Nocturne (48 page)

Then I drove away, with nothing but ashes in my soul.

Savannah

O
ne winter in Russia is enough to remind you
, forever, to always carry your scarf. That day was particularly glacial, though. The wind whooshed through my hair with such cruel rawness I was certain my brain would freeze.

“Bella!” Aldo called from behind me as I crossed the street to head for my apartment after rehearsal.

“Ciao, Al.” I smiled as he caught up to me. He was a short Italian cellist who had been at Bolshoi a year before me. All last year he’d walk me to my apartment after rehearsal, especially in the winter when the sun left long before we did. Given the incidence of street crime in Moscow these days, I was grateful for the escort.

“You always call me Al. Why Al?” His broken English cracked me up. He knew I could speak fluent Italian, but also knew I longed to speak English whenever I could. My roommate was from Moscow and I spoke more Russian than she spoke English.

Our apartment was a quiet place.

I shrugged. “No reason. It’s cute.”

“Ah, like you.”

Poor Al … he’d been courting me from the minute my plane landed in Moscow in August. I haven’t a clue what gave him the urge to seek me out, but I was his target. He had no way of knowing I had little time or desire for Italians … or cellists.

As we approached the stairs to my fourth floor apartment, Aldo spoke faster.

“Savannah, you … do you want to come over for tea?” A nice request on the surface, but his hand had slid to my lower back over the course of our short walk.

I hated to let him down, but I wanted to be fair. “Maybe another time? We should get everyone together to go to the teahouse down the road tomorrow after rehearsal, or on break or something.”

He nodded, pulling his lips back in a sweet smile. He was only capable of sweet. “Another time.
Essere sicura.
” He gave my shoulders a tight squeeze as he told me to be safe.

Despite our silence-inducing language barrier, I was still grateful that Sasha was part of a brass ensemble that kept her out late most nights. With a sigh, I made my way to the front window, where I saw Aldo Marietta heading down the road to his apartment two blocks away. Turning back to the front table, I sorted through the mail I’d picked up the day before but hadn’t gone through yet.

Christmas cards from my friends in the States were starting to decorate the bare walls in my tiny bedroom. Christmas in Russia wasn’t celebrated until January 7th, so it was always a topic of conversation among friends that visited our apartment. They’d point at cards illustrated with a very fat and cartoonish looking Santa Claus and laugh, highlighting our deep cultural differences that went far beyond our celebration of this particular holiday.

Settling back into Moscow and the orchestra was seamless. Some of my friends had kept tabs on the tour and congratulated me on the performances but, luckily, no one had heard about the end. How that never ended up in the artsy tabloids was beyond me, but I was grateful. After what I learned on tour about how people spread lies more than truths, I’m sure someone spent a lot of money to keep the backstage scuffle between Nathan and Gregory a secret, affair revelation and all.

I felt comfortable with my position at the Bolshoi and was being groomed for the principal chair in the coming years, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to get to the top of my career there. The atmosphere at the highest levels was cutthroat, and a level of bitter intensity that I never wanted to associate with a professional career. I’d been keeping my eyes and ears open throughout Europe for auditions. In truth, I had my eyes set on the London Symphony Orchestra. While the BSO had filled every musical aspiration I’d had since I started playing, it was no longer an emotional possibility. I didn’t resent him for it, but I knew that the tethers of Boston’s Symphony Hall still had a grip on my heart, and I needed time and distance for them to wither away.

I paused briefly as I got to the large manila envelope that came once a month from my dad. He’d collect news clippings from friends of mine from high school, or any he came across about Nathan or my other friends from the conservatory. I was relieved each month that he dutifully ignored my insistence that I could locate such information on the Internet. He said it just wasn’t the same as having a piece of it with me. He was right.

Still, I set the envelope aside for the time being and wandered over to my laptop, pulling up Spotify’s Adele station and the Boston Globe’s website as I sat down. Automatically I clicked on
Arts
and scrolled until I reached the
Theater and Art
section.

I hadn’t spoken to my mother since watching her walk down the steps of Symphony Hall four months ago with Malcolm by her side. My dad encouraged me to reach out to her any chance he got. I told him I would when I was ready, and he said he understood. His understanding lasted until the next phone call or email, where we’d have the same conversation. My promise. His understanding. The end.

News on my mother had died down since opening night at the end of September, but I still scrolled through, peeking for glimpses of the life she chose. Maybe looking for reasons why. Before I had a chance to click on the
Theater and Art
tab to take me to the full list of stories, the headline smacked me in the face.

Carroll and Carulli To Wed.

... Proposal during an after-show party earlier in the month.

... Wedding this summer at Symphony Hall.

... An affair that will cost well over fifty-thousand dollars and host the most prominent …

Seeing it in print held a different weight than reading it in my father’s email last week.
Things with them are getting serious quickly,
he’d said. It was only quick for someone who refused to, or couldn’t, acknowledge a prior seven-year affair.

“Well, there
that
is.” I sighed and worked my way out of the section, scrolling past the
Music
link I’d grown to avoid out of habit.

Until this time.

Prized Antique Cello Fetches $1 Million at Auction.

My shoulders tensed as I hovered the cursor over the link. It had to be him. It was him. I knew it was him. But ...
what?
So, I clicked.

At the annual New England Center for the Arts Gala, sponsored by Sotheby’s, world-renowned cellist Gregory Fitzgerald auctioned his nearly 300 year-old Montagnana cello, netting $1 million dollars on the nose. 

Shit, it really was him. The article continued and, despite myself, so did I.

The donation was sent, upon request by Mr. Fitzgerald, to the New England Conservatory. Fitzgerald is earmarking the funds to be used for a new program he’s helping to develop for music education students to be trained in specializing in working with children with disabilities. 

I pressed the heels of my hands into my forehead as I rested my elbows on the table. Months ago he’d confessed to me how thoroughly unprepared he’d been to take on the young blind cellist, Robert. This was for him.

The rabbit hole wasn’t quite finished with me as I read and reread the last line of the article.

Gregory Fitzgerald was the principal cellist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra until his resignation earlier this month. 

“
What?”
I shouted into the empty air of my apartment. “That’s it?” I scrolled up and down and clicked back and forth, but that was it.

He stayed with Karin … and they’re having babies.

That was the only reasonable explanation for such preposterous news.

I didn’t know which to address first, the bile rising rapidly through my throat, or my dizziness. I was already sitting, but not, unfortunately, near a toilet. I only had time to make it to the kitchen sink, so my painted blue teacup from the morning’s breakfast bore the brunt of my resurgent heartache.

After rinsing my mouth out, I cautiously returned to the Globe’s web page to find the answer.

There was none. The article just … ended there.

Gregory had left the BSO.

And auctioned his cello.

And nothing made any sense.

“Oh shut up, Adele, what the hell do you know.” I clicked off her instructions to have me make someone feel my love and picked up my phone, scrolling to Nathan’s number. He’d know something.

“No,” I said, only mildly concerned about my increased talking to myself. I set my phone down and took a breath. “Just … leave it alone.”

 Gregory  

“Oh, hello,” Karin said. She looked as surprised as I felt to see each other.

I coughed lightly, then said, “Hello, Karin.”

She gave me a sardonic smile, then said, “Don’t look so uncomfortable, Gregory. It’s all over.”

“Indeed.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about seeing her. The New Year’s party at Joseph McIntosh’s house was in full swing, at twenty minutes to midnight. I’d had three drinks and had a warm glow going that even the sight of my ex-wife couldn’t kill.

“You received the final check?” I asked. The sale of our house, which I’d mortgaged all those years ago to buy the Montagnana, had finally gone through. The tiny amount of cash left over from the sale was split between us, but the lawyers had handled that end of things.

“I did,” she said. “And I’m all settled in my new place.”

“Oh, good.” The words felt stiff.

In the end, our divorce had been amicable, uncontested. All the same, I felt uncomfortable in conversation with her, unsure of what to say, especially in a social environment like this. We’d only been married three short years, but it was long enough to create an immense, complicated tie. I had my own plans, but part of me wanted to know that she was ready to move on with her life without me. But, of course, we didn’t talk about such things.

She put a hand on my arm. “I heard about what you did. With your cello.”

I nodded. That was something I didn’t feel comfortable at all talking about.

“It was a good thing to do, Gregory.”

I shrugged, unsure about how to engage in “normal” conversation with her.

A tall man, in his early forties approached, sliding his arm around her waist. Surprisingly comfortably.

She smiled, blushing a little. “Gregory, meet Richard Hightower. Richard, this is my ex-husband, Gregory Fitzgerald.”

Richard—apparently her new boyfriend—reached out to shake my hand. I gritted my teeth for a second, then let it go. He looked like one of those guys who liked to test his manhood by squeezing the life out of opponents during handshakes. But I was surprised. His grip was surprisingly limp.

“Pleased to meet ya, Greg.”

Karin winced when she heard him shorten my name. His false familiarity was both grating and somehow gratifying. On the one hand, anyone who shortened my name and spoke to me in such a casual manner was extremely irritating. On the other hand? I was happy to see she’d found someone, especially someone so unlike me.

Two could play that game. “Nice to meet you, Dick.”

Karin actually looked amused as she said, “Richard is associate director of the endowment at Harvard.”

“I see ... so you share a line of work. How nice.”

My eyes were starting to glaze over. So it was a blessing when I heard Madeline’s voice across the room. “Gregory!”

“Please excuse me,” I said. “Karin, a delight to see you. Dick.”

We exchanged pleasantries and I escaped as quickly as I could, joining Madeline and James at the opposite corner of the large room. They were part of a small circle of men and women, mostly musicians, who stood near Joseph, our host. Madeline was drinking soda water. They were expecting a baby in June.

Madeline leaned close and whispered in my ear. “I saw you cornered over there.”

I shrugged. “It was really all right. Though her new boyfriend Bob is a little insufferable.”

“I think his name is Richard?” Madeline said.

I shrugged. At that moment I froze in place. Vita Carulli and her fiancé Malcolm Carroll had approached the crowd.

I’d once admired Vita. She was a remarkable performer.

She was also Savannah’s mother ... the mother who had hurt and abandoned her.

“Gregory,” Vita said, nodded. One star of the music world to another.

I turned away from her, taking a sip of my drink. I had an established reputation as an arrogant bastard; might as well monopolize on that by snubbing a world class opera singer. Her career was on a downturn anyway.

James clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s time you moved on. I meant to tell you, I met a lovely young cellist the other day ...”

Madeline rolled her eyes. “James, really ...”

“Seriously. He needs to go out and—”

“Don’t say it.” Madeline raised a disapproving eyebrow as he spoke.

I chuckled. “I think you can let it go,” I said.

“So ... what
are
your plans?” she asked.