Sight Reading (33 page)

You have no idea.

But I do! I know I've always failed you, somehow.

And yet it did seem, now, that there was something he did not know, something that kept him apart from the vast grief in this room. He pictured Yoni's face in the diner, the familiar frustration suddenly too much. Well, that sort of anger could happen when you were close the way they were. And there had always been envy, of course—Yoni always wanting what Nicholas had.

Nicholas sat up straighter at the thought. He turned to look at Remy. She had put her hands up over her eyes, like a grieving widow.

Cybil was still retching into the toilet. “I'm sorry,” Nicholas heard himself stutter, “but I think I have to go home now.”

Remy nodded. “Go and get some sleep. I'll stay here as long as Cybil needs me.”

Shaking, he stood. Even his legs felt weak. But he managed to walk away from her, this woman grieving for her other husband.

IT WAS HOURS LATER WHEN
Remy headed home. She had fallen asleep on Yoni's hard gray sofa, awaking to find Cybil's closest friend and a neighbor setting up trays of food, taking charge for the next shift.

Carrying her violin case as if it were any other day . . . The air was sweet with springtime. Yoni, what happened to you? But she knew, of course: his heart had broken. Of course it had. An entire life spent trying to refind that one true love. How long could a heart stand it? Missing someone, yearning. It was just that combination—loss and desire—that had been Yoni's very essence.

At home, the house was quiet. Nicholas had fallen asleep atop their bed. Seeing his wrist in its bandaging, Remy bridled again at how separate the two of them had become, how little she understood him, and could not bring herself to lie down beside him. Instead she went downstairs to sit in the light-filled music room. The air sifting through the windows made her feel briefly stronger.

Nicholas's pages were still spread atop the piano. Remy didn't even need them anymore, except for the final movement; the others she knew by heart. Just glimpsing the manuscript, she itched to play the piece again, to be back inside that alternate world, instead of here in this room on this horrible day.

She took her violin from its case, tuned the strings, tightened her bow. Closing her eyes, she thought back to the opening bars. Her bow met the string, and soon she found herself among those mysteries she was still trying to understand, those questions still taking shape. Playing from memory always held this quality for her, as if inhabiting a nameless space whose light and shadows became gradually—with each playing—more clear to her. Already she sensed, this time, a leap forward in her comprehension, her playing no longer a matter of mere translation. The music had become a part of her, so that she felt, this time (though tears streaked her cheeks), its meaning.

Yes, she heard it now. Those measures that had been haunting her—the wisp of something she almost recognized. Notes she had already examined closely. She stopped and, this time, instead of playing them as written, reversed them. Played them backward, just like that.

It was a riff from the Franck sonata—the one she and Nicholas loved to play together, the one she had learned in that long-ago summer with Conrad Lesser.

She laughed out loud.

Then she went over to where the pages of the manuscript lay and took them up, seeing anew these marks her husband's hand had made, this code whose secrets she only now understood. She turned ahead to the next movement to see what he had done.

This time he had inverted the notes, had them going down instead of up, but again with the original rhythm intact. And in the third movement he had used the same notes and rhythm but rearranged their order, like an anagram. She looked ahead to the fourth movement, where he had shuffled them yet again. How amazing—how stupendous! To see in this pattern of dots and stems the constellations of another soul.

Just a little string of notes. But to Remy they were a secret message just for her. She saw that now, as she began to play the solo section of the final movement. With each stroke of her bow she felt Nicholas's love course through her, immense and many colored, nothing he could have put into words, nothing he could speak aloud. Its expression was
this
.

“That was gorgeous.”

She looked up to see Nicholas, and was surprised all over again by the bandaged wrist and the sling. His nose and eyes were red from crying. Remy went to him, leaned into him, and felt him lift his right arm around her.

“Thank you,” she told him. “For the violin part.”

“It's the first time I've heard it played. I thought I'd surprise you. It's . . . You've made it beautiful.”

“I've been working hard on it!” Remy gave a little laugh—her first laugh, she realized, since the events of last night. Not even a day had passed, and already she had laughed. She felt she had betrayed Yoni.

“I can tell,” Nicholas said. “I'm honored.”

“Well, I wanted to use it for an audition, actually.” She stepped back, paused just briefly before telling him about the orchestra in Barcelona. As she spoke she could see that she had shocked him. “I mean, who knows if it's even a possibility, who knows if I'll really want . . . well, I mean, I want to be sure of at least getting an audition.”

“I'm sure you'd be selected,” Nicholas said, as if in a trance. The expression on his face prevented Remy from saying more. In a slow, heavy voice, he told her, “Barcelona was the first city I ever visited in Spain.”

“I remember you telling me about it.”

He said, “I don't suppose you want me there. Not that you even asked, I mean, I don't mean to suggest—but if you did—”

“Honey,” Remy said, taking his good hand in hers. “Honey.” There was so much she wanted to say. But a lump had formed in her throat. “Here, come help me. Let's try the final movement.”

Nicholas nodded at his sling. “I'm afraid I can't accompany you.”

“I mean to turn pages,” Remy told him. “I don't have all of it from memory yet.” She laid the stack of pages before her, and Nicholas came to stand at her side.

She began to play.

Since this was the full score, the turns came quickly. The lilting music filled the room, Nicholas following along beside Remy, each turn of the page taking them forward in time.

She felt herself floating within time, the way she often did while playing, that suspension of time that is the peculiar alchemy of music. Just as Nicholas had said on that very first day, twenty years ago.
Not just how fast or how slowly the music moves. It's about how fast and slow
life
moves
.

Now they were approaching the thick dark vertical line that signaled the conclusion of the movement. And there at the end were the penned instructions, which Nicholas had abbreviated to “D.C.”

Da capo
. Remy felt herself preparing for the shift. And with perfect timing Nicholas flipped back to the first page, so that she could start again from the beginning.

Chapter 8

T
he entire yard was blooming, bright new petals and the green of youth, nasturtiums by the front steps, petunias happy in their big clay tub. Among the shrubs, chipmunks ran busily, stashing seeds, and from all along the street came the hum of lawn crews mowing, blowing, raking.

Hazel stepped out onto the veranda and breathed the smell of wood chips and fresh peat—her backyard, her world, where sycamores formed a protective awning over the healthy lawn. With so much rain last month, things were growing like mad; already a few stubborn tufts of onion grass had reemerged, along with a smattering of clover flowers, their messy heads soon to be lopped off by the mower. But what a gorgeous afternoon it was turning out to be, Hazel thought as she sponged off the glass-topped table and made sure there were no spiderwebs or dead bugs on the chairs. Marta was fetching the folding ones from the garage. Everything was in place.

With a little shake of the sponge, Hazel returned to the kitchen, where an array of thick paper napkins, plastic cups, and shiny disposable plates waited to be freed from their wrappers. Her good china teacups would go on the credenza with the punch. On the counter, covered with a glass dome, was a homemade chocolate cake with marshmallow icing. The marshmallow oozed over the sides and had coagulated in shiny puffs. It looked disgusting, but it was Jessica's favorite, ever since she was a little girl.

Marta shouted, “The chairs are all there!” She always shouted. “For the dining room, do you want the linen or the lace table runner!”

“The linen sounds nice. Thanks.” Hopefully people would spend most of the party outside.

Marta shuffled into the dining room as Hazel dumped a frozen brick of raspberry sherbet into a cut-glass bowl. She tipped a plastic bottle of soda water over it, watched it glug, then gave the concoction a stir with the matching glass ladle. Immediately the sherbet began melting in its fizzy way. Why was it that some of the most delicious things looked so revolting?

“You know, I think the lace is fancier!” Marta called.

“All right, then.” In such matters, Hazel always let Marta have her way. Sloppy and increasingly deaf, Marta had been Hazel's cleaning lady for sixteen years and, though she continued to arrive twice a month without fail, now missed entire swaths of dust, and dirt, due to failing eyesight and aging in general. Hazel always had to go over windowsills and corners with a wet rag after Marta had gone. Well, what was she going to do, fire an old lady who had spent much of her adulthood pushing dirty water around with a mop, who had helped Hazel prepare for some of the most important parties (Jessie's graduation, Robert's promotion) and had witnessed her daughter transform from a girl into a woman, in and out of braces, in and out of phases? If in the end it came down to this, cleaning up after the cleaning lady, then so be it.

“Ah,
that
looks nice!” Marta announced. “I put the daisies in the middle!”

Hazel stepped into the dining room to look. “Beautiful.” They were Jessica's favorite flower; hopefully she would at least notice them. “I figure we should keep the cold cuts in here,” Hazel told Marta, “so the bugs don't get to them.”

“Right!”

The guests were due in a half hour. Jessica had sworn she and Joshua would arrive earlier, but you never knew with her. They had been staying with Nicholas and Remy; their dear friend Yoni had passed away. It happened last month, very suddenly, and Hazel could see that Jessica was still torn up about it. Yesterday they had taken part in a memorial service at the conservatory. And though Jessica had insisted she go ahead with the party as planned, Hazel knew it had been a rough time for all of them.

She looked at her watch. Robert, just back from racquetball, was upstairs showering.

Hazel took the feather duster from the broom closet and stepped into the hallway to glance around appraisingly. The living room looked especially nice, brightened by the many colors of the antique carpet. She and Robert had purchased it the year they married; the old, smaller one was up in the study now. Hazel shook her head, recalling Nicholas's mix-up—as if Remy would ever have even cared about a thing like spilled wine on a carpet. But Hazel understood: to Nicholas, the recollection concerned his friend and his wife, and he could have only one wife at a time. It would therefore have to be Remy.

From upstairs came the squeak of the shower taps being shut off. Truth was, Hazel thought to herself as she dusted lightly at the end tables, she couldn't imagine reacting quite so strongly, now, to a spill. She smiled at the sounds of Robert upstairs dressing in his speedy way, the drawers quickly opened and shut, a crisp clean shirt plucked from a hanger in the closet. In the foyer she sighed, from habit more than emotion, at the nude crystal girl lying in the curl-wave on the pedestal.

The fact was, the “artist”—Hazel could not even think the word without quotation marks—had died. Just last week. He wasn't even old. Midsixties. It was a yachting accident; she read about it in an article Laura had clipped for her from the
Times
. Robert told her that, according to the dealer who had sold it to him, the sculpture was now worth three times what he had paid.

“Then can we sell it now?”

Robert had laughed at that. “Well, all right. Although I've already grown rather fond of it.”

“I'll bet you have.”

Supposedly he was negotiating its sale this week. Hazel felt herself relaxing at the thought; soon the imitation crystal wave-girl would be gone.

“It's art!” she could still hear Robert insisting, the day he brought it home. It had taken her a full two weeks to finally find a way to explain why it could not be art: because it wasn't
true
. But Robert had just replied, “It's one artist's vision.”

“Yes, but it's a fantasy,” she had corrected him.

“But isn't that what art is meant to do? To posit another possible world? Create something more beautiful than our pedestrian lives?”

Hazel had been frustrated at that, because she couldn't find the words to explain why this plastic girl's beauty was not real. “This is a fake woman with no thoughts or emotions,” she had told him. The girl's face did not reveal a psyche at all; her perfect, slender body might as well be a pinup or an inflatable sex toy.

To that Robert had said, “It's not
pornography
.”

Maybe not, but the fact that it passed as art was a crime.

“This isn't art,” she declared now, to herself, with conviction. After all, she knew true beauty when she saw it. It was thanks to her that so many local craftspeople were able to sell their work, and to find a following. She had been a godsend for the woman in Somerville who made those clay beads, and Sam the silversmith out in Wellesley. Just yesterday she had put in another order for those woven bags from the pretty Hispanic girl. The girl had sounded delighted; Hazel had felt good about it all afternoon.

Of course, few people thought of her as a curator. Many thought her work nonessential. Jessica, in her college years, during her antimaterialist phase, had referred to Hazel's wares as “rich people thingies” (phrasing that must have come from Remy). Yet even Nicholas had marveled, the first time he saw the Newbury Street boutique, at the fine workmanship Hazel had managed to cull. He was the one who, at the shop's grand opening, had said, as if just realizing it, “You're an artist, too. You're the one who brought all of this together. It's your imagination that orchestrated this entire arrangement.”

His words had touched her. He was one of the few people secure enough in his own accomplishments to be able to truly praise the talents of others. It was the insecure artists whose anxieties left them clinging to the notion of certain arts as somehow more noble than others. To them, the fine arts would always be of a higher calling than mere arts-and-crafts. Even this atrocity . . . Hazel looked down at the sculpture. A lie that pretends to be the truth is not art. That was all it came down to. The fact that Hazel had ever put up with this thing surely deserved some sort of award.

Yes, there was a lesson in it, she decided as she dusted one final time around the girl. In fact, it seemed at this moment the only real advice she might be able to hand on to Jessica now that she was engaged. They always say marriage is about compromise, about accepting the bad with the good, the happy with the sad. Well, sure, Hazel would tell her, that's all perfectly true—but what it boils down to, really, is having a tacky nude statue backlit in your foyer.

“Let's turn the display light on!” Marta had emerged, a bottle of Glass Plus and a roll of paper towels in her hands.

“Ugh, Marta, I don't know. I hate to call attention to it.”

But Marta loved this statue, had proclaimed to Hazel the moment she first saw it that it was beautiful. Hazel had asked her to explain what made it beautiful, thinking that then she herself might be able to see what Robert saw. Marta had just said, “She's pretty, and the glass is so shiny, like a big diamond!”

Now she was polishing the thing, somewhat heedlessly, and Hazel couldn't help smiling: though it might pose as art, it couldn't escape Glass Plus and Marta's rough hand.

“I think we should turn the light on!”

Hazel laughed. “All right, then, fine.”

Marta flicked the switch, and the naked girl glowed.

Funny, Hazel thought, how separate this was from the real thing. Jessica, for instance—now, there was real beauty. Of course Hazel would think that about her own daughter, but Jessica truly
was
more than a pretty face. She was a force of nature. Next month she and Remy were going to Spain for three weeks, just the two of them, while Joshua took a month-long intensive teaching certification course back home.

“It's just us gals for the first week,” Jessica had said, when Hazel asked if Nicholas would be going with them. Remy apparently had professional business there, and Jessica, too, had decided to mix business and pleasure. “A reconnaissance mission. I'm going to scope out some hotel packages for work, so that I can write it off.”

Hazel laughed to herself, at Jessica's notion of a business trip, picturing her on the Andalusian coast in some newly purchased bathing outfit. Hazel was able to hold completely different images of Jessica in her mind at the same time: in her soccer uniform in college; in her ice skates with the pom-poms in middle school; swimming in Walden Pond when she was still a toddler; and strapped into her collapsible stroller when she was one year old, bouncing along the bumpy cobblestone streets that summer when Nicholas had the fellowship in Belgium. It was amazing, actually, the way that, in Hazel's mind, Jessica could be all those things at once.

Hazel glanced at herself in the oval mirror above the side table. From the little drawer she took a plastic comb and made a few brief adjustments to her hair. Then she opened a small compact and lightly powdered her forehead and nose. That was all she needed.

Here came the springing steps of Robert descending the stairs to join her.

“Hey, there!”

The voice came from outside.

Hazel turned to the screen door to see Jessica hand in hand with Joshua, the two of them smiling broadly as they approached the front door.

“Look who we brought along.”

Behind them on the curving path were Remy and Nicholas. They were walking unhurriedly, side by side, with Jessie and Joshua just in front. The door became a frame, then, the crosshatch of the screen muting the four of them, making them look soft, ethereal, so that for a brief second they were a picture, stepping forward, and Hazel nearly lost her breath, so taken she was by this movement toward her that was her family.