CHAPTER TWO

I had no problem catching a flight early Christmas morning. Most people were home with their families, so it was just me and the unlucky flight attendants in a half-full cabin of glum passengers. My old fear of flying made an unexpected return. Breathing became a painful chore and my stomach churned as the engines roared at takeoff. I whimpered as I watched the earth shrink below us, then hid my head in the small white airline pillow. At one point I was surprised to discover a pair of flight attendants hovering over my seat, strapping me in with the cooing assurances you give a hysterical child. I must have done or said something to merit that attention, but damned if I could remember it.

My parents were disappointed by my pre-holiday departure, but I couldn’t face a house full of relatives. They protested while I packed, and as we drove to the airport, and when I explained for the dozenth time that I didn’t want to be around people, even on this favorite family holiday. (My California relatives had long ago switched to Jewish-lite. They always rescheduled Hanukkah for December 25, when it was easier to get everyone together for gifts, latkes, and a nice ham.) At the airport, I made my parents swear an oath of silence concerning what had happened. So I knew I could rely on my mother for twenty minutes, tops, before she’d blab everything. My parents had made a tape of me playing the night before, and I made Dad promise to hide it from Mom until the company was gone. Without that evidence, at least, her story would be taken with a pound of salt.

The cabbie from Kennedy Airport must have been pleased with the hundred-dollar bill he got when we reached my Brooklyn Heights apartment. Too stressed to deal with details, I walked away without waiting for change. I lugged my heavy bags up the four floors, eager to return to my books, my dishes, my African violets, my world. Opening the door, I wondered if my psychic intruder would dare cross the threshold with me. They say vampires can’t enter a home uninvited, so I squeezed my brain to envision a crucifix with DO NOT ENTER written across it. It must not have understood English, though. The pushy spirit stayed adhered to my innards as I dropped my big bag next to the old leather couch and threw my satchel on the rickety kitchen table.

I was on home turf again, thank God. Every inch of my little nest comforted me, except for the vague impression that things looked odd just outside my field of vision. I’d twirl around quickly, trying to catch the peripheral view. I half expected to see the melt and droop of a Salvador Dalí painting. But periphery can only be off-center, so the strangeness persisted like an unreachable itch.

I had no fruitcakes or decorations. The messages on my answering machine and a bunch of Christmas cards from friends and insurance agents were all I had to create atmosphere. I listened to my messages over and over. I liked hearing the good wishes. Don’t think for a minute that I really wanted to hear Patrick’s voice just one more time.

He sounded friendly and familiar. Somehow I thought he’d have picked up a phony-baloney Italian accent.

“Christmas in Siena is incredible. Everything I could want, except I miss you, of course. Buon Natale, sweetheart.”

Buon Bullshit, asshole.

Patrick’s bon voyage speech had been a treasure. “Real love means letting your partner go—to explore, grow, experience other people.” Women, by any chance? “If we’re meant to be together—and I know we are—we will be. In just six months, at most. You’ll be so busy anyway . . .” Blah, blah, blah.

So we’d been in touch since his summer departure, but I can’t say I was happy about it. He sounded pretty happy, though.

Patrick Florio and I had been together for three years when he decided to follow his dream as an architect and go live in Italy. Even though he’d never been there, he felt “in his heart” that’s where he belonged. I knew in my heart that I couldn’t get an extended leave of absence from my law firm. No matter. At least Patrick had plenty of time to absorb Italian culture, study great art and architecture, and complete his comparative study of American and Italian hooters. Little did he know that my missing him sometimes crossed the line into hating him. We were together but not— a theoretical couple.

With effort, I chased Patrick out of my brain, but he kept sneaking back in. I also wasn’t ready to deal with my recent musical adventure or the disoriented feeling that followed me around like a puppy. In fact, some heavily rummed eggnog with a good friend was about all that sounded right to me just then. I picked up the phone and called Fred.

“Yeah, sure, I’ve got eggnog,” Fred told me. That meant he would pick up the fixings on his way over.

Fred Wilner was my oldest, most comfortable friend. We’d known each other since college and even attempted a romance of our own once. It was fun, easy, and completely lust-free. We agreed we could marry, assuming neither of us ever wanted sex again.

He arrived with rum and eggnog and a cable-knit sweater for me, which would have been gorgeous except for the egregious mustard color.

“I thought the color would be great on you,” he said.

“Why do you do this, Freddie? We agreed no presents, then you go overboard like this?” I slipped the sweater on, not to hurt his feelings. I looked deathly ill in it.

“Liza, I’ll stop buying you presents when you stop giving me Christmas stuff.”

I wouldn’t stop, though. I get enough presents to embarrass a princess, and Fred gets a Radio Shack gift certificate from his uncle Bernie. I handed him a large wrapped package from Max and Louise.

This was what he was really waiting for. With both of his parents gone, he’d glommed on to mine and they were totally thrilled. Acquiring an adult child—housebroken and appreciative—may be the only sensible way to become parents. So Fred had become my parents’ favorite child. Big deal. It’s easy to be the favorite if the folks haven’t endured adolescence and other indiscretions with you.

His package contained a cashmere sweater in a magical shade of blue. How nice. I was tempted to tell Fred that I was a big musical genius, but I forced myself to heap praise on his new sweater instead.

“So how are they?” The sweater went well with Fred’s denim-blue eyes. His dark hair curled just above the collar. “Have fun with the folks? I thought you were coming back tomorrow.”

“I wasn’t feeling so great, so I passed on the family party.”

I was barely holding myself together, but I didn’t want to scare Fred away. His presence helped me in ways he’d never know.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said. “Besides, my parents’ll still send all the presents from everyone.”

Fred looked at me closely. “You know, you do look a little pale.” It was the egregious sweater, but I didn’t say so. “Why’d you really come home early? Kicked out and disinherited?”

The phone rang just then, buying me time to come up with a better story.

“Hello, amore.” Patrick’s voice was honey itself. “I tried calling you at your parents’ house. They said you left early. Everything okay?”

“Sure,” I lied, “everything’s fine. Just wasn’t in the mood for a big family gathering, so I ducked out early. It’s the kind of thing, though, where you’ve gotta pretend you’re sick to get out of it, or they’ll never forgive you.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ve done that a few times myself,” Patrick commiserated.

Across the room, Fred didn’t seem convinced by my latest version of why I’d bugged out early. Long distance, though, Patrick had already launched into a story about himself and what he had done in a similar situation. I pretended to listen.

“Well, did it fit?” Patrick asked, apparently not for the first time. My mind had wandered, but I realized he was talking about the outfit he’d sent me from Italy.

“Oh, it’s incredible, I love it!” Actually, I wasn’t sure what it was. It had a vagabond Renaissance look involving velvet, brocades, shawls, fringes, and possibly pantaloons. Definitely not from Nordstrom.

“Does it look good on you? I thought of you as soon as I saw it. Send me a picture of you in it, okay?”

“No problem,” I promised. “Fred’s here, I’ll get him to take the picture tonight.”

Silence. Patrick hates Fred. Why do I say things to annoy my beloved, faraway, deserting, self-centered lover?

I changed the subject and Patrick and I mustered up gooey good-byes. Then Fred helped me figure out my genuine, weird Italian outfit so we could take goofy pictures. For a little while, I almost forgot to be petrified.

I awoke the morning after Christmas, praying I would feel normal again, that I could look back on my unexplainable show of genius as a never-again anomaly. I could live with the prickle of an unsolved mystery as long as I knew it was gone for good.

After a mercifully solitary start to my day, the strangeness returned mid-morning. It disabled me. I stayed in my apartment, too preoccupied to get dressed. Something was inside me that didn’t belong, phasing in and out unpredictably. I knew when it was alert because everyday sounds made me jump, and the kitchen appliances and bathroom scale became stare-worthy. Also, a soundtrack ran through my head with musical passages to glorify the brushing of teeth and the rinsing of silverware.

I had a couple more vacation days before going back to work, which gave me a chance to consider the evidence in private: My visitor was obsessed with music, possessed an Olympian set of senses, and seemed as scared as I was. Probably not American, judging by reactions to nearly everything. Maybe not even of this century. I thought about the great pianists first, but that seemed too limiting. With so many instruments playing in my head at once, this pianist was surely a conductor or composer as well.

My only clue was the “Unfinished Symphony.” Even I, with my basic level of music appreciation, identified that one easily. The other music I heard was beautiful, but I couldn’t be sure who wrote it. Did I hear bits of Beethoven? Mozart? The possibilities spun around me, dizzying and indistinguishable.

In desperate moments, I tried purposely to will the thing away. I visualized it as a virus, urging my body to fight it off like a common cold. As a last resort before bedtime, I helped myself to vitamin pills, out-of-date antibiotics, cold tablets, and other stray goodies in the medicine cabinet. Their cumulative effect was nothing compared to the strangeness I was already feeling. There was no virus, of course.

I had occasional slivers of hope the next day, when I went for up to two hours without a symphonic note in my brain. During each quiet interval, I’d tell myself that the whole episode was coming to an end. After all, if I could return to normal for two whole hours, why not the rest of my life? Maybe I would not wind up institutionalized by rational people who didn’t understand that something real was happening to me. That Franz Schubert was happening to me.

Deep in the night, his name had come to me in a whisper, distant but clear. At first, I tried to attribute it to dream haze, to push it back in its hole. In the light of day, the idea kept springing up and waving its hands in my face. I tried to reject it, nearly deciding that I was delusional, but that didn’t explain my piano performance. Slowly, the reality had glued itself to me: Franz Schubert was happening to me. I didn’t know if it was good or bad, only that it was true.

Of course, the only other being who would believe me was Schubert himself, and we couldn’t communicate with words. I sensed, however, that his fear and confusion were at least as great as mine. Nothing in my world was familiar to him, not even the century. He was constantly confronted with startling technology. To alleviate his panic (which rapidly fed my own), I introduced him to the technology he’d most appreciate—CDs and the radio.

He was not used to music flowing from impossible, inanimate sources, and his responses were intense. I tested him on different kinds of music. He reacted with magnetic interest to the classics he knew and to the ones he wanted to know. A moving piece could send us both into rapture, but distortions and mistakes in the music (subtle ones I’d never have noticed) caused acute annoyance.

Contemporary music was a great challenge to him, though I suspect he had some understanding through me, just as I understood some things through him. Rock left him agitated, jazz bewildered him, and an old disco tune made my teeth hurt. He was moved by an early Bessie Smith recording, but he also liked some old junk by Gary Lewis and the Play-boys. Go figure.

There was hardly a need to supply music anyway. In any normal day, we’re exposed to heaps of it without even trying. Radios everywhere, passing cars with pounding stereos, TV commercials with singing cats, snippets of pop songs when you’re put on phone hold. There’s always something to hum along with.

Franz’s frequent dormant periods were either sleep or, more likely, a voluntary withdrawal from modern commotion. In addition to music, there are the sounds that most of us are oblivious to. Airplanes, car horns, the whir of the refrigerator, the clicking of computer keys, and the rumbling of the dishwasher were all harshly penetrating to my more sensitive half. It added up to a din, to be taken in small doses.

At night, though, Franz frolicked without restraint. Our sleep was filled with his marvelous dreams, like nothing I’d known before.

Brain chemistry is supposedly ripe for inspiration during sleep. Artists, upon waking, sometimes envision completed works just waiting to come alive. Franz slept in creative overdrive, conjuring music as a full-body experience. He saw sounds vividly, felt them speeding through his bloodstream, smelled flowers and brimstone, tasted every note.

And through this waterfall of new sensations, I realized how insanity comes to people, perhaps to me. A twist here, an alien perspective there, and one day you’re not thinking like the rest of the world. It was like discovering a new color. How could I describe this nondimensional phenomenon to anyone who happened not to be me?

That’s why I guarded this secret as long as I could. Yes, it might be a gift and, yes, some people would dog-paddle across an ocean to trade places with me. But to me it was so big and out of my control that it scared me half to death.

Practically speaking, I didn’t know what to do next. I was due back at work. Should I go to the office and try to act normal? Walk into an emergency room and demand a surgical exorcism? Scour the Yellow Pages, as if I might find help there?

With wild optimism, I chose work and normalcy. I thought I could pull myself together with massive self-discipline. I’d carry on each day like someone you’d see on a schlocky talk show who harbored a terrible secret for years until a close friend finally asked, “So how long have you been combing your hair to cover that crowbar sticking out of your head?”

The truth is, I was so dazed by my circumstance that people quickly figured something was wrong, even if my crowbar was invisibly nested inside my head. I became ridiculously klutzy with the addition of a second set of reflexes that were not calibrated to my own. The stimuli that I barely noticed would set off alarms in Franz’s system. Suddenly I couldn’t step onto an escalator in less than three attempts or cross a street without lurching like Frankenstein’s monster at a bonfire. Also, my conversations wandered, I couldn’t attend to normal tasks, and I had a tendency to hum way too loud. This did not help me at the office.

In the highly competitive law firm where I was a hardworking associate, I made a spectacle of myself just by not being perfect. When I lingered an extra hour over lunch (where the Brandenburg Concertos played on the restaurant’s sound system) on Tuesday, the client I was consequently standing up was instead shmoozed by a mealy new associate named Myles Broadbent. Naturally, at our staff meeting the next day, Myles pointed out how perfectly happy he was to help out any colleague who needed backup. It didn’t help that I’d arrived at work in my bedroom slippers.

I left work early that day.

At home I practiced being invisible. Hey, if I could be invaded by Franz Schubert, anything is possible.

I ignored all letters and e-mails, and returned my parents’ frantic phone messages with calls perfectly timed to get their answering machine (Tuesday-night Scrabble, Wednesday-night dinner club). I worried about work, called in sick, fretted over Franz, and had a disgusting craving for schnitzel. His thoughts were colliding with mine, and my attempts at solid thinking crumbled like cake. On Thursday night, my friend Fred lovingly coaxed me out of my retreat.

“What the hell’s the matter with you? Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Fred stood at my front door wearing a look of shock, so I made a start toward the bathroom mirror.

“No, wait, Liza.” He sounded nervous. “Don’t look yet. I don’t want you to go from scary to suicidal. Let’s talk first.”

But the mirror beckoned. Fred followed me into the tiny bathroom. I shrieked at the sight of my reflection. Makeup is a dear friend to me, and I appeared to be completely friendless and overwrought. My expensive work clothes lay like rugs on the floor. They had dark footprints on them like in a murder mystery. I was wearing—what, my wetsuit from dive class? With a nice silk blouse and a decorative sheet tied around my waist. I must have been distracted when I dressed. And, of course, that wasn’t the worst of it.

My hair has always been my crowning horror. At that moment I could have scared Medusa. It’s a gift from my father. His wild thatch was too much for one head. Clumps of Dad’s overgrowth leapt onto my scalp at birth, planting hideous hair seeds, stubborn as Bermuda grass. Every morning I do battle with this mop—fluffing and swearing until it resembles human hair. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but this was no contest. I looked at Fred sheepishly (although I think sheep have better hair).

“You also don’t smell that great,” he said. “Why don’t you start from scratch with a shower, then we’ll go out.”

I was too appalled with myself to turn down anyone else’s free advice.

I emerged from the shower to hear the phone ringing. Fred picked up for me.

“Oh, hi, Louise . . .”

I waved my arms and mimed the obvious to Fred. (“I am not home, I am not home.”)

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

(“I’m away! You’re here to water the African violets. Tell her!!”)

“I love the sweater, thanks . . . Sure, a perfect fit. I’m wearing it.”

(“Liar!”)

“Sure, she’s right here. Let me get her.”

(“You can lie about wearing the sweater, but you can’t tell her I’m not home??”)

I had heard that if you smile while you talk on the phone, your voice sounds naturally cheerier. I must have been smiling like Jack Nicholson in The Shining because Fred looked frightened. I grabbed the phone, un-smiled, and tried to sound normal.

“Hi, Mom, what’s up?”

“What’s up? Where have you been is what’s up. Your father and I are worried sick about you, the state you left in. Are you all right?”

I told her I was fine and offered hearty reassurances, which she disregarded. She wanted details about the music and the fainting. Fred was casually listening nearby, so I went into my bedroom and closed the door.

“Has it happened again?” Mom demanded.

“Happened again? No.” Not a lie, technically.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Your father and I have a theory, don’t laugh.” She cleared her throat. “Maybe you could be just a teeny little bit like an idiot savant?”

I wasn’t laughing, but she did make me smile. I commented on my quick descent from being her genius daughter to being a freakish dolt.

“Liza, you know I didn’t mean that.” I knew. “And Aunt Frieda agrees that something’s going on.”

“Aunt Frieda, perfect. The world’s leading authority on shopping for shoes agrees with your psychological assessment. Case solved. Let’s move on.”

Mom reminded me, as always, that Aunt Frieda was a sharp cookie who probably knew more than I thought. I reminded Mom of her promise not to tell anyone.

“Frieda is family, darling. She loved that tape of you playing. Anyway, I had to talk to someone about this. Frieda’s family.”

I pointed out that she could talk to Dad, who was also family and already knew about me. She squirmed past this logic, aiming again for an update on me.

“Well, I’ve stayed away from pianos, but he’s still here.”

“Fred?”

“No, Franz.”

“Franz? Who’s Franz? What happened to Patrick?”

“Franz Schubert, the composer.”

It was the first time I’d said the words out loud. I explained that he seemed to be sharing my body.

“Liza, you know that can’t be true. Please, you’ve got to talk to someone about this. A professional.”

I wasn’t ready to admit it. Instead, I knocked loudly on my bedroom door.

“Mom, that’s Fred knocking. We’re going out and we’re running late. I’ll have to call you back.”

I surrendered the hair battle and put on a hat, got dressed, and found Fred still sitting in my living room. He didn’t enjoy being pointedly excluded from my conversation with Mom, but he was determined to be nice. In fact, he invited me to a recital that night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In retrospect, I should have asked what was on the program.