Contrary Motion Read online

  Within ten measures I notice a buzz in the sixth-octave C string. I have to pull on it hard to get the volume I need, but the harder I pull, the worse the buzz. I tune that string again, but that’s not the problem. I give the instrument a once-over, and sure enough, there’s a hairline crack in the short hump of wood that connects the neck to the top of the soundboard. It wasn’t noticeable just after I dropped the harp, and earlier this week, when I sometimes heard the slight tremors that herald a buzz, I had put off a careful reexamination. But now I see the crack exists. For their whole lives the neck and the soundboard have wanted to kiss, two thousand pounds of pressure pulling them together, and now they are a speck closer, and the bass string knows it.

  “Shit,” I say.

  Unlike your violins and violas, which ripen over the centuries, all harps eventually fall apart or need overhauls, and this one, more than twenty-five years old, is aging. In other words, this buzz could be the beginning of the end. It’s also possible that this is just one of those buzzes they can fix at the factory, which happens to be right here in Chicago.

  I try not to freak out, but dizziness gathers behind my eyes. The likelihood that my dropping the harp caused the crack is poisonous food for thought. This is Ms. Beckwith’s second harp, the one she kept at the high school and eventually sold to my parents for a rock-bottom discount because our family was large and financially pathetic and she had hopes for me. It’s really the only harp I’ve ever played on, through college, through grad school, through my best performances—in Israel, Seattle, San Diego—and through my worst. And it’s also a harp played by none other than Claire Houghton, Ms. Beckwith’s stunning niece, who I believed would meet me at the end of my harping rainbow right up until she crushed my adolescent dreams. I’ll not soon forget the day that I biked over to the high school in eighth grade and ran into her in the music room. She was just finishing when I arrived.

  “You sounded good,” I said.

  “Ah, thanks,” she said, wrinkling her nose, “but it’s going nowhere.”

  Claire seemed in a hurry, cramming a few scores into her backpack. And though I lit more inane conversation starters, she was hell-bent on getting out of there. That’s when I noticed a guy standing by the door.

  Wearing bitchin’ Nike high-tops and a letter jacket decorated with a ridiculous number of honorary patches, designations, and even actual medals, he was just as athletic and handsome as she was beautiful. I had successfully ignored the possibility of her dating someone else, assuming that her first allegiance was to the harp, which would give me an inside track when she would finally choose a mate. She went to him and they kissed on the mouth, his hands resting on the hips of her jeans. By the time they finished that obscenely long smooch, which they were still completing as they headed out of the room, my delusions were in ruins.

  I sat down to the instrument, which was still warm from Claire, still smelling like her perfume. I felt the outer wooden edge of the soundboard against my thigh, knowing it had been warmed by Claire’s thigh. I put my arms around the instrument and placed a palm on each side of the flat soundboard, which the strings divided in half. I closed my eyes. The rounded back of the harp was smooth against my chest, just as it had been against Claire’s. I was alone in the music room, though I didn’t know for how long. My heart started pounding and my spit burned away. I looked at the open door and sent my hearing into the hallway. A locker closed in the distance. “Crazy,” I said out loud, but I knew the chances of stopping myself were not good.

  I stood and carried the harp into one of the practice rooms on the perimeter of the music room. I closed the door. With my back to the tall narrow window in the door, I stood behind the harp, hugged it, and slid my hands down the front of the soundboard, imagining myself standing behind Claire, smoothing my hands on her thighs. The third oval sound hole was just about the right height. Trembling a bit, I took myself out of my pants and laid myself in the smooth wooden slot, which was softer feeling than you would think. I didn’t care if anyone discovered me. I didn’t care if I ever saw another person again. I used my hand and the lip of the oval. When I was getting close, I heard two girls enter the outer room, talking loudly. But I was past the point of no return. I knew they were as self-absorbed as I was; in this way, it seemed we were all in it together, and with that final, romantic thought I refocused on my beloved and ejaculated through the sound hole and into the harp.

  I was nineteen before I successfully had intercourse with a woman, but once when asked on a late night in college, in mixed company, how old I was when I lost my virginity, I blurted, “Thirteen.” In response to the hoots and disbelief of my friends, I blushed and refused to elaborate beyond, “It was the whole harp thing, some people can’t resist it.”

  In the wake of this appalling memory, sweat starts on my forehead and full-on dizziness washes over me. I walk slowly, hands out in front of me, to my bedroom and ease down face-first on the bed and close my eyes. And I know if I don’t move for five minutes, I’ll be able to lie here indefinitely without throwing up.

  My doctor thinks my dizzy spells are related to my congenitally low blood pressure, but I’m beginning to think they might be something more psychological.

  I lie on my stomach for an hour, maybe two, flipping the pillow occasionally so I don’t overheat it.

  All in all, this is just one of my garden-variety personal collapses. Pretty trivial, I know, compared to, say, the catastrophes in Iraq or Darfur. Yet I imagine the people who perpetrate such large-scale misery probably get their start by mishandling their small personal meltdowns, so I try to be on my p’s and q’s whenever I implode to limit the damage on those around me.

  My apartment is quiet—T.R. must be out lunching with friends, and Max, the wayward boy occupying the attic, hasn’t been around much lately—and I drift into a thin sleep, before the ringing phone on the nightstand wakes me up.

  “Matthew, this is your mother. Are you still fornicating with that girl with the screwy eyes? I really wish you’d consider the priesthood.”

  The imitation is so spot-on that it takes me a beat to figure out who’s calling.

  “Adam, you bastard!” I exclaim. “It’s great to hear from you, man!” And the last wisps of dizziness blow away.

  “How are you, my dear Midwestern friend?”

  It is in fact my best friend from college, Adam Brackett, calling from New York City, where he is enjoying what the general public considers B-list fame and fortune, but which appears to me as amazing success. He’s had major supporting roles in movies like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the Scary Movie franchise, starred in dramedies like Rocket Man and The Love Letter, was the lead in a Broadway revival of Oklahoma! for which he was nominated for a Tony, and has guested on a bunch of TV shows.

  “I’m good,” I say. This is entirely for Adam’s benefit—a knee-jerk effort to appear happy and successful—and now it’s too late to mention my father’s death. “Hey, I saw that Sex and the City episode again last month,” I add. “You and Sarah Jessica Parker!”

  “Sarah is a lovely professional, and I enjoyed working with her.”

  Adam and I roomed together at Northwestern, in the fine arts residential college, freshman and sophomore year. Adam was tall, handsome, quick with a joke, a great actor with a great singing voice. Right after college, he did the Second City Conservatory, was in a touring company within a year, and on the main stage in two. Meanwhile, I was playing harp in the Civic, still taking sections with Eddie, who was in his twilight years at the CSO. Adam and I stayed reasonably close while he was still living in Chicago, but when he moved to LA and then to New York, we became less so. Even though what he did always got him more attention than what I did, for a while I thought our lives were more or less parallel. Then it became obvious that he was nearing the top of the mountain and I was clutching the base of a greased pole.

  “And you were pretty convincing as that moody jazz pianist!” I gush, going on about his Sex and th
e City role.

  “Thank you, thank you very much. But enough about how my career has fallen into guest appearance hell: I’m going to be making some short films here in New York and, fuck me, but I need a harpist.”

  He goes on to describe a kind of high-concept comedy thing called “Eighteen Breakups (with Music),” which involves horrific breakup conversations set in various venues around the city, some of which would involve live harp music. He tells me he’s going to shop them to SNL and Comedy Central, and if they don’t pick them up, he’s going to post them on YouTube and ride the Internet buzz to new opportunities and idiosyncratic artistic satisfaction.

  “I want some creator shit to start happening for me,” he explains.

  “Sounds good,” I say.

  “Come out to New York for two days of work, I’m thinking the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh,” he says, “and I’ll pay you a thousand plus expenses—and don’t say you’ll do it for free or I’ll whip your ass with a car antenna.”

  “Man, I totally can’t charge you,” I protest, though my heart’s not in it.

  “Matt, that’s incredibly feeble, even by your standards. I’m assuming you’re desperate for cash and I’ve got money for this, and have some respect for yourself as a pro, goddammit.”

  “All right, all right,” I say, though this is just two weeks away.

  “Beautiful,” he says.

  Then he tells me he has to run but he’ll be in touch about details—don’t worry, I can stay at his place, etc.

  It’s only when I hang up that guilt, with more dizziness, comes crashing back. I find the bottle of Tylenol by the harp and down two with half a glass of water that’s been sitting there for who knows how long. It seems to offset the dizziness. I have further sabotaged my audition prep, but I feel powerless against the aura of success Adam Brackett emanates, and my worst insecurities seek validation via a New York gig of any sort. And what if it leads to something cool? This all makes me feel excited and somewhat out of control. In an attempt to settle down, I call Aphrodite Harps to make an appointment to bring my harp in—turns out next Friday is first available. And then, despite the buzz, I practice.

  9

  “Don’t get weird about it,” Cynthia says, standing naked at my dresser, rifling through the drawers.

  “All right,” I say.

  “You’re starting to, right there,” she says. She turns around with one of my T-shirts in her hands. “The way you said ‘all right’ was weird.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes.”

  She slips into the shirt, flips her shoulder-length hair behind her with the backs of her fingers, and for good measure reasserts the left-side part of her hair with a swoop-back of one hand.

  “Look,” she adds in a softer voice. “Your father just passed. Cut yourself some slack.” Then she heads out of the bedroom, maybe making for the john, flashing her charming behind.

  I’m sitting up on my mattress, with my back against the wall. During his time here, Charles painted this room red and purple, and I’m the sort of person who can’t make himself correct an obvious flaw in his environment. Part of one wall slants overhead to accommodate a staircase that used to go from roughly the front door to the second floor, but which T.R. walled off when he converted this to a two-flat.

  In the wake of what has just happened, or not happened, the lameness of my bedroom in general and my lack of a bed frame in particular suddenly seem emblematic of my condition. It occurs to me that if I had asked—and of course I never would have asked—my father would have made a bed for me. He was always ready to substitute your need for his own will. This positive recognition brings another: he was usually very friendly out in the world. At the grocery store, he was like a mayor on the campaign trail, chatting up shoppers, cashiers, stockers. It must have driven my mother nuts to see him cracking jokes with bank tellers and waitresses. Why was it so hard to bring that ease home?

  I’m glad Cynthia is out of the room, because suddenly I can’t talk. I close my eyes and tap the back of my head against the wall until it passes.

  When she returns a minute later (carrying a refreshed glass of wine, which seems odd), I’ve gathered myself and the topic shifts to litigation.

  “I wish these engine failure cases would just go away, thank you very much,” she says, pacing high on her toes.

  “Excuse me?” I say, because “engine failure” sounds suspiciously like a euphemism for my dysfunction.

  “Aviation litigation,” she says, still pacing. “It’s this fucking litigation.”

  “Oh, the fucking litigation,” I say. “Well, at least something’s fucking.”

  “That’s good,” she says with some excitement, pointing a finger at me. “I’m glad you’ve got your sense of humor. We’re going to joke our way through this.”

  “We are?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not as funny as it looks,” I suggest.

  She seems to ignore this, while pacing.

  “But we were talking about a litigation,” I say.

  “Yes,” Cynthia says. She stops and makes strong eye contact, locking me in, her one-man jury. “Three Cessna Skycruisers have crashed. Three people are dead, two seriously injured. Each plane lost engine power during a normal descent, possibly from fuel starvation, and the pilots crashed into trees and power lines and whatever. The NTSB couldn’t settle on a probable cause, but now plaintiffs have a theory about the fuel selector system that ties the three accidents together—it’s complicated but kind of makes sense. It’s a new plane for Cessna and everyone wants to blame their design.”

  “And get compensated,” I throw in.

  “Get a shitload of compensation,” Cynthia acknowledges. “Plus punitive damages.” She turns thoughtful, rubbing two fingers around her lips, as if applying lip balm.

  I adjust the sheet over my still-naked waist. I say, “How does it all look?”

  She sighs. “A reasonable settlement would free me to camp happily to the end of my days,” she says. “I’d hate to go to trial, but I can’t give away the store, either.”

  She stops pacing, finishes her new glass of wine, crawls onto the bed, and tackles a pillow.

  “Let’s hope you don’t have to,” I say.

  She frowns and stares at something within the rumpled-sheet landscape. She’s afraid of failing, it suddenly occurs to me. Why so beautiful and so worried? Why insurance defense? I suspect that a person’s career can be both a solution for, as well as a shadow of, the problems that dog a life. My heart goes out to her.

  “You’re a good lawyer,” I say.

  “You have no idea what kind of lawyer I am.”

  “See? That’s how good you are.” I smile, but she doesn’t.

  Nearly a minute of silence passes while she studies a ridge in the sheet where it crosses my knee. I tap my opposite thigh, counting the silence in 4:4 time.

  “You know,” Cynthia says, “when I first met you, I thought you might be gay.”

  “I know,” I respond, not knowing what else to say.

  “There’s still so much fucking homophobia.”

  “There really is,” I say. “But I don’t know, maybe there’s less—these days?”

  “Just last summer the Eighth Circuit issued a terrible opinion upholding the constitutionality of bans on same-sex marriage,” she replies quickly. “The people stealing T.R.’s yard signs aren’t collecting souvenirs.”

  “Yeah, I guess I wasn’t really thinking.”

  “Oh, what does anybody know about anything?” she says, exasperated. She breaks her death clench with the pillow.

  And though there’s no softness to it—more as if she’s climbing onto my body like a koala climbing a tree—she embraces me and we hug there on the bed. She squeezes me hard in her arms, almost too hard.

  “You’re a real young man, aren’t you?” she says. “My protector.”

  “Sure, doll, whatever you say.”

  We’re quiet for a bi
t, then I ask, “So when you came up to me at that party, you weren’t hitting on me?”

  “I thought you were cute,” she says, pulling back from the embrace.

  “And I thought you were my ideal. You kind of move like a gymnast, and I had a Mary Lou Retton thing when I was a kid.”

  “You did not,” she says.

  “I like compact, muscly girls with great posture who can do flips and shit.”

  “I’m afraid you had a thing for the leotard up the butt crack.”

  We laugh, for no good reason, and this almost breaks the ice—the big ice, the melting of which would make me so happy I imagine it wouldn’t matter if I won or lost any audition ever.

  “First loves can be strange sometimes,” I say, with mock gravity.

  Eyes down, she smooths the bedsheet with her palm, breaking a wry smile.

  “I tried stuff with women,” she says. Her words arrive as if at the end of some boomerang arc, hitting me in the back of the head.

  “Really?”

  “In law school,” she says and laughs. “Not the most romantic time of life! We got an apartment as 2Ls with another girl. We studied together a lot, and sometimes we ended up in one bed, just like sisters.”

  As if to illustrate, Cynthia picks up the pillow and holds it against her chest like an umpire’s pad.

  “I know everyone’s supposed to have their moment in college,” she says, looking down. “But I was a late bloomer.”

  Finally, she looks up at me and smiles sheepishly. I’ve seen her smirk often enough and her big smile, but I’ve never quite seen this. This smile makes me fall for her all over again.

  “My dad was such an asshole,” she continues quietly, “so nasty to my mom. He couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, for one thing. I went through this time when I thought marriage was totally evil, and I was suspicious of men.”