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SHE NEEDED TO PLAY. Needed to feel her violin strings against her fingers, needed to press her jaw against her chin rest, her ear so close to that freshly polished wood. Close enough to feel every vibration, close enough for the music to seep into her core. To warm and soothe her soul.
How had she ignored him for so long?
Her Dmitry.
Greg was next door at the business meeting. He had insisted she stay home, and she surprised herself by agreeing without a fight. She hadn’t washed any of the dishes from dinner yet. The living room was just as cluttered as it appeared during Nancy Higgins’ surprise visit, but none of that mattered.
She just needed her music.
She plucked the strings. Even with the change in weather, Dmitry was surprisingly in tune for having been neglected for two months. No, not neglected. Katrina had rinsed his humidifier every day. Polished his wood at least once a week, whenever she needed to feel the comforting smoothness of his skin. She had feared at one point that her violin would be mad at her. Greg would tease her, of course, if he knew the extent to which she personified her instrument. But some things her chord-strumming husband would never understand. There existed parts of her soul where Greg’s hands couldn’t touch. His caress couldn’t warm. His love couldn’t reach.
There were dark places. Primitive, dangerous places, yet capable of so much beauty.
So much awe.
She tightened her bow.
She was ready.
She wondered if her friends from the symphony ever associated different music with smells. She often did. There was the scent of her high-school orchestra room just across from the gym. A mix of chalk, sweat, and a hint of chlorine from the nearby pool. The practice room for the Long Beach Symphony was different. Rosin. Perfume. A whiff of cigarette smoke wafting over from Stan’s collar beside her.
But as she held her violin now, she could only smell the antiseptic scent of the emergency room. Alcohol swabs. Laundry soap. Bleached linens. Would she ever forget?
The acoustics in her bedroom were far from ideal. When they first moved into the parsonage, she had spent an entire afternoon hunting for the best practice spot. Her first choice would have been the room Greg claimed as his office. More often than not she ended up playing in the kitchen, which gave her music a bright, open ring. But if she was sad, if she was nursing a bruised ego after yet another run-in with Mrs. Porter or any other member of the Women’s Missionary League, Katrina preferred to play in her bedroom where the curtains and carpet, the pillows and blankets on the bed absorbed so much of the sound, making it mellow. Heavy. Somber.
She could pull off bright and airy when the score called for it, but Dmitry excelled in the lower tones. Her teacher once joked that Katrina’s violin must have been a cello in a former life. No matter how much searching she did on the internet, Katrina couldn’t find out much about Leonardo Cantarella, the Italian craftsman who delivered her instrument into the world, but she imagined his life must have been filled with both suffering and beauty. The pain and longing for redemption seeped into the very wood of her violin.
So beautiful.
So heart-wrenching.
She brought Dmitry to her shoulder and shut her eyes. She loved the feel of her bow in her hand, perfectly weighted, balancing her soul in a way she could never express in words. There were some things beyond language. Things that could only be spoken through music.
She let her bow caress the open string. A low, resonant sound. She didn’t need vibrato. The instrument did that for her. Pulses of love. Waves of beauty.
Her violin.
Tentatively, she let her fingers meander up the board. The melody was slow. Hypnotic. She had composed a song for Greg just before they got engaged. She was so excited to play it for him, so eager to express her fears, her hopes, her love. But he couldn’t understand. She left his apartment that night feeling lost. Lonely.
Tonight, her rhythm was lilting. Like lovers stalling in the morning. Reminding her of those places in her soul where Greg could never venture. Places he would never see. Never know.
Lonely places.
Her notes were higher now. A dance of sorts, herself and her violin. At times like these, she was certain she could be happy alone. Perfectly alone. Just herself. Her music. Her Dmitry.
Faster now. A chase. Groping for that perfect run, that perfect phrase. Coming so close to the realization, always falling just a bow hair short of achievement. Her music was beautiful. Haunting in its drive toward even greater perfection. She had spent a decade and a half seeking that sublime moment her teachers spoke of. That elusive paradise, sometimes lasting only a few fleeting seconds. Seconds in which your music is so true, so clear, so glorious you know you could never repeat your performance, not even after a lifetime of practice.
She had come close. Oh, she had come close. On more than one occasion. And yet her soul ached for a beauty she feared she would never realize this side of heaven. She played on. Let the music swell inside her. Anoint her. Sometimes it was hard to know whether to compare it to drowning or paradise. During her engagement, she wondered if intimacy with her husband would be similar.
She focused on her music. Beauty. Chilling in its acute rawness. Intensity. Passion. Longing. Like a prayer. Like being bathed with the Holy Spirit.
Her music and no one else’s. Powerful. Primitive. Rhythm that would hold you in its caress, never relenting until it left you breathless.
A stitch in her side. Mom always told her she looked silly rocking back and forth like that while she played. Almost as pathetic as when she tried to sing.
A zinging pain like the day she lost her baby. Those cramps again.
She put down her bow.
Her song was done.