After I listen to Grampa’s message, my mind does not want to obey me, so I point it toward the green hills and the warmth of West Virginia. Thinking of home always calms me down.
And the first thing I picture is my two little sisters and my two big brothers. And my dad. And my mom.
Mama always says I am the brave one.
I can see her face on the day I tell her I want to go study music in New York. Mama could never imagine leaving her home. When she and Daddy got married, he moved south so she could stay put, close to where she was born and raised. And when I tell her I want to go and live with Grampa, she is mystified, but not surprised. I am the brave one.
For me, leaving West Virginia didn’t feel brave. More like necessary. But it wasn’t like I left all at once. I left molecule by molecule over a period of four or five years. Because when I started junior high school, I liked Nickel Creek and the Charlie Daniels Band and the fiddle playing of Alison Krauss as much as the next kid. But then I discovered Bach and Mozart and the rest of the gang, and classical music began pulling me away from the mountains, away from the deep woods and the rushing streams, and finally away from my family and friends in West Virginia. I started out liking the fiddle, but I fell in love with the violin.
And I can thank Mr. Richards for that, the music teacher at my junior high. He let me borrow some of his CDs, artists like Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell, and then Midori. And after four or five lessons with him, he convinced my folks I had some real talent. And then Mr. Richards helped me find a violin teacher in Charleston, and I was well and truly on my way. Away from West Virginia.
So by the time Grampa offered me free room and board in New York, the change was almost complete. I had to follow my new music. Mama understood, and so did Daddy. They didn’t want to see me go, but they understood.
Still, it wasn’t bravery that pushed me north. It was more like a survival instinct. The move was inescapable, but the journey wasn’t without fear.
Even though it happened almost two years ago, the feelings are still with me. On that early August morning when I take my seat in the bus and turn to wave good-bye to my family, I think, This must be the hard part. Then five hours later the bus goes across the state line up into Pennsylvania, and I think, No, this is the hard part.
I sleep and I wake just as the bus dives like a whale into the Lincoln Tunnel, and then it plunges up and out into the gray air of the city. The harpooned bus spins around and around and comes to a gasping stop on the floor of the Port Authority terminal. I climb out, Jonah with a suitcase and a cheap violin, and I glide down four escalators to the street, and I climb into a yellow taxi, and I zoom sixty blocks north through New York City—and I think, This has to be the hard part.
And then a week later I go to my first day of classes at Latham Academy of the Performing Arts, and all the kids look at me and smile at my Charleston accent, and then I have to stand up and play a solo for our orchestra conductor, and I think, No, this must be the hard part.
And it was hard, because I hate soloing. The only good thing is that once the other kids heard me play, no one cared how I talked anymore.
All that is past, a year ago last September.
And here I am still sitting at Grampa’s desk. On Thursday. Today.
I guess my mom is right. I don’t frighten easily. But as the answering machine whines and rewinds, at this moment I do hope and pray that I have finally come to the hard part. And, of course, I’m pretty sure I haven’t.
Grampa and I don’t talk much, but over the past year and a half we’ve gotten used to each other. He has his routines, and I have mine. I know he likes having me around. He doesn’t say that out loud, but he’s been so kind, mostly little things, but some big ones too.
Like the practice room. That was huge. I’d been here two weeks, and one morning he says, “There’s a carpenter coming over to fix up a room in the basement for you.” Grampa said he didn’t want to have to hear me playing all the time. And there was probably some truth to that. But it was more. It was a gift. He didn’t want me staying late at Latham, or wasting time walking back and forth to the practice rooms at Manhattan School of Music. He wanted me to have a safe, quiet place to work. And he made sure the carpenter got everything just right. A gift.
I have always felt Grampa’s presence in the next room, or down the hallway, or up a flight of stairs. We both like being alone, but we enjoy being alone together, the way toddlers like to sit side by side while they play in their own worlds. Sometimes I sit next to him and we watch Wheel of Fortune. Once he asked me to read a chapter of Lord Jim out loud. And two or three nights a week we have our bedtime snacks together. Simple moments. And already I miss that.
Sitting here in his worn leather desk chair on this Thursday night, I’m trying to understand what Grampa has asked me to do. He wants me to pretend he’s still here. When we go on vacation, my dad hooks up timers to the lights. They turn on and then off, and the house looks lived-in.
And Grampa wants me to do that same thing here, now. Because of Uncle Hank and this valuable building? That makes sense. I think I understand that part.
And it occurs to me that my grandfather might be asking me to break the law. Because the law has a different word for pretending: fraud. And I have been to church enough to know what fraud is called in the Bible: bearing false witness. Lawrence Page, my grandfather, is asking me to lie for him.
If it were anyone else, I wouldn’t even consider it.
I can hear the gold wind-up clock ticking on the mantel. It feels too quiet for this time of night, so I walk into the parlor and turn on Grampa’s TV.
CNN. That’s his channel. The news is bad, but the sound of it is good. If any of the people who live upstairs walk past the hallway door, it will sound like Lawrence the landlord is sitting in his easy chair, just like always.
And so I tell my first lie. For Grampa.
My cocoa and lemon cake have worn off. I go to the kitchen and fix myself a cheese omelette and then sit at the small dining table and eat. Omelette, toast, orange juice, milk, alone.
Alone is not a problem for me. I couldn’t count the hours I have spent alone. Alone in the woods. Alone in my room. Alone in the library. Alone in a book. Alone in my music. I’m comfortable alone.
Because being a classical musician isn’t like sitting on the front porch playing the fiddle with a bunch of friends. It’s more like a long hike on a lonely road. It’s ninety-five percent solitary practice time, two percent instruction time, two percent rehearsal time, and one percent performance. Nothing is improvised, and if you’re not a perfectionist, and if you don’t like being on your own a lot, then you need to go and find yourself another road.
And with such an intense schedule, there aren’t a lot of opportunities for making friends. Or for meeting boys. There’s just no time for that. At least not so far. Not for me. But maybe I’m only making excuses for not trying harder.
Because I notice guys, and I’ve been known to smile at one now and then. I mean, I don’t want to be on my own forever. Or living with my grampa for the rest of my life—not that there’s any risk of that.
But that thought brings back my worries, and I have to push away the fears about Grampa.
And then I try to remember what I ought to do next, right now, tonight.
With Grampa having trouble, it feels selfish to think about me, but I can’t help it. I can’t ignore what’s going to happen in five days. I am crashing toward the end of my senior year in high school, and this coming Tuesday I have an audition at the Juilliard School, and then the next afternoon an audition at Manhattan School of Music, and then two days later I have to be at the New England Conservatory in Boston. There are other auditions in mid-March, but Juilliard, Manhattan, New England—those are my big three, and they are soon.
The faculty members at these auditions won’t want to hear me gush about how I’ve loved music since I was a little girl in the hills of West Virginia. They won’t want me
to tell them how I felt the first time I listened to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, or how I wake up with melodies running through my head, and how thrilling it is to let the sounds in my mind rush across my fingertips and spray into the air that surrounds my violin. They won’t want me to talk at all. They only want to hear me play.
I have practiced my violin thousands and thousands of hours during the past ten years, and now my musical future depends on how well I play during those three auditions, twenty minutes each.
And suddenly, this new complication. More pressure is not what I need.
But it’s Thursday night, and I force myself to stay positive. I tell myself that with Grampa away, things might actually be easier. Because who’s been doing all the shopping and a lot of the cooking for the past six months? And who gets herself up and off to school every day? And who sets her own schedule, and puts herself to bed each night? Does anyone wait up if I’m out late at the Philharmonic or when I go get food with my friends after rehearsals?
Grampa hasn’t been taking care of me. More like the other way around, when he lets me. I have been mostly on my own in this city for a long time. And I’ve been worried about Grampa for a long time too. I’ll come in late from a rehearsal, and he’ll be under his fleece in that big recliner in front of the TV, looking so small and old. And I’ll be afraid to shake him, afraid that he won’t wake up.
A knock, and I jump from my chair.
A voice from the hall. “You there, Lawrence? It’s me, Jason.”
I can’t move.
A second knock. “Lawrence?”
It’s the tenant from the studio apartment at the back of the house on the fourth floor. I walk across the parlor, turn the deadbolt, and open the door six inches.
“Hi, Jason. Grampa’s in the bathroom. Can I give him a message?”
Lying shouldn’t feel this easy.
Jason’s about thirty. Short dark hair, brown eyes, stocky build, white T-shirt and jeans. He’s been eating garlic.
“Yeah, sure, Gwennie. Just tell him that the ceiling leak I told him about earlier? It stopped. Maybe iced up or something. But it’ll be back. So he needs to get a roofer over here. That’s all. And tell him I mailed that envelope for him.” A pause, a big smile, then, “So, how’s the music business? Your grampa’s so proud—tells me about you all the time. He says you’ve got auditions coming up, right?”
I smile back. “Next week.”
“Good luck, okay?”
“Thanks.”
Jason turns and heads for the stairs, and I shut and lock the door. And I’m a little surprised. Because Grampa doesn’t seem like he’s that proud of me. Or even paying much attention. Of course, it could be me. Maybe I’m the one who’s not noticing things.
A leak. That means a repairman. And I have to be here to let him in so he can get up to the roof through the metal lid at the end of the fourth-floor hall. And I have to check over the work he does. And I have to pay him. All without Grampa. And without letting on that Grampa isn’t here.
But it’s Thursday evening, and I force myself to stop thinking about this, about any of it.
I walk downstairs. I go to the ground floor door, turning on lights as I go. I pick up my violin case. The roof has a leak, and I need to deal with that. And Grampa’s gone, and I need to deal with that. But more than anything else, I need to practice the Paganini Caprice in B Minor, number 2. And then caprice number 17 too, and then all the rest of my pieces. I don’t just need to get into a good school. No, I need to audition so well that people will want to give me a scholarship, pay me to come to their school. Free room and board here with Grampa has been a godsend, but I know it’s temporary, same as my scholarship at Latham. If I want to keep going forward, I need to make my own way.
I walk down more stairs to the basement, open the door to my rehearsal room, flip the light switch, and shut myself in.
I unzip the case and take out my violin. It’s not actually mine. My own violin is in my bedroom closet. I’ve been told it would make good kindling. This violin in my hands is on loan from the school, “provided to a promising student”—which means loaned to a kid whose parents can’t spend twenty or thirty thousand dollars for a good instrument.
With the right care, a violin will live forever. And if a violin gets dropped or comes unglued, a specialist will resurrect it. This one was made in Italy in 1883. Dozens of other musicians have used this violin, and a lot of them are dead and gone. Someone else will be playing this violin long after I have died. It doesn’t matter that I don’t own it, because I’m just the player of the moment. I borrow everything. Violin, music, air, water, time, this practice room—everything’s on loan. And I have to prove that I deserve it.
I lay the violin on the stool and get out the bow, also very expensive, and also borrowed. I tighten the nut and rub the horsehair across the rosin a few times. Then I lay my mother’s white silk handkerchief on the chin rest, raise the violin to my shoulder, take a deep breath, and begin.
When I have to play a solo piece like this caprice, sometimes it helps if I imagine a scene. Because I don’t like standing up in front of people and playing alone. I’ve never wanted to be a soloist. I guess it’s the same shyness I’ve had since kindergarten. That’s why I love the orchestra. I want to be nestled there among the first violins, rows and rows of us, and there’s me, almost invisible in my black concert dress. I want to play my part perfectly, but I don’t want to be seen.
So as I play caprice number 2, I imagine that I’m a serving maid, and I have to carry a silver tray loaded with fine china from the kitchen all the way up a marble staircase to the sitting room of a fussy old woman. Up and up the stairs I hurry on tiny feet, but careful, because one false step will send me and the tray crashing down the steps. And then there’s a call from below—someone forgot the marmalade. And I turn quickly and balance the clinking china all the way back down. And then halfway up a second time, a damask napkin flutters off the tray, and I have to turn around again.
Up and down, up and down I go, each note a footstep, until finally, every obstacle is overcome, and with a flourish I sweep through the doorway of my lady’s room—and luncheon is served.
This caprice is killing me. More precisely, I am killing this caprice. And that’s sad. I know it’s such beautiful music, fluid and elegant, and I know I’m not doing it justice. Which is what my teacher demands. He’s Russian, very dramatic. He’d make a good Jane Austen character.
At yesterday’s lesson Pyotr Melyanovich said, “The composer begs you to keep him alive. When you play his capriccio, he stands behind you, listening. If your playing is weak, the composer weeps. He mourns for himself. If you cannot play his music, Paganini will die.”
Praise from my teacher is like water in the Sahara. One rare day I played well, and he said, “You have the gift, little one—the heart and the soul.” A sip of praise. It keeps me trudging forward on this Thursday night, with thousands of notes lit up in my mind, tiny stars in a desert sky.
This caprice is less than three minutes long. My practice rule is simple: Play the whole piece from beginning to end; at any mistake, start over. At the end of an hour I have played it through completely only twice.
My fingers and my bow have to dance with perfect grace across the same four strings. One false step and I’ve ruined the intonation, botched the rhythm, destroyed the dynamics, choked the flow. And for my auditions, I have to play every note from memory.
I have two more lessons before my first audition. And that’s good. This West Virginia girl needs all the help she can get.
The second hour on the other caprice is better. Paganini is still on life support, but he’s breathing. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll be able to sit up and take some nourishment through a straw. Then I spend an hour on my Bach partita, and then I run through the first movement of the Sibelius concerto.
And then it’s time for food and rest. I’m an athlete, and this is my training camp.
Walking up to the fi
rst floor, the house feels too still. I can still hear CNN, but I know it’s only noise. And when I turn off the TV, the silence is complete. There’s no traffic on 109th Street, and even if there were, the brick walls are eighteen inches thick, and all the windows are triple-glazed. The upstairs tenants are quiet. I wish I could hear Grampa snoring through his bedroom door.
“Is the perimeter secure?” That’s what Grampa asks me every night. It’s from his years in the army. And after I check all the doors and windows, I report back, “Perimeter secure, sir.” And then he salutes me. Every night. Until now.
So after I’ve locked up, I toast some raisin bread and drink a glass of milk. When Grampa joins me for an evening snack, he likes his milk warmed up. And he has a cookie or two, never toast.
Cooking just for myself is going to be simpler. So I guess that’s one good thing.
When I go into the study to turn off the desk lamp, I see the stack of mail from this afternoon. And I remember: I have a letter from home.
I carry it downstairs to my bedroom and lay it on my pillow. When I’m ready, I climb into bed, open the letter, lie down on my side, and begin to read.
February 8
Dear Gwendolyn,
It was good to talk to you last Sunday. I saw George Robbins, and he said he’d had an e-mail from you. I keep asking for a computer of my own, but your father says we don’t need one at home since he’s already got one at work. A lot of good that does when your sisters need to type their schoolwork. Half the time when you send us a message, your dad forgets to tell me, and then I have to remind him three times to print it and bring it home. And I have to say, an e-mail isn’t near as nice as a real letter in the mailbox.
We’re all fine here. Except James isn’t liking his job at the garage. Boys shouldn’t try to work for their dads, if you ask me—which nobody ever does. I have told James a dozen times that I would help him with college costs, and I think he might be starting to listen to me. And it’s about time.
Harlan’s steady as a rock. He’s just started working for a big insurance company in Charlotte, and he says he likes it. He doesn’t get home as often as I’d like, but you know me. If I had my way we’d just keep making this house bigger, and you could all live here with me forever.