21. Gerard #2
Having musical abilities, to him, was a bit like being handed a cardboard box with a fallen baby bird scraped off the pavement inside; the possibility for flight existed, but without patience and nurturing and sacrifice, it wasn’t probable.
In fact, it would be much easier to let the poor thing die than suffer the pains of becoming.
Gerard, however, became.
Became maybe too much, too quickly, too close to the sun.
After heartbreak and a life-changing diagnosis, he learned his wings might’ve been formed from beeswax all along.
“I was like you once,” Regina said, “afraid for my voice to be heard.”
“I’m not afraid,” Gerard said. Would a person who was afraid to be heard get onstage in front of eighteen thousand screaming fans?
Skepticism etched half circles beside her already-wrinkled mouth. “In practice, you sing, but you don’t sing out.”
“I’m blending. It’s a choir,” he protested.
She bobbled her head. “It doesn’t sound like blending to me. It sounds like hesitance, a hesitance I didn’t hear when I was listening to you just now.”
“Maybe I hold back sometimes,” he admitted. “I don’t want to overpower anyone else. Every voice deserves to be heard.”
“I think yours deserves to be heard on this song.” She flicked the corner of his sheet music.
“Is it really fair for you to be picking favorites before you even hear all the auditions?” Gerard asked.
“Solos are always put up for a vote by the group,” she said. “I still think they’d all agree with me.”
“How do you know?” he asked, wishing this conversation would end. Being singled out always embarrassed him, even when he was being singled out for a good reason.
“They all have ears.” She smiled. “My late husband and I used to make music together. It started as something meant just for us, and I wanted to keep it that way for the longest time, but my husband told me that holding back talent was an act of selfishness. That gifts, especially gifts from God, were meant to be shared. Speaking of which, I make a mean casserole and an even meaner pie. I have both cooling back at the house. Would you share them with me?”
“Pumpkin?” he asked warily.
“Apple,” she said, as if she knew about his aversion to the ubiquitous baked good of the season.
“That’s really nice, but I should probably get back to—” Once again, he halted before he said the wrong thing. “Actually, I’d love to.”
Regina’s slow pace as they walked back gave Gerard time to concoct a strategy to get a message to Emory about his change of plans. When the house came into view, he said, “Let me run up and set my guitar down.”
She waved him off. “Bring it in.”
He suppressed a sigh. “I’m really not dressed for dinner. At least let me go up and change into something nicer.”
“It’s my dining room, not the Plaza Hotel. I promise not to impose a jacket policy,” she said with a snort-laugh. His well of excuses ran dry.
Gerard’s eyes snagged on the upstairs apartment door as if he were telepathically sending his apologies. Maybe Emory was such a good scientist he could decode brain waves or energies or whatever.
Upon entering the main house, Regina led him through the sitting room this time. Gerard noticed a prominently placed grand piano. His glee must’ve been audible because he could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “Isn’t it a beautiful instrument?”
“Incredible.” He glided toward it.
“Do you play?” she asked.
“I do.”
“Jack of many instruments,” she said.
“I started out with the organ.”
“No kidding! What else do you play?” she asked.
“That’s all. Organ, piano, guitar. Oh, and I can pick up the bass every now and then, but only if I have to,” he said.
“If you have to?” she asked.
Right. He’s not Gerard. He’s James. Normal Guy James who would never need to round out the sound on a song when their bass player got stuck in traffic on the way to a live radio performance.
“Ever play the dulcimer?” Regina asked. “I have one up in a spare room somewhere. Should we see if we can dig it out after dinner?”
Gerard agreed and then helped her set the table.
He scarfed down his meal with lightning speed—one, because there was a strong pull in his chest to get back up to Emory after their awkward morning, and two, because he’d always been curious about the instrument that pretty much defined the folk revival of the 1960s.
The staircase to the second level was rickety, and the railing offered little support, lurching in Gerard’s hand as if purposefully pulling away.
Regina guided him down a long, carpeted corridor before hesitating.
“Don’t mind the mess,” she said, before opening the door and flicking on the light to reveal a labyrinth of boxes—plastic boxes, cardboard boxes, hatboxes.
“Do you remember where in the room you might’ve put it?” Gerard asked, daunted by the clutter.
“I don’t even remember where I set down my reading glasses this afternoon. Pick a box, any box, and start digging.”
After five minutes, Gerard considered backing out, telling her that he’d return another time when Emory wasn’t upstairs waiting for him with a hot, home-cooked meal. Or had he skipped that after their uncomfortable encounter earlier?
A loud bang that could’ve only been Emory’s doing came from above.
Regina glanced up. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Gerard asked, sensing a sweat crop up on the back of his neck.
Shaking her head, Regina grumbled to herself before continuing the hunt.
Several minutes passed before a muffled expletive oozed into the room. “Did you say something?” Regina asked.
“Just muttering to myself,” he lied.
She nodded. “Funny, sometimes when I’m getting ready for bed, I swear I hear two sets of footsteps up there and two different voices.”
Unable to come up with a reasonable explanation, Gerard stared back, shoulders rising in the slowest, least convincing shrug.
“I know. I’m old. My senses are going and playing tricks on me on the way out the door.” She threw up her hands—what are you gonna do?
Immediately, another bang rumbled overhead like a thunderclap. Gerard toppled a pile of what looked to be unsmashable boxes, offering a hearty apology to cover it up.
“Be careful! Some of this stuff is valuable. I’ll polish it up and sell it one day,” she said, then laughed at herself. The booming, jolly sound could have only come from a woman who’d long ago accepted her faults. “Who am I kidding? Break whatever you want.”
In one of the boxes closest to the far wall beneath a haphazard stack of old photos, Gerard came across pages of yellowing concert memorabilia.
A lightly torn flyer caught his attention.
The bubbly, slightly slanted writing advertised Gerde’s Folk City—New York’s center of folk music.
Stick figures held guitars in the margins.
Unknown names comprised the lineup until toward the bottom, beneath a range of dates, was the duo that brought him to Iping Island in the first place: Hallowitz & Hart.
Uncertainty about what he was looking at turned to awe, fizzling inside his chest.