But for Petra, arguments can be sport, and she and Anthony push back and forth the idea of performing the Black Angels Quartet.
“I think it’s a perfect time to play an antiwar piece. Don’t you agree, Suzanne?” Petra spins her gaze, glances at Suzanne.
Suzanne once played the piece, subtitled Written in a Time of War, in a course in which the professor was trying to teach his students about gesture, both physical and musical. She shrugs under her viola as she places her fingers on the strings, trying to steady herself as she warms up. Her right wrist feels weak, her biceps tired. There is a sharp pinch just inside her left shoulder blade.
“You don’t have many opinions of late,” Anthony says. “Funny thing is that I’m not sure it’s such a bad idea. I’d like to feel some people out.”
“Poll our electorate?” Petra asks. “See whether it would gain us more donors and audience members than it would cost us?”
Anthony takes no offense at Petra’s words. “It’s Princeton,” he says, “so it’s hard to say how it would play — I’m talking aesthetically more than politically.”
Forcing herself to participate, Suzanne enters the conversation. “If we were to perform Black Angels, would we present it as a museum piece or translate it? I mean, the directions say amplify as much possible. Back then Crumb didn’t have any idea what that would mean today. We’d blow out the back of the room.”
“The huge score,” Daniel says as he enters, “is reason enough for me to sign on. I like big pieces of paper.”
“The physical size of the score could be a conversation piece for our,” Anthony pauses as he searches for the word, “for our base.”
“Well,” Petra says, taking her seat, “you smell which way the money’s blowing and let us know.”
Today they practice Suzanne’s favorite of their standards: The Art of Fugue. The clean counterpoint lifts her from her life, from space and time, from bad news large and small, from her anxiety, into an airy world of notes. They know the piece well, so despite its challenges, they play through and the hour feels more like performance than practice. They perform for themselves. They leave the piece as Bach left it: unfinished after the letters of his musical signature. Only Bach could take such a corny idea as weaving the letters of his name into his music and have it sound perfectly elegant.
The abrupt ending hangs above them, not menacing but haunting, not a guillotine but a ghost, and they know not to ruin the moment with speech. They pack their instruments quietly, nodding good-bye, silently sharing a rare secret performance. This love of playing is what holds them together across their differences of taste and personality. Even Anthony is in it for the music today.
Seven
When Suzanne and Petra arrive home, Ben is in the living room, playing the cello — something Suzanne has not seen him do in months.
The first time she saw him, he was hunched over a cello as though it were a child he was protecting from breaking waves. Though the instrument stayed silent, his fingers moved along the strings as though he were really playing, and his foot tapped time. When he looked up, Suzanne was unnerved by the dark eyes staring out under lashes so fair they were nearly white. He had reddish hair but no freckles, and he was more tan than pale. She had never seen anyone with his coloring.
“I could spend a night with that,” whispered Petra as they stood outside the practice room he occupied but they had reserved.
“But you like ugly men,” Suzanne said, though she assumed that what Petra suggested would happen, that Ben would fall for Petra for a week or forever. She assumed that she herself was too small and dark to attract his notice, but he fixed on her from the start, further unnerving her with his height as he stood and, as he spoke, with his rich Southern-melodied voice, itself cello-like. The first word he said to her in his molasses accent was viola, and she nodded that, yes, she played the viola.
“I’m writing some music for the viola,” he said, the o open and then pulled long. “Maybe you’d run through it for me sometime.”
Suzanne found her voice. “A sonata?”
“More like a group of caprices.”
“A young Schumann,” Petra said. “I hope you’re not planning to live off your wife’s performances and then throw yourself in the Rhine and get locked away for the rest of your short, stupid life.”
Suzanne learned then an important fact about Ben: he doesn’t swat banter back and forth. When a line is thrown his way, it sticks and he responds as though it were not a line. His words are always serious; he does not joke, and he does not flirt. To Petra’s attempt, he said, “I’d take Schumann’s compositions at any price. There have been few original composers. I’m not one for Romantic music, but I’d be happy if posterity could look back at my work and say that it was utterly new.”
“Oh, my god, such an earnest young composer,” Petra said sideways to Suzanne. Of Ben she asked, “Even at the price of poverty and extreme unhappiness?”
He lifted his cello, embracing it with his broad chest as well as his arms as he stood. “No one ever said we were meant to be happy. There are more important things.”
“I’ll do it,” Suzanne interjected. “I’ll play through the caprices for you.”
“She’s very good,” Petra said, putting her arm around Suzanne like a loving father. “Though her name isn’t Clara.”
Ben ignores them as they enter now. He is playing something that sounds more like math than music — notes and tempo that do not amount to melody. They sit and listen, and it is a good ten or more minutes before he is done.
“Just working some stuff out,” he says.
Suzanne rises when the house phone rings, then worries that she appears anxious to answer first. Her fear is dulled by Elizabeth’s voice.
“We just decided to have a potluck tomorrow night. All of you come, and be sure to bring your friend Petra. She’s fun; I like her.”
“You’re one of the few wives who does,” Suzanne says, and it is true that most women despise Petra on sight.
“I can’t believe that,” Elizabeth objects. “She’s terrific. Tell her she has to come.”
“You just like her because she likes the same dreadful music you do.”
“But she’s a violinist.”
“Classical musicians have famously appalling taste in popular music.”
“You for one.” Elizabeth snorts at her joke. “And there will be kids there for Adele to play with. My kids just love her, tell Petra that. Speaking of which, when are you and Ben going to give this town some more kids?”
Suzanne flinches, as she does every time the question comes up, not understanding how people can be so nosy, or so oblivious to the possibility that people who don’t have children might not be able to. Or might have lost one. She could retort snidely — the impulse is there — but she likes Elizabeth, likes having a friend who is a grown-up party girl, careless about dates and times but thoughtful when she hears you’re sick or celebrating. Elizabeth is free of malice, and Suzanne has never heard her say a mean word about anyone, not to them and not behind their back.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” she says evenly, thanking Elizabeth before hanging up.
While Suzanne stares at the cabinet trying to imagine a dinner emerging from its contents, the phone rings again. She assumes it is Elizabeth, who always forgets something she meant to say and then phones back a minute later when she remembers.
Ben answers and passes the phone with a shrug. “Not Elizabeth.”