The Conductress

The Conductress

There is a small unfinished bathroom toward the back of Dolores's apartment, where she goes to remember.

Inside the room, which is no larger than an airport telephone booth, sits a shower. The toilet and sink had never been added as she and her husband, years earlier, had intended.

This morning, Dolores accesses the room by sliding one edge of the heavy piano away from the wall. She unlocks the padlock and slips it from its hasp. Then, after rolling her shoulders forward and pressing her arms close against her sides, Dolores squeezes into the room through the tiny door she'd pulled open.

Inside, she reaches up and tugs the dangling chain. Faint light pours from the bare bulb, and Dolores closes the door, shutting out the painful world in which she lives alone.

She sheds her house dress and shoves aside the molded shower curtain. After carefully steps over the tub's raised edge, she positions herself directly underneath the shower head.

She turns the spicket, and water falls over her like a warm rain.

Rising with the steam are the members of the orchestra. They sit straight-backed on folding metal chairs, crowding the tub, dressed in long black gowns and crisp black suits that are already drenching from the swirling steam and spritzing water.

Dolores squeezes her eyes shut and raises her baton.

The music begins with a single violinist who, while furrowing her brow, gently passes her bow over the strings. The lamenting voice of the instrument distorts the tiles that cover three of the four walls rising up out of porcelain tub. The violin's weep resurrects the faded goldfish that pattern the plastic shower curtain.

Dolores's eyes opens. She nods and the rest of the strings come to life.

The strings from the cellos, violas, double bass, and all the remaining violins stretch and vibrate together. At the moment Dolores raises a single finger, a dozen bows slide in a single motion over taut strings.

Now, with three fingers in the air, a young woman with long blonde hair leans forward in her seat and begins to pluck the strings of her harp, releasing the highest, saddest notes .

Palm outward. Hand repeatedly opening, then closing. The gesture slowing until the music that fills the bathtub grows softer and softer.

She nods again. A steady beat erupts from the percussion instruments. With her eyes shut, Dolores smiles as she identifies by memory the instrument creating each individual sound: the timpani, the snare drum, the cymbals, the triangle and even the xylophone. She counts beats, nodding slightly each time the calfskins are struck, listening with joy to the steady, haunting bad-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.

The water continues to spray over the musicians of Dolores's symphony orchestra. With the fingers of her left hand balled into a fist, she moves the baton in her right from side to side. The beat continues. The strings join in. Complete, unselfish unison to create a slow, mournful tempo, which when mounting brings grave expressions on the faces of the musicians.

Three fingers up and the brass section comes alive!

The speeded, jazzed-up tempo of trumpets and saxophones. Fire. Energy. Spirit. Fast. Steady. Lively..

Then . . . Dolores opens her hand, palm out, instructing every instrument in the tub except for the french horn to fall silent. And when the French horn groans its solo, all the musicians lower their heads.

The music grows fainter, fainter, fainter. Dolores begins to weep. But she cannot allow herself to be selfish. She snaps her baton and the silence is shattered by the cry of a single oboe. Soon joined by a clarinet. Then the flutes.

Again Dolores opens her hand. The percussion instruments beat slowly. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. The first violinist runs her bow over the taut strings.

One final burst from every instrument in the bathtub.

Then . . . slower, slower, gentler, gentler, fainter, fainter . . . until finally the music fades completely.

Dolores holds her baton low in front of her nude body as she steps out of the shower. She puts her house dress back on, turns the light off and exits through the same tiny door she used to enter.

In the dark unfinished bathroom, while the piano is being pushed back into place, the members of orchestra sit quietly with their instruments held in their laps or in front of them.

They wait for the scraping of piano legs against the wooden floor. They wait for the light to shine over them once again. And they wait for their conductress, Dolores, to stand before them and prompt them to play.