Ghost Trio by Phyllis Irwin & Lillian Faderman

Author:Phyllis Irwin & Lillian Faderman [Irwin, Phyllis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bywater Books
Published: 2022-03-07T23:59:21+00:00

Chapter 13

Lee was to meet Lily and her cousin and his wife for breakfast at 9:30, but she was again up and dressed and ready to go by 6:00. She’d put on a linen pantsuit for the breakfast meeting, but at 7:00 she took it off and threw on jeans and a sweatshirt. She’d take a run like she used to, in the early morning hours, near the Hudson River.

She slunk through the living room, shut the front door noiselessly, and began with a slow jog up the street. Not a soul was visible at this hour, but already the sun was bright and the flora everywhere was brilliant green, dazzling gold, a dozen different shades of red. She longed for Devorah to be running at her side here, though Devorah had rarely run with her in New York because she’d hated the exhaust of the car motors, which you could smell even near the river, and the ubiquitous boom boxes and buses’ roar. That noise bothered her even inside their Riverside Drive apartment unless every triple-pane window was tightly closed. That was why they’d bought the old farmhouse in Connecticut, on a wooded, hilly six acres—far off the road. They’d told each other they’d plant roses and dahlias there, that they’d buy peacocks and let them roam as though they were in some grand place like Fontainebleau. “It will be a wonderful retreat where I can go to learn new roles,” Devorah had said. “And you’ll compose there too, without the awful clang of the city interfering with the musical ideas in your head,” she’d added.

But it seemed they’d been so busy. Lee’s teaching . . . their performance schedule . . . daily life. They’d had the Connecticut place for almost five years, and they’d spent only a couple of months there, all told. That would change, Lee vowed as she ran.

The thought of their unused retreat triggered in her head an anxious recitation of her other failed plans. When and why had she given up her youthful dreams? When had she last been ambitious for her art? How much the opposite she was from the “peacock” Annajean had so absurdly invented. She’d hungered for success when she first came to Juilliard; she’d hoped for a major career, like Martha Argerich’s, Angela Hewitt’s. But she’d learned that those were the unrealistic dreams of youth. Wasn’t that maturity—to know one’s limitations, to treasure what one could do and not break one’s heart over what was out of reach? She’d loved being an accompanist, and she cherished what she and Dev had achieved together. Had she been wrong to be satisfied?

Perhaps she’d kept Dev back by her own lack of huge ambition. She searched herself deeply. Had her supreme content over the last fifteen years blinded her to Devorah’s needs? Was there any truth in what Annajean had said? Had she failed her darling?

It seemed to her now, as she thought of their last years together, that change had crept up on them, and she’d been too self-absorbed to notice.

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