Gregory
I checked my watch. 4 p.m. I was late. I hated tardiness. It showed a lack of respect. But today it was unavoidable. I’d spent the last three hours grading papers for music theory class, which I shouldn’t have been teaching in the first place. Once I started something, it was difficult to quit. And it was my luck that at 3:30 I’d pulled the next paper off the stack.
Savannah Marshall.
I want to be clear. I’m a fair instructor. Some students think I’m too harsh, too demanding. But this isn’t a liberal arts community college for those who desire to enter the fascinating world of cosmetology or small business finance. This is the premier conservatory in the world, where we train musicians who will go on to the top of their fields. I would do my students no favors by coddling them and giving them false illusions, which would only be shattered by harsh reality when they left the confines of these walls.
That said, her paper presented a dilemma. On the one hand, it displayed a level of brilliance and sheer power that was rare in students her age. On the other hand, it was a muddle of ridiculous assertions. Instead of technique, she wrote about feelings. Instead of placing the music in its proper context as a work of sublime art, she wrote about its historical context and how it represented the people and relationships involved in its composition.
In short, she understood nothing I’d been teaching. Or worse, she understood it, and dismissed it.
At 4:01 p.m. I scrawled an F across the top half of the cover page. I knew as I wrote it that it was harsh. Heavy-handed, even. But, half-steps are best left to scales, and have no business in my classroom. She needed to be taught a lesson. Sighing, I stood, and hurried out of the office.
Thanks to Savannah Marshall’s bizarre and irrelevant paper I was nearly four minutes late arriving at the practice rooms.
In the hall, I found a depressingly middle-classed young couple. At a glance, I could tell he was a computer something or other for some company on 128, and she was probably an elementary school teacher. Perhaps a music teacher, which I hoped to God not, because she would soon be attempting to tell me how to do my job. Between them stood a young boy, perhaps twelve years old, with what appeared to be an undersized cello case. It was beat up and marked with a rental agency’s logo.
“Good afternoon, I’m Gregory Fitzgerald,” I said.
The mother stepped forward. “Susan Donovan,” she said. “This is my husband David, and our son, Robert.”
Robert looked nothing like the couple. She prodded him forward. I felt unsure. Did one speak to a child that age as if they were simply a short adult? Or give orders? My father once told me that I’d never been twelve. Of course, as much as I loved my father, it became clear early on that he had no idea what to make of me.
Short adult then. I reached out a hand, not to the boy’s mother or father, but to him. He couldn’t see the hand of course, so I reached down and took his, gave him a not too firm handshake. I don’t generally shake hands, because men like to engage in stupid games of who can grip harder. My hands were my music. They were my life.
The father spoke. “We’d like to thank you for meeting with us ...”
I cocked my head. “I was under the impression your son was the student, not you?”
David Donovan looked somewhat shocked, and opened his mouth to speak, but his wife was the faster of the two, because she quickly said, “We thought we’d spend a few minutes explaining Robert’s issues—”
“Unnecessary. Robert ... come. The practice room is right over here.”
I put a hand on his shoulder to guide him.
“He doesn’t like to be touched ...” his mother said.
I waved her off, and the kid came willingly enough.
“Have a seat,” I said to him, setting my practice cello in its case against the wall. This was a relatively inexpensive instrument that I kept at the conservatory. The Montagnana was only played for rehearsals and live shows for the symphony.
He put a hand out, and said, “Where’s the chair?”
I was already unsnapping the case for my cello, but I turned and took his hand, then stretched it out so he was touching the back of the chair. Then I turned away.
Gently, I lifted my cello from its case, then took a seat. A moment later he’d found his own seat, and took his out. In the meantime, his irritating parents were pushing at each other, because only one of their heads at a time would fit in the small glass window in the door.
I studied him as he fumbled with his case. He had extensive scarring around his eyes. I couldn’t tell if he’d been in a fire, or what, but he wasn’t born blind. Something had happened to him. Whatever. It wasn’t his eye that mattered. It was his hands, and his ears.
He was awkward with his instrument, a training instrument intended for smaller children. It was in terrible condition, obviously rented. The bow was caked with rosin, the screws and fittings oxidized, and the hair brittle and glazed. The cello itself had multiple scratches. It would take a magician to get a decent sound out of that instrument. I almost felt a fit of rage over the mistreatment of the instrument, as well as whatever shyster had rented it to the boy’s parents. It was typical that a beginning musician would be given an instrument that would be most difficult to play.
“Why do you want to learn cello?” I asked.
Robert just looked confused by the question.
“You’re blind, not mute, correct?”
At that, he recoiled a little. “I can talk.”
“Then tell me why you’re here.”
“My mom ... she … um ...”
“Your mother wanted you to learn? Does she think because you are blind you’ll be some sort of prodigy?”
He flinched, then nodded, just a little.
“And what do you want?”
His face turned away from me, his blank, scarred eyes moving around aimlessly. Then he said, “I want to stop feeling like I’m a freak.”