(31)
I was on glockenspiel and Herman was on cymbals but apparently nobody could remember who’d played bass drum at the last rehearsal. I swallowed another bite of my Chex and got my music ready, but continued to glance over as the argument escalated. “It’s just one song,” Jill snapped. “Why can’t I play it? It’s just one song.” Carol was persistent, nervously running her free hand through her dark hair as she talked. “Because you’ve played bass drum on a lot of other songs. You’re always on bass drum. And this is . . . ” Her voice trailed off, drowned out by the music. I looked back at my own music. I was playing glockenspiel, and since my part came in much later, towards the end of the song, there was time to skim over the page and check the notes I had to play. Herman stood nearby looking at his music, his short, thin frame hefting the cymbals. I could tell he was pretending not to notice what was happening. Me—I just looked whenever I felt like it. Jill remained where she was, big surprise, and Carol was now rolling the big gong stand out from behind the timpani. The gong—of course. It was also at the very end of the piece, and though excruciatingly loud, was a perfect conclusion to the exciting finale of the song. Maybe they had made some kind of compromise. The band was busy, slowly working its way through the piece but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the percussion section. I concentrated on my part, making sure I was counting in the correct section. The piece gradually became louder as different sections of the band joined in and made the piece fuller, bringing it to its eventual finish. The cues on the music page alerted me when each section of the band entered the song, which was nice because I’d been paying more attention to Jill and Carol’s little drama instead of counting from the beginning of the piece. The pace and the tone of the song was methodical and ominous, and from out of nowhere, as I counted, brought back the events of my divorce; like the music, our break-up had at first seemed to be so slow, manageable and even civil, but as it ground on became loud, thunderous and almost violent. I’m keeping Cole. That’s just the way it works. Those words would probably never leave me. My lips slowly whispered the twenty-eight, twenty-nine measures of counting but then my eyes randomly scanned across the trumpets, the trombonists, the French horns, and then over at Jeff, intent and focused on his conducting. Did anybody else here experience what I had gone through? Was everybody in this breezy little town happily and forever married? What angered me was that ours was not even a marriage of abuse or infidelity; it was just one of those marriages that didn’t work, and one that managed to wring me emotionally and financially dry. The air throughout the room became even cooler and more brisk as the wind continued to blow in, and I tried to put Cole and my ex out of my mind by staring hard at the remaining twenty or so measures.
MOUNT HOPE