From the Ashes

by Janet W. Butler

  “Your grandfather knew about how tough it was,” Melody retorted. “He wasn’t exactly in an ivory tower. He was a real live performer himself.”

  “He was a performer in the ’50s and ’60s, before you were born. Didn’t you ever wonder why he wasn’t still out there and in demand?”

  Melody felt suddenly unsteady. “The dean said the Professor had decided to retire in order to nurture new talent.”

  “Well, that’s a half-truth if ever there was one.” James sighed. “He didn’t decide, Melody. It was decided for him, as it is decided for each of us eventually when it’s time to quit. He just played his cards well so no one suspected. He became picky about where he’d go, whom he’d play for. He claimed not to want to be away from my grandmother, even when she told him to keep his career going.” His voice broke for a moment, then evened out. “She told him to keep it up because she knew he wouldn’t have her much longer. Only he didn’t. He couldn’t, because he was losing his abilities. What I’m worried about with you is that he may have been on the verge of sabotaging you, not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t help himself.”

  “That’s an awfully harsh assessment of your own grandfather.”

  “I’m not being harsh, just honest.”

  “Of course,” she said coldly. “Like you were only being ‘honest’ four years ago, when you—”

  She stopped with a gasp, horrified at how her tongue had gotten away from her. And it was too late to undo the damage now. She could tell that by the way James’s eyes narrowed, by the way his color seemed to drain in the bright little room.

  “When I what?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” She averted her eyes. “Never mind.”

  “Not good enough.” He reached out one hand and touched her shoulder. “You’ve been tense from the moment you walked in here this morning. Now tell me what’s wrong so we can get it out in the open.”

  Melody felt heat flood her face again. “Really, Mr. Goodwin. I’m done.”

  “It’s James, and no, you’re not.” Gently, he turned her to face him once more. “First rule, only rule. The truth. Now what was it I supposedly did four years ago that you’re still holding against me now?”

  A flare of irritation shot through her. “You didn’t ‘supposedly’ do anything. You did it, all right, in spades.”

  “And ‘it’ is…?”

  “The master class.”

  “The master—?” He stopped, frowning. “Wait a minute. You can’t be talking about the master class I did here? With Grandpa?”

  “I most certainly can.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment as if fielding a physical blow, then sighed. “I supposed you heard all about it, especially about the parts that didn’t happen—”

  “James, I didn’t hear about it,” she cut him off. “I was there.”

  He blinked. “No. That was before your time. Those were only for upperclassmen.”

  “Usually, they are. I was one of the few freshmen ever allowed to attend something of that caliber. The Professor told me it would be a privilege.” She laughed shortly. “Joke was on us, I guess.”

  He still looked puzzled. “For the life of me, Melody, I can’t remember your being there. Were you hiding in the back?”

  Incredulous, she met his eye. “James, I was playing.” She paused. “I was the pupil you…reamed out, for lack of a better word.”

  He closed his eyes again, his face like stone, and shook his head.

  “Deny it if you want,” she snapped. “But I was there. I can recite you chapter and verse. You made mincemeat of my phrasing, you hated my pedal work, and you ridiculed my interpretation. And when the Professor tried to defend me…”

  “Call off your dogs,” he said harshly. “I’m not denying anything.”

  Melody bit her lip. When his eyes opened again, they were dark and brooding, and his color still didn’t look too good. If she hadn’t gone too far before now, this was the final straw. But he’d asked for it. He’d wanted the truth. It wasn’t her fault that truth was ugly.

  “I know ‘sorry’ won’t help much at this point,” he said, sounding weary beyond his years. “But I am sorry. I was blind, and more than a little stupid, at the time.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, his shoulders slumped. “The dean touched on that a little bit on Friday night. How I came here to see my grandfather, and he didn’t know me?”

  “That was the visit here that Dean Thomas talked about?” she whispered. “That master class?”

  “I saw it as a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. So I came here wanting — oh, I guess you could say I wanted my grandpa’s blessing. I wanted him to tell me he was proud to have me as his grandson.” James swallowed hard. “When he didn’t treat me like anything other than a visiting artist, I was so hurt I couldn’t see straight, so I struck back. I wanted to make him pay for pretending we had no connection.”

  Despite her resentment of what James had done, Melody found her heart going out to him now. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. He wasn’t pretending, was he? He really didn’t know?”

  “Right.” He gave a sharp laugh. “As my mother thoughtfully pointed out to me on my return home.”

  She shook her head. “But for that, you — you took potshots at me?”

  “I knew picking on his star student would get to him.” James’s smile was bitter. “I had what I thought were good reasons for feeling the way I did. I was pretty headstrong back then, not that that’s an excuse, mind you. I should have known better than to think that my mother’s father would deliberately not acknowledge me if he’d known who I was. And I am truly sorry for what I did to my grandfather. But mostly…” He raised his head. “Mostly, Melody, I’m sorry that I had a beautiful, talented young woman right there in front of me, and I didn’t have any more sense than to brutalize her. I’m honored that I may get a chance to…atone for it now.” He drew a deep breath. “So…how about it? You game to try a new start?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Oh, now there was a million-dollar question.

  Melody sat for a moment speechless with surprise. Arrogance, even anger and ridicule from him, she’d been prepared for. She’d been ready to fight tooth and nail with him to keep her dignity intact, if she had to. But she didn’t know what to make of James Michael Goodwin’s humbler side. For four years, she’d assumed he didn’t have one.

  “Well…I’ll try,” she said slowly. “Now that I know…more about it. I apologize. I don’t normally hold grudges all that long, you know.”

  He gave her a quick grin. “Then you truly are a paragon in the arts. Most artists I know have memories that would rival an elephant’s. Anyway…” He glanced down at his watch. “We still have lesson time left, so let’s use it. Sit tight for a minute. I need to go in back and get something first.”

  On that, he darted up and vanished into the file room, leaving Melody still reeling a bit. To think she’d been mourning the dissolution of her old routine, less than an hour ago. Little had she dreamt what surprises she’d be in for today!

  Now, however, it was time to get back to work, so work she did, and was clear through the rest of her scales by the time James returned from the back room. But instead of the refill on his coffee that she’d supposed he was going back for, he carried a small sheaf of score paper.

  “With your indulgence, I’d like to set Mrs. Beach aside for the moment,” he said, placing the pages on the rack in front of her. “Try this instead.”

  Melody scanned the music, staring at an original ink copy in bold hand. The untitled piece bore only initials in the upper-right-hand corner.

  JMG.

  Her mouth went dry. “Yours?” she whispered.

  James settled in his place before he answered. “Yes, it’s mine. Go ahead. Give it a whirl. I promise I won’t interrupt you this time.”

  She heard an odd note in his voice and realized with a shock that, in the space of a few seconds, they’d shifted roles. Gone
was any trace of arrogant Boston hotshot; in its place sat an ordinary, humbled, and vulnerable man.

  A man who cared what she thought of his work.

  Awed at that notion, she refocused on the music and lifted her hands over the keyboard. But she didn’t miss the way he leaned forward, as if hungry to hear every note she played.

  Within the first dozen bars, Melody was captivated. Like one of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, this tune needed no lyrics to convey meaning. She heard depth, promise, poignancy…voiceless longing interwoven with muted hope…and beneath it all, a constant bass line that at first was nothing more than ostinato, a foundation for what floated above. Then it shifted in emphasis; whether from her touch or the nuances of the score itself, Melody wasn’t sure. All she knew was that suddenly she heard much, much more to that bass line.

  The tolling of carillon. The overtones of the ancient Dies Irae, the music of reckoning and judgment.

  This is good, she thought. Scary good. She surrendered to the fire of curiosity, driven to delve to the core of this piece and find its essence. Without thinking about it, she found herself taking liberties, exaggerating contrasts, stretching the rhythms, until she was sure James would reach a point where he couldn’t keep that promise not to interrupt her.

  But he didn’t.

  The longer she played, the deeper the silence around her became, broken only by the haunting beauty of this music and the quiet chidings of her conscience. She’d been so sure that the buzz about Goodwin leaving the jazz world and breaking out into “serious” music was pure hype — that he was an overzealous musical wannabe — but she knew within a few minutes that she’d misjudged the man completely. When she stopped at last, letting the final chord linger like smoke in the air, Melody felt dizzy.

  Almost drunk.

  She bit back a laugh at the thought. Here was the woman who never had but a taste of wine on holidays, feeling buzzed as if she’d downed half a bottle. If she stood up from the bench right then, she couldn’t have guaranteed she’d stay up.

  But James had kept his word. He hadn’t broken in, and she wanted to thank him for that consideration. Turning, she started to speak…then stopped, astounded. His spot on the adjacent bench was vacant. She hadn’t been interrupted because no one was in the room anymore to do so.

  “James?” Her voice seemed to echo around her. Scanning in a full circle, she still didn’t see a trace of him. “James, where are you?”

  Gingerly she edged her feet to the floor and found her legs would hold her after all, then moved to the door, opened it a crack, and peeked out. The corridor was empty.

  Where was he?

  At a loss, she closed the studio door once more, then caught sight of a detail she noticed now that she hadn’t seen before: the back room file door was shut tight. Wavering, she started to move toward it, then stopped. Had the studio phone rung? She hadn’t heard it, but then again, James could have packed a suitcase and caught a plane and she wouldn’t have known that, either, so absorbed was she in playing that evocative music. Still, she would have heard a conversation behind that door, unless by some glitch of timing he was just hanging up.

  Well, then, it was time to let him know she was ready.

  Decision made, Melody closed the distance to the back room, brought her hand up and rapped firmly on the door. Then listened, but heard only silence.

  If this were a horror movie, she thought wryly, the audience would be sitting there muttering, “Don’t open that door.” Half of her wanted to laugh out loud at that thought, but the other half couldn’t help being chilled by the absolute silence. She needed to know what had happened to still the room so completely. Grasping the knob, she turned it and pushed.

  Had she not seen the top of James’s head, she might have missed him in here, too, but she could see him over the edge of the straight Windsor chair fronting the studio window. Without meaning to, she felt a twinge; he was sitting in her Professor’s “thinking” chair, the place Dr. von Steuben had always gone when he needed to unravel a problem or had a rough faculty meeting. When Melody had been disqualified on a technicality from a major competition in her junior year, he’d sat there to break the news to her. And after the verbal beating James had given them both four years earlier…

  Her eyes misted. James didn’t know he’d usurped a special place. Heaven knew his grandfather wouldn’t have considered it a problem. She shouldn’t, either. But he was quiet. Too quiet.

  “James,” she said softly, “I — was wondering where you were. Anything wrong?”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t so much as turn around. Only the subtle sound of his breathing met her ears.

  “I wanted to tell you…that music…it’s wonderful.” She despised acting perky, but she found herself verging on it in an effort to cover her awkwardness. “I truly enjoyed playing it. Thank you.”

  He didn’t answer that, either, and Melody paused before taking another step. Once she moved closer, he would no longer be hidden, and she wondered if his action was a way to tell her he just needed space.

  Then she heard it. A small variation in his breathing pattern, a catch. Unable to restrain herself, she stepped forward, and with the first clear glimpse of him, her heart skipped a beat.

  It was difficult for a moment to reconcile whom she actually saw in the chair, so vividly did his posture call to mind his grandfather’s. He was bent slightly, elbows on knees, hands clasped before him; a long moment passed before he seemed aware that she was present. He looked up, light from the window casting across his face, and she saw tiny lines of strain there, tiny workings of feeling behind the masklike, angular features. She sensed he wasn’t fully taking in the details of his surroundings, that he sat unseeing the sunlit green before him. James’s body was present, but as for his soul…

  On an instinct stronger than reason, she brought one hand up to touch his shoulder. Lightly. Just once, with a quick squeeze. Teachers and assistants didn’t have much physical contact on this campus as a rule, but she could call this a gesture of thanks, of respect. Then she started to go — only to be stopped in her tracks at what she saw next.

  Nothing she had heard or read or imagined about James Michael Goodwin could have prepared her for the way he responded to her touch. It was a simple, quiet reply, wordless but eloquent: two tears, tears he didn’t know he cried, welling in those dark, troubled eyes and falling unheeded onto his folded hands. When he bent forward once more, Melody accepted it as dismissal. Just as she was about to shut the file room door behind her, though, she heard him speak, barely above a whisper.

  “Melody?”

  She paused. “Yes, James? What do you want?”

  “I need…to tell you something.” He was sitting straighter now, but he still didn’t look at her. She had the sensation of a disembodied voice speaking from somewhere above her head. “That music you played just now…”

  “Yes,” she prompted. “That exquisite music. What about it?”

  “It’s the Adagio section of my new concerto.” His voice seemed to echo in eerie fashion around the room. “I must compliment you on how you played it.”

  She leaned on the door lintel, feeling suddenly lightheaded, as he rose from the chair. Like a sleeper awakening, he seemed stiff, preoccupied. When he faced her squarely at last, she felt his gaze penetrate clear to her spinal cord.

  “Anything I may have said four years ago…” He swallowed. “Melody, I apologize once more. I don’t know what I could have been thinking. You might have been in the room with me when I wrote this, from the way you played my music.”

  “Th-thank you,” she stammered.

  “No, Mel. Thank you.”

  She blinked, surprised at his use of the nickname. Had they crossed some invisible line already today? And why had the sound of that nickname never given her such a delicious thrill before…?

  She had no time to figure any of this out. Moments later, she heard the rattle of the outside door, and a voice calling, “Hello?
Anybody here?”

  “My next student.” James mustered a smile. “Get them started on one Bosie, will you, Mel?”

  With that, he turned back toward the window. Slowly, Melody watched his hands fold into his back pockets and felt another chill, this time of apprehension. She wasn’t sure about what, exactly. All she knew was his action had a finality to it, a closure that — in the face of the most sublime praise she’d ever received — cut her to the quick.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  She said nothing about the scene in the studio to anyone. Not to Barb, though they had an impromptu coffee break between her classes. Certainly not to Hattie, who would have concocted an entire romantic novel around it before the week was out. Instead, keeping her counsel, she went through the days that followed on automatic pilot — going to class, doing her best to concentrate on Nineteenth Century Music History and Counterpoint, while inwardly her heart replayed the music of that Adagio.

  A piece with that emotion…with that grandeur…it’s the stuff dreams are made of, and the stuff careers can be made by. Oh, to be able to play music like that all the time!

  As for James’s compliment, though, no way would anyone get wind of that, either. It was high praise indeed, and not at all what she’d expected to hear, especially after their unpromising start. But she had no delusions. She knew she played well, but she’d never brought anyone to tears before, and she doubted that it had truly been her artistry that had prompted them in James. What had taken him into that valley of shadow, she could only guess at.

  Especially when no signs of it showed up again.

  His moment of weakness, she soon learned, had been just that — a moment, and one he seemed determined to put behind him without a second look. Early Tuesday morning he met her at the door with a mug of coffee, a gesture which touched her until she realized it wasn’t chivalrous but expedient, as he threw them both into work at such a pace she was sprinting to keep up with him.