Chapter 26 Marigold #2
All in all, my set takes thirty-five minutes.
Both way too short and way too long, somehow.
And yet when I emerge to take my final bow, I can still hear the last notes ringing in my ears, louder than the applause.
I’m grinning as I stare out into the lights, and even though I can’t see past the faces in the first two rows, I know Jamie’s out there somewhere watching, too. So I smile for him.
I don’t get to see him again until after the first session’s complete. But then he shows up backstage with a bouquet of flowers that he must have bought off the street while I was warming up, because they sure weren’t in our room this morning.
“You were fantastic,” he says. “Seriously. A lady next to me was crying during the Rachmaninoff. It was like the entire audience was spellbound—I wish you could have seen it.”
He seems so purely, unadulteratedly happy for me. It’s infectious.
I set the flowers aside on the nearest flat surface and throw both arms around him, rising up on tiptoes to press a kiss to his mouth. “Thank you. God. I can’t believe it’s actually over. I still haven’t processed.”
“Over for you,” he says wryly.
“Sorry. Was that insensitive?”
He laughs. “No, I’m just giving you shit. I’m trying not to think about this afternoon. Just gonna ostrich my way through the next several hours, and maybe when I emerge, it’ll be to find out I won the whole thing. Or,” he adds diplomatically, “that you did, of course.”
“False modesty is not a cute look on you.”
“Sorry. Yeah, still hope to beat you, no offense.”
“None taken.”
I can’t remember the last time I saw him look so happy talking about music.
That horrible eternal engine that had been running inside him for the past two months seems as if it’s finally shut off, leaving behind a Jamie that smiles easily, shoulders relaxed and not constantly scrunched up around his ears.
I can’t help imagining what his final performance will sound like, if he plays it feeling like this.
Maybe for once, he’ll forget about the audience and just play. Maybe he’ll let himself feel it.
“How are you feeling?” I ask him. And then realize it’s a little unclear what exactly I mean by that, so I revise: “About your pieces. Do you feel like you’re ready?”
“Ready?” he echoes, and makes a face. “Is anybody ever ready to get judged by a jury of the best musicians the world has to offer? I’m just hoping to make it through alive.”
I fix him with a skeptical glare. “Oh, sure. That’s all you want. Weren’t you just bragging about how you were going to demolish me in the rankings?”
“Why not both?”
He still has his hand resting on the small of my back.
Hasn’t pulled it away yet, even though we’re in public, where anyone could see.
For a moment, I find myself imagining what it might be like when we go back to Parker—and how the rumor mill is going to positively combust when it hears that the music department’s most notorious enemies are now sitting together in the caf and giving good-luck kisses in the stage wings.
Maybe this is what would have happened three years ago if we hadn’t ruined it for ourselves. Maybe today, here in Stockholm, we’d be old hands at comforting each other, so used to being in each other’s orbit that distance chafes and aches, unusual.
I offer to buy him lunch, but I know even as I ask what the answer is going to be—he has to practice.
So I let Celia treat me to sandwiches instead, and afterward, I sneak backstage again to Jamie’s practice room.
I can hear him playing through the door, so I wait until he finishes a movement, then knock quietly.
“Come in,” he says.
He’s alone. The top of the piano is littered with sheet music, half of it balled up like he got halfway through reading his notes, then got frustrated. At one point, he clearly got anxious enough to throw the paper across the room, judging from the small pile accumulating in one corner.
“You…good?” I ask. He is the same sickly color my asparagus fern started to turn when I forgot to water it for three weeks straight.
“Yeah. Yeah, totally. Doing great. Crushing it. Why do you ask?” He laughs, the sound bizarre and too tight as it rips itself from his throat.
“I can leave, if you want to practice in peace.”
He shakes his head. “No. No, it’s fine. But. I’m going to puke, so you might need to step aside for a second so I can leave the room.”
I do, and hope it’s not too apparent on my face how worried I am about him.
Stage fright is one thing, but I’ve never known Jamie to get performance anxiety this bad—and trust me, I was always paying attention, always furious that he seemed so unbothered by things like major performances and competitions considering the panic attacks I usually have leading up to them.
I would tell myself that he just kept all of that behind closed doors, but I’ve been living with him for the past week of this particular competition, and he’s been a very normal and expected level of nervous the whole time.
When he returns, still wan and shaky but slightly less green, I’ve cleared off a seat by one of the score-laden tables and stolen a water bottle from the bulk supply I found shoved into a corner next to a filing cabinet.
“You’re going to be fine,” I say, because he clearly needs to hear someone say it.
“I know. I know. Worst-case scenario, I make a fool of myself on an international stage, right?” His answering laugh is unnatural, manic.
“That won’t happen. You’ve never made a fool of yourself on any kind of stage before, and that isn’t going to change now.
” I scooch my chair closer to the piano bench so I can reach over and touch his knee when he sits, squeezing lightly.
“The actual worst-case scenario is that you don’t place.
But you’re still in the top twelve, Jamie. The top twelve in the world.”
“Top twelve contestants in this competition, anyway.”
“Stop splitting hairs. It’s a good thing. You’ve already won.”
His gaze narrows slightly. “Is that how you’re gonna look at it, if you don’t place?”
“I’ll try, yeah.”
He sighs like he doesn’t believe me, his gaze sliding back over to the piano, narrow-eyed, like it’s an enemy he has to confront.
I wish I could end this for him. Just take out a pair of scissors and snap the cord of this horrible whatever he’s feeling and set him free. At least the clock is ticking; he goes onstage in less than half an hour, which means in an hour—max—it’ll all be over. For better or for worse.
I just have to hope that getting the performance over with improves things. But it feels like too much to hope that he gets through this, overcomes whatever psychological block he has about this competition, and cuts himself a break. Is it selfish to hope he quits, at least for a little while?
I can’t keep watching him torture himself like this, chasing accolades, like that will prove he deserved to live when his brother didn’t.
The rest of that half hour drags by. Jamie makes a few more abortive attempts at practice, but his focus isn’t there.
“I kicked Celia out,” he admits when I finally ask what happened to his actual instructor.
“Can’t handle the pressure right now. I just need to…
” He blows out a breath, scraping his hand through his hair. “Fuck.”
“Here,” I say, getting up and gesturing for him to lean over so that I can gently comb his now-mussed hair back into something resembling order. “It’s almost over. Do you want to just…sit, for a little bit? We can play backgammon.”
“We can play backgammon?”
“Yeah. I have the app downloaded on my phone.”
“Of course you do.” But at least the exasperated sigh resembles the Jamie I actually remember.
When someone finally shows up to get him, I reach out and grab his hand before he can disappear, pulling him back for another quick kiss. “I’ll be right there,” I tell him. “Right backstage. I’ll watch the whole time.”
He nods brusquely, his lips pressed together in a thin line. He doesn’t speak. Maybe he’s not sure he can risk opening his mouth without puking again.
I follow Jamie and the staff member up the stairs toward the stage, then hang back as Celia joins Jamie to give him a few last words of wisdom in the wings.
The announcer says Jamie’s name, and it’s time.
I stand there with my hands clasped together, watching him from the back as he bows toward the audience—and judges—and then takes his seat at the piano.
Then he starts to play.
Even just a few measures in, I can tell this time is different.
His music sweeps over me like a tide, pulling me under, until I’m hypnotized by every note.
I am buoyed up by cool seawater, breathless, weightless, entranced.
I lose track of where he is in the piece, no longer able to picture the notes on the page—it’s just music, it’s power and love and rage and beauty, Jamie tying a cord around my heart and dragging me down into his world.
When he finishes, I find my cheeks are damp.
He did it.
He finally did it.