How She Thinks About Music - Jackie Davis Martin

A reporter and a photographer arranged them on the sidewalk in front of the high school, the yellow buses puffing and snorting impatiently at the curb. First there was the entire concert band, but Marcie couldn't find herself easily in that picture. She was happier with the photo of the woodwind quintet, happy with the way her red and white dress fitted her midriff, her waist, snugly, then flared into a fullness, a nonchalant sailor collar. She squinted at it. Would anyone identify her as the bassoonist of the group?

Dan Wahl, solid, dark, grinning, was next to her. Dan played French horn and Marcie was in love with him. Sometimes he acted like he was in love with her, too. He'd shoot an intense gaze in her direction, eyes meeting above the music stands in the semi-circle they sat in, either when they were getting ready to play or sometimes in the middle of a piece, when he had a few bars' rest; he'd count them, and gaze at her. If she glanced up, her mouth puckered around the narrow double reed (and which she'd do only with a whole note), she'd often see him looking at her.

He'd smile slyly and cradle his horn into position on his lap, opening his mouth toward it before he began to play. During those times, which Marcie thought of as harvests, so abundant she couldn't gather them enough to store, Dan would linger after practice, watching her take apart the pieces of her bassoon and arrange them into their velvet fitted holders, talking about the Hindemuth, about section 32, or about the test they'd had in physics—how did she do? It was the only class they had in common besides this, music, the band, the quintet, the after school practices. Or, he'd lean against her locker, also in the bandroom, the round, bulging case of his French horn leaning against his leg, and watch her put on her jacket, ask if she was going to the studio. The studio was downtown; it was where they all took private lessons. Other times Dan would laugh with her and the others but his eyes would be unfocused when they met hers and he'd hurry away to another girl—there were many. In the quintet Dan belonged to her; neither ever missed practice. Well, none of them did. If you were in the quintet you didn't fool around with not going to practice.

The picture was taken because they—both the band and the quintet and several other instrumental groups—were going to the state competitions. On Marcie's other side stood Dina Dee, composed and exact, her neck long, her waist long, who also leaned in. Dina Dee, who played the oboe and was the other girl in the group, and Marcie were almost friends. They weren't not-friends; they roomed together happily at these competitions, had fun, but never made any other arrangements outside the group. Dina Dee studied piano, too. Well, so did Marcie, so did they all, really, but Dina Dee was really serious about it. Her oboe was almost an afterthought, a hobby, although one she was extremely good at. The threesome: Marcie, Dan, Dina Dee, were flanked by Bob Akers and Jerry Jones, flute and clarinet. Bob Akers was in charge, more than likely gay, and Jerry some sort of wunderkind, younger, dazzled by his own promotions.

The other thing was that they were all scheduled in the competitions as soloists as well. Their nerves were at a pitch. Marcie was playing the first movement of the Mozart Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra, although in her case—as in the others, the band director assigned a pianist and they two would rehearse over and over together, to time the rhythms, the pacings—even the breathing.

Big schools would be there, too, as scouts. Penn, of course, where they were going, but Pitt and Duquesne and Carnegie Mellon from here, too, from Pittsburgh, where they'd be most likely to accept a scholarship, if offered. But others, too. Peabody and and even, somebody said, Julliard. There would be the smaller colleges, too, they were told, who desperately needed somebody skilled on horn or oboe or bassoon. They—the quintet—were doing the Hindemuth as their chosen piece, wild in its changing counts, so deliberately cacophonous it made them all seem competent, above the fray, particularly when they'd just played faultlessly the required, dull madrigal. That's what mattered most, to Marcie anyway. It'd be nice to be offered something, but frankly, she cared about doing as well as the others; she wanted Dan Wahl to be proud of her. There was so much at stake here! How were they all breathing? How was she?

Years later, Marcie, now old, unfolded the scrapbook and noticed in the yellowed photo—how did she overlook it before—Dan Wahl's fingers over her head, the stupid rabbit ears! How could she have yearned for someone who did that? At the last reunion mailings, Dan Wahl's and Dina Dee's names were among the missing. Dina Dee, Marcie was pretty sure, had gone on to study music at Carnegie and Dan had done the same at Duquesne. Then, her own life had gone elsewhere, so many other things, people, arts.

What she had here was a photo of a bus trip—buses and five young people bunched together and grinning nervously—of a time when just about everything that defined what was important in life was music.