Two-Part Inventions Read online

  “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 t
hey 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.”

  “But it is,” she cried. “It’s all I have.”

  “Nonsense,” Richard said. “It’s not all you have. It may be your best thing, but it’s not the only thing, believe me.”

  She didn’t believe him. “And anyway, I get scared when people are listening. I don’t know why. I can’t do it the way I want, the way I hear it in my head.”

  “That’s not unusual. But you can learn to overcome it, if you really want to play, that is. Meanwhile, if you can’t stop your father when he makes you perform, just play something you know well. Something short. And try to remember it’s not the end of the world if you’re not perfect. You’re asking too much of yourself. Christ, you’re just a kid. Now, play something for me. Something you love. You’ll see how good it sounds and you’ll feel better.”

  She was never shy about playing for Richard. He listened like a professional. When he made suggestions, he didn’t seem to be correcting her, but rather trying to help get the music out properly. That was what mattered to him. She played the fourteenth Bach Invention, a piece full of wit and verve, and when at the closing chord she looked up at him, he smiled and said, “Brava! What did I tell you?” And she did feel better.

  “Did your teacher, Mrs. Flower . . . what’s her name again, Mrs. Hyacinth?” He always teased her that way.

  “Mrs. Gardenia. You know that.”

  “All right, Mrs. Gardenia. Did she explain about the staccato at the end of each little phrase? Like this?” He played the first few bars.

  “No.”

  “And remember, the end is marked fortissimo. That’s not just loud, but very loud.”

  “She always says I’m doing fine.”

  “Well, you are. But look, her cookies aren’t going to do anything for you. You need a serious teacher if it’s as important to you as you say. Is it?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I mean if you want to make this your life. I think you have the talent, but you need other things, too. The will. You have to want it more than anything else. More than anyone else. And you have to be aggressive. Do you know what that means?”

  “I think so. A fighter. But I’m not.”

  “Not by nature. You bend too easily, you go along. You’re agreeable. But you can learn to be a fighter if it matters enough. Maybe you’re too young for me to be talking to you like this. But if you want I can recommend a very good teacher to your parents. You’ll have to give up the cookies, though, and he’ll be tougher on you than Mrs. Rosebud.”

  “Oh, stop that. He? A man, then.”

  “A man. Why, does that matter?”

  “I guess not. Would he come to my house?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. Here, I’ll write down his name and number. He teaches with me at Hunter, you can tell your mother.”

  “Okay, thanks.” She doubted that her parents would take Richard’s advice about anything. Her mother still interrogated her about her visits and needed to be reassured. “We’re friends,” Suzanne would protest.

  “What kind of friends?” Gerda said. “What kind of grown man wants an eleven-year-old girl as a friend? It just doesn’t feel right.”

  She took the slip of paper, but it was two months before she could persuade Gerda to call the man, Reginald Cartelli. Gerda was fond of Mrs. Gardenia and didn’t want to hurt her feelings. And wasn’t Suzanne making good progress with her?

  “Richard says I’d have a better chance of getting into Music and Art if I study with him.”

  “But that’s almost three years away. And it’s a public high school. Why should it be so hard to get into?”

  “There’s a citywide audition. You have to prepare. I don’t think Mrs. Gardenia knows anything about it.”

  “All right, I’ll call. But I hate to disappoint her. She’s been so sweet.”

  “Who’s more important, Mrs. Gardenia or me?” Maybe that was what Richard meant by being aggressive. Maybe she was learning, at least a little bit.

  Mr. Cartelli did not come to her house. Suzanne had to travel to his studio in Brooklyn Heights, where he had two baby grand pianos in the large living room, and only after six months did Gerda allow her to make the subway trip on her own.

  AS A BOY, Phil tried hard to break the habit of thinking about his family, his real family, not the aunt and uncle who took him in after the accident. Took him in: That was what their act was called, as if he’d been an abandoned cat crouching in the weeds alongside a road. Remembering, thinking, held so great an allure that it must be avoided. Brooding, his aunt called it when she saw him lying on his bed after school, staring up at nothing.

  “You won’t do yourself any good by brooding. Better to keep busy. If you haven’t got any homework to do, you can help me clean out the fridge.”

  Brooding meant restaging in his mind scenes from the past as if he were directing a TV sitcom. The four of them around the kitchen table, eating takeout pizza. He placed them all in their proper seats, his father with his back to the kitchen door, his mother facing him, and he and Billy opposite each other, Billy sitting on phone books because he was still small and the table was high. Billy would be performing antics with the strands of melted cheese, twirling them, trying to tie them in knots, his parents scolding but laughing at the same time. Billy, who wouldn’t eat the crusts but tossed them onto Phil’s plate because, as they all knew, Phil would eat anything, even the dry lukewarm crusts. Then they would clear the table together and his mother would send him and his brother into the dining room to do their ho
mework at the big table, and he would help Billy with any words he couldn’t read.

  Sometimes he began with the mornings, the lingering warm smell of coffee and toast, the breakfast finished, his father the first to leave, pulling out of the driveway in the Buick, its old gears squeaking, his mother stuffing their lunches into bags and kissing them hurriedly as they ran out to meet the school bus stopped in front of the house. Or Sundays, his large brawny father sitting on the lawn mower, pretending he was riding a horse, entertaining Phil and Billy by zigzagging, making swirly designs in the grass. It was as if by recalling intently, putting in place all the details, even the weather, he could conjure these scenes back into reality. Where did the past go, anyway? It couldn’t just disappear, could it? It had happened. It must still exist somewhere in a long chronicle of all the happenings in the world, including those of his own family. If he could somehow revive those scenes, his authentic life, then the life he was living now in his aunt and uncle’s somber Brooklyn apartment might vanish like a dream. He would close his eyes and will himself back into his room with the bunk beds, the mess of games and schoolbooks and clothes on the floor, the baseball bat in the corner, the pictures of players on the wall.

  The room his aunt and uncle had given him was nothing like what a kid’s room should be. It had been a spare room, a den, they called it. “You’ll have the den,” his aunt said that first night. “You can fix it up later, when we get your things from the house.” The bed was a studio couch—they promised to get a real bed very soon, “as soon as we get our bearings,” his aunt said—and there was a large leather La-Z-Boy chair and a TV set, a bookshelf with an old set of leather-bound books with gilt titles on the spine that looked like no one had touched them in years. Phil took down one of them to look at, and it made a crinkly sound as he pulled it off the shelf—the cover was stuck to the book next to it. He slid it back quickly. The window looked out onto an airshaft, and the floor was covered with a worn patterned rug whose colors had long since subsided into browns and grays, its fringes in tatters.