Dancing With Chairs in the Music House

by Caro Soles

  Before we get a chance to discuss it, a young man steps up to the podium and flicks the microphone with his fingers, making it whine. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Miss Rona Layne.” She steps up on the little platform, folds her hands in front of her, and begins to thank us all for coming. She thanks the pianists for all their hard work, and then she talks about this being the first big step along the path to Carnegie Hall and a successful musical career.

  Everybody cheers and claps. We are still clapping when Brian suddenly leaps up on the podium and grabs the microphone before the man turns it off.

  “I want to give a special thank you to Miss Layne for taking me on when I arrived from the west coast out of the blue and for pushing me like a slave driver all these months since.”

  Everybody laughs, especially her students.

  “She is right. I will keep going along this path, but next weekend I leave for New York City with a friend to study there. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped me, and to say goodbye in case I don’t get the chance later on. See you all in Carnegie Hall!”

  We look at each other.

  “How very theatrical,” Mother says.

  Mrs. Pierce makes a small strangling noise and crumples, senseless, at Mother’s feet.

  “Holy Willy,” says Daddy, kneeling down and feeling for a pulse.

  I look over and see Brian and the man who looks like a Velázquez painting with their arms around each other’s shoulders. They are laughing.

  As it turns out, Mrs. Pierce has only fainted.

  “It must be the heat,” everyone is saying, fanning themselves with their programs.

  We leave shortly afterwards, and I am glad because I am suddenly very tired. We take a taxi home, something almost unheard of. Streetlights are a blur as we drive along Carlton Street.

  The car smells like stale smoke, but we don’t care. Everyone is still happy from the concert, even Jonathan. Mother is carrying Jonathan’s flowers cradled in her arms like a baby. Their exotic scent gradually fills the back seat.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” she says. “The first of many wonderful concerts, just as Miss Layne told us.”

  “Miss Layne told everyone exactly the same thing,” Jonathan says, but nothing makes any difference to Mother’s great happiness.

  “I almost felt sorry for Mrs. Pierce,” Mother goes on. “Her son making a spectacle of himself like that.”

  “Maybe it was the only way he could get up the nerve to tell her he’s going,” Jonathan says.

  “He was drunk.” Daddy makes a disgusted noise as the taxi swings into our driveway.

  They send me to bed right away, which is fine with me because I am so tired. Strangely, once I am undressed and cuddled under the covers, I seem to wake up again, reliving everything that happened at the Recital. Images whirl about in my mind, a kaleidoscope of photographs in technicolour: Angelica in her grown-up dress, Miss Layne’s beaded green slippers, Brian drinking from his silver flask, Mrs. Pierce crumpling to the floor in front of us.

  I must have dozed off because I wake up again as Mother and Daddy come in and get ready for bed, whispering together. Mother gets in first and spoons against me. Daddy has just gone into the small washing room when there is a knock at the door. Mother jumps up and pulls on her old paisley dressing gown. It still looks good in the dim light.

  She opens the door a crack. “Yes? Is there something the matter?”

  “Sorry to wake youse up.” It’s Baggy Bones. “There’s a terrible racket upstairs. The Pierces are going at it something fierce, and I can’t get a lick of sleep in all the commotion.”

  “What can we do?”

  “I thought your mister could go up there and speak to them,” she says. “I don’t want to call the police, but I will if I have to. I need my sleep!”

  By this time Daddy has put on his suit again, and he opens the door wider, edging Mother aside. “I’ll go up and speak to them,” he says. “Just go back to bed, everyone.”

  I’m wide awake, sitting up when Mother closes the door. Things like this are not supposed to happen in the Music House. I wonder if the Pierces are fighting about Brian’s Mystery Woman, if she really was at the Recital as Janet suggested, if my undelivered note has anything to do with it.

  “That poor woman,” Mother says. “I may not like her, but I can sympathize. It’s obvious she had no idea of what he was going to do. Poor soul. She loves him more than life itself and has sacrificed a lot to get him where he is today, I’m sure. I can certainly understand that sense of betrayal she must feel.”

  She slides back into bed, dropping one arm around me protectively. “As if she doesn’t have enough to deal with,” she mutters.

  I lie staring at the damp spot on the ceiling that’s shaped like South America, and finally I understand—Brian is going to New York City with the Mystery Woman! That is just so romantic. I can hardly wait to tell Janet.

  Mother starts to get out of bed to find out what’s going on, just as Daddy finally walks in the door.

  “Go back to bed,” he says. He looks really tired now, his face grey and drawn. “It’s over.”

  “What happened?” Mother asks.

  “Everyone just got over-emotional—fueled by alcohol, no doubt. Neither one of them was being very… rational. Some of the things they said….” He shakes his head. “Anyway, they’ve promised to go to bed and get some sleep. And I want to do the same.”

  “That poor woman,” Mother murmurs, slipping her arms around me again.

  I settle against Mother, waiting for the bed for dip under Daddy’s weight, for sleep to come, for the images to stop rolling through my mind. The last image I remember is Mrs. Pierce slipping to the ground while Brian laughs with the man who looks like a painting.

  24. WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE…

  THE NEXT DAY EVERYONE IS TENSE, waiting. Jonathan goes down to the corner to get the papers as they come out, checking the reviews. First comes the Globe and Mail, then the early editions of the Star and the Telegram. The headlines all say more or less the same things: Angelica: Teenage Version of Janey Drew, Angelica Dazzles with Technique, Angelica: Rival for Patsy Parr? Then they get around to everyone else: Jonathan Dudley-Harris delivers a balanced rendition of Bach cantata; Frederick Ascher leaves his heart on the stage; Brian Pierce plays with a fierce intensity and the sort of control usually seen in older performers. The recital opened with caution and ended with assured passion. But it’s mostly about Angelica.

  Mother flings the papers aside. “Men!” she says. “Thinking below the belt, as usual.”

  “It’s true,” Jonathan says. “It shows I’ve made the right decision.”

  “Nonsense.” Mother picks up the papers and folds them roughly. “You need more experience, that’s all.”

  “A ‘balanced rendition’ is not enough to build a career on.” Jonathan shakes his head. “It’s over,” he says. “I have to go out and pick up a few things I need.”

  Mother watches him go then sits down in the desk chair and puts her head in her hands.

  It’s as if all the wind has dropped suddenly and the kite we were flying on has crashed on the hard ground. Everyone seems depressed. It’s the “let down” effect, Daddy says. We have been looking forward to this event for a long time, and now that it’s over, there’s nothing left to look forward to.

  Except me going to a real school. I feel hurt that no one seems to think of this as such a big thing, but it doesn’t really change anything, I guess. I hug this to me, but still feel somewhat desolate. I wonder what Brian must be feeling? At least they said some good things about him. “Assured passion” sounds really good.

  We are outside on the balcony now. Mother tries to find out what was going on upstairs last night, but Daddy is never good at relaying what he considers gossip. He just shakes his head.

/>   “They were both nearly hysterical,” he says. “People say things when they’re tired and upset and have had too much to drink. They always regret it the next day.”

  “But what did they say?” Mother wants to know.

  “Nothing that needs to be repeated.”

  “Oh, Ned, you’re hopeless,” she says. “I feel for the poor woman. I just want to know so I can figure out the best way to approach her. To show some comfort.”

  “The best thing you can do for that woman is leave her alone,” Daddy says, and he goes back to sanding rust off the old tin trunk he is giving to Jonathan to take to his summer job up north.

  Mother makes a disgusted noise and goes back inside.

  I can hear Patricia downstairs bouncing a ball against the wall. I don’t want to see her. I would like to climb up to the roof and see what’s happening up there, but I know Daddy won’t let me, so I hang over the railing and gaze at the neglected yard behind Mount Olympus. The grass is long and green and bent over, covering secrets with a pattern pretty to the eye. I wonder if anyone will ever find the prism I threw there. I hear the screen door slam downstairs, Patricia going inside, and decide to risk a trip to the garden. Daddy waves as I head down the steps.

  I haven’t been over the fence by myself since Brian rescued me from the coach house roof that rainy day long ago. I slide behind the bushes and find the footholds he used, and soon I am in the green waving grass, hidden from sight among the overgrown bushes. Crickets sing, the sun beats down, and bees circle lazily among the wild flowers in one corner of the neglected yard. The dusty windows of the old building gaze down, sightless and dead. Sometimes I find it almost hard to breathe in the Music House, and lately it is less and less like the haven it seemed in January. Here I can relax. No one expects anything of someone who is invisible. I push my way into the middle of a thicket of bushes. There is a circle of long grass here—a fairy ring—and I kneel down, running my hands close to the ground looking for treasures. I find only a short section of pipe and what looks like a bed spring.

  Then I feel what Daddy describes as “a call of nature,” but I don’t want to leave yet. I look up and around, seeing nothing from here but sky and the arching branches of the bushes. No windows overlook this secret place. I ease down my underpants, squat, and let loose the hot stream into the grass. It feels good. Afterwards, I crouch there, then move sideways, crab-like, and sit down on the ground. The grass feels oddly exciting against my bare bottom. I rock back and forth, enjoying the strange fluttering feeling shuddering through me. This is wicked, I think. And I smile. I wonder if Janet has ever done anything like this. If she has ever felt the wildness of this mounting excitement. But after a few minutes, I hastily pull up my pants, vaguely ashamed, and decide to look for the prism. I want it back. In a sudden premonition, I think we might not be much longer at the Music House and I want to take the prism with me, a tangible memory of this place. I look for a long time, crawling through the grass, scraping my knees, getting stains on my shorts, but I can’t find it. Perhaps it was bad luck anyway.

  When I climb back over the fence a while later, I find Patricia standing there, her fat arms crossed over her chest.

  “That’s trespassing,” she says smugly.

  “If a tree falls in the forest,” I say. I’m not sure what this means. It just pops into my head, and it’s enough to confuse Patricia.

  She frowns. “We’ll see what Miss Layne has to say,” she says at last, and smiles in triumph.

  “You’re just jealous because you can’t get over the fence,” I say. “You’re too fat.”

  She shrugs. “Why would I want to?”

  “Perhaps to get a little exercise,” I say. I turn my back and walk away. I hear Patricia’s running feet, the slam of the screen door. I hear her voice calling her mother.

  I feel ashamed. And afraid of what she might do, what her mother might say to Rona Layne. “I’m sorry!” I call after her. I run over to the back door and pull it open. “Hey, Patricia, I said I was sorry.”

  “Get out of my house,” Patricia screams. The kitchen door bangs shut.

  “It’s my house too.” But she is gone.

  I run down into the cool darkness of the basement and make my way through to the stairs that come up just outside Rona Layne’s studio. There is no sound in the dimness, so I cautiously appear and make my way to the front hall. Baggy Bones is on the staircase, struggling with two paper bags clasped to her chest. One is slipping, and I run up and catch it just before it falls. She looks startled and peers at me for a moment as if trying to figure out who I am, where I came from.

  “Let me help,” I say. I wish I knew her real name. It seems rude not to address her properly.

  “Oh, yes. The girl from up the hall,” she says almost to herself. She doesn’t know my name either. Maybe she has a mean name to call me when she talks to her friend Marie.

  Now she can hold onto the railing and uses it to pull herself up. I follow along behind. Her bag holds a small bottle of milk, baking soda, Ovaltine, and chocolate fingers, the kind I like. She probably bought them for her friend, for tea. I suddenly remember that Mother says she has a son, but he never comes to visit so the biscuits wouldn’t be for him. There’s cat food in the bag too. That surprises me.

  When we get to her door, she fumbles with her key, opens the door, and pushes inside. She hesitates, then opens it wider for me to come in. I glance up the hall, but no one is in sight so I slide into the room I have never seen. Inside, it smells stale, like old clothes. Maybe she doesn’t know Mother’s rule: it only takes ten minutes with the window wide open to air out a large room.

  She motions for me to put the bag down on the small table by the window and unpacks everything quickly, then slips the milk and the block of cheese outside onto the windowsill in the shade cast by the ivy.

  “Do you have a cat?” I ask, handing her the tins of cat food.

  “No, no,” she says. “We’re not allowed to have pets here.” She looks at me, her gimlet eyes sharp.

  “But it’s all right if it’s a stray, surely,” I say. “That would be like Saint Francis of Assisi helping the animals. It would be a good deed.”

  Her winkled face collapses into a smile. “Would you like a chocolate biscuit? I usually have a cup of tea when I come in from shopping.”

  She plugs in the kettle and pulls out two cups and saucers from behind a limp chintz curtain strung up under the sink in the corner. Her room is crowded, and she has a lot of plants, all green and healthy looking, unlike any potted plants we have ever had in our house. Shiny vines climb up strings surrounding her broad window, making a frame of green. It’s like an extension of the Secret Garden down below. The sun casts dimpled shadows through the leaves. She has a lot of framed photographs scattered in amongst the bric-a-brac: old people in formal poses; younger people looking as if they’d rather be somewhere else; a young man standing in front of a car with no top, looking serious. Her son?

  “That’s me,” she says, pointing to a round portrait of a smiling plump baby in the lacy dress and bonnet of a bygone age.

  “You look like Queen Victoria,” I say.

  She laughs. It is the first time I have heard her laugh … ever.

  I sit down in a small slipper chair, leaving the armchair for her. It’s obviously where she spends most of her time. It looks like a nest, with magazines and newspapers piled up on the floor on one side and a basket of knitting balanced on a stool within reach. She probably knitted socks for soldiers during the war. Mother used to do that when she was young. She always says she pitied the poor soldier who got her socks.

  Baggy Bones puts sugar and milk in the tea before handing it to me, but I drink it anyway. And eat one biscuit. She leans over and pulls a crocheted tea cozy, its hideous colours clashing violently with the flowered wallpaper, over the pot. Upstairs, someone drags a piece of heavy furnitu
re across the floor. I look at the old woman, and she shakes her head.

  “She’ll sup sorrow with a spoon of grief, that one,” she says, and she rolls her eyes up, indicating the third floor. We are right under the Pierces’ room.

  I freeze, waiting for her to go on.

  “If anyone should be leaving this house, it’s them two,” she goes on. It seems she’s forgotten me as she stirs more sugar into her tea, looking over at the window. “Shameful. The things I’ve heard….” She shakes her head again. “But you know I’m not one to gossip.”

  I pick up my cup and take a careful sip.

  “The first time I clapped eyes on them two, I knew something was off. I told Marie. I told her.”

  She pauses and takes a noisy drink.

  “Brian wants to go to New York City,” I say into the silence.

  “You don’t say.” She looks at me directly. “Just him? Not her?”

  I tell her about the Recital, how he announced it to the whole place. About how she fainted.

  Her face seems to gather more colour as I talk. She passes the biscuits. I tell her about Brian’s note.

  “Well, I never,” says Baggy Bones. “I always thought that boy had lying eyes.”

  “But he doesn’t lie,” I say, quick to defend my friend, whose name isn’t really Pierce, who has a secret girlfriend he won’t tell me about, who didn’t talk to me about going to New York before announcing it to the world. “I don’t think he lies,” I amend.

  “Are you sure?” She leans forward, her eyes bright, tiny pinpricks of light. “He’s bad news,” she says. “Mark my words.”

  We shake hands after that, and I leave. I walk up the hall to my door, past the tapestry. I pause to look at it, but the figures are flat today. There are no moving shadows in the woods. No glint in the golden hair of the young men. No faint sound of music. The horses are still. The page boy doesn’t really look like Brian, I think, and I turn away, wondering what has changed.