Chapter 24 Marigold
Marigold
We’re only in Stockholm five days before the preliminaries begin.
It feels like too much time and not enough, all at once.
The electric feeling in my neck doesn’t remit, and neither does the ungodly feeling in my right foot.
I can’t tell if it’s getting worse or if I’m just paying such close attention that it only feels worse—but it’s almost impossible to concentrate on playing like this.
I keep stumbling over my notes. A couple times, I have to stop altogether, the pain too much to play through.
All throughout, time marches on and then the week is gone, and the first round of the competition begins. First round of—hopefully—three, stretching out over two weeks of nonstop competition. If I survive the preliminaries, and the round two semifinals…if I make it to the final round…
It’s almost too much to hope, but I hope anyway.
It’s impossible to attend every single first-round performance. There are simply too many contestants, for one, plus every second you spend sitting in a theater watching someone else play is a second you could have been practicing your own pieces.
But I still go on the first day and sit in the back row, as if being hidden from the performer onstage will protect me from some kind of evil eye.
Xinyan and Jamie are both scheduled for the first day.
Xinyan, of course, plays like a goddess.
Her Mendelssohn is perfection, and even from a distance, I can see how elegantly she tilts over her instrument, absorbed in the music.
She isn’t in pain. The girl next to me watches Xinyan with her hands clutched before her chest like she’s praying, eyes glistening with unshed tears.
Once upon a time, I could make people feel like that.
But not now. Now, I’m going to sound like a staggering elephant let loose upon the stage.
When Jamie’s turn is up, he plays a Chopin mazurka to start, fingers flying over the keys. I’m too far away to see his facial expression, but I’ve watched him play enough to imagine it: his eyes fallen shut, lips slightly parted, as if playing in a daze. Perfect, and perfectly disconnected.
I wish I could slide onto the bench beside him and rest my hands over his hands.
I wish I could infuse him with some of what I feel when I hear this piece: the light skip of a happy heart, an imagined landscape of wildflower meadows and the springtime breeze on my cheeks and the joy of interlocking fingers with someone you adore.
The next piece is darker, more frenetic. Jamie’s spine curves forward, bowing over the keyboard like he needs to be closer to it, like he can make himself fall into the music itself and let it fill him up. I remember telling him to do that. Fake it till you make it.
But how much do these little charades really matter, anyway? The fact is that Jamie plays every single piece on his docket perfectly.
I slip out the back when he’s done, instead of waiting for the final two people in the morning session to perform. Just listening to Jamie and Xinyan has my fingers itching to get back to their own keyboard.
The standard has been set. Now I just have to coerce my body into letting me meet it.
I find it hard to get started, though. I play the first few bars of my most difficult piece, the Schumann, four times before I’m satisfied enough to keep going.
But even then, my heart’s not in it. It’s like part of my mind got stuck to Jamie while I was listening to him play, and now it’s trailing him around the city—from the Opera House to an imagined cup of coffee at a nearby café back to the hotel, where even now he might be taking the elevator up from the lobby, might be walking down the hall, might even be right outside my door.
I keep circling back around the look on his face when he held me last night—the anxious desperation that wrote deep lines on his forehead, the way he kept rubbing the back of his neck like he just needed something to do with his hands.
I give up practicing after a couple agonizing hours and text Jamie. Hey. Where are you?
At that café down the street, he replies instantly. Want to meet me?
I glance at the bedside clock. It’s already mid-afternoon; where did the time go? I tap back an affirmative and bundle up in as many layers of clothing as I can manage before facing the Swedish winter air.
Despite the hour, the sun is already on its way down.
The gold sunset-light glitters over the icy lake and rooftops, giving the city a fairy-tale air.
My breath bursts before my lips in white clouds as I make my way down the narrow winding street toward the nearest café.
It had snowed a few days ago, then melted just enough to make the ground slippery and lethal when the nighttime temperature dipped below freezing again.
When I get to the coffee shop, Jamie’s already in line, two people in front of me.
I stand there behind him for a moment and stare at the back of his head, at the little errant curl that sticks out at his cowlick and the single mole visible right at the edge of his back collar.
I feel like I’m spying on him or something, some voyeur taking notes on the way he stands when he thinks nobody he knows is watching.
The way he keeps reaching for his phone like a tic, then changing his mind, as if he’s made some kind of very belated New Year’s resolution to stay present or whatever.
But the creep life is too much for me, so I mumble an Excuse me to the person in front of me and sidle up to him, bumping my shoulder against his. “Hey there, loser.”
He bumps me back. It’s remarkable how I can literally see the tension drain from his body when he sees me. Like he’s come home after a long day and settled into a familiar room.
“You sounded great today,” I tell him. “That mazurka was awesome.” Yay. I sound like I’m complimenting his grilling technique at a Memorial Day cookout. “I mean, it was really good. You did really good.”
He shakes his head, but at least he’s still smiling. “It was okay. I could have done better. At least, that’s what Celia says.”
“Celia always thinks you could have done better.”
“True.”
The cashier gestures us forward, and Jamie pays for both our orders, even when I protest. The baristas are damn efficient about preparing them, too, sliding our lattes across the counter so soon that I almost wonder if they have a set of prepared drinks back there, waiting for stereotypical Americans to come in and order their oat milk mochas.
I tip my head toward the small collection of tables. “Want to sit? Or want to go wander around in the frigid Swedish winter?”
“Is it weird if I choose the winter?”
“Uh…a little? Are you fond of frostbite or something?”
He shrugs. “I mean, I am a Midwesterner.”
“I’m vetoing you. Sorry. But you can pick our table, if you want.”
He sighs and performatively rolls his eyes, but he does pick a table, so really, I won.
He chooses the one by the window, where we can sit and gaze out at the icy street as the sun dips closer to the horizon.
A few figures bundled up in black hurry past, heads ducked against the breeze. Clearly none of them are Midwestern.
“How are you feeling?” he asks after a minute, once I’ve had a chance to take a sip of coffee and pick at my cinnamon bun.
It’s a heavy question, which Jamie knows. And it’s one that I’m not sure how to answer. “I guess okay. Nothing’s gotten worse in the past few days, anyway. But I still feel like I have a sword hanging over my head.”
It’s impossible to entirely shut out the knowledge that this could be it for me—my final competition, my last chance to prove myself on the world stage.
The prospect of going home after this, not to my old life, but to an endless stream of doctors’ appointments and MRIs and new medications with unknown side effects, makes me want to curl up and die.
I have to get through this. I have to.
“I wish I could fix this for you,” he says softly. “It’s so unfair.”
Somehow Jamie always knows the perfect thing to say.
Not I’m sorry, no pity-laced platitudes.
Just simple validation that yeah, this really fucking sucks.
And there’s nothing either of us can do to make it better.
Jamie might be the first person on the planet who has heard me talk about something like this and not made it all about themselves and how they Just don’t know what to say and Can I bring you a meal, like early MS means I can’t make myself a sandwich.
“I’ll be okay,” I say, and manage a smile. The last thing either of us needs right now is to wallow in my misery. “I’d better be, anyway. My prelim performance is tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ll be in the back row, praying you fail miserably.”
“Oh, don’t I know it.”
And just like that, things are back to normal—at least a little bit. God, I wish they’d just stay that way. I need to worry about piano and Jamie’s jealous streak, not life-and-death-and-disability. Jamie being a little shit is the perfect antidote.
“What about you?” I ask, doing my best to transition us into a new subject as seamlessly as possible. “Are you dying of panic yet, or still trying to pretend your stage fright’s not terminal?”
He lets out a heavy breath. “Oh, you know. I’m practicing so much, I feel like my fingers are gonna fall off. And I keep seeing people around that I recognize and know are fifty times better than I am, which makes the whole thing feel a bit pointless.”
“Hey, now. Don’t count yourself out before we even start round two.”
“Not doing that, don’t worry. I still plan to crush you, for one.” He gives me that gorgeously crooked smile that made me fall for him, and it finally feels like the weight between us is lifting, my lungs expanding with the first full swell of air they’ve had in a while.