Seventeen

Suzanne finds the porch light on—an unusual thoughtful detail from Petra—and Petra reading in the living room wearing underwear, tee-shirt, and slippers, her hair loose and her face clean. Suzanne registers the house’s distinctive smell, a smell she notices only when she has been away for more than a day.

Petra stands and embraces her. “Thank god you’re home. I’m not cut out to be a single mother.”

Suzanne almost says, “But you are a single mother.” Instead she says, “You’re a great single mother. Adele feels lucky to have you.”

“I’m trying, but I’m a disaster. I don’t know what I’d do without you. And Adele missed you like crazy. It’s like you’re the mother and I’m the father.”

“What does that make Ben?”

Petra shrugs and follows Suzanne to peek at Adele sleeping and then to the main bedroom. “So tell me everything about this mysterious session work.”

Her back turned to her friend as she sorts through the suitcase on her bed, Suzanne says, “I kind of lied to you. There was another reason I went to Chicago.”

Petra laughs. “Finally you’re having an affair!”

Suzanne shudders, restraining tears, holding back her desire to tell Petra every single thing. She wants to tell her about the time Alex took her to hear the all-Argentinean program at Frank Gehry Hall, about holding his hand while Renee Fleming sang Strauss in a darkened Carnegie Hall, about watching the awkward left hands of aspiring conductors at a conductors institute in South Carolina until they were laughing so hard they had to leave. Most of all she wants to tell Petra about the night Alex made good on his promise of a private performance by the world’s most celebrated violinist.

“I was just kidding, of course.” Petra hops on the bed, her hair falling easily around her shoulders. She leans back on Ben’s side of the bed.

Suzanne puts her dirty clothes in the small hamper in the corner, stows her earrings in the jewelry box in the top drawer of her nightstand. “Why ‘of course’?”

“Oh, give me a break. I know you. But something’s up. What?”

Instead of telling her the Felder story, Suzanne tells her the easier truth that Alex Elling’s widow has commissioned her to complete and orchestrate a posthumous concerto. She says it in a plain voice, planning to attribute any quaver or false note to her travel fatigue.

Petra’s response stings: “Why would she ask you?”

“Because it’s for the viola, because I played under him once. Because … I don’t know.”

“But you don’t have any composition credits to speak of. Of course you should have some, but it’s really weird that she would pick you without them.”

Now Suzanne shrugs. “Maybe she’s crazy, I don’t know. And maybe I’m crazy, too, because I told her I’d do it.”

“Good for you.” Petra’s smile is fast and wide. “Good for you!”

Suzanne spins the empty suitcase onto the floor and lies down next to Petra. “Maybe it will be the start of something big. I need something new, something to change.”

“Yeah, I feel like that a lot. I wish I knew what was going to happen with the quartet. Oh, oh, oh.” Petra slaps the bed several times. “I need to warn you: Anthony is going crazy with the online promotion.”

“Does he know he’ll be rubbing elbows with the Neue Musik people?”

“He read an article about the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra live-posting a performance.”

Suzanne imagines Alex’s reaction to that news. Her smile is stopped by the recurring thought she keeps pushing away: I didn’t really know him. “Please tell me,” she says, “that he’s not planning that for Black Angels.”

“Not yet, thank god. But the rehearsal, promotion, stuff like that. He’ll have to get people to notice him, of course, which I’m sure he plans to use you for.”

Suzanne measures the information, the anxiety she feels in her throat. She has always been very careful not to self-promote, not directly, and she enjoys the conversations she has online. They make her feel in touch with some larger endeavor, part of a bigger music—a hint of the way she felt when she played with a traveling symphony and at receptions when Alex introduced her to people she never would have talked to otherwise. Yet Ben may be right that musicians have no business marketing themselves in words at all. Perhaps they should admit that they make something almost no one wants and that those few who do want it already know where to find it.

Not wanting to talk this kind of shop, she asks, “What about Adele? Have you decided?”

Petra turns to face her, head propped on one hand, tucking her hair behind her ear with the other. “I’m going ahead. I asked her, and she said she wants to hear us play.”

“She’s a little girl, though, honey. You’re the grown-up.”

Petra nods, her expression sad. “But she’s smarter than I am, and she’s old enough to know what she wants. And what she wants is what I want, too. I don’t want to make her do it, but I want her to do it.”

“You’re doing the right thing. Inasmuch as there is a right thing, you’re doing it.”

Suzanne’s eyes film with tears, and soon Petra is crying.

Through her crying Petra says, “When you’re young you always think there’s a right thing to do. You’re obsessed with making the right choice, like your fate is going to go in one direction and you could jump on the wrong boat and get it all wrong.”

The twin bedside lamps splash imperfect circles on the ceiling, casting the air straw yellow.

“But then you learn,” Petra continues, “that there’s no right answer. Just this thing or that, and the things you do and the things that happen to you add up to whatever they add up to, and you never know if whatever good or bad comes your way is because of some particular thing you did.”

“I think I followed that,” Suzanne says. “And I think the most valuable thing you forfeit when you make a choice is knowing what would have happened if you’d decided differently.”

She holds her friend, lets her cry into her shoulder and neck, breathing in the clean smell of her shiny hair.

“I’m going to need even more help, though,” Petra whispers. “It’s going to take a lot of therapy and work. Driving to Philadelphia. Working with Adele every night. Eventually she’ll have to change schools, and that’s going to be hard. I can’t do it without you. I’m sorry because I know it’s not fair, but I really can’t.”

“You don’t have to do it without me, and fair doesn’t enter the equation anyway. What’s fair? I love Adele.”

“Things could change, though. Ben could want to move. Or the quartet could fail.” She laughs through her crying, “Anthony could single-handedly ruin us with his ‘online presence.’”

“There aren’t many guarantees in life, Petra, but I promise that I’ll always be your friend, and I’ll always do anything I can for Adele.”

Petra sits bolt upright. “No matter what?”

Suzanne nods and coaxes her back down. “No matter what.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Petra whispers, and Suzanne hushes her.

When Suzanne awakes in the middle of the night, dressed and on top of the covers, the lamp on her side of the bed is on, but the other has been switched off. Petra huddles against her, shivering in her tee-shirt and underwear. Without waking her, Suzanne works them both under the covers and darkens the room.

Facing away from her friend, toward the wall she can no longer see, she replays the night in San Francisco, the story she wanted to tell Petra but did not.

Almost exactly one year after his prediction that Felder would become the world’s most celebrated violin soloist, Alex made good on his promise for a private performance. He was guest-conducting the San Francisco Philharmonic, Felder as soloist, and Alex arranged an invitation for Suzanne to play with Symphony Silicon Valley the same week. Their last night, the night after they were both through with their musical responsibilities, Alex insisted that they leave the room to eat. “We’ll get depressed if we stay in all night. We’ll just be thinking about the airport.”

Back at the room, Alex made her wait in the hall. When he opened the door to let her in, she heard music. A single violin, unmistakably live. Alex put his fingers to his lips, and she entered quietly. In front of the floor-to-ceiling windows sparkling with the city’s lights sat Joshua Felder, blindfolded and bowing his elegant way through Bach’s Sonata 3 in C major. Alex pulled her hand, leading her to the edge of the bed, perhaps four feet from Felder. Suzanne studied the line of the young man’s jaw, the whiteness of his skin, the dark hair spilling over his blindfold. She gasped when he finished the piece and began the Bach-inspired violin sonatas from the humbly born Belgian composer Eugène Ysaÿe, perhaps her favorite violin music of any period. She felt Alex’s breath in her ear: “He’s going to play all six.”

Alex pushed her back on the made bed and slowly, quietly unbuttoned her blouse, undid her skirt, disrobed her completely. Again he put his finger to her mouth and she nodded, yes, they would make love in silence, the only sound Felder’s beautiful Stradivarius. She closed her eyes and listened to the long notes as Alex moved his hands and mouth down her body, slowly, taking time everywhere. She sealed her lips so she would not moan or cry out and felt that the entire world was touch and sound. She wanted time to pause, a permanent, exquisite caesura of pleasure.

When Felder finished the sixth Ysaÿe sonata, he set his bow on his knee for only a moment before lifting it and striking into Paganini’s caprices. Alex lay on top of her, settling his full weight on her in his attempt to be quiet as he entered her and they made love, though certainly Felder knew what was happening. The only mystery could be her identity. They moved together until a few bars before what Alex must have known was the end of the evening’s program, when he came violently, now making no attempt at silence.

Later, after Alex escorted the still blindfolded musician from the room, he said, “That’s something I’ve always wanted to do. At my age I’m not willing to wait much longer to do things I’ve always wanted to do.”

“But how did you convince him?”

“I have something he wants, and I have something on him.” Alex smiled, looking ruthless.

“I like being with a man who can call in favors,” Suzanne said. “Thank you.”

“I wanted to give you something you would never forget. Years from now, when you’re an old woman and I’m long dead, you can sit on the porch and tell your acolytes the story of the night you made love to the handsome conductor while Joshua Felder played the violin blindfolded.”