Two-Part Inventions Read online

  As he got older he trained himself to stop reconstructing his former life. His aunt was right. It did no good. It was over, beyond anyone’s power to bring back. Instead he looked to the future and began planning his escape. As soon as he reached sixteen he could quit school, hitch rides across the country, camp out in the woods and forage for food, like a boy he’d read about in a book. He could get odd jobs, maybe work on a construction gang. A new apartment building was going up across the street from his school. From the classroom windows he could watch the men, and at lunch hour he snuck out for a closer look. The men maneuvered cranes and derricks, piled dirt and hauled beams, and some sat on seats high above the ground, manipulating the machinery; others sprawled on the sidewalk, wearing their hard hats, eating hero sandwiches, and making jokes, calling out to the girls passing by. Or he could start his own rock band, like Buddy Holly. He was just a kid when he started out. Phil’s parents had one of his records and sometimes danced to it in the living room while Phil and Billy watched and laughed.

  Phil loved all kinds of music, and his aunt found him a teacher so he could continue the piano lessons he’d started two years ago. He didn’t like this new teacher as much as the one back at his real house, but still he practiced diligently. For a rock band, though, he’d have to learn to play the guitar. If his aunt and uncle ever asked what he wanted for his birthday, he’d say a guitar. He could learn on his own, or take classes after hours at school. With his band he could tour all over in a bus painted with crazy colors and pictures. He’d seen one parked on Flatbush Avenue, with wild hues and shapes—bizarre animals climbing over each other, impossible flowers and ripples and stars. He could drive a bus just like that. Uncle Mel had promised to teach him to drive as soon as he was old enough to get a permit.

  Sometimes at night, while his aunt watched TV, he played games with his uncle. Mel taught him to play chess, and by the time he was thirteen Phil became so adept that once in a while he even won. Uncle Mel loved to discuss what he called strategies, and he carefully explained what the word meant. When the game was over he would go back over each move and explain his strategy. “You see, when you moved your queen there—and that was a pretty smart move, by the way—I couldn’t get my bishop where I had planned, and my knight was unprotected. So I had to find another way to cut you off. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, know what I mean? If the obvious way doesn’t work, look for something else. Be ready to change your plans. That’ll do you in business, too.” Then he launched into stories about his successful clients, how they had revised their plans to make products people would want. They couldn’t always reveal their plans or their procedures openly or totally—of course not. No one would survive in business if they never cut a few corners here or there. The crucial advice, Phil remembered always: The main thing was to achieve your goal by whatever means, and for that you needed a strategy. More than one. A main strategy and then a backup. Or two.

  WHEN SHE WAS thirteen, Suzanne found herself bringing Richard the very same complaint about her father’s demands that she had two years ago. Only this time she thought she’d handled things far more cleverly.

  Once again she’d been reading on her bed on a Sunday afternoon—past Nancy Drew now and on to Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility—when she heard his pebbly voice calling her from downstairs. They had visitors; she’d heard the door open a while ago and the usual trilled greetings. So it was going to be the same thing all over again. She’d thought it was finished, this summoning her to entertain when guests turned up. He’d stopped after the fiasco with Aunt Faye and Uncle Simon, with only a couple of relapses. But now she was definitely too old. She was tall, almost as tall as her father; she wore grown-up clothes and her long sleek hair fell down her back. Men on the street looked at her as if she were a real woman. And her father still treated her like a circus act. It made her feel sick, a tightness in her throat, the threat of an avalanche in her gut. She wouldn’t answer.

  He kept shouting and finally came clomping up the stairs and knocked on the door—this brief warning a small deference to her age—then too quickly entered, undoing the value of the gesture. “What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf?”

  “I was asleep.”

  “Well, wake up. The Woodsteins are here. You know they love to hear you play. And they brought Mr. Woodstein’s sister and her husband from Philadelphia. They’re staying in New York for a week.”

  His shirtsleeves were rolled up, revealing his thick hairy arms. He was glancing around the room with a proprietary air, like an animal surveying his territory, Suzanne thought. It was her room. She didn’t want his gaze taking in her things, the books on the bed, the lipsticks on the dresser, the photos of famous musicians she’d cut out of magazines and stuck on the mirror the way other girls hung up photos of movie stars.

  “I really don’t feel like it, Dad. I’m tired.”

  “What’s this nonsense? You know you enjoy it once you get started. I can see it in your face. Comb your hair and come down. We’ll be waiting.”

  This, she vowed, would be the last time.

  She greeted the Woodsteins politely—it wasn’t their fault, after all. The couple from Philadelphia, introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Newman, were short and stout, so alike in their plump placidity that they might have been sister and brother. They were overdressed for a Sunday afternoon visit, Mr. Newman in a checked sports jacket and maroon slacks, and Mrs. Newman in a tight green wraparound dress from which her pudgy knees protruded, the nylon stockings straining over the flesh. Mr. Newman was bald except for a reddish-gray fringe, but Mrs. Newman had hair enough for both of them, a halo of gold curls sprayed to a fine metallic finish. They sat docilely on the cream-colored couch that always reminded Suzanne of an angel food cake, their faces stiff with eager anticipation.

  “We love music,” Mrs. Newman said. “We tune in to the classical station all the time. It would be such a treat to hear you. If you don’t mind, of course.”

  “I’m used to it by now,” Suzanne mumbled. Her father cast her a sour look as she slouched to the piano. Gerda was off in the kitchen, preparing the snacks that would follow the music. Suzanne imagined she must have left the room on purpose: Gerda knew how much she hated being displayed. If her brothers had still been at home, they might have managed to distract the guests—in the past they had saved Suzanne more than once. But they had moved out and gotten an apartment together in Park Slope after college, and she saw them rarely.

  “Well, what kind of music do you like? I mean, like what composers?” She wanted to find out if the Newmans knew anything at all or just cared for the novelty of the experience, like watching a dancing elephant. It didn’t really matter whether the elephant did a waltz or a tango. The Woodsteins, she had already ascertained, knew nothing.

  “Oh, you choose. We love everything,” said Mrs. Newman, crossing her legs at the ankles and leaning back.

  Suzanne played a simple gavotte from one of the Bach English Suites, choosing it almost perversely as the least she could possibly offer and might get away with. But it was not enough of a showpiece; by the hesitant way the guests clapped and exclaimed yet remained sitting expectantly, she could tell it would not suffice. They considered it a species of appetizer.

  “Would you like to hear something I made up?” she asked.

  “Oh, don’t tell me you compose music, too?” said Mrs. Newman. “That is so fabulous. Yes, please, let’s hear it.”

  She played the opening of a Rachmaninoff prelude. Mr. Cartelli had said she might be ready for a few of the preludes in Opus 23. She had just begun studying the eleventh, which was difficult, though Mr. Cartelli said the others were even harder. She played what she could remember of the opening, then began skipping the harder parts, interpolating passages, inventing transitions, then repeating the beginning. She was rather pleased with the collage she was constructing; Rachmaninoff himself might be amused. Every now and then she glanced in the guests’ direction, but clearly there was n
o danger. They sat rapt.

  “Amazing,” they said, when she finished with a barrage of chords. “What a gift!” And so on.

  “What did I tell you?” her father cried. “Is that something or is that something?”

  “Thank you,” Suzanne said, and made off for the kitchen to get a glass of water. What a fool he was. He didn’t even recognize the piece she’d been practicing for weeks.

  “Did you tell them you made that up?” Gerda said in a low but tense voice. She was arranging pastries on a platter, and the kitchen smelled of powdered sugar.

  “Whatever you heard, that’s what I told them.”

  “You didn’t make that up. It’s the Tchaikovsky? Or no, wait, it’s the new Rachmaninoff he gave you last month.”

  “Well, great, at least someone around here listens.” She grabbed a cream puff from the platter and bit into it. Gerda slapped her hand lightly for spoiling the design of the pastries and rearranged them to hide the empty space.

  “You mustn’t do that. It’s wrong. Utterly wrong. I’m surprised at you.”

  “It’s more wrong that he still makes me perform, just for his fat ego. This is the last time.”

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” One of Gerda’s favorite axioms.

  “They’ll never know the difference. Neither will he. So what does it matter? I was just entertaining myself. Aren’t I allowed to have any fun out of all this?”

  “Of course it matters. You certainly don’t need me to explain why. It’s stealing and it’s lying. And about something you love, or claim to love. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “I’m going out,” she said.

  Richard’s car was in his driveway, her reward for ingenuity. She was embarrassed to be bringing him the same old complaint, afraid of wearing out his patience. But this time was different. He was always suggesting that she think of new ways to approach problems that arose in music, so why shouldn’t that advice apply here, too? He might even find what she’d done today a step toward aggression, in a way. She was coming closer to the world he lived in, the world that was complex and real, the world where cleverness could defeat ignorance, where people took music seriously, not like the Newmans, who didn’t even know what they were hearing.

  If only he didn’t have visitors. His friends often dropped in on Sundays, men who sat in the living room smoking and drinking beer or wine, listening to recordings of operas, comparing notes and gossip about the singers. From their talk she had the impression they must know the singers intimately, but when she mentioned this to Richard he laughed and said it was just music-world gossip. Some of his friends worked behind the scenes at the Met or the smaller opera companies, or elsewhere in the music world—at magazines, in arts management, or staging performances. They picked up information and spread it around. It was a small world, he said.

  “I thought this was the small world.” Suzanne had waved vaguely toward the window facing the street.

  “I know what you mean. I meant in another sense, though. An in-groupy sense. Kind of like high school.”

  Now when she rang the bell he appeared at the door with the bassoon in his hand. Behind him she saw a man sitting on the couch, holding a cigarette and leafing through a magazine.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s a bad time. I’m interrupting.”

  “No, no, it’s okay,” said Richard. “Come on in. Suzanne, I don’t think you’ve ever met my good friend Greg.”

  She still wasn’t accustomed to calling adults by their first names, and so she blushed and stumbled over the name as she said hello. She wasn’t used to shaking hands, either, and offered hers limply while he grasped it firmly. Greg appeared older than Richard, with fine lines around his eyes and graying hair, but he was lean and athletic-looking in blue jeans and a dark red pullover. Almost like an actor, or the host of a TV news show, the sort of man her mother would call distinguished if she saw him on TV, though Suzanne wasn’t quite sure what distinguished really meant. It had something to do with being “well turned out,” as her father would say, someone you would pick out in a crowd as special or different, more aware of the impression he was making.

  “What is it?” Richard asked. “You look like something’s the matter.”

  “Oh, nothing much. Same old thing, really. Well, not exactly. Something different happened. But I can tell you about it another time.”

  Greg rose, holding his magazine—a copy of Opera News, she could see now—and headed toward the kitchen as if he were quite at home. “That’s all right. I’ll get myself a cup of coffee. Nice meeting you, Suzanne.”

  “I’m sorry I barged in like this, Richard.”

  “It’s okay. What happened?”

  “I just did something . . . I don’t know . . . I thought it was a brilliant idea when I did it, but now I’m wondering. Maybe it was a bad thing. I can’t tell.”

  “Well, how bad?” He waved her to a chair and set the bassoon down. “Murder? Blackmail? Kidnapping? You’d know right away that those were bad. No ambiguity there.”

  Already her mood was lifting just by being in his presence, in his living room. She laughed. “Kidnapping might not always be so bad. I wish someone would kidnap me. Why don’t you kidnap me?”

  “I wouldn’t have any place to hide you, for one thing. You wouldn’t want to stay down in the basement. There’re sometimes water bugs. Anyway, your parents probably think I’ve already kidnapped you in spirit. So, what did you do?”

  She told him. She had a faint hope that he might find her little trick clever, though hope was waning as the sense of reality claimed her, as it always did in Richard’s living room, along with the sense of pleasure. What she wanted most was a word from him that would erase the image of Gerda’s stern face. But nothing like that came. He didn’t even smile.

  “What made you do that?”

  “Oh, you know. Because I’m so sick of my father making me out to be some sort of freak of nature. It makes me wish I was ordinary. Who asked to have talent, anyway?” But that was not true, she knew even as she said it. She didn’t want to be like Eva or Alison or Paula, who had nothing special. She wanted to be herself, but free. Like Richard. “I wanted to see if I could get away with it, I guess. Amuse myself.”

  “Surely you can think of better ways to make him stop. Talk to him. Tell him how you feel.”

  “Are you kidding? He knows how I feel, but he insists. And I just can’t . . . you know, resist. Anyhow, the point is, it worked. No one noticed. That’s how dumb they are.”

  “You sound like an obnoxious little snob. Their intelligence is not the point. Do I really need to explain to you why what you did is wrong? Claiming someone else’s work as your own? It’s stealing.”

  It was what Gerda had said, and it sounded just as bad coming from Richard. Maybe worse.

  “The music is still there,” she protested. “It hasn’t disappeared like when someone steals a painting from a museum. Anyone can still play it or listen to it anytime. And it made those people happy to hear it. It made me feel happy to do it. What’s so wrong about that? Everyone’s happy and no one is hurt.” She was convincing herself once more of the cleverness of what she had done. It was as if a dialogue were going on in her head, like a TV courtroom drama. She was the defense attorney who had just made a shrewd argument. But Richard would be the ultimate judge.

  “Come on, Suzanne, don’t be disingenuous.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means pretending to be more simple-minded than you are. You know very well why it’s wrong.”

  There was no answer to this court’s pronouncement.

  “I thought you might find it funny,” she murmured. She could smell the coffee from the kitchen, a rich luscious smell. Her mother said she was too young to drink coffee. All she allowed her was tea, which Suzanne found insipid. The house was so quiet, she could hear Greg turning the pages of his magazine.

  “You must have known I wouldn’t find it funny. I can’t encourage that ki
nd of joke—it wouldn’t be right. You came to confess.”

  “You mean like you’re my priest?”

  “Okay, this time I absolve you. But you mustn’t ever do it again. And you’ve got to do an extra hour of chromatic scales to atone. That’s what priests do—they make people say extra prayers. Those will be your prayers.”

  “Big deal,” she scoffed.

  “Seriously, don’t try that again, Suzanne. If you get into Music and Art and pull anything like that, it could get you into a lot of trouble.”

  “You sound just like my mother.”

  “And why not? Your mother isn’t always mistaken. Tell me, aside from feeling exploited, what is it you dislike so much about playing for people?”

  “Being forced is what I dislike. And besides, it makes me feel sick to my stomach. I get hot and cold and my fingers turn to jelly. The people who listen might not know the difference, but I know, and I hate the feeling. It’s like my hands are out of control.”

  “That’s not so uncommon. It’s plain stage fright, and lots of musicians suffer from stage fright to one degree or another. Ask Tom Cartelli. Maybe he can help you. How are you getting on with him, by the way?”

  “Fine. He’s a great teacher. He doesn’t say much and he’s not very friendly, but I’ve gotten used to that. He can say one little thing, or change the position of my hands in a tiny way, and it makes such a huge difference. But no cookies, of course. He’s definitely not the cookies type.”

  “No, not at all. Meanwhile, since you’ve already performed today, would you like to hear Greg? He’s a very good pianist, teaches at Mannes. I’ll ask him to do something for you that you haven’t heard, by Poulenc. I love Poulenc. You should hear more twentieth-century music. He did a terrific trio for oboe, bassoon, and piano, but unfortunately we don’t have an oboist on the premises. Greg?” he called into the kitchen. “Come and give Suzanne a treat.”

  “Could I have a cup of coffee, too?” she asked. “It smells so good.”