A Stringed Instrument Ch. 14

"I don't see you since Monday," he said. "You went away?"

"Sydney."

I must have sounded pleased with myself, because he replied, "You're back with Phoebe, isn't it?"

"Yes!"

"Oh thank God. I have been THIS CLOSE to cut the cord on your stereo."

I should have reminded him of the performances he invariably put on after a breakup. After the last one he'd spent four days painting a gigantic canvas of a demonic pig whose face bore a suspicious resemblance to his ex Wasim. But since I was in a good mood I startled him with a hug instead, then went off to unpack.

On Monday I went back to work. Since my employment had officially been terminated we had to go through the paperwork again; Susan had returned a week earlier, and I was pleased to see I was reporting to her once again.

"Good to see you back, Yvonne! It hasn't been the same without you."

"Good to be back! Speaking of which... I don't suppose you had anything to do with that?"

"I have no involvement in hiring processes. Those are entirely RJ and Peter's prerogative." Was that a ghost of a smile? "I do recall some sort of discussion with RJ, but it would only have been offering advice." And that was all she'd say on the matter. Zara, she told me, had moved to another school; she still fell into black moods from day to day, but she'd found a counsellor she liked, and overall Susan thought things were improving.

It wasn't until a few weeks later that my suspicions would be confirmed. One day while I was fixing the settings on Janelle's calendar she and I got to chatting, and she mentioned the day when Susan had come in unexpectedly — "this was when she was still on leave" — and marched into RJ's office. After a few minutes of raised voices Susan had come storming out again, and a couple of days later RJ had asked Janelle to call me about coming back to RJC.

In the meantime I had plenty to do. The contractors who'd been filling my shoes had kept up with the day-to-day maintenance, but they'd let the longer-term stuff slide, and the Redmond Barry website looked like something coded by a work-experience student full of Jagermeister. With Susan's permission I reverted to the last version I'd saved before they fired me, and started catching up from there.

There was an awkward moment when I bumped into Peter in the lifts at lunchtime; eventually he managed to say "So you're back with us, then," and I answered "Yes, I am." Then the lift arrived at our floor and we went our separate ways. I was sure I'd see him again soon enough, when next he found some new way to screw up his PC.

It was late in the afternoon before I had things under control. There was still a mountain of work waiting for me, but at least I'd made a list of what needed to be done. Only then did I feel I had enough breathing space to lock my computer and go knock on RJ's door.

"Come in."

I pushed open the door and slipped inside, pulling it shut behind me.

"Ah, Yvonne." He rose and extended his hand, and I shook it.

"Mr. Churchill. Um, Phoebe asked me to give this to you." I reached into my pocket and held out the envelope she'd given me. He took it from me, frowning. Then his expression changed as he recognised the weight and the shape that bulged inside the envelope, the partner to the gold ring that he still wore on his own left hand, and I heard a faint sigh.

"Ah. Thank you." He tucked it away inside his suit jacket. "I suppose —"

My phone buzzed, and at the very same moment his beeped. We both hesitated a moment, trapped by politeness, and then both of us checked our messages.

Out of audition. Think I did OK, will find out in a few days.

I looked up from mine to see RJ nodding at his own. I felt something had to be said so I cleared my throat. "I guess that's good news."

"So far, so good... has she talked about what this means for her?"

"Yes... yeah, we've discussed it a few times."

"I told her I'd support her, whatever she wanted to do for a living. And I'm proud that she wants to do it for herself. I was the same. But I worry about her a lot. I see how disappointed she is every time she fails an audition, it's hard on her."

"I know." I wanted to say more, but I couldn't figure out what was appropriate. I love her too. I worry about her too. She can stay at my place if she needs somewhere. I came home early so I wouldn't distract her. It all seemed too intimate; we'd reached some sort of truce, but I wasn't sure how far that extended. So I just stood there stuck for words until he cleared his throat. "Well, I shouldn't keep you. I'm sure you have plenty to do."

"I do. Well, thank you."

"Thank you, Yvonne." And I slipped out again. I wanted to call Phoebe back to ask about the audition, but decided to give RJ a chance to talk to her first.

It took two more weeks, and one last round — an interview, to weed out any candidates whose musical talents couldn't make up for their personalities — and I spent a lot of nights trying to soothe Phoebe's anxieties over the phone. But on a Friday afternoon late in June I finally got the call I'd been waiting for.

"Hey sweetie!" I had a guess what it was about, but I didn't want to ask her, in case it was bad news.

"Hey there, love. Just had a call... well, they offered me the job."

"Oh, yay! Oh, I'm so pleased! When do you start?"

"I haven't accepted yet. I said I'd like to discuss it with my partner first."

"Ah. Hang on." I walked into the store-room for privacy. "Well, this is what you want, isn't it?"

"It is. But... I know you said you'd put up with the long-distance, but I still didn't want to give them an answer until I'd discussed it with you."

"Say yes. I think we can cope with the distance thing for a while... and then who knows? Maybe I can find something in Sydney. But call them back, and we'll talk later."

"Love you. Talk soon!"

She called me back a few minutes later: they wanted her to start on August 13, a few days before her birthday. "So I guess I'll have the party early... I was thinking, I can't take too long because I need to wrap up with most of my students, but I could come down on the Friday, have the party that night, then spend the weekend with you?"

"Yes please!"

And so on a bleak Friday in August, I took an afternoon off work and met up with Phoebe at Southern Cross, and we talked on the way home. She had explained to her father, very tactfully, that although she intended to spend time with family she'd be staying with me while she was in Melbourne.

"So how'd he take it?"

"Him? Not so bad. Yaya wasn't very happy though."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Is that about you not being there, or about you being with me?"

She shrugged. "A bit of both. It's complicated. She still likes you, she just doesn't think the relationship is a good idea. Keeps trying to tell me why it won't work. The main one is babies."

"Babies?"

She lapsed into a good impersonation of her grandmother's voice. "'Two girls can't get babies. You need a man for —' oh, I shouldn't make fun. It's not easy for her. Dad's her only son —" I thought for a moment of his long-ago brother "— and I'm her only granddaughter, and I think since Mum died she's been thinking about this stuff a lot more."

"So what did you say?"

"I said there were options, but you and I hadn't discussed it yet, and it was still a bit early in the relationship for that."

"Fair enough." After a while I remembered something that had been niggling for a while, ever since she'd accepted the job: "Love, if I'd said no to you taking the job...what would you have done?"

"I think..." She looked out the window. "I would've said goodbye to you and taken it anyway. I'd have missed you terribly, but I would still have taken it."

"Uh-huh." It was what I'd expected.

She squeezed my hand. "But I didn't think you were the sort who'd say no to that. So here we are." Then she looked at me, eyebrows arched. "Does it bother you that you're sharing me with her?"

"Her?"

"My cello."

"Oh. Not really. Well, it did, but... I'm okay with it now. I love you, but I've seen couples who were completely wrapped up in one another, and in the end they drive one another crazy. It's good if you have your stuff and I have mine."

"I'm glad." She snuggled beside me, squeezed my hand again. "I'm very glad you said that, because I'm thinking of bringing another cello into the relationship."

"Wait, you what now?"

"You've met her. In Janos' shop."

"Oh, that lovely electric one — wait, I thought you were broke?"

"I am, until I start work. And I owe back rent and bills, you don't want to know how much... but when I came down to help sort out Mum's stuff, we talked to her lawyer and he went over the will with us. Anything she didn't allocate otherwise goes to me. Which isn't much, mostly a lot of books and some old furniture. But there's her car."

"Oh." I hadn't thought of it in those terms — only as the setting of Helen's death - but of course, it hadn't been badly damaged. I supposed that with a little bit of panel-beating and new airbags, it would be quite drivable.

"I'll probably get a car for work eventually, but... not that one. It's still worth a few thousand, I'd rather sell it and not have to look at it."

"That makes sense. But —" I tried to recall our conversation from seven months earlier "— I thought you wanted to earn the money for this one yourself?"

"I did. But it all went on plane tickets and bills and stuff. I thought about waiting until I'm earning and I've paid off what I owe, but... by then, I'll have a lot more money than I'm used to, it won't mean as much. So I thought, this is Mum's money. I'll let her buy me something special for my birthday, something to remember her by. Maybe I'm just rationalising it."

"I think it's a good idea." I clasped her hand between both of mine, because she looked as if she was on the verge of crying. "Just as long as I get to hear you play her."

"Deal."

Back at my place we snuggled for a while, freshened up, and then dressed for the party. RJ had insisted on holding it at his place, and Phoebe had deemed it tactful to accept. Speaking of tact...

"You're wearing that?" Phoebe asked. I was holding the candy-striped dress Yaya had given me.

"Considering it, if you'll help me get it on."

"I thought you never wore dresses."

"I don't. But I want to show her I appreciate the gesture. And besides, you said you'd do me in this. That's a pretty compelling argument."

"I did? Well, then." And in the process of helping me into the dress, Phoebe somehow managed to get me on my back, lips at my throat, hands all over...

"Oh dear, look at the time." She sat back and started straightening my outfit.

"Wait, you can't stop now!"

"You'll get yours." She kissed me. "Afterwards. Oh, don't pout like that, it's undignified."

It was only the second time I'd been to RJ's, and I felt as nervous and out-of-place as I had been at the Christmas party. There were about thirty people there, and I knew only a handful of them. I remembered Maria, Jill, and Ellen from our movie outing, and I recognised Phoebe's aunts from their photos. The rest were strangers to me, except sometimes by reputation: her other friends from school and elsewhere, music buddies, distant cousins, and some older folk who were mostly neighbours or friends of RJ's.

She introduced me simply as "this is Yvonne", leaving me to fend off the inevitable "so how do you know Phoebe?" with evasions and half-answers. I had to fight the urge to cling too close to her, lest I give us away; I hovered nearby as she began chatting with a couple of fellows who'd been to the Conservatorium with her, but soon realised I didn't know nearly enough about music to get involved.

So I drifted away, and to avoid orbiting the room all on my own I started up a conversation with Jill and Ellen: work, Jill's kids, the weather, all the safe topics.

"I'm sorry I walked out on that movie," Jill said. "Just too much for me. Did you enjoy it?"

"I don't know if 'enjoy' is the word, but... yeah, it was worth seeing. Not easy watching, though. It got rougher after you left." Alongside me, Ellen nodded.

"Ugh. What I saw — enough to give me nightmares," Jill replied.

"Me too," said Ellen. "I heard Phoebe had a lot of trouble getting to sleep after, too." I started, and looked at her closely — was that an innuendo, had she heard something? Was I looking guilty, would she suspect something now? But I couldn't see anything in her expression.

"Yeah, um, I heard that too."

Soon after Ellen and Jill got talking about Deb (absent, travelling overseas), and I drifted out of the conversation. I wandered out to the back yard; it was unpleasantly chilly, but I wanted the fresh air. I stood there, looking out into the blackness of the winter night, until I was surprised by a dry voice behind me.

"It suits you. I told you it would."

Thump-thump, the old familiar spike of adrenaline. I turned; Yaya had been there the whole time in her wheelchair, almost covered with in blankets, so still that I'd missed her. Only her eyes gleamed like black marbles.

"Uh, yes. It's a good fit."

"But you don't like to wear a dress. You're always in pants."

"Yeah. Um, I like clothes with pockets." There was a lot more to my clothing choices than that, but I wasn't equipped to discuss the complexities of identity with Yaya. "I always have stuff I need to carry around, and I don't want to haul a bag everywhere."

"Come here. I show you something."

I approached. The blankets shifted as she got her arm out from underneath. She wasn't wearing the brace any more, but her movements were slow and stiff as she clawed at my side.

"Here." She poked at a spot near my hip, in between the pleats of the fabric. I touched it, and my fingers slipped into a space I hadn't noticed: a pocket, concealed between the folds, large enough for a wallet or a phone. When I checked, there was another just like it on the other side.

"I put them in. Opened up the seam and sewed them in."

"Hey, that's really nifty." Still not my thing, but nifty.

She gave me a weary smile, wrinkles shifting on her face. " I don't like bags either. Too many people stealing them... be a good girl and push me inside, it's too cold here."

By the time I got her inside and comfortable next to RJ, most of the other guests had already taken their seats for dinner — catered, of course — and I was left down at the end away from Phoebe, next to her aunt Gia. She seemed a nice lady but was a little hard of hearing, and I found it difficult to talk with her over the background noise. I looked at Phoebe as often as I could without being too obvious; occasionally she'd look back and smile at me, and once she pursed her lips into a brief hint of a kiss. But mostly she had her head down, looking quiet.

A waiter did the rounds, filling up our glasses with wine and champagne; I substituted fizzy mineral water in mine. When everybody had a drink, RJ rose to his feet, tapping his glass with a spoon: ching-ching-ching. Across from us, Chloe had her camera out and was snapping photos of the party.

"Hello everybody, and thank you for coming. I'd just like to say a few words about how proud I am of my daughter. Today we're celebrating two milestones, her birthday and also her new job. I sat down this morning and I worked out that by the time she turned eighteen, Phoebe had done over five thousand hours of practice and a thousand hours of lessons, and now at last her hard work is paying off." He brandished a sheet of paper from his pocket. "And now that she has this job, she can start paying me back for what we spent on lessons. Here's the bill, Bee-Bee!"

There was a ripple of laughter, and she stuck out her tongue, and Chloe's camera flashed. Around us, waiters were bringing out the food.

"But seriously, I'm as proud as a dad could be. I know Helen would've been proud too. And I don't want to talk too long, so I'm just gonna ask you all to stand and raise your glasses. To Phoebe!"

"To Phoebe!" I kept my eyes fixed on her as I took a mouthful of bitter-tasting mineral water. She was smiling, but she looked pale in the camera-flash. And she was licking her lips, looking at her glass. As the rest of us sat back down, she stood.

"Thank you everybody. It's been... a bit of a rough year, hasn't it? But, touch wood, I think it'll get better from here. I'd like to thank Dad for getting up early to drive me to all those cello lessons. And all the other stuff." She pointed at the 'bill'. "And my Yaya for nagging me when I got bored with scales and tried to cut corners. Don't try that with Yaya!" Another ripple of laughter. "And Mum. I wish she was here to see this." She sipped from her glass; I thought she looked nervous.

"And, uh, I'd also like to thank my partner Yvonne. For being there for me, and putting up with me. I love you, Yvonne. And to everybody else who's here. You might not know it, but all of you helped me get here. You're all my family. To family!" And we followed suit as she toasted.

I don't remember much of the meal; without any assistance from alcohol, the surprise and the unexpected attention had turned me into a blushing pile of incoherent mush. But a happy, bubbly sort of mush. It wasn't until after the mains that I ended up standing near Phoebe, and she took my hand and drew me aside.

"Hey there, sweetie."

"Um. I wasn't expecting that."

"I wasn't sure whether I was going to do it. Well, not tonight."

"I'm not complaining." I placed my other hand over hers. "Well, what brought that on?"

She glanced to either side, dropped her voice a little. "I was thinking about Mum. About how I was going to sort that stuff out once the rest of my life was tidy and under control. And wondering whether it ever will be tidy and under control. There's always something. And thinking... if something happens. God forbid. But it can. If you or I died, love... what happened with Mum's funeral, I don't want it to be like that.

"And then... when I was talking to Yaya the other day, I talked about coming out. She said, what if you do this, and tell everybody, and then it doesn't last, and you've stuck your neck out for nothing. Because I'd already told her, I didn't go looking for a relationship with a woman, if I wasn't with you it'd probably be a guy."

"And?"

"I thought, even if it happens like that... it's not for nothing. This is important to me. When I become the greatest cellist in history and everybody's writing books about me... you ought to be in those books. And Mum too. Both of you should be there. Even if you're the only woman in my life, that doesn't make you an experiment, it makes you unique."

Stuck for words, I drew her closer to me. I saw her eyes flicker as she looked around at the people nearby, some watching us, some oblivious... and then we kissed.

Flash-flash.

And now she's back in Sydney rehearsing for her first concert, and I'm here in Melbourne fixing printers and wrangling webpages, and each of us yearns after the other and counts the days until we're next together. But meanwhile, in a silver frame, there it stands on my desk at RJ Churchill: a photo of me and my partner.

• * * * *

I wrote the first chapter of this story as a gift to my lover A, who was good enough to say 'yes' when I asked her approval to post it here. It was meant to be a one-shot, but I started wondering: what happens to these people the next day? It ended up a lot longer than I'd expected, but here we are at last.

Thanks to everybody who took the time to offer encouragement and feedback along the way, and in particular NJLauren who gave a lot of behind-the-scenes help with the musical details.

Extra thanks to A, for inspiration and encouragement; and especially to R, my editor and partner in life, who's never afraid to tell me what works and what doesn't.