Sight Reading (22 page)

“The guinea pig.”

“Oh.” Hazel seemed to be thinking about this. “When did she bring him home?”

“End of last year.”

Hazel still looked deep in thought, her brow wrinkled. “Is he in her bedroom?”

“The guinea pig?” Remy wondered if this was some sort of hygienic issue. Irritated, she said, “No, he's in the family room.”

“There's room for him there?”

“Well, I mean, it's just a big glass cage with a wire thing on the top. It's not like we don't have any free space.” Their house was smaller than Hazel's, but it wasn't tiny.

For some reason this information seemed to be of great interest to Hazel. She was nodding, as if imagining. “I suppose he's more interesting than Freddie. Jessie's frog. To be honest, I'm not sure she even remembers that he belongs to her. Or even that he's alive.”

Remy gave a smile. “She's actually been pretty good about cleaning out Jasper's wood chips and making sure he has enough food. Of course, when she's at your place, I'm the one who takes care of him. Nicholas has never touched the thing.”

“He doesn't help much, does he,” Hazel said.

Remy just laughed.

That was when Hazel leaned in and, with a strange intimacy, asked, “How are you feeling?”

Was it that obvious, Remy wondered—guilt splayed across her forehead? No, it must simply be that she looked tired, exhausted, from so many sleepless nights; probably she looked ill. As if on cue, a chill ran across her shoulders, and her stomach churned briefly.

“Oh, I'm all right,” Remy said, “just tired. Thanks for asking.”

Hazel seemed to be waiting for more. Remy looked away, flustered.

“I remember Nicholas wasn't always as understanding as I needed him to be,” Hazel said, as though fishing for something. “I remember I thought he'd figure out when I needed his help. I didn't realize I'd have to tell him everything I needed.”

Remy gave a little laugh. “Every single thing.” But she felt she had been tricked—tricked into saying something against Nicholas.

“I didn't even have the energy to stay angry with him,” Hazel said, almost to herself. “Whenever I got mad at him, I'd just picture him eating peas.”

Remy let out a small yelp; she couldn't help it, envisioning Nicholas stacking peas neatly on his fork, orderly colonists overcrowding an island.

“You know how he piles them up in rows?” Hazel asked. “I used to find it so charming.”

Remy knew exactly, said, “It must be something they taught him in boarding school.” Poor Hazel, having to imagine Nicholas with peas on his fork. Remy preferred simply to throw something at him.

“Hello, my friends!”

The science teacher had arrived. A small man, dark hair plastered to either side of his head. Brown slacks, matching blazer, and fastened to his lapel a large round pin of one of those happy faces that when you looked more closely was making some other expression. “Welcome to the fun house,” he said, and laughed nervously at what he must have thought was a joke.

“This is my world,” he began. “A world I've created. In my classes, we call it Polaris. It's a magical world, completely separate from the rest of this building.”

Hazel gave a barely audible sigh and flipped shut her notebook. The oldish man in the front row let his head drop to his chest.

The teacher didn't pause in his narrative, went on for long, painful minutes. Remy let her eyes slowly roam the room, tried to stifle the panic that had begun, yet again, to rise within her. It didn't matter that she had told Yoni they could not continue, or that he had said, “Yes, I understand,” in the most mature and kindly way. It didn't matter, because the mistake was already made, and there was no way to erase it. She had been disloyal to Nicholas, and she had hurt Yoni.

“Any questions?”

A man in the back row had a few. Everyone else waited patiently, thanked the teacher, and filed out of the room as swiftly as possible. Remy felt the relief of knowing she didn't have to go back there ever again. Even as they wished each other good night and made their way out of the building, no one dared to say anything about the teacher. “Oh dear,” was what Hazel said to Remy, when they had stepped out into the parking lot.

“ ‘Oh dear' is right. Do you think there's anything we can do to help Jess get through that?”

Hazel was looking distractedly around the parking lot, as if someone might catch them there. “I think we're just going to have to write this one off.”

“I think you're right,” Remy said.

Hazel was looking at her again in that oddly expectant way. When Remy said nothing, Hazel turned toward her car. “Well, good night,” she said.

“Good night.” Remy watched her walk away, sure that there was something she was forgetting to do, some new way she had disappointed her. “Oh, wait,” Remy called, thinking of a possibility.

Hazel turned. “Yes?”

“I've wanted to ask you,” Remy said, approaching her. “What do you think of Kevin? The ninth-grade boy.”

“He's seems perfectly nice,” Hazel said. “I've only met him a few times, but he was very sweet.” She looked suddenly concerned. “Is there a problem?”

“No. No, not at all. It's just that, you know he asked Jessie to come with him to the holiday dance; Nicholas keeps acting worried about it, since it's at another school.” She thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose it's not the dance. I guess it's the idea that she has a boyfriend.”

Hazel gave a small laugh. “I think for a man it's more of a challenge. After all, you and I were girls once, we've gone through everything Jessie's going through—going on a first date, wearing our first gown to a dance. But to Nicholas it's foreign territory. Watching his little girl become a woman. It must be disconcerting.”

“You're right. I hadn't thought about it that way.”

Proudly, Hazel said, “Well, it's just a theory.” She looked again somewhat nervously toward her car.

“Okay, well, have a good night,” Remy told her.

“Good night,” Hazel said, and added in that bright, cold voice, as if suddenly remembering who the two of them were to each other, “Give Jessie a hug from me.”

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, NICHOLAS SAT
alone in the courtyard of the Gardner Museum. It was his new routine, coming here one day each week. On Thursdays he was gradually making his way through the MFA, and yesterday he had made a visit to the Fogg. Last week he had gone to the Sackler and next Friday he planned to visit the new exhibit at the Boston Public Library.

It was his new push to broaden his horizons, to be “an artist
in toto,
” as his university mentor, Gordon Winthrop-Hayley, had put it. An expert in clerical music, Winthrop-Hayley was a Renaissance man who spoke eloquently not just of music but also of architecture, sculpture, poetry; he attended the theater, read novels—had even written one—and, having married a ballerina, claimed to love dance. Nicholas had never been particularly keen on dance, nor did he pretend to be, and other than poetry read just nonfiction, occasionally. The only time he had ever enjoyed standing around looking at things in museums was when Hazel was there to explain everything to him.

Yet for the past hour he had been squinting at portraits in the wearily lit Isabella Stewart Gardner. It was part of his new initiative to nudge himself into some new creative space. His hope was that it might bring new insight to the big orchestral piece. After all, of all possible modes of creative output, music just happened to be the one at his disposal. Not words arranged on a page, or color swept around by a brush. What the Dutch masters had used oil paints to portray, or what a sculptor expressed in physical shapes, Nicholas could imagine only as sound and silences. Who knew why that should be, why his talent should be for “surprising harmonies” (as one of the critics had put it) and rhythmic invention. Even when he was so young that when he sat on the piano bench his feet didn't reach the floor, he had loved playing with chords and cadence, finding beauty in dissonance, teasing new aural patterns out of any tonal landscape. In a way, that was all it came down to, really: discovering new combinations of sounds that pleased him.

The big orchestral piece, though . . . he really had hit a wall. Perhaps he ought to talk it out with someone, have a fellow composer take a look. The thought came to him: Sylvane.

Of course! Why hadn't he thought of her earlier? She had already wrestled with her own lengthy orchestral work—the sprawling
Day of the Kings
. That one in particular had impressed him, the broad space she managed to cover, the way she seemed to paint with sound, with light and shade.

It was what Nicholas wanted to do in his own piece, reaching back to his youth and all the things he didn't quite know, to his lost mother, to the brief wisp of a human being's time on earth.

Well, even Sylvane struggled and faltered. Sometimes an almost phlegmatic heaviness dampened even her loveliest work. That piece she based on Monet's water lilies hadn't impressed him much; there was something too pretty about it, and then it became sort of muzzy, and seemed to disintegrate toward the end. . . .

Well, either way, he ought to talk to her. Yes, that's what he would do. Call Sylvane.

Chapter 8

I
t took a full month until Remy decided that something was truly wrong. When at last she allowed that she felt worse than ever before, and that her body was not behaving correctly at all, she decided she must be dying. That would be her punishment.

She skipped a morning chamber music meeting and instead made a visit to her doctor.

Two days later, at Vivian's, on the dark red divan draped with a chenille throw, Remy slouched, her forearms on her knees, and said, aloud for the first time, “I'm pregnant.”

Vivian's face lit up. “Oh, Remy!”

Through the tall windows the afternoon sun was weak, a wash of chamomile over the floorboards. Remy shook her head and burst into tears. That was when Vivian understood and said, “Oh, Remy,” in a completely different voice.

Remy leaned her head into her hands. “I'm like a character in a fable. Or one of those awful Greek myths.”

“No, just a soap opera,” Vivian said, placing a kiss on the top of her head.

“Thanks for putting me in my place.” But she still pictured the immortals on Olympus having a good laugh.

Vivian slung her arm around Remy's shoulders. “Come on, tulip, don't be too harsh on yourself.”

“Why not? I've behaved abominably. Multiple times.”

Vivian gave a small, blasé shrug, indicating that she was not necessarily of the same opinion.

“I just wish I knew what to do.”

“Well,” said Vivian, pragmatically, “there are only so many possibilities.”

But already Remy's imagination had produced a host of horrible outcomes. She had confessed to Nicholas and then miscarried, losing husband and child. She had ended the pregnancy but been caught out in her lie. She had told the truth and made the three people she most loved—including a girl at the precarious age of thirteen—miserable. And many other configurations of catastrophe.

“Do you even know for certain it's Yoni's?”

“Ha. That would be a fun bet.” Remy shook her head again. “No, it has to be his. . . . But I haven't told him.”

“Does he even want a child? He doesn't strike me as the sort.”

“He once told me he wanted a family.” Remy's heart sank, again, at the thought of that other boy's life cut short. “I think he would be a wonderful father. More than Nicholas, even.” And there was that other thought, too: that Yoni loved her.

“Then why not have a modern relationship,” Vivian said, as if none of this were terribly complicated. “A baby with a mother and two fathers.”

“Don't joke.”

“I'm not. There are lots of ways to live, Remy. There are all kinds of families.”

Remy thought about this. “You have to be a certain kind of person to do that.”

“What makes you think you're not that kind of person? You're already part of a less traditional family.”

Remy shut her eyes. “Because I'm scared.” The very range of possibilities frightened her. So many unknowns. Her fear was as great as her guilt.

We never know what life might toss at us.
Conrad Lesser making her sight-read in front of the class, holding down the page so that she could not see what came next . . .

“I can't believe what a mess I've made! It's ridiculous. I think of myself as this unassuming person who just works hard, does her job, doesn't overstep her bounds—”

“What bounds? No one's binding you.”

What she meant was that she did not seek out trouble; she took what she was given, and was grateful for it—and yet she had created such trouble!

Vivian said, “I think you're losing sight of the bigger picture here, Remy. You finally got what you wanted.”

Remy tried to envision that she might somehow be the person Vivian thought she was: a woman who could have everything she desired, all at once. Could it be, after all these years, that she really was that person?

I want you to feel limitless
.
Sleek and floating and free
.

Perhaps she already
had
been, all this time, but simply hadn't realized it.

No, surely not. She told Vivian, “I gave the bow back.”

“The bow . . . The
violin
bow?”

“I don't deserve it. I'm probably not even going to try for the associate concertmaster spot, anyway—”

“Remy! What does your violin have to do with this? Oh—you mean you're planning on taking maternity leave. So you won't need the bow. Is that what you're saying?”

Remy sighed. “I mean that I'm not a person who can just blithely have this modern ambiguous family, or pull the wool over my husband's eyes, or Yoni's, in order to get what I want. And I don't
need
anything more than I already have. Not a baby or a job or a new bow.”

Vivian gave a little exhale through her nose. “Maybe you don't actually want it.”

Irked, Remy said, “I've been dreaming of that bow for two years.”

“I'm not talking about the
bow
!” Vivian lifted one of the little sofa cushions to give Remy a light bonk on the head. “Is it possible you just
thought
you wanted a child?”

Appalled, Remy said, “Of course I want it!” But she paused to consider.

You are learning to play without fear
.

Her fear was immense—fear of the calamity she had created. Who knew what might happen, should she upset the delicate chemistry of their world?

And yet she had believed, those years ago, that she might learn to be fearless!

Conrad Lesser pinning the pages down, knocking the music off the stand. Yet she had played on, impromptu, intuiting what might come next. Couldn't she find that intuition within herself again? After all, what other choice was there? Impossible ever to know what new fence of notes might be thrust before you.

SHE ASKED HERSELF WHAT TO
do, what to do, over and over as she swam her afternoon laps—at the high school pool, where the public was allowed during certain hours each day, presided over by a pair of teenaged lifeguards who, despite the seven lanes separating them, managed to flirt with each other, Remy had noticed, across the expanse of chlorinated water. Jessie was here, too, in the “fast” lane with her friend Allison. It was part of Remy's weekly routine, bringing the girls to the pool with her—one of those little customs that settle in by default until one day you realize that the custom itself has become precious to you.

With an ease that belied the strife inside her, Remy swam backstroke, gliding along the surface, the water pleasantly obliterating other sounds. Though she always chose the “medium” lane, she realized that she was pulling the water faster today; she kept nearly running into the woman sharing the lane and had to repeatedly slow herself down. But then she would accelerate again, as if fleeing something—until she realized, as she completed another rapid lap, that what she was fleeing was herself.

She wanted to escape herself! The thought caused her to lose her breath, and at the end of the lap she paused to dangle at the edge of the pool, resting her chin on her arm. She looked out over the wet tile floor, then turned to find the lane where Jessie swam freestyle, in a blue swimsuit and white cap identical to Remy's. In their goggles, their hair stuffed into the rubbery caps, they were masked versions of themselves.

Jessie had come to the end of a lap and did a quick flip turn, launching herself from the wall, shimmering underwater like a glittering fish until she burst again through the surface. Amazing creature. How untroubled she looked, speeding through the water, when really her entire world might be about to capsize. And only Remy knew—Remy who was the cause of all the trouble that had ever happened in this girl's life.

Weak with the thought, Remy pulled herself out of the pool, stepped into her flip-flops, and went over to the bench where her towel lay next to Jessie's. She hadn't the strength to dry herself, just wrapped the old green towel around her shoulders and sat watching Jessie and Allison complete their laps. When a wave of now-familiar nausea surged through her, Remy bent forward and focused on the wet tile floor, waiting for the queasiness to pass. Already she felt, incredibly, a protective impulse for this other child inside her. Amazing, how automatically that happened.

When she looked up again, Jessie had finished swimming and was chatting with Allison, the two of them bobbing in the water like seals. Then something must have struck them as funny; they shook in paroxysms of laughter, the physically grueling kind that only happens when you're thirteen. Remy laughed at the sight, then felt the stab inside her, her own awfulness. To disrupt such hilarity, the warmth of this very routine, this pool, this laughter . . . How could she even consider such a thing?

Now Jessie and Allison had climbed out of the pool and were padding wetly toward her. Remy saw again, if with diminished shock, how Jessie's body was changing—the budding breasts, the discernible hips. Like Remy, she had pulled her goggles up onto the top of her swim cap. Allison didn't wear goggles; her eyes were tinged red.

“What were you two cackling about over there?”

“Jessie's going on a date!” Allison said.

Jessie was grinning so widely, the silver band of her retainer showed. “Kevin invited me to go see
The Nutcracker
with him. His parents are taking us.” Though she was clearly trying to appear nonchalant, her eyes shone.

“That's a pretty suave Christmas present,” Remy said.

Allison said, “We were trying to figure out what she should get for him.”

“Why don't you bring him to the Symphony for our Christmas concert?”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “That's so
gay,
Remy.”

“Oh, and going to the ballet isn't?” Remy couldn't help laughing.

Diplomatically, Allison explained, “It's different if the guy is inviting the girl.”

Remy gave each of the girls a pinch on the shoulder. “C'mon, you two, I'm getting cold.”

As they headed toward the locker room, Remy thought how odd life was. She would not even be here with Jessie if Nicholas hadn't made up his mind—if he hadn't returned from Italy saying he knew what he had to do. He might just as easily have decided to stay with Hazel, to turn away from Remy instead.

The mere thought caused a small flip of panic inside her as she stepped into one of the shower stalls. She let the blast of water warm her. Jessie and Allison were showering on the other side of the locker room, jabbering away.

This time, Remy told herself, the decision was hers to make. This time she was choosing. Yes, this time
she
would decide.

But across from her the girls had begun laughing again—reminding Remy that, really, she already had decided.

AT GARY AND ADELE'S THAT
evening, Nicholas and Remy ate Adele's angel food cake and listened to stories from their trip to South America.

Nicholas found it charming the way Adele urged Gary to tell his various anecdotes. They had been married last May, during a hailstorm, by a priest who kept calling Gary “Greg.” Theirs had been a quick courtship. In fact, Nicholas and Remy had made bets on how long the marriage would last. Remy said a year and a half; Nicholas said forever. When he asked why she had made such a cruel prediction, Remy explained that Adele didn't know what she was getting in to. “She's stepping into a life that has just barely enough room for her,” Remy had said, though she spent much less time with Gary than Nicholas did and couldn't fully know. “That
apartment
barely has enough room for her. It's only a matter of time.”

Now they sat across from them on a lumpy couch and ate rubbery wedges of cake. Normally Nicholas would have enjoyed such a visit. He liked to relax with a beer or two and discuss local politics or some other subject on which Gary was an unofficial expert. But this evening he was unable to fully relax; his mind kept returning to Sylvane.

“We thought it was some mistranslation in Spanish,” Gary was saying, weaving his way through an anecdote set in Guatemala. “So then the guy tells me that he
did
work there, but he was on his lunch break.”

Though Nicholas hadn't bothered to follow the story, he was pleased to see Remy laugh. She had looked so worn-out earlier today. But Remy had always found comedy in Gary and his household—the newspapers and magazines in piles everywhere, the television always on, the random books splayed open to whatever esoteric subject Gary was currently researching, and now Adele's exercise equipment tucked in the living room corner.

Now Adele asked, “So how's Jessie liking middle school?”

“She has a boyfriend!” Nicholas hadn't intended to say it aloud.

“No longer a little girl, huh?” Gary said.

“She's even going to her first dance,” Remy said. “The Holiday Gala.”