9

The Audition

JOANNE

The first time Mr. K booked our quartet to perform at a Ukrainian festival, I was mystified. I didn’t understand a word of the entire evening, which apparently was a tribute to some dead nineteenth-century Ukrainian poet.

But that wasn’t nearly as mortifying as the day he sent our quartet to a street fair in the historic district dressed up in Colonial-era villager costumes. I spent the entire afternoon trying to melt into the pavement, hoping I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. I tugged at my pink floral-print gown and flattened myself against the brick wall of old Crandall Elementary School, glancing right and left to make sure there were no familiar faces. My hair was giving me trouble, which happened often these days. Long and frizzy, it refused to be tamed. I alternated between the two-hour struggle with a blow dryer required to straighten it, and my clumsy curling-iron attempt at Farrah Fawcett wings.

My mother told me I was going through what she called an “awkward phase,” which so far as I could tell had lasted, oh, about thirteen years. The boys at school told me I looked like a scarecrow and called me “four-eyes.” What they lacked in originality they made up for in accuracy.

Being in the orchestra was suddenly social suicide. I had just started Hammarskjold Junior High School—named for a Swedish diplomat most kids never heard of whose name many would never learn how to spell—where the pecking order was clear and an instrument case instantly advertised your position at the bottom. After the first few days, I refused to bring my viola to school—I made up some excuse about how it wouldn’t fit on the bus—and used a school instrument for orchestra rehearsals instead. I began to avoid the music kids in the hallways, even my friends, even Melanie. I don’t think I ate in the cafeteria with her once in three years, even though we spent hours together after school and at ASTA during the summers. If the gods of popularity deemed orchestra kids to be pariahs, I wasn’t in any position to argue.

The tension between us was unspoken, but the effect was unmistakable. When we got our yearbooks that first spring, even kids I barely knew wrote knowingly intimate inscriptions. But Melanie’s note to me sounded as if it were penned by a distant acquaintance: “Good luck in the future.”

Middle school everywhere is the killing field of musical ambition. There’s actually a technical term for it—for real, researchers have studied the phenomenon. It’s called the “I want to quit” phase. That’s the span between twelve and fourteen years old, when, as researcher Theresa Chen put it, kids drop out “because of their desire to seek peer attention and approval.”

Lots of teachers ease up on their students when the calamity that is adolescence strikes, hoping to coddle and cajole them through the worst of it. Mr. K did the opposite. He got meaner.

He was especially tough on one of my classmates. Ted Kesler was small for his age, with shaggy bangs he was forever shaking out of his eyes and a sweet, slightly foggy expression on his face. Once, when Mr. K was trying to teach him how to play in fifth position—in which the left hand climbs all the way up the violin neck in order to play high notes—he pressed on Ted’s thumb so hard that the knuckle cracked. You could hear it popping, and it hurt like hell afterward.

“That’s so you don’t forget where fifth position is,” Mr. K barked.

“I never did,” Ted would say decades later.

As socially humiliating as viola was, I didn’t consider quitting. Neither did most of the other musicians in school, not even Ted. “Taking lessons with Mr. K felt like playing for the Yankees,” he said. “You put up with the shit because it got you to the championships.”

Mr. K, it was true, was on a roll. His students were dominating every orchestra competition, and I was one of them. Junior Regional Orchestra at twelve years old, Senior Regional at thirteen, All-State Orchestra at fourteen, the first year I was eligible. Melanie, naturally, was named concertmaster of all three.

At one audition for a youth orchestra the year I turned thirteen, the primary judge had a particularly intense rivalry with Mr. K. She sneered at me as I carefully closed the door behind me. The door had a glass window, but she had covered it with paper so no one could see inside. She looked me up and down and shook her head in disgust even before I began to play.

“B-flat scale,” she said in lieu of a greeting.

On a viola, B flat is the highest three-octave scale there is. It’s the scale that requires you to crawl your fingers all the way up the instrument’s neck, where it’s harder to play in tune and your fingers have to be thisclose together and the bow can scrape and scratch like a screeching cat if you aren’t careful. Mr. K had drilled me on it probably a million times by now. I handled it without a problem.

She scowled.

“Faster.” She gave me a hard look.

I played it again, concentrating fiercely. I stared at my fingers, willing them to hit their marks on the neck of the instrument as I played all three octaves on a single bow: BflatCDEflatFGABflatCDEflatFGABflatCDEflatFGABflat. Then down again: BflatAGFEflatDCBflatAGFEflatDCBflatAGFEflatDCBflat, also on a single bow. I hit each note. The endless drilling during my lessons had clearly paid off.

Thank you, Mr. K.

The judge gave me a look of loathing.

“Faster!”

I took a deep breath. I had never played it any faster. I had never heard anybody play it faster. I had never heard a judge make that kind of demand, either. The cruel expression contorting her features unnerved me. What did I ever do to her? I could feel the muscles in my arm tensing up. My palms were sweating. Both hands were visibly shaking. I steeled myself, closed my eyes, and dug in.

BflatCDEflatFGABflatCDEflatFGABflatCDEflatFGABflat, on a single bow. Then down again: BflatAGFEflatDCBflatAGFEflatDCBflatAGFEflatDCBflat, also on a single bow. The scale went by in a flash. Notes that were too sharp and too flat and off in a variety of ways hung in the air. At least I got through it.

“Faster! Do it faster!” Sadistic glee was playing across her lips.

I looked helplessly toward the judging desk. A second teacher sat next to her, but he looked just as cowed as I did. He turned away from me and didn’t say a word. By this time my breath was coming in short, shallow bursts. It was clear this woman was out to get me. You could see in the expression on her face that she wanted me to fail, that she was putting all of her energy into willing me to fail.

“I said faster.”

My hands were visibly trembling as I dug into the scale once more. My brain was telling my fingers to go faster, faster, but like a jockey that whips his horse until the beast collapses and dies mid-race, my fingers didn’t have the wherewithal to cooperate. BflatCDEflatFGABflatCDEflatFGABflatCDEflatF—

And smack. My left hand spun out of control, falling right off the neck of the instrument.

“Ha!” she said. With a theatrical flair, she lifted her pencil and brought it down with a swoop to mark my presumably failing score.

The rest of the audition was a disaster. Muscles I didn’t even know existed tensed into knots I had no idea were possible. Between the flop sweat, the shakes, and the sneering from the sidelines, I barely got through my solo piece and sight-reading. When I finally was dispatched out the door with its square of window strategically taped over, I ran to the closest unoccupied corner of the corridor, sank down against the cinder-block wall, and cried.

MELANIE

“Ewww! It’s Melanie!”

I don’t remember the first time I was concertmaster of an orchestra, but by junior high, I am earning the title regularly. The year I turn fourteen, I am named concertmaster of six different orchestras. One of them is Senior Regional Orchestra, made up of high school students. It’s a qualifier for All-State Orchestra, where all three regions of New Jersey are represented.

When I show up for the All-State auditions, in a big suburban high school a good hour away from home, some of my new acquaintances are already there. In the warm-up room, I’m unpacking my instrument when behind me I hear the girl’s voice. “Ewww!” she says again.

Turning around, I see a violist with long, beautiful hair whose name I don’t know but whose face is familiar. She’s surrounded by a group of her friends. I smile tentatively and continue rosining my bow. The girl approaches me from across the room. She’s dressed in tight hip-hugger jeans and smells faintly of cigarettes.

“Hey, Melanie,” she sneers. “See that guy over there?” She points to a short boy with glasses who is vigorously practicing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major, one of the most difficult pieces in the classical violin repertoire. “He’s really good, and he’s your competition. Let’s see if you can beat him!” She stalks off, leaving me with my smile frozen on my face.

How could this girl hate me? Why is she so hostile? She doesn’t even know me.

Confused, I hide behind my instrument and begin to warm up with some scales. This is a new and awful feeling, being singled out for derision. I had first noticed it this past summer at ASTA, when the camp photographer posted candid photos on the wall for parents to buy. It’s a coup to get your picture taken, and every year, kids walk up and down trying to spot themselves. But my dad always insists that the photographer take multiple portraits of him with Steph and me so he can get one where Steph isn’t laughing or his bald spot isn’t showing. “Why are there so many pictures of Mr. K’s daughters?” I heard one of the kids complain as I walked past the photo wall.

That did it. When Daddy waylaid us for our next portrait session, his suit buttoned up neatly and his tie smoothed, Steph and I told him we didn’t want to pose. Daddy was furious. He exploded, then stormed off and refused to talk to us for days afterward. I felt terrible, writing him a long letter begging forgiveness, saying, “I’m sorry! I didn’t get a chance to explain my feelings of embarrassment about the dumb way I look in a picture and the way I feel when people complain…”

Now, warming up for my first All-State audition, the feeling comes flooding back. The boy is playing the Tchaikovsky loudly, and his friends, I’m sure, are snickering at me. I try not to notice them, and my heart gradually stops pounding. After a few minutes I’m engrossed in my piece, Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 1 in G Minor.

That night, when Daddy gets home from the auditions, he’s wearing a huge grin. “Well, sis, congratulations! You made concertmistress of the All-State Orchestra.”

“Concertmaster!” my mother yells from the living room, correcting him. “You can’t call her concertmistress. A mistress is something between a mister and a mattress.”

My dad ignores her. “There eez a boy, a high school junior, and you outscored him by only a couple of points. Really, eet could haf gone either way. This eez his last year in All-State…”

I know instantly whom he’s talking about. The boy whose friend taunted me.

“I think eet would be the right thing to do to offer to split the concertmastership with him.”

I consider what my father is saying. My dad has a firm philosophy about seniority. When he holds auditions in his own orchestra, he gives extra points to upperclassmen, five points for each year of seniority. He always says there has to be some reward for loyalty, some benefit to sticking it out through the years.

He is waiting for my answer. I think about the girl with the beautiful hair, sneering, “Eeew, Melanie!” I don’t like to be singled out. Anyway, what’s the big deal about being concertmaster? Being awarded first chair seems to come easily. I couldn’t care less about it. At least, I don’t think I care.

I nod.

“Good,” he says. “You weel have other chances.”

As far as my social life is concerned, I’ve hit bottom.

My tiny neighborhood elementary school was located in a corner of East Brunswick that some kids consider “the other side of the tracks.” At my new school, Hammarskjold, there are wealthier kids, too. It isn’t cool to be smart, or musical, or especially talented at anything except athletics. I figure out the rules pretty quickly but have no hope of mastering them:

A) Appearance and confidence override everything else.

B) It’s crucial to have an insulating group of friends.

C) It’s helpful to have parents who can assist with A and B by providing a dermatologist, an orthodontist, a ride, and a credit card.

I don’t have any of those things. It’s hard to blend in when you’re a lime-green-plaid-stretch-pants-wearing music nerd. I can’t do much about my parents, but I do persuade my dad to give me an old clunker violin that I can stash in the music room semipermanently so I don’t have to parade around with my telltale instrument case on orchestra days.

I learn how to hide my grades, too, concealing the A’s on assignments by covering them up with my palm as the teacher hands back papers, then quickly stuffing them into my notebook. In class, I never raise my hand or volunteer to answer a question. I adopt a hairstyle that hides part of my face from view, with my bangs swept dramatically over one eye. My mother calls it my “Veronica Lake look.” My dad calls it ridiculous.

I haven’t given up hopes of reinventing myself. I won’t be able to imitate the pretty, wealthy, fashionable girls who saunter by confidently in cute jeans with their shirttails knotted around their midriffs. I’m just hoping I can break free of polyester clothes in colors not found in nature that come from the Sears catalog, arriving wrapped around cardboard and sheathed in plastic bags. Finally, my dad gives me money and allows Steph and me to shop for ourselves at the mall.

Getting real jeans is a dream come true, even though they have to be loose enough to satisfy my dad’s sense of decency. I also get a pair of white painter’s pants, complete with the hammer loop and the long, skinny brush pocket where I keep a comb for hair emergencies. Tan corduroy gaucho pants and vest come next; all I need is a hat and a rope slung over my shoulder to look like I’ve just stepped off a cattle ranch in Argentina. A mint-green jumpsuit that makes me look like a gas station attendant becomes one of my favorite outfits. And when I am finally allowed to get a pair of “buffalo sandals”—tan suede two-inch platforms with beige leather straps—I sleep with them beside my bed for a week so I can see them as soon as I open my eyes in the morning.

Baba is disgusted by my new clothes. “Vhy you not take-it nice dress? Vhy you wear-it always the pants?” she asks.

She takes one look at my new sandals and laughs bitterly. “How you can walk like thees, een these crazy shoes? You looks like you have-it two bricks strapped on you feet!”

I don’t care. I love my platform shoes, and I’m not going to take fashion advice from a woman whose wardrobe consists largely of floral-print babushkas. But Baba doesn’t let up. A few years later she has a similar reaction to my shoulder pads, snorting “You looks like you have-it two hard rolls under you blouse!”

Hammarskjold is a lonely place for me. I have Miriam, of course, and some friends in the orchestra, but if Miriam is absent that day, then I have no one to sit with at lunch. Joanne goes to Hammarskjold, too. We laugh and joke at orchestra and outside of school. But inside school, we don’t connect much. Joanne excels in advanced classes that I’m not allowed to take. She seems to have lots of friends, most of whom aren’t in the orchestra. She’s confident, even around teachers and boys, which makes me feel more shy. Joanne is the type of girl who would surely laugh at me for acting uncool. Once, in seventh grade, she does invite me to a Girl Scout party, but the invitation is halfhearted.

“Uh, we’re having this party?” She isn’t even looking at me. “With my Girl Scout troop? I guess I’m supposed to invite you?”

I’m embarrassed to say how eagerly I accept.

In my scrapbook, I paste an article about one of our orchestra concerts in Atlantic City. On the margin, I compile a list of my friends’ names. There’s Miriam, whom I’ve nicknamed Murray. And Michael Grossman, the cute boy our age who plays violin, and our family friend, John Stine, who plays the cello, and his big sister, LouAnn, a violist. Last of all, I write down Joanne’s name. Next to it, I pencil in a question mark.

Not long after the All-State audition, at the end of eighth grade, my mother goes into the hospital again.

This is becoming a familiar routine. Her health rallies, then deteriorates, in an almost predictable cycle. Whenever her illness gets out of hand, she checks herself in to the hospital, usually for a few weeks, which seems to stave off decline for a little while. Lately, she’s having more trouble transferring in and out of her wheelchair without help. I have been lending her a hand when she needs it, but that is no longer enough, and I don’t have the strength to lift her on my own.

The morning my mother heads off to the hospital, I kiss her good-bye with my violin in one hand and turn back to the concerto I’m working on. “I’ll be back in a few weeks,” my mom promises as she leaves.

Dad takes Steph and me to visit a few days later. My mother seems to be in good shape compared with most of the others. At forty-four, she still has the lustrous hair and piercing blue eyes that first caught my father’s attention back in college. She is a few decades younger than most of the other patients, the majority of whom have suffered strokes or accidents that leave them with debilitated speech and urine bags tucked beneath their wheelchairs. I hand my mom a box of chocolates to share with her roommates and gather up a laundry bag full of her clothes.

For the next few weeks, that’s our routine. My mother calls every day. Once or twice a week, Daddy loads Stephanie and me into the car to visit. Each time we bring her magazines or chocolates or her favorite McDonald’s milkshake, and I take home her laundry, which I’ll wash and return to her on our next visit. Sometimes we bring our violins and play for her, and Daddy lets us count it as practicing, since she corrects our intonation. She introduces us to Millie and Mary, stroke victims who have lost the ability to speak. She’s giving them choral breathing lessons that are so effective that a local newspaper takes note, writing about the music therapy she introduces to patients.

Between treatments, Mom organizes a patients’ choir that she conducts. She positions her wheelchair in front of them, looking out at a line of a dozen old stroke and accident victims, most in wheelchairs, their hobbled knees covered by afghans knit by wives or grandchildren. On our visits, she starts asking us to bring her sheet music instead of magazines. Just before the holidays, she leads her patients’ choir in a performance, all of them outfitted in Santa hats.

Jean Kupchynsky conducts the Roosevelt Hospital Nursing Home patient choir in a holiday concert, circa 1977.

It’s Christmas morning. I’m just getting out of the shower when Steph calls down the stairs, “The ambulance is here! Mommy’s home!”

A big white emergency vehicle with flashing lights, its siren mercifully silent, has just pulled into our driveway. It has arrived half an hour early.

I run up the staircase in a towel, my hair dripping on the carpeted stairway. Daddy is already pulling the living room couch out of the way to make room for the medics who will be carrying her inside. Steph, still in her pajamas, is jumping up and down in the open doorway.

Just outside, I can see the neighborhood kids streaming out of their front doors to see what the commotion is about. A group of them gather on the sidewalk directly in front of our house, staring and pointing, as my mother is loaded onto a stretcher, strapped down, and carried across our lawn to the front steps. I feel the familiar blush of embarrassment rising in my cheeks.

“Merry Christmas,” my mom sings, as if there is nothing unusual about her entrance. “It’s good to be home.”

We couldn’t have gotten a better present. After a celebratory breakfast and a frenzy of gift unwrapping, Steph and I set to making my mother’s annual Christmas meal—roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy—while she happily calls out instructions. My mother’s gift to me, appropriately enough, is my own copy of one of her favorite Fannie Farmer cookbooks, inscribed in a hospital volunteer’s unfamiliar handwriting: “To Melanie, as a supplement to Betty Crocker. Love, Mother.” My dad plays records of Christmas carols.

Still, even though she is in high spirits, I can see that my mother is struggling. She’s trying mightily not to betray how weak she is. Despite being in the hospital for several months and daily physical therapy, she is frailer than when she had checked in. Her hands aren’t strong enough to play carols on the piano, as she used to do when I was little.

We have barely finished dinner when, at six P.M., the ambulance rolls up our driveway again.

My mom is going back to the hospital. “Just a few more weeks,” she promises as she leaves.