Two-Part Inventions (8 page)

“Go ahead, then. Don't be afraid.”

“No.” She got up from the bench. She wouldn't, not in front of the girls. The music was from another part of her life, her real life that had nothing to do with these girls. They might even laugh at her. It was as if she were two different people, the one who played the piano and the one who went ringing doorbells with them, and the second one was a distorted shadow of the first, a role she had to play because she was a child and that was what children had to do. The piano was something only she could do. Yet here in this room the Two-Parts of her were both asserting themselves, and she didn't know what to do with them, how to reconcile them. This man wasn't like the
aunts and uncles her father made her perform for, who didn't really understand the music, merely admired her dexterity, as if she were some sort of acrobat. He was different, he seemed genuinely interested. She had a dim sense that this room and this man came from her future, while the girls, with their petty intrigues and gossip and collection boxes, would soon drift into the past.

“Okay, maybe not right now. But you can come back and try it anytime you want. Just ring the bell,” he said, smiling over at her, as if the others had vanished and they two were alone.

“You wouldn't dare,” said Alison after they were back out on the porch, nibbling the last of the cookies and climbing over to the next house.

“I might,” said Suzanne nonchalantly. “He seemed nice.”

“That's because there were four of us,” said Eva. “You don't know what he might do alone. We can't tell anyone we went inside. It has to be our secret. Did you see those crazy paintings? I went up to the bathroom on purpose, to look in the bedroom. There's this enormous bed with a purple cover. Lots of books. And more pictures. One of Jesus Christ on a cross with a big hole in his side and blood coming out. It was really gross.”

Three days later, in the late afternoon, Suzanne told her mother she was going to Paula's house and rang Richard Penzer's doorbell. He welcomed her as if they were old friends and he'd been expecting her. The bassoon was out of its case, lying on the couch, and a music stand was set up nearby.

“Did you come to try out the piano? Go right ahead.” He waved her over. “I have some things to do in the kitchen.”

He left her alone in the room with the pictures and the colored
lampshades and the bassoon, and she felt at home, as if this were a place that had been waiting for her, like a cottage in the woods in a fairy tale, and she was grateful that she'd finally found it.

 

 

With so many observers on the block, there was no way of keeping her visits to Richard a secret. Gerda scolded her as she had expected and wanted her to promise never to return to number 23. But Suzanne, who felt as excited as if she had discovered a magic kingdom right across the street, allayed her mother's fears by repeating that he was a music teacher, he taught at Hunter College in the city, and no, he never touched her, only helped her with her lessons and played records for her and taught her things; and no, there were never any other people there.

This last was not entirely true. A few times she had come upon a friend of his in the living room—from the doorway she could hear an opera on the phonograph, and she saw the man drinking something amber-colored out of a small glass. Richard had greeted her kindly but asked if she could come back the next day. And twice she had found him with two friends, playing music. One man was at the piano and the other played the violin; Richard was holding his bassoon when he opened the door. He invited her in to listen, but the first time she was shy and backed away. The second time she went in and sat on the couch while they played. She had never heard chamber music before; it was a revelation—had she been familiar with sex, it would have struck her as a new kind of caress. They were playing a Beethoven trio, Richard told her. He was playing the
part meant for a cello. She looked puzzled and so he explained what a cello was and said that another day he would teach her about all the instruments in the orchestra. Meanwhile she should simply listen to the way the three instruments played together, like tossing a ball back and forth, or, better still, as if they were having a conversation, asking questions and answering them, or sometimes saying the same thing in their different voices. When they were finished she sat dazzled by what she had heard.

The pianist's name was Arthur and the violinist was called Dan, though at first she was too shy to call them by name. Mostly she called grown-ups, her teachers and her parents' friends, Mr. and Mrs., although she had gotten used to calling Richard by his name. When they were done they played a few parts over slowly to show her how they fit together, and then Arthur let her sit next to him on the piano bench and showed her the music. She even played a few simple measures with the violin and the bassoon, and afterward the three of them clapped. She flushed with pleasure and curtseyed as if she were on a real stage, making them all laugh. This was real, this was the reality she had been looking for. It existed—these men were proof—and she was a part of it.

 

 

About a year after she met Richard, Suzanne was summoned by her father to play for Aunt Faye and Uncle Simon, who had dropped in on a Sunday afternoon. They were her favorite aunt and uncle. Faye, her father's sister, was a seamstress with a merry, lilting voice that sounded operatic, flitting rapidly up and down the scale. She was plump and chatty, as lively as her
brother was taciturn. Often she brought Suzanne embroidered blouses and once a skirt in a paisley pattern that twirled when she spun around. Uncle Simon could wiggle his ears—though by now she had outgrown her delight in that—and could recite lines of poetry in his faintly British accent. Suzanne loved hearing him come up with his quotations. On their last visit, when her mother and Aunt Faye were discussing what to do about a cousin who was still unmarried at thirty, Uncle Simon cleared his throat dramatically and said, “Full many a rose is born to blush unseen, and waste its fragrance on the desert air.” Faye slapped his hand mockingly and said it wasn't over yet for that rose, there was still time. And when Suzanne's father boasted about how well his furniture business was doing—the new housing development a few blocks from the store was a godsend—Uncle Simon muttered, “Put money in thy purse.”

Joseph Stellman was immune to his brother-in-law's wit and found his charm negligible, because (as he told Gerda after their visit), Simon could barely make a living as a clerk in a men's haberdashery. “If Faye didn't keep working they'd be up shit creek” was how he put it. “He sits on a stool and reads. The customers have to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention.”

When she heard her father's voice calling her from downstairs, Suzanne recoiled. She was in the middle of a Nancy Drew mystery,
The Quest of the Missing Map
, and the plot was at a crucial point: Nancy had found the decisive clue and was about to tell Ned who the villain was and how they would trap him.

“Don't you hear me?” He was halfway up the stairs. “I want Faye and Simon to hear that new piece you learned.” Now
he was in the doorway. Suzanne looked up, her finger in her place.

“You know the one I mean, with the fancy runs? Is it Bach? Or Beethoven?”

It was a Chopin étude she'd begun working on two weeks ago, the third. Mrs. Gardenia said it was a good place to begin Chopin. “Take it slowly,” she said, “one hand at a time, before you try them together. Just do up to here—” she pointed. “That's enough for a start.” But Suzanne had played the two hands together on the third day of practicing and gone further than Mrs. Gardenia indicated. The other night her father had stood behind her, listening, then patted her head. “Very nice, very nice.” She grew hot with scorn; she hardly knew the piece yet. The dynamics were shaky and she still stumbled over the chromatic chords. He didn't even know what he was hearing.

“I just started that one, Dad. I can't do it right yet.”

“It sounded fine to me. Come on, put the book away. You can go back to it later.”

She protested, he insisted, until she followed him sullenly down the stairs. He always won. He was still stronger.

She played badly, as she knew she would, even worse than she expected because she was stiff with tension and rage. Her fingers faltered over the runs and botched the chords, even the timing. She stopped at a chord resolution—he'd never know the piece wasn't really over—and, resisting the impulse to end with an infantile bang on the keys, let her hands grip the edge of the bench instead. There was silence. No one could pretend this had been a stellar performance.

“Well, now, that wasn't bad, considering how difficult it is. Chopin, right? One of the études?” Uncle Simon said.

She nodded without looking up. She wouldn't let them see her tears. “I told you,” she murmured. “I told you I didn't know it yet.”

“All right, all right, let's sit down and have something to eat,” said Joseph.

At the table Uncle Simon nudged her and began making up a limerick about Chopin—“There was a composer named Chopin, who wrote études quite hard for the left hand . . .”—but she couldn't bring herself to smile.

As soon as they left, she grabbed her jacket and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” her mother asked.

“Out.” She slammed the door before Gerda could say anything more.

Luckily there were no unfamiliar cars parked in front of Richard's house. Sometimes on weekends his friends came over with their instruments. But today she found him alone, with an opera coming from the radio.

“
Tosca
,” he said. “Come on in and sit down. She's just about to throw herself over the balcony, it's only a few more minutes.”

To her surprise, she was able to concentrate on the music, and it calmed her. The soprano's voice was powerful and full of grief, but contained, like liquid poured through a channel. Suzanne wasn't sure what the grief was about, but it made her own seem much smaller. Afterward, Richard told her how Tosca had been tricked into thinking the man she loved was dead, and so she jumped off a parapet.

“It's great to watch it onstage,” he said. “She jumps and vanishes and you really think the singer is dead. That was Maria
Callas. She's incomparable, of course. What's the matter? You don't look too good.”

As she recounted playing the étude so badly, she wept tears of frustration. If she could sing, she would sing like that woman, proclaiming her fury and wretchedness.

“Why didn't you play something else, something you knew? If, as you say, he can't tell one piece from another.”

“He wanted that one. I don't know. I didn't think of it. It's like he . . . sort of casts a spell on me. Maybe I wanted it to come out bad, just to show him. I can't play it yet, but I think I made it worse almost on purpose.”

“If your father would listen to me I'd tell him to cut it out. But it's all he can do to say hello on the street. Tell me, why does it matter so much? I mean, it's your aunt and uncle. You know them. They know you can play, and even if you couldn't . . . so what if you mess up one time?”

“I don't know. I just can't. When I play for people I have to sound good. It's not just the music. It's as if they're listening to
me
—I mean me the person. If the music is bad, then I'm bad.”

“If you think that way, you'll make it all harder. The music is itself—you can't harm it no matter what you do. You're only the interpreter. You do your best. If people are judging you—and you seem to think they always are—all they can judge is that you haven't learned the piece properly yet. It's not your whole identity.”