“Rayquan! Come here, honey!” She was looking good in a white summer dress, and the twins hung back behind her.
“Mama!” he launched himself into her arms.
“Stop that,” she said. “You want me to drop this? Here, you take it.” Her fake nails were a frosty pink.
“Uh—I can’t,” he said. “I need both arms free.”
Janice was suddenly there, taking the flowers, talking to his mother. In the past four years, throughout college, they’d never met. Ray gave the twins a hug—it had been months since he’d seen them, and his sister was definitely taller. They were twelve now, little carbon copies of Mom: good-looking kids. His sister’s skirt was too short, and he wondered if his mom had picked it out. His brother was trying to grow a mustache. Both twins seemed tongue-tied.
Later, back in the packed dressing room, his mother cornered him. “I want to see Mama’s fiddle.”
He had it strapped to his back, as always. He opened it up, handed it to her.
“Is that PopPop’s fiddle? You sure? That fiddle was white.”
“Yeah I’m sure. That was the rosin. The stuff that PopPop put on the bow.”
“That nasty sticky brown stuff you always left all over everywhere?”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“Ten million, you say?”
He packed the violin away.
“Hope you’re gonna share some of that,” she said.
“The water bill due?”
She rolled her eyes, sighed, and gave him a look.
He reached out, hugged her. “I love you, Mama.”
She was stiff in his embrace, but eventually her arms wrapped around him for a moment. It was more than usual: it was enough. It would have to be.
Later, he drove back to his little house. Exhausted but still on a high, he showered, lay down, and stared at the flowers his mother had given him.
In what seemed like a few moments later the sun was pouring through the window. He pulled up his banking app. A deposit of $2,000 had been made hours earlier. Money from his first performance.
Online, he found a local report about last night’s concert and footage of him onstage. He quickly clicked away. It felt weird to see himself like that. But then he couldn’t resist, clicked to the end of the video, heard the reporter say, “It looks like he and his Stradivarius have a brilliant career ahead of them.”
Ray lay back in bed, closed his eyes. This was really happening.
He called Aunt Rochelle. “Do you use PayPal or Venmo?”
He had to explain what they were and walked her through setting up a Venmo account. “What’s this for?” she kept asking.
He transferred $1,200 into her account—$300 for her to keep and $900 to be divided among each of his aunts and uncles. “Tell them there’ll be more coming soon.”
She tried to object, but he’d already transferred the funds, with another $300 to his mother.
The next morning, all his aunts and uncles texted him, thanking him. Can’t wait to hear you play, Uncle Thurston wrote. You’re doing us proud! Aunt Joyce said. His mother didn’t write.
* * *
—
Four days later he showed his ID to the security guard at the VIP entrance of the Greensboro Coliseum. The North Carolina Symphony’s warm-up poured from speakers lining the hallway. He’d hoped that Janice would come for this performance as well, but he was on his own.
Just as he was about to go out and introduce himself, the conductor called for a fifteen-minute break. This was the time to go onstage, but he hung back, suddenly shy. What if they didn’t know who he was? Stupid, but he was okay just standing there, savoring this moment, watching these musicians congregating in small groups, others heading off to the restrooms, or for a smoke break outside. The concertmaster—whom Ray recognized because Ray’s college studio had come to a performance when the orchestra had played in Charlotte—was heading his way with a couple of the other violinists.
“Wonder where the wunderkind is,” an older woman—the third chair—was saying.
“Not sure why they’re even letting this guy play.”
He backed into the curtains that cloaked the rear wall.
“I don’t even think he’s played more than one concert with anybody in his life.”
“It’s just a PR stunt,” the concertmaster told them. “The only reason he’s playing is because he has a Strad. You know how people try to get at least one Black person to play with a major group at least a couple times a year? It covers all the bases.”