Playing With Fire

by Tess Gerritsen

  “Love,” she murmurs.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you hear it? The passion, the anguish in this music. In these first sixteen bars, where the melody’s introduced, such sadness and longing. Then at measure seventeen, it grows agitated. The pitch climbs and the notes speed up. I can almost imagine two frantic lovers growing desperate.” Gerda looks at me. “Incendio. I think it’s the fire of love.”

  “Or hell,” I say softly, and rub my temples. “Please don’t play it anymore. I don’t think I can stand hearing it.”

  She sets down the violin. “This isn’t just about the music, is it? What’s really going on, Julia?”

  “It is about the music.”

  “Lately you’ve been so distracted. You’ve missed two quartet rehearsals in a row.” She pauses. “Is there something wrong between you and Rob?”

  I don’t know what to tell her, so for a moment I don’t say a thing. It’s so quiet here in Gerda’s home. She lives alone, with no husband, no children; she has to answer only to herself, while I’m forced to share a house with a man who questions my sanity and a daughter who scares me.

  “It has to do with Lily,” I finally admit. “She’s been having problems.”

  “What problems?”

  “Remember when I told you I cut my leg and needed stitches?”

  “You said it was an accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident.” I look at her. “Lily did it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She pulled a piece of broken glass out of the trash can. And she stabbed me with it.”

  Gerda stares. “Lily did that?”

  I wipe away tears. “And that day I fell, that wasn’t an accident, either. She left a toy on the stairs, right where I’d step on it. No one believes me, but I know she did it on purpose.” I take a few breaths and at last manage to regain control. When I speak again, my voice is flat. Defeated. “I don’t know who she is anymore. She’s turned into someone else. I look at her and I see a stranger, someone who wants to hurt me. And it all started when I played the waltz.”

  Anyone else would tell me that I’m delusional, but Gerda says nothing. She just listens, her silence calming and nonjudgmental.

  “We took her in for medical tests, and she had a sort of EEG, to look at her brain waves. When they played the waltz for her, her brain responded as if it were a long-term memory. As if she already knew this music. Yet you say the waltz has never been recorded.”

  “An old memory,” Gerda murmurs and stares at Incendio, as if seeing something in that music that she had missed before. “Julia, I know this is going to sound bizarre,” she says softly. “But when I was a child, I had memories that I couldn’t possibly explain. My parents put it down to an active imagination, but I remembered a stone hut with a dirt floor. Fields of wheat, waving in the sunlight. And I had a vivid memory of seeing my own bare feet, but with one toe missing. None of it made any sense, until my grandmother told me they were leftover memories of who I once was. In a previous lifetime.” She looks at me. “Do you think that’s crazy?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing seems crazy to me anymore.”

  “My grandmother said most people don’t remember their past lives. Or they refuse to accept those memories as anything but fantasies. But with very young children, their minds are still open. They still have access to prior memories, even if they don’t have the language to talk to us about them. Maybe that’s why Lily reacts to this waltz. Because she’s heard it before, in another lifetime.”

  I can imagine what Rob would say if he heard this conversation. Already he suspects I’m unbalanced; if I start talking about past lives, he’ll have no doubt of it.

  “I wish I could offer you some sort of solution to your problem,” she says.

  “I don’t think there is a solution.”

  “Now I’m really curious about this music. If your antiques dealer in Rome can’t help us, maybe we can track down the composer ourselves. I’m scheduled to perform at that festival in Trieste, and that’s really close to Venice. I could make a quick side trip to the address on Calle del Forno. Find out if L. Todesco ever lived there.”

  “You’d go to all that trouble for me?”

  “It’s definitely worth my time, and it wouldn’t be just for you. This waltz is gorgeous, and I don’t think it’s ever been published. What if our quartet could be the first to ever record it? We need to make sure the rights to this waltz are free and clear. So you see, I have my own selfish reason to track down L. Todesco.”

  “He’s probably long dead.”

  “Probably.” Gerda casts a covetous look at the music. “But what if he isn’t?”

  —

  When I arrive home after my visit to Gerda, I see Val’s Ford Taurus parked in our driveway and Rob’s Lexus is already in the garage. I don’t know why Rob is home so early, or why they’re both standing at the front door when I walk into the house. All I know is that neither one of them is smiling.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Rob demands.

  “I went to see Gerda. I told you I was going to visit her.”

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “Was I supposed to be home earlier? I don’t remember talking about it.”

  “Jesus, Julia. What is wrong with you?”

  My aunt interjects: “Rob, I’m sure she got busy and just lost track of time. There’s no need to get mad about it.”

  “No need? I was about to call the police!”

  I shake my head, baffled by this conversation. “Why on earth would you call the police? What have I done?”

  “We’ve both been trying to reach you for hours. When you didn’t show up at the preschool, they called me at work. Val had to rush over there and pick up Lily.”

  “But I’ve had the phone with me all day. No one’s tried to call me.”

  “We did call you, Julia,” says Val. “It kept going to voice mail.”

  “Then something must be wrong with it.” I dig the cellphone out of my shoulder bag and stare in dismay at the screen. There they are, all the missed calls and voice mails. From the preschool, from Rob, from Val. “It must be the ringer,” I say. “Maybe I accidentally turned it off. Or something’s gone wrong with the settings.”

  “Julia, are you still taking the Vicodin?” Val asks quietly.

  “No. No, I stopped it days ago,” I mutter as I fumble through the phone menu, trying to find out how I accidentally muted the ringer. My fingers feel clumsy and I keep tapping the wrong icons. I have had nightmares just like this, when I am frantically trying to call for help and I keep dialing the wrong numbers. But this is not a nightmare. This is really happening.

  “Stop,” Rob says. “Julia, stop.”

  “No, I need to fix this now.” I keep tapping through phone menus, even as Lily runs into the hallway, even as her arms encircle my leg like smothering vines.

  “Mommy! I miss you, Mommy!”

  I look down and in her eyes I suddenly glimpse something poisonous, something that ripples like a serpent to the surface of those still waters and dives once again out of sight. I jerk away from her so sharply that she gives an anguished wail and stands with imploring arms, a child abandoned by her mother.

  Val quickly takes my daughter’s hand. “Lily, why don’t you come stay with me for a few days? I could really use some help picking tomatoes. Mommy and Daddy won’t mind if I steal you away, will they?”

  Rob gives a weary nod. “I think that’d be a very good idea. Thank you, Val.”

  “Lily, let’s go upstairs and pack a suitcase, okay? You tell me what you want to bring to my house.”

  “Donkey. I want Donkey.”

  “Of course, we’ll bring Donkey. What about some other toys? And what do you think of spaghetti tonight?”

  As Val takes Lily upstairs, Rob and I remain in the foyer. I’m afraid to look at him, afraid to read, in his face, what he thinks of me.

  “Julia,” he sighs. “Let
’s go sit down.” He takes my arm and leads me into the living room.

  “There’s something wrong with this goddamn cellphone,” I insist.

  “I’ll take a look at it later, okay? I’ll figure it out.” That’s always been Rob’s role in our family. He’s the fixer. He checks under the hood and tests wires and finds a solution to every problem. He sits me down on the sofa and sinks into the chair across from me. “Look, I know you’re under a lot of stress. You’re losing weight. You’re not sleeping well.”

  “I’m still having back pain; that’s what’s keeping me up. You wanted me to go off the Vicodin, and that’s what I did.”

  “Sweetheart, Val and I both think you need to talk to someone. Please don’t think of it as therapy. It’ll just be a conversation between you and Dr. Rose.”

  “Dr. Rose? Is this the psychiatrist you told me about?”

  “She comes highly recommended. I’ve gone over her qualifications. I’ve looked into her background, her physician ratings.”

  Of course he has.

  “I think she could help you a lot. She could help our whole family. Guide us back to the way we were before all this happened.”

  “Rob?” Val calls out from upstairs. “Where can I find a suitcase for Lily’s stuff?”

  “I’ll get you one,” Rob answers. He pats my hand. “I’ll be right back, okay?” he says and heads upstairs to find a suitcase.

  I hear him moving around in our bedroom, and then the sound of suitcase wheels rolling across the wood floor. I focus on the living room window, which faces west. Only now do I register how low the sun is in the sky, far too low for three o’clock in the afternoon. No wonder my back is aching again; my last dose of Tylenol was far too many hours ago.

  I go into the downstairs bathroom, open the medicine cabinet, and shake out three extra-strength caplets. As the cabinet door swings shut again, I’m startled by my reflection in the mirror. I see uncombed hair, puffy eyes, washed-out skin. I splash cold water on my face and run fingers through my hair, but I still look all wrong. The strain of dealing with Lily has turned me into a ghost of myself. This is the dark side of motherhood that no ever warns you about, the part that’s not all hugs and kisses. They don’t tell you that the child you once nurtured in your womb, the child you thought would bring you such love, instead begins to gnaw at your soul like a little parasite. I stare at myself and think: Soon there’ll be nothing left of me.

  When I emerge from the bathroom, Rob and Val are back downstairs in the foyer, right around the corner from me. They’re talking so softly I can barely hear them, so I move closer.

  “Camilla was the same age as Julia is now. That’s got to be significant.”

  “Julia’s nothing like her,” Val says.

  “Still, the genetics are there. Her family history of mental illness.”

  “Trust me, this is not the same situation. Camilla was a cold-blooded psychopath. She was self-centered and clever and manipulative. But she was not insane.”

  They’re talking about my mother. My dead, baby-killing mother. I’m desperate to hear every word, but my heart pounds so hard it threatens to drown out their voices.

  “All the psychiatrists who saw her agreed,” says Rob. “They said she had a psychotic break, lost all touch with reality. These things do run in families.”

  “She had them fooled, every single one of them. She wasn’t psychotic. She was evil.”

  “Mommy, hold me! Hold me!”

  I whirl around to see Lily standing right behind me. My daughter has exposed me. She looks up at me with perfectly innocent eyes as Val and Rob come around the corner

  “Oh there you are!” says Val, trying to sound casual but not quite hitting the right note. “Lily and I are just about to leave. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  As Lily clings to me in a goodbye hug, I can feel Rob watching me for signs that I’m a danger to my daughter. I know that’s what worries him, because he brought up my mother’s name, a name that’s never spoken in my presence. Until he said it, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I’m the same age my mother was when she committed the most unforgivable sin a woman can commit. I wonder if some twisted remnant of her is now stirring to life inside me.

  Is this what she felt in the days before she killed my brother? Did she look at her own child and see a monster staring back?

  12

  December 1943

  From the back room of his father’s luthier shop, Lorenzo heard the tinkle of the bell on the door and he called out: “If you can wait just a minute, I’ll be right out to help you.”

  No one answered.

  He had just applied glue and was now clamping the violin’s belly to the ribs. This was a delicate step, one he could not rush, and he took care tightening the clamp and confirming the angles. When he finally emerged from the back room, he saw his customer crouched before the display case of cello and viola bows. Only the top of her hat was visible above the counter.

  “May I help you?” he asked.

  She rose to her feet and smiled at him. “Lorenzo,” she said.

  Five years had passed since they’d last spoken to each other. Although he’d glimpsed her several times on the street, it had always been from a distance, and he had never approached her. Now he and Laura Balboni stood face-to-face, with only the display case between them, and he could not think of a single thing to say. Her blond hair was short now, cut in the stylish bob that was so popular among female students at Ca’ Foscari. Her face had lost its girlish roundness, and her cheekbones were more prominent, her jaw more sharply defined. Her gaze was as direct as ever, so direct that he felt pierced to the spot, unable to move, to say a single word.

  “It needs to be rehaired,” she said.

  He looked down at the cello bow that she’d set on the countertop. The frog end was scraggly with broken horse hairs. “Of course, I’ll be happy to do this for you. When will you need it back?”

  “There’s no rush. I have another bow I can use in the meantime.”

  “Will next week be soon enough?”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Then you can pick it up on Wednesday.”

  “Thank you.” She lingered for a moment, searching for something more to say. With a sigh of resignation she went to the door. There she stopped and turned back to him. “Is that all we have to say to each other? Pick it up on Wednesday. Thank you?”

  “You look wonderful, Laura,” he said softly. And she did; she was even more beautiful than he remembered, as if the passage of five years had burnished her hair and face into this shimmering version of the seventeen-year-old girl he’d once known. In the gloom of the shop, she seemed to shine with her own light.

  “Why haven’t you come to see us?” she asked.

  He looked around the room and gave an apologetic shrug. “My father needs my help here. And I teach the violin. I have ten students now.”

  “I sent you half a dozen invitations, Lorenzo. You never came. Not even to my birthday party.”

  “I did write to you with my regrets.”

  “Yes, and all your notes were so polite. You could have come to tell me in person. Or just stopped in to say hello.”

  “You were off to study at Ca’ Foscari. You have new friends now.”

  “Which means I can’t keep my old ones?”

  He stared down at her bow, its frog end bristling with broken hairs. He remembered how vigorously she attacked the cello strings with that bow. No timid strokes for her. A player as fierce as Laura would quickly snap strings and wear out bow hairs. Passion had its price.

  “That night, at the competition,” he said quietly, “everything changed for us.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “For you it didn’t.” Suddenly angry at her obliviousness, he looked straight at her. “For me, and for my family, everything has changed. But not for you. You’re allowed to study at Ca’ Foscari. You have your new friends, your pretty haircut. Your life goes on, happy
and perfect. But mine?” He looked around the shop and gave a bitter laugh. “I’m trapped. Do you think I’m here in this shop because I choose to be?”

  “Lorenzo,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Come back for your bow on Wednesday. It will be ready.”

  “I’m not blind. I know what’s going on.”

  “Then you also know why I stay away from you.”

  “Is it to hide? To keep your head down and stay out of trouble?” She leaned in, confronting him across the countertop. “Now is the time to be brave. I want to stand with you. No matter what happens, I want to—” She stopped as the doorbell tinkled.

  A customer walked in, a thin-lipped woman who merely nodded to them, then slowly circled the shop, eyeing the violins and violas hanging on the walls. Lorenzo had never seen this woman before and her sudden appearance made him uneasy. His father’s luthier business survived only because of a small but devoted clientele. New customers almost never came through the door, but favored the luthier shop down the street, where the words Negozio Ariano were so prominently displayed in the window. Aryan Store.

  Laura seemed to share his uneasiness. Avoiding the woman’s gaze, she quickly turned away and proceeded to rummage in her purse.

  “Might I assist you, madam?” Lorenzo asked the woman.

  “Are you the proprietor of this shop?”

  “My father is. I’m his assistant.”

  “And where is your father?”

  “He went home for lunch but he should be back soon. Perhaps there’s something I can help you with?”

  “No, nothing.” The woman looked around at the instruments and her upper lip curled in distaste. “I simply wondered why anyone would choose to patronize this business.”

  “Maybe you should ask a musician,” Laura said. “Since I assume you’re not one.”

  The woman turned to her. “Excuse me?”

  “The finest violins made in Venice come from this luthier shop.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You’re Professor Balboni’s daughter, are you not? I saw you perform last month, at La Fenice. Your quartet was excellent.”