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.”
Seventeen
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.”
“Does he know he’ll be rubbing elbows with the Neue Musik people?”
“He read an article about the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra live-posting a performance.”
Suzanne imagines Alex’s reaction to that news. Her smile is stopped by the recurring thought she keeps pushing away: I didn’t really know him. “Please tell me,” she says, “that he’s not planning that for Black Angels.”
“Not yet, thank god. But the rehearsal, promotion, stuff like that. He’ll have to get people to notice him, of course, which I’m sure he plans to use you for.”
Suzanne measures the information, the anxiety she feels in her throat. She has always been very careful not to self-promote, not directly, and she enjoys the conversations she has online. They make her feel in touch with some larger endeavor, part of a bigger music — a hint of the way she felt when she played with a traveling symphony and at receptions when Alex introduced her to people she never would have talked to otherwise. Yet Ben may be right that musicians have no business marketing themselves in words at all. Perhaps they should admit that they make something almost no one wants and that those few who do want it already know where to find it.
Not wanting to talk this kind of shop, she asks, “What about Adele? Have you decided?”
Petra turns to face her, head propped on one hand, tucking her hair behind her ear with the other. “I’m going ahead. I asked her, and she said she wants to hear us play.”
“She’s a little girl, though, honey. You’re the grown-up.”
Petra nods, her expression sad. “But she’s smarter than I am, and she’s old enough to know what she wants. And what she wants is what I want, too. I don’t want to make her do it, but I want her to do it.”
“You’re doing the right thing. Inasmuch as there is a right thing, you’re doing it.”
Suzanne’s eyes film with tears, and soon Petra is crying.
Through her crying Petra says, “When you’re young you always think there’s a right thing to do. You’re obsessed with making the right choice, like your fate is going to go in one direction and you could jump on the wrong boat and get it all wrong.”
The twin bedside lamps splash imperfect circles on the ceiling, casting the air straw yellow.
“But then you learn,” Petra continues, “that there’s no right answer. Just this thing or that, and the things you do and the things that happen to you add up to whatever they add up to, and you never know if whatever good or bad comes your way is because of some particular thing you did.”
“I think I followed that,” Suzanne says. “And I think the most valuable thing you forfeit when you make a choice is knowing what would have happened if you’d decided differently.”
She holds her friend, lets her cry into her shoulder and neck, breathing in the clean smell of her shiny hair.
“I’m going to need even more help, though,” Petra whispers. “It’s going to take a lot of therapy and work. Driving to Philadelphia. Working with Adele every night. Eventually she’ll have to change schools, and that’s going to be hard. I can’t do it without you. I’m sorry because I know it’s not fair, but I really can’t.”
“You don’t have to do it without me, and fair doesn’t enter the equation anyway. What’s fair? I love Adele.”
“Things could change, though. Ben could want to move. Or the quartet could fail.” She laughs through her crying, “Anthony could single-handedly ruin us with his ‘online presence.’”
“There aren’t many guarantees in life, Petra, but I promise that I’ll always be your friend, and I’ll always do anything I can for Adele.”