Sight Reading (29 page)

Nicholas vaguely recalled his first mother-in-law—Hazel's mother—who had knitted in an automatic, soul-less way, as if it were a mere necessity, like breathing.

Paula said, “I'm hoping it'll make me rich someday.”

Something about the way she said it, so earnestly, made Nicholas wish he could lift her up and present her directly to the gods.

Instead he thanked her for the lesson, and the ride, and, now that they had reached the T, told her good night.

“Here,” she said, “before you go.” Reaching into her purse, she found a pen and an envelope, from which she tore off the flap to write something on it. “For your continued musical education,” she said, handing him the scrap of paper.

He looked at the words, in that same loopy script, only this time in dark purple ink.
The Latin Brothers
.

“Another band for you to research,” she said, “since I can see you take this seriously.” She winked.

La Sonora Carruseles
was the name she wrote the following week, this time at the other dance club, which had disco balls and a cover charge. She wrote the words on the back of a piece of cardboard she tore from the packaging of a new hairbrush. The brush was a big cylindrical one with many tiny bristles, like something for cleaning machine parts. She dropped it back into her bag and told Nicholas, “They're one of my favorite groups.” He was looking at the scrap of packaging as if it were a password or secret code. On the other side were the equally foreign words “Salon Styling at Home.”

Nicholas found more CDs at the library. This, too, was freeing, listening to something with simple curiosity, not as a composer or critic or teacher. The propelling rhythms, the lyrics in Spanish so that he didn't even know what the singing was about, energized Nicholas at the same time that something deeper within him relaxed.

And then, on a cold night in March, something wonderful happened.

It was one of Remy's Symphony nights. Nicholas met Paula at the dance club, and instead of the usual DJ, there was a band playing. Six young men with slick dark hair and matching button-down shirts. Their energy reverberated throughout the space as they sang and played their instruments as if their lives depended on it. The percussionist and horn player were particularly good, as was the lead singer. By the time Nicholas was ready to leave, the place was packed, and Nicholas was sweating from all the dancing and bodies and the excitement of having live music on the premises. He thanked Paula for his lesson and, watching her happily go off to dance with another partner, elbowed his way out the door.

The parking lot was quiet. As Nicholas was unlocking his car, some other patrons exited the club. The band's music slipped out the door with them—a brief buoyant affirmation, the singer's voice soaring above them, hailing the night. And then the door slid shut, and all that was left was a throbbing box of tamped sound.

Nicholas stood in amazement.

The gypsy music on the sidewalk.

A visitation. A call. Nicholas waited, shivering in the cold, for someone else to leave the dance club, so that he could hear again that burst of joy punctuating the air.

This was what he wanted. The feeling of that moment, the bewildered awareness of the divine. That simple burst—an unfettered voice.

For that was what was missing from the symphony—the voice that hadn't been allowed to shine through.

A miracle's

Oor only chance.

Up, carles, up

And let us dance!

Don't let go of it, he told himself when he eventually started the car up and set out toward home. He felt the two moments merging in his memory—the sidewalk gypsies and the salsa band—and knew that if he could just keep the sensation alive he would figure out what to do. Already he had an idea, felt that rare clarity of vision. He drove fast and didn't wait to turn at the two
NO RIGHT ON RED
stoplights. He had to get home.

Less than an hour later, as he sat down eagerly at his desk, he saw, in one sweep, the entire thing, his symphony, from beginning to end. The full arc of the whole unruly mess—the places that didn't belong, the ones that needed to be cut, a whole section that would need to be moved. And embroidered through the entire piece, breaking out intermittently in interpolated bursts, that one voice soaring above. Yes,
that
was what he needed, the surprise of it, sound cutting through the stillness, the gypsy musicians, right there on the sidewalk. . . .

He began to work, keeping at it long after Remy had returned from work, and he rose early the next morning to continue. There was much new composing to be done, to create this new conception out of the existing fabric. He composed in long bouts, until his fingers were cramped, his hand tired from gripping the pencil. Why hadn't he thought of this before?

Because I was stuck, he told himself. I needed a nudge out of that rut. That must have been what drove me to Paula in the first place. I was driven to her—to the dancing—for a reason.

He told her this when he returned to the salsa club the following week. His left wrist still tingled from the long hours of notation that day; he hadn't wanted to stop working, had quit only so that he could see Paula and thank her. As they sat out a cha-cha, leaning wearily on a table in a dark corner not far from the bar, he told her, “I feel very lucky, actually, to have met you.”

Paula gave a big grin. “I feel that way, too.” Looking suddenly bashful, she added, “I've never met anyone like you.”

And then she was leaning toward him and his lips were on hers. How lovely, her soft lips, and the tip of her tongue, the taste of her. It was hard for him to stop—but soon Nicholas pulled away, sat farther back in his chair. The slightly icky feeling returned. Paula shook her head at him, her nostrils flaring in that laughing way. She rolled her eyes and let them close for a moment, but then she exhaled loudly and reached for his hands. “Fine, then, come on. Let's dance.”

Even as they danced he felt her electricity, as if some connection between them had been finalized. Her hands were warm as he led her, spun her around. When he told her good night, outside in the cold, they kissed again.

The next morning he set immediately to work, to prove that it was all in the service of art. Though he had much new writing to do, his confidence kept him afloat. The days, and then weeks, blurred one into the other, hours passing as if mere seconds while Nicholas worked. No time for anything else. In fact, he stopped going to the dance club altogether. He simply had too much to do, now that he knew what was needed, how to finish the symphony.

SHE STAYED UP LATE PRACTICING.

The violin solo wove through much of the first movement. A lithe, winding tune in F-sharp major—no open strings, which meant fewer overtones ringing out. What resonated instead was the touch of Remy's fingertips on the strings, the warmth of physical contact; without open strings vibrating, the sound of each note was more audibly human, almost voicelike. It seemed her fingertips themselves were singing.

In very brief moments, a wisp of melody seemed to recall something, some tiny sound-memory within her—but it was too brief, too quick. Remy could not hold on to whatever the recollection was, though she listened hard as she worked through that first run-through. She loved how it felt to move freely along this unfamiliar path. The solo was full of melismalike embellishments and rapid downward spirals that at points were nearly dizzying. Falling in love—that was what Remy's first-year theory teacher had said fast downward scales represented. When our ear hears that wild tripping down the scale, he had explained, we can't help being reminded of what it feels like to tumble headfirst into infatuation.

Was that what Nicholas had been writing about all this time, falling in love?

With her—or someone else?

Her heart seized once again at the thought of that other woman, and again she thought of what she might do—leave him, hurt him. She would call Christopher about that new orchestra in Spain . . . go somewhere far away from here.

Yet she did not want to stop playing. When she arrived at the end of the first movement, she immediately retuned her violin and flipped back to the beginning. This was one of those rare parts that made the most of her instrument's lyric qualities, its ability to portray human emotions. Not just the falling in love, but the excitement and trepidation (Nicholas had even included a
sul ponticello
section, that spooky sound that came from drawing the bow right across the top of the bridge) and the moments of pure joy. She loved the drama that leapt from the page through her limbs, through her violin; when she played those spirals, she felt a tumbling sensation, as if she, too, were falling in love.

She realized it had grown dark. Forcing herself to take a break, she went to the kitchen and scrounged for leftovers in the fridge, suddenly ravenous. It was the first time that day that she had had an appetite. She ate quickly, eager to return to the score. But first she closed the windows and fixed her heavy practice mute on the violin's bridge, so as not to disturb the neighbors.

Chapter 3

N
icholas awoke to a violent honking—Gary blowing his nose into a paper napkin, which was then tossed past Nicholas's head in the general direction of the wastepaper basket. Gary had spent so much of his life alone, he thought nothing of gargling with the bathroom door open, burping loudly at whim, walking from room to room in nothing but his underwear. Though it was not yet seven, he was already at his computer, wearing a slim telephone headset, its mouthpiece curving like a tiny garden snake toward his chin. From the lumpy couch where he had slept poorly, Nicholas watched with half-opened eyes as Gary typed madly, one window on his computer connected to the Internet (for firing off pithy e-mails and letters to editors) and the rest of the screen filled with an article he was negotiating to sell to a magazine.

Nicholas tossed off the musty blanket, produced a deceptively jolly “good morning,” and went to rinse his face at the stained bathroom sink. He had decided to take his breakfast at the diner down the street, the one where the waitresses call you “honey.” He was in great need of affection; even the indiscriminate kind, from thick-ankled women in aprons, would do.

He washed in a halfhearted way, slapping suds onto his cheeks and neck, sloshing palms of water under his armpits. He reached for a towel that wasn't there, then squeezed some toothpaste from the messy tube onto his fingertip and rubbed it around his gums and teeth. He caught some water in his cupped palm, brought it to his lips, swooshed the liquid around in his mouth, and spat it out. Again he reached for the absent towel. Gary had lived in this apartment for decades, and though it accommodated the occasional guest, it did not welcome anyone with sincerity. All around were the subtle signs of neglect that, Nicholas realized, must accompany so many homes of a certain type of single male. Mildew speckled the bathroom ceiling; a bouquet of dried flowers was netted with cobwebs; in the small refrigerator sat half-wrapped deli sandwiches, a twelve-pack of Busch, and a carton of curdled milk. From those few years of Gary's marriage, all that was left were a series of blurry watercolors, covered by a faint layer of dust, that Adele had painted. Gary didn't seem to think it odd to have kept them. Neither had he seemed particularly distraught at becoming a bachelor again, though Nicholas knew it had been a painful time.

Nicholas took his jacket from the hall closet, eager to leave. He would go to that diner, eat a big breakfast, and think, hard, until he figured out what to do about Remy.

“Okay, I'm off,” he called to Gary. But doubt gripped him, and he added, “I might possibly be back this evening, if that's all right.”

Gary spun his swivel chair and nodded, his lower lip jutting out a bit, as if in the midst of contemplation. The telephone headset gave him a mildly absurd air of importance. “Okay, buddy. Maybe we can go to the pub.” When he spun back to face the computer, the chair gave a loud sigh.

“NEED MORE COFFEE, HON?”

The Day Shift, populated mainly by elderly widowers and young college students, had a nice, warm greasy smell. The widowers took entire booths for themselves, forcing newcomers like Nicholas to sit at the counter, where heaped breakfast plates were passed, steaming, overhead. From behind the swinging kitchen door came the crashing sound of cutlery landing in soapy bins and the heavy chink of ceramic dishes being stacked. Nicholas found himself watching the cook, a stocky man named Marty, flip pancakes on the wide dark grill where pork sausage had been frying mere seconds earlier. The waitresses shouted their orders to him, so that there was a sense of urgency about the place, as if it were all quite dire, cups of coffee and bowls of oatmeal handed hastily back and forth. On the wall was a mute television tuned to CNN.

The man next to Nicholas ordered steak and eggs and wished Nicholas good morning. His name was Harvey. He was eighty-seven years old and had been eating at the Day Shift every morning for the past eighteen and a half years. They were already planning the party for his twentieth anniversary, he told Nicholas, explaining that he lived around the corner, and about the party that would happen two years from now. There would be news spots on Channel 2 and WGBH, and the
Globe
would do a piece in the Living section. He described it as if all this were just days away. Nicholas, though, couldn't help wondering if Harvey would make it to his own celebration. He was wheezy and intensely wrinkled, his face patterned with liver spots.

When Nicholas had ordered his eggs and allowed the waitress to take his menu away, Harvey asked, “You new here, or what?”

Nicholas said, “I don't usually eat here, no.”

“No, I mean in town. You've got that accent, and I've never seen you before.”

“Oh, yes, well, I've lived here for twenty years, actually.”

Harvey was still peering at him. “Got any kids?”

“A daughter, yes. Jessica.” Nicholas heard the absurd pride in his voice, as if it were his love alone that had nudged her into what she had become: strong, beautiful, lucky. Upon graduation from college two years ago (she had a BA in Hospitality Management), she had led cross-country bicycle tours for a summer before being offered a position at the West Coast branch of a company where she had interned, organizing travel incentive packages for business corporations. As the liaison between corporate clients and tour providers, she was brightly professional while retaining the aura of someone perpetually on holiday. Though her own vacation preferences were strenuous ones (biking across Tuscany, hiking Machu Picchu), her business travels were to ensure that the most popular tour packages—Malaysian spas, European ski chalets, Alaskan cruises, and Hawaiian beach resorts—maintained expected standards. She was also good at wrangling freebies—had sent her mother to Costa Rica, Nicholas and Remy for a long weekend in Turkey, and Remy's parents on a cruise to Argentina.

“She lives in Seattle,” Nicholas told Harvey. “In fact, she's just gotten engaged.” Even her voice on the telephone last week had been ebullient, describing how Joshua had bent down onto his knee to propose.

“Careful, honey, the plate's hot.” The waitress, with reading spectacles low on her nose, handed Nicholas his runny eggs with wheat toast on the side, while the men to his right debated how the United States could ever get out of Iraq.

Shaking his head, Harvey said, “What a mess.”

For a brief second Nicholas allowed himself to think that Harvey somehow understood what had happened yesterday. But Nicholas hadn't discussed it with anyone, not even last night when he asked Gary if he could sleep on his couch. Gary had just said, “Big fight, huh,” as if he, too, went through such things all the time and they were nothing more than a headache.

The problem was, Remy felt betrayed. And so it was up to Nicholas to figure out what to do. He felt suddenly wild with panic—but forced himself to take a slow sip of coffee. Twice already he had tried to apologize. Now he said, “What do you think we ought to do?”

“What do I know?” Harvey said. “I've got one foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel.”

At that moment an anorexic woman, so thin her shoulders poked at her shirt, fit herself onto the stool next to Nicholas. A sour smell came off her. Nicholas turned his face away and looked up at the television. Images flashed: a bombed-out city, children on hospital stretchers, wailing women. The anorexic woman ordered a coffee mixed with hot chocolate. So much foulness in the world, Nicholas found himself thinking—though he had never before thought of the world that way.

REMY ROSE EARLY, UNABLE TO
sleep. and though her back ached from practicing late into the night, she returned to the music room. It felt good, this fatigue—not just physical but cerebral, too. The fatigue of hard work. She had forgotten, over the past years, what it felt like to study something with intensity. She had forgotten that sense of discovery.

The violin solo, it turned out, wove throughout the entire piece; variations reappeared in each movement. There were even cadenzalike sections, as in a concerto—though Remy could see that the
tutti
parts were still the main thrust of the piece.

That all this time, Nicholas had been writing a symphony with solo violin . . .

How could he have kept this from her?

Now Remy was teaching herself the second movement, which started out quietly but grew big and blustery, nearly roiling; the solo parts were full of wild runs and sudden furious chordal stops. This was a storm, Remy realized quite suddenly, her fingertips powerfully stopping the strings as she used a whiplike bow stroke. The section was marked
colossale,
so that she couldn't help wondering if it was one of Nicholas's private jokes.

As she moved through the notes Nicholas had written, there came again that tiny burst of recollection, a reminder of something—it must be some other piece, some other melody—but she could not find the memory. Odd. She was usually so good at locating motifs, quickly identifying aural allusions. If there were a “Name That Tune” for classical music, Remy would be the reigning champion. Nicholas used to try to stump her when they played together, improvising little mutations of recognizable themes—but she always managed to figure them out. Now she searched the score for a visual clue as to what this one might be, but found nothing.

Well, it would come to her, surely. In the meantime she worked to perfect the solo parts, attending to details she rarely had time for at the Symphony, making sure to substitute one finger for another on repeated notes, working to shape certain phrases without crossing strings. The second movement called for a range of timbres, using the back of the bow for
col legno
in the calm right before the storm, and snap pizzicato—plucking the string so hard that it slapped the fingerboard—where the first splatters of rain started. At least, that was what Remy pictured in her mind, recalling what Nicholas had once described to her: a brooding ocean, and dimming light thrown from wave to wave, and the plaints of gulls incising the sky. How strange it was now to see in her mind's eye what had once been in Nicholas's imagination.

And yet he hadn't told her about the violin solo. Had he intended to surprise her with it?

Had he been thinking of her at all?

Again Remy found herself scrutinizing each page, searching for hidden meaning, as if the answers to these questions might emerge from the notes themselves. It had been years, she realized, since she had studied a new work this way.

Maybe it hadn't even occurred to him to share the piece with her. Or maybe he meant to, when he began it all those years ago, but then forgot.

He did that sometimes, forgot about her, like some absentminded professor. One time he had neglected to give her the address of a friend's picnic out in Concord where they had planned to meet up; Remy didn't even know the friend's last name, kept calling Nicholas's cell phone, but of course he hadn't turned the thing on. And it hadn't occurred to him when she didn't show up to call her and see what the trouble was. Hard not to feel, when he made that sort of blunder, that perhaps, if subconsciously, he didn't really want her with him anymore.

But he had always been flighty that way, hadn't he? Well, yes, but . . . She thought back to her brief time with Yoni, that sudden reckless connection. Even then, her confusion had not diminished her feelings for Nicholas, had not diminished those things she shared with him. Music had remained the bond between them.

Now that, too, was lost—no different, she saw now, from any of those other activities people do together and then separately, when unable to resist the wear and tear of growing apart. That was what made his betrayal all the worse. It didn't matter how many times he apologized or tried to explain about that other woman. The slow growing apart that overtakes so many had reached them, too, without Remy even realizing it.

AT WORK, HAZEL ASKED LAURA
if she knew of an artist called Trent Rafael.

“The name sounds familiar.”

“Here.” Hazel held the magazine article out to her. The magazine was fat, heavy with colorful photographs intended for people with so many homes, they had to constantly search out new things to put in them.

Laura lifted her reading glasses from their little silver chain. “Oh, right,” she said, at the photographs of the pastel-clad man and his sculptures. “I've heard of this guy. How is it this kind of thing gets a following?”

Hazel said, “Now there's one in my house.”

“You're kidding.” Laura let her reading glasses drop on their chain. “I'm so sorry.”

“A friend of Robert's said it was a good investment. I was sure he must have been hoodwinked.”

“Not according to this article. Jesus.”

Hazel said, “I don't have the heart to make him return it. It's the only ‘art' he's ever bought.” In another time, another mind-set, she might have pinned some terrible significance on the awfulness—the falseness—of the wave-girl. But now Hazel knew enough to understand that in the grand scheme of things it didn't matter.