Variations on a Theme Chapter 2

"Adagio"

Alex Maxwell, age 22, pounds away at Chopin's "Raindrop" Prelude in D flat. He has played this song again and again as yet another distraction from completing the final piece for his senior recital. He hates this song, but has never realized it until now. Perhaps what irks him is the repeating A flat or the heavy melodrama of Frederic Chopin, a composer who struggled with tuberculosis for much of his life. Or perhaps it is the realization that the fates may not have intended for Alex to become a musician after all.

He stops in the middle of the storm section with the melody in the left hand. Alex slams the piano lid shut. More blank sheets of staff paper fall to the floor and join the many scribbled upon sheets covering the room. A hollow sound reverberates through the piano. Standing up, he knocks over the bench. It clatters, wood striking wood. He pauses a moment, then returns the stool to its standing position.

Hearing the noise from outside, Rachel, Alex's girlfriend, raises her head from its slumped position between her knees. She has been sitting against the door for hours, knocking on it occasionally, never giving up her pleas for him to let her in.

"Alex, we need to talk!" Rachel's voice has lost some of its anger. "Please, just open the door!”

Alex stares at the door, wondering why he cannot see her silhouette behind the frosted glass window. This upsets Alex since he could not even hear her outside until he finished playing.

Then he realizes that there is no way she could stand in front of that door for so long. He half smiles, imagining Rachel in one of her business suits, crouching on the floor in her pantyhose and uncomfortable black pumps. It contradicts the tough-as-nails exterior she had cultivated over the years.

The problem now, however, is that not even Rachel's strength or Alex's own determination may bridge the growing rift between them. He cannot help but wonder why she would even be waiting for him.

As far back as he can remember, Alex has always been at a piano. Alex started playing the piano at an early age, since his parents felt it would be a great way for him to learn discipline. He never seemed to take to soccer practice due to his quiet and individualistic demeanor, not to mention that he could never kick the ball straight. Solo performance seemed to be his only option.

His parents were worried about Alex's limited social interactions until the most unlikely thing happened. Rachel Park– everything Alex Maxwell was not: outspoken, impulsive, extraverted– took an interest in their introverted pianist and opened him up to a world outside of the eighty-eight toothed gaping maw in front of his bench. It was true that they had known each other since they were children in grade school, but they had little interaction until adolescence.

In fact, people in their small town high school associated them with each other since they were the only two Asians in school, even though Rachel was Korean-American and Alex was half Filipino and half Caucasian.

His ethnicity was a sensitive topic for Alex even though he rarely mentioned it, even to Rachel. His own name failed to suggest any sort of Pacific ancestry. People on his mother's side of the family often commented on how tall he was. This made him more self-conscious of the arms and legs which seemed to sprout out of control with awkward long fingers only good for stretching over long intervals on the expanse of black and white keys. Yet they were always there for him, those keys on the piano, along with Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaninoff, and on the rare occasion, Gershwin.

And Rachel was there with him too. The main difference between her and the long dead composers he became familiar with was that he knew her. Alex truly knew her, from the way her arms felt when they snuck up from behind and encircled him at the piano bench to the way she smelled pressed up close against him at the first dance he had ever gone to, and even the almost musical shifts in the tone of her voice depending on her mood. Because of Rachel, he understood why many composers used minor keys to convey melancholy. Alex could swear by Haydn's missing head that whenever Rachel was deeply upset, her voice wavered in an a minor tremulo.

Rachel understood him, or at least she tried to. Alex told her about things he could not talk about with his parents or siblings, mainly because his pain was often inadvertently caused by them. Alex was never sure if he was doing the right thing by concentrating exclusively on music, even if he had succeeded. In comparison, his two older brothers had given up music for sports, but eventually going to medical and law school.

“I’m telling you, the boy is bakla.” Alex’s mother said over the phone.

Alex paused a moment before shutting the refrigerator. He had taken a carton of orange juice out and drank straight from it. His mother did not yell at him for doing so as she usually had for the past six years since he was first able to reach the top shelf of the fridge. From the limited Tagalog he could decipher, “bakla” either meant gay or backwards.

“He must be! Look at all of those holes in his face. Or maybe he’s in a gang!”

This was all the conversation that he could catch onto before his mother went into a tirade of unintelligible Tagalog. Most likely, his mother and her sister were talking about Alex’s cousin Felix again. He was always the odd one out of the family and he probably didn’t help things by keeping his parents up late at night with his loud bass playing or getting numerous piercings. Alex was 18 years old. Felix was 16. Yet even if he was older, Alex always admired his cousin and felt a kinship to him that he couldn’t find with the others on his mother’s side of the family.

During their limited interactions at the massive family get-togethers, Felix would talk about songs he was writing for his bands and Alex would talk about pieces he was to perform for various recitals as well as his own compositions. However, only one of them would be recognized by the family as a “true musician.”

“You set him straight.” His mother slammed a fist on the table. “I know he can be a good boy. Look at his grades! With his brains, he could be a great doctor. Take away his guitar and that will stop all this nonsense.”

After his mother hung up the phone and left the kitchen, Alex was left standing alone with an empty carton in his hand.

“Is that what you think of me?” He whispered to the empty chair.

Despite the warm and affectionate support he received from his family at his recitals, Alex never felt quite comfortable in his own skin. Something would always itch and twinge beneath his starched collars and ironed slacks. He especially felt this way since after awhile, it was abundantly apparent that he would pass for white in situations outside the halls of his small-town high school.

He spoke no Tagalog. He completely disliked the taste of dinaguan, never believing for a second that what he was eating was “chocolate meat,” as his mother had told him when he was seven. Alex also never understood why his mother sent his old things "back home" in large cardboard boxes. None of these personality quirks seemed all that important until he got to college. With Rachel's effervescent enthusiasm, she fell quickly into her own niche of fellow business majors and Asian Pacific Islander American student organizations their freshman year of college. Out of a desire to introduce Alex to some of her new friends, she decided to drag him to the introductory barbecue for all of the APIA organizations that year.

“Hi Mark, this is my boyfriend Alex.” Rachel said to the president of the Undergraduate Asian American Business club. She took his position two years after this meeting when Mark went to graduate school.

“Kumusta Alex, kumain na ba ikaw?” The two young men shook hands. Mark’s hand gripped Alex’s tightly.

“Sorry, I don’t speak Tagalog.” Alex eyes wandered to the refreshment table behind Mark.

“Hm. Well. Rachel tells me that you play piano, right?”

“Yeah.” His eyes returned to meet Mark’s.

“Heh, I think at some point most of us here went through that phase.”

“Phase?” Alex’s eyebrows lowered, creasing the skin above the bridge of his nose.

“You know, the whole ‘I’m taking piano to make my parents happy since they couldn’t afford a piano back in the old country’ thing.” A laugh rang out of Mark’s chest.

“Well, I don’t think it’s ‘just a phase’ with Alex since he’s a Composition major.” Rachel put her arm around Alex. “You should hear him play one of his pieces sometime. He’s quite brilliant. He even got a scholarship from the music department here.”

“Is that so?” Mark took a sip from his cup of punch. “Well, I better keep circulating. Gotta meet all the new blood in the organization. It was nice meeting you Alex.”

At the parties and other social events the APIA organizations held, Alex could not help but feel like everyone was staring at him. Their eyes seemed to wonder what their beloved Rachel was doing with "that white guy." That which had made him so different and distinguishable in high school passed with little notice in college. He wanted more than anything to be able to say that he was one of them, but he really couldn't. Eventually, Alex stopped escorting her to dances and meetings altogether, no matter how much Rachel reassured him that he was always welcome in her groups.

One day during Spring semester of his junior year, he walked by a coffeehouse on the way to the music building. He saw Rachel through the window sitting with one of the few guys she had introduced to him. He could hear no words through the window, but their eyes told him everything. Alex wasn’t exactly jealous, but hint of regret twinged his eyebrows when he saw her connecting with someone else on a level that he never could. Not in his years of knowing Rachel did he ever remember her ever laughing like that, not when he was around at least. Alex was convinced that it was only a matter of time before he lost her for good.

Yet Rachel was the reason he had made it that far in the first place.

* * *

Picture a typical prom photograph with a smiling couple in front of a generic backdrop of pastels with a column swathed in ivy to frame them. Imagine that same picture in a silver-plated frame on top of a closed grand piano, shaking slightly at the sonic disturbance beneath it as someone plays.

The pianist causing this disturbance was young Alex at age 18, doubting himself again. Alex scribbled on a piece of paper, erased, then began the process all over again. He balanced rhythms and tones with methodical precision only to play through them and hear their dissonance.

Most entering college students become well-acquainted with the bothersome five-hundred word personal statements explaining why the college of their choice should admit them. In Alex's case, one could say that he had to do it within the five-lined boundaries of the staff.

The tip of his pencil broke under the stress of being pressed against the staff paper. A loud breath escaped from Alex as he tossed the useless writing implement aside. He stared at the nearly illegible mess on the page. It looked more like a Jackson Pollack painting than a musical composition.

"How's it going?" a familiar voice asked.

"Not so hot." Alex picked up another pencil, only to rest it on the sheet music ledge. "I don't know how I'm going to do this final composition for my music school admission portfolio."

Rachel squinted at the page in front of her. "What's the problem?"

"I don't know. Nothing seems to fit at all."

"What? Is it supposed to fit? Were you given any direction or prompt in writing this?"

Alex shrugged. "My piano teacher liked all the stuff I’ve shown her so far, but she told me that as good as my work is, she can’t ‘feel’ me in the music. She suggested that I write something reflecting upon my current emotional state Still, nothing I feel seems to tie together."

"Well, what do you feel?"

Adding things together, Alex counted off on his fingers. "Anxiety over having to write this stupid thing just to get into music school...relief at finally graduating high school...and..."

For the first time in what seemed like a long time, Rachel returned one of Alex's rare smiles. "What? What else?"

"Happy you're going to be with me." He took the hand Rachel had placed on his shoulder and kissed it, then looked at the scrawlings in front of him. "At least if I can get this stupid thing written and get a confirmation that yes, I have been officially accepted into the music school."

Alex took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes as if he had not bothered blinking for days, "I don't know. All these contradicting emotions are hard to sort out– to put together so they make sense in music. It just seems like it would just be a cacophony."

Rachel kissed him on the cheek. "Well then, just write what you feel and never mind
fitting it all together. Feelings aren't supposed to make sense all the time."

She ruffled his hair and began to walk out of the room.

"I just dropped by to say thanks for helping me study for that history final. You don’t know how much you saved me. I've got to get to work, so I'll see you later, ok?"

Taking his pencil in hand once more, Alex smiled again. "Ok, 'bye Rache..."

* * *

Now, in time for Alex's senior recital, everything they had worked so hard to build seemed to be crumbling at the very foundations. They had been around each other for so long that the possibility of them not being together was enough to break into other seemingly unrelated aspects of their lives. Alex’s senior composition was in the final stages of completion before he decided to scrap the entire second movement and write it from scratch.

In fact, it seemed rather sad to Alex when of all people, his typically confident and urbane younger cousin called him to ask for dating and relationship advice. This surprised him, since the usual topic of conversation was Felix’s otherwise unspoken exile from the family. Alex could handle that, or at least be an understanding listener. Yet hearing his cousin, who often found himself in the position of signing various bare body parts of female fans, get nervous about a girl only perplexed him. To Alex, everything with Rachel seemed to simply fall into place, perhaps the only thing in his life to come together so naturally.

Four years after the prom picture of them was taken, the only visible separation between Rachel Park and Alex Maxwell is a locked door. Rachel's eyes burn red, not from staying up too late studying for midterms or drinking too many cups of coffee, but from crying for a couple of hours. This is a steady stream of tears, slowly and silently trickling down cheeks to a wryly smiling mouth.

Rachel raises her hand in a final attempt to reach out to Alex, to pound on the door and demand to be allowed entrance. Yet, she understands Alex well enough to know that the best thing she can do at the moment is to just leave. Withdrawing her tightened fist and sheathing it in her blazer pocket, she wobbles up and walks down the hall, regaining her composure with each step.

The rhythmic clicking in a decrescendo followed by the sforzando of a slamming door alerts Alex to Rachel's retreat. He spins on the stool to face the piano once more. The lid retreats into the piano, revealing a row of teeth which could either be a smile or a grimace. His fingers hover above the keys before retreating into the pockets of his jeans. He stands and kicks the bench over. After gathering his jumbled sheets of music, he attempts to rearrange them according to the page numbers scrawled on the bottom margins. Alex throws open the door and runs down the hallway.