Ivories

a short story by Carrie Lee South

Ruthie Petrenko’s first-year audition had already become the stuff of legends. The story goes that she walked into the room with no hesitation, went right up to the program director, swept down for a kiss, then sat down at the piano and played a better rendition of Ballade No. 4 than Chopin could have himself. It was one of those performances that transports the listener to some other plane of existence, musical poetry in F minor, moving from the tragic to the sublime in a flurry of restless sixteenth notes. Triplet rhythms, crescendoing in complexity until ending with the solo’s haunting, conclusive chords. The only perfect score in Eurydice audition history.

I don’t believe the part about the kiss—pure fantasy. But everything else? I have no doubt that Ruthie’s performance was flawless.

Nobody went through the program anonymously; there were only enough students to fill an orchestra. The Eurydice Conservatory sits tucked away in the hills of Cold Springs, a small town in Upstate New York, hidden in a valley only accessible by train.

Ruthie’s roommate Hannah Martin was thin, fidgety, and constantly apologizing. Her wide doe eyes were almost always cast down, and she had a habit of chewing on the ends of her hair when she was nervous. She was short for a pianist, stubby fingers not quite suited to stretch across the keys, but she pushed herself. A few weeks into our senior year, after failing another recital, she hung herself in her dorm room. Ruthie found her there. The sickening permanence of it cast an icy pall over the whole conservatory.

Everyone knew how jealous Hannah Martin had been of Ruthie Petrenko. It was hard not to be envious. Her slender fingers could stretch to a perfect twelfth interval. Even her name seemed like it had been designed by a calligrapher to bloom across the cover of a concert program as top billing. Hannah certainly hadn’t been the only one in her shadow. What would it feel like to be Ruthie Petrenko?

When the last dregs of that summer gave way to copper foliage, the program director called me into her office. The stained-glass windows gave the room the solemnity of a church sanctuary.

Only the lines in Dr Brady’s face betrayed the weight of her transition from artist to academic. I both admired her and feared becoming her. We all hoped that our passion and talent would carry us beyond the ivory tower.

“Mia, your grades continue to slip. We’re putting you on academic probation.”

I received a letter of concern at the end of the previous semester. Violin had always come naturally to me. I never practiced growing up because I never needed to, but the gap between my classmates and I continued to widen. It wasn’t that I didn’t already know this, there had just been so much going on around me that I managed to ignore the problem.

My throat tightened up. I tried to compose myself and managed to spit out, “I’ll do anything.”

There was a long pause as she seemed to decide the best way to propose what came next. “It’s clear that you need more support, and your classmate Ruthie Petrenko has expressed that she would be happy to accompany you in a collaborative performance for your senior thesis recital. And her discipline could help you with your practice schedule.”

I couldn’t hold back the tears now. This was humiliating.

Dr Brady continued. “I’m speaking with our residence life coordinator about the two of you becoming roommates for the rest of the school year.”

“What about Natalie?” My current roommate wasn’t exactly my best friend, but at least she left me alone.

“We’ll make sure everyone is taken care of, but you’re aware of Ruthie’s roommate situation. I’m concerned about her. I think this will be beneficial for both of you.” She placed a hand over mine, hesitant, as though she had read somewhere that this was the best way to indicate compassion. “I see mentorship in your future.”

My face flushed. The implication couldn’t be any clearer: I wasn’t suited to performance, so maybe I could teach.

Ruthie moved into my room a few days later. I almost didn’t notice her slip through the door with a suitcase until her soft voice rang the silence like a bell. “Mia, it’s nice to see you.”

She had effortless bronze curls and dark brown eyes flecked with points of amber light. When she looked at you, it felt like your goosebumps became braille, her gaze tracing your skin, reading you. Up close she seemed to be made of silk, and I felt a sudden urge to run my fingertips across her delicate flesh.

I went to help her unpack her things. As I helped sort her reams of sheet music and scribbled notes, I found a marked-up copy of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29 and gasped.

“Have you played this?”

A small smile danced on her lips. I sensed that she loved the effect she had on people; she wanted to be impressive. “I’m preparing it for my own senior thesis recital.”

“You’re going to try to tackle the Hammerklavier?” It was one of the most notoriously difficult piano pieces in musical history. “You’re not worried about tripping up your final recital?” It was a controversial piece, one of the only times Beethoven included metronome markings, which gave the final movement a frantic energy bordering on deranged. Her smile faltered slightly, and I rushed to save face. “Of course, if anyone can do it, it’s you.”

“I’ve made excellent progress with the movements so far.”

“I gave up on piano as a kid. My teacher was always on my case about my fingernails being too long and clicking on the keys.” She laughed as I wiggled my fingers.

“Have you thought about what you want to play for your recital?”

“I was thinking maybe some Tchaikovsky? I was planning to play his Violin Concerto in D major…” I trailed off, ashamed to acknowledge that my intended solo performance had been canceled.

“Gorgeous! Actually, I was thinking along the same lines.” She looked through her sheet music for a moment. “I have this beautiful piece.”

She handed me Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d'un lieu cher, a composition for violin with piano accompaniment. It was a simpler arrangement, probably more suited to my skill level than I was ready to admit. When had I gone from prodigy to pitiful? The little anxiety gremlin on my brainstem shouted that Dr Brady probably hand-picked it. I forced a smile. “Perfect.”

Our first practice session felt like a blind date. I rummaged through my case to find the rosin, feeling every bit like a teenage boy fumbling with a prom corsage. Ruthie sat on the piano bench, fingers hovering for a moment before connecting with the keys. I had never seen someone interact with an instrument that way. She was just an appendage, an extension of the whole, descending into a flow state as though possessed while she ran a series of scales to warm up. Finally, she placed the sheet music on the piano and began to play the composition like she wrote it herself. I don’t even think she noticed that I hadn’t played a note.

Eventually she turned to me—smiling, confident, perfect. “Ready?”

I butchered my first attempt. I’m not sure whether it was nerves or if I was just that bad in comparison, but Ruthie praised the effort. We ran through it several more times until I at least sounded like I knew how to play the violin.

As we packed up for the day, I asked her, “What made you want to be a pianist?”

She smiled. “String instruments, I’m sure you agree, are the most beautiful. As for the piano, no other instrument has such a range of sound—from the bass notes that beat with the rhythm of your heart to the treble tones that hang among the stars.” She mimed the scales in the air while she spoke.

Something about the way she talked, with such a grandiose affectation, felt almost passive aggressive. I couldn’t decide whether she truly believed the pompous things that came out of her mouth or if she just wanted to make me feel inferior.

“I thought you started the program as a Composition major.”

She looked up at some indiscernible point over my shoulder. “I wanted my name to be associated with something beautiful that would last longer than I would.”

“What kind of music did you compose?”

She blinked. “Imitations.”

For the first time since I’d known her, I heard apprehension in her voice. Her response indicated the tiniest bit of self-doubt. Encouraged by this crack in her façade, I dug in. “But you’re playing Beethoven for your recital. I guess you switched your major to Performance?”

Her skin reddened and I could see her pulse jumping against her throat. “I had to. After Hannah died, I just…” She swallowed the end of the thought.

I tried to cover my insensitivity. “You can still leave a legacy of performance. I’ve never heard anyone play as beautifully as you.”

Her eyes drifted back to mine. “We’ll see.”

Our first few weeks as roommates passed uneventfully, punctuated only by the familiar routine of our bi-weekly practice schedule. I admit that she inspired me to work harder than I ever had. She played the simple piano accompaniment in the Tchaikovsky piece with such expressive tenderness; I wanted so much to match her artistry. It had more to do with a sense of competition than anything.

The dorm rooms were small, which made it hard to maintain any real distance, but Ruthie somehow managed to be unobtrusive. I had imagined her larger than life, her energy filling up a room. The way other students described her, it was as if you could touch the hem of her skirt and be healed.

On the contrary, she seemed to be shrinking. If I sat at my desk with my back to her side of the room, I wouldn’t even hear her hushed footsteps whispering across the stone floor. I can’t count the number of times I would forget she was there at all until she spoke and startled me. Our relationship became one of long silences and jumpy encounters.

Things changed one night when Ruthie woke me with a shriek. I shot up and turned to her, only to see her staring at a corner of the room, whimpering. Her eyes strained to open as wide as they could, fat teardrops leaking from the corners. Her lips trembled as she spoke, “Please, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

I whisper-screamed, “What’s wrong?”

She continued mumbling at the empty space and I realized she wasn’t talking to me at all. My heart pounded against my ribcage as I rushed over to her bed and grabbed one of her arms. Like I’d touched her with a live wire, she flinched and realized I was there. “Oh, Mia, she’s awful.”

“Who?”

Ruthie cried harder, gagging on her tears. “Hannah, she’s hanging there.”

I glanced up to where Ruthie pointed and rubbed her arm. “It was a nightmare, Ruthie, just a bad dream.”

Ruthie shook her head. “No, no, she’s there.”

I stared at her. She was wide awake now; why wasn’t this delusion going anywhere? I kept rubbing her arm. We sat like that for a full hour as her sobs faded to small choking gasps, Ruthie continuing to insist on Hannah’s presence and apologizing to thin air. She wore herself out and we fell asleep curled together on her bed.

The next morning, we hardly spoke as we got ready for class. I tried to assuage her guilt again, reminded her that Hannah made her own choices, and no matter how much she had compared herself to Ruthie, it wasn’t Ruthie’s fault.

She hesitated with her hand on the doorknob. “Isn’t it, though?”

I don’t remember when she stopped talking to me. At some point, Ruthie spent almost every free moment practicing. She would slink back into our room after I had already turned in for the night, then get up at dawn to return to what had become her designated practice room.

I knew from my own experience that there were only so many times you could play a piece before exhaustion transformed the notes into something unrecognizable, like the feeling you get when you’ve stared at a word for too long and it stops making sense. How could she play those fortissimo chords, the unrelenting scales, trills on both hands climbing octaves, over and over, without losing her grip?

It was January when I first noticed Ruthie wearing gloves to our Advanced Theory class. I couldn’t stop staring at them as Dr Wright droned on about the particular nuances of polyphonic texture in the Baroque era. Why was she wearing them inside? The school kept the temperature almost unbearably hot to offset the New England winter. We all layered summer clothing underneath our coats to strip down once inside the buildings. While Dr Wright lectured, Ruthie struggled to type her notes, grimacing almost imperceptibly with each keystroke.

As we stood up to leave, I caught her by the crook of her elbow before she could run off to the practice room. “Hey, are you ok? What are the gloves for?”

The dark circles beneath her eyes looked like bruises. “Oh, I just have bad circulation. It’s nothing.”

“I’m worried about you. I never see you anymore.”

“What are you talking about? I see you every day, Mia.”

“Not as much as you see the inside of the practice room.”

Her brow furrowed. “I’m hardly in there.”

I snorted but her expression remained bewildered. I started to get frustrated. “What? You’re in there at least five hours a day.”

“That’s ridiculous. I have a set practice schedule, one hour in the morning. Other than that I’m in class or studying.”

I wanted to roll my eyes, but she looked so sincere that I felt panic bead me with cool sweat. “Ruthie, this isn’t funny. We both know how long you spend practicing that piece. It isn’t healthy.”

Her voice faltered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I really don’t.”

We stood staring at each other, each waiting for the other to crack, until I had no choice but to brush past her and go to my next class.

Ruthie started to cancel our practice sessions. We hadn’t met for several weeks, but I was determined to master my recital piece. I knew that Ruthie already had it memorized and would undoubtedly outperform me, but my only concern at this point was whether or not I would graduate at all. Dr Brady had made it clear that I was on thin ice.

I wondered whether I should alert the administration to Ruthie’s increasingly isolated behavior, but I worried about what would happen if she wasn’t able to accompany me at my recital. If I got the professors involved, would they make Ruthie take a leave of absence? Would I just flunk out? I spent so much time thinking about the best course of action that I never took any action at all.

During one of our rare practice sessions, I noticed that she had lost weight. Her spinal column poked through her thin blouse as she hunched over the piano bench.

The way she punched the keys sounded feverish and urgent. What normally would have been a plaintive, mournful piece of music tumbled into frightening chaos. My bow flew across the strings to keep up with Ruthie’s frantic pace. Finally, breathless, I demanded a break. She craned her neck to look at me and I stumbled back.

It may have been Ruthie’s face, sucking on a strand of hair, but it wasn’t Ruthie. Hannah Martin’s wide, doe-like eyes stared back at me.

My breath hitched. I reached out a shaking hand. “Are you…”

The moment I touched her shoulder, her eyes went slack, crossed, and she shrieked at me, “Get out! Get out!”

Her screaming continued as I scrambled to gather my things and followed me all the way down the hall.

The end of the semester drew near. Practice rooms were highly coveted in preparation for the recitals. The housemates developed a sign-up schedule for the practice rooms to make sure we all had access to the space, so we alternated two-hour slots. But on the first day of the new schedule, my former roommate Natalie shoved her way into my room, furious.

“Hey, you have to do something about Ruthie.”

“What?”

“She’s locked herself in Practice Room One and won’t respond to any of us. Her turn is up.”

Icy heat electrified my skin as I headed down the spiral staircase to the heavy wooden door, Practice Room emblazoned in gold lettering. The frenetic pace of Beethoven’s masterpiece echoed through the cracks. I knocked.

“Ruthie? It’s Mia.”

No response. I hammered the door with my fist and raised my voice. “Ruthie! Your time is up! Someone else has to get in there.”

I heard a bang like she had slammed her fists into the keys, an angry discordant symphony. “I’m not done.”

“The sign-up sheet says you are.”

“I’m not done!” she screamed with the unhinged, feral wail of a mountain lion. I stepped back. I felt my last chance at a musical career slipping through my fingers. If she lost it, she’d take me down with her.

“Ruthie, please, you need to take a break.”

After a long silence, she responded. “Alright. I just need to wipe down the keys.”

When she finally emerged, I looped my arm through hers. We walked through the halls in silence and I led her to the refectory. I bought her a hot cocoa and seated us in front of the large stone fireplace. As she lifted her cup to her lips with shaking hands, I saw that she still had the gloves on, the fingertips were blackened. I didn’t ask. I should have asked. 

I had let her creep along the edges of my periphery without saying a word. How much of her current condition could be attributed to my quiet complicity in her breakdown?

Ruthie set her drink down and I reached across the table to touch her hand, but she flinched and jerked it back like a startled rabbit. I held up my palms, “Ruthie, Are you ok?”

Her eyes peered up at me as if seeing my rippling reflection from under the surface of water. “I’m sorry. The fugue, I just need to work on the fugue,” she murmured.

I shuddered. She couldn’t be attempting Beethoven’s own metronome markings. Even the most skilled pianists in modern history don’t observe those time signatures. The music simply doesn’t want to go that fast. 

Our performances were just weeks away. Surely she could hang on until then. We were so close.

As soon as we made it back to the dorm, Ruthie slipped back to the practice room.  Natalie scowled at the closed door. “Could you at least get her to stop eating in there? I went after her and there was this stuff in between the keys making everything sticky.”

That night as I laid in bed, the sucking dread in the pit of my stomach felt like water gurgling as it spirals down a drain. If I said something now, wouldn’t I be ruining both of our futures right at the finish line?

I heard the soft click of the door as Ruthie came to collapse in her bed around two in the morning. I hardly dared to breathe in the darkness until I could hear the rhythmic sounds of sleep. When I was sure, I crept down to her practice room.

The moonglow filtered through the window on the far wall, whispery beams of light shimmering on the keys. The pearlescent sheen of still-wet disinfectant swirled along the acrylic surface. I reached out a shaking hand to press a finger against middle C, pushing with the most delicate touch to prevent the hammer striking. Natalie was right—something caught. Suddenly the key gave way, the loud note vibrating in the air, and I stared at the congealing brown substance, hiding underneath, clinging to the wooden sides of B and D.

A hushed anticipation settled over Eurydice in the week leading up to Ruthie’s recital. Notes of Sonata No. 29 echoed in every corner, lingering like the smell of cigarette smoke. Everyone wanted to see if she could live up to her own impossible standard.

The largest concert hall on campus could barely contain us all. The school’s ancient Bechstein grand piano waited alone on stage beneath a solo spotlight. If the professors were surprised at the turnout for a student recital, they didn’t show it. The acoustics of the room bounced the sound of the crowd’s murmuring all around into an indistinct buzzing while we waited for Ruthie to walk onto the stage.

When the overhead lights dimmed all talking ceased in an instant. We could hear every soft step of Ruthie’s designer slippers and the swish of the jeweled tulle on her evening gown. The only thing that looked out of place were the gloves she still wore. She sat at the bench and lifted her hands above the keys. I couldn’t breathe. Then, the joyful thundering of the opening chords rang out. The chromatic voices in the bass and treble lines flowed into and over one another, surging with ecstasy and heartache. I felt the room spinning, melting away and becoming a kaleidoscope of color and song. I had heard my professors talking about music’s power to transform, but I had never experienced it until this moment.

The third movement broke into a cadenza that took the mood from the sublime to the supernatural. I closed my eyes to absorb the fury and passion in those notes as the piece moved into the adagio. I realized I could hear some kind of metronome, a click-click-clicking behind each note. For one ridiculous moment I thought, Oh God, she forgot to trim her fingernails, until someone screamed and I looked up.

Blooming pools of red poured across the keys and spilled onto the floor. We were in the fugue, that demon-possessed flurry of impossible and violent avalanches of trills. Now poking through the ripped ends of her gloves, Ruthie’s fingers skidded across bloody keys, spraying fireworks of gore into the front row seats. The clicking was all I could hear now. Professors rushed the stage, but before they could pry her from her seat, I saw the tips of white bone protruding from the ends of ragged flesh on her fingers.

She screamed as they dragged her from the keyboard before she could hit those final chords. She thrashed in their arms, kicking at the piano as if trying to smash the notes out with her feet, then finally collapsed. For a brief, heart-clenching moment, I could see Hannah’s face smiling with satisfaction, even relief.

Ending notwithstanding, the performance had been perfect.

Dr Brady was right, in the end. I was better suited to teaching. Every now and again I feel the sting of disappointment, a longing for the concert violinist I never became, but I’ve seen the destructive forces that can come with that pursuit. At least I’ve found a way to put that knowledge to good use.

I watch for Ruthie and Hannah in all of my students. They deserve to be more than a cautionary tale, and yet here I am, repeating their stories so often that only an imprint of their memory is left, like a stamp that I’ve etched into rubber by hand and then pressed into the ink so many times that now the edges are blurry.

I eventually found my way back to Eurydice. I feel a sense of protectiveness, like I need to shield Ruthie from rumors even now. It’s almost funny. My students think this story is apocryphal, but I know why middle C sticks in that practice room.

Carrie Lee South is an MFA candidate at the Arkansas Writer’s Workshop. She writes stories to keep you awake at night. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review, Opus Comics, The Dread Machine, Tales to Terrify, and elsewhere. Read more at carrieleesouth.com