Page 74 of Requiem

Julia 28

When I was fourteen years old, I became entranced by the winter Olympics. At the North Fork Children’s Home, I’d beg our housemother to let me stay up late to watch the figure skating. I didn’t see pretty costumes or romantic stories. I didn’t care about the athleticism or the difficulty of the programs. Watching the skaters was like seeing music in a physical manifestation. I could see the music. And I was enraptured by what I saw.

Now, from next to me, my accompanist starts the rippling undercurrent of Bach’s Prelude No.1 in C Major. The composer wrote it for piano. And then, nearly a century and a half later, a composer named Charles Gounod superimposed his own melody on top of Bach’s … his setting of the Ave Maria. It became known as the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria and it is the last piece that I will play tonight. It’s the encore that the audience has demanded of me and, with the heavy lifting of Vivaldi and Brahms behind me, I allow myself to be lost within this sublime music. I allow myself to skate.

In my mind, I glide effortlessly across the smooth, unmarred ice, stretching my arms and delicately turning my body so that it faces in the opposite direction even as it continues its forward trajectory. And then I slip into a spin. Not a blinding, blurring spiral, but the most delicate of circular motion before I fall back effortlessly to where I began. Up down. High low. My body flexes with the music, which flexes with my body.

As the piece starts to its climax, I see myself as a skater in the ‘spread eagle’ position, both feet on the ice, toes pointed outward in opposite directions, heels facing one another. My arms are outstretched, my chest laid open as if awaiting embrace. As the music builds, so does my speed, carrying me into a series of intricate jumps strung together. A toe loop, an axel, a camel spin. I can practically feel the gentle swoosh of air blowing through my hair as I sail effortlessly through the boundaries of gravity.

After much too short a time, I feel the Ave Maria coming to its inevitable conclusion. Even as I pull bow across strings, I am like a gold-medalist at the end of an emotionally powerful routine. I come out of one final, languid twist, sinking down and down and down, until my knees hit the glassy surface and I simply slide across the ice with eyes upturned toward heaven and arms open in welcoming adoration.

When I come back to myself once more, to this tiny room built around a concrete floor, I am breathing hard from the effort and spent from the satisfaction. The audience jumps up in rapturous applause for a performance that they don’t even know they have seen.

****

My sublime experience is quickly forgotten as I step out into the main exhibit hall of the Beau-Radcliffe Gallery and into a swarm. It’s clear that the Kreisler Competition has really gone all out with its huge PR and marketing departments.

Every horizontal surface is littered with my new CD. There’s a banner outside the gallery, over the front door, and then, there’s the cardboard cutout. Right now, I’m standing in front of it, tilting my head from side to side, trying to decide what to make of my super-sized doppelganger. It’s me, but it’s not me. I’m considerably more statuesque in the image in front of me, easily six-feet tall compared to my more diminutive five-foot-one. And a half. My teeth are the size of subway tiles and my God, you could literally drive a truck through those pores!

“Wow, has anyone ever told you that you look like her?”

Matthew has sidled up next to me. Both of me.

“You read my mind!” I say with a delighted smile.

He leans down and gives me a long, slow, soft kiss.

“Again! You read my mind!”

He wraps an arm around my waist, pulling me closer to him.

“You did the skating thing again, didn’t you?” he guesses with a knowing smile. I give a little shrug, amazed by his ability to see through me every time. “Well, you were spectacular,” he murmurs in my ear.

“If you think that was good, wait till we get home. I’ve got quite an encore planned,” I say with a suggestive raise of a single eyebrow.

“I’ll look forward to multiple curtain calls,” he counters with his own bit of naughty thrown in.

I put my head on his chest and lean into him as I survey all of the people swirling around us. It almost feels as if we are standing still while they continue to move in fast forward. They’re taking signed copies of my CD from a big display table and chattering animatedly to one another as they survey the beautiful paintings and sculpture around them.

“They’re all here for you,” Matthew says, following my eyes around the room.

He’s right. I recognize most of the people here. Some are from the Kreisler International Music Competition, including Lester Morgan, the Director. Several friends from McInnes Conservatory are here as well. I spot Mila Strassman with her boyfriend, they’re sneaking kisses in the corner and it makes me smile. Brett and Maggie are here somewhere, too. I debated about whether or not to bring David, but it would be way past his bedtime and my little firecracker of a son gets very testy when he doesn’t get enough sleep.

My eyes are drawn to an abstract painting by a hot new artist, Vanessa Shogreen. I suspect by the time this event is over, half of her paintings will have ‘sold’ stickers on them. I’ve been eyeballing one called ‘Still Life in French Toast,’ though I’m sure Matthew will just tell me my breakfast food obsession is out of control. I’m just wondering if I can sneak the four-figure price past him in the checkbook when I hear a familiar, squeal.

“Noooooo, Nata, nooooo!”

I cringe as I watch David squirming to get out of Natalie’s iron embrace, surrounded by several extremely expensive pieces of sculpture. Maybe bringing him wasn’t the best idea.

“What on earth is all the fuss about?” someone says. That’s when Trudy Corrigan steps out from behind a life-sized rendering of a woman with wings, and wearing a beanie on her head. David stills instantly at the sound of her voice.

“Holy cow …” I gasp under my breath.

“More like ‘holy shit,’” Matthew chuckles from next to me. “That woman is like a ‘baby whisperer’ or something.”

He’s hit the nail on the head. My boy’s huge hazel eyes track on the tall, lean woman as she makes her way toward him. The woman with the identical, huge, hazel eyes. When she’s close enough, he holds out his arms to go to her. Nat shoots a questioning glance our way and I nod my okay.

Trudy says something to her that I can’t hear and it makes Natalie smile. She hands him over and I watch in awe as David immediately wraps his arms around her neck, snuggling his little head against her chest. It’s as if he’s known her his entire life.