“Let’s take our embryo on its first trip to a jazz club. I think there’s an open mic thing going on this afternoon. I want to make sure our child loves jazz.”
Emily lifted up Ezra’s hand and kissed it. On one of their very first dates—the first one after they had lunch together at a deli near the School of Global Public Health—they went uptown to Cleopatra’s Needle and listened to a jazz bassist play while they drank cocktails at the bar. Emily loved that Ezra loved music. And while jazz wasn’t her top choice, she loved how relaxed he looked when he listened, how the music seemed to take over his body, change his mood. And his love of jazz made her love it when she was with him—she hoped their baby would, too.
“Let’s go, then,” Emily said.
It was September, and there was a soft breath of fall in the air.
“I love September in Manhattan,” Ezra replied.
They took the subway up to 86th Street and walked along the west side of Central Park. The trees were just starting to turn golden, and it seemed like the whole city was out enjoying the day. Even taxicabs seemed to honk with good humor instead of anger. The sky felt bluer, the sun brighter than before. Soon they could hear guitar music floating through the trees.
“It’s Saturday!” Emily said. “That Guitar Man is playing!”
Ezra looked at her. “Forget the jazz club?” he asked.
“Forget the jazz club,” she echoed. She loved listening to That Guitar Man, even though it sometimes made her melancholy, sometimes made her think about the life she could have led, the shows she could have played, the people she could have touched with her music. But it also reminded her of falling in love with Ezra. On one of their early dates, the two of them had been walking through Central Park when they discovered a hill full of people listening to a man playing the guitar, singing and dancing with him. They’d joined the group, and Ezra had asked a man leaning against a tree what was going on.
“He’s That Guitar Man from Central Park,” the man said. “Comes every Saturday from May until around October, as long as it’s not raining. The New York Times wrote him up and everything. They called him ‘the most famous person in New York that nobody knows.’”
Then the guitar man started playing a song called “Tom Cruise Scares Me,” and Ezra and Emily were hooked. They spent the rest of the afternoon with the people on the hill, listening and dancing and eating soft pretzels and ice cream from a vendor who was parked close by.
“This is delicious,” Emily had said, dipping a piece of her pretzel in mustard.
“You’re delicious,” Ezra had countered.
“This day is delicious,” Emily added.
They were happy and falling in love—with each other, with the music, and with the world. And they carried that feeling of happiness with them through the years that followed, protecting it, nurturing it, and letting it blossom, trying to blot out the darkness.
vi
Until I met your father, the last time I’d played music for an audience was in a piano recital the year I was fourteen. I played Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” I flubbed the fingering once, and cringed internally, but no one seemed to notice but me. All the parents and other kids were transfixed, and then broke into cheers and applause when the last note rang out. My parents handed me a bouquet of flowers and took me out for dessert afterward. I remember how filled with happiness I felt—music did that to me, playing the piano did that to me, the audience’s reaction to my song did that to me. I would’ve kept working with my teacher, but my mom—your grandmother—got sicker. And any after-school activities that weren’t school-sponsored weren’t allowed anymore. It was just too difficult for her and my dad. So I stopped my lessons, even though my teacher told me it broke her heart. I kept singing—in the school choir—and I still played at home for my mom, but it wasn’t the same. And then she died the summer before my senior year of high school. After that, I stopped playing completely.
Your father gave music back to me, and it was like it had been waiting, dormant inside me, for something—or someone—to bring it to life. Like a garden, seemingly dead all winter only to bloom, like magic, in the spring. After we’d dated for half a year, after we’d made music together all summer, he asked me to perform with him. It was at a bar downtown, playing some rock-’n’-roll covers. He was on guitar. His roommate was going to play drums. A friend of theirs was on bass. But he needed someone to play keys. Even if I hadn’t wanted to, I would’ve done it for him, but I did want to. The music that he’d awakened inside me made me feel more alive, more real, more grounded than anything else had since your grandmother died. My feelings came out through my fingers—and with your dad, I was able to channel those feelings, not let them take over. When I played I felt like more than me, like I was part of something larger. And so I spent the first two weeks of the fall semester practicing whenever I wasn’t in class.