Dear Friend, the message began, Apologies for this batch-addressed email, but it’s the most efficient way to quickly contact all of you. You’re reading it because you’re one of the many thoughtful people who, concerned for my safety and health during this extraordinary time, have forwarded emails with recipes for home-made hand sanitizer, sanitizing spray, disinfecting wipes, instructions for disinfecting my washing machine and dishwasher, for making no-sew face masks, and many other tips for protecting myself during the Covid-19 pandemic.
I thank you sincerely for your kindness, and despite the fact that this may seem rude, I’m asking you now to cease. It’s not that I don’t appreciate your thinking of me as someone worth protecting. It’s simply that I get too many of these from well-intentioned friends. Last week I received ten emails from ten friends with recipes for hand sanitizer, seven of which were identical. Please know that I am grateful for your friendship. And please stop sending me these emails. From now on, whenever one appears in my In box, I will delete it immediately.
Love, Larisa
There were, in truth, only two recipients. I was the first, both sender and addressee, and I BCC’d the primary target, Erica Klepper. Energetic and capable, Erica is nevertheless one of those people whose intense way of connecting is more exhausting than enjoyable. For instance, she never stops talking. Also, she’s usually right about everything, and she knows it.
The pandemic, it seems, has channeled much of Erica’s energy into DIY projects—hence her focus on pandemic defense. Which is fine…and I wouldn’t even have minded one or two forwards occasionally, about, say, making masks from old socks; but in the past month a day hasn’t ended without at least four or five tips from Erica invading my online life. I hoped my plea conveyed that I wasn’t singling out her emails for rejection, but that she was one of many well-intentioned friends bombarding me with this crap.
I like her husband, Pierre, more. In fact, I met Pierre about five minutes before I met Erica, and wished we’d had an opportunity to converse before Erica horned in and took over. We were introduced by our mutual friend, Perri Fowler, when Perri and I were having late-morning coffee at Seven Stars Bakery on Hope Street. Perri had “needed” to run some ideas past me for a cookbook she wanted me to write with her. Translation: I would write, she’d get the credit. No thanks.
“I’ll do the grunt work on the recipes—testing them, and recording the data,” she explained. “You turn the grunts into mesmerizing prose—you know, not just the recipe itself but a kind of backstory that would tempt someone into actually cooking it because it would be so, you know, inspiring?”
As with most of the ventures Perri proposed, she envisioned herself as the mastermind, until she didn’t. Most of her projects were, unsurprisingly, fairly short-lived. A while back, she’d wanted us to write a children’s book series based on her formative years in our city of Providence, Rhode Island. She’d made me look at too many photo albums for that project, believing I’d be able to stitch together a captivating narrative from childhood images of Perri: in her mother’s arms, in her stroller, Perri’s first Christmas, first birthday, first steps, first day of school, etc. I didn’t exactly decline to participate, only said that I’d take it under consideration.
I was eating a large oatmeal-raisin cookie and listening to Perri’s cookbook monologue, when we were interrupted by a man saying, “Well, hello Perri!” and then there was a lot of ritualistic smoochy-huggy. Flipping her hand in my direction, Perri said, “Pierre, this is my friend Larisa Lang, the pianist. (She pronounced it PEE-nist.) Larisa, this is Pierre Klepper, the architect.”
I smiled demurely and channeled my defense system. “Hi,” I said, “Perri is given to hyperbole, as you may know. She and I were just discussing a writing project. Nice to meet you, Pierre.”
Perri explained, “Larisa suffers from serious stage-fright, so has decided to concentrate on chamber music rather than solo performance, which makes her very anxious. She also writes for magazines. Modesty forbids her from telling people she’s a writer as well as a peenist.”
“Actually, it’s an awkward way to identify myself,” I told Pierre. “I usually just say one or the other.”
“Is that true about your stage fright?” a voice piped up from behind Pierre. “I’m Erica, Pierre’s wife, and I know a great therapist whose specialty is helping people overcome performance anxiety.” She stepped forward and extended her hand.
Performance anxiety, ugh! It sounded like a euphemism for erectile dysfunction. And why was this person who’d just barely met me so eager to sign me up with a shrink she knows? Did she work on commission? I wished fervently that Perri didn’t have such a big mouth. For all I knew she was already swanning around town, telling random people that her friend, the peenist and writer, Larisa Lang, was collaborating with her on a cookbook.
“Thanks so much,” I said, assertively tossing back the coffee remaining in my paper cup. Gulping thus, in one swift motion, I felt some of it wash over my top lip and out the corners of my mouth. As the burning subsided, I groped on the table for the napkin dispenser, and began to mop my face and neckline.
“Are you related to Lang Lang?” Erica quizzed.
I kept the napkins over the lower part of my face and answered, “I don’t think so, but I’ll ask my mother.” Do I look Chinese? I wondered.
“Just curious,” Erica said. “I thought it was worth asking, since you’re both peenists. Have you ever seen the video where he performs ‘Clair de Lune’ on a barge floating down the Seine in the moonlight? It’s so, you know, sexy? Like I wouldn’t kick that guy out of my bed!” She emitted a little sigh and smiled slyly in Pierre’s direction.
Pierre, oblivious, chatted with Perri. They seemed to be discussing a house he’d designed in Newport. He looked like a pipe-chomping intellectual of the Hugh Hefner era, but instead of a brocade smoking jacket, he sported tweed, cashmere, and corduroy. His hair was thinning, grey, longish, swept back behind the ears, and he wore the round Le Corbu specs that scream “Architect!” Erica was pixie-like, her layered platinum hair highlighted with interesting purple streaks. She wore black suede pants, a white tunic, and several necklaces made of connected silver hoops.
I checked my watch. “Oops, gotta go!” I exclaimed. “Great to meet you!” I started gathering my coat and bag.
“Here! Take my card,” said Erica, thrusting it at me. I saw the Sotheby’s logo and that she was a realtor. I guess that explained her shill for the shrink after all. “Can I have yours?” she asked.
“Um….” Should I prevaricate and say I had none with me?
Perri said, ever so helpfully: “Larisa’s in a rush; I’ll give you her info.”
Thus my relationship with the Kleppers, such as it is, began. Gerard and I were invited to a couple of their dinner parties, and I guess we became, however lightly, part of their Venn Diagram. All of this was way pre-pandemic and seems like eons ago, though it was probably less than three years.
At that time I had no performances lined up because Emily, the cellist of the group I’d played with for nearly a decade, Ménage à Trios, had taken maternity leave and didn’t seem keen to return anytime soon, claiming new mother exhaustion. Annie, the violinist, and I felt awkward about replacing Emily, especially since she’d suggest, now and then, that we should commission new works by rising young composers—her husband Martin, for example—thus implying that she would return to our ensemble. I was reconciled, not to the death of our trio, but to its prolonged catalepsy.
Otherwise, I gave about six piano lessons a week, and the rest of the time took on freelance writing assignments. I specialize in Cooking, Travel, and Classical Music. Those provided a steady lite employment, but the compensation wasn’t enough to keep an aspidistra flying. Fortunately, my husband Gerard, a tax lawyer, earns a good salary. If it weren’t for Gerard, I’d be unable to work at what I love and do best. If it weren’t for Gerard, I’d probably be a bona fide member of the rat race, treading water frantically to survive, and practicing late into the night when I was already exhausted by a long day at some nondescript office.
To counterbalance my dedication to the gods of music and the written word, I’ve always done volunteer work. This provides me with a nuts-and-bolts view of reality that playing music and writing on a word processor don’t. Over the years I’ve taught English to immigrants, knitted winter hats for the homeless, answered phones at Public Broadcasting fund drives, helped register people to vote. And while I usually appreciated the different tasks I was assigned, none of them ever gripped me. That is, until I found my niche at Washington County Hospital, the lobby of which featured, inexplicably, a grand piano, unplayed.
I’d first noticed it when I went to see Erica, recovering from a hysterectomy. She’d phoned from her private room and invited me to visit her on the third floor: “There’s a winter view of the ocean!” (It was December, and yes, far in the distance the edge of our continent was vaguely discernible.)
The lobby piano was surrounded by generic lobby furniture; its closed lid supported a holiday display of brilliant poinsettias, and piles of printed handouts. I found the piano’s presence both incongruous and intriguing, but when I mentioned it to Erica, she at first wanted to talk about the success of her recent operation. “They got everything!” she crowed. “No more cancer!”
“That’s wonderful!” I said.
Then abruptly, she demanded: “Did you ever see a shrink about your stage fright?”
“Um, no,” I mumbled, wanting to move off the topic. “What happens next in your treatment?” I asked brightly. “Chemo? Radiation?”
Ignoring the questions, Erica continued, “Because I have an idea.”
“Oh?”
“You should play that piano downstairs. It’s in the lobby for a reason, you know—to be a kind of mood enhancer, to calm people down.”
“It looks like a staging platform for giant poinsettias and next year’s calendars.”
There was a knock on the door.
Erica, in bed, was tethered to an IV, oximeter, and blood pressure cuff, so I answered it. A sturdy woman wearing an official volunteer jacket (turquoise with a white “Volunteer” patch on the breast pocket) stood before me, accompanied by a fat brown Labrador Retriever with a matching jacket. The jacket identified it as an “E.S.P.: Emotional Support Pet.” It was on a lead, and tail-wagged vociferously.
“I’m Muriel Murville,” boomed Muriel, “And this is Murphy! Would you like a friendly visit now?”
“Uh, one minute, please.” I half-closed the door and asked Erica if she wanted me to let them in. “Their names all start with M-U-R,” I observed. “A coincidence, do you think? Or a secret sign? Do you think they’re murderers? Or murmurers?”
Erica grinned. She pressed the electric control on the bed to move it into a more upright position. She seemed extremely chipper, considering her very recent operation. “C’mon in,” she warbled.
Muriel and Murphy entered. Muriel dropped the dog’s leash. Ignoring Erica, who waved a cellophane pack of saltines in its direction, Murphy beelined for me and rolled over for belly rubs. I noticed then she was a girl.
While performing pet massage, I listened as Erica quizzed Muriel about her volunteer service. When she and the Murphy finally left, Erica said, “You should definitely do this!”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“You should volunteer here, dodo—play the piano in the lobby!”
“What? Why?”
“This is how to conquer your stage fright. Take matters boldly into your own hands, instead of procrastinating about starting psychotherapy (although I’m sure you’d find it very helpful in so many ways).” She smiled knowingly. “Regular exposure to random people in the lobby, who will mostly ignore you—that’s what will desensitize you and diminish the anxiety.”
“Right,” I said. “Play the piano amid hordes of people entering and exiting. Play the piano next to the bank of ringing phones at the Information Desk. Play the piano while people talk, shout, push wheelchairs, eat on the go, and otherwise swirl around me. How will I even concentrate on the music?”
“Exactly!” Erica agreed. “And hopefully, after a while, you’ll be trained out of your stage fright!” I wondered, not for the first time, why Erica was so fixated on my idiotic, self-sabotaging fear of playing in public. To my knowledge, she’d never heard me perform, nor had she ever asked me anything about my musical life. When I asked Gerard if he had any idea, he said, “Maybe she sees that as the chink in your armor.”
“What?”
“You know, your vulnerability. The place where your weakness resides.”
“But why would she even care? Look, we’ve been to dinner at her house twice, but I don’t consider us friends, really. Acquaintances, yes. Potential friends, perhaps. I just don’t understand her doggedness.”
Gerard started to say something, but then he stopped, shrugged, and meandered over to his desk to inspect some paperwork. That’s what he does when he senses an unclear outcome.
Two months later, having completed a training course at the hospital and passed the background checks, I was a certified hospital volunteer.
Erica Klepper was right about everything, of course. I wonder sometimes about her know-it-all confidence. It’s certainly helped her sell real estate, because she has a knack for matching buyers to excellent properties; in fact, she’s one of the most successful agents in Rhode Island. Is she confident because history has led her to believe in the correctness of her predictions, or has her confidence in her predictions enabled their correctness? At any rate, her m.o. seems to be to tell everyone what they need and then how to satisfy that need: Buy that center-entrance colonial on a quiet, tree-lined cul-de-sac in Barrington, and you will be beyond-your-wildest-dreams happy! Despite this, she has tolerant and loyal friends. I’ve met some at her dinner parties.
So I enrolled in Erica’s vision of me as a fearless musician. I was sick and tired of stage fright and its attendant mishigas, and willing to try anything that would nuke it.
And just as Erica had predicted, my experience of playing the piano in the hospital lobby was, over time, fairly effective. My nerves were definitely subdued by the constant exposure to blatant public disregard, and when I reported this to her, she actually said, “What did I tell you?” Despite this self-aggrandizing comment, I felt hugely grateful, and after a year of fearless playing, bought her a potted rose bush. It was accompanied by a note that said, “Erica, you were right! My stage fright has subsided, thanks to your plan. I could never have done this without you. Love, Larisa.”
Before beginning my hospital gig, I’d remove whatever was on top of the piano—typically, flower arrangements, magazines, and maps of the different wings. Once, while I played a Gershwin medley, a janitor appeared with her cart of cleaning supplies and began spraying Pledge on the piano’s lid—possibly because it was available for the first time, stripped as it was of floral decorations and stacks of free handouts. This helped me to understand that music in an unusual setting could elicit unusual behaviors.
Over time, as my nervousness waned, I didn’t have to concentrate as intensely on the music and could notice people while I played. Some lingered. More often, they waved on their way to the elevator or the exit, gave me a thumbs-up, or even called out their thanks. The volunteers at the Information Desk were a loyal audience; hospital employees on their breaks came by to listen. I thought of these folks as my regulars. They chose to listen, because the songs evoked strong musical memories, or simply because they loved the tunes.
It hadn’t before occurred to me that The American Songbook, for that is mostly what I played, exerted such power. The audience confirmed this, though—the man who listened to lower his blood pressure before his cardiology appointment; the woman who said, as tears streamed down her cheeks, “I can never hear ‘Memory’ without crying”; the homeless guy who sat around on cold days, tolerantly overlooked by the staff, who, as I played, suddenly bellowed out the words to “Let it Go”:
Let it go, let it go
Can’t hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door….
But when Covid-19 hit in early 2020, only essential personnel were allowed to be at the hospital. Volunteers were told not to return until the hospital deemed it safe.
The world has been in such upheaval ever since. Every musician I know is out of work, their performances canceled, their students unable to meet them in person. Gerard, too, works from home and sees his clients and associates on Zoom. I occasionally give a Zoom lesson, but mostly spend my days practicing, reading, writing, commiserating with friends by email or phone, wondering when it will all end. I do the grocery shopping and local errands, because Gerard has underlying conditions, and I want him away from public spaces. We know how fortunate we are. We talk constantly about our gratitude—for living in a comfortable home in a beautiful city without children to care for or educate. We are grateful that our work schedules are flexible. Grateful that we’re not ill with Covid-19, and that no one we know is. Grateful that we’re safe—so far.
One day Erica called to say that despite all the closures of schools, businesses, livelihoods, her business was booming. “I sold three houses on the East Side last month,” she stated proudly. “And there was a bidding war for each one. It’s pandemic hysteria. People want to put their money into something solid, like property.”
“Sounds like you’re doing very well!” I said, wondering if my banal response sounded phony.
“Selling real estate isn’t necessarily the same as doing well,” Erica told me. “After all, look what’s going on around us.” There was a pause, then she sighed, “But in my free time, I’m learning how to make useful supplies, like hand sanitizer, from household ingredients. It makes me feel like I’m serving a cause, you know? There are a lot of instructions online. I’ll send you some recipes.”
“Oh. That’s okay—I have plenty already.”
“And what are you up to, Larisa?”
“Just missing ordinary life. And surprisingly, I hadn’t thought I’d miss the volunteer work so much,” I said.
“You could still play at the hospital,” Erica said.
“It’s now off limits to non-essential people.”
“You’re giving up too easily,” she said.
“I’m not like you,” I replied. “I can’t make the argument that my services are essential.”
“There’s a mental health aspect to what you’re doing,” she countered. “You could be deemed an essential mental health worker.”
“I doubt that would fly. And even if it did, how would I protect myself and others? By donning a Hazmat suit and surgical gloves before sitting down at the piano?” That image made me laugh out loud.
She didn’t join in. “Larisa, if I may speak frankly…your problem is that you don’t value your talent. You just don’t.”
“Really?”
“You saw how people responded to your playing at the hospital. You started out hoping that by playing in public you’d deal with your performance anxiety issue, but the experience was much more than that. It was, um… transformational. You played music, you made people happy, you solved a major problem. I’d say that was quite significant.”
I didn’t recall discussing my hospital gigs with Erica, and to my knowledge, she’d never returned to the hospital after her operation. What was her source of information?
“Muriel Murville told me,” Erica said, answering before I could even ask. “She’s my informant, so to speak. She sometimes stopped by the lobby on your gig days, which overlapped with her and Murphy’s volunteer service. She loved your playing; she loved watching how people responded when they heard you.”
“Those were the days, my friend,” I said. “We thought they’d never end—right? But the hospital has sent all volunteers packing,” I emphasized. “The world as we knew it has shut down.”
Erica was momentarily silent.
“Thanks for the pep talk,” I said. “I appreciate your support. But enough about me, okay? Tell me how you are.”
“Can’t complain,” Erica said, suddenly terse. Perhaps she suspected I was taking control of the conversation.
“I know,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s tolerable, does it? I think it’s natural to feel, at the very least, agitated, as well as powerless.”
“And what good does that do?”
“It’s not a question of what good it does or doesn’t do. And anyway, venting about it can be beneficial—to friends or even a therapist, yes?” I observed. “Better than keeping it all in by not complaining. Isn’t that what Elsa discovers in Frozen”?
Erica said, “I haven’t seen that movie. Maybe I should.”
Later that day, I prepared to leave the house. I wore my special pandemic clothes—elderly jeans and a ratty sweatshirt that I’d throw into the washing machine on my return. I worked my hands into a pair of disposable vinyl gloves. I looped on a face mask, pulled on a baseball cap, and got into my car. Before touching the start button, I checked to see that the console held a plastic bag filled with home-made disinfecting towels from a recipe Erica had provided. I’d need that for my return trip, to wipe down the steering wheel. Then I drove to Eastside Marketplace, five blocks away, to buy groceries.
It seemed ridiculous to drive a distance of only five blocks, but I needed transportation. My food shopping habits had changed since the pandemic began. I shopped as seldom as possible, buying at least two weeks of food at a clip. The size of my shopping made it easier to stay home and stay safe.
As I stood in a socially-distanced line of people waiting for admission to the supermarket, I observed customers entering and leaving Bottles, the adjacent liquor store.
It was then that I saw Pierre Klepper emerge, in cords and cashmere and N95 mask, liquor-loaded shopping bag in hand. He didn’t notice me, of course, but Pierre was easy to spot, with his round, black-framed eyeglasses, and untrimmed pandemic hair pulled into a stubby grey ponytail.
He stood at the curb and cast his gaze along the grid of parked cars, as if trying to recall where he’d left his. Then he began to wave energetically, and a white BMW pulled up beside him. In the few seconds between Pierre’s entering the car and the door shutting behind him, I saw an unmasked woman at the wheel who wasn’t Erica. She was, in fact, our mutual friend, Perri Fowler. Pierre removed his mask to bestow a mouthy kiss, Perri reciprocated, and poof! Off they went.
I wondered what Erica, know-it-all Erica, would say if she’d seen what I’d just witnessed. For some reason I imagined her calmly shrugging her shoulders and throwing me a verse of Cole Porter:
The world has gone mad today and good’s bad today
And black’s white today and day’s night today
When most guys today that women prize today
Are just silly gigolos….
“Hey!” barked the supermarket gatekeeper, annoyed that I hadn’t been attentive to him. “You can go in now!”
“Okay. Thanks.” I flashed a smile that he couldn’t see. I pulled an empty cart from the holding pen. Taking out my list and aiming for the produce department, I began searching for the things we needed to survive.
- Music for a Pandemic - June 21, 2021