Twenty-six

After Suzanne completes her work on the concerto and sends it off to Olivia, she returns to full-time practice. When playing alone, she finds a new lightness and pleasure in her instrument, its look and feel, smell and sound. She plays whatever she feels like, including some frothier baroque tunes, some Roma dance music, Debussy, moving from one thing to the next according to mood or whim.

With the quartet she practices portions of the regular repertoire, and the members discuss their next moves. Anthony is working on the marketing of the Black Angels CD and has accepted some invitations that suggest the quartet’s swelling reputation. They agree to a performance in Montreal and to appear at festivals in Salt Lake City and Austin. As they consider their future programs, Petra continues to advocate for the Ravel quartet and Anthony shows signs of softening on the point. Domestic bliss has made Daniel unusually easygoing. “Sounds good,” he says a lot, regardless of who is proposing what. One day Petra suggests a Christmas CD, just to see if he’s listening, but he catches on and grins, giving Petra what can only be called a bear hug. “I’m not quite that far gone. Linda has made me happy but not stupid.”

The news arrives by certified letter when Suzanne is home alone, practicing. She is playing Hindemith and eyeing the angle of her elbow crook when the doorbell rings. Her arrangement of Alexander Elling’s Viola Concerto, Op. 1, has been accepted into the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. If she accepts the invitation—and they hope she will—there will be breakouts and rehearsals, analysis and feedback, instruction in the business of composing, dinners with other aspiring composers. At the end of the grueling week will be a full public performance of “the work.” Compliments of Olivia’s industriousness and cunning, Suzanne will hear the composition, fully orchestrated.

She rereads the letter, her body tingling. It is the sort of letter she fantasized about receiving when she was younger, when she still thought she might make her way as a composer as well as a performer. It is Alex’s piece that has been accepted, she understands, and the weight of his name is heavy. But the concerto is her work. too, in its interpretation and execution. Suzanne wrote the second line, did much of the orchestration.

Yet when her excitement slides away, soon, the emotion gripping her is cold, quaking fear. Not insecurity or stage jitters but true fright—the terror of free fall. Olivia may be trying to destroy her, beginning with her marriage, but only beginning there and ending in something even larger and darker. That night Suzanne wakes over and over, each time in a sweat, seeing every hour the clock passes at least once: eleven fifty-eight, twelve sixteen, one forty, two ten, two fifty-six, three twenty, four o’clock. She rises for the day shortly after five, exhausted but relieved to be out of bed, away from the twisted sheets, away from the sound of Ben’s even breathing as he sleeps through the hot night.

Her eyes and skin are scrubbed raw by the insomnia; her logic is untrustworthy. Fortunately there is no practice scheduled. Not good for much else, she decides to make breakfast for the others. She’ll need to tell them about Minnesota, but not today. She’ll think about it more and make the announcement when her mind is working more swiftly. Now she concentrates on the simple work in the kitchen. She brews coffee, relieved by its smell as it begins to drip. She cuts into a pineapple, slowly, rendering it into matching cubes. She slices apple, squeezing lemon over the slices so they do not brown. She washes blueberries and blackberries, cuts up a kiwi. Next she mixes pancake batter, stirring in cinnamon and walnuts to make the recipe her own.

An hour or so later she is eating the food with Ben, Petra, and Adele. Suzanne smiles at everyone, foists seconds, pushes fruit, but only Adele seems happy with the breakfast. Ben’s aloofness is at its most marked. He and Petra do not look at each other and only occasionally look at her. Petra and Adele sign a little but not much. Petra looks haggard, as she often does these days. Her eyes are shallow on her face but shadowed by dark spots where they meet her nose. Underneath are bruised circles. Her normally straight back slumps as she sits. Suzanne feels fatigue pull on her own spine so lifts her posture and pulls back her shoulders, refusing to curl into the deep tiredness she feels.

When Petra returns from taking Adele to the summer camp at her school, she suggests a long walk. Suzanne begs off to practice a little and then nap, but her friend presses. “Please.”

They cut down the 206, keeping tight to the left side of the road until they can peel off into the woods surrounding Mountain Lake. The day is hot but not so humid as it has been, and walking feels good.

Suzanne quickens her step. “Let’s make it feel like exercise,” she says. “Maybe we’ll outpace the mosquitoes.”

They find the path that circles the lake. It’s a workday for most people, and they pass almost no one. A middle-aged woman jogging, two young guys fishing the lake with simple line poles, a man running a border collie.

Suzanne waits for Petra to talk—there must be something behind her uncommon invitation—but Petra just walks on. They cross the mucky section on the lake’s far side, near where an icehouse sat until it was taken down last summer.

“This lake was put here for ice; did you know that?”

Petra shakes her head. “I should come here more. It’s nice.”

“Back when I was trying to run, I came here a lot. Petra,” Suzanne starts, thinking she should talk to Petra about her drinking, which is beginning to take an obvious toll on her physically as well as emotionally. But she is so tired herself she is afraid she will get it wrong, and she is in no position to give anyone advice about how to live their lives. Maybe Daniel can say something to Petra, can talk to her about how he stopped and how he feels.

“I was up all night,” Petra whispers.

“Me, too. Full moon?”

Petra shakes her head. “New moon, totally dark.”

The path takes them away from the lake and then back around, up a long hill. The path widens considerably, though the foliage is thick on either side and in places obscures the lake below. Suzanne feels the climb in her hamstrings, her gluteal muscles, her expanding lungs. Maybe she will start running again, when she gets back from Minnesota. It feels good to be moving, to be breathing a little hard, to be outside.

As the path narrows near its end, where it will drop them back near the 206, Petra asks, “Have you talked to Ben much lately?”

“Every day, Petra. I talk to him every day.”

“I mean really talk to him. Mr. Aloof.”

Suzanne stops and turns to face her, but Petra keeps walking, saying over her shoulder, “You need to talk to him.”

Suzanne opens her mouth to ask Petra what she’s talking about, but Petra is already across the road and walking fast toward home. Despite the day’s heat, despite her physical exertion, Suzanne’s skin goes cold and she shivers, her stomach a core of ice.