“You know my PopPop used to play fiddle, don’t you? I loved hearing him when I was a little girl. That’s where you get your talent from. I keep telling your mama that.”
Dinner went well without his uncles around to egg each other on. Everyone complimented Ray’s mom on the turkey—a complicated recipe involving apple cider, orange juice, and cloves—so she was glowing with pride. The table almost disappeared beneath the plates of fluffy mashed potatoes, seasoned with butter and garlic; the omnipresent collard greens and cranberry sauce; the homemade butter for the cornbread. There was ham and black-eyed pea stuffing. Everyone ate everything except the sliced squash. It was always a mystery why Grandma Nora insisted on slicing squash, baking it, and serving it up on everyone’s plate every year, only to have no one touch it. This year was no different.
As they were finishing, Grandma Nora said in her unmistakable slow southern drawl, “Ray, baby, when you gonna play a song for your grandma?”
“Of course,” he said, pushing himself back from the table. “I can play you a few songs from my concert and maybe I can play my audition piece for you, too.” He gathered up everyone’s plates, picked clean—except for the squash.
“Lord, don’t nobody want to hear that noise.” Ray’s mom said, taking another swallow of her wine as Ray went out into the kitchen.
“You still play the violin?” Aunt Joyce said with genuine interest. Aunt Joyce took after her mother—a shade over five feet tall and very petite. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Aunt Joyce loved a good laugh, and her single dimple was always noticeable when she smiled, which was all the time.
He had two pies in hand: the pecan and his favorite blueberry. “Yup, I’m still playing.”
“When I was a little girl, my PopPop would always sit us down and play that fiddle. I used to love hearing him play. You know he was a freed slave and—”
“Mama, please,” Aunt Joyce said. “We heard you tell this story a million times.”
“You hush,” Grandma Nora said, waving her hand to silence Aunt Joyce.
Ray’s mother chuckled. “I could see that one coming a mile away.”
“Baby, your great-great PopPop tried to teach my daddy to play. He gave his fiddle to my daddy and told him to teach his babies music. But nobody ever learned to play. I’ve always been sad about that. My PopPop loved that fiddle.”
Aunt Joyce reached for the wine bottle. “You still have it?”
“Yes, girl. Don’t you remember when you were kids how I tried to get y’all to play?”
For the past eighteen years, Ray had been coming to Grandma Nora’s house at least once a year. He’d heard that story of PopPop and the fiddle even before he’d started playing. Maybe—now he couldn’t remember—he’d first gotten interested in the violin because Grandma Nora talked about it all the time. And yet, unaccountably, nobody had ever asked Grandma Nora if she still owned it. How had that never, not once, come up?
Ray’s hands seemed suddenly clumsy, unable to pass the pie plates around. He dropped a fork and scrambled under the table to find it.
“Yes, Mama, we remember,” Ray’s mom said. She and Aunt Joyce burst out laughing.
“Your mama and your aunt Joyce never tried to play,” Grandma Nora said to him as he emerged with the fork. “They just didn’t want to. They thought they was too cute to play an instrument.”
“Where is it now?” he said.
“It’s up there somewhere in the attic,” she said. “Told you I never got rid of it.”
As Ray went up to his room to retrieve his school violin, he heard his mom say, “Well, I ain’t tryin’ to hear all that noise. Come on, Joyce. Let’s go sit in the living room. And bring that bottle.” The rest of the family followed them out.
So he and his grandmother were alone when he played for her—starting with “Rhosymedre” from the wedding, and then on to “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, “Jingle Bells,” and even the first half of L’Inverno. When at last he drew his bow across the strings in a final tremulous finish, she did her best to leap out of her seat as she applauded him. “Come here and let me give you a hug! That was beautiful! You sounded just like PopPop.”
“I hit a bunch of wrong notes.”
“Oh, you hush. It was beautiful. Just beautiful.”
As he slid the violin back into his case, he said as casually as he could, “Grandma, you really still have your PopPop’s fiddle?”