by Jessie Tu
An hour later, she’s at the door. At first, I’m unaware. I think it’s my metronome, but then I stop playing and switch it off, hear the sharp rap at the door.
‘How long were you knocking?’
‘You’re still using a metronome?’
Her handbag is slung across her shoulder and she’s carrying a second bag with a cardigan and drink bottle inside.
I lean forward and awkwardly fold my body over hers. When we were touring, the photographers would say to my mother, ‘Squeeze in closer to your daughter.’ As though she had to be reminded that she was my mother. Today she feels smaller, like my body has expanded and hers has shrunk.
She follows me through the apartment as I shut each window.
‘This girl you live with—’
‘Val.’
‘She’s an artist?’
‘Yep.’
She blinks and looks out the window. ‘This view is not distracting?’
‘No.’
We walk to a local cafe. On the way, I tell her how pleased I am that she’s come to see me in Bondi. She is flicking her attention left to right as we walk, eyes alert.
‘It’s daytime. You won’t get mugged,’ I say.
She tells me she is always having dreams her handbag is stolen. The thief is always faceless. He is always a man. We talk about the recital, which parts I need to improve. We stick to the mechanics of performance and technique. She does not mention Banks.
She is concerned about my stiff bow arm and tells me I should visit the gym more often to build muscles in my right shoulder. I know all this. She knows I know all this. And yet, I listen with the sustained attention of an Olympic athlete. She talks and talks, recommending further exercises, and I look ahead.
‘Are you listening?’ she asks.
I blink once, deliberately, stopping on the footpath.
‘I know how to do this.’
At the cafe, we choose a table by the window, looking out onto the street.
‘Actually, can we move?’ My mother rises and moves to another table. ‘All that traffic whizzing by will give me a headache.’
The waiter comes over with menus.
‘Do you have noodles?’ my mother asks.
‘This is a cafe,’ I say. ‘It’s mostly sandwiches and salads.’
‘Oh.’
The waiter smiles awkwardly, then leaves.
‘We can go somewhere else if you like.’
My mother shakes her head.
Waiting for my mother to order is a monumental exercise in patience. I have learned to manage it by practising finger drills in my head. While she takes her time to order, I stare at the back of her menu and go through passages from the excerpts for my audition.
This is how I won competitions from a young age. On a plane, in the shower, on the toilet, at meal-times—any time I could not practise my violin. I’d focus on visualising my fingers. It worked. I won a lot of money. More than most eleven-year-olds. I went to London, Milan, Zurich, Prague. I was in Barcelona for my thirteenth birthday. On the plane ride there, I spent fifteen hours memorising an entire concerto. Glazunov, a Russian, mid-century. Something I wanted to do just for fun.
‘I’ll have the Caesar salad,’ my mother says.
I nod, raising a hand to the waiter.
We order and my mother asks for dressing on the side. I ask for extra mayo in my burger.
‘Are you sure you want extra mayo?’ she asks. ‘I saw those chocolate bars in your kitchen.’
‘They’re not mine.’
She sighs, shoulders droop.
We sip our waters and she asks whether I’m seeing anyone. ‘You need to get out.’
‘I don’t have time for that. I want this exchange in New York.’
I wait for her to say something. But she doesn’t. Instead, she picks up her glass of water and takes another sip. I take a sip of my water too. ‘You know why I have to go back.’
A thick lump clogs the base of my throat, drumming at the centre of my chest. I want so much for her to love me, but this love is impossible. With my friends, there is no anxiety to be heard. I can relax into being. With my mother, I am always anticipating her next move. I keep morphing into different women with various faces and shapes. I can’t stop shifting.
I can’t stop burying parts of myself on call. I switch roles and amend behaviours to suit the people around me. Isn’t that what being an adult is all about? I adapt and I adapt well. People should pay tribute to my abilities.
When our food arrives, we wait for the other to begin eating.
‘Are the men in New York more handsome?’ she asks, stabbing a piece of bacon with her fork.
I pick up the burger in my hands. ‘Does that matter?’
She feigns casualness, bringing another forkful of greens into her mouth. Changes the subject.
Later, as we walk back to my apartment, I put my hand on her shoulder.
‘I’m going to be fine. You have to trust me. I know how to take care of myself.’
30
Olivia calls mid-week. She’s sobbing. Hiccups. Her cries are sharp and elongated. I don’t know the words to make her stop, to calm her down. For a moment, I feel the rush of power surge into my heart. She’s reached out to me. I have won.
After a few minutes she settles down. It’s Noah, she says. He’s broken her heart. Again. He does it incrementally, she says.
I presume he has slept with someone else, but no, she assures me, it’s not that. He’d refused to spend the weekend with her in the mountains with her mother, choosing instead to stay in Sydney to see the latest Avengers film with his Newington friends.
‘Can you meet me in a few hours? I need to pick up a few things from the doctors in Sydney.’
I tell her yes, but only after the concert, which will be after ten, I have plans with Mark though I don’t tell her. I will decide later who I want to see more. She hangs up and the panic sets in; like a disease, it spreads across my collarbone, rises up my neck.
During the interval, I check my phone and see two texts from Mark. I text Olivia and tell her I can’t meet her after all, I have an emergency. She calls immediately. I am backstage, preparing for the second half of the concert.
‘What’s your emergency?’ she demands.
‘I can’t tell you. I’m just—I’m seeing someone.’
‘But you said you’d meet me.’
I feel compelled to tell her about Mark. I want to be found out. The thrill of having won him no longer has a charge if no one knows about it, if no one knows that he wants me. I need to tell someone. Part of me simply wants to see how she will react.
She is pressing me against a wall. And then it comes out. I tell her about Mark because it feels like the right thing to do, despite all that I’ve done to her, or not done for her.
‘What?’
There’s a strange silence. And then soft sounds. I can’t tell if she’s curious or sad or disappointed or angry. I can’t tell which side of anger she is on.
‘How long has it been?’
Someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s Trumpet, holding his instrument. He motions with his head for me to follow him onstage. ‘We’re late,’ he mouths.
‘Is that him? Are you with Mark right now?’ Olivia’s voice turns to indignation.
‘No.’
I press the phone harder against my ear, wanting to catch her every breath.
‘I don’t know what to say to you right now.’
The line goes dead. I fling my phone into my case and walk back onstage.
During the second half of the performance, I try to concentrate on the music in front of me. My body has disappeared, replaced by a carcass. I carry on, play every note perfectly. Even execute a difficult winding chromatic passage. But that’s another girl. One who was trained from a young age to follow instructions. I realise as I sit down to a few cheers from the audience and whoop whoop blows of the mouthpiece from the woodwinds that I am finally becoming a whole human b
eing. Fracturing and splitting into multiple parts. Forgetting which Jena is performing when.
Over the next three days, I send Olivia multiple texts which go unanswered. It cuts through me. It’s always a game, and we’re always willing to play. She’s pining for power and I hate her for it. My hatred scares me. I have never wanted to harm her, but suddenly, I imagine a world where she is injured, maimed, broken.
It rains continuously near the end of August. On the weekend, I peer outside Mark’s window in the morning and see that a slice of cool yellow light has come through the low grey sky. Mark finds me composing an email on the toilet and snatches my phone from my hand. ‘If you look at that thing again today, I’ll kick you out of this apartment.’
I’d told him about Olivia; he wasn’t impressed. In fact, he looked as though he was about to hit me, but then he moved into the kitchen and began to smash things.
Between rehearsals one afternoon, I check my phone.
Olivia’s name shows up in my email. I click on it without thinking, hurriedly.
It is an essay. She calls me names. Slut. Snatcher. Sly, conniving bitch. She says I don’t deserve her friendship.
You’ve always wanted to fuck other people’s boyfriends. You’ve done it now. Are you proud?
Get your own guy. But you can’t, can you? You just fuck people because you can’t make them like you any other way. I say this because I care about you. You need to re-evaluate your morals.
It seems, suddenly, that all my feelings were never complicated, that my inclination to trust my instincts, which had always served me well in my performances onstage, were completely wrong. The violence of her words. A throbbing pain in the back of my head.
When I get home, I light candles by my bedside table and slip into my pyjamas. I want a quiet place to rest my head. Forget about the power others have over me. At eleven thirty my phone rings. It’s Mark.
‘I thought you were in Melbourne?’
‘I came back early.’
If I wanted to play the game, I’d tell him to sleep in his own bed. If I followed the rules my father taught me, I would not have picked up the phone.
But being with Mark stops the sadness that creeps up on me when I am alone, when my heart pounds so loud I think my arteries might burst. Mark helps me forget all my inadequacies. I might be another TAG but out of all the beautiful TAGs he has chosen me. With him, I feel seen. I will take what he sees. That is more comforting than any award, any contract, any performance. To be fucked the way he fucks me feels more special than anything my violin gives me. I am not crazy. I am, in fact, normal.
He arrives twenty minutes later, smiling and sweating.
‘I was at a house gig,’ he says. ‘My friend and I were dancing in the mosh pit.’
‘Aren’t you a bit old for that?’
He points to the metronome on my bedside table, still flicking side to side.
‘Why’s that on?’
I put my hands around his neck and sink my lips into his. I feel a haunting, confused lust.
‘Can you turn that off?’ he asks, pushing me away.
‘I’m so glad you came over.’
‘I’m glad too.’
I run to the bathroom to relieve myself before we begin.
When I come out, he is naked.
‘I wanted to undress you,’ I say.
‘But I’m hungry for your body.’
‘Have we reached that stage already?’
‘What stage?’
‘Undressing before sex? It feels so clinical—like what married couples do.’
‘Shut up.’
He pulls off my top and shorts, briefly pressing his face between my legs before peeling my panties off. His eyes narrow. This must be what love feels like. A mouth pressed against the groin. Hands that slide to the places I was once told not to touch myself. He stands up and I kneel before him. He guides my skull down his body with one hand, and I let him control me. Domination and submission. A dizziness whorls down the back of my neck. My mouth becomes an instrument for his pleasure.
I feel the fleeting euphoria of achievement when he comes inside my mouth, hearing him weep with a pleasure only I can provide.
I fall asleep in his arms and wake the next morning with the stickiness of sex and exhaustion. The salty residue of his semen dried at the corners of my mouth.
I’m in the bathroom putting on make-up, listening to him talk about wanting to live till he’s over a hundred.
‘You’re insecure,’ I say, walking into the bedroom and stepping into a black skirt.
He reaches over and puts a hand over my head. ‘About what?’
‘Ageing. That’s why you’re sleeping with a twenty-three-year-old.’
‘That’s your opinion.’
‘Men chase women because they’re afraid of death. Having sex affirms you’re alive, that you can be God, create life. What you’re doing is so predictable.’
He grips the base of my neck and pushes me onto the bed. I stumble forward, hands steadying my balance. I stand to face him, wanting to resist. There are words to stop these things from happening. There are movements my body can perform to avoid this domination. But I don’t know them. I let him take over.
‘Let me give you a facial.’
I reach for my bag. I’ll be late to the matinee if I don’t leave now.
He shoves me back with a hand on my shoulder. ‘Stay, please.’
‘I need to go.’
‘No you don’t.’
When it happens, it feels like a quiet surrender. A great fall from a tall building. He comes on my face, two small spurts across my forehead. I blink hard.
I stand under the shower for a long time. I can hear him whistling in the kitchen. When I come out, my body is throbbing, glowing purple. The pain feels good.
I begin composing a text to Olivia, imagining a world where I performed human-beingness better and didn’t tell her about Mark. Then I remember we’re not speaking to each other. Perhaps today I will be asked to leave the orchestra. Why can’t I carry the weight of my obligations by myself? Why can’t I care more? Bryce picks up after the first ring. ‘Your mother again?’ he asks.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘It’s okay, Jena. These things happen. We’ve got subs in place. You can have the evening off too.’
‘No, I’ll be there tonight.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
That night, my phone rings during intermission. It’s Banks. He talks quickly. A violinist from the San Francisco Symphony is visiting Sydney for one night only. He is holding a masterclass at the Conservatorium.
‘You should come,’ he says. ‘He knows many people from the Philharmonic. You can talk to him about your audition.’
I make sounds, vague; like some stunted language. I wait for him to say something, to respond with the necessary incriminations. I imagine him standing in front of me, his mouth opening, then widening rapidly as though waiting for my reaction; his breath thickening the air around him.
‘I can’t. I’ve got plans.’
‘This is important, Jena.’
He has never needed to convince me to put my music first.
‘Why don’t you come over? We can discuss this in person.’
I want to tell him about the part of my body that hurts. The invisible hand that grinds at some small, tender part of my chest and stops me from breathing normally. There are traumas written inside my body, cellular, larger than my own existence. The hunger for some affirmation which only Mark can provide. I am ashamed, and I can’t tell him because he does not know me as someone who carries shame.
He sighs into the phone. ‘Something is always rumbling inside you.’
I want to tell him it’s his fault. Other things press into me like a foot on wet soil. The confident, abrasive mouth of a man. His eyes, his breath. His appetite for me. Banks would not understand. But then I remember his arms around my mother.
‘If you chang
e your mind, it starts at seven.’
I nod, though he can’t see me. I make a soft sound to let him know I’ve understood him. Maybe he knows, too, that the things I hunger for are things he cannot give me. But he once gave them to another woman.
31
After an evening concert, I come home and look inside my fridge. There’s half a pack of shaved parmesan, a dozen eggs, an open can of chickpeas and a bottle of beer. For a moment, I laugh; it’s a laugh directed entirely at myself. How did it come to be that the contents of my fridge resemble those of a poor college student? At midnight, nothing is open except McDonald’s. I order UberEats and fall asleep with a smear of sweet and sour sauce on my cheeks, a box of half-eaten chicken nuggets on the bedside table.
The next morning, I spend an hour in bed with my phone propped up against a pillow watching cheerleader porn. Post orgasm, I watch two hours of Janine Jansen playing the Beethoven and Shostakovich violin concertos. She is twenty-seven years old in the video, looking more like a Hollywood movie star than a classical musician.
I want to be her, much in the same way I wanted to be Ginette Neveu when she played the Beethoven Violin Concerto. How easy to go through life imitating person after person; it would be especially easy as a classical violinist. There are decades of role models to choose from. With the violin, you just have to look at what all the greats have done, play like them, flawlessly, and you’re on your way to being known. Ginette Neveu died in a plane accident on her way to perform in America. She had just turned thirty. I imagine my life ending at thirty. Seven more years. What would I do if I had only seven more years?
I want to talk to Olivia but can’t bring myself to call her. Mark does not ring. I text him a few times and all of them go unanswered. I haven’t seen Val in days. I am lying in bed watching a white man anally penetrate a Japanese schoolgirl. The screen changes to an image of my mother’s face. I dry my fingers on the bedsheets before sliding the answer button. My mother asks about the orchestra and my audition. Five days away. I want the week to stretch out like a rubber band and then snap. Our conversation is brief. She needs an early night because she is working a charity stall tomorrow. When I ask her how my father is doing, she clears her throat but doesn’t answer, says she has to go. I think about calling him, but I don’t. I lie in bed watching a gang-bang scene instead. A girl with dark brown hair. Two small white round breasts. Nipples like olive pits. Erect and inviting. I return to roughing the edges of my clitoris until I come.