Brett 6
The stage lights are too bright. The concert hall is too warm. I can’t seem to get comfortable in my chair, or in my skin, for that matter. Despite what I had hoped, there’s nothing that feels right, or good, or comforting about my return to the Walton Quartet tour.
I’d thought, stupidly, that throwing myself into my music would make me feel a little better. I was very, very wrong. At this moment, it’s all I can do to keep myself from bolting off the stage and running back to the only place on this earth where I’m guaranteed some comfort …Maggie’s arms. But that isn’t an option at this moment.
I strong-armed my way through the light and bright Mozart Quartet. I pushed through the hypnotic Philip Glass Quartet. Right now, as we reset our music, retune our instruments and take an inventory of eye contact between one another, I am finally in the homestretch of this godawful night. It won’t be long now before I can flee the oppressive applause and concerned glances of my colleagues for the sanctuary of my soulless hotel room and its minibar. But, standing squarely between me and that blissful numbness, is Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.
If only we’d chosen something different to end the program … but then, how could we have known six weeks ago that I would suffer such a devastating loss? As soon as I got into town for rehearsal this afternoon, Joe sensed this could be a problem. He immediately offered to drop the piece, knowing that it would be difficult for me. But I’d insisted it would be fine – that I would be fine. If that wasn’t the most idiotic fucking display of pride, I don’t know what is.
Now, as Joe begins to play the first violin part, he enters on a note so soft and subtle that it seems to materialize out of the ether. I can’t help myself, I commit the cardinal sin of chamber music performance: I close my eyes. Playing in a setting this intimate, with no conductor to direct the ensemble, requires the keenest attention to body language and facial expressions. But if I can’t see my colleagues, then I can’t see the worry or the sympathy that they’ve been telegraphing to me silently all night. If I can’t see Joe, or Neville, or Philip, I can lose myself in Brett.
I play underneath, listening as Joe spins the lamenting melody that will possess the next ten minutes of my life. The rest of us – second violin, viola and cello, slip in beneath him. We provide a slow-moving blanket of music to catch the sound of the first violin’s tears. Not that this is some self-indulgent funeral dirge. This music is raw, unbound emotion … grief at its harshest and cruelest.
It’s pining for something forever lost, wishing you could retrieve all that time you wasted, because you now realize that there will never be another hour. Or minute. Or second. There will never be another heartbeat.
As our individual parts melt into one another, we become mourners standing around a gravesite, bound only by our collective agony. Aside from that single thread that tethers us to one another, we are each lost in our own internal suffering; bereft and desolate.
When it’s my turn to echo the melody begun by the first violin, I find relief in allowing my viola to shoulder the wordless tune for me. Under my bow, I feel it growing and spreading and building. And then I pull back, allowing the cello to take on the burden of this lament.
Then, little by little, the tension starts to coil and our individual parts weave together into a single intense sound. Our unified agony turns in on itself until we are lost in a frenzy of ragged desperation. This is the sound of a fist, raised and shaking its ire towards the heavens, crying out at the injustice of it.
And then there is silence. It is the silence of the dead. It hangs for one very long moment before transforming itself into the softer, lower chords of acceptance for that which we cannot change. When the original melody returns again, it’s no longer haunting … it’s haunted. The jagged edges of sorrow and despair have been rubbed smooth by grudging acceptance. And then Joe is there again, the first violin in its final moments, with the same rhythm but different notes– a lower, tempered play on the opening measures.
As the Adagio comes to its conclusion, the sound stretches thinner and thinner until there’s nothing left to hold it together anymore. Just air. And then shadow. And then darkness.
The flame is snuffed. The casket is lowered. And now there is nothing left to prove that this moment ever even existed. That is, except for my broken heart.
****
“Join us for drinks?” Joe asks as we head back to the dressing rooms to get packed up. “We’re meeting some of the Detroit Phil guys.”
Absofuckinglutely not.
“No, thanks, Joe. I appreciate the invite, but I’m pretty wiped.”
He nods his understanding. “Do you …do you want me to tell you if your brother’s name comes up?”
“No,” I shake my head and then stop. “Yes, actually. No … Oh, fuck, I don’t know, Joe. You decide. If it seems like something I should know then please, do. But if it’s just the same bullshit he’s always up to …then I’d just as soon not. Okay?”
I can see in his expression that he realizes just how wrung-out I am. “Did you tell him you were going to be in town?”
“Oh, trust me, I don’t have to. I have no doubt that he knows. And if he wants to find me, he will.”
We arrive at Joe’s dressing room door and he puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “You’re not your brother, Brett. You don’t answer to him anymore. You never did – you just didn’t know that before. But you do now.”
“Well, maybe somebody should tell him that,” I mutter as I turn my back and keep walking.
I find my way out through the backstage door and into the chilly Detroit night. It’s cold enough that I can see my breath, but I’m still feeling warm and flush from sitting under those stage lights. Suddenly my jacket feels as if it’s choking me and I stop to peel it off, breathing a sigh of relief when I’m finally free of my leather albatross.
I’m just about to start walking again when I spot him not twenty feet in front of me. It turns out that Jeremy on a bench in Detroit looks very different than Jeremy at my mother’s kitchen table. I was certain he’d show up somewhere, I just wasn’t certain when or where.
“Bro!” he grins happily as he gets to his feet.
He holds out his arms to embrace me, but I just stand there, staring at him blankly. Finally, he drops them to his side.
“What? Aren’t you happy to see me? I can’t believe you didn’t mention that your tour was bringing you here to Detroit! I had to read it in the paper.”
“When should I have told you? Before you demanded your inheritance, or after you threatened Mom?” I reply icily, shifting away from him.
But a cold reception is no deterrent for Jeremy.
“Come on,” he coaxes. “At least let me buy you a beer. A one-drink truce, Brett. That’s all I’m asking for. If I piss you off, you can just get up and leave. No harm, no foul.”
Oh, I passed pissed several days ago. Now, I’m parked squarely in the realm of rage. I consider my state of mind at this very moment, concerned that if I sit down with him for even a single sip, I might just kill him with my bare hands. In the end, I decide I’m more curious to hear what he has to say than anything else. He can see that I’m waffling.
“Please?”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard my brother say that word. He probably spent hours practicing in the mirror so it would look and sound natural coming out of his mouth.
“Fine,” I huff in exasperation and follow him in silence to a pub around the corner.
“Bud, please,” I say to the waitress once we’re seated.
“Make that two,” Jeremy adds.
“So, what do you want?” I demand, getting right down to business.
“How was the funeral?”
“Really, Jeremy?”
“I didn’t want to upset Mom, so I decided it was just best to stay away. God only knows what she would have done if I’d been at the church and the cemetery.”
“Sounds more like you were worried about yourself. About what she might say to you in front of our friends and family.”
“Family? What family? It was just you and Melanie, wasn’t it?” he wonders innocently as the waitress sets our bottles down in front of us.
“Jeremy,” I growl, holding up my wrist and tapping my watch pointedly, “I don’t have the time or the energy for your bullshit. If you keep it up, we might not make it through a one-sip truce.”
“No, no,” he says as he shakes his head. “Sorry. Maggie. I meant to say Maggie.”
I sigh.
“Aunt Elise made an appearance,” I tell him at last.
“Aunt Elise? Jesus, I can’t remember the last time we saw her. Where the hell has she been all these years?”
“Only forty-five minutes away, as it turns out.”
He takes a sip of his beer.
“And she told me she’s a lesbian,” I continue.
“Well, duh!” he mocks me.
“Wait. What? You knew that?”
“Of course! Don’t you remember she brought her girlfriend to Grandma Ruth’s funeral?”
“Did she? Jesus! How is it that you can remember that and I can’t?”
“Are you kidding me?” he laughs. “That was one of the happiest days of my life. I hated that nasty old bitch.”
I think about her finger poking Jeremy’s chest. Yes, I’m sure it did make him happy to see her dead.
We sip in silence as a few locals get loud at the bar, laughing about something we can’t quite hear from where we are. One of them walks over to a vintage jukebox and drops some coins in.
“So, are you and Maggie still living together, then?” Jeremy quizzes me over the beginning of Linda Ronstadt’s ‘Blue Bayou.’
I nod. “Yup. We were at her place for a while, but it was tight. So we ended up moving out of Brooklyn and into a brownstone apartment in SOHO a few months ago.”
“Sounds pretty serious.”
I shrug noncommittally.
“So …no wedding bells ringing then?” he fishes.
“Not yet.”
He faces forward as he takes a long, slow swig of his beer. When he puts the bottle down on the bar, he turns toward me again.
“Huh,” he muses with the slightest furrow of his brow. “You know, that’s interesting, because I ran into Sharon Ginsburg. You remember her from McInnes, don’t you?”
Shit. I know exactly where he’s going with this, but he doesn’t wait for my reply.
“Yeah, she plays with the Broadway touring company of ‘Hamilton’ now. I ran into her when the show came through town last month. She was pretty hammered. And horny. And chatty. But not a bad lay, as it turns out.”
I give him my best ‘spit it out’ glare.
“Anyway,” he continues, oblivious to my irritation, “she seems to think she’s invited to your wedding. The one you’re not having.”
I hold up my empty bottle for the waitress and she nods that she’ll bring me another one. For a second I consider asking for a shot of tequila instead. Or, maybe, in addition to.
“Do you really not want me to come?”
His affectation of hurt is nothing short of brilliant. But I know better. My brother doesn’t do hurt.
“Why? Do you really want to come?”
“Of course! You’re my only brother. I want to be standing by your side when you pledge your eternal love to your blushing bride.”
I’m about to snort when my bottle of beer arrives.
“Thanks,” I mutter to the server before turning my attention back to Jeremy. “Oh, please,” I hiss. “The only reason you want to come to my wedding is to stir up shit. Not gonna happen. I don’t want to see you anywhere nearby. Not at the church, not the reception. And not even God himself will be able to help you if you should somehow pop up anywhere nearby on my honeymoon. Got it?” I point my bottle at him, making direct eye contact. I need to know that he understands what I’m saying to him. He raises his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Okay, okay! All you had to do was say ‘No, Jeremy, I don’t want you to come.’ That’s all.”
“Fine. No, Jeremy, I don’t want you to come.”
An awkward silence settles over us. I offer an olive branch by way of a change in subject.
“How’s the Philharmonic?”
He accepts the offering.
“Not bad. I’d rather be playing first horn, but all things in time.”
“I hear Jennifer Ruiz is an amazing player.”
“She’s not as good as they say,” he informs me flatly and takes a long pull from his bottle before continuing. “But the truth is that it isn’t her fault.”
I nearly choke. “What? Please, are you seriously trying to tell me that you don’t hold a grudge against her?” I scoff.
My brother shrugs sheepishly. “Well, maybe a little one,” he admits. “But, here’s the thing … my beef isn’t really with her because she didn’t want the principal spot. She didn’t audition for it. She was trying out for the third horn spot.”
“Which you now have,” I point out.
“Yes, which I now have. I’ll admit it, I was ready to make the little twit’s life a living hell, but I didn’t have to.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“The afternoon of her first rehearsal, she shows up in tears. She takes me aside and explains that she went to the idiot Orchestra Director and begged him to swap our spots.”
“She did what?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Nobody turns down that kind of an opportunity.
Jeremy is nodding adamantly. “Oh, yeah. I confirmed it with one of my moles in the administration offices. She wanted out of that spot bad, but the asshole flat-out refused.”
“But why? If it was what she wanted …”
“Christ, Brett! Do I have to spell it out for you? She wanted third horn but they gave her principal. I wanted principal but they gave me third. You see where I’m going with this?”
I resist the urge to tell him to fuck off. I want to see if he’s going where I think he’s going with this.
“So you think management is fucking with you,” I deduce.
“I don’t think, bro, I know. The Director is over-the-top pissed off that I managed to sneak into the auditions right under his nose … and actually win. Now the little shit can’t fire me without a huge lawsuit on his hands, so he fucked me over the only way he could.”
Holy shit.
If I didn’t know how dangerous Jeremy can be, I might just laugh at the insanity of this situation.
“So, what are planning to do?” I ask at last.
“Not much, as it turns out. She’s taking care of it all by herself. The stupid bitch is a basket case before every concert and our new maestro hates her. The whole thing is just a ticking fucking time bomb,” he declares with a satisfied grin.
That’s my cue to leave. I’ve already heard too much. I drain the last of my beer and slide off the barstool. “Yeah, well, I’ve had a long day so I’m gonna head back to the hotel …”
He puts a hand on my forearm to stop me. “I heard that Philip Tonka is resigning as cellist of the Walton this season.”
Shit! I was so fucking close to a getaway …
“Well, he’s here in Detroit with us,” I begin, choosing my words very carefully, “but this will be his last concert for a while. He’s having some surgery that’ll have him out of commission for several months, at least.”
“Is it true that Julia is taking his place?”
I nod slowly, waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it finally falls, it falls hard and fast.
“I have to admit, Brett, I’m really surprised. I didn’t think you had it in you. I guess we’re more alike than I realized.”
The mere suggestion of that causes my blood pressure to spike. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I growl, sitting once again so I can be sure to catch every nuance of every twisted word he’s about to utter.
“First, you convince Mom to cut me out of the will so you can have it all to yourself. Then, you exclude me from your wedding. And now, you choose Julia, that whore who trashed my reputation, over me, your own brother. Dude, how do you sleep at night?”
I make a weak attempt to hold back but it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Ah, fuck it. I laugh. I throw back my head and continue to laugh until tears are streaming down my face and I’m getting over-the-shoulder glances from the regulars at the bar. Jeremy goes still in his rage.
“Are you for real?” I snap, wiping my damp face with the back of my hand. “You want to know how I sleep at night? You’re fucking delusional, man!”
His lips twist into a sneer and his eyes narrow. This is my second cue to leave and I aim to take it.
“Goodbye, Jeremy,” I conclude, getting to my feet. “Thanks for the drink.”
“We’re not done,” he informs me, grabbing my forearm this time. I raise my eyebrow, which communicates that he needs to get his hand off of me. He gets the message loud and clear, releasing his grip.
I turn and walk out onto the sidewalk outside of the bar, but my brother hot on my heels.
“Brett, I’m not kidding …” he calls out from behind me. “There’s more that we need to discuss,” he’s saying as he catches up to me and matches my brisk pace.
I stop and face him.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Jeremy,” I correct him calmly. “We are done. And I’m not just talking about this conversation. You and I … We. Are. Done.”
“You don’t mean that,” he dismisses me with his tone and his expression.
“I do,” I insist coolly. “There’s no coming back for you and me. I’ll never forgive you for letting Dad die.”
“Oh, please,” he scoffs, batting away my words with a flick of his wrist. “Dramatic much, Brett? He had a heart attack. Plain and simple.”
Mother. Fucker.
I take a step closer to him, a subtle reminder that I am still bigger and stronger than he is. That I could – and certainly would – kick his ass from here to Grand Rapids if necessary.
“Listen to me, little brother, and listen good. If you’re smart, you’ll make things work here in Detroit. You’ve got a great gig, and a nice life for yourself. There is absolutely no reason you can’t be happy here. As happy as you’re capable of being, anyway.”
He seems more amused by me than threatened. Time to change that dynamic. One more step and our chests are touching. My voice drops to a low, menacing rumble that comes from somewhere deep within my chest.
“Stay away from me. Stay away from Maggie. Stay away from Mom.”
“Or what?” he challenges, the corners of his mouth now curling up into a hideous grin.
“Believe me, Jeremy, you don’t want to find out. If you underestimate me, you’ll regret it.”
He shrugs with disinterest. “Whatever, Brett. Maybe I will stay away from you. Watching you isn’t nearly as interesting as, say, watching my son.”
I feel my heart jump right to my throat. To hear him utter those last two words is more jarring than anything else he could have possibly said. And he knows it.
“He’s getting big, isn’t he?” Jeremy continues, knowing full well that he’s struck a nerve. “Too bad he’s going to look like his Plain Jane mother. But who knows, maybe as he gets older …”
I grab my brother by the collar of his shirt and slam him against the brick wall of the building. Nobody seems to notice or care that there’s an altercation occurring right on the street. Just another Saturday night in Detroit.
“You like to think that you know me better than I know myself, right, Jeremy? If that’s true, then you will believe me when I tell you that your life won’t be worth shit if you get anywhere near that kid,” I warn, biting off each word and spitting it in his face. “You know I’ll do it, Jeremy.”
He smiles at me, but I can see the briefest flash in his eyes that tells me he does know. I let him drop to the ground and turn around, starting the walk back to the hotel. This time, he doesn’t try to stop me.