In Harmony(6)

The decision was this: I was going to play with the New York Philharmonic.

That’s a cute dream and a nice ambition when your father’s a normal guy. When he’s a concert pianist with a string of bestselling albums, things are different.

As I began to show promise, he told the neighbors. I’d sit there, little face a mask of concentration, and play Bach Cello Suites and he’d say, “She’s going to play with the New York Phil one day.”

At school, he’d pick me up outside the gates and whisk me off to youth orchestra practice and then to more practice at home. At first I had time for other things, like girl scouts—mainly at the insistence of my mom. Then she left, and one by one the other activities stopped. At twelve, I did my first big solo: Haydn’s Cello Concerto in front of a hall full of people, throwing up in the bathroom beforehand and then nodding and smiling when my dad asked if everything was okay. The man doing the announcements said I was Karen Montfort, who’s already tipped for the New York Philharmonic, and I remember feeling both proud and uncomfortable, although I didn’t know why, then.

My mom had a new life within a year, with a man she claimed made her feel “free”. I didn’t understand what she meant, at the time. I thought she was ungrateful; couldn’t she see how hard my father worked to give us a home, and me a future? I clung even more tightly to him and he to me, and that seemed to push my mom even farther away.

Thanks to my dad insisting I start high school a year early, I was the odd one out. A year is a long time when all the other girls are getting breasts and periods; spending every night practicing instead of hanging out at the mall didn’t do anything for my image, either. When I graduated, I was glad to be out of there and when I got into one of the top music colleges in Boston I was excited beyond belief. Finally, I thought, I’d be around people who understand me.

People think that if you’re good, training side-by-side with the best can only make you better. And that was true, in a way. We were all the best in our high schools and, naturally, we all wanted to be the best in the college. It was just what we were trained to do—we didn’t know anything else. So every day, you heard the best students playing at a level above and beyond what you were capable of and you tried to match it. And then other kids were trying to match you—a leapfrogging race of ability that was always going to end badly. We’d all made the same mistaken assumption: Only one of us can be the best, and it’s going to be me! It never clicked that all but one of us had to be wrong.

Most of the other students lived in shared student accommodation, bitching about the roaches or the walk to campus. I already lived in Boston, so it made no sense for me to move out of my dad’s house. I went home every night to a home-cooked meal—I thought I was lucky, at the time.

But while every other student could let off steam with their friends, catching a movie or passing a joint around, I had to go home and tell my father that yes, everything was fine. If I messed up a piece, there was no one to commiserate with me over a sneaky beer—I couldn’t tell my father or he’d be disappointed in me. If I started to doubt my ability, or fear that I’d never be as good as the student I’d heard play that day, there was no one to share it with over coffee, no one to reassure me that they felt the same.

I started, for the first time, to understand what my mom had been talking about, but by then it was far too late.

I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t have been any different if I’d lived with the other students. I certainly wasn’t the only one to crack under the pressure.

I was the only one they found on the roof, though.

I didn’t like public speaking. When most people say that, they mean they get a little nervous when they have to stand up and give a speech to their entire company. But I got that way when I had to socialize with one or two people I didn’t know. My eyes locked on the floor, my words had to be squeezed out between lips that were almost sealed together and my voice dropped to barely a murmur. If I had to present to the whole class, I completely locked up. My throat seemed to swell and block and my lungs fought me, refusing to draw air. I’d sit down and shake my head, unable to even start and the teacher would sigh and give me an F. When I went to the music college at Boston, I presumed those days were behind me. I was fine when I was playing in public—it was my voice that was the problem.

But despite being very performance-oriented, the course at Boston still required essays—which weren’t a problem—and presentations, which were. As the first big one approached, I became more and more scared. When it came to the morning of my turn…well, that’s when they found me on the roof.