second violins, of which Phoebe was one. Even worse, she had to share a stand with a righteous pimple-face named Kwan who was always correcting her bowingsâher fingerings, too. Not that it ever occurred to her to quit. Despite her acid-tongued letters to Iron Curtain pen pals, she didnât have a rebellious bone in her body. She still considered family to be destiny. Which is not to say she wasnât increasingly resentful of the hand she imagined destiny to have dealt herâthe hand that had denied her the leather couches, Central American cleaning woman, three-car garage, and color TV with remote control that all the other kids at Pringle Prep had.
Phoebe had matriculated in the ninth grade. Pringle Prep wasnât like Whitehead Middle at all. It wasnât even in Whitehead. It was in the next town over, a town whose abandoned railroad tracks literally divided rich from poor, and black from white and predominantly Jewish, with the exception of one or two over-the-hill R&B stars who lived in gated Italianate mansions up on the hill, over by Pringleâs playing fields. It was Roberta whoâd insisted that Phoebe transfer there, because, for one thing, Phoebe had begun speaking âJersey-ese.â (Sheâd say, âIâm goinâ a scooull,â instead of âIâm going to school.â) For another, it was Robertaâs contention that with a diploma from Pringle Prep, Phoebe would have a better chance of getting into a good university or music conservatoryâthe kind whose clear plastic bumper sticker would look impressive affixed to the back window of the family station wagon for all the neighbors to see. There was already a clear plastic Yale University sticker affixed in this very manner. Emily had gotten in early admission.
It wasnât exactly a surprise.
By her junior year, Emily had won all the academic prizes the school had to offer, so the school invented more prizes on her behalf. In addition to editing the school newspaper, she sat on an independent council of faculty, administrators, and alumni who met bimonthly to brainstorm on the topic of pedagogical theory. As for her S.A.T. scores, they were a near-perfect 1,580. Still, Emily Fine was perhaps best known as the only student in the history of Pringle Prep to have researched a history term paper at the Library of Congress, where she ploughed through more than two thousand primary documents issued by the Freedmanâs Bureau. (âWhite Lies: Race, Politics, and Dialectical Materialism in Reconstruction Georgiaâ was the name of the resulting screed.)
Phoebe didnât begrudge Emily the success so much as she did Leonardâs and Robertaâs excessive pride in it. Never mind the Yale sticker. To Phoebe, it seemed as if her parents looked to their children to succeed where they had only ever survived, their love of classical music grossly outweighing their drive to climb its arcane but increasingly cutthroat hierarchy. Indeed, every month another orchestra folded; every year Henry Purcell crept further into obscurity. And the classical-music audience was shrinking, graying, shriveling up like an old peach. And there werenât enough jobs for all the fresh-faced musicians Juilliard dumped on the city streets each June. Not to mention the fact that there were only two oboists in every orchestra, compared with nearly three dozen violins. Never mind the paltry number of violas. This is the kind of talk Phoebe heard at home, at dinner, and in the car to Grandma Lettieâs house in Tarrytown.
She heard another kind of talk from the top of the stairs, where she sat obscured from view trying to eavesdrop on the purportedly private conversations Leonard and Roberta conducted late at night in the kitchen in hushed tones, and sometimes, if they were being extra paranoid, in broken French. They spoke of Leonard changing careersâof him becoming a real estate or travel agent like Mr. Grossblatt,
Phoebe had matriculated in the ninth grade. Pringle Prep wasnât like Whitehead Middle at all. It wasnât even in Whitehead. It was in the next town over, a town whose abandoned railroad tracks literally divided rich from poor, and black from white and predominantly Jewish, with the exception of one or two over-the-hill R&B stars who lived in gated Italianate mansions up on the hill, over by Pringleâs playing fields. It was Roberta whoâd insisted that Phoebe transfer there, because, for one thing, Phoebe had begun speaking âJersey-ese.â (Sheâd say, âIâm goinâ a scooull,â instead of âIâm going to school.â) For another, it was Robertaâs contention that with a diploma from Pringle Prep, Phoebe would have a better chance of getting into a good university or music conservatoryâthe kind whose clear plastic bumper sticker would look impressive affixed to the back window of the family station wagon for all the neighbors to see. There was already a clear plastic Yale University sticker affixed in this very manner. Emily had gotten in early admission.
It wasnât exactly a surprise.
By her junior year, Emily had won all the academic prizes the school had to offer, so the school invented more prizes on her behalf. In addition to editing the school newspaper, she sat on an independent council of faculty, administrators, and alumni who met bimonthly to brainstorm on the topic of pedagogical theory. As for her S.A.T. scores, they were a near-perfect 1,580. Still, Emily Fine was perhaps best known as the only student in the history of Pringle Prep to have researched a history term paper at the Library of Congress, where she ploughed through more than two thousand primary documents issued by the Freedmanâs Bureau. (âWhite Lies: Race, Politics, and Dialectical Materialism in Reconstruction Georgiaâ was the name of the resulting screed.)
Phoebe didnât begrudge Emily the success so much as she did Leonardâs and Robertaâs excessive pride in it. Never mind the Yale sticker. To Phoebe, it seemed as if her parents looked to their children to succeed where they had only ever survived, their love of classical music grossly outweighing their drive to climb its arcane but increasingly cutthroat hierarchy. Indeed, every month another orchestra folded; every year Henry Purcell crept further into obscurity. And the classical-music audience was shrinking, graying, shriveling up like an old peach. And there werenât enough jobs for all the fresh-faced musicians Juilliard dumped on the city streets each June. Not to mention the fact that there were only two oboists in every orchestra, compared with nearly three dozen violins. Never mind the paltry number of violas. This is the kind of talk Phoebe heard at home, at dinner, and in the car to Grandma Lettieâs house in Tarrytown.
She heard another kind of talk from the top of the stairs, where she sat obscured from view trying to eavesdrop on the purportedly private conversations Leonard and Roberta conducted late at night in the kitchen in hushed tones, and sometimes, if they were being extra paranoid, in broken French. They spoke of Leonard changing careersâof him becoming a real estate or travel agent like Mr. Grossblatt,
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