices!”

  “I’m criticising your choices because they’re stupid!” cried Matt. “What you’re doing, Abby, with all these hours and hours of practice, it’s not a life!”

  “It’s the life I want! And besides, I wouldn’t need to be doing all this extra work if it weren’t for your band!”

  Matt glared at me. “You’re blaming me for falling behind? You’re unbelievable! You think it’ll all be okay just as long as you don’t have to admit that maybe you’re not as good as you thought you were.”

  I leapt off the step. “I don’t think that at all! But you’re making it pretty obvious that I’m going to have to decide between playing and going out with you!”

  Matt flung his cigarette onto the porch. It glowed orange before sizzling to black.

  “Don’t bother telling me which one you choose. I think it’s pretty clear who the loser is here.”

  “Then why can’t you just support me?” I cried. “I don’t want to have to make a choice!”

  “Forget it. I’m sick to death of being second best to your fucking violin.”

  I pushed past him and raced down the concrete steps. He snatched my arm.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.” I yanked free of his grip.

  “Don’t be so stupid. You’re not going anywhere by yourself at this time of night.”

  “Well I don’t want to stay here with you!” I cried. “So you go!”

  “Fine.” He marched inside and snatched his jacket off the floor. I didn’t see his face again as he ran down the path. I sat on the step and watched him disappear around the corner. Squeezed my knees to my chest and shivered. My pyjama sleeve was still wet from the bathroom tap. I stared into the twisted trunk of the oak tree before giving in to my silent tears.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I wanted to drive a bus through the violin section of Saint Christopher’s junior school orchestra.

  “Miss, I forgot my music.”

  “I forgot my bow.”

  “I forgot my violin.”

  I held up one hand in a futile attempt to command silence. “Everyone that doesn’t have music sit next to someone who does. Everyone that doesn’t have a bow or a violin, you’ll just have to pretend.”

  “Miss?”

  “Yes-” Insert name other than ‘fat kid’, I thought hurriedly.

  “He kicked me.”

  “Kick him back. What’s the name of the first note?” I asked for the billionth time.

  Ten pairs of eyes stared at me blankly.

  “What’s the saying we use to remember our notes on the lines?” I sighed. One more recitation of Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit would be enough to commit me to a mental asylum. More vacant eyes.

  “G!” piped up a pigtailed girl in the front row. “The first note is G.”

  I wanted to kiss her. “That’s right. Did everyone hear that? The first note is G. Let’s all play a G.”

  Somewhere in the howling mess was a note that vaguely resembled G.

  “Very good. Let’s play slowly through the first line. Violins up. Fingers out of noses. No, keep your hands to yourself, thank you. Is that an appropriate place for your bow to be? Fingers out of noses!”

  Two hours later, I stumbled gratefully into the violin-less street, praising the exquisite sound of peak hour traffic. The icy chill of winter had disappeared, but the spring evening was edged with a cold breeze. I tucked the ends of my scarf inside my jacket and walked towards the station.

  After two weeks, I was missing Matt like hell. He would always wait patiently for me outside the hall, lean on a pillar and casually bring a cigarette to his lips. I’d kiss him gratefully and he would carry my violin back to his car while I whinged about my incompetent students.

  Now there was no welcoming smile to signal the end of work, no-one to complain to about the regressing talent of the junior school orchestra and, I thought as I shoved my way onto the packed train, no lift home. We had spoken a couple of times at uni, after countless frosty stand-offs in the middle of the Con foyer.

  “We should try and be friends,” he said. “For the sake of everyone else. For the whole Friday night thing.”

  “Sure. I can be civil.” I was sure the gulf between the two of us had become too big to ever get over. Losing Matt left a hole not even Dvorak could fill.

  I clung to a pole as the train rattled over the tracks. Someone was pushing against my violin case and ripping my arm from its socket. I sighed. This wasn’t what the Con was supposed to be about. It was supposed to be glamorous; a stepping-stone to my illustrious performance career. Instead, it was the point on my résumé that had secured the job teaching ten little shits who exploded into giggles whenever I asked them to play the G string. In the back of my mind was the conversation I had had almost three years earlier with Andrew’s friend Lily. Her words had stayed with me since the moment they were spoken.

  “It’s a bitch, you know; the Con…”

  I didn’t want Lily to be right.

  Jess pulled me out of the choir hall before the final cadence had even ended. Her latest obsession was an American exchange student named Mickey and she had been counting down the hours until she saw him again.

  “Let’s go!” she sung. “I’m getting the six-forty train. We can make it if we run.” She swished her hips in the bright green printed skirt she had found at the op shop. She had pinn
ed the broken zip with a safety pin and I could see her undies but Jess said she didn’t mind. It was a statement. I thought she probably hadn’t realised they were showing until after she had left the house.

  “I’m going to stay and practise,” I said. “There’s only a month to go.”

  “Three weeks, five days and counting…” groaned Jess. “Don’t be silly. Mickey and me will be out late, you can have the whole house to yourself. You don’t want to be alone in those tiny little practice rooms all night.”

  “I don’t want to get distracted. I’d rather stay here.”

  She unscrewed the lid of her water bottle and took a sip. “Okay, honey. If you’re sure that’s what you want to do. But don’t be too late home.”

  I trudged down to the practice rooms at the back of the Con. The grey walls were peeling and the whole dingy corridor smelled of rotting fruit, courtesy of an apple left in the common room by someone who had graduated circa 1973.

  I pushed the door of my room closed and tuned my violin. Across the hall, I could hear the muffled sounds of an oboe and one bar of a Chopin etude being repeated like a broken record. I opened my score. It was full of grey-lead scribbles from John. ‘Rhythm’ he had scrawled. ‘Watch position change. Broader vibrato…’. I was still trying to take it all in.

  I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to empty my mind of everything except the music. My bow moved slowly through the tuplets. I imagined how it would sound with the orchestra behind me. I could hear my dramatic solo rising up over the horns and woodwinds. I shivered in anticipation.

  One by one, the muted sounds from the other practice rooms disappeared. The security guard poked his head around my door.

  “I’m locking up,” he said, jangling his keys on the end of his finger. “You got an access card to let yourself out?”

  I nodded and turned back to the music. The light under the door had vanished; the rest of the Con now bathed in darkness. I began to play louder to drown out the eerie creaks that moved through the old, deserted building.

  Finally, I flicked closed the music and rubbed my aching head against my arm. Once more, from memory, start to finish. I rolled my arms in a wide circle, then sat my violin back on my shoulder. I struck the opening note and let the rich tone vibrate around the room. In my mind, I filled the bars rest with the dark orchestral melody. My bowing arm stretched sluggishly over the leaps and I struggled through the final cadenza, a sharp pain shooting through my wrists and hands. When I lifted my fingers at the end of the piece there was blood on my strings.

  The clock in the Con foyer was five minutes fast. After I discovered this at the end of first semester, I would sit there every Tuesday, watching the seconds tick by until it showed twenty-five to four and I couldn’t put my lesson off any longer. As I watched the clock, my mind would overflow with anxiety. Every week I would sit there, knowing that once again I hadn’t done enough practice. Even the weeks when I had worked my arse off- the way I had since quitting Standing Waves- I would still sit there, staring at the dusty white face, knowing it hadn’t been enough. And then I would draw in my breath, cross my fingers and walk into John’s studio.

  But lately, my unease had softened. I could feel the Dvorak piecing itself together, slowly bringing back my confidence. I let myself into the studio five minutes early.

  John opened my score and waited for me to begin. I closed my eyes and imagined myself playing the opening bars perfectly. Then I inhaled and lifted my bow to the strings.

  As I played, John began pounding out the beat on the edge of the piano, slowly at first, then faster and faster until my bow flew over the strings. I had no idea what my fingers were doing and I didn’t stop to think about it. John reached up and flicked the score shut. I didn’t miss a note. The music swirled inside me. I felt Dvorak’s passion and the flood of the rippling cadenza. It was as though everything that had flowed from his head as he wrote the piece had somehow been transferred to me.

  Suddenly, my problems seemed so petty. Matt, Clara and the junior school orchestra all blended into insignificance. Nothing mattered except the music. I remembered suddenly what real inspiration felt like. I remembered why I had cried for joy when I had been accepted into the Con. The passion that had carried me through my childhood in Queensland had suddenly come rushing back.

  I touched the final cadence and let the eerie A minor fill the room. John held the silence for a moment. He crossed his legs.

  “It’s improving,” he said. “But not quickly enough.”

  I dropped onto the piano stool. My adrenalin plummeted through the floor. I longed for Andrew’s musty basement with the blue wallpaper. I longed for his calm voice.

  “Beautiful, Abs…”

  “I know it’s hard work, Abby, but you’re going to be in front of the orchestra in two weeks and they won’t stop for you. You need to do better.”

  Angry tears simmered behind my eyes. I clenched my fist around the neck of the violin. Suddenly I didn’t care about keeping my composure. I wanted John to see me cry. I leapt to my feet.

  “I can’t do better!” Tears spilled down my cheeks. “I have practised for hours every day to get this right and I can’t do any more! This is all I have!”

  John lifted my flailing bow out of my hand. He touched my shoulder. “If that’s how you feel, maybe performance isn’t for you.”

  “Don’t tell me that,” I sobbed.

  He rifled through his briefcase and handed me a tissue. I squeezed it between my fingers, without wiping my eyes.

  “Performance is for me! It has to be!”

  John watched me choke down my tears. “I think you ought to pull out of the competition. You’re not handling the pressure.”

  “No. No.” I snatched my bow. “Just tell me what I need to improve.”

  John began to pace across the creaking carpet. “Abby, you know what you need to improve. We’ve been over it again and again. I just don’t feel as though you’re really getting anywhere.”

  “I’ll do it again.” My hand trembled on the fingerboard. John held up his palm to command silence.

  “You’re in no state to play any more today. Put your violin away.”

  I moped across the room and packed up my things. “I’m not pulling out of the competition,” I said.

  John nodded. “If that’s what you want. But please think about why you’re doing this, Abby. Is it really worth it?”

  I sat on my bed with the phone in my lap. Rain pounded the roof and headlights flashed through the gap in my curtains. In the lounge, Jess was practising scales, smacking the keys with her fist at every mistake. I pulled my doona up over my head. Dialled with a shaking finger and pressed the phone to my ear. It rang three times.

  “Andrew?”

  “Yeah, speaking.”

  I swallowed heavily. “This is Abby Austin.”

  “Abby,” said Andrew shortly. “It’s nice to hear from you.”

  A sharp pain stabbed the back of my throat and I tried to push it away. “I’m sorry it’s been so long,” I croaked. I heard Andrew exhale and imagined him running his fingers through his hair the way he did when he wasn’t sure what to say.

  “How have you been?” he asked finally.

  “Good,” I lied. “How are you?”

  “Oh, you know. The usual. Just teaching and stuff.”

  The muscles in my throat tightened. “Where are you?”

  “Driving home.” I heard a swishing sound as a car passed his.

  I tried to force a lightness into my voice. “Very naughty.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Hang on, I’ll put you on speaker.”

  I sucked in my breath. “How’s Hayley?”

  “She’s good,” said Andrew, his voice brightening slightly.

  I rested my head against my knees.

  “She told me she saw you. That must have been nice for both of you.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “It was great.” I wrung my free hand around the corner of my doona. Tears stung
my eyes and I couldn’t tell if they were for him or me.

  “So how’s the violin going?” he asked. “What pieces are you playing?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but fell speechless.

  “Abby? You still there?”

  My eyes overflowed. “I’m still here.”

  “Are you crying?”

  I sniffed. “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I gulped down my breath. “Nothing’s wrong,” I coughed. “I just needed to hear your voice.”

  “I don’t believe you. I know you too well.” He paused. “You can’t have changed that much in two years.”

  I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my pyjamas. “I’m just stressed out. I’ve got a big competition coming up.”

  “Well good luck,” said Andrew. “And take it easy. Don’t forget that music is supposed to be something you love.”

  “I really miss you,” I blurted.

  “I miss you too, Abs. I’m glad you finally called. There are a lot of people here that would like to hear from you.”

  I buried myself into the doona. “Do you think we could just chat for a while? Not talk about music or anything?”

  “Abs, I’d love to, really. But I need to get home. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s cool.” My voice trembled.

  “I’d better go,” said Andrew. “But it really was great to hear from you. Give me a call and let me know how your competition goes.”

  “Okay.” I bit my lip. “Take care.” My voice was scratchy.

  “Yeah sure,” said Andrew. “You too okay.”

  I sniffed. “I’ll try.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  With a week until the competition heats, the practice rooms at the Con had become my second home. I was on a first name basis with the late night cleaner, who would sit at the bottom of the stairs and share her thermos of coffee with me.

  Concerto practice and waitressing quickly replaced sleep, turning logic into a thing of the past.