OCTOBER 1992
27.
Jade
She sat on the cool floor in the hallway of the music building, leaning against the wall outside a classroom. Inside the room, an ensemble rehearsed a Bruch concerto. They were good. A dull ache traveled down her arms as she listened to them, and her throat was tight from the effort of holding back tears. She’d skipped her child development class to sit here and listen, like an addict who couldn’t stay away from her next fix, and she knew she was in trouble.
Her first few weeks of college had been an out-of-body experience for her. The campus swarmed with students and she didn’t remember ever feeling a part of something so enormous. Having been homeschooled all her life, she found it hard to adjust to moving from one classroom to another. The structure was so impersonal; the crush of students daunting.
She was quiet in her classes, afraid to draw attention to herself, and she didn’t interact with her fellow students. The only people she could sincerely call her friends were Grady and Ingrid and some of the regular customers, like Charlie, who came in every week to talk music.
The ensemble reached her favorite part of the concerto and she rested her head against the wall, shutting her eyes to listen. She didn’t know why she tortured herself this way, hanging out in the music building, but she couldn’t stay away.
When the ensemble had finished rehearsing, she opened her eyes and noticed a bulletin board on the wall across from her. Unlike the boards where she’d found the poster about Matty’s concert, this one had small typed or handwritten notices: students advertising instruments they wanted to sell. She caught her breath. Standing up, she crossed the hall to scan the notices. There were three violins, none anywhere near the quality of Violet, but there was a Jay Haide for five hundred dollars. More than her car had cost her, but probably in better shape.
* * *
She’d gotten in the habit of using Ingrid’s phone on those rare occasions she needed to make a call. It was cheaper, easier, and less disgusting than using a pay phone, but it came with the possibility of Ingrid overhearing the conversation. She could usually wait until Ingrid was working in the garden or taking cookies to the homeless on the beach. This afternoon, though, she was too impatient. She needed to call about that Jay Haide violin before it was snapped up by someone else, and it didn’t matter if Ingrid was in the kitchen or not.
So Ingrid chopped vegetables to toss in a stockpot while Jade placed the call. The girl—her name was Cara—was a senior, and she told Jade that she was moving up to a nineteenth-century Amati. They made plans to meet in one of the practice rooms at San Diego State the following day. Jade had hoped Cara could meet that evening. She would have turned around and driven all the way back to school if Cara had been free, but she said she had classes and then a date with her boyfriend.
When Jade hung up the phone, Ingrid handed her a chunk of the celery she was chopping.
“A violin?” She looked amused, as though she thought Jade had lost her mind.
“I used to play when I was a kid,” Jade said, “and I kind of miss it.”
“Cool.” Ingrid scooped the celery pieces into the pot on the stove. “I can’t wait to hear you play.”
Jade shrugged, as though buying the violin was no big deal. “Oh, well, it’s been years,” she said. Two years, nine months, and about fourteen days, to be exact.
“Well, good for you for pursuing a passion,” Ingrid said. “Stay for dinner? Turkey soup.”
Jade shook her head. “Thanks, no. I have homework.” Ingrid was really nice but Jade tried not to spend too much time with her. She no longer worried about being recognized, but she did worry about the police showing up at Ingrid’s door one day, asking questions about her strange tenant.
She barely slept that night, she was so excited about the violin. The excitement, though, was tempered by thoughts of her father. Never pick up a violin again, Lisa, he’d warned her. He’d be furious if he knew, but she would be very careful. She’d play only in her cottage. She had no reason at all to play anywhere else.
* * *
Cara was twenty-one and extraordinarily beautiful. Total California girl, Jade thought. The kind she could picture surfing rather than cooped up in the music building at San Diego State. But Cara was a good violinist, and Jade sat mesmerized as she played the opening section of “Czardas” by Monti. She watched Cara’s tanned and toned bare arms work the bow and her long fingers sail over the strings, and she was unsure whether she was more taken with the violin or the violinist.
Cara finished playing, then handed the instrument to Jade. Holding a violin beneath her chin for the first time in so long felt like holding a friend she’d thought she’d lost forever. She played some scales and arpeggios to hear the sound and warm up her tense, tight fingers. Then she played a bit of Vivaldi’s Concerto in A Minor, and she didn’t have to work hard at sounding like a novice. It had been so terribly, painfully long.
She gave Cara five one-hundred-dollar bills, then carried the violin across campus to her car, hugging the case tightly in her arms as if it were a baby.
* * *
San Diego was in the midst of the hot, dry Santa Ana winds of autumn, and even though her cottage felt like a sauna, Jade closed all the windows, stood in her living room, and played. Although her left hand and bow hand worked seamlessly together, her fingers felt weak from too much time away, and they moved sluggishly at first. Her control of the bow was imprecise, but none of that mattered. She cried with happiness and sorrow as she played. She’d lost so much. Her home. Her family. Her future. But in her hands she held the one thing with the power to bring her joy, and she played her new best friend until the early hours of the morning.