Good Things I Wish You (13 page)

The news about Robert isn’t good.

At some point, she must consider propriety. What will be the consequences of such a trip? It is one thing, while she’s on tour, having Johannes constantly in her home, busying himself with the children, keeping an eye on the servants, documenting household income and expenses in his quick, vigorous hand. Especially since his devotion to her husband is so well known. Still, it would be better, upon their return, if Johannes would agree not to nap on the couch, lazy and warm as a loose-limbed cat, where visitors can see him plainly. If he wouldn’t write so admiringly of her to mutual friends. If he’d stop fussing over her like a husband each time she left on tour, urging her to pace herself, to take care of herself, to come home soon. If he didn’t insist they address one another not as
Sie
but
Du
. Not only in letters, but in company, trumpeting an intimacy that would strike anyone as peculiar. Not that there’s anything between them that isn’t open and good.

They are friends.
Best friends.
What else can they be?

In this light, after much discussion, she has finally agreed to return his warm and affectionate
Du
.

There are, of course, his dark moods. Understandable,
considering his childhood, his past. Easily forgotten—or, at least, explained away—as soon as they have vanished, which they do. And then, how easy, how effortless everything is! The meals they share, the walks they take. Conversations about the children: what is best for the girls, what should be done with the boys. Discussions about Robert’s situation in Bonn, doctors’ reports, new therapies. Analysis of Clara’s performances, program selections, resulting reviews. Debates over Johannes’s compositions, which seem, at times, to belong to them both.
^*
Together, they sit at the piano, reviewing modulations, refining passages, Clara’s fingers moving over the keys like gestures accompanying a story she’s determined to finish. It is not enough that he says he understands.

She bats at his arm.
Do you see?

In the end, of course, he listens—as she listens to him, in her turn. He encourages her own compositions, applauds her private performances, yielding to her superior sense of line, her inspired fingerings. He distracts the children with gymnastics, walks, giving her the gift of a clear afternoon in which she can sit down to compose. He intercedes on her behalf with doctors and bill collectors, and when a rat scuttles out of the coal bin, it’s Johannes who brandishes the broom, screaming along with the children, even as he chases it through the parlor and out the front door.

And then there’s the way he talks to her, of everything, of
nothing. Of music and sunlight, of trees and stones, of porridge and history and science and God. Of his mother. Of her father. Of a restaurant in Dresden where, once, he sampled a particular kind of cheese. Of local politics and musical fools, America, the plague, French fashion, Liszt, Fanny Mendelssohn’s new parlor maid, Joseph Joachim’s annoying tendencies, German folklore, Hamburg. She’s following him down a steeply sloped path: thirty-six years old; strong-willed; strong-limbed. But she cannot keep up with all that he says. She cannot keep up with her own flooding heart. Placing her foot against a loose stone, she tumbles forward as he turns to catch her, touches her forehead to the rough kiss of his chin. Somehow he’s holding her hard in his arms, his exhalations filling her inhalations, an exacting completion, a jigsaw fit, and she thinks of making music. She thinks of making love. The places on her body he has not yet touched are dark spaces.

The rest of her shines.

Do I want to have Robert back like this?
she has written in her diary.
And yet, should I not want to have, most of all, the person back again? Oh, I don’t know what to think anymore: I have thought it all over thousands upon thousands of times and it always remains just terrible.
^*

Wake up, she tells herself. Step away.

He keeps breathing. She keeps breathing. Around them, the green land. The golden light of dreams.

This is not the sort of man with whom you build a future.

At some point, you must step away.

Date: Saturday, June 17 10:58 PM

To: [email protected]

Dear L—,

You wanted to know how I really am. I needed some time to think about my answer.

Six weeks ago, I met a German man—actually, I can’t shake this déjà vu feeling he’s someone I’ve met before—and I suppose we’re friends, though he insists that men and women can’t be friends. He also says there’s no chemistry between us, but lately it seems there’s some chemistry after all. Remember the book I always wanted to write about Clara Schumann and Brahms? He’s helping me with translations. Also, I’m going to Germany next month, and he’ll be there at the same time. Sometimes I think he cares about me. Other times, there’s this calculating distance, as if I don’t quite measure up.

So all this is to say that I guess I don’t really know how I am, aside from being sorry, from my heart, to hear about you and Sally. Is it something that can be fixed? Then again, I suppose these things can’t ever really be fixed. But maybe it’s different with a second marriage. Maybe things are easier to figure out.

Heard any more divorce jokes lately? I’ve started collecting them. It helps. Anyway, I’m thinking about you.

Jeanie

Date: Saturday, June 17 11:16 PM

To: [email protected]

Hi Jeanie—

How about this one? Half of all marriages end in divorce, but the other half end in death. Sally told me that over lunch yesterday. We’ve agreed to divide things up nicely. We’re putting away our knives. I suppose that’s the biggest difference between a first and second marriage. With the second, you’re much more willing to cut your losses when you see that things are wrong.

About this guy who’s helping you with the Clara book: if men and women can’t be friends, what, exactly, are the two of you—research associates? Research associates with benefits? Look, either there’s chemistry or there isn’t. And that déjà vu feeling like you’ve met him before? It crosses my mind—now don’t get mad, Jeanie, but you did talk to me, once, pretty frankly about Cal—that you’re setting yourself up yet again to want somebody who won’t want you. There are plenty of men who find you attractive, and I don’t just mean your beautiful mind. What if you hung around with one of those guys for a change? Especially since you’re a free agent now. You wouldn’t have to leave him outside your door this time.

When, exactly, do you leave for Germany? Did you get a direct flight or are you coming through New York? If you’re still speaking to me, I could meet you for a drink.

I hope you’re still speaking to me.

L—

28.

W
E MET IN SUSHI
bars, at coffee shops, at open-air restaurants fronting the beach, lugging backpacks and satchels, over-stuffed folders, Internet printouts bunched together with clips. I’d leave Heidi at my parents’ house for dinner, then head out to meet (so I explained) a German man who was helping me with research on my book.

“How did you find him?” my father asked.

“Through a service,” I said truthfully.

“Is he charging you money?” my mother wanted to know.

“Spell everything out up front,” my father said. “You don’t want trouble down the road if this guy wants royalties or something.”

This particular night at the end of June, we were at Crabby Joe’s overlooking the boardwalk, and even before the specials had been read, our table was covered with papers and Post-its, biographies and articles, a scattering of pens. The waitress returned again and again, but no, we were not ready, we needed more time. We were talking
about the first vacation Clara and Brahms took together, in 1855, a time which Clara described in words like
rapturous
and
exquisite.
We were talking about the second vacation they took together in 1856, two weeks after Robert’s death: the ill-fated trip to Gersau. We were talking about the letter Clara sent to Brahms in 1858, in which she writes,
If only I could find longing as sweet as you do.
We were talking about the letters between Brahms and Clara in the 1860s, in which Brahms declares himself an “outsider” to Clara and her children. By then Clara had purchased a house in Baden-Baden, where she’d vacation with the children each summer. Frequently, Brahms joined them despite moody outbursts that left Clara in tears.

“There was a small demon in him,” Clara’s youngest daughter, Eugenie, would recall, “and who does not know from experience that we are apt to let it off against those of whose affection we can always be sure? This was the case with him. What Brahms loved in our mother above everything, above even her artistic understanding, was her great heart; he could be sure of its love and forgiveness even if he were to let loose with a legion of demons.”
^*

“He wants to be close, he can’t stand to be close,” Hart said, closing his edition of
Erinnerungen
. “I tell you, Jeanette, there are things about men and women that do not change. She welcomes him in, he shoves her away. She kicks him out, and then he wants to be close again—”

Hart passed me an airmail parcel. Inside was a copy of
Aus dem Kreise Wieck-Schumann,
^*
a slender, bitter recollection penned by Clara’s half sister, Marie.

Instantly I forgave him everything. “Where did you get this?”

“Friederike sent it to me. Thursday, I must catch the red-eye to L.A. I’ll take a look at it then.”

“What’s in L.A.?”

“A conference I must attend.” He reached for my journal. “May I?”

“A conference on what?” I said, but he was writing notes beside my own in dark, meticulous pen. I thought of Friedrich Wieck writing in Clara’s diary, composing first-person entries as if his voice and his daughter’s were one and the same.

I’d never allowed anyone to read my journals.

Much less write in them.

After dinner, we walked along the boardwalk. The sun was still high, but the air remained humid, thick. A sour smell rose from the beach. Hart was talking about the fuel crisis, about the Bush administration’s isolationism, about sea turtles. He was talking about a woman he’d dated who
disliked wearing shoes. He was talking about the weekend weather forecast, which didn’t look good in Orlando, but was promising south of Miami. He belonged to a private glider club there—maybe I’d like to come with him? He owned shares in an ASK 21 there, a two-seater, much nicer than the Blanik.

“How did you get your name?” I asked, interrupting the torrent of words.

“I am named for a grandfather,” Hart said. “And you?”

“But
Hart
?” I said, refusing to be distracted. “Is that the usual nickname for Reinhardt?”

“Lauren started calling me that.” A gambling boat was making its way out to sea; we stopped to watch its progress.

“Because of how much she loved you?”

“Because she thinks I have none.” Hart bent to touch my forehead with his own. “Where does it go, the good feeling between us?”

“Between you and me?” I said, surprised.

“You and me, sure. You and your Cal. Me and Lauren.”

“It doesn’t have to go anywhere.”

“Ah, Jeanette. It is always the same thing.”

“It wasn’t the same thing for Clara and Brahms.”

I tried to put my arms around him, but he sidestepped me awkwardly, angrily, hopping down off the boardwalk and onto the sand. “You have done a lot of research on your Clara,” he said. “As a woman, perhaps, you understand her better than I. But I am a man and I can assure you, what happened between them is no mystery. Listen to how Brahms writes to her:
Do not ever throw away a pretty ribbon from your hat, or anything of that sort, but give it to me so I may tie it around your letters.
^*
How long could any man, especially at that age, be satisfied with letters and ribbons?”