The Cellist

A sun-dappled spiral of concrete serves as a drainage ditch in a more secluded and flood-prone part of the University’s arboretum. In a different place of the world, the full, deciduous trees that surround it would have served to make a veritable hotel for the homeless and transient, but this is, of course, a unique place in the world, untouched by the unpleasant and unfortunate.

Daisy has been looking for a place like this. Now she ducks under the branches at the top of the spiral with her cello strapped to her back. The top of the case catches a branch and when she steps down onto the first concrete step she can hear the rustle of leaves as the branch is released.

The air is cool today and mercifully devoid of dust. The green surrounding Daisy de Witt makes breathing unusually pleasant. Outside of this damp place, in the surrounding desert, she often encounters harsh swirling dust, which she imagines tears her vocal chords. Some mornings when she sings scales in the shower, she imagines a roughness in her voice and promises to turn up the humidifier before she goes to sleep again.

Daisy uncases her cello and picks the bow out of its clip. She plucks the strings with her ear nearly touching the fingerboard, the other hand twisting the tuning pegs with a cruel precision.

Taking a breath of the damp air, Daisy draws the bow across the strings beginning with scales and then descends into improvisations on her favorite melodies. In this calm, cool morning she can be free to play and free to think.

Most of the tensions of the day are stripped away as she dances on the fingerboard, plucks out staccato arpeggi, slices out legato runs of the scale. What’s left is the sensation of winning an argument. 

When Daisy was a young girl, her father told her that she should find a nice man and to not do music as a career. “It’s a great hobby to have, but you can’t make any money being a classical musician.” Daisy would often wonder if Piet de Witt was drunk when he said this to her, or even if she made it up. She doubts that she made it up.

When Piet helped Daisy move into her first apartment, the apartment she would occupy for the next two years of Master’s school, his moustache twitched and his lithe body tensed when they hugged. “I’m so proud of you, Daze.”

“Aw, dad,” she patronized, “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be back for Thanksgiving.”

“You should know how proud I am, though. I know I’ll see you again soon,” he said.

“Remember when you said that I shouldn’t go into music because you can’t make money in it?”

“No,” Piet had a confused look on his face, and hurt. “I don’t think I would say something like that.”

Daisy nodded and continued to unpack. She thought about how her father grew old. His moustache almost all gray, his clothing hanging off of his bones, the way he struggled to use his enormous trifocal glasses when using the laptop. Once he had been a monolithic figure in her life, almost frightening, but then Daisy’s mother left and she began to see the flawed man that Piet de Witt really was. Forgetful, emotional, prone to escapism. In the years following the divorce Daisy saw the indirect effect her mother had on her father. He would never let her see the arguments or the mediations herself, but she saw the effect they had on him.

One day, she came home to the big dusty house after the sun had set. It was mid-fall and orchestra had run late. Piet sat next to the only illuminated light in the house a book split open on his lap as if he had just read something so shocking or tragic that he had to face it away from him lest the words continue to hurt him. On the table next to him was a glass of whiskey and soda. “Daze… Daisy, hey… How was orchestra?”

He looked collapsed in the chair, like a muppet without a hand in it. Something about his face was grotesque, subtly clenched muscles around his mouth made him look like he was tripping down the uncanny valley. “It was good. Sara— the third chair violin—won the first chair today.”

“You… You wanted that to happen, right?”

“Yeah, Mike got bumped down to fifth and thank God! He always played like tempo was just a suggestion. Go play in the jazz band if you want to play ‘fiddle.’”

Piet chuckled at his daughter’s seriousness, “I don’t think they have fiddle in jazz music.”

“Why not? They let any other stupid instrument into jazz music, why not violin? They have saxophone after all!” Daisy spat saxophone with mock disgust, playing up the serious joking.

“Who needs Coltrane, right?” Piet said and laughed.

“What did you do today?” Daisy knew he hadn’t been to work. Piet hadn’t been to work since June when mom left.

“I had another meeting with your mother. Should be the last one for a while. I’m not really sure when the next one will be,” Piet said in the dark room to his daughter who sat on a nearby ottoman.

“When do you think I’ll be able to see her?” Daisy asked. By now it had been established that Daisy’s mom was not coming back and that if they were to see each other, it would have to be Daisy who did the seeking.

“Should be soon, should be soon… We didn’t really talk much about that today.” 

Piet had tried to bring it up during the meeting, but it hadn’t gone anywhere, “Well, I know that you’re uninterested in giving up full custody, so I don’t see much reason in talking about that,” Daisy’s mother had said. Her tone made her sound as if there wouldn’t be much difference between Piet taking care of Daisy or if CPS did.

“Have you had dinner yet?” Piet asked.

“Nope.”

“How about grilled cheese?” Piet had another two glasses of whiskey while he made Daisy grilled cheese, which took too long and ended up being a little burnt. He handed Daisy the plate and let her go into the living room to watch TV while she ate. It occurred to her, after she had tuned the television to Family Guy (a show she was not supposed to watch, but did anyway), that he had sent her to the living room because he probably wanted some privacy to cry. 

Over the years, Daisy cultivated a condescending resentment of her father. Flaws in his personality, typical teenaged criticisms of parental figures, facial expressions all became evidence in the imagined trial in which her mother had divorced Piet. 

Even now, in the spiral shaped drainage ditch (which reverberated with some sublime acoustics) she imagined the divorce not as stacks of paper, mediations in conference rooms, tearful conversations with lawyers who offered their condolences and boxes of tissues, but rather as a full trial like you might see in Law & Order.

Piet sat on the right, her mother on the left, both facing the judge and stenographer. On the right sat twelve faceless, nameless jurors who wore loose and threadbare polo shirts and summer dresses with the color washed out of them.

For days on end Daisy’s mother would pile the evidence on, all the reasons why she couldn’t be involved in this family anymore. Meanwhile, true to form, Piet had shown up unprepared and disorganized. He would try to refute something Daisy’s mother had said, but then the judge would pound his gavel and shout (like Daisy’s 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Cooley) “Do you have a citation for that?”

“Well, no,” her father would say lamely. His responses always sounded lame in her imagination.

“I’d like to call my daughter, Isolde “Daisy” de Witt to the stand!” Daisy’s mother would say.

“I object!” Piet would answer.

The judge would sigh and say, “God knows what sort of gambit this is, Mr. de Witt, but it is your right to represent yourself in court and to object to the introduction of any sort of evidence. I suppose you have your reasons.”

Then would be the verdict and sentencing:

“Mrs. de Witt, you are hereby released from this family and are free to return to your maiden name. Mr. de Witt, you are hereby the sole parent and guardian of one Miss Isolde “Daisy” de Witt, may God have mercy upon your souls.”

It was a cartoonish way of looking at the whole situation, but she had few other ways to look at it. The divorce was preserved in her memory as she experienced it at the time: as a sort of soundtrack to cartoons that she would watch while she sensed her father’s conversations and emotions in the kitchen. To this day, her skin prickles at the sound of a barely heard telephone conversation, she expects it to be bad news.

Why couldn’t he have tried harder during the divorce? Why is it that when her mother left, she stayed gone? Surely Piet could have done something before or after. In her more charitable moods she would assume that nothing could have been done. When she was feeling more vicious she would think about calling Piet and asking him what he did to her mother, what was so offensive that she hadn’t received even one phone call from her mother in nearly 13 years!

Jesus. Had it been that long? Middle school and high school and college had been a blur. She could see it all there before her, but it struck her as more of a history of her education as a musician than a proper life. This, too, she blamed on her father.

When she said that no, she did not want to go to prom, why didn’t he try to convince her otherwise? 

Why is it that he had no problem with her going to yet another cello competition (the third that year) when she could have instead gone on the French class field trip to Quebec City? Why did he have that soporific look on his face when he drove her to and from that competition in the rain?

Where was he when she started to flunk out of physics? Granted she was hiding the failed papers and report cards, but he should have known something was up.

Did he not care about where she ended up? Going to some third-rate university because she couldn’t figure out how many meters per second per second was terminal velocity and he would just stand there with that look on his face like he’s been on a morphine drip for too long mumbling about how proud he was of her.

Her mother may not have wanted her, but neither did he, she was sure of it. He was just stuck with her and after his life fell apart. (His company that he started took away his position as CEO and golden parachuted him after the divorce. The chairs claimed that it was unrelated to the divorce, but everyone knew that the vim had been shocked out of Piet. He was dead weight and this company was going places.) Now she was the only thing left and he held onto her like a life raft. Something he’d gladly discard if only dry land were under his feet again.

She showed him. Not only does she make money off of her music (she’s never had to pay for school either since she’s got scholarships out the yin-yang) but she’s completely abandoned his advice that she find a nice guy. She’ll date whoever she goddamn feels like. Occasionally when she brings up her memory of Piet saying that, he’ll say that he doesn’t care who she dates “as long as you love him”, but she can see right through that bullshit. She can see right through those dopey eyes. He wants her to grow up and marry a “nice guy” like him and stay with him through thick and thin and redeem her gender of the perceived betrayal that Piet suffered at the hands of her mother.

He might think he’s a nice guy, but he’s willfully ignorant that the reason why her mother left him is because he is the way he is. The blame rests on his stupid shoulders. Men think they’re somehow capable, but there isn’t another more deluded creature on the face of the earth. You think mom betrayed us? No, our downfall was your self-sabotage!

By now she’s setting her cello thundering through the leaves guarding her secret place. She jerks the strings around with her bow and her fretting hand needs to do some correction to keep the peg in the strap. She takes a deep breath and lets the bow slow the vibration of the strings into a gentle drone, keeping the string buzzing away as if it will never end, always trying to find the vibration of the earth, quietly searching for the secret frequency.

Years ago, in the lonely apartment that she kept as a graduate student, she was on the phone with Piet. She was talking about the man she’d been dating recently. A fellow musician and aspiring composer of movie soundtracks. “So when do I get to meet the illustrious Detlef?” Piet asked. “Sometime around Thanksgiving maybe?”

“Actually, I think we’ll be flying out to Detlef’s parents’ for Thanksgiving this year,” Daisy said and remembered what she had said the day she moved in to keep him from getting weepy.

“You can always come out around Christmas time,” Piet said. 

But Christmas came and went and Daisy was glad to use the excuse of professional distraction to keep away from her father. The doting, the attention… it seemed ridiculous, but it all seemed to be so fake. Deep down she knew that his behavior was some sort of symptom of his own failed life. He had to be extra sweet so that she wouldn’t leave him too. That’s why he denied saying that she shouldn’t pursue music! That’s why he denied that he said she should find a “nice guy”! That’s why he denied he said those things!

He just struck her as pathetic. 

By the time Daisy had landed her first professorship at 28, and people started to regularly call her Doctor De Witt, she had warmed to her father. She would show up at his house on a semi-regular basis and they would resume a conversation that had been started when she began to speak and would only end when he no longer could.

A few years ago he had moved out of the house they shared after the divorce and moved into an apartment that had been made out of recycled shipping containers. His rent was based on how many modified containers he wanted. Piet had three and had the outside of one painted in the style of his namesake, Piet Mondrian. From a distance you could see the fields of white, yellow, blue and red divided by straight black lines, but up close, the stamped steel made the lines seem like saw blades.

One summer they sat on the porch, outside of the kitchen section of Piet’s home, and drank Americanos in the late afternoon sun. In the far distance the inklings of a thunderstorm were ruining some other father-daughter duo’s day, but for Piet and Daisy, all was peaceful and content.

“I’m thinking about taking a job at a Consortium,” Daisy said flatly, hoping that what she had said would be ignored.

“Oh?” Piet’s eyes sharpened imperceptibly. He spoke the “Oh?” in such a way that might have fooled a less perceptive listener into thinking that perhaps he had misheard over the din of cicadas. Daisy was not fooled. “When are you thinking of going? I’m just curious because you just moved back to town and it’s been awful nice having you come over for cocktails and dinner on the weekends.”

“I’ve got to go to where the work is, dad. It’s drying up here. The fields dry up, the money dries up, the interest in musicians dries up. I’ve got to keep moving.”

“I understand,” Piet responded. “Which one are you looking at?”

“The Nevada Consortium.”

“Oh, that’s not so far! I can fly out every once in awhile and visit, can’t I?”

“Of course, dad. I think you’d like it. The main square looks very European and they have all that fancy coffee that you like so much.”

“I swear, it is one of the greatest mysteries how you grew up in the Starbucks generation and never developed a taste for espresso! It’s like growing up in the flower generation and never smoking pot!” Piet laughed until he coughed and his gray hair flopped about on his head.

Now it’s time to practice. She reaches over for a thick sheaf of sheet music and scans the first page for a few seconds before she begins the boring, but essential part of a concerto. The recital is in another two days for a reception of some new equity partners of the Consortium who expressed an interest in having live music, particularly Brahms, but any old thing will do. 

Charlatans, she thinks. Some moron executive heard the name Brahms once and now every time he wants to sound cultured he pulls it out for display. Ooh! Aah! So fucking cultured.

Daisy’s fingers dance and her arm swings rhythmically and she forces the tick of the metronome into her mind. Relaxation ripples through her body and she is at peace.