An Unfinished Score Part 16

Olivia looks up from her pad, speaking softly but with audible, crisp words. "To give a less childish example, perhaps it would help to imagine a woman home alone while her husband goes to hear her favorite tenor with another, younger woman."

Suzanne remembers that concert. She didn't like the program at all, and she and Alex left early and went instead to a blues bar, where they drank gin and smoked cigarettes-two things she hasn't done since-and watched people dance, their bodies close and sweaty, taking the dark room's permission to move lewdly.

Suzanne tells herself that it isn't due to Olivia's a.n.a.logy, but nevertheless the ba.s.soon player's reading of his part improves. She is relieved because she feels too exhausted to make it through more than once after that. "One final go at it," she says, and she puts up her feet to listen.

Before she goes up to her room to rest before dinner, Olivia taps her shoulder. "Who was that woman-the blond-you were with yesterday at the bar? She's not one of the composers."

Suzanne wants to tell her it's none of her business, but it seems easier to answer, and she's no longer sure what belongs to whom, whose business is whose. She looks directly at Olivia and says, "I guess you could say that she is to me what I am to you."

For once Olivia looks confused instead of like the person in charge. Suzanne walks away at a pace Olivia would have trouble matching without obvious effort, without denting her armor of composure.

In her room Suzanne pulls open the thick curtains and sits in the gauzy light permitted by the thin inner curtain. She rests her feet on the ottoman and closes her eyes. Even as she is thinking how nice it is to be alone-to have no one looking to her or even at her-the impulse to call Petra tugs. She can imagine them sitting cross-legged on her bed, her telling Petra what Olivia is doing to her and Petra rea.s.suring her that Olivia is indeed diabolical but won't eat her alive. Even the imagining gives Suzanne a sliver of relief, but as soon as she feels it she closes herself to the idea. Everything that has happened is too huge to be treated as though it were small, too difficult to make easy.

Instead she rouses herself to wash her face, change clothes, primp as though she cares how she looks when she goes down to the lobby to be ferried with the others, in small groups, to the Greek restaurant where they will dine.

An hour later she is sitting, in a dark blue dress and silver jewelry, at a large table as a waiter and waitress who could be brother and sister bring bottles of retsina, baskets of bread, olives, sauces in small white bowls. They splash skillets of ka.s.seri cheese with ouzo, set them on fire with disposable lighters, and douse the flames with lemon juice. It is the same start to a meal Suzanne shared with Alex in Detroit. He'd made an excuse to come hear her play in a university auditorium, and after her recital the two of them braved streets so empty that deer mingled on the yellow center lines, searching for what the pianist had told her was the only decent restaurant in walking distance. Now she watches Alex's wife as she feels Alex soak into her with every sip of the resin-flavored wine, every bite of the lemony cheese, the warm bread, the salty olives, the garlicky tzatziki tzatziki.

f.u.c.k Olivia, she thinks yet again, and then she is pierced by the thought of Petra, alone in her large room, maybe thinking the same thing about her.

The young composers talk business at first, debating the pros and cons of university sinecures, wishing aloud that there were more organizations like the Minnesota Commissioning Club-the group of ordinary people who pool their money to commission contemporary music.

Red wine follows the retsina, and they toast Minnesota as heavy plates of food arrive. The talk begins to bridge business and music.

"I'm just not sure what the future of the orchestra is," says Lisa-Natasha. "Find me one where half the audience doesn't have gray hair and a walker and I'll say we have a fighting chance."

The quietest of the group, Paul, now speaks, his accent so strong that he seems to be speaking in a second language, although he is English. "Of concern to me is the future of the orchestra in the compositional landscape. In a world where composing is more and more private, and more and more about recording and not performance, why should we bother arranging for seventy parts?"

Bruce smiles at Suzanne. They know the thrill of being one of those seventy.

The others' responses are equally predictable according to each person's stance toward music and place in the world. Suzanne thinks back to Curtis, when these conversations excited them to stay up late, drinking and arguing. She wishes she was still capable of that. But she is hardly paying attention until she hears Alex's name. It comes from Greg.

His voice is beautiful, with a complex texture to the tone, the sound of beads being pulled across a stiff fabric. "How was he trained?"

Olivia fields his questions, and those of the others, about Alex's early days on the piano, his first job as a conductor, his rise. But mostly she shares his stories of musicians, particularly of the difficult or downright insane. She tells the story about the princ.i.p.al flutist who chose to be demoted rather than sit next to her ex-boyfriend, the orchestra's second flutist; the soloist who demanded all red candies; the famous pianist who played with tobacco tucked into his lip; the p.u.b.escent violin prodigy with a drinking problem; another who would eat only organic food; a beautiful cellist who always slept with someone seated on the first row of the balcony. "Never mind if she got a more attractive offer. Had to be someone from the first row of the balcony."

They are stories Suzanne has heard before, told better. It seems that it is now Olivia's turn to be the one who has drunk too much, whose composure has frazzled.

Her mouth moving like a hinge, the shape of her skull evident under her skin, Olivia asks, "You played under him, didn't you, Suzanne? I don't recall him having any stories about you. I guess you were easy." She smiles. "To work with, I mean."

Greg looks at Suzanne, a gaze she interprets as sympathy. Lisa-Natasha stares at her, forgetting to either eat or put down her fork.

"You know me," Suzanne says, "always aiming to please the conductor and and the composer. May we be so lucky tomorrow." She raises her gla.s.s to the table, hoping this is enough to turn the attention away from her, away from Alex, to move the conversation along to something else. the composer. May we be so lucky tomorrow." She raises her gla.s.s to the table, hoping this is enough to turn the attention away from her, away from Alex, to move the conversation along to something else.

"Here's one for you," Olivia says. "A conductor and a violist are standing in the middle of the road. Which one do you run over first?"

This is not one of Petra's jokes, and Suzanne does not know the punch line. No one else answers, either.

"The conductor," Olivia says, her voice now low and controlled.

"Okay," Bruce says. "Why the conductor?"

Olivia's smile widens greedily. "Easy. The conductor first because you always take care of business before pleasure."

Eric laughs hard, and Bruce laughs politely. Greg stares at Olivia. Lisa-Natasha stares at Suzanne, who looks over her shoulder. She's not looking for any concrete reason, but it catches the waiter's attention. Suzanne realizes that she is still thirty minutes and a piece of baklava away from escape, and then she realizes that there's no safe ground to hide from anything that's happening. Her eyes follow the jumpy light of the twin candles at the center of their table, and she wishes she could will herself out of time altogether.

Thirty.

Olivia is late to the fourth day's rehearsals, which are held in the orchestra's broad, spare, absolutely beautiful performance auditorium. Despite the cavernous ceiling s.p.a.ces and open wings, the hall is made warm with color and the textures of wood, concrete, fabric. The effect is not emptiness but simplicity. Suzanne loves it immediately and wishes Alex could have conducted here instead of in the dilapidated glory of Chicago's red-and-white auditorium, suggesting a heyday decades gone.

Despite her jitters, despite everything, Suzanne feels strong, or at least at ease in her own body, with her own face. Today is the first time the full orchestra will work through each of the six compositions, and Suzanne is glad to be free of Olivia for now. Established composers and other guest faculty listen in, give broad impressions, occasionally make specific suggestions. There won't be much time to fix anything beyond the most horrible wrong moments-the public performance is one night away-but still this is meant to be an educational experience.

"Not ideal circ.u.mstances, but not unique," the conductor tells them. His Finnish accent, all but untraceable on the inst.i.tute's first day, comes heavier now. Fatigue, Suzanne a.s.sumes, based on her experience with Alex and with Petra, though she hears Lisa-Natasha whisper "Faker" to Eric.

"Don't get caught up in the thrill-or in the agony-of hearing your work. Listen as dispa.s.sionately as you can to what you are actually hearing, not what you think you are going to hear or want to hear or what you are afraid of hearing. What you are actually hearing-that's its own skill-and be open to alterations as needed. This part is as important as the original setting down of notes on the page or whatever you thought you heard in your mind that day inspiration hit you while you were eating your oatmeal or-" he pauses and finds the spot where Greg is sitting. "Or while you were drinking your third scotch."

Suzanne sits through the compositions of the other composers, a.s.suming the weight of Alex's name is the reason they are scheduled last. Eric and Lisa-Natasha are up first, and Eric leaves immediately afterward, as though there is nothing to learn from the others. Their two pieces have some similarities, including evidence of mathematics-based training, reliance on percussion and ba.s.s to drive rhythm, and certain uses of atonality and line fracture that have become stock in any music wanting to proclaim itself postmodern. There are differences, too, mostly in mood, with Lisa-Natasha's piece having a bit more fun than Eric's, which is almost uniformly dark and, Suzanne guesses, self-pitying. Wishing Doug were at her side, if only for entertainment value, she jots down a few personality notes for him.

Bruce's piece is also unsurprising given what she knows about him. It shows his cla.s.sical training, his lifetime of experience in full orchestration, dependence on the violin roles, a pleasing if safe sense of symmetry, and a bright, exuberant sensibility. Paul's work is more complicated and interesting. The ubiquitous note-counter tabulated his piece as having the fewest notes of all the compositions, and he draws many of them out, letting them reverberate in the hall's still, cool air, reverberate in the listener's ear. The composition is t.i.tled "Water," and in it Suzanne feels water in a mult.i.tude of its forms. The music trickles, babbles, bubbles, sinks, gathers, roars, moves tidally in and out. Yet there's nothing obvious or easy about how he's done it. There is a bit of cleverness, but depth, too. Mostly it is lovely, nearly everyone agrees, and Suzanne looks at Paul with more respect, nodding when she catches his eye, glad that he seems pleased by his audience's enjoyment.

Suzanne appreciates the inst.i.tute's willingness to produce such disparate works of music, its understanding that style is so often temporary in young composers, its desire to look beyond that for a more fundamental talent. All four pieces have been quite good, and she suspects the best is yet to come after the break, with Greg's short symphony.

The music proves her right. Greg's piece jumps in quality above everything else they've heard, and so she is surprised when two of the guest faculty voice sharp criticisms-not merely suggestions for the performance but actual dismissals of the work as a whole, words that cannot possibly help anyone a single day before a public performance. An older man leaps up to defend the piece, saying, "You can't criticize it just because it's a hundred times better than anything you ever wrote."

Greg, who sits two rows in front of her, spins around and puts his hand alongside his mouth. "Oh, good, we get to hear a battle of the Old Schools. I don't know whether it's worse to be attacked or championed."

"Your piece," Suzanne says as the speaking men continue to argue. "Your piece is really great."

His answer is simple-no puffing up but no false modesty, just an honest confidence. "Thank you."

Maybe she's so suggestible that Greg's turning to talk to her prompts her to imitate the move, or maybe she can feel the gaze on the back of her head. She turns, and there is Olivia. Suzanne does not know how long she has been there, presumably since the end of the break, throughout Greg's symphony and the discussion afterward.

There is something off about Olivia, or maybe on, some natural wildness she usually sleeks back, places under control. Maybe it's just her hair, which now sprays loose about her shoulders. But there's also again a strange set to her mouth. Though it's not crooked, it reminds Suzanne of Ben's mother on the boat at the scattering of Charlie's ashes. Someone with a plan gone astray, someone letting something out of herself that she's carefully hidden before.

"We're up next," Suzanne says just loudly enough to carry two rows. She spins back to face the orchestra, taking the deep inhalation that she has taken before every performance since her first recital in a church in South Philadelphia, wearing a dress her mother found at a consignment store, playing the Beethoven-for-kiddies piece well enough that everyone in the room knew she was different, knew she had something the rest of them didn't.

The violist barely keeps up with the technical difficulty, but he gets through, and the double reeds play beautifully-better than she's hoped or, more true, exactly as she's hoped. She closes her eyes and tries to hear the relationships between the solo line, her moving line, and the full orchestra.

One of the guest faculty members halts the peculiar second movement and suggests a stronger entrance by the bra.s.s. "Also," he says, "the strings are trying to rush the crescendos. Is that what you want?" he asks, turning to Suzanne. "It's your job to speak up."

From behind her she hears Olivia call out to the orchestra. "Let the conductor hold you, even slow down the crescendo at D. Too slow is better than too fast."

Suzanne's throat constricts, and she feels a twitch in a small muscle on the right side of her face. For that brief moment she thinks she is having a stroke. Her recovery is immediate, but still she remains silent, listening to the orchestra play out the Viola Concerto by Alexander Elling and Suzanne Sullivan. With full orchestration and herself in the audience instead of with bow in hand, she hears it for the first time. The concerto was written not to show her off but to ruin her. It was written not out of love but out of hatred.

Again her face twitches, followed by a crushing weight on her chest, and this time it feels not like a small stroke but like the end of everything. She has has been wrong all along, spectacularly, humiliatingly, unbearably wrong. And now she has been undone. been wrong all along, spectacularly, humiliatingly, unbearably wrong. And now she has been undone.

As the conductor and concertmaster discuss strategies to prevent the audience from being fully duped and so angered by the false ending. Suzanne stands to leave.

She sees concern on Greg's face and on Bruce's, but only fascination on Lisa-Natasha's as she tries to back away but instead leans over and vomits all over the empty seat in front of her.

Thirty-one.

Alone in her room, her stomach empty and her arms weak, Suzanne raises her viola and plays the viola line as if for the first time. Just to be sure, she tells herself, though she already knows. She digs her bow hard into her strings, makes every crazy turn, every rise and fall, twisting at the waist so she will not miss a note. Her breath fails her more than once, her right arm aches, and her neck pinches. No matter how much she wants to distrust her instincts, the music is now obvious to her. The concerto is an act of retribution.

Suzanne feels stripped even of profound grief, and the emotion she is left with is shallow and pale, thin as gauze, its color washed away. Doloroso Doloroso. But nothing more.

She can think of only two ways to stop the farce that Olivia has cast her in: she can call the music director or she can call Olivia. She spins out each scenario. The first one unfolds predictably: there is anger, a scratched program, upset musicians, public exposure, humiliation. The second she imagines in several alternatives, but the truth is that she cannot imagine what will happen if she confronts Olivia because she cannot imagine what Olivia will do. She has overestimated Olivia's humanity and underestimated her brilliance. She does not know if Olivia cares if her whole plan is exposed-maybe the publicity is even what she wants. Almost certainly she will threaten to talk to Ben. She will tell Ben, and Suzanne will lose him, too.

She thinks of her musical reputation, of the quartet, of Anthony's aspirations for them all. If the false Wikipedia entry about Alex calling music "a healing force" made headlines and ripped through the online world, how large a scandal might this be? What will its salacious headline be? Will people remember and care? Will they forgive Suzanne because she is the dupe, or is that the least sympathetic role of all to play? And she isn't just the victim, of course; she is the other woman other woman, the one who set into motion the whole sordid sequence.

It is two in the morning when she calls Petra, and so she is surprised by her quick answer. "Thank G.o.d," Petra says. "I was starting to think you really wouldn't call me."

"It's not good news," Suzanne says and gives Petra her room number.

Petra arrives fast and wearing street clothes, as though she's just come in from a night out. Suzanne asks her how much she's had to drink.

"None. I quit." She meets Suzanne's look. "Not quite, but really I haven't had anything to drink tonight. I'm trying to quit. I talked to Daniel about it. I figure there's a chance I'm going to be a real single mom soon, and I need to learn how to do it."

Suzanne takes the armchair, propping up her feet, insisting upon that distance between them.

"Where is Adele? You didn't leave her with Ben, did you?"

Petra takes the bed, stretching out on her side, head propped up by her bent arm. "I asked him. Because he really is good with her, but he said no because he didn't think I should come here. He told me to stay away from you."

"So where is she?"

"This is how much I love you: I left her with Jennifer. She's probably charting her progress day and night, turning her into some color of cat." Petra rolls onto her back, then resumes her sideways position. "Suzanne, do you think we can start over?"

Suzanne laughs, a small sound. "That's what I asked Ben."

"And what did he say?"

"He said we can't undo what is done. We can just keep going. He wants that, I think, to keep going."

"And what's your answer? What do you want?"

Suzanne cannot see a simple reconciliation with Petra, but neither can she imagine that they won't be lifelong friends. Adele will need Suzanne, more than ever, even if Petra does shape up, grow up. After the terrifying surgery, she will need months of training, years of understanding. Her life will always be shaped by the simple, hard facts that she was born deaf and has no father she knows.

"I need you," Suzanne whispers.

Petra springs up, starts to approach Suzanne but holds back a few feet. "I need you too, honey, more than you can guess."

"No, I mean I need you right now."

Petra looks confused, then hurt. "Taking me up on my offer? Maybe I deserve it, but please don't do that to me."

"Not everything's about s.e.x, Petra. There are other ways to connect people. Always going for the genitals is not a permanent strategy."

"Maybe it's the only way I'm good at."

"I have a lot to tell you. If you love me, really love me, you're going to promise me that you'll never tell any of this to anyone, no matter how tempting, no matter how mad you get at me. Or how mad you get at Ben. Or how drunk and gossipy you ever feel. Can you say that?"

Petra sits down, leaning back on her hyperextended arms, feet hanging off the side of the bed. "It's the least I can do. Tell me the whole thing of it."

Suzanne starts at the beginning, with Harold in Italy Harold in Italy, and the telling of her story takes a full hour as she tries to reconstruct the geographical order of her love affair with Alex. She tells Petra about the music, about her early jealousy, about his dark moods, about the night they made love while Felder played, about how lonely she always felt with Ben, about her guilt, about wanting money and fame or just to be special, about every performance she and Alex ever sat through together. She tries to remember details as she tells, so that Petra can understand what her story really is. Maybe her friend can tell her how she has felt, how she feels. Finally she tells Petra about the plane crash, about Olivia's machinations and how fully deceived she has been, which brings her to this moment.

"My G.o.d. I always think I'm the shocking one, but look how boring I am."

Suzanne smiles, a genuine gesture.

"How did you hide all that? From Ben. From me."

"Maybe that's the part of me that was missing."

Petra lies down. After a stretch of silence, Suzanne wonders if she has fallen asleep, but she listens closely and hears the pattern of Petra's normal, waking breath.

Finally Petra sits up. "I think you just have to play things out."

"Do what she wants? Go on with it all?"

Petra nods. "Unless you want to explode your whole life, that's what you should do."

"It might explode anyway."

Petra nods. "But it will definitely explode any other way."

Suzanne nods short and fast, for a long time, settling into the idea, the plan that is no plan at all. "I'll be at her mercy."

"I think you already are, sweetie. If you defy her you'll be exploding your own life, but still it won't really be on your terms."

Petra and Suzanne sleep fully clothed, side by side, all morning. They order room service, Suzanne adding a ridiculously generous tip to the already steep bill. "It might be my last meal. Besides, empty stomach."

"I'm glad you can laugh about throwing up in front of a room full of music people."

"The alternative is too depressing," Suzanne answers, biting into a strawberry, trying to decide which sandwich she wants.

"I'm flying home a day later than you. I thought it was the right thing to do, to give you and Ben the house to yourself at first."