Two-Part Inventions Read online

  But there were spells when she was still plagued by the mysterious symptoms no one could diagnose. Every couple of weeks she would spend a few days in bed, achy, weary, and when she came to the studio she could rarely play in top form for more than an hour and a half. She was willing to come back for more repeats, but most of the time Phil didn’t push her. He didn’t want to wear her out or discourage her.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” she said. “I have no energy anymore. I should be able to do this. At school I could play for hours at a stretch. Do you think I’m getting lazy?” She cocked her head and gave a wistful smile. “Or maybe just plain crazy.”

  “Of course not. Don’t even think such things. You’re a little down, that’s all. Maybe it’s the rainy weather.” They had just finished a takeout pizza after a tiring session in the studio.

  “Come on, weather never stopped me from doing a Schubert sonata. I was stumbling all over the place.”

  “That’s okay. I can fix those parts.”

  “What do you mean, ‘fix’?”

  “Okay, yeah, we’ve got to do that one rough part over. But it’s amazing how much I can accomplish with the technology.”

  “Really? But is it still me?” she asked querulously. “If it’s all edited by machine? If it makes me sound better than I am, or even different? Then what are the reviewers reviewing? Me or the technology?”

  “It’s still you, don’t worry. This is how all CDs are made.”

  “I wonder if listeners know that.”

  “They don’t have to know. As long as they get the music sounding as it should . . .”

  “Well, I guess if everybody does it . . .” But she looked dubious. She wasn’t quite sure what he meant by “fix,” but it was simpler to trust him—he was so competent at his work. If she pushed him further, there would be complicated technical explanations that would only baffle her.

  He didn’t say any more, just started cleaning up the crusts, then took his recorder and went upstairs to practice. Soon the reedy, piping noise she had gotten used to would begin again. Handel tonight. It never lasted for more than an hour or so, though.

  It would be so ungrateful, she thought, to object to his methods, his “fixing.” He had done everything he promised, as far as she would allow him. It wasn’t his fault that she hadn’t achieved a brilliant career as a performer—onstage, that is. She was entirely to blame for that failure and accepted the responsibility. If it were left to Phil, he would have kept arranging gigs for her, but she refused. True, the very thing she had longed for, she could not have. But this was the next-best thing and it made her happy, happier than she had been since her hopeful days at Juilliard. Her CDs were having an unexpected success, even selling well and bringing in money, which neither of them had counted on or even cared much about. If pride and ambition were her sins—their sins, for they were in this together—and perhaps a tinge of envy as well, she consoled herself by thinking that greed certainly was not.

  At first she’d read the reviews in Gramophone, Chanticleer, and the other music magazines with astonishment. Was that really her they were talking about? “One of the most vigorous and lively performances of Beethoven’s Opus 10 Piano Sonatas we’ve heard in a long while.” “A masterful interpretation of Rachmaninoff, faithful without being slavish, played with keen understanding and consummate skill.” “A pianist with an extraordinary range. It’s amazing that we haven’t heard of the reclusive Ms. Stellman before, but wherever she is, we hope for more of these profoundly sensitive recordings, and of course hope to hear her perform in public.” They were the kind of reviews she used to make up in her head when she was still a teenager in high school. Or with her friends at Juilliard, before the pressures of the contests and the uncertain future sobered them. Her reviews nowadays reminded her of those absurdly overblown fragments they would compose, sitting over coffee after the day’s classes.

  None of it would have happened without Phil’s urging, his efforts, his encouragement. Or what she occasionally called—in petulant moods—his badgering. “It’s my badgering that’ll get you what you want—don’t forget that,” he would say, undeterred.

  Now he never needed to ask what she did all day, as he had done tentatively, those years in their Greenwich Village apartment and after they first moved to Nyack. Then he had dreaded asking, and she had dreaded hearing the questions and giving her vague replies: She took walks, she cooked, she read, gave her lessons, practiced. Now, besides the practicing, there were letters from fans, addressed to the studio and brought home by Philip. There were her polite responses to other recording companies making offers. She thanked them for their interest, but she worked exclusively with Tempo Recordings. She was sought out by more students than she could handle, and had to limit herself to only a few advanced ones, who came to the house.

  And a year or so after the CDs started appearing, there were the interviews. At first Phil had thought it better if she handled them by phone, and she did two that way, for the online magazines. But when one website, called TheWholeNote.com, ran a feature headed “Does the pianist Suzanne Stellman really exist?” she insisted on allowing the reporters to come to the house, or even meeting them in midtown. She knew the headline was a joke, but when she remembered her childhood fears about not being real, it gave her chills. “Of course I exist. They can come and see for themselves.”

  “If you’re sure you want to,” Phil said.

  “Why not? Are you afraid I’ll say the wrong thing?”

  “Not exactly. But we ought to go over what you’ll say.”

  “You mean, to be sure it fits with what I said to the others? I can remember what I said.”

  “No, not necessarily. But journalists are very tricky, especially if you sit down and have a drink with them. You think they’re being friendly, so you relax and forget it’s an interview, and later you’ll find every chance personal remark exaggerated. Did you tell the others you had studied abroad, as I said?”

  “Yes. I was kind of vague about it, though.”

  “Vague is good. Though you might mention a few names this time. Paris, say. Nadia Boulanger. Milhaud. Emil Gilels. You might well have met them. Actually, Milhaud even lived here for a long time.”

  “You’re kidding. It’s one thing to say I studied in Paris—okay, I can live with that—but I can’t say with a straight face that I knew those people.”

  “That’s what I’m concerned about. If you can’t say it with a straight face, then you should do it on the phone or in an email. And you don’t have to tell them all the same thing. Tell one you were in Paris, and for the other, say . . . oh, Vienna.”

  “I don’t get why we need all this lying.”

  “It’s not exactly lying. It’s just sort of stretching the truth. You did study at a major conservatory in a large city. It’s good to have an aura of mystery. Then they’ll talk about you—who is she and where did she come from? By the way, you can be vague about where you’re from, too. Lots of artists say they moved around in their childhood. You have no idea of the fantasy lives they create for themselves. And by the way, don’t forget to mention that you studied with Madame Kabalevsky. She’s legendary now. You become attached to the legend.”

  She was reluctant, unaccustomed to stretching the truth, as he called it. But after all, it did no harm in the end. The facts of her life didn’t matter; only the music mattered. She didn’t lie in the music—there was no way you could lie in music.

  After the interviews appeared and the CDs continued to sell well, she was invited to give a master class at the Manhattan School of Music, which occupied the old site in Morningside Heights where Juilliard used to be, while Juilliard itself was long since settled in its more lavish quarters at Lincoln Center. The streets and the old rooms were very familiar, even if the administration was a different one. The students seemed the same, too: eager, anxious, a curious blend of confidence, awareness of their own gifts, and fear. As for her, she felt no anxiety at
the prospect of demonstrating a passage, or even a large part of a movement. Her panic always let her have a few moments of grace at the beginning, a short-lived generosity that made its succeeding cruelty worse. And it was the students being judged, not her. Remembering how she’d felt at the master classes at Juilliard long ago, she was kind. She didn’t interrupt unless it was absolutely necessary, and she preceded her corrections with kind words—she could always come up with some merit in the student’s playing. She played with virtuosity and grace; her visit was a success, and led to more.

  “We were told you were very reclusive,” one of her hosts remarked over coffee after the class. “But here you are, and you seemed quite willing to appear.”

  “Oh, yes,” Suzanne said, laughing. “I heard there were rumors that I didn’t exist, that the CDs were a kind of . . . I don’t know, emanation. But I assure you, I’m quite real. And so is my music.”

  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?”

  AS 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.