“I feel responsible, in part,” Tess told me over dinner. “And helpless. As if we should do something about rebuilding.” Over our lamb chops, she outlined a plan to raise money for the library. The details arrived in such waves that I knew Tess had been contemplating the matter since the day of her return. “We’ll start a book drive, too, and you can make your concert a benefit for the children.”
Stunned and relieved, I could raise no objection, and over the next weeks, the bursts of activity overwhelmed my sense of decorum and privacy. People boxed up their fairy tales and nursery rhymes, and swarmed through the house at all hours with cartons of books, stacking them in the studio and garage. What had been my hermitage became a beehive for the well-intentioned. The phone rang constantly with offers to help. On top of the hubbub over the books, planning for the concert interrupted our peace. An artist came by to show poster designs for the concert. Advance tickets were sold from our living room. On a Saturday morning, Lewis Love and his teenaged son, Oscar, showed up with a pickup truck, and we loaded the organ in the back to install it in the church. Rehearsals were scheduled for three nights a week, and the students and the musicians constructed it measure by measure. The giddy pace and hum of life left me too exhausted to consider my conflicted emotions. Swept up in the motion Tess had created, I could only truly function by concentrating on the music as the date for the performance drew near.
From the wings, I watched the crowd file into the church for the benefit premiere of The Stolen Child on that night in late October. Since I was performing on the organ, I had passed the conductor’s baton to Oscar Love, and our old Coverboys drummer Jimmy Cummings was on timpani. Oscar had rented a tuxedo for the occasion and Jimmy had cut his hair, and we seemed much too respectable versions of our former selves. A few of my fellow teachers from Twain sat together in the back rows, and even one of the last remaining nuns from our grade school days attended. Ebullient as ever, my sisters showed up in formal wear, pearls at their collars, and they flanked my mother and Charlie, who winked at me as if to impart a dose of his abundant confidence. I was most surprised to see Eileen Blake escorted by her son Brian, who was in town for a visit. He gave me a momentary fright when they arrived, but the more I studied him, the less he could be compared rationally with Edward. My son after all, and thank goodness, he takes after his mother in every respect but appearance. With his hair tamed, and dressed up in his first suit and tie, Edward looked like another boy altogether, and seeing the foreshadowing of the man my son will become one day, I felt both pride and regret over the brevity of childhood. Tess could not stop grinning that crooked smile of hers, and rightfully so, for the symphony I had promised to write long ago was nearly hers.
To let in some fresh air on the crisp autumn night, the priests had cracked the windows, and a light breeze crossed the altar and the nave. The organ had been positioned at the apse because of the acoustics, and my back was to the audience and the rest of the small orchestra as we took our positions; from the corner of my eye, I could see only Oscar as he tapped and tensed the baton.
From the very first notes, I was determined to tell the story of how the child is stolen and replaced by someone else, and yet both the child and the changeling persist. In place of the usual distance and separation from the audience came a sense of connection through performance. They were stilled, hushed, expectant, and I could feel two hundred pairs of eyes watching. I concentrated to the point where I could let go and play for them rather than satisfy myself. The overture teased out the symphony’s four movements: awareness, pursuit, lamentation, and redemption, and at the moment when I lifted my hands from the keys and the strings took up the pizzicato to indicate the arrival of the changelings, I felt his presence nearby. The boy I could not save. And as Oscar waved me in for the organ’s interplay, I saw the child through an open window. He watched me play for him, listened to our music. As the tempo slowed in the second movement, I took more chances to watch him watching us.
He was solemn-eyed, listening intently to the music. During the dance of the third movement, I saw the pouch slung over his shoulder, as if he were preparing for a journey. The only language available to us was the music, so I played for him alone, forgot myself in its flow. All through the movement, I wondered if anyone else in the church had seen that strange face in the window, but when I looked for him again, there was nothing but black night. At the cadenza, I realized he had left me alone in the world and would not return.