The boys are still traumatised about the egging at the opening. I suggest they take a few days off to relax. Binge on Harry Potter. Go for a two-hour massage. Double jack-off to Michael Fassbender in Shame. Instead, Mike returns to the studio that night, and Jacob stays in his room.
I spend all weekend in the lounge room practising. I eat dry cereal for breakfast because there’s no milk left in the fridge.
On Sunday afternoon Jacob comes out of his room in his Peppa Pig PJs holding a bottle of beer and a bag of corn chips.
‘You sure I can’t do anything?’ I ask.
He slumps onto the couch. ‘No.’
‘Want me to practise in my room?’
‘No, but the scales are kind of annoying.’
I make a small noise. He returns to his room with a fresh pack of chips.
I turn to the tricky passages of Mahler’s 4th. Slowly first, then at twice the speed. Slow, fast, slow, fast. Alternating between slurs and staccato, ricochet and dolce. The bow is the voice. It’s all in the right hand. I play until the sun weakens. Birdcalls replaced by bat croaks. Sometimes, when I’m playing Mahler, I am tempted to butcher his music deliberately because of what he did to his wife, Alma. He is another man, a composer, who probably never dreamed a girl like me would replicate his melodies. But I shouldn’t be so cruel. None of that matters. They’d written the notes that once saved me, and for that, I ought to be grateful.
The following Friday, I get home from a concert to find Jacob sobbing on the couch.
‘What’s wrong?’
He tells me he’d gone to visit his mother in Vaucluse for Shabbat and they had a fight. He’d wanted to take Mike, but his mother refused. ‘She said she’d rather die than see me with a man.’ His shoulders are trembling. ‘Now she says she never wants to see me again. She’s cutting me off. And I can’t afford to live here without her help.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mum owns this place.’
He looks at me. Eyes glassy. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘She’s said she’s selling it in a few months.’
‘Oh.’
The skin around his eyes is swollen and pink. ‘There’s no rush, though. You’ve got at least two months, maybe three.’
‘That’s okay,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
They move out a week later.
For three days it rains without stop. The canvas chairs in the back yard collect ponds of rainwater in the seats. I take pictures of the sad ponds and Mike and Jacob’s empty room and send them to the boys accompanied with sad-face emojis. The kitchen has been stripped of all their possessions. It’s a kettle-less, toaster-less, espresso machine–less kitchen; a gallery with no art.
I make another round of miso spag bol, listening to the excerpts as I squeeze miso paste into the cold mince. Mozart. Beethoven. Singing along to the violin line.
I plate up, grate parmesan on top, light a candle.
‘It’s ready!’
My voice cuts through the empty house. Hollow.
I reach for my phone: 9.45 pm. I shove a few mouthfuls into my mouth, then realise I am not hungry at all. I thumb a text to the bass player, holding my finger over the blue arrow, but I don’t press send. It’s too early for a booty call. Too late for a satisfying fuck. But he was never satisfying.
Screen off. A sombre face stares back at me from the grey reflective surface. How does anyone survive alone?
I press on Val’s name.
She picks up after the second ring. ‘Are you dead?’
‘No. What? How could I call if I was dead?’
‘Are you in hospital?’
‘No.’
‘Why else would you be calling me?’
‘You said the other night that you might be looking for a new place to live.’
‘Yeah,’ she says slowly. ‘Are you thinking of moving out?’
A few seconds after we hang up, I text Geordie because he is reliable, and because it’s the right amount of time since we last saw each other. As I’m clearing the dishwashing rack, I feel that old sense of euphoria return. Waiting for my lover to come. I check my face in the bathroom mirror and readjust my hair. When he texts that he is outside, I go to answer the door. Inside, I let him do what he wants to me because I don’t want to spend another night alone. I need someone’s breath to distract me from my anxieties. I need a shawl over my gaze to prevent me from looking too closely at my small, defective heart.
12
The hand physio calls to ask about my wrist. She is interested in the way mayors are interested in their constituents; at a distance. We are allocated four appointments each season and this will be my last. She has a spot at three in the afternoon. I arrive half an hour early to lift weights at the gym next to a rehearsal studio. I forget how quickly I sweat, even when I’m just lifting dumbbells, and end up embarrassed by my collar of sweat on my T-shirt when I arrive for my appointment.
She squeezes my wrists gently.
‘Are you over-playing?’
‘I’ve got an audition coming up.’
‘Stop after an hour. You can’t play more than an hour at a time. You’ll damage the ligaments around your fingers.’
‘I played six hours a day for more than a decade.’
She stills her face, a mother to a child.
‘You’re not young anymore.’
Olivia comes over for a practice session after dinner. She brings a bottle of red wine.
Two weeks out from the auditions, she’s had to take a week-long break from playing after spraining a finger playing netball. We argue about the dangers of sport for the hundredth time. She insists netball is the safest sport for violinists.
‘There are plenty of other sports that don’t involve the potential of losing a finger,’ I say.
She pushes the sleeves of her sweater up and follows me into the kitchen, red-cheeked and frowning.
‘I’ve done it for so long.’
‘That’s no excuse.’ I pull two wineglasses from the cupboard. ‘Why do you play with only girls? Women’s sport is so … catty.’
‘You’re such a sexist.’
She opens the bottle and pours herself a glass of wine.
‘There’s some strange competitive thing happening when there are only women on the court.’
‘What about men?’
‘Well, all-male spaces are inherently bad.’
‘You don’t really mean that.’
I take a moment to think about it.
‘No, I really do mean that.’
We return to the lounge room and pick up our violins, play a few scales, go through the excerpts at half the speed. I sense her lagging half a beat behind. I pull her up on it. She asks for the metronome.
‘Ninety,’ she demands.
‘That’s too slow.’
I thumb the dial in my hand, the lever jumping from the low tens to three digits.
Olivia picks up her glass of wine and readjusts her music stand.
‘Before I forget, Noah said he needs a second player for his show in September. You know, the one he’s been roped into by his school friends?’
I nod my head to the click of the metronome. Place it on the stand quickly and begin playing along. Olivia follows and we continue playing, applying less pressure to our bows at the phrase before the big climax in bar 127.