“You’re squishing me,” she said, amused, as she extricated herself. “The real question is, What’s wrong with you?” Jeanne stood on her tiptoes to reach a vase on a top shelf. “Is it your concert that’s got you in such a state? Don’t worry, we’ll do what we always do: I’ll pretend I’m not coming, to avoid adding to your stress. As the doting mother of anungrateful son who couldn’t be bothered to reserve me a seat in the front row, I shall remain tucked away, out of sight in the back of the hall.”
Feeling a mix of annoyance and affection, Thomas pulled two tickets out of his pocket. “One for you and one for Colette, but make sure she doesn’t clap at the end of every movement. It’s embarrassing.”
“I’ll do my best.” She took the tickets and slipped them into the pocket of her robe. “You still haven’t told me what I did to deserve such a beautiful bouquet,” she said, putting the finishing touches on the arrangement. “The scent is a bit too strong for my bedroom. You don’t mind, do you?”
“It’s the fifth anniversary of Dad’s death. I didn’t know if you’d remember, but I wanted to be with you ...”
“Oh, sweetheart. He may have left you five years ago, but he left me long before that. So, anniversaries, you know, they don’t mean so much to me.”
“You should go get ready,” suggested Thomas. “I don’t know what your ‘plans’ are, but it’s getting late.”
“If I bore you that much, feel free to eat in the kitchen,” Jeanne said, and then she slipped away to her room.
Thomas watched as she walked down the hallway of the Haussmann-style apartment he’d grown up in. Then he attacked his plate of ham while checking his messages. Philippe had texted news from the set, some complaints about the snow and about how hard it was to manage a team that spoke barely a word of French and hardly more than that of English. He reported that Warsaw was beautiful, though, and Polish women even more so. Thomas had to agree. He’d been invited to play there by the city’s Philharmonic Orchestra, and he remembered the concert fondly, the hotel he’d stayed in less so.
He loved going on tour. It was an unparalleled privilege to travel the world and play with musicians from all different backgrounds. But his career as a soloist had had an impact on his love life as well.
For a time, he’d had a passionate relationship with Anna, a Sicilian violinist he’d met on tour in Italy two years earlier. Over the span of sixmonths, they’d managed to spend one December weekend together in Berlin, thanks to Shostakovich; a Thursday night in Milan in March, brought together by Bach; and a Friday in May in Stockholm, gripped in a Brahms-inspired fever. Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor had accompanied their night together, and they’d decided it was their song. For a pianist and a violinist, making love to a Brahms concerto is an unforeseen source of wonder.
They went their separate ways in June, and July kept them apart. Grieg tried in vain to rekindle their flame in September, but not even Vienna could seal the deal. Their story came to an end in Madrid at the beginning of winter. Ever since, every time Thomas had played Brahms’s Concerto No. 1, the conductor had had to instruct him to take his interpretation of the adagio down a notch.
“Are you staying?” his mother asked from the doorway.
Thomas stood and carried his plate to the sink.
“Leave it. I’ll take care of it. I like doing the dishes after you’ve gone. It makes me feel like you still live here.”
“I’m going to head home,” he said. “I need to get a good night’s sleep for tomorrow.”
“Did you really put us in the eighth row?”
“They’re the best seats in the house.”
“Meaning, you’re sure you won’t see me sitting there, right?”
“You know why, Mom.”
“Just once, one time in your whole life, you thought you read disapproval in my eyes while you were playing. You were sixteen and still at the conservatory. Don’t you think it’s time you let that go?”
“I didn’tthinkI saw it, Ididsee it, and I blew my performance because of it.”
“Maybe my eyes weren’t lying then. Perhaps you had already messed up, from the very first notes. But you’ve more than made up for it in the years since, that’s for sure.”
“You know what they say: ‘An adult is just a child with debt.’”
“And you’ll be in my debt forever, sweetheart. In the meantime, you can stay as long as you like.”
“Do you have any cigarettes lying around, by any chance?”
“I thought you quit.”
“That’s why I don’t have any cigarettes.”
“You’ll find a pack in your father’s desk. Colette smokes in secret during our Saturday-night dinners. It’s rather pathetic at her age. She ‘forgets’ her pack, leaving it in the right-hand drawer, I think, or sometimes in the left-hand one, to spice up her next visit. What do you think of my outfit? Have I still got it?”
Thomas studied his mother’s black pencil skirt and white top. Age seemed to have had little impact on her graceful figure and her natural elegance, and even less on her impulse to provoke.
“That depends on the age of your date,” he answered innocently.
