16
Maxine wasn’t wrong—it’s a lot of sanding.
It’s my third time here since our first meeting, and I’m in one corner of her workshop, the sound box of a harp-to-be on the downdraft table in front of me. Heavy-duty earmuffs are clamped around my ears as I operate the handheld optical sander, the table sucking up the sawdust. The corgi club is just outside the workshop door, away from the loud noises.
Already, I know more about wood than I ever thought I would. Maxine uses a variety: walnut, cherry, mahogany, koa, bubinga, spruce.
“The harp is essentially three main pieces,” she said last time, showing me each one. “The neck, which is the curved top piece. Then there’s the pillar, which is the front piece, and the sound box, which includes the soundboard and the string rib.”
“And what about this?” I asked, pointing to the back of the sound box.
She smirked. “We just call that the back.”
The wood has to be exceptionally smooth before Maxine applies the finish, which means hours and hours of sanding. About four hours for each sound box.
And I like it, completely losing myself in the task like this. Sometimes my mind wanders to places where I can’t quite catch it, but other times I can turn off the noise—literally, with the earmuffs—and simply be.
I’ve never spent much time around adults who aren’t my parents or teachers. Our vendors mainly work with my parents, and even then, we’re working together. Collaborating. Here I am very clearly a student, and yet Maxine doesn’t treat me like a child. There’s a middle ground, I realize, between the way my parents treat me and a way I’d hate to be talked down to.
That middle ground is Maxine Otto and Emerald City Harps.
After another hour, I switch off the optical sander and head into the studio. This is our trade-off: I sand, and then I get to play around on my favorite cherrywood harp after I finish tuning.
I’m working on the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” which is full of lever changes. It’s very obvious when the lever isn’t right, especially with a song you know well, which makes this a good one to practice. You hear a natural instead of a sharp, and it’s immediately jarring. If one of my levers is wrong, I back up a couple measures, determined to recapture that fluidity I love about harp music.
“Try crossing under with your second finger there instead,” Maxine says next to me, pointing. The dogs react differently to music, I’ve learned. A couple of them curl up at the bottom of the harp to feel the vibrations, though one of them, Gregor, whose tawny fur is flecked with the white of old age, whines a bit before eventually settling down. Maxine told me he doesn’t like anything in a minor key. “Otherwise you’re not going to be able to get to this string with your thumb. It’s all about the fingering.”
I try and fail to hold in a snicker, and she shakes her head. “Sorry. I’m basically twelve.”
The piece is still more staccato than I’d like, my movements a little staggered as I flip the levers. It’s a new kind of choreography for my hands, and it feels… powerful. Like I didn’t know my hands were capable of this, and now there’s a whole new skill set quite literally at my fingertips. Sure, I could have searched for this kind of music, but I wouldn’t have known anything about lever harps. I wouldn’t have been able to see their versatility for myself. Watching the instrument turn from nothing into something—it’s hard not to be inspired. I didn’t know playing the harp could be angry, rough, complicated. What I’m realizing is that it can be so many different things.
Before I launch back into the song, my phone buzzes. “Sorry,” I say, reaching into my pocket to switch it to do-not-disturb mode. A text from Asher, but I’m not in the mood to answer it. Not when I’m in my new safe space. “My sister. We, um, work together.”
“Right, the family business,” Maxine says, and there’s a flatness in her tone I can’t interpret. “My daughter, Josie, used to help out in here. Even when she was little, she could never stop fidgeting. She was always tapping her fingers on something or bouncing her legs, and I was so convinced she was going to become a musician.”
It’s unusual for Maxine to share so much about herself, and I revel in it. “I take it she didn’t?”
Maxine smiles, but it’s not entirely a sad one. “She could have been really great. She played harp until she finished high school, and she helped in the shop until she finished college, and then she was off on her own path. Graphic design. Of course I wanted her to do what she wanted, but I can’t say I wasn’t a little disappointed. And Josie was always going to do what she wanted.”
“Does she live here?”
“Chicago. She and her wife eloped a couple years back. You have no idea how relieved I was. Her father, though…” She shakes her head. “He was livid. Or he just wanted to go to Hawaii—who knows. I gave up trying to figure out what was going on in his head a long time ago.” When I’m silent for a moment, she supplies, “Divorced. Fifteen years ago.”
“Oh, I’m—” I’m sorry is what I was going to say, but what am I really sorry about? Sorry she isn’t married? Sorry something she may have thought was supposed to last didn’t?
Fortunately, Maxine continues, saving me from stuttering out an end to that sentence. “I love living on my own. I had the experience of being married, and I never felt like myself, to be honest. And now… now I can do everything I want. I don’t think being married was for me. Being partnered up in that way… wasn’t for me. I couldn’t even begin to tell you
