Chapter 26 Marigold
Marigold
There are only twelve contestants to make it this far, out of almost two hundred.
It feels unreal—not that they give us any time to let the news sink in, because they announce the final list at ten p.m., and the first session of the next round is scheduled less than a day later.
Because who needs more practice at this point, I guess.
Or maybe I should try to view it as a good thing. If I’m not ready now, I never will be.
My father’s flight lands in Sweden late that evening.
The man literally skived off two performances at the Phil to be here for me, which sounds like it should be no big deal but is actually a very big deal.
He envelops me in a hug the moment he spots me in the hotel lobby, pulling me in tight where I can breathe in the warm scent of him, his familiar fingers pressing into my spine.
“How are you feeling?” he asks when we finally part, his hands still braced against my shoulders, luggage forgotten at his feet.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I think I’m just…I’m trying not to obsess too much, you know? It won’t help anything to get anxious about my stupid malfunctioning brain.”
He raises his brows. “Easier said than done.”
“Yeah. No shit. But what other choice do I have?”
In the silence that follows, I know what he’s thinking: I can make the same choice my mother did. I can quit. I can let music fade, then I can let everything else fade, too.
But that’s one thing I get about my mom now.
She didn’t quit. When she stopped playing, she didn’t lose music.
Even as lupus stole her strength and her focus and—ultimately—her life, she still had music to wrap herself up with at night.
I remember hearing the sound of old Liszt recordings drifting from behind her shut bedroom door, my mother humming softly along, even when she only had days left to live.
Music will always be there. Music is a constant, a friend that never gives up on you, and I’m not going to give up on it, either. Even when MS steals my hands, it won’t be able to steal my heart.
“I’m going to be okay,” I tell him. “I mean, I’m going to win this thing, obviously.” I laugh. “But even if I don’t…I’ll still be okay.”
“Big change from the way you were talking two weeks ago,” he says. “Who are you, and what did you do with my Goldie?”
I grin, and all of a sudden, my chest feels full to bursting—I’ve missed seeing my dad’s face, and I didn’t realize how much until just this second.
I’ve missed the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, so many lines it looks like his skin is crumpled paper.
I’ve missed the faint pattern of vitiligo around his mouth and nose, the gray threaded through his hair like fairy dust.
“Still here,” I tell him. “Just trying to be a grown-up about things, I guess.”
He pulls me into another one-armed hug, lips pressing a kiss to my temple. “You’ll always be my little girl,” he murmurs.
And I know that to him, that’s true.
As for Jamie, I hardly saw him at all last night.
Celia texts me to say she’s secured us a practice room before my dad’s even finished settling in.
And she keeps me there until nearly midnight, until finally even she has to admit that a good night’s sleep will serve me better than another six renditions of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30.
Jamie’s at the keyboard when I get back, noise-canceling headphones crammed over his ears; he doesn’t even look up when the door falls shut behind me.
I creep past as unobtrusively as I can, stripping off my clothes and crawling into bed in my underwear, burying myself as deep under the duvet as I can.
I don’t know how anyone is supposed to sleep on a night like this.
My phone has been going off with congratulatory messages ever since the list dropped online, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to respond to a single one besides Cessy’s.
There’s no room in my brain or body for anything but the buzzing crescendo of fear and elation that all but consumes me.
The sound of Jamie’s playing is a dull percussion, the actual music filtered into his headphones and inaudible.
It’s impossible to sleep listening to that, but I can’t bring myself to throw a balled-up takeout napkin at him, either.
So I just watch from my position under my blanket fort, until finally he lets out a heavy sigh and pushes his headphones down around his neck.
“Don’t freak out, but I’m right behind you,” I say.
And of course he jumps, startled, and I’m grinning by the time he twists around to look at me properly. He looks pale and slightly waxy. I wonder if he’s even bothered to eat today.
“How was your practice?” he asks.
“It was okay. I’m dying of anxiety, but okay.”
“At least you’re going in first session tomorrow,” he says. “Get things over with.”
“Yeah. I guess.” I’m honestly not sure that there’s a better or worse time to play.
I’m going to be equally panicked either way.
And even if I get my own performance done first thing, I’ll just spend the rest of the day overanalyzing it and comparing it to everyone else’s, trying to see how I measure up.
Nope. Tomorrow’s going to be fucked, period.
He stretches his arms overhead, cracking his spine—I try not to visibly cringe—then stands and strips off his own clothes, crawling into bed after me in just his boxers. His body is like a furnace when he curls in close, but his hands are icy cold as they settle against my spine.
I don’t even care. I bury my face in the crook of his neck and breathe in the musky, steadying scent of him.
“We’re going to do great,” I say, as much to convince myself as him. “We made it this far. That’s enough. Even if we don’t place. We made it this far.”
He just presses a kiss against the top of my head and doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t have to; I know what his mind is doing, circling around the same rigid demands he’s placed on himself since day one, convincing himself that nothing short of first place is enough.
That until he’s proved himself on this stage—on every stage—he doesn’t really belong.
If we fell asleep right now, we’d still get five hours of rest before needing to wake up for breakfast and warm-ups and hair and makeup.
But we make love anyway, all but silently, chasing the heat of each other’s bodies with both hands and mouths.
Afterward, we lie tangled up with the sheets kicked down around our ankles, sweaty and breathless.
I close my eyes and wish it was as easy as just willing myself to sleep.
I wish that I could ignore the electric feeling that zips down my spine when I tip my head against his.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Jamie says, like he can hear what I’m thinking. “No matter what. We’re both gonna knock it out of the park. And by this time tomorrow night, it’ll all be over.”
It’ll all be over.
Just a matter of time.
In the end, I do manage to get a couple hours of sleep, even if I spend the first half of the night trying not to toss and turn too much—because the only thing worse than not sleeping myself is dooming Jamie to the same fate.
Even so, when my alarm goes off at six, I lurch awake to a nauseating sense of disorientation, as if my brain is awake but my body still hasn’t fully got the message.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, and Jamie twists around to slide an arm around my waist.
“Shh,” he says. “It’s okay. You’re gonna crush it.”
I appreciate that he doesn’t bother with small talk this morning. Exchanging sweet nothings right now would give me a panic attack.
We get dressed in relative silence. Speaking silence, anyway—I play the recording of my set list on my phone the whole time, carrying it around with me from the bedroom to the bathroom and back again, cranking the volume all the way up while I’m in the shower until the sound of Prokofiev almost drowns out the rain of water against tile.
Jamie and I get breakfast together, cardamom buns and coffee at the same place we always go to, even if we sit opposite each other at the table with headphones crammed over our ears, listening to the same shit for the five hundredth time.
“You will do well,” Celia tells me when I show up at the practice room at eight-thirty. “Just don’t overthink it. Play the way you have played this entire time, and everything will be fine.”
Easy for her to say. I bet her memories of all her young pianists’ competitions are so buried under the intervening decades that they feel like documentary films. Hindsight confidence is always peak confidence.
Warm-up goes better than I expected, though, considering the level of sleep deprivation and stress I’m operating with.
By the time one of the staff members shows up to let us know that they’re almost ready for us, I’m feeling lax and loose, and like, you know what, maybe Celia’s right, maybe I won’t completely fucking die today after all.
I change into my performance dress, which is black velvet and lace and way too expensive considering, if I bomb this, I’ll never be able to wear it again without feeling miserable.
I don’t remember the entire trip from the practice room up the stairs and through the warren of backstage.
I just know that at some point, I’m stepping out under the white glare of the stage lights and the audience is clapping, the orchestra poised onstage with bows and instruments aloft, and this is it. This is really it. It’s happening.
I smile and dip into a shallow bow, acknowledging the applause. But I can’t keep staring out into the lights for long. I feel like I’m running off the fumes of adrenaline alone at this point.
When I settle in at the bench, though, as the claps taper off—when it’s just me and the piano, the one I picked out, the one my hands have learned too well over the past few weeks—all of that falls away. I take a breath.
And the music takes over.