Page 62 of Echoes of a Silent Song
I was back downstairs in the living room.The Stuarts were long gone, and thanks to perfect Flora’s tireless efforts, the house wouldn’t betray that they had ever even been here.The Christmas tree and the piano lamp were the only lights, bathing the room in a cozy calmness and blessed, blissful quiet.
I, however, was anything but calm.After paging through my music notebook and finding nothing worthy of Whitehall, I now sat at the piano, my left foot clamped down on the una corda pedal, dampening the sound so I wouldn’t wake anybody.A pile of manuscript paper stood on the music rack, and I was trying my hardest to recapture the magic of “I Am My Beloved’s.”
Of course, that was the very definition of magic or inspiration or whatever had struck me and enabled me to write that piece—there was no channeling it or changing it or controlling it.Like the wind, it came from wherever it wanted and went wherever it pleased at whatever speed it liked, and no one could do anything about it.And normally that was fine.
But normally I wasn’t staring down the barrel of a deadline.
I was determined to do this, though.It would be my way out of thepuppeted life Mother wanted for me.They wouldn’t pay for my schooling if I pursued music?Fine.They’d always controlled me through money, and unless something changed, they always would.If I could turn my back on that, if I could prove to them that I was capable of making music a career, then I would win.
In this way, despite our differences in financial status, Victor and I weren’t so different.Both of us needed freedom from our family legacies.And neither of us had the monetary means to escape on our own.We needed the Whitehall Conservatory of Music to help us.And I wrote a quality piece once.Surely I could do it again.
But that night—possibly due to exhaustion or desperation or both—writing a quality piece was suddenly a tall order.“I Am My Beloved’s” was the best thing I’d ever written, hands down.It had come from the truest, deepest part of me.My soul-level love for Victor, a kind of love I hadn’t even known existed.That was what had inspired the music, and that was also what had inspired me to give it to him.Even if he and I were physically intimate—which we hadn’t been, not yet—nothing I could give him would mean more to me than that piece.
I didn’t think he truly understood the depth of the gift I’d given him, though.Oh sure, he thanked me for it.But now, alone in the cozy light of the Christmas tree, I had to admit that his gratitude seemed ...hollow.Like he was grateful on the first few levels of himself.But my gift to him came from the deepest possible level of me.And that was what I wanted from Victor.What I hoped he would someday give me.The deepest possible level ofhim.
Oh, I was being silly.Victor had called me an angel.He’d said he loved me.What more could he possibly have done?What more did I truly need from him?Was I so addicted to him that no matter how much he gave me, I’d never be satisfied and would always crave more?
I’d called him earlier, after my fight with Mother.I wasn’t supposed to make phone calls after eight, but that had been the advantage of my parents being downstairs with the Stuarts, making up some excuse about my having suddenly taken ill.No one could police me.So I’d sneaked into the upstairs hallway and called Victor, practically bursting to tell him all about Robert and the seventh Brandenburg Concerto and how Iwas going to audition for Whitehall after all.I couldn’t wait for Victor to encourage me, to tell me that of course I could write something brilliant overnight.You can do anything you set your mind to, Iris Wallingford.He always used my first and last name together when he wanted to make a point.It was one of the most adorable things about him.
But it hadn’t happened anywhere close to that.Victor had sounded distracted.Preoccupied.Finally, after a couple of minutes, he’d said he didn’t have the capacity to handle my problems just then.His parents had gotten into yet another fight about him being drafted and possibly going to Vietnam, and that had just reminded him how critically important this audition was and how desperate his situation was, and anything else piled on him right now ...“Well, it’d just be too much, Iris.Don’t you see?”
“Oh.I’m sorry, Victor.I didn’t think.”
Then I said good night and hung up, feeling chastened and humiliated.I’d seen his parents.Even that small bit of a fight I’d witnessed Monday night after the draft lottery had been awful.What must it be like to live in that environment day after day?To have that be all you knew?My problems were nothing compared to his.
Maybe that was why my love for him couldn’t get the ideas to flow this time.Maybe a love song wasn’t what my muse wanted me to write.
I took the piece of manuscript paper on which I’d sketched a few bare-bones ideas and tossed it aside in favor of a fresh one, then leaned back and surveyed the room.The nativity set my parents had purchased in Italy last summer adorned the mantel.Maybe I could write something about Christmas.There were so many good texts to choose from.“Gloria in excelsis Deo,” maybe.Or “Ave Maria.”
I walked over to the mantel and stared at Joseph in his purple robes, Mary with her clasped hands and blue head covering, and the little infant Jesus, chubby and blond on his bed of ceramic straw.I mulled over both the “Gloria” and the “Ave Maria” texts.Repeated them, emphasizing different syllables, trying to get something to spark.
But nothing did.
Okay, fine.Maybe I’d just start with a melody and hope I could find or create words to fit it.Or maybe I could abandon the idea of a choralpiece and just write something for piano.Piano wasn’t my strength, but it’d besomething.
I walked to the window, my steps in time with the ticking of the grandfather clock.A few snowflakes drifted down from the sky.The ticking clock and the snowflakes reminded me of an hourglass.They reminded me of time and how it was running out.
Timewasrunning out.Time for writing the audition piece, yes, but this felt deeper than that.Almost like I was nearing the end of something.More than high school.More than this deadline.Time was running out on everything I knew and everything that seemed real.And I didn’t entirely understand these thoughts, these feelings, but when they crystallized into a melody, it didn’t matter ...
Oh, there you are, Melody.I’ve been wondering when you’d show up.
This gift from Melody was quite different from anything she’d given me before.The tune was a desperate one, filled with soaring leaps and an undulating rhythm.A tune striving to go somewhere but not quite able to make it.It was stuck.Not because I couldn’t take it there.No, this melody simply existed.Trapped in a world from which it had no escape.
But at least it existed, and the clock had just chimed two, and I had to get something on paper.Despite what my mother told the Stuarts, there was no way she’d believe I really was sick and let me stay home from school.And I couldn’t skip class once I got there, because they’d call her and she’d be home and I’d be in even more trouble.No, this had to get done tonight so I could drop it in the mailbox on the way to school.
So I went with it.Maybe this desperate, striving melody would turn into something amazing.
Dull-gray dawn had just peeked through the window when I finally drew the double bar line at the end of the last bar and sat back.Exhilarated and exhausted in equal measure.
I did it.I wrote something for Whitehall.
It wasn’t my best work, or even my usual work.I had no idea if it was good enough to get me into Whitehall.But I’d gotten it done, and I was proud of myself for finishing.
I brushed the eraser crumbs off the piano keys—Flora had an eagle eye for any kind of mess—then dug the application out of my school bagand filled it out.Next stop was my father’s study for an envelope and a stamp.I scrawled the address across the envelope, folded everything up, stuffed it inside, and licked the envelope closed.With a wish and a prayer, I tucked it back into my school bag and headed upstairs to my room to pretend I’d been in bed all night.
Maybe this wasn’t my best.But it was the best I could do under the circumstances.
That was all anyone could ever ask of me.
