And maybe Tarek, too, who’s taken to texting me things like, good morning, friend! and you working this weekend, pal? The first time, it was sweet. After that, though… It’s hard to explain. I want to be friends. I really do. But I can’t shake the feeling that he’s overcompensating for our shaky start this summer. It’s jarring, this emphasis on our new friendship. Hopefully I’ll gain some clarity at this weekend’s wedding.
With a healthy amount of trepidation, I lift my hand to the door and knock as quietly as I can. It doesn’t matter—the chorus of barking starts up right away. There’s so much barking that I can’t tell how many dogs I should beware.
I’m debating turning around and running for my life when the door opens, revealing Maxine in a worn pair of jeans, her white-blond hair tucked back with a headband. I regret my clothing choice: my wedding planner black slacks and shirt. I’d wanted to look more professional. Older, even. The opposite of what I usually want on my days off.
I’m expecting German shepherds the size of horses, huskies built like polar bears. Instead, there’s a tiny corgi army held back by a gate, five of them yapping away. It’s clear now that the barks belonged to small dogs; they’re just so loud. I’m too used to Edith, whose sole act of aggression is a lazy swipe of her paw if you scratch the one-inch area on her belly she doesn’t like.
“Sorry about them,” she says, tossing a treat over the gate, where they descend on it like furry piranhas. “They’re good dogs. They just get a little overexcited.”
“With those signs, I thought…”
“My daughter gave them to me a while back. She thought it would be hilarious.”
Maxine’s aesthetic seems to be corgis and woodworking. There are a few harps in her living room, along with a wall of guitars in various sizes. I scour the walls for family photos, deeply curious about this woman. There are a couple with a boy and a girl in graduation gowns, a handful of dog photos. It’s probably because I’m in the wedding business that I look for a ring on Maxine’s hand and don’t see one, which of course could mean any number of things, not least of which that she simply doesn’t like rings.
She closes the door behind me, and the barking finally starts to subside. “I’m glad you could make it. Hopefully you didn’t have any trouble finding the place?” She’s warmer here than she was at the wedding or on the phone.
I shake my head. “Thanks for having me. Should I, um, take off my shoes, or keep them on or…?” The awkwardness, it is strong today.
“You’ll want to keep them on. Let’s go out to the workshop.”
She unlatches the gate for her dogs, and they paw at my legs before following her through the kitchen and outside. The workshop is a separate building out back, a brightly lit space filled with machinery, the walls lined with chisels and saws I can’t begin to guess the names of and some half-finished projects on a counter in the middle. And that earthy scent of wood, a scent I realize I like quite a bit.
“This is—wow.” I take a few uncertain steps forward. I’m worried about accidentally stepping somewhere I shouldn’t, but the dogs don’t have the same concern, chasing each other around the workshop like they’ve done this a hundred times before. One of the corgis, a black-and-white one, plops down near a stool and starts grooming. “All of this is for building harps?”
She nods and grins at me, her first one. “I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years, so some of the machines are newer than others. I imagine it looks like a lot, but there aren’t very many of us in this business. Fewer than thirty in the United States, and not all of them are consistently turning out instruments.”
“How long does it take to make one?”
“For me? About two and a half months. I used to be faster, but I’ve been… working on my own for a while.” There’s an odd pause there, one I can’t interpret. “I have multiple harps in progress at a time, and I can make around thirty-five in a year.”
Two and a half months. I knew it was an intricate instrument, but it’s been a while since I thought about the artistry and craftsmanship behind it.
Maxine tells me she has her own production method that speeds up the process, a set of patterns that standardizes each piece she makes. Then she runs through the equipment in the workshop: the various saws and sanders, a shaper, a joiner. In the back of the shop there’s a spray booth, where the harps are lacquered.
She strings and tunes them in a studio back in her house, where she takes me next. A row of harps in different colors, some of them fully stringed and some still waiting. Cherrywood, mahogany, koa. One of them with a mother-of-pearl inlay on the front of the pillar, the longest column that’s farthest from you when you’re playing. All of them bear a tiny silver plaque with what must be Maxine’s logo, a trio of leaves with the letters ECH.
“They’re gorgeous,” I say, stating the obvious. “I’d practice every day if I had something like this.”
“That’s what some people think. If I just had this expensive instrument, I’d become a virtuoso. I’ve seen too many people buy pricey harps for children, or for themselves when they’re just starting out. It isn’t my business to tell them it’s a bad idea, necessarily, but I do try to steer them toward
