The Skin Above My Knee Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Minnows

  Hoover

  Behind

  Proud

  Pointe

  Oboe

  Tit for Tat

  Speed

  Jinx

  Shut Up

  The Move

  Pucci

  The Lone Sock

  The King

  Yes

  Mannes

  Impressive

  Thief

  Hell

  A Job

  Glass

  Elliott

  Don G.

  Texas

  In C

  The Q100

  23rd Street

  Big Boys

  Clint

  Noise

  Gato

  Saved

  Sound

  Gato Redux

  An Omelet

  Body Parts

  Tony

  Danny

  Burt

  Repeats

  Florida

  Designated

  A Sister

  Famous

  The Letter

  Grass

  Road Trip

  168 Hours

  The Fallen

  Space

  Donna

  Black

  Emily

  Tristan und Isolde

  Red

  Amnesia—A Love Story

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2017 by Marcia Butler

  Cover design by Gregg Kulick

  Author photograph by Deborah Donenfeld

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First ebook edition: February 2017

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  Lyrics to “Optimistic Voices,” here, copyright E. Y. Harburg.

  Excerpt from “I Am Lost,” here, copyright Bruce Gilmour.

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  ISBN 978-0-316-39226-6

  E3-20170120-NF-DA

  For Terril Gagnier

  The mother I never had

  The sister I dreamed of

  Author’s Note

  The events in this book took place. As my memory is sometimes fallible, dialogue is approximate. Some names have been changed, and certain events have been reordered or compressed in order to serve the story. I’ve made best efforts to ensure accuracy of detail and emotion in the way I layered the two into this recounting of my life.

  Minnows

  AUDIENCES MARVELED AT this young violinist—how he performed with effortless abandon, uninhibited by the technical challenges in the violin concerto repertoire. Tonight, our audience was newly enthralled, on the edge of their seats inside Carnegie Hall, as the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto moved at breakneck pace. In the principal oboe chair, alongside the fifty-plus other musicians in the orchestra, I leaned forward, listening intently, not wanting to miss a second of the violinist’s nuanced interpretation. My eyes wandered over the conductor’s head to the upper balcony of Carnegie Hall—137 steps above the lobby. The very first time I performed on this stage, so many years before, I’d also gazed up to the farthest patron. Young and new to the freelance scene in New York City, and fresh out of music conservatory, I remember pinching myself for my good fortune: I had made it to that venerable and most august of concert halls.

  Years later, I felt I knew the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto almost as well as the soloist; I’d performed it within the orchestra dozens of times over many years. Considered to be perfectly constructed, this iconic work of the violin repertoire emerged from Mendelssohn’s genius at age thirty-five. Unencumbered by compositional traditions of his time, he experimented with a concerto form in flux, ultimately becoming a critical composer in bridging the late-classical, muscular writing of Ludwig van Beethoven and what would become the lush and broadening romantic realm of Johannes Brahms. The violin concerto reveals what a precocious innovator Mendelssohn was, retaining the usual fast-slow-fast movements of classical concertos but breaking with form by having the soloist enter immediately at the beginning of the first movement rather than using a lengthy exposition by the orchestra to introduce the thematic material. All three movements are performed attacca, or without a break. Neither the violin soloist nor the orchestra has the opportunity to regroup after each movement, whether to retune or just relax. We begin, and then it is “go” until all noses cross the finish line. No matter how many times I’d performed that concerto, I felt compelled to jump out of my seat at the end along with the audience.

  Along I played, in love with the soloist’s interpretation of this warhorse favorite, feeling as if I were part of an intricate Flemish tapestry made of silky sounds and woolen harmonies. We musicians in the orchestra carefully balanced our accompaniment, and I emerged occasionally with my own solo here and there. The flow was instinctive, as if we could play it in our sleep. But not quite. Music of the late-classical period can be repetitive and easy to mix up because melodies are repeated many times and whole sections may be revisited, albeit in a different key. It isn’t a matter of not knowing the piece well enough but of losing one’s presence in time, or perhaps the mind’s uncanny ability to function on different levels of consciousness simultaneously. And when a long work is performed, the mind wanders to surprising and perhaps unimaginable places—almost like dreaming onstage.

  Perhaps this particular conductor was thinking about the reception afterward and the donors he needed to chat up. He certainly wasn’t thinking of the musicians before him, his arms offering us no assistance, his eyes shut as if enthralled. No matter. A conductor’s public persona often trumps his conducting skills. Charming potential donors brings in necessary revenue, after all. And while he was no genius on the podium, we knew that this conductor could effectively execute the public “fearless leader” aspect of his job and guide us with minimal help.

  Other minds also wandered. Just before stepping onto the stage, a section violinist had a screaming fight with her husband by cell phone. We had all heard it, trying not to listen too carefully. She surely had other things on her mind as she crimped her violin under her chin, preparing to play her next entrance. My eyes drifted toward a friend in the viola section. Our eyes locked. She signaled a very subtle “Oh, brother” look, lifting her brows slightly. I knew just what she meant: she detested this conductor. Glancing back over to the violinist who’d fought with her husband, I noticed her hooded and dull stare while she played a particularly difficult passage in a tutti section. Yet the music continued, beautifully.

  I
indulged in my own momentary lapse, wondering how my new puppy was doing and worried because I’d left her at home alone for far too many hours. Now the third movement was beginning, so I refocused and started diligently counting my rests, preparing for my next entrance.

  Many complex lives wove snugly together on the stage, and in spite of this communal daydreaming, the bitching and moaning by means of conspiratorial glances bandied back and forth, and the nonverbal high jinks, a wonderfully transcendent performance was emerging. Scattered minds and thoughts notwithstanding, we remained intensely occupied with the task at hand: the performance by a superb violinist and a sensitive and attuned orchestra of one of the greatest violin concertos ever written.

  An orchestra functions not only on these levels but also as a tight, organic, undulating ball of kinetic energy, similar to an enormous shoal of minnows—thousands of which can span half a mile. Consider the whimsy of one minnow. Suddenly, that first minnow decides to make a 180-degree turn, and every single one of the others makes the same exact turn at precisely the same second. Spanning half a mile, where minnow number 1 can’t even see minnow number 50,000, they pivot on an invisible fulcrum. This intuition is undoubtedly primal and surely important for their survival: it is also wondrous to watch. That evening, our soloist made his own whimsical version of a 180-degree turn, and we became his personal school of minnows. The first little fish veered, and an orchestra awakened.

  We felt the subtle rupture in the music, not sure of what had happened or even if it was significant. But as it turns out, it was big: the violin soloist skipped eight bars, heaven only knows why. Daydreaming or just losing his place, he jumped and kept on playing as if nothing had happened. But what occurred next was unfathomable, really, except if you consider the humble minnow.

  When the violinist made his error, the principal trumpet player instantaneously took on the role of minnow number 2. He had been counting many rests, waiting for an important entrance, but when the soloist leaped, he jumped, too, and put the trumpet to his lips to play his heralding entrance. He did this without thinking, it seemed, and in a split second. Upon hearing the trumpet entrance, half the orchestra jumped eight bars and followed him. By beat 4, all fifty-plus musicians were perfectly aligned. That was all it took: four very fast beats.

  A small smile appeared on the face of the violin soloist as he realized what he’d done—and how the orchestra had saved his performance. Mendelssohn may have known from his grave that eight bars had been deleted from his magnificent violin concerto. But the audience was none the wiser, because those four seconds were a mere blip on the radar. Our conductor, whose eyelids were still fluttering and shut, listening to his internal and solitary rapture, was the last to catch up.

  Compositions are painstakingly rehearsed in order to establish the basic interpretive arc for how the work will be heard by an audience. But in performance, many previously agreed-upon subtle details and gestures worked through during rehearsal may be spontaneously tossed out. Skipping eight bars of music aside, musicians love it when something unexpected happens. These moments are experienced as group impulses, emanating from the collective beating heart of the ensemble. Calling this nonverbal communication is too simplistic. It is not just an intuitive understanding among highly skilled artists but rather a developed, honed expertise realized after thousands of hours of practice and a lifelong dedication on the part of each musician to the mastery of his or her instrument. Musicians are gifted, no doubt, but they are also muscled Clydesdales. Perhaps it was our dogged preparation that helped dig the violinist out of his potentially embarrassing mess. A piece of music, played perhaps thousands of times before, can be interpreted spontaneously or manipulated quickly because of an error, a fact profound in concept and occurrence. And thrilling. We call this making music.

  When we finished the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, the ecstatic audience clapped with extended and then renewed force. The soloist came back for several bows and played an encore of unaccompanied Bach. We left the stage and filed upstairs to the dressing rooms, another concert at Carnegie Hall under our belts.

  “Nice job, Bill,” we simply said later to the trumpet player as he was packing up, getting ready for his commute home to Leonia, New Jersey. The section violinist had a make-up cry with her husband on the cell phone. I packed up my oboe quickly, rushing so that I could get home to let my pup out the door. The violin soloist didn’t show up to thank the orchestra—or the trumpet player, for that matter. Our conductor was nowhere to be found.

  As I walked out the stage door of Carnegie Hall with my friend the violist, she took up her rant about the incompetence of conductors in general. Nodding in agreement, I let her vocal treatise float into the background. I was already musing about the performance that evening, dreaming again about the first time I performed at Carnegie Hall and how in awe I was of the sheer beauty of the space and the impeccable, world-class acoustics. Even now, after my many years of performing concerts all over the world, Carnegie Hall still softly rocks me—suddenly I felt very young.

  I noticed the quickening of a deep vessel expanding within my heart; always beating, always pulsing. Walking down the subway steps, I remembered the very day when my guileless four-year-old ears first experienced the life-altering impact of music. I halted midstep and stood, motionless, needing to grab that fleeting, now ancient, sensation; to hold it close again for just a moment. My heart slowed, aching for the next beat.

  Hoover

  WATCHING THE HOOVER sway back and forth across the living-room carpet, I lay flat on my back, my legs bent like a pitched roof. Loose, fuzzy tufts of the velvet-cut pile surrounded my head and tickled my nose, waiting to be sucked into the vacuum cleaner. A menacing rubber rope connected to the machine swung above me, snapping with a blurred smear. As I held my little four-year-old body very still, this lumbering machine moved toward then away from me, sounding like the bellows of a monstrous accordion. My mother deftly negotiated the space—rocking the vacuum and flipping the electrical cord over the sofa, over the club chair, over the lamps. Over me. The Hoover’s wheezing rumble receded far into the background, the cord now a tolerable blur. But other sound clusters crowded, as music pressed closer—around me, over me, into me.

  Our home on Sunday mornings in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, resounded with the conclusion of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, as Norwegian opera singer Kirsten Flagstad sang Isolde’s final aria, the “Liebestod.” It was 1959. “Liebestod” translates as “love-death,” a complex concept sweeping far beyond my young capabilities, yet I implicitly understood this sung story to be simultaneously deeply sad and marvelously transcendent. Isolde stands over her dead lover, Tristan, and has taken poison that will hasten her own death in order to join him in the afterlife.

  Dramatic sopranos gifted enough to sing the Wagnerian opera repertoire are rare indeed. The unparalleled Kirsten Flagstad, whose magnificent career waxed in the 1930s and waned in the early 1950s, was perhaps the rarest. All her vibrant vocal resonance was held in the facial mask, around the nose and eyes. Her voice was not at all nasal; she possessed a gloriously hollow quality. A once-in-a-century voice—never shrill, never mannered, and never what we have come to identify as “operatic.”

  A new and pleasurable sensation sank deep into my tummy, like a very heavy anchor with no water to resist its plunge. This squishy giddiness was as alive and direct a sensation as anything yet available in my young life. Kirsten shook me awake. With the distance of time, I suppose it was love. Kirsten must have loved me.

  I was hooked. When the vacuum started and my mother dropped the needle onto the vinyl LP grooves, I’d race to the living room, dive-bomb onto the carpet, and settle into ten minutes of sentient comfort. It almost hurt, but it could not be ignored. Wagner’s signature musical landscape was a backdrop onto which an aching melodic line could float—and then soar—telling Isolde’s story through Kirsten’s voice.

  Kirsten sang:

  Do you see it, frie
nds?

  Don’t you see it?

  As I listened to Kirsten and wondered what Isolde was singing about, I also ached for my mother, whose right hand remained at the top of her Hoover, the left tethered to the long electrical cord. By keeping us clothed, sheltered, and fed, she met our physical needs, but no additional juice came our way. We knew this, as children do, but just to press the seal onto the wax, we were told, often.

  “Honestly, I don’t know what is the matter with you girls. I don’t play favorites. I treat you the same. You each get what the other gets. What more could you possibly want? Please.”

  With this branded into my phyllo-thin skin, my mother was off to her bedroom with one of her frequent and debilitating migraines. With the door locked, curtains drawn, the house silenced, she mothered from a deafening distance. Our carefully deadened home, with a churchlike quiet, gave her comfort and provided the space she needed.

  During the week I would discover many of the thin cracks and shallow crevices of my mother’s mind and what she could accept from me. A “can-do” problem solver, I cobbled together weekly rituals through which I might pretend to be close to her and imaginatively pierce her thick veneer.

  The valedictorian of her high school and college, my mother kept the yearbooks documenting her many past achievements stacked on the living-room bookshelves. Once a week I pulled all the books down off the shelves and laid them neatly in front of me. Now I was ready. Turning the pages one at a time, and always starting from the beginning, I discovered and rediscovered my mother’s image in the group shots of clubs and associations. Held back till the very end of my devotional sessions was the final black-and-white glossy: a full-page portrait from the University of Toledo, her glorious face and hopeful expression gently tilted upward, revealing a slight smile. With her lips apart just a bit, she exposed her crooked front tooth, and I imagined she was about to laugh; a laugh that was meant for me. The caption: “Margery Bloor Wenner: Brains and Beauty.” It packed a wallop every time.