Happy Any Day Now (26 page)

“Oh boy, you didn’t know. I had no idea. I figured he might want to keep management in the dark, but you . . . Well, now the cat’s out of the bag. The UK Concert Orchestra is looking to fill an open principal trumpet. Burt says Geoff flew over last night to check it out. I’ll bet they won’t make him go through this fucking rigmarole. My understanding is he’ll have it if he wants it. Smaller ensemble. Lighter schedule. Cushy job.” He licked up to his mustache like a tomcat relishing a dinner of broken bird. “Goddamn, I feel awful about laying this on you, Judith. Especially now.”

No, he didn’t. He’d done what he’d set out to do. Rattle me. Make my stomach clench and my hands tremble. Joke (mine, made up on the spot):

Q: “What do you call a cellist with the shakes?”

A: “I don’t know, but you don’t call her a cellist.”

I reached into my pocket to feel for the happy pill. Still there.

Not for long.

This time Geoff
had
deliberately held out on me. I suppose for a decent man it made sense not to tell me just before I went on to win or lose the rest of my life. But look how it had turned out: me facing Vince DeGrassi, who was knitting his bushy brows in ersatz sympathy.

Except what screws people like Vince is their arrogance. A limitless ego never knows when enough is enough. He’d knocked me out with the Geoff bombshell, so the jerk could have bounded off with a spring in his step, convinced he’d put away the competition. But he had to push. He had to make sure the body wasn’t twitching.

“Judith, I almost forgot . . .”
Almost forgot
. What a crock! It was obvious from the anticipation on his face, whatever he had up his sleeve was going to be the coup de grâce. He’d planned on saving his best for last, but what could be worse than his news that Geoff was moving to London? A parry that caused me exactly what he was aiming for, a swift stab of agony that still throbbed, soon to be followed by a distracting soreness. Right now, I had to blank it all out. Hurt, angry, sad are not a combination plate you want to carry with you into an audition. Vince was unable to hide his satisfaction at the outcome of his ploy. Though he worked on keeping a straight face, his gray-streaked mustache made little rays above the sunny arc of his mouth.

Maybe this was about the North Korea trip. Vince was a notorious gossip. Maybe he’d heard it really
was
me who’d wrecked the negotiations. Maybe something Grace had done or not done on her paperwork sixty years before had screwed up a history-making international cultural exchange. With Angela out there, if I was the spoiler, I’d be lucky to keep my current seat, let alone move up to principal.

“Congrats on the Goffriller.”

Ah. So the Goffriller was his ace in the hole. I wondered how he was going to play that hand. As it turned out, dirty.

“That must have been a staggering surprise. It was for your friends and colleagues. You and that priceless cello of yours are the hot topic of the week. Everybody’s talking about it. And I mean everybody.”

Of course they were. If my Baltimore colleagues knew, the woman who mopped the stage at the Bangkok Symphony knew.

“I’m sure you’ve seen on Google that the last Goffriller put up at auction went for a cool million five. Now that’s one hell of a parting gift.”

Crass. But not deadly. Deadly was coming, I could tell from the cattiness that had crept into his voice. “You two must have had a very special relationship.”

So there it was. Overcome by revulsion, I backed up a step.

In case I’d missed the lack of subtlety, he drove the knife home again with a redundant twist in the singsong of a taunting five-year-old. “Unusually close, even for stand partners.”

Richard and I had an affair. And the Goffriller was a gift to a mistress from her dying lover
. That’s what he was saying, what everyone in every symphony orchestra in the world was thinking. And didn’t that imply I hadn’t,
couldn’t
make my way up the professional ladder on talent alone? I had to rely on the trading of sexual favors for success? Therefore I was a weak slut sister and an alpha male like Vince DeGrassi could mug me for the principal spot.

As he took in my offended, teeth-gritting silence, he straightened the knot of his tie.
Tighter
, I urged silently.
Tighter, until your eyeballs pop and your evil swollen tongue flops like a limp dick under your silly mustache and the coroner pronounces you DOA
.

But he was alive and he wasn’t finished. “Fabulous instrument you inherited. Up there with the best. But you do know it’s going to create unrealistic expectations. You playing the Goffriller, there’ll be no excuses for a less than perfect performance. No room for the slightest mistake.” Bastard. I wanted to jab my knee into his balls. Hard.

I took a deep, cleansing breath, trying to pull up Dr. Gottlieb’s words at our second appointment the week before.
Before your audition, think confident, think calm. Remember, serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm.
Had she been quoting Mahatma Gandhi? Al Roker? The session had been devoted to my terror onstage, which tellingly took place only when I played solo. “Alone again. Does it feel something like abandonment?” she’d suggested. “But you’re never alone, Judith, when you fully trust yourself.”

Facing Vince, I pulled up one of Theodora’s self-soothing exercises. You couldn’t risk closing your eyes on that weasel, but I unfolded my clasped fingers and breathed to a calming rhythm.
Peace. Inhale. Peace. Exhale.

Sorry, Doc. Peace was the farthest thing from my mind. Victory occupied every vigilant brain cell.

Then I said, because it was true, and also because I knew it would throw him, “You’re right, Vince. I appreciate your reminding me. That was just the push I needed. Really, thanks.” I gave him a grateful smile. Swallowing my loathing for the greater good, I topped the smile, à la mode, with a peck on his nasty, cologne-soaked cheek.

And that’s how it should have ended. But his ear—large, lupine, and springing a bramble of kinky hair—was so close. And telling him off would be so satisfying. Self-destructive, maybe, but satisfying. Oh, the hell with it. I couldn’t resist. I whispered into his hairy ear: “I hope you crash and burn, DeGrassi. Now go screw yourself!”

There’s a Korean proverb my mother liked to quote: “Even a fish wouldn’t get in trouble if it kept its mouth shut.”

I left Vince standing there gaping like a flounder.

T
here was no way I was going to sit in second chair while DeGrassi in principal called the shots till death or retirement did us part. No way in hell I was going to sit shoulder to shoulder with him as stand partner, suffocating in his stinky cologne Eau de Smug. And after my kamikaze screw-off, he’d have it in for me with a vengeance. To stay with this orchestra in any capacity, I knew what I had to do.

I must have looked as fierce as I felt because our personnel manager, who’d come to escort me upstairs, gave me a curious look. “You okay?” He really wasn’t supposed to communicate with me beyond clarifying procedure. As I patted my new sidekick of a cello, I curved a smile. “Fine.” Which I was close to, now that I had a mission.

Onstage, I took the candidate’s chair, spread the same long black skirt I’d worn to audition for associate principal, my lucky skirt with the lucky horseshoe money clip and the Inderal still in its pocket. My music had been placed on my stand in the order I’d be playing the selections. Muted voices and the rustle of evaluation forms floated in from behind the concealing screen.

The committee was made up of colleagues, some of whom were also friends. In my mind’s eye I envisioned the lineup: Angela, then the concertmaster, second violin, principal viola, principal bass. Principal cello, dear Richard, absent. The next row was smudged. I had no idea which members of the cello section had accepted the invitation to sit in on the audition as I’d done many times myself.

A coughing fit broke the silence. High pitched with a soprano whistle at its crest, it erupted from Lauren Symonds, I was sure. Our principal viola had been out for two weeks with pneumonia. I’d chipped in for the get-well plant the string section had sent. Lauren was unaware that the person who’d insisted on a gardenia bonsai rather than a cactus dish garden was candidate number seven, at that moment drawing her bow on the first note of the opening to Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5.

I played that and bits and pieces from the two Strauss
Don
s—
Juan
and
Quixote
—as well as I’d ever played them. I gave Bach his glory, nailed all the crescendi and decrescendi in the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Yes, I faltered on the
Tännhauser
overture—it was in my blood to ride that anti-Semite Wagner too hard. The personnel manager poked his head around to convey the committee’s request that I replay the last two lines a bit slower. I thought it was still off. But the solos that dipped into Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations and the Dvorák concerto
,
an emotional kaleidoscope, soared and shimmered in all the right places. Sum total, my mother and Geoff would have been pleased. I wanted to think that Richard Tarkoff’s witty ghost and Florence Beckersham’s beautiful spirit high-fived each other in heaven.

A half hour later I learned I’d made it through to the final round.

• • •

It should have been easy. I was charged with lightning from the morning’s competition. And I loved the afternoon’s set, was relieved the committee had chosen the William Tell rather than the excerpt from the Brahms Concerto No. 2, the piece that had sparked a panic attack the last time I’d played it in public. For this deciding round, the screen would come down and I’d be able to make out my colleagues on the judging panel. I knew they’d be tempted to lean over backward, tipping away from me to prove objectivity, but I was familiar with the process, had felt what they’d be feeling, and trusted them to find the perfect balance of fairness.

My two competitors were Vince, whom I dearly wanted to arm wrestle for this position, and a young cellist from Pittsburgh noted for the precision of his technique. The only time I’d heard him, I’d detected a deficiency of heart. An audition for principal
anything
demanded a grand passion. So it should have added up to victory for me.

Should
have. As I began to warm up—disaster. The François Tourte bow, the one that partnered the Goffriller, failed me. There was a tiny eyelet that tightened the horsehairs to an exact tension, and when all was well you heard a faint click that told you,
Done
. Over time, though, those eyelet threads wore out, and, when they did, the strings didn’t respond. You got zilch, zero. Flabby-bow syndrome was a death sentence. The bow was useless.

Every cellist carried a standby for just such an occasion. Lucky for me, I had my Sartory bow, which had worked beautifully with my trusty Tecchler cello but had never been up against the exalted likes of a Goffriller. Richard’s bow had a particular heft, a sparkling yet adaptive personality that I’d quickly learned would handle whatever I asked of it. My bow, I’d discovered over the years, was more temperamental. It had its favorites. It loved Mozart, but it didn’t have a taste for, say, Elgar. The solo I’d signed on to play in the final was Elgar’s Cello Concerto. So I was worried.

Vince DeGrassi, with an animal lack of shame and a nose for prey in trouble, stopped by to congratulate me on my first round, but really to check me out. He poked his head in the door, baring his teeth in an approximate smile, showing no sign he’d registered my final furious whisper. He had to be playing some higher-level mind game to freak me out. No need. I’d freaked myself very proficiently without any help.

He found me examining the injured bow and could barely contain his joy. “It happens . . .” He smirked, ecstatic it had happened to me, for him, at this perfect time and place.
Grrrr
, the man made me want to kick ass. I knew I could have kicked his fat one with the Tourte bow in hand. But now?

With no Geoff close by, I conjured up a conversation with him.

Me: “My Sartory bow isn’t as good a match for the Goffriller.”

Geoff: “With all due respect, Judith, based on your recent behavior, you know very little about good matches. Your old bow has worked perfectly well for you for years.”

Me: “But it’s not part of the package Richard left to me.”

Geoff: “Ah, I get it now. You think this gift from Richard—the cello, the bow, the whole kit and caboodle—holds some kind of magic, don’t you? Come on, Jude. You know better. The magic isn’t in some old instrument. It’s in you, luv. You make the magic.”

Then he recited his favorite saying: “The best musicians don’t play cello; they play music. So forget the details, go for the big picture. You’re number one. Rock on, babe.”

Even far away, when called upon, Geoff was . . . inside me, I realized with a shock.
Inside me
, and not just in the usual place he inserted himself so brilliantly. He’d found his way to my . . . God help me . . . heart, soul, and kishkes
.
Oh, perfect timing, with him in London forever.

Then Charlie materialized. Not in person. Or even by phone—I hadn’t heard from him since the weekend. He arrived via Teleflora, of course. The bouquet was huge, formal, and symbolic: predominantly yellow roses, our flower, and baby orchids, maybe because they were exotic, which is the way he thought of me, or maybe just because he could afford them, and stephanotis, which I knew from all the bridesmaiding I’d done was the wedding flower. Still, until I read the inscription I thought, maybe (my heart going arrhythmic),
Geoff from London
. But the typed message was definitely Charlie. He must have ordered it by phone on the fly between hearings, or he’d told his secretary to call it in, because it read:

“Here’s to your success. You deserve the best. The orchestra does too. Sending much love to you, Jew-Jew.”

Jew-Jew.

That launched me into a fit of hysterical laughter that was just what I needed to break the tension. Of all people, after all these years, Charlie Pruitt in his own screwed-up way came through for me.

Second bow came through, too. That afternoon it sucked up to Mama and gave its all.

The Elgar was an intimate exercise shot through with yearning and despair. My adolescent idol Jacqueline du Pré, RIP, had owned the piece. I took my inspiration from her, but in that audition I made it mine. Really mine. With no ghosts haunting it, no pills taming it, the music emerged incandescent, spiritual, painful, and sweet under the striving bow.

“Thank you, Judith” was all Angela said to me before I got shipped back downstairs to await the verdict. But I heard the congratulations in her voice. I could read music, and I knew.