An Unfinished Score Part 15

"How long will you be gone?"

"I don't know. A week. And you need to keep Petra away from me until I get back. Tell her not to call me because I won't be answering." She opens her closet to pull out her suitcase. "And when I get home I want to run the G.o.dd.a.m.n air conditioning at night. I can't sleep when it's hot, and I don't think our marriage can survive another night of me listening to you sleep while I can't." She doesn't speak her other thought, which is that Petra should stay away not just from her but from him.

Ben sits back down, watching her pack. "If it means we can keep going, we can run the air conditioner more."

Suddenly calm and focused on what she is about to do, she says, "I'm not promising that, and neither can you. We've let things go pretty far."

"But maybe not too far. We're not like other people."

"No," she admits, "we're not much like most other people."

"I feel like I've always been waiting for you, so what's another week?"

She peers back into her closet, wondering what a person is supposed to wear at a composers' inst.i.tute. She grabs jeans, shirts, and black dress and drops them on the bed next to the suitcase. "You'll work while I'm gone?"

"Of course," he says. "It's what I do."

Twenty-eight.

The composers are housed in a large hotel. They are six, if Suzanne counts herself and Alex as one. She feels dwarfed by the huge lobby but even more so by the other aspirants. One of the young men wears a Hawaiian shirt and an eagerness for friendship, but most are reserved. Two-one man and one woman-seem frankly hostile. Suzanne remembers the compet.i.tiveness from Curtis and from her summer at Marlboro, but it was friendlier there. Even Anthony knocked off with only a comment or two, not actually wanting others to fail but only himself to succeed.

Or maybe it only seemed friendlier, given her naivete and the more youthful stakes. Maybe she just didn't know enough to feel threatened or to wield her own knife. Occasionally Ben was accused of a cutthroat att.i.tude, but she understood immediately that this was a misreading. There was a confidence there, verging on arrogance, and a disdain for laziness and shortcuts of any kind. And aloofness always. But no malice. He could be fairly accused of ignoring other people, of failing to notice them, of frowning openly at their musical tastes, but not of wishing anyone else failure or harm. Even before she knew much about him, she could feel that there was no aggression. He never schemed. And even now, when she has learned that so much about him is not what she thought, she knows she was right about that. He is not a mean person.

What she does know now that she didn't know when she was a student is that some people are indeed mean, with no compa.s.sion. Perhaps they are the least dangerous of all people, the least likely to hurt you, because you know they would if they could. That's what she thinks when she meets Lisa-Natasha and Eric. Though she doesn't think they are a romantic pair, and maybe not even allies, they are sticking together for now, and Suzanne thinks of them as joined, as male and female halves of the same taut ambition. They even look alike in their dark skinny jeans, black shirts, and streaky hair, with their fast-moving eyes, with their speedy a.s.sessments and dismissals of the people they introduce themselves to, never shaking hands or asking much.

"Not Lisa. Not Natasha. Lisa-Natasha," the female one says, and Suzanne whispers, "Got it."

But other composers' att.i.tudes aren't at issue, not really. Suzanne is not here to make friends, if she could even remember how to go about it or figure out whom to trust. She is here to finish whatever it is that Olivia started. She has come for the learning and the work. Perhaps she is here to become, at last, a composer. Mostly, though, she has come to Minneapolis to have the concerto worked on and performed. She has come to hear what it sounds like and to have her farewell from Alex.

Her relationship with Alex was an education in how to compartmentalize her emotions, her thoughts, parts of herself. Even so, she is surprised at how easily she sets aside Ben and Petra. For the first time she understands Ben's ability to work in the days after she lost the baby. She wasn't able to play, not even a little, for several weeks, and his capacity to overlook her pain and write music made him seem monstrous and her feel weak. And to overlook his own pain And to overlook his own pain, she realizes for the first time. Now maybe she sees: he wasn't ready to think about it, and he knew it wasn't going away. Why not work?

She studies her itinerary in her large room, and for a moment she feels as though Alex is in the bathroom or has run down to the lobby for aspirin or a newspaper-as though he will be right back. No, she reminds herself sternly, but then she thinks, He is here in the music He is here in the music. There is comfort in this thinking, but it's not mere comfort. She believes it.

The itinerary names the work: Viola Concerto, composed by Alexander Elling and Suzanne Sullivan. They are united on the page even if they are divided by life. Her hands shake, and she lowers the paper to the bed to read the five-day schedule of meetings, panels, critique sessions, lectures, readings, rehearsals, and, finally, the Friday-night public performance of the six works.

It is late when she turns her lights off, and she sleeps the deep sleep available to her only when she is both alone and very tired. If she dreams, she does not remember her dreams, and so upon waking she thinks instead of the Chicago dream of being trapped inside the moist head of another person, attempting an escape that may be futile. She comforts herself again, telling herself that it is Alex's head she has been inside, inside his music and his mind, and so no escape is necessary. She feels oddly confident about the concerto itself: she has solved it, and the result is both daring and beautiful.

Showered and dressed, Suzanne finds her way to the continental breakfast set out in one of the hotel's conference rooms. As she serves herself coffee, weak orange juice, and an oblong wheat roll, she greets the other five composers. Again Lisa-Natasha and Eric respond icily, turning their heads slightly away as they speak to her and saying something mildly clever. She wants to a.s.sure them that she is no threat at all. The friendliest of the bunch wears another Hawaiian shirt, this one even brighter than yesterday's. "Bruce," he says, shaking left hands with her as his right balances a plate holding his breakfast and a steaming mug.

"I know," she says. "I've had the pleasure of seeing you play."

She overhears Lisa-Natasha say to Eric, "It's easy for him not to care. He's already concertmaster in Baltimore. This is a second career for him, and he doesn't need to succeed. That one, yes, her, she's also a performer." Suzanne smiles at Lisa-Natasha, almost impressed that she didn't whisper.

She also exchanges names with a slightly ghoulish-looking young man with a British accent-Paul-and a haler, tall guy who introduces himself as Greg. She has read the short biographies provided by each, but Greg Michael Simon is someone she has heard of before. She cannot remember if Ben mentioned him with admiration or disdain; she will know for sure when she hears his composition, which the program bills simply as a short symphony for small orchestra.

Given the unusual provenance of the concerto-"the tragic circ.u.mstances of its collaborative nature" is how Olivia phrased it-special permission has been granted for Olivia to shadow Suzanne.

Making the emotional literal. Olivia is at her side by the time she sits to eat. In black pants and a tee-shirt-styled sweater, Olivia looks slightly more casual than she did in Chicago, though she is as collected as ever with her hair smoothed back and her earlobes dotted with silver knots. The sweater that looks easy on first glance is, on a closer look, make of good thin wool.

The composers sip their beverages and eat their breakfasts at the large round table, and soon a second table fills with the week's instructors and lead musicians, some of whom nod to them and some of whom ignore them altogether and instead catch up with each other. The conductor stands at a lectern and taps the microphone. He holds himself tall and speaks with confidence, as did Alex, as do most conductors, who have sought front and center and are accustomed to being watched. He's younger, though, and takes up more s.p.a.ce. Alex was already trim when Suzanne met him, and his response to aging was to lose more weight, not realizing that it made him seem not younger but rather a tad more frail-something she never told him.

"Your week will be a microcosm of the real orchestral world," this conductor tells them. "It just gets worse from here." He holds open his palm and sweeps his arm to indicate the outside world.

Only Suzanne and Bruce, the two partic.i.p.ants who have played in professional orchestras, do not laugh.

The lovely red-haired Minneapolis concertmaster stands next at the podium. She will be the one to go over all the violin parts in all six scores. "Remember, we want to play what you want us to play, but musicians also care about sounding good. Most of us are cooperative, but we want to sound good, and we get tired. Remember that if you find a musician difficult, it's either because he's tired or because you're not making him sound good."

Their workdays are to last twelve hours. The most important part of Suzanne's first day will be her afternoon meeting with the princ.i.p.al viola player. She has also asked for another breakout session with the violist together with the cellist and double-reed section that will make a fugue of the solo, but that will not happen until day three. Today is only the viola.

First are the morning meetings, which Olivia tells Suzanne she will skip. "I've had enough of the business of music to last my life. You have no idea what it means to be a conductor's wife." It's such an obvious dig to take, and delivered so smugly, that Suzanne wonders if she has overestimated Olivia, if her revenge can be that pedestrian.

Suzanne's first meeting is with one of the orchestra librarians to discuss any errata. She doesn't have many, just a few accidentals carrying over octaves, but they need to be made on fifty parts. The librarian takes the news easily. "Not even close to bad," he tells her. "You're careful in your work, clearly."

She has never thought of herself this way, yet nods. "I suppose I am."

Following that meeting is a grant-writing workshop for the whole group. Suzanne takes notes, thinking that the person who should be attending is Ben, who works intensely hard on his music but has never been interested enough in the business to give himself a real chance. "We're not filmmakers; we can write music without money," he sometimes says, as though music is something that can live on paper when it is not played, performed, recorded in forms that others listen to.

Olivia finds Suzanne at lunch, which is held in a private room of the hotel's restaurant. They eat to the sounds of a live saxophone player who plays not cla.s.sical music but jazz standards with a few popular songs tossed in.

"Someone's idea of texture," Eric says.

"I think the change of tone is a good idea," says Greg.

Bruce nods his agreement. "I'm actually studying jazz more and more. It was completely missing from my training."

"That's because you're a violinist," Lisa-Natasha says with salad in her mouth.

"As opposed to bra.s.s?" Bruce asks, looking genuinely confused.

Lisa-Natasha swallows the salad, then waits another moment. "As opposed to a composer."

Greg glares at her. Bruce simply whispers, "Ouch."

"We have a session," Olivia says, scooting back her chair. "Suzanne?"

Suzanne rises and follows her to the lobby, where they are greeted by the driver who will take them to the university music school. On the way Olivia says, "We're required to use the orchestra musicians, but at the real premiere you will be the soloist, of course." It had crossed Suzanne's mind to request to play, not because she wants to but simply because she can can play the piece, which is not something that will come readily to anyone who gets less time with the music. Or cares less about it. But her play the piece, which is not something that will come readily to anyone who gets less time with the music. Or cares less about it. But her not not wanting to won out, as did her desire to partic.i.p.ate as a composer, to hear her music played rather than to be heard playing. wanting to won out, as did her desire to partic.i.p.ate as a composer, to hear her music played rather than to be heard playing.

The practice room looks like every practice room Suzanne has ever known, with the superficial exceptions of the black-and-white-striped floor and one wall painted red behind the large green chalkboard. The viola player is a young man who is immensely talented and has worked on the music in advance. Still he stumbles on the technical difficulty, particularly during the second movement's most difficult pa.s.sages.

Suzanne says what she can say: "I understand." She adds, "If we need to, we can amend the music in a few places to make it more natural for you. But give it one more try as is, okay?"

He looks lovely when he plays. His dark, longish hair is mostly straight, but a few locks curl over his forehead, a flourish over his wire-framed gla.s.ses. Though he is thin, he owns a wiry strength, and there is a great smoothness to the movements of his bow arm. Nothing flashy, just pure competence and an obvious love for the viola.

It hits her, watching him, that the solo isn't merely a part but a role, and one intended for a female player. It's not a thought she likes-that music can be male or female. It took anonymous auditions behind opaque screens before the musical powers would accept that women have the lung capacity to play bra.s.s, and, still, after so much time, the hiring of female conductors is protested by whole orchestras, including the female musicians.

But the truth of the matter here is not self-loathing but something simple: Alex wrote the music for a woman to play. He wrote it for her to play. She looks back at Olivia, who sits behind her, eyes closed as she listens. It doesn't matter, Suzanne decides; the piece has to stand on its own. Whatever Alex's late conversion to program music was about, the music has to work without the story.

At the end of the day she is so tired that she skips the dinner and sinks into another night of sleep with no dreams, waking sprawled diagonally on the huge bed. In her prewaking moments she imagines a warmth next to her before she shakes off the sleep.

Day two is more business. At breakfast the conductor tells them, "I know all you can probably think about is your music. We put this stuff first so you can move on to that but also because it's in many ways the most important thing you will take away from this week. I cannot emphasize that enough."

Today business business means a seminar with one of the orchestra's artistic planners, a good-looking woman, perhaps in her early thirties, groomed and dressed for the corporate world. "My t.i.tle says means a seminar with one of the orchestra's artistic planners, a good-looking woman, perhaps in her early thirties, groomed and dressed for the corporate world. "My t.i.tle says artistic artistic, but it's really about the planning, and the planning is about the money. In many ways I have the best job of all because I get to make the ideas and dreams of the conductor, the music director, the concertmaster, and so on, a reality." She dims the light and uses PowerPoint to tell them about working with unions, about the relative virtues of renting versus owning everything from a building to flower vases, about production costs and the least painful ways to slim down orchestration if your budget won't stretch to match your vision, about new marketing. Suzanne is surprised by the small nuts and bolts: from the risks of cost-tiered seating to labor costs on different days of the week, at different times of day.

They move to a larger room for the seminar on copyrights, to which the public is admitted provided they are orchestra donors or members of the American Composers' Guild. Suzanne spies some of the usual types-guys with briefcases carrying pages of their unpublished and quite likely unfinished scores who will ask detailed questions about protecting their copyright to music no one wants to steal.

Yet she listens as closely as she can, jotting notes when an intellectual property rights attorney and someone from the American Music Center advise the young composers on commissioning fees, managing risk, payment considerations when considering hard and soft deadlines, and responding to plagiarism accusations or suspected plagiarism of your own work.

When Suzanne steps out, she scans the lobby. Relieved that Olivia is nowhere in sight, that Olivia's presence is only the invisible mantle always heavy on her shoulders, Suzanne pushes through the revolving door. For four years travel to a new city almost always meant Alex-concerts, paintings, restaurants, long walks-and she feels her solitary stroll sharply. Her senses have returned, and the air feels like hands on her face. The shifting smells of evergreens, car exhaust, hot-dog stand, and newsprint alter her breathing, making it deeper or more shallow, more or less pleasant. She walks a loop of a few blocks, perhaps twenty minutes, before returning to the hotel, walking through the taxi circle, nodding to the young doorman, pushing back through the revolving door, feeling as though it did indeed spin her out and back in.

Standing in the center of the lobby, back to Suzanne, blond hair shiny, is Petra. Petra spins, tucks her hair behind one ear, and stares directly at Suzanne, as though she saw her coming in a mirror that Suzanne cannot see.

"It's about time. I'm buying you a drink." Petra laughs and adds, "I promise mine will be cranberry juice."

"Why, are you pregnant?" Suzanne asks, her voice more bitter than she feels.

Petra shakes her head, and Suzanne follows her into the hotel bar, to a table in a dark far corner, a table perfect for secret a.s.signations. True to her word, Petra orders juice. "But you should have a real drink," she says and tells their waiter to bring Suzanne a whiskey.

They wait for the drinks to arrive and the server to leave before they start their conversation. Petra starts with a joke: "Why don't viola players play hide and seek?"

Suzanne sips her drink and says nothing.

"Well?"

"You're really going to make me answer a joke so old?"

Petra nods.

"Fine. Viola players don't play hide and seek because they know no one will look for them."

Petra reaches across the table and squeezes Suzanne's forearm. "Except we did look for you. That's what we were mostly doing, you know, looking for you."

Suzanne decides to hold her own words until she hears more. "We were lonely. We were lonely for you. That's mostly why we did it." Petra tips her head to the side and smiles. "That and the fact that I'm a s.l.u.t."

"The girlish charm isn't going to work on this, Petra. And it's not likely that I'm going to buy into the explanation that you and my husband slept together to be closer to me." Suzanne pauses. "That's kind of a question."

Her answer is simple: "Yes. We did."

"That's bulls.h.i.t."

"Since when do you swear?"

Suzanne takes three large gulps of the whiskey, burning her tongue, palate, the left side of her throat. "Since you screwed my husband."

Petra is shaking her head. "Maybe he wants the part of you I have, and I want the part of you he has."

Suzanne waits, but Petra offers no more, so finally she says, "So you slept with my husband because you wanted to sleep with me." Forgetting for a moment everything but that Petra is her best friend, who has always told her the worst about herself, she laughs.

"And if I asked you to, what would you say?" Petra returns her grip to Suzanne's forearm.

Suzanne leaves her arm still, consciously, but ignores the question, and ultimately it is Petra who retreats from the physical contact.

"What I know and Ben doesn't understand," Petra says, unwrapping and removing the scarf around her neck, "is that those parts aren't even half of you. You checked out on us a while ago, Suzanne. You left us alone, and we took comfort in each other."

With nothing to say, no words coming at all, Suzanne feels the hollow in her neck, that ache that can be filled only with chin rest and wood. She wants Petra to leave so she can go upstairs and play music and think about nothing.

"I always figured that part of you died when you lost the baby, or maybe you saved a little of that and poured it into Adele. But it's been gone from me and I'm pretty sure gone from Ben, and even he's not so emotionally thick that he wouldn't notice, even if he can't name it."

Suzanne begins shaking her head vehemently. "No," she says. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to make this my fault. You don't get to use Adele like that, and you don't get to talk about my baby, not ever. If you ever say that again, if you ever even mention it in pa.s.sing, you will never see me again."

"Does that mean I will if I don't?" Petra's lips are stained a sheer bright pink from her juice.

What Suzanne wants, more than anything, is for her marriage to be happy and Petra to be her best friend. She wants Alex alive and perfect and unharmed-someone she admires but has never met. She says, "I would like you to leave."

Petra is not stricken, as once she would have been. Or maybe she is stricken in some unseen way, because her transparency has clouded and Suzanne cannot read her. She merely nods, drains her juice, and shoulders the straps of her purse. "Call me if you change your mind. I have a room here. I can't help but think you're here because of me, because of me and Ben, and I'm not having you here alone."

Suzanne drinks the rest of her whiskey in a few short sips. "It doesn't have anything to do with you, or with that. Not the way you think. I really would like you to leave. Leave all the way."

"I already paid for my room." Petra shrugs and starts to leave, but she turns around and steps close to the table, bending over, making Suzanne look at her. "You know I've always liked you more than him, even during."

Petra's words make her physical presence stronger, and Suzanne looks at the thin white pipe that is her neck, the collarbones revealed by the scoop-necked shirt, the shape of her shoulders underneath. It is now that she imagines Ben and Petra actually together. She has seen each of them naked many times, and now she fits them together. His hand tracing the line where Petra's small, perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s become her armpits, the V-shaped lines of her thin stomach, the scant hair between her legs, the slight inward curve where her long thighs join her body. Ben, just a little taller, lining up chest to chest, hips to hips, feet to feet. Eyes to eyes Eyes to eyes. She blinks and sees them other ways, the ways she has been with him: Petra straddling him on a chair, pinned by his weight against the wall, on her tiptoes in the shower, on top of him but facing backward. She pictures Petra under him, over him, in front of him. Stop Stop.

Petra tries to smile, but it doesn't hold. "Anyway, I hope you'll call me."

Suzanne closes and opens her eyes, slower than blinking. "I'm not going to change my mind, but we'll talk when I get home."

She watches Petra as she walks up to the bar and signs for the bill. The server asks her something and she stays for a moment, talking to him, and Suzanne sees something new in Petra's body language, in the angle at which she stands, in the position of her shoulder-a slight reserve. It's not just that Suzanne hasn't noticed it before; it is utterly new. Suzanne looks down and is surprised by her own forearm, unmoved from the place it rested when Petra held it tight, sitting on the table as though it doesn't belong to her at all but is just something someone left lying there.

Twenty-nine.

The third day of the inst.i.tute marks the serious turn to the compositions. After a score seminar with a master copyist, the day will be spent in reading sessions with various sections of the orchestra, beginning for Suzanne with percussion and ending with the full strings. Throughout the day Olivia watches and writes copiously with a blue pen on a yellow legal pad, but she says little, leaving it to Suzanne to listen, guide, negotiate. Suzanne tries to ignore her, to forget her as much as that is possible, but Olivia's silence makes her presence louder. If the concerto is the story of Alex's love with Suzanne, then Olivia is entirely the wrong audience.

The most challenging reading of the day is the requested special section with the princ.i.p.al cellist and double reeds. This is the music that Suzanne has not merely filled in, arranged, or embellished. This is the music that she herself created from scratch, summoned into existence from whatever void holds music that is unwritten.

It is nearly impossible to notate music completely. Marks on a page are but an elaborate shorthand, an approximation of the language the composer imagines hearing, desires to hear. There is always room for interpretation and so misinterpretation, but Suzanne finds that the young oboist with dark circles under her eyes understands her intentions, using dynamics to represent various states of sadness and agitation, following the tempo Suzanne wants. The ba.s.soon player, despite his obvious talent, has less feel for the piece. His changes in dynamics are overstated, almost clumsy, making Suzanne's compositional moves sound hackneyed and amateurish.

She recalls the concertmaster's advice: "We want to play what you wrote, but we want to sound good." She needs to make the music make sense to the ba.s.soonist, to help him find the best tonal color, to help him feel the timbre. She tries to describe it in words, remembering a children's book she used to sign to Adele that described sadness as a single petal fallen from a flower, a seal stranded on a beach while his family rode the current back out to sea, a marble that rolled under a sofa and was forgotten.