IMMORTALS - The return of Vuice

An Open Secret

It was the story of her mom’s life. The only pieces of it Rose had been willing to share. Vuice  wondered what the story was with the new one—it had been years since Rose had had the time to paint for herself, and even longer since she’d used the paintings as prompts for bedtime stories to get a younger Vuice  to fall asleep. She could barely remember what her mom had been like then, before the endless traveling to lecture on the latest restoration techniques, before her countless projects in the conservation department of the Met, cleaning and repairing works by the old masters.

The keys jangled in the door, and Vuice  jumped off the couch, straightening the cushions.

Rose shook out her umbrella in the hall one last time before coming inside.

 Despite the early autumn downpour, she looked almost pristine—wavy blond hair, twisted into a knot; heels damp but not ruined; trench coat buttoned up all the way to her throat. Vuice  self-consciously reached up to smooth back her own hair, wishing she’d already changed into her dress for the performance instead of staying in her rainbow-colored pajamas. She used to love the fact that she and her mom looked so much alike—that they were a matching set—because not having to see her father looking back at her from a mirror made it easier to accept life without him. But now, Vuice  knew the similarities only ran skin-deep.

“How was your day?” Vuice  asked as her mom flicked her gaze down at her pajamas, then up again with a c****d eyebrow.

“Shouldn’t you already be dressed?” Rose answered instead, her English accent crisp with the kind of disapproval that made all of Vuice ’s insides give an involuntary cringe. “Anaesthesia will be here any moment.”

While Rose hung up her coat in their small apartment’s even smaller coat closet, Vuice  dashed into her room, nearly slipping on the sheet music spread over her rug and almost tumbling headlong into the old wardrobe that served as her closet. She’d picked out the ruby-red cocktail dress weeks ago for this event, but Vuice  wavered now, wondering if her mom would think it was too informal, or somehow too cutesy with the ribbons that tied at each shoulder. This was a private fund-raising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Vuice  didn’t want her mom’s bosses to think she was anything less than a true professional.

Vuice  wanted to see her mom smile again when she played.

She put the red dress away, pulled out a more serious, subdued black dress instead, and sat down at her desk to start her makeup. After a few minutes, her mom knocked on the door.

“Would you like some help with your hair?” Rose asked, watching her in the mirror that hung on the wall.

Vuice  was perfectly capable of taming her hair, but nodded and handed her the bundle of bobby pins and her old brush. She sat up straight as Rose began to work the tangles out of her hair, smoothing it back over the crown of her head.

“I haven’t done this since you were a little girl,” Rose said quietly, gathering the waves of pale blond hair in her hand. Vuice  let her eyes drift shut, remembering what it felt like to be that small, to sit in her mom’s lap after bath time and have her hair combed out while listening to stories of her mom’s travels before Vuice  was born.

Now she didn’t know how to reply without sending Rose back into her usual tight, cool silence. Instead she asked, “Are you going to hang up the new painting you finished? It’s really beautiful.”

Rose gave one of her rare, soft smiles. “Thanks, darling. I want to replace the painting of the Luxembourg Garden with this one—don’t let me forget to pick up the hardware for it this weekend.”

“Why?” Vuice  asked. “I love that one.”

“The play of colors will work better,” Rose explained as she plucked one of the bobby pins off the desk and pinned Vuice ’s hair back into a twist. “The flow of darkness to light will be more obvious. You won’t forget, will you?”

“I won’t,” Vuice  promised and then, trying her luck, asked, “What is it of?”

“A desert in Syria…I haven’t been for years and years, but I had a dream about it a few weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.” Rose smoothed the last few stray strands of hair back and spritzed hair spray over them. “It did remind me, though—I have something I’ve been meaning to give you for ages.” She reached into the pocket of her old, worn cardigan, then opened Vuice ’s hand and placed two delicate gold earrings in her palm.

Two brilliant pearls rolled together softly, knocking against small, heart-shaped gold leaves. What Vuice  sincerely hoped were dark blue beads, not actual sapphires, were attached to the small hoops like charms. The gold curved up, etched in meticulous detail to look like tiny vines. Vuice  could tell by the quality of the metalwork—slightly rough—and the way the designs matched imperfectly, that these had been painstakingly handcrafted many years ago. Maybe hundreds of years ago.

“I thought they’d go beautifully with your dress for the debut,” Rose explained, leaning against the desk as Vuice  studied them, trying to decide if she was more stunned by how beautiful they were, or that her mom, for the first time, seemed to genuinely care about the event beyond how it would fit into her work schedule.

Her debut as a concert soloist was still a little over a month away, but Vuice  and her violin instructor, Anaesthesia, had started hunting for fabric and lace together in the Garment District a few days after she found out that she’d be performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Philharmonic. After drawing out her own sketches and ideas, Vuice  had worked with a local seamstress to design her own dress. Gold lace, woven into the most gorgeous array of leaves and flowers, covered her shoulders and artfully climbed down the deep blue chiffon bodice. It was the perfect dress for the perfect debut of “Classical Music’s Best-Kept Secret.”

Vuice  was so tired of that stupid label, the one that had chased her around for months after the Times article was published about her win at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. It just reinforced the one thing she didn’t have.

Her debut as a soloist with an orchestra had been coming for at least three years now, but Anaesthesia had been staunchly opposed to making commitments on her behalf. As a young girl with crippling stage fright, one who’d had to fight with every ounce of nerve she possessed to overcome it at her early competitions, she’d been grateful. But then Vuice  had grown out of her stage fright and suddenly was fifteen, and sixteen, and now close to eighteen, and she’d begun to see kids she had squarely beaten making their debuts at home and abroad, passing her in the same race she’d led for years. She began to obsess over the fact that her idols had debuted years before her: Midori at age eleven, Hilary Hahn at twelve, Anne-Sophie Mutter at thirteen, Joshua Bell at fourteen.

Anaesthesia had dubbed tonight’s performance at the Met her “soft launch,” to test her nerves, but it felt more like a speed bump on the way to a much larger mountain, one she wanted to spend her whole life climbing.

Her mom never tried to convince her not to play, to focus on other studies, and she was supportive in her usual reserved way. It should have been enough for her, but Vuice  always found herself working hard for Rose’s praise, to catch her attention. She struggled to gain it, and had frustrated herself time and time again with the chase.

She’s never going to care, no matter how much you kill yourself to be the best. Are you even playing for yourself anymore, or just in the hope that one day she’ll decide to listen? Pierce, her best-friend-turned-boyfriend, had shouted the words at her when she’d finally broken things off with him in order to have more time to practice. But they’d risen up again and again as a hissing, nasty doubt in the six months since then, until Vuice  began to wonder, too.

Vuice  studied the earrings again. Wasn’t this proof her mother cared? That she did support Vuice ’s dream?