An Unfinished Score Part 5

"Can't you at least sit in different seats?" Suzanne asks as she approaches.

"We just can't get enough of each other," Petra says, patting the empty chair.

Suzanne sits and looks out to her right, where she can hear but not see a small brook on the other side of a boxwood hedge.

"A viola player and a cellist are standing on a sinking s.h.i.+p," Petra says. "The cellist calls for help, says he can't swim."

Suzanne finishes Petra's joke: "'That's okay,' says the viola player, 'just fake it like I do.'"

Petra lifts the outsized bottle of wine leaning against her foot and tops off Suzanne's gla.s.s, though it is still nearly full. "Keeping it close so we don't have to get up and down just to stay liquidated."

"Hydrated," says Daniel.

"And so I don't have to talk to those women. It's not like I even want anything to do with their stupid husbands, and if I did they should thank me. If one more of them says how ironic it is for a musician to have a deaf child, I'm going pistol."

"Postal," says Daniel.

"Right," says Petra, "homicidal."

The timbre of her laugh straddles the border between lighthearted and reckless. Suzanne knows, from experience, that this means Petra is a couple of hours into her drinking. She knows it's why Petra didn't come home, why she wanted to meet at Elizabeth's. Suzanne angles her chair so she can see the group of kids Adele is playing with. Adele seems to have given up trying to lip read-something difficult in groups and impossible with moving children-yet she appears happy in the company, handing toys back and forth with a boy her age, smiling.

"What do you think, Suzanne?" Daniel's off-center gaze suggests that he has drunk plenty of wine as well.

"We're recycling the argument over performing Black Angels Black Angels," Anthony says.

Suzanne shrugs. "I'll play anything."

"Even Tchaikovsky?" Anthony exaggerates the lift of his eyebrows.

Suzanne smiles, though she feels as though she is watching them from far away. "Let's not get carried away."

"We know your theories," Petra says to her. "Romanticism yes, sentimentality no."

"My theories?" She wonders if Petra is angry with her or just wined-up and in the mood to quarrel with anyone. She reminds herself that Petra's arguments are rarely personal, but her friend's sentences have sharp points tonight, and her voice is pitched higher than usual. Theories Theories is a word they usually reserve for Ben-a shared defense disguised as mild disdain. is a word they usually reserve for Ben-a shared defense disguised as mild disdain.

"I think we should play the Black Angels Black Angels." Daniel speaks without looking at any of the others. "If we can't do something, say something, about what's going on in the world, then what use are we?"

Petra shrugs. "Either way. There's always a war somewhere, no? Besides, this isn't my country. I have the luxury of being an observer."

Suzanne listens to their arguments but continues watching Adele at play. Adele interacts through objects-handing the other children found leaves and flowers, accepting a bubble-blowing wand. Suzanne wonders if she will always have to give to fit in, and how that giving will change as she grows up. She imagines Adele with the implant, almost hearing, learning to speak but still noticeably different. She wonders whether Adele will be more fully accepted or instead rejected. With the implant, she'll be neither hearing nor deaf but instead an inhabitant of the one category children will not tolerate: indefinably different. Suzanne is not sure adults accept that kind of difference much better than do children, even as she hopes that children are nicer these days than they used to be, that better parents have made better kids.

Anthony waves for her attention. "Suzanne, what do you think?"

She sips her wine, which tastes too much of its cask. "Here's my opinion, then. The contribution of art to society is its existence more than its content. It's not the job of art to comment on current events. It should matter, but it should inspire by existing, by exploring what's beautiful, what's timeless."

"Oh, my G.o.d, you sound exactly like Ben." Petra's words slur and she blinks frequently, her expression p.r.i.c.kly. "I think I'm going to puke."

Years of experience with her drinking father tell Suzanne that it's useless to reason with Petra now, but she is tired of one-way niceness, of covering for Petra with Adele, of defending Petra and Ben to each other, of always being the grown-up. "You wanted to know what I think, and that's what I think. Take the Holocaust, the role of music. What was miraculous wasn't people writing music about how awful the camps were. What was miraculous was the people in the camps playing Bach, saying, You can't take this away from us You can't take this away from us, saying, This is beautiful no matter what This is beautiful no matter what."

"So no music can ever comment on the world? Just itself? That's masturbation." Petra says the word too loudly, and a nearby couple look over their shoulders, the woman s.h.i.+fting them away.

"Let the rock stars protest war," Suzanne says. "People actually listen to them anyway."

Petra looks straight at her and pauses before she says, "You're such an elitist."

"If you're mad at Ben, Petra, then argue with him. But, sure, I agree with him on this. We live in a culture that doesn't value what we do. To meet it halfway is to give up. If holding up the best music ever written as a great human accomplishment makes me an elitist, then I am a sn.o.b, a monk in the tower protecting the books from barbarians."

"You're self-absorbed, that's what you are," Petra says. "When's the last time you thought about the war or even anybody else?"

Suzanne's anger expands and then fast shrinks back into the small, dull pain of feeling alone in the world. It's what you are left with when the person in the world who best knows you dies, something that has now happened to Suzanne twice. Next, she thinks, she'll lose Petra and then Ben. Being without them would make her even more alone than she is when she is with them.

Anthony's wife strolls toward their group carrying two small plates and forks. Jennifer wears thin gold jewelry that seems too delicate for her st.u.r.dy frame. She holds a law degree that she's never used, and her family's money is no longer looked down on as new money-it's been three generations, and even in Princeton people no longer care very much where money is from so long as it is plentiful and tastefully spent. That the money is spread thinner now is a more serious problem and the reason the quartet is always under pressure to become more reliably profitable.

Though Jennifer dictates to Anthony most of his life, from where he dines to what brand of s.h.i.+rt he wears, in front of the others she waits on him as though she is a well-dressed servant. She hands him a plate holding cake with sliced strawberries and asks if she can bring him coffee. He stands to give her his chair.

Watching the children play, Jennifer explains her child-rearing notions as though they are all gravely interested-as though Daniel and Suzanne are parents and Petra is a by-the-book mother instead of who she is. Jennifer tells them she has plans to market her ideas in the form of a chart she's designed to track her own children's behavioral progress and quantify their rewards and punishments.

"It's like a game for them," she says. "Each child is a different color of cat, and the chart looks like a board game except it's vertical and magnetic so you can put it on the refrigerator. Very colorful. Their pieces get sent back s.p.a.ces for particular offenses-like three s.p.a.ces for whining-and they also receive surprises along the way, such as a trip to Thomas Sweet for a day without sibling rivalry."

Suzanne pictures her life on the board, her childhood ambitions punished with poverty, her adultery with pain, her need to fit in with shunning. Her cat would fall backward right off the chart.

Anthony, who may or may not approve of his wife's meting out of childhood's pleasures, smiles. "Jennifer's research suggests there's a national market for this kind of thing."

Petra leans over, tipping her low-slung lawn chair to a dangerous angle. "Great," she breathes into Suzanne's ear. "Now children in all fifty states can hate her." She rights herself, pus.h.i.+ng off the gra.s.s with her hand.

Suzanne smiles, relieved to have her best friend back on her side, if only because they now face a common enemy.

"I don't understand." Jennifer points to the rather flat piece of layer cake she's just taken a bite from. "The recipe was three pages long, describing every test the kitchen made. I followed it exactly. I even beat the eggs and sugar over simmering water until the mixture reached exactly 110 degrees. I have a new thermometer-the good kind."

"You took your cake's temperature?" Petra smiles at her.

"It looks delicious," Suzanne says quickly. "Ben always prefers a moist fallen cake to one that's cooked too long."

Daniel nods. "It looks great, Jennifer. I'm going to get a piece later after I finish my wine."

"The gla.s.s or the bottle?" asks Petra.

"That's not the point." Jennifer looks at Anthony, then Daniel, searching for support. "That's not the point. If you follow the rules, you're supposed to get what you set out for. A recipe is a pact."

"Like music." Anthony rubs his wife's rounded shoulder with his free hand. "You can't give an audience a pleasant beginning and then hit them with something they don't understand. Same thing with marriage."

"I suppose you think life works that way," Petra says, her words loose but her face clamped. "Follow the rules, advance three s.p.a.ces, collect your reward. Americans who were popular in high school always think like that."

Dusk lurks above them and then settles, as though the darkness is not a declining of light but a tangible thing losing alt.i.tude. Once lowered, it leaves Suzanne slightly chilled. Adele sits with another child, a girl whose mother, Linda, is a widow.

"She's beautiful," Daniel says of the woman, who stands beyond the girls.

"She doesn't look it, but she's ten years older than you are," Suzanne tells him, her voice sympathetic.

"That doesn't matter to me."

While Petra's drinking words slur unpleasantly, Daniel's overlap melodically, as though he is speaking a Romance language Suzanne half understands.

"She has two children, all the time."

"I love children," he says.

"Daniel," Suzanne says, her voice now like snapped fingers, "she doesn't drink. She quit when her husband died, because she always has to be the responsible one."

"Ah, well, now that might pose a problem." Daniel grins, boyish, but still he watches Linda play with her daughter and Adele. The three hold hands and turn in a circle. From behind, Linda, slim-hipped, looks like a tall child.

"Ashes, ashes, we all fall down," Linda's daughter sings as the three collapse to the ground laughing.

Ben walks up behind Suzanne, holds the back of her neck in a loose grip.

"That's a bit morbid," says Jennifer. "The father died on 9/11."

Petra's words collide with each other: "Did you hear the one about the terrorists who hijacked a plane full of viola players?"

Anthony helps Jennifer from the low chair and murmurs good-bye as they walk away to collect their children.

"Have some more wine, Petra." Ben's voice is like metal.

"Let's go," Suzanne says.

"But Adele is having fun. She never gets to play with children."

"Then let Ben drive you home, and I'll stay with her."

"And then come back for you?" He sounds annoyed and his grip tightens perceptibly.

"And then come back for Adele and me," Suzanne says resolutely. She's about to ask Daniel if he wants Ben to drop him off also, but he's already up and walking a straight line toward Linda.

As soon as Ben and Petra have left, Suzanne wishes she and Adele had gone with them. The party empties while they wait for Ben to return, and Adele quickly runs out of children to play with and settles in Elizabeth's living room with a book. Suzanne helps Elizabeth process some of the dishes, including her own empty cake plate. At one point she turns to Elizabeth, suddenly compelled to tell her-tell someone-about Alex. Instead she pours the wine left in her gla.s.s into the sink. She reminds herself, sternly, that she can never tell anyone, that not telling is part of the cost of what she has done.

When Ben returns, finally, the kitchen is clean and Elizabeth's family has gone to bed. Elizabeth dances with Adele in the living room to music with the ba.s.s turned up.

Ben wipes his feet on the mat just inside the kitchen. "It was hard to get Petra to stop talking and get inside."

Suzanne shrugs. "Too much to drink, I guess. Shall we go?"

Adele begs to sit in the front, but Suzanne insists she sit in the statistically safer backseat. "I'll sit with you, so we can chat."

As they drive across to their side of town, Adele leans her head into Suzanne's arm, sleepy and sweet.

Figuring Petra has pa.s.sed out, Suzanne puts Adele to bed, brus.h.i.+ng her teeth for her because she is too tired to lift the brush herself, tucking her in, kissing both soft cheeks.

When she gets to her bedroom, Ben is packing.

"I forgot you're leaving tomorrow."

"You seem to have a lot on your mind lately," he answers, his tone neutral.

She stalled him after Alex's death-several days, a week, strange that she cannot remember exactly. She stalled him not because it would have made Alex the last-she hadn't seen him for a month when he died-but because she feared some emotional ignition. She was afraid she would burn white heat and confess every wrong thing she has ever done. But she could not, or did not, stall longer, and she and Ben have made love several times since. She was surprised by how easy it was to give away nothing. Now she reaches for his hand: they always have s.e.x the night before one of them goes away. It is almost a superst.i.tion, a required act. Even when it was her leaving to see Alex, she and Ben would sleep together. The next morning, shaving her legs in a bubble bath, she would separate the two realities into Ben-time and Alex-time, two things that were both true but were divided by water and had nothing to do with each other.

Tonight Ben has left the light on in the bedroom closet so that he can see her. And she can see him, the ropes of his stomach muscles leading up to the broader muscles of his chest, shoulders, arms reaching to hold her hips, guide their motion. A still-young man who has stayed in shape to play the piano and the cello even though he abandoned performance years ago. She presses her hands on his chest, for balance and for leverage, and she and Ben let themselves go completely, eyes still open. It's the closest they ever come to seeing each other, to really speaking.

In the morning she sleeps through his leaving, his good-bye only a short note on the kitchen counter.

Nine.

It sits on the center of Petra's palm, looking more like a computer chip than the swirled snail of the hearing inner ear.

"The implant imitates the cochlea not in appearance but in function," the doctor tells them.

He has the good looks of Spanish youth, reminding Suzanne of the tall, healthy musicians she played Carmen Carmen with one summer in Seville. They attacked the music, grinning with the schmaltz of it, taking her later for wine near the university that was once Carmen's tobacco factory. "Tourist season," they shrugged, and she felt happy. She was not a tourist but a musician leading an extraordinary life, a woman meeting her lover in Lisbon two days later. with one summer in Seville. They attacked the music, grinning with the schmaltz of it, taking her later for wine near the university that was once Carmen's tobacco factory. "Tourist season," they shrugged, and she felt happy. She was not a tourist but a musician leading an extraordinary life, a woman meeting her lover in Lisbon two days later.

The doctor's smile does not seem disingenuous, but it is easy, offered without real thought. "It both will and won't make her hear, depending on how you conceptualize hearing."

Petra repeats her question: "Will she be able to hear?"

"The implanted electrodes introduce signals that are carried by the auditory nerve fibers to the brain, allowing sound to bypa.s.s the damaged portion of the ear. Is this hearing? Yes and no. The sound processor translates microphone signals into electrical stimuli. These elicit patterns of nerve activity that Adele's brain will interpret as sound."

"So the answer is no; she won't hear." Petra leans back in the armchair, folding her arms.

"More than ten percent of patients receiving the implant can communicate without any lip reading at all. They can converse with their eyes closed, you understand, talk on the phone. Most recipients can communicate fluently in spoken language when it's combined with lip reading. Many can distinguish pitch. The numbers are only getting better."

Petra s.h.i.+fts forward again. "But aren't the outcomes much better in people who have lost their hearing? You know, who remember what speech sounds like and already know how to talk."

"Of course." The doctor still smiles. He is not talking about his child, and he speaks with energy and good cheer. "But we are having tremendous success with those who have been profoundly deaf from birth, provided-"

Petra laughs. "'Profoundly deaf.' That's funny."

"Provided that we implant close to the optimal age range and follow up with education and therapy. If we can implant Adele in the next six months-sooner is better, understand-I have every reason to believe that she will live a normal life in the hearing world."

"'A normal life.'" Petra laughs again. "Can you get one of those for me, too?"

The doctor smiles, aware that she is joking but not quite getting it.

"When do you need to know?" Petra asks.

"We can complete the presurgery therapy and schedule the procedure with about two months' notice."