Starry-Eyed (4 page)

“And hugely talented,” he agrees. “No, I was talking about myself.”

“
You
?”

Henry DeRuyter who always plays Henry DeRuyter is telling me he's not Henry DeRuyter.

“Did you know I've got a brother?” I didn't. “James. He's nine years old and incredibly annoying. Anyway, a few weeks ago, James was bugging me about looking at his stamp collection, which is a lot less weird than the soda can pull-top collection that he's amassing to donate to the Shriners or his deep knowledge of monkdom across the centuries.

“Anyway, James wants me to look at his stamps, and I'm asking him why I have to deal with his hobbies, and suddenly it occurs to me that I've got no hobbies of my own. None. I haven't got one single personal interest. I read books I have to read for school; I see whatever movies happen to be out. Football is boring. I don't care about cars. You're going to say, what about theater? It's true, I like doing theater, but I don't like theater people, and this is probably going to be the last show I ever do. I keep asking myself how I made it to senior year of high school this way.”

While he's been talking, Henry has been pacing back and forth, and while he was pacing, he loosened his tie and then unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Now he's rubbing the back of his neck. He stops and points at me.

“But
you
,” he says, “you've got this thing that you love, this thing you're amazing at, and you keep it a secret from the entire world.”

I'm a tree falling in the forest.

“Play for me.”

“Henry, I don't want to.”

“You've got an unbelievable talent. I've just confessed to you that I've got nothing. I want to know what it feels like to be you.”

“Trust me, you really don't.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

How can I explain my Swiss cheese soul to Henry? “It's just, when I play in front of people, I feel like I lose myself, piece by piece.” I keep the part about feeling like a member of Barnum's Freak Show to myself.

Henry studies my face, and I hope I'm not still blushing.

“When was the last time you played for an audience?”

“When I was nine,” I admit.

“So? It's been so long, how do you know you'll still feel the same way?” He puts his hand on my arm. “Try it. Just with me, like an experiment. Play
Kreisleriana
. From the beginning.”

He doesn't know what he's asking. The first movement is wild, uncontrolled passion.

When I don't answer, he sits next to me on the bench. There's barely enough room and our hips touch, but both of us pretend not to notice.

“Please.”

How many more ways can I say no? But the truth is, I kind of want to do it. Maybe Henry's right. Maybe it'll be different now.

There's a ball of ice in my stomach as I push the pages from left to right. Page one:
ausserst bewegt
. Extremely moving.
Agitatissimo
. Very agitated.

“Wait,” Henry says, his expression a new and totally unfamiliar mixture of shyness and need. “I want to know what it feels like.” He reaches his hands toward mine. “Can I? I mean, would you be able to play if I . . .”

I understand what he's trying to say. Can he hold my hands while I play
Kreisleriana
? The idea is terrifying and irresistible.

“It won't work like that,” I say.

“Of course not. I understand. I'm sorry,” he says, looking completely mortified, another unfamiliar expression.

“No, I mean I can't play if you're leaning across me,” I say. “You'd need to sit behind me.”

“Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

Henry gets up and I shift forward on the bench. Then he sits behind me, straddling me. “You mean like this?” he says. His mouth is just above my ear.

I have to tell myself to breathe. Henry's body is so warm. “Yes,” I say. I put my hands on the keyboard, and Henry puts his hands on top of mine.

You know what it's like when you go to the beach in June on a hot
day when the water is only about fifty-five degrees, and you're standing at the shoreline with the sun boiling your scalp and your toes numb in the frigid sand? That's how I feel right now.

I think about the rooms full of strangers at my auditions. I think about my mother's meat mallet. And then I push it all out of my head and think about Henry's thighs, which are currently sandwiching mine, and how the poor lonely tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it has always seemed so pathetic to me and I really don't want
that
to be the metaphor of my life.

One-two-three-go!

There's no introduction to the first movement of
Kreisleriana
, no way to get ready for the tidal wave of sound that overwhelms you from the first instant. My hands are like life rafts in a tumultuous sea of music. They fly to the extremes of the keyboard and Henry leans against me, following my body's movements to keep his hands from slipping off mine.

I can feel Henry's heart beating against my back, feel him breathing in fits and starts. I'm breathing hard, too, but it's okay. I'm okay. I'm playing
Kreisleriana
and Henry's here listening—
more
than listening—and I don't want to die.

The movement is building toward its final crescendo, the chords climbing higher and higher. It ends
sforzando
, as loud as I can make it, and while the blast of sound decays around us, Henry squeezes my hands and I feel the rise and fall of his chest on my back, his breath heavy in my ear. I turn my head, but before I can say anything we're kissing.

This is not the awkward too-wet fumblings of the boys at music camp. This is the kiss I've been waiting for. I twist around so I can put my hands on Henry's shoulders, and he grabs my legs and pulls me the rest of the way so now I'm the one straddling him.

Which is when the practice room door swings open.

Chloe.

Her hand flies to her mouth, and her eyes well up for an instant. Then just as quickly, she's pulled herself together.

Henry jumps off the bench, like if he can get away from me fast enough, maybe Chloe won't have noticed the way I was wrapped around him.

“I'm
so
sorry to interrupt,” Chloe says, “but break ended five minutes ago. You remember—we're doing ‘Dear Friend,' the song where Amalia
begs the love of her life not to humiliate her
? She's such a tool, Amalia.”

This time, Chloe doesn't take a beat. She exits. Center stage.

. . . . .

I'm back at the piano in the auditorium watching Ben and Chloe go through their scene. Chloe seems distracted, and Ben keeps botching his staging.

“Hold!” Mr. Sandburg says for the umpteenth time. “Ben, you're supposed to take the book from Chloe. Why is this so hard?”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Sandburg,” Ben says, looking straight at me. “Maybe if I sat next to her—or
maybe if I sat in her lap
—it would be easier.”

“Just do the bit, Ben. Take it from when he tells her it's wrong for a man to keep a girl waiting.”

I feel the tears well up like they always do when I'm mortified, but unlike Chloe I can't control them. They run down my face while I play “Dear Friend” for her. If Chloe notices, which I doubt, she doesn't care.

Henry, meanwhile, is backstage. Since he doesn't have to go on again until the second act, I can only assume he's hiding, asking himself why he ever thought it was a good idea to get within ten feet of freaky me and
Kreisleriana
. Or, like everyone else, he's entranced by Chloe's riveting performance. Or making out with Sophie. Or Ben.

This is what I get for sticking my neck out. Yes, Chloe's a diva and Ben, as it turns out, is a jerk, but if I'd never agreed to play for Henry, I wouldn't be sitting here now, melting away bit by bit.

After about a hundred years, my sleeve is encrusted with snot and Act I is over. Mr. Sandburg doesn't give us a break. Instead, we go straight into “Try Me,” where Davis Lee begs his boss for a job. Davis is full of “Hey,
world, I'm in ninth grade and I have a song!” exuberance. He doesn't care that it's ten thirty at night, and he doesn't know that his school is full of nasty egomaniacs, and a dirty mean part of me wants to grab him by the shirt and tell him.

But I don't. Instead I play “Days Gone By” and “Where's My Shoe?” and I give Ben all the notes he can never find on his own and I hold all the high notes just the way Chloe likes them—and stretch the ritards for her because she sounds even better that way. And Jenny Jackson keeps missing her cues and Walter the Sound Guy is AWOL and now it's past midnight and half the cast is asleep or in tears from pure fatigue. Did I mention that the audience is full of pissed off parents waiting to pick up kids who were supposed to be home hours ago?

Also, I haven't seen Henry since Kodaly got fired for sleeping with the boss's wife.

And then it's time for “Vanilla Ice Cream.”

Not the dessert, the song. Chloe's last big song, where she flits around her bedroom in a nightgown charming the pants off everyone. I'm about to cue her when she leans over the stage and beckons me until her face is about two inches from mine. “Watch me make my mark,” she says.

I know instantly what she's going to do. “Vanilla Ice Cream” is the best song in the show, mainly because Chloe is the one who sings it. It's the one everyone's going to walk out humming. It's hard because it's so high, which you'd never know because Chloe makes it look easy. But there's one note even Chloe hasn't gone for yet. An optional high B at the very end when the singer is bound to be tired. And you can't just touch it, you have to hold it.

I don't know what Chloe had planned to do before to make her mark, but she's changed her mind. She's going for the high B.

. . . . .

Chloe, fragile and angelic in her cream-colored negligee, is at her desk, writing to her lover. Jenny dims the lights and shines a spot on her. As soon
as the first lines are out of Chloe's mouth, the buzz in the auditorium dissolves. Cranky parents lean forward in their seats to catch every word. Mr. Sandburg stops talking to the music director.

Chloe looks up from her letter, distracted by a shiny new thought:

Ice cream!

Smiles spread across all the tired, furious faces. She's that good. And suddenly I see Chloe's performance for what it is: a gift. Even though she didn't intend it to be. Even though she's doing her thing just to show the world how great she is, the fact remains that watching someone great do what they do shines a light on the rest of us.

I'm infuriated by my own sappiness, but I still can't take my eyes off Chloe. Neither can Henry, who's now watching from the wings with the rest of the cast.

She's nearing the end. I can see her getting ready for the high B, planting her feet, rolling back her shoulders—when every single light in the auditorium goes out.

We're all sitting in pitch black.

Dead silence and then Chloe screams, “
JEENNNNYY!!
”

From the dark comes Ben's voice, “Chlo, com'ere. It's okay,” at the same time that Henry says, “Oh, for fuck's sake.”

From Jenny in the lighting booth, “It wasn't me! I swear! I didn't touch anything!”

From Mr. Sandburg, “What the hell is going on!
Walter
!”

From Walter the Sound Guy, “. . .”

You can hear parents jumping up from their seats and their cries of “Enough!”, “Sandburg!”, and “One o'clock in the frigging morning!” Onstage kids are wailing and someone is screaming, “Stop it! Just stop it! Stop it!”

Which is exactly how I feel. I can't breathe. The noise is a vortex that sucks every molecule of air from the room.

“
Help!
” says a voice.

I could help.

I could replace the screaming and crying with something else. Something beautiful. I could replace it with the fourth movement of
Kreisleriana
.

It wouldn't be about Andie the Oddity. It wouldn't be about
me
at all. It would be a gift. For all of us.

I think about Robert and Clara Schumann. I think about the look on Henry's face when he said, “Holy cow, what was
that
?” And then I think about the kiss I'd been waiting for and I start to play.

It helps—a lot—that the lights are still off. The movement begins like a whisper, lyric and ethereal, and I'm not sure anyone can hear me. But, gradually, musical tendrils gentle the whirlwind and fill the auditorium, the sound building in power until every crevice is smooth.

The houselights come back on and although my eyes are glued to my hands, I'm aware that the hall has gone silent and people are coming up the aisles and down from the stage. I feel their eyes on me, but instead of melting away I'm growing warm, coming alive like a daffodil after winter.