Chapter Seven
Ava and Nathan were waiting to announce Xander Thorne’s departure from the Pops until after the season closed at the May Anniversary Concert. One of the other cellists would step in for the remaining rehearsals and performances, but they’d told him it was temporary, that Xander Thorne’s band had gotten a gig. They didn’t want the donors and subscribers to know quite yet.
Gwen shadowed Ava through every rehearsal leading up to the Anniversary Concert. Word had spread among the orchestra about her promotion, even though the press release hadn’t come out yet.
Despite what Nathan had said, Diane was not excited to be giving up third chair just so Gwen could sit behind Ava while training. And while Henry and the other violinists had congratulated her, she couldn’t help but wonder if they resented her— especially when no one approached her at break time. Did Gwen really deserve first chair? Had some of her colleagues been hoping for their own promotions?
In the week leading up to the concert, Ava and Nathan let her sit in at first chair one rehearsal, and Diane complained that she wasn’t leading enough. Her elbow didn’t pull far enough away, her head didn’t move when she found the downbeat, her shoulders did so little.
As first violin, it was her job to conduct the string section as much as it was Nathan’s. And as a conductor with an instrument to worry about, she had to communicate through her body since her hands could not.
And according to Diane, she was not communicating with much other than her own ass.
“Thank you for the suggestion, Diane,” Nathan said in his friendly tone. “That’s something Gwen can definitely work on.”
He turned to grin at her, and she looked down at her knees. She thought she heard Diane grumble three seats behind her.
Ava assured her that she would be available to her during her first season for any questions or bowing problems. Nevertheless, the stress of it all was making Gwen turn toward solo work, which wouldn’t be helpful in her new duties as first chair. Other than a lead violin solo here and there, Gwen needed to be focusing on ensemble work and leading her section. Still, solo work soothed her nerves.
Strangely, it was the Chaconne by Vitali that she kept coming back to—particularly the arrangement she’d found Alex Fitzgerald playing on YouTube. It wasn’t the popular arrangement, but Gwen liked it so much more. Once she’d memorized it, she would turn on his performance and watch him play it. She’d mute the volume and play with him, eyes on his shoulders, his bowing, his fingering. She tried to follow his head, even taking down her hair to try a now infamous Xander Thorne hair flip.
She’d hurt her neck.
It wasn’t natural. Or not to her, at least. To Alex Fitzgerald…it was artistry.
She watched as he closed his eyes, lips tightening over the one singular place in the entire piece that wasn’t intoned perfectly. She wondered if he’d focused on that moment. If he’d obsessed over it for days after, thinking about pulling the video and trying again.
The video was from ten years ago. He’d been sixteen during that recording (according to an embarrassing amount of googling on her part). He’d started playing violin eight years sooner than she had. He’d mastered one instrument more than she had—possibly two, as an Instagram video of Thorne and Roses with Xander Thorne messing around on the drums indicated. He was only about four years older than she was, but he was already one of the most accomplished musicians she’d ever watched.
The account that posted the Chaconne videos had also posted almost eighty other videos of Alex working on songs. The username didn’t seem like it belonged to Alex, and the captions talked about him in third person. Alex Fitzgerald, age 15. Bartók Violin Concerto No. 2. See 13:52 for something really impressive. She’d watched them all at least three times.
She even searched Reddit, finding rumors and theories on why Alex Fitzgerald had disappeared. Plenty of internet sleuths had figured out that Xander Thorne was the gangly teenage violinist, especially noting that there was limited information on Xander’s background before Thorne and Roses.
Gwen sighed.
She couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Ava—how he’d wanted first chair badly enough to endure playing an entire season across from the woman he refused to call his mother. Would he have even given up Thorne and Roses to do so?
And how much did he resent her for taking that away from him?
Before she could stop herself, she looked up Thorne and Roses’ live performances. She watched him break bow strings, sweat, and flip his hair around. She listened to the crowd scream for him. There was one video where Xander had to take the mic to talk to the crowd while Dom, the violinist, solved a sound issue. He jokingly narrated the moment, teasing Dom for not knowing how to plug into an amp. Dom told him to fuck off, and Xander’s lips lifted in a small smile.
Almost like the twitch of his lips she’d noticed as he spoke to her upstairs at the wedding. The barely-there smile as he slowly packed up his cello in the rehearsal room. Like someone who’d forgotten how.
Gwen watched it again.
Gwen would be presented to the patrons as the new first chair at the Anniversary Concert. Ava suggested purchasing a new dress for the occasion, and at the frightened look on Gwen’s face, she’d laughed and called the car to take them to Fifth Avenue. Ava had forced her into a dress with enough length at the knees to sit comfortably during the concert, but with enough sparkle for Ava’s wild imagination.
On the night of the concert, Gwen warmed up onstage while the audience filed in, scratching at the glittery material of her new dress. She used to chat with Mei and the brass section before concerts, but she’d started to feel them pull away after her promotion. Now, she sat onstage by herself, focusing.
When the lights dimmed, she waited for Ava Fitzgerald to enter. The next time Gwen played at Stern Auditorium, she would be the one backstage, waiting.
The doors opened, and Gwen listened to the cacophony. Ava turned to the first oboe and tuned the orchestra. Once satisfied, she sat.
Nathan entered and waved to the audience, throwing his hands wide for the orchestra. The musicians applauded for Nathan. It wasn’t necessary, Gwen had heard, but ever since she’d started, the orchestra would join the audience in welcoming Nathan to the stage.
He mounted the podium, and Gwen turned her eyes to the first piece.
They played through, and Gwen kept one eye on Ava, watching her elbow pull and her knee bounce when she felt the strings had gotten ahead.
At the end of the song, Nathan addressed the crowd, thanking everyone for attending the Anniversary Concert. He joked his way through a few memories of the year, and the subscribers chuckled. He introduced one of their guest singers for the night, a Broadway name Gwen didn’t know.
While she waited for the violins to begin, Gwen caught sight of Ms. Michaels and Dr. Bergman, sitting in the first tier, close to the stage. They sat with a few other well-dressed people— more board members, Gwen assumed.
From the moment the concert started, she felt the time trickling away, counting down until Ava played her final notes and Gwen took her place.
Just before Nathan reintroduced the guest singers again, to close out the performance with “Happy Days are Here Again/ Get Happy,” he took a moment and said, “I have an announcement for you all tonight.”
Gwen felt her palms sweat, bow slipping.
“You—our dedicated subscribers and patrons—will be the first to know. It’s with a heavy heart that I announce that my wife, Ava, is about to play her last piece as first violin for the Manhattan Pops.”
Gwen felt the gasping chatter like a knife through her stomach.
Ava stood and took a small bow. When the applause didn’t end, she sent an “Oh shut up,” over the din that had them all rolling.
“I’ll miss performing with her very much,” Nathan said. “I’ll miss bossing her around even more.”
The couple smiled at each other while the crowd laughed.
“But I want to introduce you to our new first violinist.”
Gwen swallowed and tried to relax her face.
“At twenty-two years old, she is the youngest violinist to take first chair not only in Manhattan Pops history, but also in every professional orchestra in the United States.”
These facts checked out. Gwen had looked it up. She ignored the crowd mumbling and cooing.
“It’s my pleasure to introduce you to my friend, Gwen Jackson.”
A light hit her. She smiled at the crowd and stood, holding her instrument awkwardly at her side. Nathan’s hand extended, presenting her. She grinned at him and gave the crowd a little shake of her hand.
The sound of applause hit her like a wave, pulling her under before letting her take a breath.
“Before the Pops, Gwen was playing violin in subway stations with her case open for tips.”
Gwen blinked. Flashing camera phones. Murmurs.
It was true, but she hadn’t known it was going to be announced to the public like that. It sounded different when he said it that way. She felt her cheeks heat, and she struggled to push away the memory of that orphan who’d needed to be good enough at violin to afford groceries.
“She auditioned for us at nineteen and blew us away. She’s been honing her craft for the past four seasons here at the Pops, and I cannot be prouder of the musician she’s become.”
Gwen felt her cheeks grow tight with her smile. There were certain facts missing from Nathan’s story. And Mabel’s voice hummed in her ears, about Nathan “discovering” Ava. But she’d signed up for this kind of exposure when she’d said yes to first chair. Part of her promotion was a marketing ploy—“a pretty picture on the brochure” and all that—so she took a deep breath and beamed back at Nathan as he continued.
“And because I knew she would refuse if I asked her in advance,” Nathan said, “I was hoping to spring on her the opportunity to play something for you all.”
She felt the blood leave her face. Her legs were full of air, the oxygen in her lungs slowly draining into her thighs. Gwen blinked at him as the crowd began applauding, bursting into her ears in spurts of noise in between the pounding in her head.
She knew she looked ridiculous, standing there with her violin hanging from her fingertips, white as a ghost. Nathan was applauding. Ava was applauding. Even fucking Diane was applauding—albeit out of obligation because the entirety of Carnegie Hall was making noise for her.
Nathan whispered something to Ava, out of the mic, and Ava smiled and nodded at her.
Gwen turned to the crowd. She mimicked Ava’s easy grace with a smile that tugged on her eyes. She placed the violin on her clavicle, and the crowd quieted.
It wasn’t until she brought the bow up that she realized she had no idea what she was going to play.
The Beethoven concerto popped into her head, but this was bigger than that. Bigger than the same old song she’d been playing for ten years.
And suddenly, the bow was against the strings, and Vitali’s Chaconne poured through her. It wasn’t as perfect as Alex Fitzgerald’s videos, but the bow synced with her thundering heart, and her fingers flew over the neck of the violin with a dexterity she’d been practicing for weeks.
Her nerves had set the tempo a few beats too fast. She tried to breathe into the held notes to get a sense of the pace back.
She played through the end of the insanely tricky leggiero section, and then dragged the bow across the violin one final time, ending her performance. She couldn’t help but look to Ava first as she opened her eyes.
She caught the moment before Ava set her features into a proud grin. Her lips had turned down, eyes stuck on Gwen’s fingers with a haunted expression, like trying to place a drifting scent from your childhood. A jolt of panic ran through her when Gwen realized she might recognize it as something her son used to play. But then it was gone as Ava smiled brightly.
And like running into a brick wall, the sound returned to the room, and Gwen almost stumbled backward at the push of it. She looked to the audience, catching Ms. Michaels and Dr. Bergman standing in their seats.
They all were. Carnegie Hall on their feet for her.
No one had told her applause was something you felt. And that when it was thundering, it was only a buzzing. Like your ears protected you from the sweet pain of it.
Gwen took a small bow. Her first solo bow onstage at Carnegie Hall.