Elise Blackwell - An Unfinished Score

Ready or not, here I come .

In the conservatory, Suzanne rosins her bow and raises the music stand. Sections are impossible to play without bending at the waist and thus impossible to play seated. Olivia sits at the piano, her left hand on the Bösendorfer’s keys but her body turned toward Suzanne. In navy-blue pants and a navy blouse, her hair smooth in its chignon, she looks like a silhouette of herself.

Suzanne strikes the opening and plays through all three movements as best she can. She’s better at it now, able to interpret and not just sight-read, but still she lands at the concerto’s end exhausted, humiliated as a performer. When her breathing returns to normal, she says, “It’s ridiculously hard physically. It’s like he was trying to kill me.”

The rising sun has brightened the glass panes of the French doors, and the silhouette of Olivia looks dark against the glare, almost black. Suzanne cannot make out her features, only her shape. She cannot find even her eyes.

“Perhaps he was jealous of your talent,” Olivia says.

“Alex was proud of me, not jealous, and you must have heard him rail against virtuosity. He could barely stand most concertos.”

“But he was writing it for you. If he was proud of you, then maybe he wanted to show you off.”

When Suzanne blinks, she holds her eyes closed a moment longer, which exaggerates the otherwise involuntary movement. “So many times,” she says, “so many times Alex told me that the best concertos enact conflict and resolution. It’s the reason to write them — the only reason, he said. The solo voice should have the larger part in the conversation because it is the weaker voice, the one playing against the many.”

“Maybe he was challenging you to match that idea with this music. Try it again.”

“Once more,” Suzanne says, grateful that clouds have floated in to obscure the glare, finding it easier to concentrate on bow and strings.

Suzanne comes closer this time, but only by a degree. As soon as she finishes she says, “The pajama shirt — I want it.”

Olivia’s smile is wry.

Suzanne waits.

“I told you performance night.”

“This was a performance, and I want the shirt now.”

Olivia shrugs and smiles again — an expression that looks genuine. “The pajamas were already in the dryer when I heard the news.”

Suzanne’s hands shake visibly as she cases her viola, but she controls her voice. “Then why did you tell me you had them?”

Olivia answers quickly and with force: “I wanted you to be lied to.”

Suzanne’s hands feel suddenly weak, as though her bow might slip and fall to the floor. She places it in the lid, fastens her case’s three latches. Leaning against the doorjamb, halfway in the hallway, she whispers, “Just because I’m doing what you want doesn’t mean you can torment me.”

“Perhaps what I want is to torment you.”

Suzanne realizes that she was mistaken the night before. Olivia was never almost her friend, not even for that tiny shard of time. “You should have held on,” she says. “You played your trump card. Now you have no way to make me arrange this music for orchestra.”

Olivia has not stopped staring at her. “I expected you to be more intelligent, but maybe smart people tend to overlook the obvious.”

Suzanne slides down the jamb, all the way to the floor, holding her viola case across her tucked legs. Something hard grows in her throat, and her swallow is painful.

“That’s right. I can tell your husband whenever I want to.”

“I’m not overlooking that,” Suzanne says. She thinks of Ben the night before he left for Charleston, the way they looked directly at each other while making love. He saw her then, and they seemed in that time like two people who had chosen each other, who had found each other in the world and said, That is what I want . “Maybe I’ll tell him first. Then you’ll have nothing over me.”

Olivia’s face remains placid as she says, “I imagine that would be a good way to hurt all of us. Maybe what I wanted to do was torment you, but that’s not what I want now. That sort of revenge can never be what one really wants, I suppose. What I want now is to have that music orchestrated, and you’ll do it. You’ll arrange the music because you don’t really want to tell your husband, but mostly you’ll arrange it because Alex wrote it and because it’s good.” After a pause she says, “Play it for me again — try it on his viola this time — and then I’ll drive you to the airport.”

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.”