Nocturne(72)

He was only ten or twelve years older than me, but his skill made him sound like he’d been playing for a hundred years. His hair was completely salt and pepper, which did wonderful things for his green eyes. As he sat, he turned toward Nathan and me, extending his hand, which Nathan accepted.

“Tim, I’d like to introduce you to my friend—”

“Savannah Marshall.” Tim leaned past Nathan and gently took my hand in his.

“Yes …” I trailed off, shaking my head in confusion.

Tim chuckled softly as he let go of my hand and ran his over his tightly cropped hair. “I’m a friend of Madeline White. She told me you’d be joining us this summer. She’s talked a lot about you over the years, and I’m glad to finally meet you. That piece you played in your junior year flute ensemble was stunning. Well done, really.”

“Were you there?” I asked, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

“No. Madeline sent me the video. She was showcasing the two of you.” Tim pointed his finger between Nathan and me. “She was giving all of us a heads up on who to look out for over the next few years.”

“Oh … wow.” I exhaled softly as someone tapped Tim on the shoulder, calling his attention away from us.

“You okay?” Nathan asked, trying to follow my stare at the floor.

“I feel like I may have let Madeline down a bit.”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “You just spent a year playing for Bolshoi. You’re far from a disappointment.”

I smiled and leaned my shoulder into his before going through our music selection. Apart from playing The Stars and Stripes Forever at the end of each performance, we would be rotating through a breathtakingly beautiful selection of music. On the order for today’s rehearsal was Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 73, Theme from Schindler’s List, which I could rarely play without tearing up, and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A Major. There were more. Generations had lived and died under this music, and I was getting chills at the prospect of making the music come alive.

“Here come the bees,” Nathan mumbled, tilting his chin toward the front of the stage, where a majority of the strings swarmed to their seats.

I laughed, thinking about my summers as a student at Tanglewood with Nathan, when he first pointed out to me that the strings huddled together and always took their seats together, looking and sounding like bees as they settled into their seats and began tuning.

“Oh, excellent,” I whispered, “Zoey’s here!” I caught the eye of one of our conservatory friends who’d gone on to Cleveland, and waved. She smiled and waved back.

My smile quickly vanished as the cellos made their way on stage. It didn’t occur to me that Gregory Fitzgerald would want to participate in something like this, given his two best friends weren’t participating, and loads of travel crammed into an eight-week, twenty-city tour didn’t seem to be his cup of Earl Grey.

“Nathan,” I snipped.

“Yeah, doll—oh, for Christ’s sake,” he grumbled as he looked to where I was pointing.

“Did you know?”

“Yeah,” he spit out sarcastically, “I thought it would be a f*cking blast to sucker you into spending two months with him on the road. I’m sorry, Savannah.” Nathan leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his loose curls.

I shook my head, mocking Gregory’s signature dismissive wave. “Don’t be sorry. It’s way old news. A heads up would have been spectacular, but, whatever … let’s look over this piece.”

Nathan and I got out our pencils, marking sections that we would each have to pay extra attention to in order to not make total fools out of ourselves. Every few seconds, my eyes would flicker to Gregory, and I found myself wondering what had him in a seemingly extra sour mood.

His eyes seemed ashen, bags under them that weren’t there a couple of weeks ago at James and Madeline’s wedding. His usually well-groomed goatee looked about a day or two past its scheduled maintenance, and he seemed to speak in clipped sentences to his section mates. Despite his usually gruff attitude toward the rest of the world, from what I’d seen, Gregory was always pleasant with his fellow cellists.

My stomach flipped as I waited for him to relax the muscles between his eyebrows. He didn’t. Something was wrong, and wrong enough for him to let it show all over his face and body. I’m not sure what concerned me more, that something was definitely unsettled in his meticulously polished life, or that I cared.

And I wanted to make him feel better.





Gregory


I don’t understand why you won’t agree to have children with her.

The voice of my mother grated in my ears every time I thought about it. After days of a cold standoff between Karin and me, I’d received an unexpected phone call. My mother, who barely left her home these days due to a host of ailments, most of them imaginary, wanted to meet for lunch. And catch up. That was her code for interfering in my life. I could have rehearsed her lines for her in advance; they were so predictable.

That lunch resulted in a shouting match later between Karin and me. How dare she involve my family in this discussion? The last two days our attempt at a silent argument over whether or not to have children had erupted into open warfare, and I’d left this morning in a rage.

All the same arguments kept running through my head as I carried my cello into the rehearsal hall. I’d told her more than once, many times really, that I had no desire for children. Did she think that was going to change after we got married? Did she think she could change it for me? Did she want to change who I was?