Her Name Is Rose (13 page)

The piece unfinished and the students waiting, Hector left Grace's and crossed Huntington. Something has happened, he thought.
Something.
Out of nowhere there was a new rhythm shaping in his head and the image of the lady in the blue dress was spread out against the sky. But it was the last thing he needed today. He needed to finish his piece. He needed to get to his waiting class. He stood at the intersection of Mass Ave. and he tried to concentrate on hearing
Sparrow in Summer
in his head. But there she was. She was like some walking bass line. A blue note. A blue flower. Suddenly, in the middle of his piece, the Bowen lady was an improv all her own.

What was it about her? Her hair—that was like, like what?

Cinnamon.

He raced up the stairs ten minutes late. The students were all there. They were used to seeing him a bit tangled, and used to him going into the wrong classroom, getting their names mixed up, calling them “Clarinet One” and “Sax Two.” It didn't diminish their respect. He was Hector Sherr.

“Okay,” he said, and pushed his hands along his thighs. “So. You know I've played the park before, right? In '99 and '04, both times as part of a trio: sax, bass, and me on piano. And it was cool both times. But this is the first time I've decided to invite two students to join me on stage.” He watched a little flicker of nervousness run through them.

“But it's improv, guys. So don't sweat it.” He relaxed now, getting into his role as the offbeat professor. “The way I see it, there are three groups of people in the world. Those who rein in their creativity because they're afraid to express themselves, those who just express themselves without thought or form, and those who follow their creativity and listen to it, without restricting it, allowing it … personal feeling. And that, that's jazz, baby. That's what I'm looking for. Can you guys deliver?”

He broke his students into groups, gave instructions, the major chords and key signature, and sent them to work on their improvs in practice rooms. Alone in the studio then, he sat down at the piano, a Boston upright, and worked on the final chord progression for
Sparrow in Summer.
(Turned out allowing personal feeling wasn't so easy.) He worked until one, taking breaks to check on the students, and coming back with a kind of punchy electric urgency. Just before lunch he cracked the tune.

“Got it! That's it,” he said under his breath. “Yes yes yes,” and he played the piece again to secure it. “Thank you. Mrs. Bowen!”

After a quick lunch of an apple and a yogurt he'd taken from Grace's refrigerator, he went to audition the students. He had an extra bounce in him now. The students could see it. They knew his piece must have come together. He chose Casey and Belletti for the concert that evening, told them they'd be sensational and told the others he wished they could all be on stage, that he was that proud of them all.

When he came out into the sunlight, he had the elation of completing the composition and the brief glory of thinking it was great. He was light-headed and his heart was jumping. If you saw him coming, then you'd say he almost
shone.

He crossed Mass Ave. and continued along and before he knew it, or before he'd admitted it to himself, he was heading for the massive doors of the Mary Baker Eddy Library and the Mapparium to see if, maybe, she, Mrs. Bowen, had taken Billy's suggestion and gone there. It was unlikely, but so was the world. He'd dip in anyway. The Mapparium was one of the old haunts of all the students at Berklee.

The fact was, she
had
helped with the piece. He wanted to find her to thank her for that. Maybe he could even thank her
and
apologize for his brusqueness that morning.

That was what he told himself. That was the reason. It was nothing to do with the fact that she was beautiful and he just wanted to see her again. See that red hair, those cinnamon curls.

He found the entrance to the Mapparium and walked in through the Indian Ocean. Two boys in green-and-white soccer jerseys with the numbers 6 and 8 were whispering.

“Hey Colin, look! The North Po—” whispered the younger boy of the family. He stopped suddenly, startled by the sound of his own voice so loud, so bright, so booming around the world.

“Yeah! Brilliant! Can ye hear
me
?” the older boy whispered. Their laughter bubbled, like a cascading waterfall, like the sound of Art Tatum's fingers running the keyboard playing “Tea for Two.”

“Shh … Robert!” said the father, trying to keep his voice quiet without success, then he, too, was laughing, and so, too, was their pink, sun-flushed mother.

And at the end of the glass bridge, nearly thirty feet away, blue on blue, was Iris. Her back was turned and she was busy with her handbag. She didn't see Hector. As she fussed, the contents of her handbag spilled out. The pink soccer mom stooped to help her and from the opposite side of the world Hector heard them whisper—a soft murmur that was a loud murmur in the whispering gallery.

“Here, love. Let me help.”

They gathered the contents and the soccer mom feather-touched Iris's shoulder. But as she rose, her left foot moved a last piece of note paper or something that had lain on the bridge. The paper was moved to the edge, and as the woman stepped away it slipped though the gap off the glass walkway. Iris gasped, her hands outstretched to it. And then she, like Hector, watched the falling note drift like a tumbleweed, down Central America, past Costa Rica, past Peru, then Chile, riffing along the curve of the blue Pacific, until it stopped thirty feet below, somewhere west of the South Pole.

When Hector looked up, Iris was hurrying out.

*   *   *

Outside in the blinding sunlight he stood scanning the crowds for her. The pavement scorched the rubber of his shoes. She was gone. After the blue cool, the heat was a shock and he went across the plaza straight to the splash fountain. The water was rising and falling in arcs from its flat concrete base, and into it Hector stepped, triggering an eruption of whoops and glees in the children as he crossed through the fountain in his own kind of cool, and coming out the far side.

Something was happening, something was definitely happening, but he hadn't the words for it yet. Shaking the water from his hair he suddenly remembered. “Jesus, Hector,” and from the back pocket of his shorts he pulled the envelope she had dropped. (He'd had the attendant retrieve it from the bottom of the glass world.) It hadn't got wet in the fountain. He shook it in the air a moment just in case. Although it was just an empty envelope, yellowing, with a handwritten address on the front, he wanted to deliver it back to Iris intact. He took off, heading over Huntington and back to Grace's, and without needing to pause he plucked a daisy that poked through the park railings. He had a sense of propulsion, of things moving forward without his wishing or planning, and he was just going to go with it. He hadn't felt this way since … since … He wasn't going to think about that.

By the time he got to Grace's, he was nearly steaming, so when his wet clothes hit the a/c he felt chilled. He took the stairs in leaps. He needed a shower and a nap, but he needed to calm down first. He rang Billy and asked for coffee and lemonade. Then he put the daisy in a glass and the envelope on the desk and looked carefully at it. It was addressed to the Adoption Board, Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland. In the upper, left-hand corner was the sender's address: Hilary Barrett, 99 St. Botolph Street, Boston, MA. Postmark: August 21, 1991.

What was the story here? What was the connect? Had there been more than one thing lying in the bottom of the glass sea? Maybe this wasn't Iris's. Had the guy fished out the wrong thing?

There was a knock. He opened the door to Billy, who was smiling. Hector was down to his boxers. The tattoo of an eagle on Hector's right arm caught the sunlight. “Hey, Professor.” Billy put down the lemonade and coffee. “Mrs. Hale said she'd see you later. She hopes you got a ticket for—”

“Of course I did. Two, in fact.” Hector winked.

“Right. She'll be pleased.”

“Hey. Has the Mrs. Bowen lady returned? I mean, she staying here tonight?”

“No, she hasn't and yes, she is. I told her about the Mapparium. And I told her where the public library was. She wanted Internet. So maybe—”

“Gotcha. She's here but not here.” Hector didn't exactly push Billy out, but he held the door for him and closed it quickly. He drank the lemonade first, then the coffee, then he lay out on the bed, but couldn't nap. He sat up, lay down again, but still couldn't nap. His head was buzzing between
Sparrow in Summer
and Mrs. Bowen. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep.

He woke with a start when a door closed. It was 5:27. The students expected him to join them for special supper at Botolph's at six.

He shaved, calmed his hair, threw on his blue Hawaiian shirt, the one with the white hibiscus, and bolted downstairs. There was no sign of Grace in the front room. He checked the kitchen. No sign of her there. Nor Billy. Nor Mrs. Bowen. By the side table in the front hall, he found a brown envelope and stuck two tickets inside, scribbled
For Your Grace and Mrs. Bowen,
and left.

He hurried along West Newton and when he reached the corner, he stopped dead, as if for the first time noticing the street number of Botolph's restaurant. He'd been coming here for what? Fifteen years or so. Since it opened. But there etched in white fancy numbers was 99, in the glass above the door. What do you know? How many times had he been there? With Grace, with students, with colleagues?

Now he noticed—99.

What it meant he had no idea, but it didn't take a rocket scientist, he thought, to know something here was of concern to Mrs. Bowen. It was the
something
troubling her which he'd sensed that morning. He had no words for his thoughts, only feelings, and those feelings in one intense flash of inspiration had already found their way into
Sparrow in Summer.
But there was more, he was certain.

*   *   *

After a light supper, rambling monologues, sudden silences, and nervous jokes from Casey and Belletti, Hector walked with his students to Titus Sparrow Park. A large audience had already gathered with picnic baskets and rugs and multicolored nylon beach chairs. The summer concerts always began just at twilight. Hector looked around him, at the light tumbling down, disappearing into the trees and across the flowerbeds. Layers of different hues of blue cloaked the sky. Soon, the other musicians would appear and the evening would become magical.

But before the magic could begin, the musicians needed to warm up. Backstage, Hector's mind was gliding and humming, running through riffs and runs, swings and syncopations. He was bounce-walking up and down, rolling his shoulders, loosening his neck muscles, looking up into the night sky, getting ready for the music, but all the time, playing like a thumb line, was something he wanted to say to the woman named Iris: that blue in all its splendid dynamism was the color of hope. He couldn't articulate it any better than that. He peeped through the curtains. Grace wasn't there yet. He'd left reserved seats for her in the front row.

Hector finished his warm-up, then he gathered Belletti and Casey, brought them over to meet the man sitting in the corner cradling his guitar. “And here's Amos McGee, the one and only. Best bass guitarist there is. Close your eyes when you hear him play and it sounds like a horn has slipped in. Amos, meet Casey and Belletti. And guys … meet Amos.”

“Hey, kids, welcome aboard,” Amos said. He tipped his baseball cap back on his head one second and lowered it again. He stood up then and walked out on the stage. The clapping began right away because Amos McGee was a legend in Boston. His name stretched back into the days when Dizzy Gillespie played in the South End. In his Red Sox cap, he strode smooth and cool, paused a moment, and then did his customary pirouette.

The rumble of applause rose up from the grass into the gloaming sky. Hector stepped to the microphone and introduced the band. “Mr. Amos McGee, you all know.” More applause. Amos bowed just slightly, his hands moving over his guitar. “And, here, now, are two of Berklee's finest, Mossy Casey and Gino Belletti, who'll back up Amos and maybe … let's see how it flies … maybe they'll have a riff or two of their own—to take us higher.”

He paused for effect, let the evening gather its breath. “Ladies and gentlemen, on this bee … u … ti … full night, I give you,
Sparrow in Summer.
”

Hector sat down, summoned that still place inside, and then broke it open, playing the black and white notes fast and free, sounding like a bird jam, like a sparrow sings. Sharp notes. A succession of warbles and trills.
Chimp. Tsip. Tsip. Tsip.
He nodded to Amos and his thumping and plucking sounded like the repeated chattering of a sparrow Hector had imagined. Then he and Amos held back while Casey and Belletti stepped forward, showcasing the slap bass improvisation they'd worked on earlier.

Hector looked out at the crowd and breathed it all in. At the piano he was fully alive, and the thing that was happening inside him fused with the music and he knew he was playing better than he had in a long time, and he looked up into the dark blue sky and he thought, Man, this is a little like paradise, this is jazz as it is in heaven, sound upon sound with no boundary, mingling, colliding, harmonizing, blending, melding, balancing, clashing, fusing. An acoustic Arcadia, smooth and easy, head-buzzing, heart-stopping, and goddamn transformative.

He looked out and there was Grace. And, sitting right beside her, some kind of illumination, was Iris Bowen. She looked up at him with the saddest-looking eyes he'd ever seen. And he knew. He knew right then with perfect clarity that this was the something that had changed, had changed utterly, and although he still didn't have the words for it, he had the notes.