had once asked.
“Because she
has
to look after you,” he said, “and she
wants
to look after me. My career makes many demands on her. Ineed her to be home when I return from tours and you need her to be home when I’m away on tours.” He looked as if this explained everything, and when she still seemed puzzled, he said with exasperation, “It was no longer suitable for her to be working with those people. I asked her to give it up when you were born. It just wasn’t practical anymore for her to have so many commitments that conflicted with my own schedule.”
Her mother’s anger washed over Mariana, the bystander, and scared her. She tried to understand how her mother could love her father so passionately and protectively, craving his attention and devoting her life to him, while at the same time resenting his success and raging at his absence. When Alexander returned, Pilar would always punish him, but he would slowly coax her back out of the darkness. Once, winking at Mariana, he confided, “She and Maxxi are the same in this; they have their pride. They must, with patience, be brought around.”
On the morning after Mariana returned from Boston, her doorbell rang and a delivery man handed her a bouquet of flowers. She ripped open the envelope. The note came from Claude:
Dear Mariana,
I hope you do not find it forward that I am writing to you after our last encounter. I’m giving a concert at Alice Tully Hall this Saturday, playing Brahms with William Rossen. It is my first New York recital and I would be honored, truly delighted, if you would be my guest at the concert and the reception and dinner afterward, given by Edith Libbey. I feel we have so many reasonsto know each other, to be friends. I hope you’ll agree to come. I’ll leave a ticket for you at the box office, in any event, and will ask Mrs. Libbey to send you an invitation.
With fond regards,
Claude
She felt a rush of excitement that conflicted violently with the anguish she’d been feeling since her departure from Boston. Had she hoped to hear from Claude? Many years had passed since her last, and only serious, involvement with a man, Anton Pietovsky. It had not turned out as she hoped; he left her.
Removing the paper and ribbon from the bouquet, she admired the extravagance of the arrangement, the largesse of the gesture, and the scent of the fresh spring flowers. She did not even have a vase to hold so many blooms, but she brought her largest glass pitcher from the kitchen and pressed them in. Pietovsky had made such gifts — flowers awaited her in every greenroom, chocolates and champagne at her hotels, an ermine shawl to wrap around her gowns in winter, and on her thirtieth birthday, a diamond bracelet. He was a romantic. Perhaps Claude was too. Or maybe he just felt guilty.
She set the flowers on a table that still held a photo of herself with Anton and her father, a large framed black-and-white picture, taken in 1989. She had been seventeen and eager to meet the sensational Russian conductor, fifteen years her father’s junior, who had recently engaged Feldmann to play the Dvořák concerto under his baton, in Moscow. In the photo, Alexander, as usual, towers over the group; Pilar is behind the camera. Anton has his arm around Mariana, who has already emerged as a beauty, taller than he. They arein New York at her parents’ apartment, just about to have a celebratory dinner party. Behind them, the table is set.
Mariana remembered the occasion vividly. Anton had been barely able to speak English, though his attempts were unselfconscious, voluble, and full of large gesticulation. When Mariana entered the dining room, she took note of the two empty bottles of Russian vodka on the table, making rings on the cloth. The two men had apparently been long engaged in drinking and talking music in Alexander’s studio. She looked at the conductor, whom she’d heard so much about, and found something quite appealing, something alive and
“Because she
has
to look after you,” he said, “and she
wants
to look after me. My career makes many demands on her. Ineed her to be home when I return from tours and you need her to be home when I’m away on tours.” He looked as if this explained everything, and when she still seemed puzzled, he said with exasperation, “It was no longer suitable for her to be working with those people. I asked her to give it up when you were born. It just wasn’t practical anymore for her to have so many commitments that conflicted with my own schedule.”
Her mother’s anger washed over Mariana, the bystander, and scared her. She tried to understand how her mother could love her father so passionately and protectively, craving his attention and devoting her life to him, while at the same time resenting his success and raging at his absence. When Alexander returned, Pilar would always punish him, but he would slowly coax her back out of the darkness. Once, winking at Mariana, he confided, “She and Maxxi are the same in this; they have their pride. They must, with patience, be brought around.”
On the morning after Mariana returned from Boston, her doorbell rang and a delivery man handed her a bouquet of flowers. She ripped open the envelope. The note came from Claude:
Dear Mariana,
I hope you do not find it forward that I am writing to you after our last encounter. I’m giving a concert at Alice Tully Hall this Saturday, playing Brahms with William Rossen. It is my first New York recital and I would be honored, truly delighted, if you would be my guest at the concert and the reception and dinner afterward, given by Edith Libbey. I feel we have so many reasonsto know each other, to be friends. I hope you’ll agree to come. I’ll leave a ticket for you at the box office, in any event, and will ask Mrs. Libbey to send you an invitation.
With fond regards,
Claude
She felt a rush of excitement that conflicted violently with the anguish she’d been feeling since her departure from Boston. Had she hoped to hear from Claude? Many years had passed since her last, and only serious, involvement with a man, Anton Pietovsky. It had not turned out as she hoped; he left her.
Removing the paper and ribbon from the bouquet, she admired the extravagance of the arrangement, the largesse of the gesture, and the scent of the fresh spring flowers. She did not even have a vase to hold so many blooms, but she brought her largest glass pitcher from the kitchen and pressed them in. Pietovsky had made such gifts — flowers awaited her in every greenroom, chocolates and champagne at her hotels, an ermine shawl to wrap around her gowns in winter, and on her thirtieth birthday, a diamond bracelet. He was a romantic. Perhaps Claude was too. Or maybe he just felt guilty.
She set the flowers on a table that still held a photo of herself with Anton and her father, a large framed black-and-white picture, taken in 1989. She had been seventeen and eager to meet the sensational Russian conductor, fifteen years her father’s junior, who had recently engaged Feldmann to play the Dvořák concerto under his baton, in Moscow. In the photo, Alexander, as usual, towers over the group; Pilar is behind the camera. Anton has his arm around Mariana, who has already emerged as a beauty, taller than he. They arein New York at her parents’ apartment, just about to have a celebratory dinner party. Behind them, the table is set.
Mariana remembered the occasion vividly. Anton had been barely able to speak English, though his attempts were unselfconscious, voluble, and full of large gesticulation. When Mariana entered the dining room, she took note of the two empty bottles of Russian vodka on the table, making rings on the cloth. The two men had apparently been long engaged in drinking and talking music in Alexander’s studio. She looked at the conductor, whom she’d heard so much about, and found something quite appealing, something alive and
Similar Books
