An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell

Just itself? That’s masturbation.” Petra says the word too loudly, and a nearby couple look over their shoulders, the woman shifting them away.
    “Let the rock stars protest war,” Suzanne says. “People actually listen to them anyway.”
    Petra looks straight at her and pauses before she says, “You’re such an elitist.”
    “If you’re mad at Ben, Petra, then argue with him. But, sure, I agree with him on this. We live in a culture that doesn’t value what we do. To meet it halfway is to give up. If holding up the best music ever written as a great human accomplishment makes me an elitist, then I am a snob, a monk in the tower protecting the books from barbarians.”
    “You’re self-absorbed, that’s what you are,” Petra says. “When’s the last time you thought about the war or even anybody else?”
    Suzanne’s anger expands and then fast shrinks back into the small, dull pain of feeling alone in the world. It’s what you are left with when the person in the world who best knows you dies, something that has now happened to Suzanne twice. Next, she thinks, she’ll lose Petra and then Ben. Being without them would make her even more alone than she is when she is with them.
    Anthony’s wife strolls toward their group carrying two small plates and forks. Jennifer wears thin gold jewelry that seems too delicate for her sturdy frame. She holds a law degree that she’s never used, and her family’s money is no longer looked down on as new money—it’s been three generations, and even in Princeton people no longer care very much where money is from so long as it is plentiful and tastefully spent. That the money is spread thinner now is a more serious problem and the reason the quartet is always under pressure to become more reliably profitable.
    Though Jennifer dictates to Anthony most of his life, from where he dines to what brand of shirt he wears, in front of the others she waits on him as though she is a well-dressed servant. She hands him a plate holding cake with sliced strawberries and asks if she can bring him coffee. He stands to give her his chair.
    Watching the children play, Jennifer explains her child-rearing notions as though they are all gravely interested—as though Daniel and Suzanne are parents and Petra is a by-the-book mother instead of who she is. Jennifer tells them she has plans to market her ideas in the form of a chart she’s designed to track her own children’s behavioral progress and quantify their rewards and punishments.
    “It’s like a game for them,” she says. “Each child is a different color of cat, and the chart looks like a board game except it’s vertical and magnetic so you can put it on the refrigerator. Very colorful. Their pieces get sent back spaces for particular offenses—like three spaces for whining—and they also receive surprises along the way, such as a trip to Thomas Sweet for a day without sibling rivalry.”
    Suzanne pictures her life on the board, her childhood ambitions punished with poverty, her adultery with pain, her need to fit in with shunning. Her cat would fall backward right off the chart.
    Anthony, who may or may not approve of his wife’s meting out of childhood’s pleasures, smiles. “Jennifer’s research suggests there’s a national market for this kind of thing.”
    Petra leans over, tipping her low-slung lawn chair to a dangerous angle. “Great,” she breathes into Suzanne’s ear. “Now children in all fifty states can hate her.” She rights herself, pushing off the grass with her hand.
    Suzanne smiles, relieved to have her best friend back on her side, if only because they now face a common enemy.
    “I don’t understand.” Jennifer points to the rather flat piece of layer cake she’s just taken a bite from. “The recipe was three pages long, describing every test the kitchen made. I followed it exactly. I even beat the eggs and sugar over simmering water until the mixture reached exactly 110 degrees. I have a