Sight Reading (30 page)

Laura was again looking at the photographs in the magazine. She began laughing, hard. “Of all people to have one of these in her home . . .”

“I know.” To her relief, Hazel found that she, too, was laughing. “This is good,” she told Laura when their laughter had at last subsided. “As long as I can joke about it with you, Robert won't have to hear me making fun of it. I hate to hurt his feelings.”

Still, a heaviness hung on her for the rest of the day. It couldn't be the sculpture; it must still be Remy. It had all been so clear, for one brief moment. And yet—this was the oddest part—what Hazel had once wanted so badly (for Nicholas to hurt Remy, for there to be irreparable damage) was now, she realized, something she dreaded.

It just wouldn't do, if Nicholas and Remy fell apart, she told herself as she flipped through the past month's invoices.

“I hung those new mobiles up for display,” Laura said, nodding toward a corner of the shop.

“Oh, they look lovely. Thanks.” Hazel took a deep breath, told herself everything was all right.

Because if it wasn't, and Remy and Nicholas fell apart, then why had Hazel been humiliated like that? What was the reason for all that misery? To have been put through such an ordeal, when none of it was ultimately necessary . . . That didn't make sense at all.

“Cognitive dissonance,” she knew from the psychology class she had taken at Harvard Extension. She knew that was what this was. But, she told herself as she put the invoices away, there had to be a reason. Otherwise, what was the point of those years of suffering? Why had she been hurt that way? She went over to the wall and straightened one of the framed photograms. Why had any of it happened, if it wasn't even meant to be?

HE LEFT THE DAY SHIFT
and glanced at his watch. Remy would be headed to rehearsal now, not thinking of him at all, perhaps—or perhaps still as mad as yesterday. If only she would let him explain. If only nothing at all had happened. If only he knew what to do . . . He headed to the conservatory and knocked on Yoni's office door.

This he did even though he knew Yoni would not approve, that in Yoni's eyes Nicholas had already—always, somehow—failed Remy.

This fact was long acknowledged between them, though it was never spoken outright. There had been that night, years ago, back when the two of them still went to the jazz club, when Yoni had scolded Nicholas. “Careless with her heart.” Yoni across from him too full of whiskey . . . That was during the rough patch with Remy, when something had happened, Nicholas never quite knew exactly what. Two months later the club had closed down, as though permanently contaminated by their conversation. (The following year, as if to consecrate the tragedy, the entire building had been gutted. In its place was a tall, shiny glass-and-metal structure with million-dollar condos reaching into the sky. On the ground floor, in approximately the spot where the jazz club had been, was an overpriced raw bar.)

No answer came when Nicholas knocked on Yoni's door. Nicholas made his way to his own office, on the fourth floor of the new building, Treenan Hall. A few stalwarts continued to call it “the new building,” though it had been there four years now and already had its own tradition of jokingly obscene graffiti in one particular bathroom stall. Unlike all the other buildings, Treenan had no distinctive smell, no clanking radiators or flickering ceiling lights. Nicholas's office was graced with a skylight and continued to welcome him with a cheery cleanliness that his many stacks of papers and cardboard mailing boxes and even the occasional lump of wet raingear or snowy boots could not dispel.

“Hey, there, Nicholas.”

He looked up to see Justin Fiori exiting the office next to his. “Oh, hello, Justin. Congratulations.”

“Thanks, wow, I didn't realize word traveled so fast—oh, right, you mean about the grant.” Justin readjusted his expression so that Nicholas understood there was some other accomplishment about which Justin felt even more excitement. “Yeah, well, there's still a lot of work to do there.”

Justin was the school's youngest hire, just twenty-seven years old, and though he looked even younger, he had already won almost every prize available to a young composer. Last week it had been announced that Justin had secured an enormous development grant to purchase state-of-the art equipment for the conservatory's Digital Composition department. The department had barely been on the national radar ten years ago; Justin, a “digital whiz,” had been brought in specially to revamp it. With rapidly increasing enrollment and the well-publicized success of some recent graduates, the department had apparently already gained national attention (although Nicholas didn't see what all the hoopla was about).

“How's it going with you?” Justin asked, locking his office door behind him.

“Fine, fine,” Nicholas grumbled. An entire page of the school's Web site described the many radical developments Justin had instigated since his arrival.

Nicholas had reservations about these so-called advancements. For one thing, he had never particularly liked digital compositions. And when it came to technology . . . he simply didn't find it an improvement. His composition students now turned in electronic files of their assignments, so that the computer played back accurate yet soulless renditions Nicholas couldn't help thinking of as . . . well, not cheating, exactly, but cheapness. And unnecessary. After all, Nicholas could tell what a piece would sound like simply by reading the score; these computer playbacks were inferior versions. He himself still wrote everything out in long hand and always composed in full score. He saw what happened when students used those computer programs, the way the fixed pages and measures confined them, so unlike the freedom of blank staff paper. He saw how quickly the students worked themselves into corners, stumped by the orderliness of the programs themselves. Nicholas's work was untainted by all that.

“Well,” Justin said, “I'd better run. I've got a commission that's overdue and . . . well, I'm just adding final touches, but you know how much time that takes. Plus I'm off to Rome tomorrow night and haven't packed.”

“How nice,” Nicholas told him. “Have a wonderful time.”

“Thanks, see you in a week.” Justin turned and went briskly on his way.

Nicholas let himself into his office, the familiar view of the wall busy with photographs and plaques. On the other side of the wall was another recent hire, Sarah Pagent, chair of Guitar and Harp; Nicholas could hear her yelling into the telephone at her teenage son.

Nicholas tried to find pleasure in the sight of his crowded office—the welcoming messiness his colleagues teased him for. On the floor near the door was a big plastic bag filled with wool: the best kind, from New Zealand, skeins and skeins of it, natural and undyed.

He had bought it a month ago, on a whim, when he passed a store not far from here during his lunch break. It was a store he had never taken note of before though it was just around the corner. He recalled Paula mentioning how expensive real wool and real silk were, and how she hated to use synthetic yarn.

By that time it had been weeks since he had gone dancing. Ever since that lightbulb had gone off in his head, he had spent his evenings at home with his symphony. And so, when he came upon the yarn shop, it had struck him as an appropriate way to thank Paula. He had bought a whole bag of wool for her, the size of a big black garbage bag—and the bag was still on his office floor. It had been here so long, it had become part of the landscape of the office, though Nicholas still fully intended to stop by the club and drop it off.

Seeing it now, he hung his head at how angry Remy was, and for some reason felt Justin Fiori was to blame. “ ‘Final touches,' ” he muttered to himself. “ ‘Off tonight and haven't packed . . .' ” The telephone on his desk blinked at him, and his heart gave a small skip. With a mixture of trepidation and hope, he lifted the receiver, filled as he was with the notion that Remy might have left word for him.

Instead he heard his daughter's voice. “Dad, hey, I left a message at home but thought you might be here. Just wanted to let you know we'll be coming to visit next month—we get in on the eighteenth. Just want to make sure you'll be in town. I'm pretty sure you said you would be. I'll e-mail you our flight info. Love you!”

Nicholas took his seat in the bouncy rotating desk chair that the school had recently splurged on in an effort to become more “ergonomic.” He sorted through the mail that had come into his department box, most of it ignorable—but one envelope, a big, thick one, caught his eye. Noting the return address, he slit the thing with a pair of scissors. Paper-clipped on top was a note:

My friend,

It seems to me a long time I haven't seen you. I hope you are well as always. I write you now because, as you know, I value your help. I hope therefore you will allow me to take you up on your offer of critiquing my latest work. It is one that has preoccupied me for years—yet it seems for once I have managed to capture what I hear between my ears.

I hope you do not find it presumptuous that I enclose a recording here; it is the Lyon orchestra, in their “New Works” performance. My hope is that this work might be nominated for the Felster Prize (as if I might have any more chance this year than in the past! But one continues to try . . .). Please let me know if you think this possible, if you would do that for me.

And you are doing well, I hope? Life is good, is it not? For some reason it took me a bit long to see that. (Well, because sometimes it isn't, quite.) But even so—en avant! I have so many other pieces I want to write.

Je t'embrasse très fort,

Sylvane

Nicholas took the CD up to see if it had a title. He had twice before nominated Sylvane for the Felster Prize and would be happy to do so again. Yet as curious as he was to hear her new piece, now was too risky, while he was still making final alterations to his own work. And so he wrote a quick e-mail to Sylvane: “I've received your piece. How good to hear from you, will get to it next week at the latest, as soon as I finish some outstanding projects I have right now.”

Probably it would be something marvelous. She was the real thing—not an overconfident kid, like that Justin Fiori.
Final touches
 . . .

Nicholas settled back to his work—returning phone calls he had long put off, taking care of this and that, anything to keep busy. Morning became afternoon, and Nicholas stood from his desk. Remy would be finishing rehearsal soon. He left his office, ready to try once again.

Chapter 4

W
hat happened was that she was looking for the stub for the dry cleaning. Instead she found, amid the various slips of this and that, a scrap of paper—cardboard, actually. Remy was crumpling it up as trash when she saw something written on the other side, something in loopy, feminine script. For a moment she thought it might be Jessica's, except that Jess always wrote in sloppy block print, as if never having learned cursive. And this was, she realized, Spanish. Remy looked at the mysterious words for a good few seconds, wondering. It was not just the unfamiliar handwriting—it was the scrap of paper itself, taken from what must have held a hairbrush.
PROFESSIONAL
, the package said, and
SALON STYLING AT HOME
—nothing that Remy or Nicholas would have purchased. Perhaps that was what stopped her from throwing the scrap of paper out. Instead she put it in the pocket of the cardigan she was wearing, as if it might be useful at some point in the future.

Thinking back to this now, Remy realized she must have known, subconsciously, what had happened. Why else would she have kept that scrap of paper? A clue, evidence. She hadn't thought of it that way at first. She had simply put it in her pocket and forgotten about it. It was days later, when she was eating breakfast and Nicholas was fixing himself a cup of tea, that she reached into the pocket of her cotton sweater and found the scrap of paper there.

Reading the words again, she had felt herself take a deep breath, somehow aware that she held in her hand the key to a mystery. And yet she asked her question in a calm voice: “What's this?”

“Hmm?” Nicholas had leaned toward her to look at the writing. He shook his head, confused. And then his face had softened, remembering something. “Oh, a young woman I know, she gave me that. It's the name of a band she wanted me to listen to.” He said it lightly enough that Remy might not have worried.

But the phrase “young woman” caught her, the unspoken meaning it carried. “What young woman?” she asked, though she knew she was pressing into a dangerous place.

“She's no one, really,” Nicholas said.

Being lied to infuriated her. “Who is she, Nicholas?”

Nicholas began to explain: it wasn't what she thought, it was nothing at all, just salsa lessons, at a dance club.

“Salsa lessons? When did you start that?”

“Oh . . . February.”

Four months ago. “You've been going to dance classes and didn't even tell me?”

Nicholas looked equally surprised, as if unclear as to how it could have happened.

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I don't know why.” Remy saw that it was true. It must have been the “young woman” there, the need to see her, to admire her, or to be admired. . . . He must have done something illicit—otherwise he would have told her. “What else aren't you telling me?”

“Nothing. Really, it isn't like that at all.”

“Really?” Even as she asked this, full of dread, she recalled her own confusion, back when she had been unable to keep herself from Yoni. But any empathy she might have mustered flew away when Nicholas said, “Well, no, I mean, not really . . .”

“Nicholas! Is she your . . . lover?” Saying it, she felt her heart crack in two. Never had she felt such a thing, her heart being cracked in half, like a nut.

“No—no!” But the twitch of his cheek told her there was something.

“You lied to me.”

“I didn't lie.”

“Four months.” Without me, she was thinking. A whole experience he had that he didn't want me to be part of. A whole part of his life he didn't want me to touch. He chose to do this without me. Whatever it is he actually did. She couldn't bear to imagine.

And so she told him to get out, while the cereal in her bowl became mushy and dejected. It was the first time in her life with him that she did not, in anger, throw something. Instead she sat there behind the
Boston
Globe
and pretended that she was through with him.

These moments played themselves out again in Remy's mind as she came to the end of the Symphony's final rehearsal of the season—an open rehearsal, with a small audience of retirees and music students dotting the hall.

It had been something of a letdown today, to find herself back with the second violins. Not that she usually minded. After not winning the associate concertmaster seat (a good ten years ago now) she had resolved to make the most of the one she did have. Indeed, she had become the best principal second she could be—had even been praised in print a few times, and warmly thanked more than once by her colleagues. To herself, she had resolved to try to embody those principles she had once abandoned, reminding herself of what Julian had said, that every time she played, no matter the occasion, was a performance.

Yet it had been a long time since she felt ignited, as she had while playing last night.

Rehearsal ended. As the others hastily packed up their instruments, and the makeshift audience applauded and then shuffled out of the hall, Remy wiped away the rosin dust that had collected on the face of her violin. Carefully she fitted the violin into its satin bed and rested a silk kerchief across the top. Twirling the little adjuster, she loosened her bow and plucked off a broken horsehair. The dedication of these small movements, the endlessly repeated gestures . . . Sometimes it seemed her life was one never-ending rehearsal. Even her violin was showing signs of age, its C-bout worn in the place where her bow sometimes brushed against it, as was the varnish of the upper rib shoulder. Her bow, too, was worn down, at the spot where her thumb met the leather cushion.

It was the gorgeous bow, the wildly expensive one from Daniel's shop. She had purchased it ten years ago, when she didn't win the associate concertmaster slot. No, the bow hadn't consoled her, but it was a beautiful daily presence in her life.

The youngest musicians were already heading off together, and now the brass clique was noisily making its way out the door. Over in the first violin section, the concertmaster was joking about something. Although they both played the same instrument and were both section leaders, he made five times Remy's salary—even though he sometimes played only half a concert, if it was one that included a long solo.

“So, have you given it any more thought?” Christopher had come over from the woodwinds. He spoke in a whisper though Remy's stand partner had already left, and nervously stroked his theatrically long mustache.

“I haven't had time to really research it,” Remy told him, almost as quietly, as she placed her music back in her tote bag. “But I—I'm definitely interested. Have you gotten any more information?”

A good friend of Christopher's was helping to start a new orchestra in Barcelona. Apparently there was generous funding, and the music director was soliciting musicians from top orchestras all over the globe. Interested musicians were to send recordings and résumés, and auditions would be held in July. It all sounded potentially wonderful. In fact, Remy had begun to wonder, late last night, when her mind was still turning angry circles, if part of the reason she was so furious at Nicholas had to do with this—if she wanted an excuse to try out for the new orchestra.

Because there were things she no longer loved so much about her job. Some of the musicians she had most liked, the ones she had counted as friends, had already retired or moved away. Gone—just like the affable security guards whose names Remy had known and who had greeted her, too, by name; they had been replaced by a management company from out of town, an endless rotation of random agents who didn't know any of the orchestra members by sight. That was something Remy certainly wouldn't miss. . . .

She recognized what she was doing, mentally preparing herself, telling herself there were things she wouldn't mind leaving behind. Yet at the same time she wished she could say, as she would have in the past, No, thank you, I don't need a new job or a new place to live. I'm perfectly content with my life here. Though how could she pretend that now?

“I'll check my e-mail when I get home,” Christopher told her. “See if there've been any new developments. I'll get back to you soon.”

The stage had emptied out, but a few other friends lingered behind and suggested lunch at a new noodle shop. “No, thanks,” Remy told them as she shut her violin case.

That was when Christopher turned toward the wings and said, “Hello, Nicholas!”

“Christopher.” Nicholas nodded hello as the rest of the little group greeted him.

“How are you?” Christopher asked, but Marina, another friend, said, “Come on, folks, I'm hungry.” The little group made their way out the door, the last to leave except for a timpanist who was still in the back, fiddling with something.

“Remy,” Nicholas said, making his way toward her through the rows of chairs until he was in front of the conductor's stool. He looked tired, said again, “Remy.” His voice sounded different here on this stage renowned for its acoustics. He said, as he had too many times, “I'm sorry.”

Remy felt oddly bored.

“You have to know that what happened really was nothing,” he continued, “and that nothing like it will ever happen again.”

To have these lines delivered in such a place, center stage, made them sound like a performance—and like most performances, insincere. All the while, Remy could hear the timpanist fiddling at the back, like some sluggish stagehand late with a scene change.

In a low voice Nicholas said, “I know you don't believe me when I tell you it was just dancing. But that's basically the truth—”

“Basically!”

“Really, Remy, it was nothing, please believe me—”

“I do believe you! That's just it! That's exactly it!” For Remy the very notion that “it was nothing” made it all the worse, the fact that Nicholas could have betrayed without sacrifice—without giving anything up, not even a sliver of his heart.

When she herself had slipped, the connection
meant
something—and the pain remained with her even now. Whereas Nicholas could cavort with some “young woman” and then move on, without any trouble at all.

“Look, I'm really sorry,” Nicholas said, with a desperation that was new. He must have heard how hollow his words sounded; he went down onto his knees to say, “I'll never hide anything from you again. I promise. Please, Remy.”

“Jesus, Nicholas, get up off the floor.”

Nicholas hunched his shoulders like an old man.

Remy said, “I think I've seen enough of you for today.”

Nicholas narrowed his eyes at her. The muscles of his jaw twitched. He stood, and for a long second waited, then turned and negotiated his way past the empty chairs.

Remy watched him leave. The timpanist dropped something, and a loud, clanging sound reverberated across the stage.

BY THE NEXT MORNING, NICHOLAS
could no longer stand it. On his way to the Day Shift, he made a phone call.

“Hello!” came Yoni's chipper voice.

“Oh, good, you're there. Have you got a minute?”

“Nicholas, how are you?”

“I was hoping we might meet to discuss something, if you're free.”

“I have time this morning. But I'm meeting Justin Fiori at noon.”

“Well, if you're free now, how about breakfast?”

“That works.”

Nicholas asked him to meet him at the diner and felt both relief and apprehension when Yoni said, “I'll be right there.”

At the Day Shift, Nicholas took a seat at the counter and slung his jacket over the stool to his right; there were no free booths at this hour. A plump, blond waitress said, “Hi, honey,” and asked if he had gotten a good night's sleep.

“I did,” Nicholas lied, so as not to sound like a complainer. “And you?”

“Oh, on my feet all day, you know, I fall into bed like a log.”

The old man, Harvey, hadn't arrived yet. Nicholas found himself glaring at a college couple nearby who addressed each other with a shy complicity, the girl smiling at the boy in a glib way, the skin under their eyes puffy from a night of drink and sex.

“Here you go, hon,” the waitress said, handing him his coffee.

Nicholas took a gulp and shook his head—at the couple, but also at himself. Never before had he been so judgmental. He had always been open to everything. Wasn't that why everyone liked him?

“You again,” Harvey wheezed, easing his body onto the seat to Nicholas's left.

Nicholas nodded hello. “How's life treating you?”

“It doesn't treat me at all. I treat myself. Otherwise I'd be completely neglected.” He gave the hollow snort that was his laugh. Nicholas could see the skin tags on his right eyelid, the deep wrinkle in his earlobe, the crease down the middle of his cheek.

“Hello!” It was Yoni, grinning.