Rebecca Makkai - Music for Wartime

She was displeased with how frequently she found herself checking the clock, how busy her hands wanted to be. “There’s a used bookstore in town,” she said, “and a coffee shop, if you want to drive in. I thought we could all go out to dinner tonight, or we can order pizza. And tomorrow’s the day Julie comes, from Deutsche Grammophon.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Langley said. “Don’t tell me.”

“You can pretend she’s my sister, and she’s visiting from Canada. My blond sister, ha! But she’s going to love you.”

Julie was thrilled by the prospect of the quartet, especially since it involved Gregory, who was already on the label. But Celine hoped, from a sort of motherly perspective, that Julie would fall so in love with Mike and Mike that she’d develop independent relationships with them.

Gregory had, apparently, just let himself right in the front door, because there he stood, duffel bag in one hand, violin case in the other, his thinning hair still bleached from the summer, his face unshaven. He put his things on the floor and hugged everyone. Celine held her wooden spoon out awkwardly behind her back so she wouldn’t get grease on his coat.

“Quite a display you have out front there.”

“We were wondering!” Mike Cho said. But then he straightened his face, clearly worried he’d made a mistake. “Was it your dog?”

“A girl on a motorcycle.” Celine went back to the stove and started cracking eggs into the new batch of vegetables and sausage. Too many eggs, probably, but she couldn’t stop herself from cracking one more, and then one more. She told them the story, as she knew it, and about the recent additions. “I haven’t been out yet this morning. How bad is it?”

Gregory considered while he poured a mug of coffee. “I’d say it’s sprawling .”

She turned from the stove, relieved to have found a topic of limitless conversation. “Okay, here’s the issue, then. Pretend you’re advice columnists, and I’m depending on you for a moral answer: What do I do ? I can’t take it down. I can’t live with it forever. I can’t move. I can’t ask them to make it more tasteful. It’s selfish, I know, but I’m not okay with a shrine on my lawn. Not forever.”

“Could you plant a shrub in front of it?” Mike Langley asked.

“That’s good! But maybe — no, it’s too close to the street. There’s only a couple feet of room. And in winter you’d be able to see right through anyway.”

“You should complain to village hall,” Gregory said. “They probably own the land by the road for putting in phone poles, right? They wouldn’t want that on town property. Separation of church and state.”

“This is a town that erects a life-sized Last Supper on the green for Easter.”

“I want to see it again,” Mike Cho said. “We’re creative people. We should be able to come up with something.”

When he stood, Mike Langley followed him, leaving Celine with a pan of eggs she was about to serve Gregory, and Gregory with an empty plate. She scraped the eggs onto the plate — a mountain, really — and handed him a fork. “You can carry this, right?”

“I thought I’d stay here and chat with you and enjoy my coffee.” He looked straight at her and didn’t blink, and she saw that it was a challenge, or at least an offer.

“It’s so nice out!” she said. “And we’ll be sitting all day. Let’s get some exercise.”

And so he followed them all out the door, eating his eggs.

It was worse than she’d imagined. The flowers were spread over at least twenty-five square feet, all the way out to the street and all the way back to the oak, but three times as long as that — a carpet of white and blue and pink. They had jammed the plastic stems so far into the earth that it was botanically bizarre — roses and tulips and carnations that blossomed only three inches above the ground. The stuffed menagerie had expanded, as well. A plush moose and what looked like an off-brand Cabbage Patch doll were now slumped near the base of the cross, like winos at a bus stop.

Mike Langley clasped his hands behind his neck. “I’m offended , aesthetically,” he said. “This is possibly the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Celine shook her head. “So tell me, then: Am I a bad person? I do feel sorry for them. But that doesn’t mean they can have my lawn.”

“You’re a good person,” Gregory said. He was circling the scene with his eggs. “They can’t make a shrine on your property.”

Mike Cho suddenly grew excited. “Could you mow the lawn and just chop them all down? And then it would just look like your lawn people did it.”

“I don’t think these are the kind of folks who would assume anyone had lawn people. Which I don’t , except when I’m out of town. And it would ruin my mower.”

They all found themselves straightening things, just as Celine had the day she’d first found it. “Are you even religious?” Mike Cho asked. “Are you, like, Christian, or…?”

“Not since I was fifteen. I love sacred music, though. I love masses, and I love requiems. The Verdi Requiem might be my favorite thing in the world, even though I don’t believe a word of the text. Is that weird?”

Mike Langley poked a fake tulip with the toe of his shoe and said, “I think weird has just been redefined.”

Back in the house, Celine toasted more bread and refilled everyone’s coffee and started another batch of eggs. “Look at you,” Gregory said. “You’re Snow White, feeding all the little men.”

The Bartók went beautifully, as if a day hadn’t passed since Marlboro. Of all the groupings that summer — cello with piano, cello with flute and harp, cello with clarinet and alto — this string quartet had been the one that instantly justified itself, that proved revelatory. Rehearsals had left her sweaty and exhausted and jubilant. It had been a long time since she’d felt that way about any collaboration, and it had been at least a year since she’d felt she was making any progress, musically. She knew the Mikes must still be wondering what on earth these two experienced, successful musicians could want with two young kids. They didn’t understand yet what they were bringing to the equation themselves: fire, energy. And marketability, to be quite honest. It was an interesting concept, one that Julie from Deutsche Grammophon thought would sell nicely. “The music press will love it,” she’d said. “Because it’s about teaching, and it’s about a meeting of the generations, and it’s about Marlboro.”

Gregory was a subtle leader, so subtle that Celine found herself not just listening to his first violin but watching him closely for any twitch of the mouth. When he looked back at her, just as when either of the Mikes caught her eye, it was with the unapologetic stare of collaborating musicians. There were musicians who never looked up from their hands or their instruments, but she’d seen quartets of straight men gaze at each other like they were making love.

They finished the Allegro and Prestissimo movements and stopped to talk about balance. “You have amazing acoustics,” Gregory said. “We could record right here.”

She looked around the room, at the high ceiling and bare walls, the bare floor, the couch and coffee table crammed into a corner, the empty and cavernous fireplace. “It comes from having no furniture,” she said.

Mike Langley raised his viola bow tentatively in the air, asking permission to speak. The Mikes would both have to get bolder, be willing to argue with Celine and Gregory. “Should we come up with a name?” he asked. “Before your Deutsche Grammophon person gets here? Would that help?” No, it wouldn’t, particularly, but Celine didn’t want to shoot him down.