Two-Part Inventions (30 page)

 

That summer she and Phil treated themselves to a trip abroad. Phil left the business in the hands of the assistant he'd hired two years ago, after the work became too much to handle on his own. Naturally, Phil had offered to arrange concerts for Suzanne—his contacts had now spread across the ocean: Kosinski, for one, would surely help him out, after Phil had gotten him off to such a good start in the United States with those recordings of the Chopin nocturnes years ago. And there were others like him, in Italy and Austria and Russia. But Suzanne said no, she wanted this to be a true vacation, though she would like to visit the conservatories she had heard so much about. This, too, was easily arranged. With the reputation she had earned from her recordings with Tempo, and from the online reviews and interviews, she was invited to conduct master classes at the Moscow Conservatory and the Vienna Conservatory. There were two students in Moscow who she told Philip were extraordinary; Philip asked them to stay in touch and consider visiting the States.

Soon after they returned home she met Richard for lunch
in an outdoor restaurant across from the park. Richard lived on Central Park West now, with his latest lover, a younger composer who taught at Hunter, just as he himself had once done. In love with himself, Suzanne thought, a younger incarnation.

“You're looking wonderful,” he said. “Are things going well?”

She told him about their trip. “Imagine,” she said, “the first time I've been to Europe. At my age! Except for those few contests, I mean, when I hardly saw a thing, I was in such a fog. We did all the touristy things, the Trevi fountain, Big Ben, the Louvre. It was glorious. And I met some wonderful musicians in Moscow. Of course, we needed a Russian translator.” At that she immediately thought of Elena and regretted even this remote allusion. Fortunately, their salads were set in front of them and they were silent while the waiter fussed.

“Well, good,” Richard said with a crooked smile. “Meanwhile, I've been reading a few interviews with you. I never knew you studied at the Paris Conservatory. Nadia Boulanger? How did you manage that while you were across the street from me the whole time?”

“Oh, come now. Are you scolding again? Like you used to? I didn't think it would do any harm to make myself sound slightly more interesting.”

“And in another one you studied in Vienna. Don't you imagine some of the same people read both magazines?”

“So? They'll be slightly puzzled, is all. I'll be enigmatic.”

“That doesn't sound like you at all. I hear the voice of Philip behind this.”

“What's wrong with that? He always has good ideas about promotion, that kind of thing.”

“Do you think lying is a good idea?”

“Do you know, you sound more like my mother now than you ever did twenty years ago?”

“And do you remember I told you your mother wasn't always wrong?”

She looked at him ironically from under lowered lids, like a chastised but still naughty schoolgirl.

“All right, I won't sound like a schoolmaster. Sorry. But seriously, Suzanne, it's not a good idea. Someone's sure to notice. They'll spread rumors—you know how fast they fly on the web—and soon they'll get suspicious.”

“I have been to the Paris Conservatory, actually. Just last month. I visited them all. I think I phrased it in such a way that it might sound as though . . .”

“Oh, if you're into sophistry we'd better talk about something else. Your husband may go for that, but not me. So tell me what your plans are now. The Rachmaninoff CD was fantastic, by the way. You're sounding better all the time. How are you feeling?”

When she got home she reread the interviews in the online magazines and the two in print. She had only skimmed them before. What did it matter what they said about her life? What mattered was her playing. But when she'd read through them, it did seem as though she'd contradicted herself a good deal.

“Phil,” she said, as she stirred spaghetti in a large pot. “Do you really think it was okay to tell all those stories in the interviews? Richard thinks maybe I shouldn't have done it.”

“Oh, Richard thinks this and Richard thinks that.” He rarely showed anger, and even now he didn't raise his voice, but it had a sharp edge of bitterness. “Where do you think you'd be if you'd listened to him all along?”

“I don't know where I'd be. I didn't see him for a long time after we married. He never gave me practical advice, I mean, not since I was a child.”

“I didn't mean literally. Suzanne, you have to trust me in this. Have I ever steered you wrong?” He came over to her at the stove and put his arms around her waist from behind.

“I don't think so. But it's not over yet. Watch what you say—I'm standing in front of a pot of boiling water.” She laughed and leaned her head back as he ran his hands over her breasts. “Please, I really need to drain this spaghetti.”

“Later, then.”

“Okay. Later.”

“Not much later. Like, how about you finish the spaghetti and we take a glass of wine to bed and eat afterward?” He was still caressing her as he spoke, and he put her hand on the front of his pants. She didn't want to wait either.

“Okay, okay. Just let me finish this. You think you're changing the subject, but I won't forget.”

“Oh, you will,” he whispered in her ear, congratulating himself on the clever way he was handling it all.

He was pulling at her clothes as they went up the stairs, and they hardly made it to the bed. She was as aroused as she used to be years ago when they first married.

It was over quickly and they were hungry. They ate the spaghetti and finished the bottle of wine on the screened-in back porch Phil had built. They'd both changed into shorts and shirts, and sat with the plates on their laps and their bare feet up on the railing. High above them a gibbous moon shone, that odd shape, not quite a perfect circle yet, unsettling, unfulfilled.

“Oh, you know what I heard the other day from Alec?” Alec was his assistant. “About Elena. She's getting married.”

“Married! Why didn't you tell me?”

“I'm telling you now.”

“I mean before. So, who's she marrying? A musician? You're not going to tell me it's her stepfather?”

“No, no, they didn't need to get married. They were already family. She's marrying an investment banker. Works for Lehman Brothers, I think.”

“I wonder how they met.”

“I haven't heard that yet. But no fear, she'll probably invite you to the wedding and you can ask her.”

“Me? If anything, she'll invite us. She wouldn't invite me separately.”

“Maybe not. But I've always felt she's still pissed at me.”

“What? You can't mean from high school?”

“Yes. Because I broke up with her.”

Suzanne shook her head. Let him think that, she thought, if it makes him happy. On the rare occasions when his name came up in college, Elena had spoken of him dismissively—he was not even worth her contempt. Superficial, she called him. She'd sent him on his way. Suzanne would never forget those harsh judgments. Surely by now Elena had changed her mind: Phil had done so well, and all on his own. But if it placated his male ego to imagine he'd been the one to end it, let him.

“I'm sure she's gotten over it by now,” Suzanne said, nudging his bare foot with her toe. “Especially as she's found an investment banker. She's certainly embraced the American dream, hasn't she?”

A
S HE'D PLANNED, Philip had turned a spare room of the house into a soundproof studio where he could work at night, editing his recordings, a small room Suzanne rarely entered, crowded with a console and screens and tape machines and wires, all a mystery to her. It was too small for recording, and so Suzanne kept going to his studio in New York. Over the next few years her work there was often as dazzling as ever, Philip said; remarkable, the reviewers called it. Philip allowed a few journalists from small magazines to come to the house for interviews—to show she was real, Suzanne always said jokingly when they arrived. To them she spoke less about her background and more about the music, her interpretations.

But she grew tired and frustrated ever more quickly. Philip was required to do more and more alterations on her recordings; it was occasionally necessary to substitute an entire movement from his vast library of recordings by other pianists. What worked best were recordings made in his own studio, with the same room sound, so he found himself bringing out CDs nominally by Suzanne that competed with his earlier issues. Or he had to seek out older recordings made in similar studios. All this required a good deal of legwork, but it was worth it, he
never doubted, for Suzanne. She was doing the best she could. It was not her fault that her powers were so uneven. If not for the bad luck of her illness, she could have been one of the great pianists of her generation.

For they had finally found a neurologist right in Nyack who had diagnosed Suzanne's mysterious on-and-off symptoms as a form of fibromyalgia. She was frightened when she first heard the words, then somewhat relieved when the doctor described the illness at length—elusive and difficult to diagnose—and said that hers was a relatively mild case. She was lucky that it hadn't progressed very far by this time—Suzanne was in her forties. If her luck held and she didn't succumb to depression again, it might not get much worse.

“We need to make clear,” said Phil, who of course had accompanied her to the appointment, “that my wife is an important pianist. A major artist in the middle of a successful recording career.” Suzanne shot him glances to make him stop, but to no avail. “She's been managing to play up to now, but we need to know the prospects for the future.”

“It's hard to predict with fibromyalgia,” the doctor said. A Chinese woman probably twenty years their senior, with a severe white coat and an array of diplomas on the wall, she seemed unfazed by Phil's boasting. “But I'd advise you, Mrs. Markon”—and here she turned back to Suzanne, who didn't interrupt to explain that she used her original name—“to go on as you've been doing, get exercise and plenty of rest, and, as I said, if you're lucky you'll be able to continue your work. I certainly hope so, and you should come in every couple of months so I can have a look.”

The doctor wrote out several prescriptions and though both reached for them, she handed them to Suzanne. “You're fortunate
that it hasn't affected your arms and hands any more than it has. I know it must sound odd to use that word, fortunate, in these circumstances, but you may come to see it that way once you get used to the idea.”

“Frankly, I'm relieved, in a way,” Suzanne said as they got into the car. “Not knowing is worse. At least I know it's real, it's not depression alone, or I'm not indulging myself. Did you think I was just, you know, avoiding . . .”

“Of course not,” said Phil. Although he had at times thought precisely that. His sympathy and encouragement had grown slightly worn and thin, like an old coat its owner is thoroughly tired of but can't afford to replace. Now he could be freshly sympathetic and useful; it was bad luck, nothing psychologically torturous or self-destructive. He must see that she kept playing as long as possible. In any event, the recordings could continue; by now they had an independent existence.

 

 

Months passed and Suzanne was no worse. Indeed, she seemed better, more energetic and lighter in spirit, since the doctor had given her condition a label. She still enjoyed cooking. One winter evening she'd made an elaborate cassoulet, and as she was setting it on the table she said nonchalantly, “You'll never guess who came over today. Elena.”