Happy Any Day Now (3 page)

Brenda and I tried to stay in touch. We phoned each other a few times a week, but her father wouldn’t drive her to Bed-Stuy, we didn’t have a car of course, and the subway stations in my new neighborhood were a mugger’s paradise. By high school, Brenda was already only a bright memory in the prevailing gloom.

“Just the one party on my first birthday,” I said, musing aloud. I should have been aware that my mother, an immigrant even after fifty years, was always on guard, listening carefully, eyes wary.

“What you expect? After your father left, you think have money for birthday parties? I put food on table. You have music lessons. You know how long I wore same winter coat?”

Back at Tio Pepe’s I’d squirmed off the birthday party hook. I’d hosed down Marti and thought I’d closed the issue. But now I thought,
I’m giving myself a party for my fiftieth
. The thought made words, a string of them that detonated like firecrackers, jolting a table of Scrabble players across the room, snapping my mother’s gaze from the solitaire hand she was laying out.

She closed her eyes and her lips moved silently as if she were a
mudang
like Lulu Cho taking messages from the spirits. Then she opened them to say, “Good for you. You deserve.”

This is how she surprised me, my mother. Just when I thought she came close to matching her ex-husband’s talent for self-absorption, she came through.

“But you give party for self? You have friends now. The people from orchestra and the . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say “lesbian,” though she watched
Jerry Springer
on TV and had seen them pulling hair.

“Marti will take over,” I said. “She’s good at organizing things.”

“I help, too,” my mother said. “I pay.”

“No, Mom, that’s okay.”

“I’m your mother. You listen to me. I pay. You don’t have big wedding.” With Todd, I’d hastened to wed so I wouldn’t change my mind. “At this age, no chance. This your wedding money. Sky is limit. Up to three thousand.”

My mother lived on social security and a small payment from the Korean-American Benevolent Society. The whole thing sounded as fishy to me as
aek jeot
, the anchovy sauce we use in kimchi.

“How come I never heard about these savings? Let me get this straight. You’re telling me you stashed away my wedding money and you never spent it in all these years? You didn’t declare it when Blumen House added up your assets to figure out your rent on the sliding scale? You’re saying—”

“Okay, okay,” she interrupted. “You win, smart girl. Truth is I make killing at craps table last time in Atlantic City.” She was staring at her hands in her lap and her complexion was flushed pink, but this correction might have been the truth—it was just the kind of jackpot my mother would come up with. She looked up, eyes faking hurt. “My money good. You make nice party. And take advice from me, Judith. Brenda Himmelstein probably still in Brooklyn. Look in phone book. Invite her.”

My mother used present tense for all tenses. In this case, I think she meant past, or maybe she knew more than I gave her credit for. Because she said, “Invite her. You love her.”

• • •

I phoned Marti on my way home. “I’ve changed my mind about the party.”

“No kidding. Well, I guess it’s a good thing I started working on the guest list. You’ll help me fill in names. I should have some invitations for you to choose from midweek. And I’ve got a few ideas about the venue.”

“I can’t believe you’ve already . . . and I’m not even sure I . . .”

She cut off my stammering. “You don’t have to be sure of everything, Judith. I know you play classical, but, honestly, it’s okay to improvise once in a while. Relax.” She took a deep breath as an example. “It’s going to be wonderful.”

A
t Tuesday morning’s rehearsal, Vijay Patel, the concertmaster, approached as the stage door closed behind me. “You’re in first chair again tonight.”

It took me a moment, but I got it. “It’s Richard, right? Oh God, what now?”

Richard Tarkoff, our principal cellist, my stand partner, my mentor, my dear friend, was seventy-two and battling melanoma. Two years before, a nasty black mole had surfaced on his cheek. Months later another appeared on his leg. As new lesions cropped up, his Johns Hopkins surgeons hacked off pieces of him until, he joked, all that would be left would be his bow hand and two kneecaps. He’d finished his third round of chemo the week before and this was to be his first night back.

“He came in, began his run-through and stopped eight bars in. I’ll tell you, Judith, he scared the hell out of me. He was swaying as if he was going to pass out. His wife drove him in. She’s on her way back to get him. I hope I’m wrong, but this could be it.”

Richard’s fondest wish was to die in the chair. Some musicians signed off when they noticed flagging technique, but many wanted to play until the bow had to be pried from their cold, dead fingers. Making music was a passion, one of the last to go.

The concertmaster cast a grim glance at Richard leaning on his cane, hobbling a path between the men’s room and the artists’ exit, and breathed a sigh. “No one wants to say the words none of us want to hear. But from the looks of it, we’ll be posting auditions for his seat sooner rather than later. I’m assuming you . . .”

I knew what he was assuming. As associate principal, I was in a prime position to advance to the top spot. But I wasn’t a shoo-in. I’d have to compete with our own musicians and with cellists from around the world if I wanted the job. Did I want the job? Right now, watching Richard panting to a stop, I didn’t even want to think about it.

“Later,” I said to Vijay.

I walked across the room into the embrace of my friend’s one free arm.

“Can you believe this shit, Judith?” Richard’s face appeared steroid swollen and as fragile as porcelain, but he managed a smile, as thin as a spider crack. After years together, we’d become expert at reading each other’s subtle signals, a knack that made for a successful professional partnership but sometimes produced TMI personally. As in, I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Behind the battlefield of anger and frustration, I thought I detected the white flag of surrender.

“I was so ready to get back in the harness. I felt great when I woke up this morning. Then, just as I start going through the Schubert here, I get light-headed, shaky, and my fingers won’t work. I can’t get the bow under control. That’s a new one. Goddamn chemo kills the good cells, too. It keeps you alive, but for what?”

I gave him nothing creative, only what could have been the truth and what I wanted to believe: “I think you jumped the gun coming back. This will pass. You just need more time.”

“Yeah, my better half, smarter half told me the same thing. Too much, too soon. But I was sure I was okay to play.” He pulled a handkerchief from his trousers pocket and mopped his forehead. “I don’t know anything for sure anymore. Maybe I’m deluding myself. Maybe the time has come to hang it up.”

“Maybe it hasn’t,” I countered. I needed to keep the delusion going too.

A horn sounded outside. “Sarah. Coming to fetch me. Thank God I didn’t marry an I-told-you-so woman.” He’d lost his eyebrows to the chemo, but the exposed skin furrowed. “You handling that bastard Schubert with no problems?”

The Ninth’s second movement was a killer, but I’d done fine with it the night before. I nodded.

“Of course. Never had a doubt. Get the feel of the first chair, Judith. It looks like it’s going to be yours from now on.”

Sarah leaned on the horn. Richard waved off my offer of a supporting arm and straightened his spine. The mind-body connection must have kicked in because he paused, then said, “On the other hand, a few more days of R and R, and I could pull a Lazarus. So don’t get
too
comfortable.”

“I’ll keep the seat warm for you,” I promised.

“With that little tush?”

Ah, the witty, sparring Richard was still in there behind the suffering. I loved hearing him laugh.

• • •

In the musicians’ lounge, Geoff Birdsall (my lover, significant other, whatever you’re supposed to call your boyfriend after your acne has cleared) added milk to my tea and handed me the cup. “Sorry about Richard. Damned shame. But at least he knows the principal seat will be in good hands.”

“If I make it.”

He took a deep swig of his coffee and peered over the rim of the mug. “Do you want it?”

“I want Richard to stay alive and keep the seat,” I said.

“Come on, Jude, that’s not going to happen.”

I sighed. “Then I want first chair more than anything in the world.”

“And knowing you, you’ve been wanting it forever.”

“No, not all the way back. When I was a kid, especially a teenager, my dream was to be a star, in the spotlight, solo, famous. That’s what teenagers want. Fuck-you fame.”

“Fuck-you fame. I like it.” Geoff chuckled.

“On my street, the girls wanted to be Pam Grier. I wanted to be Jacqueline du Pré, without the MS of course. But you know what happened in my twenties.”

I’d screwed up the finals of a competition that meant more to me than it should have. How I lost it made me wonder whether I was cut out to be a solo artist. As in not being quite good enough. Or not having the temperament or the ego for it. But that reaction had been knee-jerk, and might have passed if I hadn’t fallen in love with being a part of an orchestra.

The thing is, an orchestra is a family, and beyond my mother—all credit to her—I’d never had one. Never experienced that jumble of love and hurt, intimacy and irritation, the craziness, the caring, the mess of it. I’d never even met any of my Korean relatives. Occasionally, when she got tipsy on rice wine or gin, my mother would reminisce about her family in North Korea.

As a teenager, she’d had big dreams, too. Leaving her parents and brother behind on their small farm in the north, she and her sister had fled south to the city to find work. Then the war hit and Seoul changed hands four times. In the chaos the girls got separated.

“My sister get trap behind north line. Never see her again. Have photo of parent but not her. So beautiful, Min Sun. You look like her. Who knows if she still alive? Life so hard there. Very bad place.” And she’d blot tears for her vanished family, for herself, for me and our loss.

As for my father’s clan, the center hadn’t held. I could count on his sister, Phyllis, to keep me attached, but I’d always felt like the outsider, the not-quite-one-of-us, the oh-poor-Judith.

It was only after I’d joined my first professional orchestra that I felt the presence of family. And when I needed a larger home, the Maryland Philharmonic took me in. A move that had turned out far better for me than any fuck-you fame.

I’d been associate for nearly ten years and would have been comfortable in the second chair for as long as Richard held the top slot. But now, with the impending vacancy, I was being given a chance to reclaim some of the old dream. The principal got the solos. So, God yes, I wanted it. But there was a risk. If I didn’t win the seat, I would feel too humiliated to stay on. That would be a loss I wasn’t sure I’d survive. Take the Maryland Philharmonic from me and . . . honestly, I didn’t know what or who I’d be.

But I wasn’t going to tell Geoff that.

The big, handsome Aussie gave me an approving nod. “You need to want it heart, gut, liver, and lights. I give management a day or two to post the opening. Nothing to stop you. You’ve got a clean bill of health, so there’s no worry about taking on more than you’re able.”

I’d phoned him right after my neurologist appointment the day before, eliciting a “Hurrah for you, Jude” at my good report. Now he pecked the spot on my temple above the life-saving coil. “I have to keep reminding myself you’re fine. That every headache isn’t an aneurysm.”

“Yeah, and I have a bitch of one now.” I should never have mentioned it. The color drained from his face.

With a singular exception, Geoff Birdsall had no fear. He’d wrestled a fifty-pound squid off the Great Barrier Reef and his idea of fun was cliff diving into the Loch Raven Reservoir. But the possibility of my suffering another aneurysm terrified him. “We’re ten minutes by car from the Hopkins ER if you want to check it out,” he said.

No, I assured him, there was a difference between this hormone-driven throbbing in my temples and the blinding pain of a hatchet sunk into my forehead signaling an arterial bubble was poised to burst. “A couple of aspirin and I’ll be fine.”

He looked doubtful and kept watch on me throughout rehearsal. He really cared.

• • •

I nailed the Schubert. Technically and creatively. I played and the world fell away. Richard’s illness. The impending big birthday. My mother with all her craziness. Charlie. The dull tail end of my headache. God, I loved my work.

The audience did too. Baltimore audiences are incredibly generous. Give them the flimsiest reason, a show-off cadenza, daring inflexions, and they’re on their feet yelling bravos. And the Maryland Phil’s second female conductor, Angela Driscoll, was, in the tradition of her predecessor, a gracious commander. She motioned for me to stand not once but twice to acknowledge the applause. Among the approving
tap-tap
of bows on instruments from my peers, a voice stood out: Geoff rumbling, “Well done, well done.”

“Brava, Jude,” he said when he caught up with me on my way to the women’s dressing room. “Not bad for a night’s work. Headache all gone? Splendid.” He was also interested in weather conditions in my southern hemisphere.

“Your visitor still in town?”

It took me a moment, but when he raised his eyebrow salaciously, I got it.

“Vanished, without a trace.” In perimenopause, your period’s here today, gone tomorrow.

“The perfect guest.” He smiled.

“Who wore out her welcome a couple of years ago.”

Secretly, though, I was pleased she hadn’t left for good. For some reason, the idea of menstruating even once every so often was reassuring. How many AARP women still got their period? I had no illusions about making at fifty the baby I’d longed for at thirty and forty. My eggs were more poached than the ones they served at the Café Hon under hollandaise. No, this was just a reminder that the tap on the juices of youth hadn’t shut down entirely. There was life in the old girl yet.

“Let’s do a special dinner tonight to mark your two standings,” Geoff suggested. Our usual postconcert supper was bacon and eggs at the Double T Diner. “I’m thinking mussels at Petit Louis. How does that sound?” Like a shellfish aphrodisiac, I thought. “Dessert at your house.” I knew Geoff’s idea of dessert. Something incredibly delicious that burned off the calories from dinner and then some.

It was Tuesday, two days past Sunday, and Charlie hadn’t called. Obviously, he wasn’t in any rush. Rush for what? For—with the exception of an absurd fantasy on my part that I was loath to admit even to myself—nothing. On the other hand, I had a very real fantastic something peering at me questioningly with smoky eyes.

“You’re on,” I said.

“On is good,” Geoff responded. “Actually, I have a feeling on will be exceptional this evening.”

• • •

It was. Geoff was a pleasure maven, an expert. It wasn’t just the sex, which was spectacular. It was much more.

Home from dinner, he stood at my kitchen window, one hand clutching a chilled bottle of Foster’s, the other, warmer, creeping under my sweater to stroke my back as he stared at the cherry tree on my front lawn. Its blossoms were lit iridescent by a full moon.

“Bloody glorious, isn’t it? And look, a rabbit!” There was indeed a small brown bunny sitting under the tree.

What knocked me out about Geoff was that he took pleasure from what slipped by most people. He’d point out to me how savory garlic smelled when the olive oil was at a perfect temperature in the pan. The rough elegance of some hip-hop artist spinning street poetry. “Come,” he’d call, “you have to see this.” And
this
would be a battalion of ants marching across the kitchen table. I’d run for the Raid and he’d marvel at their strange little bodies working together to haul crumbs.

Maybe because when I was a kid and the world around me didn’t offer me much of anything I wanted, and too much of what made me scared or sad, I’d gotten into the habit of blanking it out with music and books. But Geoff Birdsall had the luck of a happy childhood and he’d evolved into that rare creature, a happy man. Pretty soon I began to see small wonders the way he did, and lately I’d been edging toward happy myself.

How long would it last? I hadn’t a clue. After my nasty breakup with Charlie and the hasty, weird marriage to Todd, I’d dismissed the possibility of anything permanent. And Geoff was king in the land of the uncommitted, so we were a perfect match. I took the relationship for what it was, as something I understood: Geoff and I made beautiful music together, but music fades. I decided to appreciate his easy charm, inexhaustible energy, and sky-high libido for whatever time we had together. He also made a succulent lamb stew. The man could cook. Who could ask for anything more?