Chapter 38
Simone and his cello had been doing battle for days with a challenging section of a toccata capricciosa. It was a mere forty seconds of music, but it had already cost him hours of practice and fine tuning.
It was another late night, midnight, and he was alone in the rehearsal studio. The college was all his at such an hour, quiet and ideal for concentration.
What does one do, or more to the point, what does a young cellist striving for perfection do when faced with a complex, daunting task that leads to frustration and defeat?
He closes the score and plays something familiar from memory, something he has previously mastered, something to reestablish his confidence, even if it is as simple and commonplace as a children’s melody or a beginner’s piece.
Simone chose a song he had learned during his university days in Washington, when he was part of an ensemble that played for a production of Porgy and Bess.
The sultry, sweat-dripping notes of “Summertime” echoed down the hallway as Simone, eyes closed, swayed to the languid melody.
Mr. Gershwin would have been very pleased at the slow, weary voice with which the cello drew out the notes and evoked a muggy night in Charleston. Simone channeled Louis and Ella themselves as he droned the well-known tune.
Blues on a cello?
Simone reached the final note of the song and pulled the bow to the last possible millimeter of sound.
The room went silent. Almost.
From down the hall came a voice, as if the last note from the cello was reversing course and returning to Simone in reply. It was the sound of singing. Not loud. Obviously not meant to be heard but heard nonetheless.
“And yo’ mama’s good lookin’.”
Simone’s trained ear could tell that the voice was on pitch, that it possessed feeling, and that it knew the song well. All this at a barely audible volume.
He put down his cello, walked to the door, and looked down the hallway.
A cart, laden with various brooms and cleaning supplies, stood unattended.
Simone was aware that custodians cleaned the classrooms at the end of each day. He often heard the sounds of vacuum cleaners, floor buffers, and trash cans being emptied on the late nights when he practiced alone.
He was usually too focused on his own work, and the janitors too hurried in theirs, for them to notice one another.
As Simone stood in the doorway of his rehearsal room listening for more sounds of singing, a stocky young man rounded the corner to retrieve something from his cart.
Their eyes met, and a moment of awkward silence ensued. Both looked as if they had been caught doing something wrong.
“Man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
At that moment, the singer in the hallway was fearful of getting into trouble and losing his job, something he could ill afford to do. Policy dictated that maintenance personnel were never to interrupt students or faculty from their study or rehearsal.
Sensing a measure of distress in the custodian’s voice, Simone quickly absolved him of any trespass and walked toward the cart. If there was a caste system that separated musicians from maintenance men, he was unaware of it.
“Was that you singing? That was excellent.”
Both faces showed signs of relief and warmth.
“I couldn’t hear you very well,” Simone continued, “but what I heard was really nice.”
“Well, thank you.”
“My name is Simone Lavoie. I’m a student here.” He held out his hand.
“I’m Kendrick Whitaker. I work here.”
“I thought you might be a student yourself, a vocal performance major or something.”
Kendrick laughed, not quite grasping the compliment he had been paid.
Simone asked, “How did you know that song I was playing?”
It was admittedly an old song, hardly in fashion, even if there were a few thousand recorded renditions of it in circulation.
“I learned it in high school,” Kendrick replied. “My music teacher made me sing it one year at the school talent show. She made me listen to lots of different people sing it and then she told me to put my own voice on it. That’s a good song, y’know.”
Simone nodded, intrigued. “Did you ever sing after that?”
Kendrick shrugged. “Not really. Sing for fun, you know, but that’s about all. Sometimes me and my little girl go to church with my grandmama, and we sing there. Ol’ stuff, ol’ gospel stuff.”
“You’ve got a nice voice, Kendrick. What other things do you like to sing?”
Simone and Kendrick talked for a short while, mostly about music. Kendrick would have asked questions about the cello, but knew he was supposed to be working. Policy.
Simone apologized for interrupting him. Kendrick apologized again for interrupting him.
“Of all the versions you listened to, who sang ‘Summertime’ the best?” Simone asked.
“Aw, maaaan, that’s tough. There are some good ones. But for me it’s gotta be Miz Ella. She owned it.”
Simone nodded. “I agree.”
“Well, I better get back to work. Nice to meet you, Limone. Is that right? Limone?”
Simone laughed.
“Close! It’s Simone. Simone Lavoie. But sometimes people get it backwards. Limone Savoy. That’s got a nice ring to it.”
Kendrick put both hands on his cart to return to work.
“You keep singing,” Simone said.
Kendrick smiled. “And you keep playing.”
An hour later, Simone packed up his cello, put it on his back, and locked the door to the studio. As he stepped out of the building, he saw Kendrick sitting on a bench nearby. They exchanged hellos.
Kendrick held up his cell phone. “I’m just taking a break and checkin’ on my little girl.”
“Is she up this late?”
“Naw, naw. She’s asleep, but I got this camera thing in her room, so I can look in at her. I got a friend who gave it to me, so I could watch her while she’s in the hospital. She had to go back in last week to have a surgery.”
“Is she OK?”
Kendrick told the story of Lamisha’s accident and injury.
“She got a real nice doctor, Dr. Good — that’s what we call him ‘cause his last name is kind of hard to say. He’s from Nigeria.
He’s the one who did the operation. My daughter’s gonna have a limp, but she’s gonna be pretty much able to do everything like everybody else.
We thought she might lose her leg, but the doctor fixed her. We’re blessed. You wanna see her?”
Kendrick tapped a couple of times on the small screen. Simone sat down beside him, leaned in close, and looked at the picture.
The hospital room was dimly lit. A bed, a number of pole-mounted monitors, an IV bag, and walls in the stark institutional color of no-color surrounded a sleeping girl with intricately braided hair.
Her leg was held slightly elevated and immobile by various gadgets. She had the appearance of a small-scale suspension bridge — cables, wires, rods.
“They have to put all that there so her bone heals right,” Kendrick explained. “It hurts her a lot, but Dr. Good says they gotta do it. He gives her medicine to help her sleep.”
“That’s quite a cast on her leg,” Simone observed.
And it was. The doctor had allowed Lamisha to select the color herself. It was one way to let the young patient feel that she was in control of at least a small part of her healing.
She had chosen the brightest shade of blue on the menu of options. Not quite blue as morpho but close. It glowed in the half light of the room.
She was sleeping soundly.
A figure entered the camera view. A nurse?
On the small screen, it was hard to tell.
“That’s him,” Kendrick said. “That’s my friend who gave me the camera.”
Simone leaned in closer, squinted and frowned. “Is that… Is that Theo?’
Kendrick’s face lit up. “You know Mr. Theo?”
“I do. He’s sort of a neighbor. I see him on the Promenade a lot. Why is he there?”
Kendrick recounted the friendship of the old man and the little girl.
“Well, Mr. Theo loves my little girl, and when she’s in the hospital, he goes to check on her, and when she’s home he comes over every week to read with her.
He can’t sleep sometimes at night. That’s what he told me.
So, maybe that’s why he’s there so late tonight.
“Somethin’ about Mr. Theo, when he comes around, they take real good care of Lamisha. They think he’s important or somethin’. My grandmama says he’s an angel.”
“How’d you meet him?”
Kendrick told the story of the bestowal. “It still seems crazy to me and I still don’t know why he’s so nice to us, but he’s a good man. A for-real good man.”
“How long will he stay there tonight?”
“I don’t know. Till it’s time to go, I guess.”
Kendrick’s work break was over. When he turned his cell phone off, Theo was still sitting in the chair beside Lamisha’s bed, hands in his lap and his eyes closed. It was a comforting scene.
For the second time that night, Kendrick and Simone said their farewells. Kendrick returned to the bright interior of the classroom suite in Symphony Hall, Simone to the misty darkness of the Promenade.