Happy Any Day Now (21 page)

W
ithin minutes of Sarah Tarkoff’s call to Angela, the orchestra’s public relations and development departments leapt into action. Although at first the crassness of it made me cringe, I had to admit they brainstormed a brilliant coup. They turned the following evening’s open rehearsal into a fund-raiser, a tribute to Richard that would bring tears to donors’ eyes and pens to their checkbooks. “As he would have wanted it,” an internal memo tried to persuade his colleagues.

Knowing Richard, I figured he may well have gotten a kick out of being made into a shill postmortem. And you couldn’t expect PR to just ride out this perfect storm of opportunity, luck, and schmaltz. This was an event loaded with the Phil’s most generous benefactors.

A few times a year they were invited to sit in as the orchestra rehearsed that weekend’s program. It was a thank-you-for-your-support, you’re-one-of-us occasion. The civilians loved open rehearsals. They got to watch the musicians screw up and cut up a little, and they got a taste of Angela’s dry wit as she buffed us to a shine. Nobody loved to schmooze an audience more than Angela, or did it better. And nobody picked a donor’s pocket with a more elegant sleight of hand.

The full-press court began in the lobby, where traditionally the guests sipped champagne and nibbled refreshments. We musicians circulated among them, glad-handing and making small talk, an exercise in forced intimacy that supposedly translated into more funding dollars.

Then, suddenly, the unexpected. The crowd hushed as Angela stepped front and center to announce that the evening was dedicated to the memory of—flourishing off the velvet drape over the easeled portrait of Richard in his prime—a shining light with the orchestra for more than four decades. Our principal cellist had passed away the day before, expressing a final wish that his beloved Maryland Philharmonic live long and prosper. “And so we are hereby establishing the Richard Arthur Tarkoff Foundation for Capital Improvements.” (Ah, electronic eye toilets for the ladies’ rooms.) It was a brilliant Lazarus moment that generated a rumble of sympathy and a collective nod of support.

In the past, I’d enjoyed working the reception with the orchestra groupies, but tonight swamping the undertow of grief were huge surges of gut-wrenching fear at the prospect of performing solo at Richard’s funeral, an obsession best tended in private. (I could almost hear him
tsk-tsk
ing like a metronome in his coffin.) So my plan was to track a single figure eight through the crowd and head backstage. It was the last loop that snared me.

“Judith, over here.
Here
, Judith!” a familiar voice rang out, really
rang
, loud enough to temporarily dampen the chatter in the immediate vicinity. I stared at the woman who’d swept into my path, the one with the alien hairdo, a stranger wrapped in a purple jersey Diane Von Furstenberg rip-off as she metamorphosed into my mother.

“You surprise?” she asked, gold teeth gleaming. “I tell you she surprise, honey.”

The honey was Irwin Raphael, looking as out of place as the pope at a klezmer concert.

“Winnie Chang donate much money all the time. She get invite but can’t go. So she say, you take two ticket, Grace. Korean girl play. You like very much.”

Our guest artist that week was Melanie Rhee, the talented young Korean-American violinist. Nice of Winnie. Stupid of me not to think of inviting my mother.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Irwin said as he slipped my mother’s hand in his.

Really? The few seventy-eight records he’d left behind in Brooklyn when he’d rushed off to pursue the chippie were of Sinatra, Ella, and Benny Goodman. These days, judging from the way he dressed, like a Jewish cowboy—that night in a plaid sport jacket with a bolo—I figured he liked country music. So this had to have been a reach for him.

“Winnie have much culture,” my mother said. “Me, only when you play. But tonight I like, I think. You make duet with Korean girl, Judith?”

“No,
Uhm-mah
. She’s playing solo, but the orchestra will be accompanying her.”

Decibel level soaring, my mother announced to the neighborhood, “Judith play solo many night. Associate principal. Soon be principal. Highest cello in orchestra. My daughter make me very, very proud.”

My accomplishments had always given her what my aunt Phyllis called
nachas
—proprietary pleasure. Grace had boasted about my first job, a part-time gig in a small-town orchestra, with as much gusto as she would about my later work with a major symphony. She really loved me for whatever I was.

She looked around to see if the immediate world was taking that in. “Ah, look near stairway.” She waved. “Selma Frommer, Blumen House 7B. Such snob.” She extracted her hand from Irwin’s and pushed her nose into a snooty pug. “I need to say hello and brag too.” Her eyes twinkled. “She always brag on her son, the big, famous doctor. Now my turn. Be right back. No more wine for you, Irwin. Two glass enough.” She darted off.

I heard a hum come from my father, as if he were revving up to get through a conversation with me on his own. He began on a high note.

“She’s a pip, your mother.” His eyes followed her and his lips curled in a smile at the sight. “In her golden years, she’s an outgoing person. Who would’ve thought she’d turn out this way? Not that I don’t like it. That’s what I saw of her personality when I met her. But then, when she came here, she hardly spoke English and she was shy as a cat. A totally different woman. And now she’s back to the version of her I met in Seoul.” He shook his head so the pompadour shimmered ebony in the lobby light. “Amazing how getting older changes you. Makes you better sometimes.”

Was he leading into a commercial for the new and improved Irwin Raphael? If so, it would take a money-back guarantee to make me buy it.

One look at my caveat emptor face and he hitched his neck in the direction of Richard’s portrait. “Sorry about your partner. Eight years younger than me. Poor bastard. Excuse my French, but your mom said he suffered a lot. In and out of the hospital.” He fiddled with his bolo clasp in the shape of steer horns. “Personally, I hope I get hit by a bus.”

A pregnant pause as I silently seconded the motion.

“I seen so many hospitals with Lorna. The late Mrs. Raphael. Lupus is a hell of a disease. She was in more than out in the last few years. ‘Don’t let me die in the hospital,’ she always begged me. I promised she’d die at home. Another promise I didn’t keep.”

That lassoed my attention. We were heading down some yellow brick road here. Where it was winding I couldn’t yet tell.

“Her sister called an ambulance near the end. Jesus, I hate hospitals.”

At which point I found my Oz. “Is that why you didn’t come to see me when I had the aneurysm?”

“Wha?” His jaw literally dropped.

This thought had been nudging me since Irwin had reentered our lives.

“You had to have known. If not through Mom, through Aunt Phyllis. You think people get better with age? My aneurysm was only a year ago, I could have died, and you
still
didn’t show up.”

“Now just one cotton-pickin’ minute, kiddo. The hospital’s not why—” he began.

“I don’t tell him.” My mother, whose timing was as good as any musician’s, had threaded her way back. Now she edged in, facing me. “And I tell Aunt Phyllis to keep big mouth shut. Why? I tell you why. Chippie . . . Lorna very sick when you sick. Lupus make very bad time for her.”

Grace laid a consoling hand on my father’s arm. “And if I tell him you have aneurysm, he come run, run, run. For what? I know you won’t see him. If I tell you, you be so mad. It make you more sick to see your daddy here. So I don’t tell and I make Aunt Phyllis swear she don’t tell.”

He hadn’t known.
He hadn’t known.

Just then, my watch alarm sounded and, as if the timer had set it off, my chest began to ache. Not the breathless clutch of anxiety. I knew the difference. And though I was swept by a cold sweat, not a heart attack. This, I suspected, was an event that would never show up on any cardiogram. A piercing of that membrane I’d toughened to protect my emotional center. Just a tiny puncture, but it hurt like hell.

Or it could have been gas.

“The orchestra is starting to warm up. I’ve got to go,” I said just to my mother as the chest pain ebbed.

Her other hand flew out to capture my elbow. “When Irwin and I begin e-mail, I talk about you many things. Now back here, he get so upset when you have even little headache. He think your aneurysm come back. He go crazy, your father. He worry about you. He love you.”

“Can we discuss this later, please?” I asked, needing air and my arm.

Even in the lobby, I could latch onto the muted sound of the musicians warming up onstage. The program was all-Prokofiev. I wanted to hear the carefree youth of Juliet in the Suite No. 2. That the runaway who messed up my youth loved me, this I didn’t want to hear.

“Go.” Grace freed me. “We eat at Matsuri restaurant after concert. You father say he don’t like sushi but I like, so he eat it now. You come with us tonight. We eat, we talk.”

The idea of a reconciliation supper with the old man turned my stomach more than squid sashimi.

“Sorry,
Uhm-mah.
I can’t. I’m playing at Richard’s funeral tomorrow and I need to practice with the pianist after the rehearsal.”

I’d booked a half hour with Ernie after the stage cleared, one last session to make sure we were in sync with the “Meditation.” Then home to go over and over my mistakes, real and imagined, and count down the hours until F-Day: Friday, funeral, fuck up. Take your choice. Take all three.

“Maybe tomorrow,” my mother said. “After you come back from cemetery, I make us lunch. Yes, Irwin?”

Take four, if you counted my father.

My father, my father. I thought and rethought the new, unmodified word as I hurried off, leaving them silent behind me. Now that I had a father, what was I supposed to do with him?

R
ichard Tarkoff, rest his soul, made his final appearance before a packed house. And what a house! Temple Beth Zion, a standout even in the cluster of designer synagogues on Park Heights Avenue, was a Walter Gropius paean to—well, whatever it was that Independent-Progressive-Reconstructionist Jews believed.

It took me five minutes to navigate the huge, crowded art nouveau lobby that could have passed for the first-class salon on the
QE2
in its heyday. And then there was a queue to sign the guestbook. When I finally got to the front, I thumbed through the preceding pages wanting to see who would be in the seats for the service. I swallowed a lump of fear as I found the sprawling, flourishing signatures of musical giants: Wasserstein, Sundergard. Lermontov, Chumsky. It would be just Ernie and me up there playing before the crème de la crème, a thought that sent my pulse rocketing. But soothingly, just above the line left empty for me to sign, Aunt Doris and Uncle Lester Rosenberg had written, “Richard, you were an inspiration to us all. Truly a man for all seasons.” Truly.

I was bent over the page, about to add a bravado curlicue to the R in Raphael, when an arpeggio of prickles ran down my spine. I swear I felt her before I heard her. And then I did hear that unmistakable loud, grating voice that was chalk on blackboard to me. And the fake international accent. She was from Borough Park, Brooklyn, for God’s sake. Eloise Flint. My nemesis from the New England Conservatory. My replacement in Charlie Pruitt’s bed. Thief of honors in the Balakirev competition. A woman who could vacuum all the air from a room in a single sweep.

I checked and, damn, there she was off to my right, maybe twenty pounds heavier than the airbrushed book jacket photo, but definitely Eloise in a weird brown-striped caftan thing and too much artsy-craftsy jewelry. She was nodding like a parrot peck-peck-pecking as the violinist Lucian Landau whispered at her side. Then her beady avian eyes locked on my gaze, she waited a beat, and she waved. Not a socially acceptable full-handed dash of a hi, but an affected flutter to show off her superior fingering, I supposed.

And then I had an
Oh God
moment as I realized she’d soon be sitting in the sanctuary, up front, I was sure, following my every bow stroke, judging my every intonation.

Geoff materialized beside me. “You okay, Jude? You look a mite green about the gills.”

Beyond him, Eloise eyed us with unabashed curiosity. I laid one hand on Geoff’s arm, proprietarily. Strictly for her benefit.

“Feeling queasy,” I said, accepting the small pack of tissues he pressed into my hand.

“Ernie alerted Joan as backup and she’s standing by. But you can do this, Jude. I know you can.”

As Eloise’s inappropriate cackle split the air like a hen screeching out an extra-large egg, I said, “Right.” What I needed was some pharmaceutical assistance. Richard would have thought I was cheating, but a half-full vial of just-in-case pills buried in my handbag jiggie-jigged a maraca rhythm against my hip when I moved.

Which wasn’t fast enough for the woman behind me. “Nu already, sweetheart?”

She leaned in, giving me a tight, burgundy-outlined smile. “The book? You want to sign the book?” She tapped her Movado. “Hopefully before the Second Coming?”

I signed. Geoff signed, and took my elbow. “Now shall we pay our respects to Sarah and the boys?” he asked.

The condolence line stretched through the door of the reception room. As we inched along, I got a view of Sarah accepting sympathy hugs at the other end. She looked pale, but put together.

We were almost at the grieving family when she and I made eye contact. She held up a pause finger to me and leaned over to the older of her boys, the Stanford professor. I heard her say, “Joel, darling, I need a break. Give me five minutes. And keep the line moving. It’s almost time for the service anyway.”

She crooked the finger and beckoned me to follow her.

“Be back,” I said to Geoff.

I had no idea why I’d been singled out or where we were going. It turned out it was to the sanctuary. There, she took my hand.

As she led me in I said, “Sarah, I’m so sorry. You know how I felt about Richard.”

“I
do
know, Judith. And how he felt about you. Come, let’s sit for a minute.”

We took adjacent seats in the first row. If we’d been in Ghana, the deceased might have been buried in a coffin carved in the image of his beloved cello, but here he rested center stage in a simple casket of rich oak. The gorgeous Matteo Goffriller instrument was positioned five feet away. I still had no idea why I was here, but it had to be something important to pull the widow from the receiving line.

“Truthfully, I don’t think you know how much Richard loved you and respected your talents, but you will soon enough.” Sarah checked her watch. “I’ve had them keep the main doors locked, so we can have this talk. But as you can hear from the lobby, the natives are getting restless, so I’ll make it quick.”

Her voice thinned to a thread that seemed just about to break. “I can’t believe he’s in that coffin. Of course, he selected it himself. Which is just like Richard—in control to the very end.” She gave a short, parched laugh. “They say you can’t take it with you. Now, had he played flute, I would have tucked it in with him. But the Goffriller? That has to stay behind.” Her glance flitted from the cello to me. She was dry eyed, sharp eyed.

“Can you imagine how much pleasure that cello has brought to the world over the last four hundred years? And how much more it has to give?” Then she said crisply, “Richard was very clear about its disposition after his death. Because it’s a substantial bequest, he took all the necessary legal steps to make sure his intentions would be honored. The Goffriller would bring an astronomical price in a private sale, perhaps even more at auction. But he knew where he wanted it to end up.”

Her grip on my hand tightened. Where she was heading had begun to seep in, but the destination seemed so implausible, so outrageous, my brain refused to go there.

“For Richard it was a purely emotional decision. On my part—and he wanted my concurrence—I felt a decision of this magnitude required some thought. Our sons have no musical inclinations. The gene doesn’t seem to run in the family. Financially they’re both well off. I will never be homeless. And the prospect of selling that gorgeous instrument, the possibility that someone like that detestable Eloise Flint—and this is hypothetical, of course—might empty her bank account, add it to the proceeds from her new book—Richard called it a grim fairy tale, by the way—and walk off with it . . . Well, that was unthinkable to both of us.”

Her hand was trembling ever so slightly. Or maybe that was mine trembling in the cave of hers. “So.” Sarah swiveled to seal the deal with a widow’s sad smile. “It’s yours, my dear. We’ll get it to you in plenty of time to work with it for your audition. Oh yes—on that subject, Richard said to tell you that whatever doubts you had about
your
gift, this gift should put them to rest. I should remind you, Judith, that he was not only a brilliant musician, he was also an astute critic. I’d take his word for it.”

She gave me a moment to let it sink in, this incredible legacy, this vote of confidence from the coffin. Of course, I was flabbergasted. Astounded by the sheer scale of the gesture. But that was in the first aftershock seconds. Then, very quickly, it all seemed to make perfect sense. Richard had been so generous to me from the beginning, he wouldn’t let the end of him be the end of his goodness.

“One more thing. He left you an annual stipend to cover the insurance. Bottom line is you won’t need anything but you and the Goffriller to make magnificent music. ‘Nothing extra’ were the precise words he asked me to repeat to you. Whatever that means, he said you’d understand.”

I did. Although I swayed under the impact of the last few minutes, the pill bottle in my handbag had lapsed into guilty silence.

Confounded by the joy of owning this exquisite cello and the pain of not being able to thank Richard for it, I stammered, “How can I ever express my—?”

Sarah cut me off. “Just make the best music you can, Judith. Now you have no excuse not to.”

How was that for a burden and a blessing?

“After Joel speaks, he’ll move the cello center for you.” She was on her feet.

I thought the echo in that vast auditorium had mangled her words.

“The Goffriller. You want me to play it today?”

My stomach plummeted so suddenly that my center of gravity shifted. Even on that awful night at the Berenson when the first panic attack had struck, I hadn’t felt the crushing force to double me over. Now I fought to stay upright.

“Yes, of course. I want you to play it today.” Sarah and her pearls shimmered too bright in my vision. “But more important, that’s what Richard wanted. He loved what you coaxed from that Goffriller. And your new bow is also a beauty.” Richard’s François Tourte bow had an equally distinguished pedigree.

I watched Sarah pat my hand reassuringly, but hardly felt it. Most of me had gone numb, but shock and dread must have been readable on my face. “You’ve played the instrument before, Judith. A number of times. Always beautifully.”

The Dvorák, when he was dying. Maybe five or six other times total. The first was a winter evening in the Tarkoffs’ living room fifteen years before. Richard had rocked in his chair as though he were davening a prayer of thanksgiving as the cello exploded torrents of tone in Chopin’s G Minor Sonata. My fingers flew and the Goffriller’s heart nearly burst with emotion. An aristocrat, a peasant, a revolutionary—a superb instrument can be everything.

Sarah, the attorney, clinched her closing argument. “And now you have the opportunity to play one last time for Richard. That way the both of you can say good-bye to him.”

• • •

Geoff was waiting for me in the lobby, arms folded, expression self-satisfied. “So how’s that for a parting gift? Oh, Jude, wait until you get your hands on that Goffriller. It will be transcendent.”

“What?” I snapped to incredulous attention. “You knew?”

“Richard couldn’t keep it to himself. He was thrilled for you. Me too. He did the right thing, leaving it to you.”

I flared. “And having me play it today? Unprepared? Unrehearsed with it? You think that’s the right thing too?”

“Today? Here? Now
that
I didn’t know.” His laugh was so boisterous, it turned the head of an outraged mourner. “Why, that old fox. And yes, he did the positively right thing. Brilliant.”

• • •

We took seats in the second row. It was like being strapped in a taxiing plane. Doors shut. Fate sealed. Too late to back out. We took off so quickly, I barely had time to think.

The rabbi recited the “time to sow and time to reap” passage from Ecclesiastes.

The cantor chanted.

I felt for the vial of Inderal in my right pocket. There was no water for a pill and had there been I would have choked on it anyway after Richard’s coded command from the grave. I stared at the Goffriller, willing myself to absorb its centuries of confidence.

Joel, the older son, read the poem “Invictus,” his voice cracking at the reference to the “unconquerable soul.” When that was over, he carefully moved the Goffriller front and center and announced, “As my father wished, the ‘Meditation’ from
Thaïs
by Massenet will be played by Ernst Leonard at the piano and Judith Raphael on the cello Dad loved.”

I walked the last yards, my heart thumping in sync with my steps. Once seated, I allowed myself a moment to settle in. After all, Richard wasn’t going anywhere except to heaven and, as Aunt Phyllis used to say, quoting maybe the Bible or maybe Warren Beatty, heaven can wait.

Ernie would also have to wait for my cue. Stop, smell the funeral flowers, my dearly departed mentor would have instructed. The Orthodox don’t do flowers (no music either), but this synagogue looked like the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I inhaled, giving myself ten seconds of sweetness. I embraced the Goffriller,
my
Goffriller almost, and breathed in its centuries-old promise of brilliance. As Joel exited stage right, I caught a glimpse of the exiled Tecchler cello that had served me well all these years and was about to be turned in for a new love. Which reminded me to look for Geoff’s reassuring smile. Got it. Quickly scanned the house. Zigmund Manheim, at the end of the third row, eyes downcast, was thumbing through the program. Daniel Kassakov, probably my favorite living cellist, fidgeted next to him. Danny liked me too. His gaze caught mine and he winked. Inappropriate but appreciated. Lucian Landau, having escaped Eloise Flint’s braceleted clutches, was two seats left of Daniel.

I found my nemesis on the aisle, fourth row. In spite of having given a command performance at Buckingham Palace and being descended, according to her auto-bogus-ography, from Priscilla Alden, Eloise was simultaneously and energetically chewing gum and picking her nose. Somehow, that indecorous image of Eloise short-circuited my anxiety. She was only human, my nemesis was. We were all only human.

With that reassurance, I nodded to Ernie, lifted Richard’s legacy François Tourte bow, and drew my first stroke. Velvet. Then, in a miracle worthy of Moses himself, whose sun-drenched, stained-glass image cast vivid spotlights on the stage, I relaxed and let muscle memory take over. And then I did forget them all out there, except for Sarah and the family. And Richard, of course. I was playing for Richard in that zone that surpasses rational thought. My hands were detached at the wrists, moving on their own. I conjured up images of my old friend alive and healthy. By the last sixteen bars, it was Richard playing the “Meditation.” The final chord stretched mournfully as if he and I couldn’t quite say good-bye.