Things Hoped For (3 page)

I have practiced my violin thousands and thousands of hours during the past ten years, and now my musical future depends on how well I play during those three auditions, twenty minutes each.

And suddenly, this new complication. More pressure is not what I need.

But it’s Thursday night, and I force myself to stay positive. I tell myself that with Grampa away, things might actually be easier. Because who’s been doing all the shopping and a lot of the cooking for the past six months? And who gets herself up and off to school every day? And who sets her own schedule, and puts herself to bed each night? Does anyone wait up if I’m out late at the Philharmonic or when I go get food with my friends after rehearsals?

Grampa hasn’t been taking care of me. More like the other way around, when he lets me. I have been mostly on my own in this city for a long time. And I’ve been worried about Grampa for a long time too. I’ll come in late from a rehearsal, and he’ll be under his fleece in that big recliner in front of the TV, looking so small and old. And I’ll be afraid to shake him, afraid that he won’t wake up.

A knock, and I jump from my chair.

A voice from the hall. “You there, Lawrence? It’s me, Jason.”

I can’t move.

A second knock. “Lawrence?”

It’s the tenant from the studio apartment at the back of the house on the fourth floor. I walk across the parlor, turn the deadbolt, and open the door six inches.

“Hi, Jason. Grampa’s in the bathroom. Can I give him a message?”

Lying shouldn’t feel this easy.

Jason’s about thirty. Short dark hair, brown eyes, stocky build, white T-shirt and jeans. He’s been eating garlic.

“Yeah, sure, Gwennie. Just tell him that the ceiling leak I told him about earlier? It stopped. Maybe iced up or something. But it’ll be back. So he needs to get a roofer over here. That’s all. And tell him I mailed that envelope for him.” A pause, a big smile, then, “So, how’s the music business? Your grampa’s so proud—tells me about you all the time. He says you’ve got auditions coming up, right?”

I smile back. “Next week.”

“Good luck, okay?”

“Thanks.”

Jason turns and heads for the stairs, and I shut and lock the door. And I’m a little surprised. Because Grampa doesn’t seem like he’s that proud of me. Or even paying much attention. Of course, it could be me. Maybe I’m the one who’s not noticing things.

A leak. That means a repairman. And I have to be here to let him in so he can get up to the roof through the metal lid at the end of the fourth-floor hall. And I have to check over the work he does. And I have to pay him. All without Grampa. And without letting on that Grampa isn’t here.

But it’s Thursday evening, and I force myself to stop thinking about this, about any of it.

I walk downstairs. I go to the ground floor door, turning on lights as I go. I pick up my violin case. The roof has a leak, and I need to deal with that. And Grampa’s gone, and I need to deal with that. But more than anything else, I need to practice the Paganini Caprice in B Minor, number 2. And then caprice number 17 too, and then all the rest of my pieces. I don’t just need to get into a good school. No, I need to audition so well that people will want to give me a scholarship, pay me to come to their school. Free room and board here with Grampa has been a godsend, but I know it’s temporary, same as my scholarship at Latham. If I want to keep going forward, I need to make my own way.

I walk down more stairs to the basement, open the door to my rehearsal room, flip the light switch, and shut myself in.

I unzip the case and take out my violin. It’s not actually mine. My own violin is in my bedroom closet. I’ve been told it would make good kindling. This violin in my hands is on loan from the school, “provided to a promising student”—which means loaned to a kid whose parents can’t spend twenty or thirty thousand dollars for a good instrument.

With the right care, a violin will live forever. And if a violin gets dropped or comes unglued, a specialist will resurrect it. This one was made in Italy in 1883. Dozens of other musicians have used this violin, and a lot of them are dead and gone. Someone else will be playing this violin long after I have died. It doesn’t matter that I don’t own it, because I’m just the player of the moment. I borrow everything. Violin, music, air, water, time, this practice room—everything’s on loan. And I have to prove that I deserve it.

I lay the violin on the stool and get out the bow, also very expensive, and also borrowed. I tighten the nut and rub the horsehair across the rosin a few times. Then I lay my mother’s white silk handkerchief on the chin rest, raise the violin to my shoulder, take a deep breath, and begin.

When I have to play a solo piece like this caprice, sometimes it helps if I imagine a scene. Because I don’t like standing up in front of people and playing alone. I’ve never wanted to be a soloist. I guess it’s the same shyness I’ve had since kindergarten. That’s why I love the orchestra. I want to be nestled there among the first violins, rows and rows of us, and there’s me, almost invisible in my black concert dress. I want to play my part perfectly, but I don’t want to be seen.

So as I play caprice number 2, I imagine that I’m a serving maid, and I have to carry a silver tray loaded with fine china from the kitchen all the way up a marble staircase to the sitting room of a fussy old woman. Up and up the stairs I hurry on tiny feet, but careful, because one false step will send me and the tray crashing down the steps. And then there’s a call from below—someone forgot the marmalade. And I turn quickly and balance the clinking china all the way back down. And then halfway up a second time, a damask napkin flutters off the tray, and I have to turn around again.

Up and down, up and down I go, each note a footstep, until finally, every obstacle is overcome, and with a flourish I sweep through the doorway of my lady’s room—and luncheon is served.

This caprice is killing me. More precisely, I am killing this caprice. And that’s sad. I know it’s such beautiful music, fluid and elegant, and I know I’m not doing it justice. Which is what my teacher demands. He’s Russian, very dramatic. He’d make a good Jane Austen character.

At yesterday’s lesson Pyotr Melyanovich said, “The composer begs you to keep him alive. When you play his
capriccio
, he stands behind you, listening. If your playing is weak, the composer weeps. He mourns for himself. If you cannot play his music, Paganini will die.”

Praise from my teacher is like water in the Sahara. One rare day I played well, and he said, “You have the gift, little one—the heart and the soul.” A sip of praise. It keeps me trudging forward on this Thursday night, with thousands of notes lit up in my mind, tiny stars in a desert sky.

This caprice is less than three minutes long. My practice rule is simple: Play the whole piece from beginning to end; at any mistake, start over. At the end of an hour I have played it through completely only twice.

My fingers and my bow have to dance with perfect grace across the same four strings. One false step and I’ve ruined the intonation, botched the rhythm, destroyed the dynamics, choked the flow. And for my auditions, I have to play every note from memory.

I have two more lessons before my first audition. And that’s good. This West Virginia girl needs all the help she can get.

The second hour on the other caprice is better. Paganini is still on life support, but he’s breathing. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll be able to sit up and take some nourishment through a straw. Then I spend an hour on my Bach partita, and then I run through the first movement of the Sibelius concerto.

And then it’s time for food and rest. I’m an athlete, and this is my training camp.

Walking up to the first floor, the house feels too still. I can still hear CNN, but I know it’s only noise. And when I turn off the TV, the silence is complete. There’s no traffic on 109th Street, and even if there were, the brick walls are eighteen inches thick, and all the windows are triple-glazed. The upstairs tenants are quiet. I wish I could hear Grampa snoring through his bedroom door.

“Is the perimeter secure?” That’s what Grampa asks me every night. It’s from his years in the army. And after I check all the doors and windows, I report back, “Perimeter secure, sir.” And then he salutes me. Every night. Until now.

So after I’ve locked up, I toast some raisin bread and drink a glass of milk. When Grampa joins me for an evening snack, he likes his milk warmed up. And he has a cookie or two, never toast.

Cooking just for myself is going to be simpler. So I guess that’s one good thing.

When I go into the study to turn off the desk lamp, I see the stack of mail from this afternoon. And I remember: I have a letter from home.

I carry it downstairs to my bedroom and lay it on my pillow. When I’m ready, I climb into bed, open the letter, lie down on my side, and begin to read.

I fold the letter and tuck it with the others in the drawer of my nightstand.

I feel bad about Uncle Belden. I had to make a CD of my playing to send along with my college applications—prescreening just to get an audition. These schools want to hear a recording first to see who deserves to try out in person. I could have burned an extra CD and sent it to Uncle Belden. And I should have, but I didn’t.

People hear I’m from West Virginia and right away they think poverty and dirt floors and hog farms down in the holler. My folks are about twenty minutes outside Charleston, and where we live it’s not like that. My dad has his own car repair business, and my mom finished two years at the junior college before she started her family. I guess we’re middle-class Americans. Still, every radio button in both the car and the pickup plays country. And not just because that’s all there is to choose from.

We don’t have a lot of money, but we’ve never been poor. Now, my mom’s family, they’re poor. They live in the hills about two hours east. Not dirt-floor poor, but pretty close. They live scruffy, and it would be hard to say how much money my dad’s loaned them over the years. Hard for me to say, I mean. I’m certain that Daddy knows to the penny.

Uncle Belden is my mom’s brother, and it’s fair to say he’s the reason I’m here in New York, even more than Mr. Richards. When I was little and we’d visit, he’d always play his fiddle. He had the magic, and everybody listened, even Daddy. It’s almost my earliest memory, sitting on my mom’s lap, listening to that sound, and then wailing for more when it stopped. Belden knew. He told my mom, “That Gwennie, she’s got the music, you wait and see.”

Turns out we didn’t have to wait long. I was four and Belden gave me a one-fourth-size violin for Christmas. He put the tiny fiddle in my hands and showed me how to tuck it under my chin, how to hold the bow up and scrape it back and forth across the strings. And to me it all felt as natural as jumping in the creek on a hot afternoon.

Every time we went up into the hills to visit, Belden and I would play for hours. We found the most amazing harmonies. And when I was ten, Belden declared, “This child knows more ’bout fiddlin’ than I do!”

And thinking of that simple time makes my eyes smart. But I blink hard and turn off my lamp. And I make myself promise to send Uncle Belden a CD. And I make myself stop wondering how Grampa’s doing, and how I’m going to get the roof fixed. And I make myself stop worrying about my auditions. And then I make myself close my eyes and say a prayer and rest. And I make Thursday come to an end.

Because I am the brave one.

She is balanced on a tightrope, thin as an E string. There is only emptiness below, and the rope slants upward. In the mist above her there must be a place to rest, a platform she can cling to, but she can’t see it. Wind and rain slap at her from behind. There is no going back, and there is no net. And as she tries to take her next step, the rope goes slack. She is dropping into the darkness. And as she falls, I sit up, bed drenched with sweat, breath rasping in my throat.