Two-Part Inventions (17 page)

In public Suzanne sympathized with Helene. She truly felt sorry for her, knowing how painful it was to be the topic of whispered conversation. Privately she was shocked, even offended, at what Helene had done. This wasn't some childish prank with no consequences to speak of, as when she herself had passed off a Rachmaninoff prelude as her own work, and anyway, that was four years ago—she certainly wouldn't repeat it today. No, this was serious; this was school. There was one's permanent record to think of, and moreover it was shamefully dishonest. But Helene's troubles, for Suzanne, were only a minor distraction. Always foremost in her mind was Philip and his betrayal.

Friday afternoons were a relief, because of her lesson with Cynthia. It was a busy time. Suzanne had to prepare for the
end-of-term recital required of all juniors and seniors. She'd chosen a Haydn sonata that had looked simple at first glance but showed its subtleties the more she worked on it; she was also required to do a chamber piece, and together with a violinist and cellist was practicing the first of the two Mendelssohn piano trios. It would never do to break down in front of Cynthia, so exasperatingly serene, so sophisticated, so reasonable. Lessons with Cynthia meant only work and more work.

Cynthia was twenty-seven but seemed to Suzanne much older, with her own apartment, her grown-up clothes: She never wore jeans but dressed for lessons as if she were going to the theater. She was starting to play in recitals in small venues and was destined for success, Suzanne could tell. Certain people were, like Phil, and perhaps Elena. It had nothing to do with talent. Such people moved in the world as if it were theirs to manipulate, not hesitant or apprehensive. Cynthia was glamorous, though not beautiful. Striking, rather, with her prominent features, her dark hair cut short like a boy's, and her heavy jewelry, necklaces and glinting earrings, but no bracelets or rings on her large hands, which could stretch two notes past an octave. She asked Suzanne nothing personal and told nothing about herself, except to explain once in a while how she had mastered a difficult passage. Suzanne had no idea whether she had a boyfriend or lover—she lived alone, that was clear—but if she did, she would never let herself be dropped. She would do the dropping. “You might find her cold,” Richard had said when he first suggested her, “but don't be put off by that. She's an excellent teacher and really a kind soul at heart, only she doesn't like to show it.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, you know, some people are afraid of being hurt. Of getting attached.”

Something about the way he spoke—too self-consciously offhand—made her think they had been a couple. They'd make a good pair: Cynthia's chill and Richard's warmth, her sleekness and his nonchalance. Suzanne couldn't imagine Cynthia hesitant about anything. Certainly she was no one Suzanne could confide in, except as her feelings emerged through her playing. When she pounded out Chopin's twelfth étude or the passionate Brahms
Intermezzo
from Op. 118, she felt all her rage going into the music. Cynthia liked that. “I heard real passion there,” she said. “That's fine. That's how it should be. Only don't get carried away. Remember, passion with control. You want to move your listeners to feel emotion, not to be overwhelmed by it yourself. Just because people call it the
Revolutionary
Étude doesn't mean you should be in attack mode.”

At those moments, when they felt close purely through music, Suzanne would have liked to ask Cynthia how she recovered from love affairs—for surely she must have had many—but Cynthia, unlike Richard, did not encourage such liberties.

 

 

Suzanne found a job working as a music counselor in a summer camp far enough from home that she needn't visit on weekends, and there, on neutral territory, she made friends easily. There was an older boy, also a counselor, pursuing her, whom she liked well enough, and with a nonchalance quite new to her, she didn't need much persuasion to sleep with him, sneaking out to his bunk while his roommate was on kitchen duty after dinner. He seemed impressed by her experience and her
responses, and she let him think it was his own appeal. In reality, and this surprised her, when the boy moved inside her, it wasn't Phil she envisioned, but rather Richard. At first she tried guiltily to banish those fantasies, then after a while gave up and indulged them; they worked so well. This continued all summer, a colorful backdrop to the daily duties, yet she was relieved to know the boy was from Seattle so they wouldn't be seeing each other again. Parting was not hard.

She felt as if she, too, had learned to play roles the way Phil did, and, for all she knew, everyone else as well. She had met people from all over the East Coast and unearthed a bolder Suzanne from a repertoire she hadn't known she possessed. She returned for her senior year feeling grown-up. And Phil was gone, off to Columbia, she heard; now she was ready to see what else the world had to offer. This fall she would apply to Juilliard—the auditions would be dreadful, but she believed she'd get in—and then her true life would begin. What she had now only with Richard and Cynthia would spread and fill the rest of her days.

She found solace in visiting Richard and in playing for him. Aside from her family, he was the only listener who didn't make her feel queasy with anxiety, the stage fright that dogged her more and more the older she grew. He was her one true friend, the one person with whom she could show her real self.

“You are the genuine article,” he said one evening. She'd hardly come in when he said, “Play something for me. Nothing fancy, just something to settle me. It's been a long day.” Without a word, she sat down and played one of the intermezzi Brahms wrote for Clara Schumann.

“You are the genuine article.” He said it as if he hadn't been
totally sure before but now there was no doubt. She swiveled on the piano bench to look at him sprawled on the couch, his forgotten cigarette smoldering in an ashtray. He was smiling broadly, with satisfaction, and she smiled back. His hair was unruly and he needed a shave and he wore an old black sweatshirt she'd seen dozens of times, and yet he managed a casual elegance. He looked all at once beautiful to her. She felt something stirring in the air between them, and she longed to get up and touch him. She had turned seventeen over the summer and felt that her childhood—so prolonged—was at last over.

She didn't go over to touch him. She sat on the bench staring for so long that he finally asked, “What's the matter?”

“Nothing. Or at least nothing I could talk about.”

“Try. Is it anything at school? The teachers?”

She shook her head.

“I know you broke up with your boyfriend last spring. Is it still that? Is he really worth months of pining?” He had just the hint of a smile, as if he were afraid to sound mocking.

She'd never gotten around to introducing Philip to Richard. Maybe she knew he wasn't worth it, that he didn't deserve Richard, he was a lower order of being. Her own thought startled her—exactly the kind of bigotry she scorned in others.

“No, it's not him anymore. I'm over him.” She hoped that was true. Her feelings were such a tangle that she couldn't tell whom or what she wanted. But she wanted something. And she had to speak, though she was shivering with embarrassment. Children were powerless, but adults could claim the world. Certain adults. Why shouldn't she be one of them?

“It's you,” she began, then paused while he waited, looking
puzzled. “We've known each other such a long time. You've done so much for me. But you still think of me as a child, don't you?”

He grinned as he would at a child. “No. You're a woman of the world now. Especially after a summer of staging musical comedies. I wish I'd seen them. I bet you were a fantastic director. I think you have a touch of the martinet, beneath your charming good manners and appealing nature.”

“Oh, stop teasing. That is the worst. Don't you think I have feelings?”

“I know very well you have feelings. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. But I really don't get it. Tell me what's on your mind.”

“How can you not get it? All right. It's you. I mean, you and me.” She stared at him helplessly, willing him to read her mind.

It was a while before he spoke. He sat looking down at the patterned rug at his feet. “Oh. Oh, I see. I am so, so sorry. I never meant to give you the impression . . .” He spread his arms out as if to encompass the room, as if to indicate the obvious, then got up and paced to the window and back.

“It's not simply that I'm so much older. I won't even use that. But . . . you didn't know, after all this time, after all the people you've met here?” He stopped and faced her squarely. “You are a very innocent girl indeed. Look, you've met Greg here so many times. You mean to say it never occurred to you . . . ?”

Something inside her, a vital organ, seemed to drop into free fall, leaving her weak. Whispers, rumors, nasty words she'd heard at school flickered through her mind. “A fruitcake, that's
what he is,” Philip had once said about Mr. Sadler. “I can tell by the way he looks at me.” She knew what he meant, but had never given a thought to Mr. Sadler.

How on earth could I have been so stupid? she thought. She had a flash of anger at her parents as well. Why hadn't they told her? They must know. Everyone must know. That must be why they treated him with such distance, such suspicion. Of course. She flushed with shame. It was bad enough to have declared herself as she did, but to someone who didn't even like women, in that way, at least. She'd been prepared for him to say he was too old, she must put away that sweet but impractical idea, they would forget all about it and go back to being good friends. She had almost hoped he would say that; it would forestall the complication and entanglement, yet leave her with a grief to harbor, sad but tender, grief like a secret, soothing companion. But this! There was nothing soothing about this.

She couldn't account for what she said next. “I always thought there was something between you and Cynthia.”

“Well, yes, there was, briefly.” He looked away and his eyes closed for an instant, as if recalling a specific memory. “Can't you understand? I'm not that . . . what shall I say? Exclusive. Sexual choices are complicated, Suzanne. Cynthia and I shared a lot. One thing leads to another. It just happened.”

“But not with me.”

“No, not with you. Use your head. I'm more than twice your age. I'm a teacher. You're a student. It would be wrong. I'd be justifying your parents' bad opinion, doing exactly what they always feared.”

“But don't they know?”

“I don't know who knows what. I try not to pay attention. It's not easy. I've no wish to make it any harder.”

“I've got to go now.” She stood up and moved toward the door.

“Hold on. Don't run away. That's what you always do when there's something you don't want to face. Remember when you were a kid, with your parents? Or after your father made you perform? You'd dash out like a pianist rushing offstage and come here. You can't always walk out of a room or a situation you don't like. I'll make you a cup of coffee.”

She remembered the heavy yellow ceramic mugs from which she had drunk so many cups of coffee; they felt like a part of her childhood she must leave behind. “I'd rather have a glass of wine.” She thought he might object, but he opened a bottle of red and poured some for both of them. “What's wrong with walking out on a situation you don't like?” she asked. That was exactly what she had done with Philip, never spoken another word to him after she saw him walking with his arm around Elena. It hadn't occurred to her that there was a better way.

“Everything is wrong with that. Look what's happened here. You've learned something you didn't know before. That's always a good thing, at any age. When I met you, I was an adult, and I learned I could get really excited about the talent of a young child. That was something I hadn't known before. I'd always worked with older students, but you had some kind of uncanny instinct about music I'd never seen in so young a kid. So I followed it. That's all I meant. That we became friends meanwhile was a bonus. I never meant it to bring you any pain.”

She sat back down on the piano bench and hid her face in her hands. “I'm so embarrassed. I can't believe how stupid I've been. How blind. How can I ever live in the world if I can't see what's right in front of me?”

“Just sit here awhile and calm down. Don't flee—that's the
main thing. Now you'll start looking at the world more closely. There is a world out there, you know. It's not all in your head.” He drank half of his wine. “Talk to me.”

“What's there to talk about now?”