Chapter 5 Kumquat #2
Helen had heard this music many times in Boston and at Tanglewood, where birds called out to Mahler’s flutes—but tonight the drums and horns filled her with dread.
There were moments of joy, triumphant brass, and woodwinds scurrying.
There was one reprieve, an adagietto like a remembered afternoon, a clearing in the trees, where strings played alone and everybody else put down their weapons.
Trumpets silent. Percussion mute. Briefly Charles drifted off, but even here, horns lurked in shadow, armed and dangerous.
As the symphony built to its finale, Helen felt a grim foreboding about icy streets. Charles would slip and break his leg.
“Let’s go now so I can find a cab,” she told him during the ovation, but he yelled “Bravo!” ignoring the logistics. “Charles.” She took him by the arm.
Then Phoebe called out above the applause. “Wait, we can give you guys a ride. We have Uncle Lew’s car.”
Before Helen could speak, Charles said, “That would be swell.”
Phoebe drove and Wyatt rode shotgun, while Helen and Charles sat in back. The kids sang snatches of the score. “The horns!” said Phoebe.
Wyatt said, “I know!”
Charles added, “And the strings were beautiful.”
Wyatt said, “Adagietto!”
“Perfect,” Charles agreed.
“You slept through it,” Helen pointed out.
He shot her a look.
Phoebe turned onto Longwood Ave. “We played that part in camp.”
“Yeah, that was the best,” said Wyatt, “because Mr. Landau always cried.”
Phoebe said, “I used to wonder if he was crying for the music, or because his career was conducting us.”
What was that? Helen thought. What did you say? Surprise, confusion, and a flash of pleasure to hear Phoebe sound so knowing and so shrewd.
“Is this where you live?” said Phoebe.
“Yes.” Helen peered into the dark.
“I can pull into the driveway.” Phoebe eased the car in as close as she could.
“Bye, Aunt Helen,” Phoebe said.
“Hold on,” said Helen. “About your violin.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’ll send you the address of Jeanne’s luthier in Brookline.”
“I’m not sure I have time to drop it off,” said Phoebe.
“How long is winter break?”
“Four weeks—but we’re going to my parents’.”
Helen dismissed this. “If we take it in now, he’ll have time for the repairs.”
“Well, I’d have to get an estimate,” Phoebe said.
Helen leaned forward from the back seat. “I’ll pay for it.”
“Oh my gosh,” Phoebe said. Oh my gosh thank you, she kept repeating as Helen and Charles got out.
“You overwhelmed her,” Charles said, after the kids drove off.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“I know,” Charles answered, as if to say, You have a gift.
—
Three days later, a jittery Phoebe rode with Helen to Brookline Village. She was holding Jeanne’s violin case in her lap, as though she were about to be apprehended.
I’m not judging you, Helen told Phoebe silently, although she had many thoughts.
Certainly, Phoebe’s clothes were criminal.
The girl wore a raggedy shirt over leggings and salt-stained boots.
Her long blond tresses spilled over her open bomber jacket.
Helen’s instinct was to take her shopping—but she restrained herself.
She parked near Brookline Strings and led the way as Phoebe followed with the violin.
The shop smelled of varnish and emery boards and rosin. Violins lay neckless, bridgeless, naked, stacked on shelves.
“Leonid, this is Jeanne’s granddaughter,” Helen said.
“Hi,” Phoebe said.
“Good good. Open up.” Safety glasses magnified Leonid’s blue eyes. As soon as Phoebe unclipped and opened her violin case, he plucked out the injured instrument and lifted it to see the fingerboard. “You glued!” he announced, immediately.
“Um.” Phoebe hedged but could not hide.
Leonid could see and feel everything. His nails were long, his fingertips stained yellow. “Never glue yourself. You see this?” He tapped Jeanne’s violin. “Bridge. String. Sound post. Top. One piece goes and the others fall. Disaster! What do you use for practicing?”
“Just a…I’ve been borrowing.”
Already he was distracted by something else. “On the back, what happened? You dropped it!”
“No!”
Leonid stared Phoebe down. “You took it in the cold.”
“I tried to keep it warm.”
He examined the violin’s torso. “This is a crack. You see how this gets a little crack?”
Phoebe was blinking. No crying, thought Helen. It was bad enough to hear about the damage. Now the poor girl looked so sorry and so sad.
“Who fixed this?” Leonid demanded. “What happened after grandmother is gone?”
“That doesn’t matter.” Helen cut him off. “We’re here for restoration.”
“You will need complete repair and cleaning.”
“Good,” said Helen. She told Leonid to do everything, fingerboard, bridge, sound post, crack.
“This looks like I will take the instrument apart,” Leonid said.
“Do it,” Helen told him.
“I will give you quotes,” said Leonid.
“Call me later.” Helen didn’t want Phoebe to hear what a complete overhaul would cost.
As Helen swept out of the shop, Phoebe kept murmuring, “I feel so bad.”
“Yes, well,” Helen told her on the sidewalk. “No point in that. I’m taking care of this.”
“Thank you so so much.”
Helen gazed across the street at Orinoco, which was a decent Venezuelan restaurant. “We’ll get some lunch.”
“I didn’t know it would be so serious,” Phoebe told Helen at the table.
Oh, sit up straight, thought Helen. Eat your veggie empanadas. What she said was, “It’s about as serious as I expected.”
Phoebe looked surprised, and then just a little bit amused. “You expected all of that?”
Helen caught it again, a glint of wit. “At least some of it.”
The glint didn’t last. “It’s just so sad,” Phoebe said. “Because it’s like I was playing the instrument too much. I was feeling like I’d rediscovered performing. I was finally returning to my original dream—and that’s how I broke the violin.”
“Lesson learned,” said Helen.
“I was playing Bach when it happened,” Phoebe confessed. “It was like an omen.”
Helen said, “By the way, your grandmother did not believe in omens.”
“No?”
“No, not at all.”
“It was just the timing. I was playing in my room, and I thought I’m going to take next year just to practice.”
“A whole year!”
“I decided to play Bach, busking cross-country.”
“Busking?”
“Like Matt Haimovitz when he traveled with the cello suites! I had this vision and just then—at that exact moment the fingerboard popped off—and I was so sad. I started wondering, What is Jeanne trying to tell me?”
“Don’t do it,” Helen answered immediately.
“That’s how you interpret it?”
“Absolutely.”
“So, you believe in omens.”
“I believe in common sense. It’s not safe busking!”
“Well, I’d be with Wyatt,” said Phoebe.
Helen tried to parse this. “Don’t you want to finish your degree? I thought you were studying arts administration.”
Phoebe shifted her weight nervously. “But I only like art.”
Well, that’s unfortunate, Helen thought, but she said, “You could graduate first and then go and—”
“But I feel like I have to go now,” Phoebe said.
Now? thought Helen. Halfway through the year? “You need to study.”
“I need music,” Phoebe said. “I’ve lost so much time. I need to play. I mean, I’m a musician.”
“Your grandmother was a musician,” Helen said slowly. “But she taught lessons. And, of course, she married an attorney.”
Phoebe frowned.
Helen knew it was bad form to admit Jeanne’s husband had supported her—but facts were facts. “The point is, Jeanne never earned a living from her music.”
“But if it’s what you love,” said Phoebe. “If music is the one thing you want to do, then maybe you have no choice.”
“You’re choosing to live in a car?” asked Helen.
“We’d have a van,” said Phoebe, as though this explained everything.
“A van?” The question slipped out, along with Helen’s skepticism. Not just disapproval. Disbelief.
Phoebe’s body straightened. Her eyes were guarded now. Mechanically, she said thank you as Helen paid the bill.
Outside, Phoebe thanked Helen once again for lunch and for the ride.
When Helen dropped her off in Allston, Phoebe zipped up her little jacket, took out her keys, and strode toward Wyatt’s apartment building.
Suddenly she looked much more grown-up, as though she knew better now.
She would no longer tell her dreams to hostile relatives.
And Helen watched her go and she thought, Why? Why do I have this effect on people?
—
“I’ve offended Phoebe,” she told Charles in the stillness of their lamplit living room.
He looked up from his crossword puzzle. “You offered her money?”
“No, I told the truth.”
“Even worse.”
“Very funny.”
“Four-letter humanoid?”
“Yeti.”
“That’s good! Thank you.”
“I just want to help. I don’t want to drive her away.”
“I know, dear, but you’re bracing.”
“Bracing!”
“You say what you think—and not everyone is used to that. It’s an acquired taste—like kumquats, or Seville marmalade.”
“Kumquats?” Helen protested. Bitter marmalade was one thing. Delicious. But kumquats? Was she so sour? Was her skin so thin? “I don’t like kumquats.”
“Well, there you go,” said Charles. “I do.”
He was gallant and at the same time making fun of her.
That was the trouble with her husband. A kumquat was a terrible little fruit.
If Charles liked them, she had never seen him eat one.
If he’d ever tasted kumquat, it must have been in that orange pickle that came with Indian food. “So I should say nothing,” Helen said.
“Probably,” Charles answered.
He had maintained a light touch, but unfortunately, Helen had become more forthright with age. Somehow, she was fated to say what people needed—not what they wanted to hear.