I click one of the YouTube links, the description letting me know it was filmed at an international harp festival in Australia in 2004. There’s a younger version of the woman who approached me at the wedding, her hair a more natural-looking blond. She rocks forward and backward along with the harp, focused on the instrument and not the audience. Her hands are swift, her movements occasionally harsh as she hits the strings with black-painted nails.
She’s not smiling. She doesn’t look peaceful, serene, soft—none of the words I’ve always associated with the harp. And something about that makes it impossible to tear my eyes away.
In the past, I’ve gone down YouTube rabbit holes, looking for harp versions of the classical pieces couples have requested. Harp YouTube is not a place I expected to find trolls, and yet there they were. I remember one video of a woman in a heavy coat and fingerless gloves playing the harp in the snow, no skin exposed except her face and fingertips, followed by comments like try it topless and wonder what else she can do with those hands. Part of it was just trash people on the internet, but the other was the realization that a girl playing this instrument might always garner that kind of attention.
When the video ends, I watch another, one where Maxine duets with another harpist. Of course I know harps aren’t used only for weddings, that it’s not only old ladies and baby angels who play them, but I’ve never heard them sound like this, wild and feral and furious. It’s been a while since I cared enough to look.
Maybe it’s the pressure from my parents. Maybe it’s the loneliness of this weekday summer evening, my inability to grasp anything with the kind of certainty that seems to come so easily to my friends and family. Maybe it’s pure curiosity.
Whatever it is, it compels me to take a few calming breaths and make my second spontaneous call of the week, which, given I’m usually too shy to order pizza, is a real accomplishment. Somehow, I get the feeling Maxine is someone who would prefer a phone call over an email.
“Hello?” says the voice on the other end.
If you are calling someone for the first time, they should be legally obligated to make sure you have the right number by confirming who they are when they pick up.
“Hi. I’m calling for Maxine Otto?” I say, cursing the question in my voice.
“Yes?” she says, sounding impatient.
I close my eyes, let out a deep breath, consider pretending to be a telemarketer and asking if she has a few minutes for a survey about her current cable provider. “My name is Quinn Berkowitz. I, um, played the harp at a wedding you were at last weekend, and…” It sounds ridiculous to say that I googled her and loved what I heard. “You gave me your card,” I finish.
I expect her voice to change a little, but she sounds as stern as ever when she says, “I remember. It’s good to hear from you.”
“I watched a few of your videos. I’ve never seen the harp played like that before. And I saw that you build harps, and, well, I’m slightly ashamed to admit I don’t really know much about it, despite having been playing for most of my life.”
I don’t know how else to explain it: that I feel completely lost? That harp doesn’t make sense to me, not fully, but neither does anything else in my life? That the last time I felt deeply in love with something was when I talked my grandma into learning a Katy Perry cover so we could play it together, and that was six years ago? And that I’d do anything to get some of that back?
I’m surprised to hear Maxine laugh a little, like maybe that stiff exterior is softening. “Most of those are pretty old, but thank you. You’re welcome to come by the workshop. It’s usually open by appointment only. Are you available later this week, sometime in the morning?”
I check my wedding calendar. “I could do Thursday.”
“Excellent,” she says. “Come by around ten? And don’t ring the doorbell—the dogs get scared.”
“I’ll remember that. Thanks.”
And for the first time all summer, I feel something a little like optimism spark to life in my chest.
11
Maxine’s house is located near the northernmost tip of Lake Washington in a Seattle suburb with more space than any of the tightly packed homes in my neighborhood. It’s a one-story with a sprawling lawn and BEWARE OF DOG signs tacked up all along the fence.
We have two cars, the van and an ancient Honda we share, which I took today. I park in Maxine’s driveway next to an old white van not unlike our MTRMNY-mobile, relieved when my brain lets me go after locking it once. A couple years ago, during a bad OCD week, I walked back and forth from the car to the doors of a grocery store about a dozen times because I couldn’t be sure it was locked. I’d just gotten my license, and I was terrified of something bad happening to the car. I kept hitting the lock button on my key fob and the car kept honking. And yet every time I put the keys in my pocket, I worried they’d brushed the wrong way against my hand or the fabric and accidentally unlocked the car. Cue unbreakable cycle.
“Wow, you think it’s locked?” a middle-aged guy asked me as he walked by.
I have a mental illness, I wanted to yell at him, but instead I dipped my head in shame. That was the worst part of my OCD: when it made other people think I was doing something on purpose just to disrupt their lives.
I was only able to sneak out today because my parents left
