“Yeah. It’s always been my favorite. I wish I’d performed it more.”
“Why don’t you perform it next time?”
“Naw. People want to hear more flashy concertos.”
Across the street, the steel and glass of the Community Arts Center in Charlotte was the envy of North Carolina for its state-of-the-art performance theater and its multiple practice spaces. Ray had spearheaded its creation three years ago and still loved looking at it.
“Who cares what they want,” she said. “It’s what you want, remember?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I remember. I play because I love it.”
“That’s right.”
“Funny, it seems like a million years later and you’re still telling me what I already know.”
“No, just a gentle reminder.”
Half a block away, a boy was dragging his mother by the hand. Their voices echoed up to him, ghostly in the afternoon light. “Hurry up,” he was telling her. “I need to practice before my lesson.”
Ray smiled at them both, but neither noticed him.
“Remind you of anyone?” Janice shifted on the bench.
“No, not at all. I was much taller when I was his age.”
“True. And I think he’s more dedicated,” she said.
“I keep meaning to tell you something and it always slips my mind. I wonder why that happens?”
“Old age,” she said. “First the memory goes, then the bladder, and then it’s all downhill.”
“You made this all possible.” Ray reached out to the maple tree, to the afternoon sun slanting down, to the building glowing with promise, to the kid and his mom nearly on top of them. “Your belief in me.”
“I just encouraged what was already there,” she said. “I could tell from the first time I saw you with that school rental how in love with music you were. Despite nobody being there to help. It was inside you. Now you can give it to others. Courage and hope.”
“You did. You gave it to me. What a gift.”
“Music’s the gift. Caring’s the gift. And you give it to others now. There are a lot of ways apart from a concert hall to make a difference in someone’s life.”
As the kid and his mom approached, the little boy broke away and sat down beside Ray. “Mr. Mac,” he said, looking up. “I can play the whole sonata now! I practiced every day. Didn’t I, Mom?”
“He did,” she said, walking over to them. “DeMarcus never missed a day. I don’t know what you told him, but it worked.”
“That’s fantastic. Why don’t we go in a few minutes early so you can show me what you can do?”
“Yes, sir!”
Ray, DeMarcus, and his mom crossed the street together. As Ray held the door for them, he looked back at the sunlight pouring like music over an empty park bench.
“Hey. Thanks, Janice.”
Author’s Note
Music is for everyone. It’s not—or at least shouldn’t be—an elitist, aristocratic club that you need a membership card to appreciate: it’s a language, it’s a means of connecting us that is beyond color, beyond race, beyond the shape of your face or the size of your stock portfolio.
Musicians of color, however, are severely underrepresented in the classical music world—and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to write this book. Look up the statistics: 1.8 percent of musicians performing in classical symphonies are Black; 12 percent are people of color. But for me, day to day, performance by performance, it wasn’t about being a statistic: it was about trying to live my life and play the music that I loved, and often being stymied for reasons that seem, even now, incomprehensible. Many of the events in this novel—the wedding scene, the Baton Rouge shakedown, the auditions—come from my own life experiences. Having someone look at you with hatred just because your skin is a different shade from theirs is a devastating feeling that I’d never wish upon anyone. When I share these stories with friends who don’t look like me, I get the same reaction: “Things like that don’t happen. It’s not really like that.” They do. It is.
In order to make sense of this chaotic and often perplexing world, we get caught up in trying to shove people into categories. Who can or who can’t. Who should and who shouldn’t. I, as well as other people who look like me, have often been placed into the can’t or shouldn’t category. Only through sheer will and determination can we defy the standards that others have set for us.