Deaf to. She opens her eyes, kisses Adele’s temple. Adele is smiling and indeed looks to Suzanne as though she, too, is suffused by the music she cannot hear, as though she, too, has rediscovered the meaning of what they do, the reason they live and work and live lives that others think are strange.
Adele wriggles her hand, and Suzanne realizes she has been holding it too tight. She remembers Evelyn Glennie, deaf since the age of twelve, playing percussion barefoot in order to feel the music. And those case studies, those deaf people whose brain waves when listening to music mimic the patterns of the hearing, perhaps because they sense a percentage of the sound through their skin. Adele and Suzanne raise their hands to clap simultaneously. Suzanne leans back to tell Petra, again and this time sure of it, that everything is going to be all right, that Adele has the ability to hear music at least in her mind.
But she halts her voice when she sees Petra staring ahead stone-like, tears jagging her face. She is looking not at Adele but still at the stage, her expression illegible save for the tears, which Suzanne cannot interpret.
The applause in the auditorium is heavy, even ecstatic, but Petra’s hands remain in her lap.
The reception on campus is Kazuo’s doing, but Ben has agreed to go. He seems even to be enjoying the attention, at least a little. He seems lighter, a weight lifted like a stone from atop his head, and his smile comes more readily. From across the room, Suzanne sees him shake hands, nod in response to passing comments, make conversation with Anthony, with Daniel, with people from the music department. He accepts Petra’s quick hug. Suzanne holds her distance, supervising Adele as she scours the refreshments, getting her to eat a sandwich half and some fruit before she raids the selection of petits fours.
“Congratulations,” she says to Daniel and Linda as they approach.
“I know it’s fast,” Linda says, “but we’re in love, and I’m getting too old to wait.”
“You’re not anything old,” Daniel says, putting his arm around Linda’s slim shoulders.
Anthony joins them, saying, “So that was very good, and very well-received.” He’s surveying the room, nodding approval, comforted by success.
Suzanne discovers that she is smiling, perhaps over their shared surprise that the music was obviously appreciated.
It is late in the day when Suzanne finally tells Ben what she thinks. She leaves out the fact that she was surprised, saying, “Don’t be insulted by this because I don’t mean beautiful in any kind of simple or stupid way, but it was absolutely beautiful.”
“Or beautifully absolute?” He is smiling, playing with his words, staring at her breasts as he parts her blouse. “Did you really think I’d be insulted if you called my music beautiful?”
“You never know.”
He grabs her wrist as she reaches for the light switch, tells her he wants to see her standing naked. He strips her and walks around her in a circle before lifting her, completely, and carrying her to the bed. He kisses her mouth, stomach, legs, back, arms. When he pauses, just for a moment, he lingers at her ear and whispers, “It’s beautiful because I composed it for you. I don’t care what those other people think. It’s you I wanted to like it.”
She tries to make her sobbing silent. She does not want him to ask her why she is crying because she could not explain it. Ben kisses the tears on her face, her crying mouth, but he asks nothing, says nothing, and when they are done they fall asleep hard.
It is just dawn when they are awakened by a ringing phone. Suzanne bolts up, thinking, Olivia, grabbing a robe so she can hurry down the hall to answer first. But Petra has already risen to answer it and is calling, “It’s for you, Ben. Some woman.”
Suzanne throws down the robe and puts on jeans and a tee-shirt. She uses the bathroom, brushes her hair and teeth. If this is it, she does not want to be undressed. She feels each step as she walks to the living room, which is suffused in dawn’s pinkish gray light as the streetlight in front of the house clicks itself off. She hears the phone receiver set down in its cradle, the sound of her husband crying.
This is the first time she has heard him cry, ever.
She sits next to him on the sofa, lightly places her hand on the back of his head, trying to fashion words to explain, if indeed it was Olivia who triggered his tears. “Ben,” she whispers.
He turns into her, wetting her shirt with his tears. She waits, stroking and holding his head. “Ben,” she says again with her breath.
“It’s Charlie,” he says when he lifts away from her.
Her loud and involuntary response brings Petra back to the room. “Are you—” she begins, but she backs away when she sees them.
Twenty-two
While Petra takes Adele to school, Ben and Suzanne sit at the table with their coffee, Suzanne with a bowl of cereal. She has given Ben a plate with sliced banana and red globe grapes, figuring maybe he can eat fruit, but he pushes even that aside. He tells her she doesn’t have to go to the funeral.
“I want to,” she says, meaning it, “but my contract is pretty unforgiving, and performance night is almost here. I’m going to talk to Anthony. I want to come.”
Today the quartet breaks from preparing the Black Angels and works on the Haydn quartet it will play during the concert’s first half. Sometimes Suzanne regrets advocating for the piece; at other times it feels right. Today it feels like shelter, a building she knows and needs, a place to be.
The quartet plays well, each of them and the four together. It is one of those days on which years of practice distill into a clean energy and the work seems easier than it is. When the last notes are played, rehearsal disbanded, and her viola back in its case, the shock and sadness of Charlie’s death return, streaming into the whirlpool of Suzanne’s other emotions — her grief for Alex, her fear of Olivia, her delight at Ben’s successful premiere, her sorrow that his moment of triumph was undercut so immediately by his brother’s death.
When Suzanne talks to Anthony, he proves surprisingly human: he tells her she should go to Charleston, practice schedule be damned.
“If I missed a family funeral,” he says, moving their stands to the wall, leaving the room in the condition they promised, “Jennifer would have me bullwhipped in Palmer Square.”
Suzanne picks up the water bottle Petra has left by her chair and sets it by her purse. “So you know that about her?”
“More than anyone, believe me.” He brushes his trousers with the palms of his hands, wiping off chalk and rosin dust. “Which isn’t to say that I’m unhappily married. We all have our arrangements — give up this to get that. I know you guys don’t like her, but Jennifer helps make me who I am, and I love her for it.”
“Thank you, Anthony.”
“Don’t tell anyone I’m going soft. I wouldn’t send you off if we weren’t ready for the performance, and I don’t want Petra and Daniel thinking they have a license to sleep all day.”
Petra is lurking outside and startles Suzanne as she emerges from the subterranean practice room. The day is overcast but weirdly bright, and the buildings and trees are gray outlines against a metallic sky.
“Is he all right?” she asks.
“Yeah, he’s being great, actually. Told me to go to the funeral.”