Heart and Soul (19 page)

“We're worried about you.”

He was silent, but his eyes glittered at me in the half-light.

“You're not well,” I said. “This thing with Nardigger … it's …”

He didn't let me finish, just hopped up again and started walking back and forth in front of the window. “You think it's unhealthy to fight back? That's the trouble with artists. We're taught to be passive, let the lawyers take care of us, and the agents and the managers, and never do anything for ourselves. That's healthy? No, Bess. For the first time, I'm standing up for myself and for the rest of us who've been at the mercy of the Nardiggers of this world.”

“Please sit down, David,” I said, “and don't get up until I've finished. I can't talk to you while you're bouncing around like this.”

He sat, but he kept checking his watch. “Do you have an appointment?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “No, I'm sorry, Bess. I don't mean to be rude, it's just that there's so much to do.”

“I want you to see someone about medication,” I said.

He stared at me.

“It's one or the other. Either you're way too excited or you're in a black mood,” I went on.

“Taking care of Nardigger will help that.”

I shook my head. “Just see someone. Mr. Balaboo gave me a name.”

But David leapt up again and turned on me in a fury. “You Americans, forever going to psychiatrists and popping pills. It's not the answer to everything. I tried medication and it made me into a lunatic…”

I stayed put, hoping that if I was calm I could get him to quiet down. “That was years ago. There are a lot more options now, tons more choices. They'll just make you normal again.”

That did it. “Normal! What's
normal
? Because I give a damn about injustice I'm a crazy man? I'm a creative personality, that's all. Look at Schumann. If he were alive today, they'd label him bipolar and pump him with Prozac until he couldn't write another note.”

“Oh, David.” Then I really did start to cry.

He stopped shouting and came to stand in front of me. “It's been a stressful period, I admit that. Maybe I'm a little irrational sometimes, but Bess, we're at a crucial point in our careers. We could become respected fixtures in the musical world, or we could disappear forever. We have to prove that we've got staying power. I feel responsible for that. I'm willing to work hard for that.”

“David, I'm pregnant.” It just fell out of me. It was the last thing I meant to say and probably the worst possible time to say it. I just couldn't hold it in anymore. I covered my face with my hands to keep from seeing what his eyes did with the news. Finally, after a long silence, I forced myself to look up at him. Even in the dark, I could see that his cheeks were wet. He dropped to his knees in front of me.

“Oh, Bess,” he said.

He wrapped his arms around me and laid his cheek against my belly. “Oh, Bess,” he said again. I can't tell you what it meant to feel him hold me that way again. All those lonely weeks seemed to melt away and I didn't want to move a muscle. Just let us stay like this for hours and days and months until the baby comes, and I knew I sounded like Pauline but I sent a silent thank-you to my little girl for bringing the man I loved back to me at last.

T
he next day, David seemed almost to forget that we had a baby coming. Every now and then, I would catch him looking at my belly with this puzzled look on his face. But we were so crazed in those days, recording in the studio, rehearsing and performing. It was easier to just keep my head down and shut up. I was preoccupied anyway with complete adoration of my baby. Angie asked me if I was going to have an amniocentesis, but it wasn't an issue for me. Even if this child had the chromosomes of a warthog, I wanted her. I was in love with her. I never felt lonely. I didn't even miss sex anymore. And if David was continuing his obsessive campaign to mess up Nardigger, he waged it when I wasn't around.

Then we were invited to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington. I suppose it should have been the highlight of my career. First of all, I'd never been in Washington, D.C. in my life. There'd been a tour in high school which I told my parents I signed up for. While my class headed south on the Jersey Turnpike, I was in a Ford pickup on my way to Albany, never mind why. So here was my chance to check out the sights, take a tour of the White House, see the Lincoln Memorial. Instead, all I wanted to do was shop for maternity clothes, which is what I did as soon as we were finished rehearsing. How strange that just a few weeks before, I was pestering David to hang out with me whenever we had a free second, hoping I could light a fire under him. He did ask me where I was going. When I told him shopping, he looked a little surprised, that's all.

What I remember most about that concert was red. Red all around, like the whole place was the inside of a gigantic raw heart. Mine and David's and the baby's and everybody's who was in pain and feeling too much. I even wore a red dress. We performed mostly the same program that we did in London with the addition of a reverie composed especially for us by the American contemporary Lorna Wiggins. It all went along just fine until the Bartok Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, which we'd played, oh, maybe a few thousand times, give or take. We'd got to the crescendo at measure 209 when David lost it. He suddenly seemed to be playing some other music entirely. He stared at me like he'd just had the shock of his life. If you suddenly got pushed onto the subway tracks, that's how you'd look, with a face screaming
Help me!

I didn't know what to do. I slowed down, which confused the instruments even more. There was a crazy jumble of sounds. I finally put my hands in my lap, at which point David got up, closed the lid to his keyboard, and left the stage.

I remember stumbling backstage, and somebody telling me that I had to go out there and entertain all those people who'd paid good money to come hear us, that there were senators and all kinds of important people there. I think I told that person that even if the Holy Ghost Himself was in the front row, I was out of there, excuse me very much.

Holding my belly all the way, I got back to the hotel suite by telling the cabdriver there was a twenty in it for him if he made it in seven minutes. David was tossing his stuff in his suitcase. I grabbed him and held on tight. He fought me for a minute but then he just went limp in my arms and cried and cried. My beautiful man with all that genius and talent in such despair and he couldn't even tell me why. All he kept saying was, “It's all coming apart. It's coming apart.”

I made him sit on the couch and take a sip of vodka, which calmed him a little. Then I turned off the phone, which had already started ringing nonstop, wrapped a blanket around him, and held on. He was cold, icy.

“What can I do, David?” I asked him.

He just shook his head.

“Do you understand how much I love you?”

He nodded.

“We can fix this,” I said.

He didn't answer. I looked into his eyes and felt like I was falling down a well into a dark place.

“I'd like to call a doctor,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Please, David.” I forced myself not to get worked up, but I was pretty scared.

“No. Just stay here.”

So I lay there on the couch with him until eventually we both fell asleep.

When I woke up about two
A.M.
, he was on the cell phone pacing back and forth. “Then get me a charter,” he said. “We can be in Milan in a few hours. You'll book us something for next week. They'll be happy, you know they will. They loved us in Milan.”

I was wearing a mashed version of my red gown. I wrapped the blanket around me and went over to him.

“What's going on?”

David put his hand over the mouthpiece. “I'm trying to explain to Balaboo that we have to go back to Europe right away. It's the only way to erase what happened onstage tonight.”

“I don't get it,” I said.

“Here, you tell him,” David said. “Tell him to hire us a private jet.”

“Mr. Balaboo?” I said.

“He's off the charts, Bess,” Mr. Balaboo's voice said. “He needs a hospital.”

“What's this about planes?”

“He says everything was wonderful in Milan and that you have to go back tonight. See if you can keep him quiet until I can get the doctor there. It took me a while to get a referral from his old psychiatrist in New York, but we should make it within the hour.”

“Please.” I hung up. Thank God. Mr. Balaboo was staying right in the same hotel, which made me feel a little less panicked.

“What?” David said.

“He's seeing what he can do. It's not that easy at two
A.M
., but you know Balaboo. He's resourceful.” I felt awful sort of lying to him, but I had no idea what to do. I just wanted him to calm down. “Sit with me on the couch for a minute while we wait, okay?”

He sat. I could see he was exhausting himself, as if he was trying to jump out of his own skin. I was afraid to talk, afraid that whatever I said would only agitate him more, so I sat beside him and massaged his fingers the way he had done for me so many times. He actually began to doze off again, and while he slept I looked at his face and remembered back to when we first met, how he'd taken me for tea at that little place on the West Side near Juilliard, how he showed up in Rocky Beach in his tuxedo, how he set about turning me into a musician with the confidence to perform in the world's most prestigious concert halls. How he had made me feel worthy of being loved and how he had given me the life that was now growing inside. There had been so many miracles. Couldn't we just have one more?

David wouldn't let Mr. Balaboo and the doctor take him away, but he agreed to stay in the hotel with me, until he felt better he said. So we did. He watched TV most of the time and when we talked, it was only about what we were going to eat (not much—he had no appetite) or the weather or the actors in the TV show. I learned very quickly that other subjects got him stirred up, including music, people in our lives, the past, the future, and hardest of all, the baby. He seemed to have forgotten that I was pregnant, and when I brought it up, he became almost wild.

“How could that happen? We didn't plan it. How could anybody bring a child into this world, Bess? Besides, we aren't even sleeping together.” And finally, “Are you sure it's mine?” After that one, I had to excuse myself to go into the john. I cried into the bath towel so he wouldn't hear me.

He was supposed to be taking medication, but I could never be sure he was really swallowing. He'd put the pills in his mouth and take a sip of water, but I had the feeling he was faking. I felt completely out of my depth. But he wouldn't hear of going to a hospital and he couldn't stand for me to be out of his sight. The things that sustained me were, (a) I would have done anything, anything, for him, and if that included living in this hotel for the rest of our lives, well, we'd adjust. And (b) the knowledge that I had a little dependent inside me kept me focused. I didn't have the luxury of falling apart.

We were in that hotel suite with the gray carpet and raspberry curtains for three and a half weeks. Mr. Balaboo was a brick through it all, flying back and forth between New York and D.C. and giving me breaks to get outside for walks. One of the hardest things was not being near a piano, so Mr. Balaboo arranged to let me practice on the cocktail lounge baby grand, not a bad little Baldwin. We got to know the room service people intimately. I remembered the first time I ever stayed in a hotel, with my mother and sister when we went to a family wedding in Massachusetts. Next to sex, I thought it was about the most perfect experience life had to offer. A bed that somebody else made, a sink that somebody else cleaned, and sweet-smelling soap all wrapped up like a Christmas present. Well, let me tell you, after twenty-five days at the Washington Dorset, I got plenty sick of it.

The last night, instead of sleeping in his own bed, David crept into mine and put his arms around me. I automatically curled into him, just like the old days, and soon we were making love again. It wasn't the same, partly because we were silent and we'd always been pretty talkative, telling each other what felt good and what we wanted. But that night I was afraid to say anything that might put him off or get him upset. Besides, David seemed to be in a dreamy state, like maybe he wasn't even totally awake. We both came at the same time like we were riding a gentle wave. He whispered that he loved me and then we fell asleep. It seemed like a gift.

But now I come to the really hard time. It's the part of my life that lives in a dark room where I try to keep the door shut tight. Every time I open it a crack, Mussorgsky's
Night on Bald Mountain
shrieks out, music brought to you straight from hell. But so many idiotic stupid hurtful things have been said. It's important to me that the truth be told and I'm the only one who can tell it—never mind the media gossips who seem to think they were standing in my panty hose through the whole thing.

T
he cramps woke me first thing in the morning. I snuck out of bed so I wouldn't wake David and headed for the bathroom. As soon as I stood up, about a gallon of water poured out of me. I got a bath towel, stuffed it between my legs, and called Mr. Balaboo. I'm not sure Mr. Balaboo ever really sleeps. He answered the phone at six
A.M
. like it was four in the afternoon.

“What's happened?”

“I need a doctor,” I said.

“He's worse?”

“It's for me. I'm pregnant and there's something wrong.”

There was silence. Then, in the kindest voice, “Bess-dahlink. How far along?”

“I'm in the second trimester. I think my water broke.”

“Call an ambulance and get them to take you to St. Francis' Hospital.”

“I don't want anyone to know.” The cramps were getting worse. I could feel myself leaking something that was warm and thick.

“Use the name Roberta Schuman. I'll alert the hotel manager, and then I'll meet you in the emergency room. Don't let them touch you until I get there.”

The last few times he'd come to Washington, Mr. Balaboo had stayed with a friend in Georgetown. The hotel life was getting to him, too. Poor Mr. Balaboo. First David, then me. I left a note on my pillow for David, threw a couple of things into a shopping bag, and waited in the living room of our suite for the ambulance. I could hear it coming, the high whine that sounded like a child crying. I made the medical team be quiet on account of David. I could see that they recognized me, but they didn't make a fuss and got me out of there in no time.

Mr. Balaboo was waiting at Emergency with a sleepy-looking woman who turned out to be Dr. Berke, the head of OB-GYN at St. Francis'. She reminded me of Eleanor Roosevelt, which was reassuring.

Look, the details aren't important. They tried hard to save my pregnancy. Everyone was incredibly kind. It didn't become news until much later that I had ever been pregnant. The press knew something had happened, but since they couldn't get the true scoop, they used their imagination: I'd OD'd on painkillers, I'd had a lumpectomy, I had a severe anxiety attack—one paper even said David had beaten me up, but I sued the bastards and made them pay for that fairy tale.

But I lost the baby. It was a girl. She would be four years old this month. I still think about her a lot. For a while, I didn't imagine I'd ever get over it. But of course you do, more or less, even if you don't forget your whole life long.

They kept me in the hospital for a week, mainly because Mr. Balaboo thought I needed a rest. I would wake up every day, look out at the gray sky, and wish I could go back to sleep so I wouldn't have to feel anything. Mr. Balaboo brought me CDs for my Discman, which was a help as long as I didn't listen to Chopin or Bach. Something about those two twisted my insides. And then one morning he showed up with the best present—David. I had just finished not eating my breakfast and was lying there trying to decide if I would (a) stare out the window, or (b) stare at the TV with no sound on. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door open and there he was, shiny and clean-shaven and dressed in a V-necked sweater and jeans. Whoever made up that saying “a sight for sore eyes” knew what they were talking about. Mr. Balaboo gave me a little wave from behind David's shoulder.

“I'll be out here,” he said, and closed the door.

David came over to the bed and sat down next to me. He reached out and stroked my hair. “My poor Bess,” he said.

“I lost our baby,” I said.

“Is there any pain?”

I couldn't answer that one, just put my hand on my heart to tell him,
Yes, here.

He took my hand. “They're going to let you out tomorrow,” he said. “Would you like to go back to New York?”

“David, do you think we did it? By making love. Do you think we killed our baby?”

“The doctor says no.”

“You asked, too?”

He nodded. “She told me that people ordinarily have intercourse straight through. I don't want you to think about that anymore. I want you to think of the future now.”

Tall order, I was thinking. But there he was, looking like his old self, his body relaxed and his face calm.

“You seem well,” I said.

“I'm sorry for what I put you through,” he said.

“You couldn't help it, David.”

I saw his eyes go dark for a second, like he was revisiting that terrible place, but then he blinked and it was gone. “Let's go home,” he said. “We'll get back to the music if you're up to it. Can you do that, Bess?”

“If you're there, I can do anything,” I said.

He leaned over and kissed me. I felt like he'd just reached into my chest, taken my broken heart in his hands, and put it back together again.

I was better when we first got back to New York—except for a daily crying jag, which usually hit me when I first woke up and remembered that I was no longer pregnant. David and I were sleeping in his bed, but although he was affectionate, there was no sex. I didn't care. I was having enough trouble getting a grip without unleashing that part of me. Besides, my hormones were all screwed up from the miscarriage. I wasn't even interested.

Mr. Balaboo wouldn't let David schedule any concerts, which I thought was wise given his recent meltdown. What we did was work every day on new music. It was therapeutic for both of us. David started feeling confident again. Without consulting Mr. Balaboo, he volunteered us for a benefit concert at Alice Tully Hall.

I was nervous about it, and so was Mr. Balaboo.

“After you fall from the log, you must get right back on,” David told me from across the pianos.

“I think you mean horse,” I said.

“Of course you can forget how to ride if you don't practice.”

“Okay, David,” I said, “we'll do the concert. Just don't let yourself get worked up.”

“I'll be perfectly fine,” he promised. “If I give you any trouble, put a little Valium in my toothpaste.”

His sense of humor had begun to return. Well, not exactly
his
sense of humor; but somebody's. I took it as a good sign. But the stronger David got, the shakier I became. I had lost a lot of weight and I was sad all the time. Not just about the baby, but about David and how things had changed between us. It was not my idea of a complete relationship, sleeping in the same room and never fucking even if I didn't feel like it. Just the fact that I didn't feel like it was depressing in itself.

At least the concert went off all right except I thought David was too hyper afterward. He was talking to the backstage fans in choppy little sentences and his eyes looked haunted. My old friend Mrs. Edelmeyer kept shooting him funny looks. After all, she'd been watching him for years and was as much a Montagnier expert as anyone.

“How's David?” she asked me, taking liberties as usual.

“Fine, why?”

“He's acting peculiar,” she said. “You sure he's all right? We have to keep an eye on him since the Washington fiasco.”

Enough already, I thought. “Will we see you at the piano series next fall?” I asked sweetly. She wasn't
that
thick, just wished me well and moved along. But her observation had made me nervous. I saw David talking to Patty Kopec, a friend of Itzhak Perlman's. Patty's head cranked around to me with a look that said,
Whassup with him?
I wanted to tell her how David had gone someplace else now and I couldn't get him back. How I missed him and our baby.

I knew what the rest of the evening would be like. I'd haul David away from the crowd so he didn't get too agitated. Then we'd go straight back to the apartment, wash up, climb into our opposite sides of the bed, and shout good night across the vast desert of white linen. I just couldn't face it. When Jake, Pauline, and Angie showed up, I asked them if I could please take them for a drink someplace.

They gave each other a group
Uh oh
look.

“Just for a nightcap,” I said. “I need a break from the scene.”

Yeah, I know, everybody is hearing drumrolls. The famous episode. Look, at least I didn't trash a hotel room like Johnny Depp—but he probably didn't do it anyway. If there's one lesson to be learned, it's that you can't believe what you read.

We went over to Eighth Avenue to a little bar I like called Monkeyshines. Corny name, but maybe that's why the snooty types stay away. Walking over, Jake talked about the wildlife preserve. He'd obviously found his life's work, being near the water and feeling like he was making a difference.

“I feel guilty about spending so much time out at Ben's,” Angie said. “The apartment goes empty for days, whenever I don't have class. He's throwing money away.”

“Ben's paying for two places?” Pauline asked. Even after all these years, she still hadn't gotten the hang of Angie's conversation.

“David's got it to throw away,” I said. But I didn't want to talk about him. I felt uncomfortable having left him, even though Mr. Balaboo said he'd make sure David didn't hop on any planes for Italy or anything.

The bar was overflowing with people, which suited me just fine. They looked like locals—artists, unemployed actors, off-duty cops, a real assortment. We found a table for two in a back corner and jammed ourselves in tight. I ordered us a round. Then I ordered another. I socked the stuff back in a big hurry and waved to the waiter.

“You sure you want another, Stallone?” Jake asked me.

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

“Bess, you're upset,” Pauline said.

“You got that right,” I said.

“Let's take her home,” Angie told Jake.

“I don't think so,” I said. My vodka arrived and down it went, smooth as an oil slick. I tapped the guy at the next table. “I haven't felt this good in months,” I explained to him.

“Aren't you Bess Stallone?” he asked. He had a ring through his eyebrow.

“That looks great. I want one of those.” I turned to Jake. “Got your Swiss Army knife?” He always had one in his pocket. “Let's give me one like this gentleman here.” I took the hoop out of my ear, gold with a diamond in it. David had bought the pair for me in Rome. “Use this.”

But my neighbor had passed the word around and the next thing I knew, a piano was produced from behind a crowd that had been using it to lean on.

“Come on, Bess, play something!”

“Sure!” I shouted. “Great thinking! Where's that vodka?”

So the next thing, I was sitting at that old upright piano banging away all the old favorites—Billy Joel, Madonna, the Beatles, the Stones. “Reminds me of Amadoofus!” I yelled to my group.

“How about some Beethoven?” somebody called out.

“In a minute,” I said. It was hotter than hell in there, especially in my long gown from the performance. Plus I was plenty drunk by then. “Gotta lighten the load,” I said, and started to strip. The crowd was screaming, “Go, Bess!” I got down to my underwear and when I was comfortable began playing a semi-rock 'n' roll version of the
Pathétique
Sonata. It works pretty well with a boogie beat, or at least it seemed that way in my trashed state. Roll over, Beethoven. And over and over.

Anyhow, I knew Jake was trying to get at me through the crowd. He made it finally, but not until a lot of flashbulbs went off.

Well, you've probably seen the photos. They were everywhere including on the Internet, with cool captions like
Bare Bess Flies Solo,
and
How to Misbehave without Dave.
I deserved them all. Furthermore, I never found that earring.

When I woke up with the beat from Ravel's
Bolero
splitting my head, David was standing over me shaking the
Daily News
in my face.

“Get up,” he said. I hardly recognized that cold voice.

“No,” I said. “I don't feel so hot.”

He reached down and yanked the covers off me. “Put on a robe,” he said.

I felt like he'd dumped ice water on me. I did as he said and followed him into the kitchen.

“How could you do this, Bess?” he said. “All these months building a career for us, and you've gone and spoiled it in one idiotic night.”

“I was just letting off steam. It was so damn hot in there.” I peered at the photo. There were some advantages to my recent lack of appetite—at least my tits weren't hogging the picture.

“Listen,” David ordered me. “‘Bess Stallone, half of the famous piano duo with David Montagnier treated a West Side bar to a rollicking ragtime rendition of Beethoven's “Moonlight Sonata.”'”

“It was the
Pathetique,”
I said.

“How do you expect that we'll ever be taken seriously now?” I saw that he couldn't have cared less if I'd peeled off the last layer and danced naked on top of the piano. It was the music he was freaked about.

“It's hard enough in this country,” he said, “trying to convince the musical establishment that a two-piano team has something important to offer. You've turned us into a joke.”

He ripped the photo into shreds and spun around to face the window like I was too repulsive to even look at.

“I'm sorry, David,” I said. “I was feeling bad. I just needed something … something fun. I needed to laugh.”

He turned and spit his words at me like they were poisonous darts flying out of his mouth. “You with your needs. Music requires sacrifice. Did you expect an ordinary life? We tried that and look where it got us. We got so obsessed with one another that we completely lost our focus.”

“It was never ordinary,” I said.

But he didn't hear me. He just kept shooting holes in me. “It's not possible to get away with it, Bess. The world notices. And then you went and got pregnant, for Christ's sake! And here I was thinking now that you've miscarried, we'd have a chance to recover the ground we lost.”