IT WAS A mere few weeks after Suzanne’s funeral when the news really surfaced. “Barely cold in her grave” was the unwelcome cliché that leaped from Philip’s brain, promptly suppressed as too coarse, for Suzanne if not for him. She wasn’t in a grave, anyway. She’d told him long ago she wanted to be cremated, like her father, and he had always waved it off, saying it was too far away to think about. But when the time came, he complied.
He followed the music websites daily; they had been her staunchest fans, spreading the word of each new CD with adoring, overblown reviews. Now, beyond the hints and suspicions, they were posting comparisons of one or two of Suzanne’s recordings with several others, some sent in by skeptical listeners, techie nerds. Philip resolved to ignore them. But the allegations persisted and multiplied, racing from one site to another in a furious prestissimo, then moved to the print magazines, which were always slightly behind. Still he didn’t defend himself, and screened all calls carefully. If he had to speak, he would deny everything. They couldn’t prove anything. Or maybe they could, but the proofs would be so technical that no one beyond the world of computer-savvy critics and Internet music junkies would pay any attention. His clients would be loyal; he had done well for them and they knew it.
It was harder to ignore Richard’s phone call.
No preliminaries: “What the hell did you think you were doing?”
“Richard?”
“You know very well who it is. I just read about it in Andante. They don’t print such things unless they’ve investigated.”
“Don’t you know how these music sites and magazines operate? One false note and they fly into a tizzy.”
“Philip, you’re not talking to Suzanne now. We all know how gullible she was.”
She was not quite as naive as they all believed, he thought but of course did not say. He himself had never been quite sure how naive she was.
“What possessed you?” Richard went on. “You went too far this time. Chamber music? Orchestral works? Are there any limits to what you’d do?”
“It’s all totally mistaken. I know how that equipment works better than you do. You can feed stuff in and get any results you like. They’re just vultures picking at the remains. It’s disgraceful.”
“You’re going to deny it? You mean she played with the Vienna Symphony? With the San Francisco Symphony? With the Tokyo String Quartet? What world are you living in? You won’t be able to keep that up, you know. Aside from anything else—and there’s a lot else—it’s illegal. You’re in deep shit. You won’t be able to keep track of the lawsuits. But I don’t care about that. I care . . . cared about her. You ruined her. Don’t you realize?”
“Ruined her? Are you crazy? I made her.” The ingratitude of the man was unbelievable. And he professed to care about her. “Do you know where she’d be without all those recordings? Lying on the couch watching soap operas.” Or cooking shows, but out of respect for her memory, Philip didn’t add that.
“You made her! You’re nuts. My God, the colossal ego. I knew her years before you did. I helped her all along. She was a significant talent. It was only after she got together with you that things started to go wrong.”
“You want to fight over her, Richard? I’m surprised at you. If anyone ruined her, it was you, nursing those great expectations. The pressure she put on herself. As if without the public recognition she was nothing.”
There was a silence. Finally Richard said, “I didn’t do that. I only encouraged her to do her best. The rest came from her. Or her parents. Or, who knows, the miserable culture. That’s all beside the point now, where it came from. What you did is criminal. I’m glad she’s not around to see those articles online.”
“I can agree with you there.”
“I bet you can, you bastard. You took someone I loved and made a sham of everything she did and valued. And for what? Not even money. For fame. But it was based on nothing. It wasn’t even real.”
“The fame was real,” Philip said quietly. “Her satisfaction was real.”
“You are a genuine sophist. Don’t you see? That reputation, it’s all going down the tubes. All anyone will remember is the phoniness. The true talent will be forgotten.”
“Who can tell what’s true?” Philip asked calmly.
“Oh, don’t go all philosophical on me. You’re not up to it. You’re just a tinkerer. A technician. You didn’t respect her, and you didn’t respect music.”
“I respected her enough to give her what she wanted. Which is more than what you did. She never got over your . . . that business with you and Elena. She felt so betrayed.”
“That was absurd and childish of her, and you know it. My personal life has nothing to do with this. You ruined her good name. You ruined what she cared about.”
“She’s dead, Richard. She had her good name while she lived. She can’t be harmed now by any of these lies.”
“I won’t waste my breath on you anymore. And don’t expect me to defend you for her sake. I can’t defend those CDs.” And he hung up.
Philip sat by the phone in the empty living room. It was winter; the days were depressingly short, approaching the solstice. The light from the west window was fading. There was only a dim light over the piano, with sheets of music on the rack. He hadn’t touched them since her death. He had never touched them anyway—that was her domain. He sat in Suzanne’s chair, the old easy chair with the ottoman where she put her feet up. Or sometimes she curled up in it with a book late at night; the last few years she’d started wearing glasses, round wire-rimmed glasses. He remembered exactly how she looked sitting there, her dark hair tied back, the wine-colored velveteen robe. If he came out of the studio to get a drink or a cup of coffee, she would lift her head from the book and smile at him. She was happy, those last few years, and all because of him.
No one understood. He had taken no one into his confidence, and now there was no one to whom he could justify himself. Suzanne. She was the only one he would like to explain it to, but she was gone. Even she, the reason for all his efforts, the one who profited from those efforts, even she might not understand what a coup he had pulled off. If not for the single listener who bothered to look at the credits that appeared on the screen when he slid the CD into his computer, and bothered to write to Gramophone and The Half Note about the discrepancy, whose editors then bothered to fiddle with their state-of-the-art equipment to try to unravel all he had done, the whole thing might never have come to light and Suzanne would be remembered as the great talent she truly was.
If it hadn’t been Suzanne’s reputation at stake, he might have relished the notoriety, even if it did land him in deep shit, as Richard predicted. Who else could have engineered an entire career using old recordings and the newest computer programs? Not to mention that in the process he had acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of the entire recorded repertoire. But any pleasure he might have felt was stopped at its source by their last argument, just a week before her death.
He was getting ready for bed while she sat staring at the screen of the laptop she kept in the bedroom. “Aren’t you coming?” he said.
“In a few minutes. I’m reading something.”
“Don’t take long, sweetie. I’m lonely. I want someone to put their arms around me. Do you know anyone who could do that?”
She wasn’t appreciating his silly jokes tonight. “Let me finish, okay?”
He was almost asleep when he felt her weight sink down on the bed. She turned the bedside lamp on. “Phil? Are you up?”
He turned around. “I guess so.”
“I can’t believe what I just read in Platinum.”
“What? Another good review? What’s so hard to believe?”
“Phil. It was a review of me playing the Emperor Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic. And in Gramophone there was one of me doing the Trout with that group from São Paulo. These are Tempo CDs. What’s going on? They must be mislabeled.”
He was already sitting up, his mind racing. Reviews, of course. How could he have made such a slip? He had sent out the usual review copies along with her latest solo CD, a selection of Brahms waltzes, and not given it a thought. Carelessness, pure and simple. Although she hardly read the reviews anymore, unless he sent her the links. What made her start surfing the sites tonight? Still, it was his fault. He hadn’t thought about her coming upon possible reviews—he’d been so caught up in the latest adumbration to his scheme: Suzanne playing chamber music, Suzanne playing orchestral works, who knew what else might be in the offing? He’d found obscure pianists, excellent but barely known, whose style was not unlike her own. He’d been so pleased with himself. . . .
“Phil. It is a case of mislabeling, isn’t it?” When he didn’t answer, her voice became almost a wail. “Oh, please, Phil. Tell me it’s a mistake.” She looked at him, not even angry, merely wretched with suspicion. More than suspicion.
She’d never asked him outright before, or not since Elena’s visit two years ago. Now he found he couldn’t lie to her.
“Oh. So, it’s not a mistake.” Her voice hardened. “So it’s a big lie. The whole thing is a big lie.”
“No, no,” he said hastily. “It’s just this . . . these last few . . . I thought it was a smart idea . . . you know, branch out, not just your solo work. Show what else you can do—”
“But I can’t do it. I didn’t do those, at any rate.”
“But you could if you had the chance.”
“Oh, so the truth is just a technicality?”
“Suzanne, it’s late. I had a long day. Can’t we talk about it tomorrow?”
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more to say. I’m finished. Do you understand? I’m not doing it anymore. Elena was right. Richard was right. I can’t keep participating in this . . . this . . . I’m finished. I’m never going to that studio again. Do you hear me?”
“It doesn’t matter at this point whether you go or not. The CDs can continue without you. You’re a brand now.” He rolled over. Tomorrow would be dreadful, when he faced her in the light of day, but he might as well get some sleep. “Oh, by the way, how were the reviews?”
“The reviews? They were excellent. ‘Masterful, plangent, powerfully articulated, controlled but touching emotional force.’”
He grinned into the soft darkness of the pillow. He’d done it again. He reached over and stroked her hip, but she pushed his hand away and turned her back.
Since that night she hadn’t wanted him to touch her. She never brought the subject up again, and neither did he. The next few days were strained, with conversation at a minimum, but there gradually came a thaw. She wasn’t one for the extended silent treatment. She had things to tell him: an invitation to do a master class at Oberlin in the spring, to attend a series of concerts by a former student who had won a major contest, a note from a childhood friend, Eva, congratulating her on her success. “She was a real bitch. I can’t imagine why she got it into her head to write to me.” And Phil, likewise, brought her news of the studio and his other recordings. Before long, she’d come around, he felt sure. A few weeks, and things would go back to what they were before. Their good years.
Instead he had found her lying on the kitchen floor while a teapot screeched. Calling her mother was an agony. Gerda had grown more sentimental in old age. “My little girl. So young,” she wept. “Such a talented little girl. She had a real gift. Didn’t she? And those wonderful recordings! It just isn’t fair. It doesn’t seem right.”
“No,” Phil agreed. “It’s not right. She deserved better.”
He was alone in the house that first night after he called the police and made all the arrangements, after the body was removed. Two young men in down jackets had lifted her off the floor and placed her on a stretcher, as if she were only sick. He closed the door after them; he didn’t want to watch the next steps. He wasn’t used to being alone. With all the people he knew, all the business contacts, the networking, there was no one to sit with him and keep him company. He felt the desolation he remembered from years ago, the first few nights in his aunt and uncle’s apartment. At least this was his own home, with his own things.
The house was too quiet. Maybe he should have followed those two young men to wherever they were taking her. He should have kept her longer; he wasn’t ready to let her go. He went over to the shelves that held hundreds of CDs; he could keep her by her music, anyway. Wasn’t that the wonderful thing about art, that it outlasted its creators? Life is short, art is long—some ancient said that, he couldn’t remember who. Suzanne would probably have known. She wasn’t altogether gone. There was the music. He picked out one of the recordings he himself had made, Suzanne playing the Schubert Impromptus, and slipped it into the slot. The opening notes were full of brio, exhilaration. For a moment it was as if she were back in the room, alive and eager. He remembered her playing it in the studio, and he remembered editing it. Was this the one where . . . ? Yes, it might be the one where she faltered early on and he had had to make several alterations. The pianist was well into the piece now, and Philip had to acknowledge that it probably was no longer Suzanne playing. He had done his job so well, even he couldn’t tell where the cut came. He couldn’t be absolutely sure, but he didn’t think it was Suzanne. There was a whole shelf of her recordings, recordings that bore her name, and he would play them all over the next few weeks, to try to keep her close. But he would never really know if he was hearing her or some stranger. It shouldn’t have mattered. That was what he had told himself all along. It didn’t matter. It was the music that was important, and no one could deny the excellence of his recordings. But now, when he needed her and her alone, it mattered.
