Part 2 (1/2)

”Isn't it the same thing?”

I smile, leaning against my worn-out Honda. ”No, Franklin, it's not. We aren't professional musicians. We work in a music store. And Clive has more students than all of us.”

He runs that through his head, doing the figures. He says, ”He has fourteen. Same as you.”

”I have thirteen.”

”Since when?”

”I don't teach Hallie Bolaris anymore.”

He seems surprised by this information. He knew Hallie, as all the people in McCoy's did, because she came in so often (never missed a lesson, and sometimes took extras), and because her unofficially adopted mother, Mrs. Edwards, used to amuse the people in the store while she waited for Hallie to finish. Mrs. Edwards hated music and wasted no time in telling everyone that. Sometimes she would hover over Declan as he repaired instruments. She'd say to him, ”Let me ask you something. Why do you have such a long beard?”

Declan, easily the most even tempered and well adjusted of the McCoy's employees, said, ”Because I don't like to shave.”

Mrs. Edwards said, ”I don't like to clean the toilet, but it has to be done.”

Declan said, ”I like to clean the toilet. I do it with my beard.”

That pretty much finished their relations.h.i.+p. She moved on to Ernest, who often played guitar on the floor when business was slow. She'd watch him, unable to stop herself from being drawn in by his playing, which was quite impressive.

She'd say to him, ”You look like a smart young man. Why are you wasting your time in a music store?”

Ernest said, ”I tried wasting it in other places, but I usually got arrested.”

This was true of Ernest. He was a real musician, which meant that he had encountered (and overcome) serious substance-abuse problems. Most real musicians don't overcome them, or didn't in my day. No one of my generation ever expected to see Keith Richards or Eric Clapton welcome in the new millennium. We are all still a bit thrown by that, which is why we sometimes refer to them as sellouts.

Pretty soon, Hallie and Dorothy had become the stuff of legend at McCoy's. People looked forward to Wednesdays, when Hallie came, because they were certain to be entertained. It was Hallie who indirectly inst.i.tuted the Wednesday night discussion group, wherein all the employees of McCoy's would hang around telling funny stories about our exploits, and then we'd move on to talk of music, and eventually we would play instruments and wouldn't end up leaving the shop until around midnight.

We no longer had the Wednesday night discussion group because it went away when Hallie did. I'm the only one at McCoy's who makes that connection. Everyone else thinks we all just got busy, even though n.o.body's any busier.

”What happened to Hallie?” he asks.

”I don't know.”

”She just disappeared?”

”Something like that.”

”Did she say why?”

Did she say why? She did and she didn't.

Did I know why?

I did and I didn't.

”No, she never told me. Directly. Her mother said something. Her foster mother. It was complicated.”

Franklin's face registers a modic.u.m of concern for me. In the old days, I would have mistaken it for love. But the reason I am alone now is that I've learned to tell the difference.

”You said she was your best student.”

”She was more than that. She had the potential to be great. The way she understood the instrument.”

”Better than you?”

”Yes, much better than me. Maybe that's why she stopped coming. Because I had nothing left to teach her.”

Franklin doesn't want to hear this. He shakes his head and s.h.i.+fts his guitar up on his shoulder. He clings to that guitar as if it were a security blanket. It is a security blanket. That is what all our instruments are to us. The difference between me and Franklin is that I know it.

”She was just a kid,” he says. ”I'm sure she just got bored.”

Franklin appears to be stuck in this place where youth is the enemy. Maybe it's resentment; maybe it's envy. Maybe he thinks that young people have the gift of opportunity awaiting them, while the truth is that like anyone else, they have to wade through the mud of confusion before they can confront the landscape of possibility.

But I let him think it was her youth that led her down the sinkhole, because the truth is too hard. There are two possible scenarios. In one, I am crazy. In the other, I am cruel. Time does not smooth out the edges of those choices.

I stare at the cars moving past in erratic colors like pills. The colors don't mean anything. It's just how you tell one from the other.

I say, ”What do you think it means when the scriptures say unless you're like a child you can't enter the kingdom of heaven? Jesus couldn't have been talking about innocence or happiness or painlessness.”

Franklin looks at me as if I'm not well.

”I don't think about the scriptures, Pearl. Why do you?”

”I don't know. Because I'm from the South. I was raised with it.”

”I was raised with a lot of crazy ideas I've left behind,” he says.

”It doesn't seem like a crazy idea. It seems like a mysterious one.”

”You're not from the South. You're from Virginia.”

”Last capital of the Confederacy. Danville, Virginia. My hometown. That's not the South? I will drop them a note.”

Franklin is almost done with me now. He doesn't like to talk about the South. He doesn't want too much truth at once. Who does? The fact is, I am from a real place, with a real musical heritage. He is from a land that someone dreamed, and the dream is not complete. California is still entirely open to interpretation. The South has been defined. It has gone to war. California has gone to skirmish. It is still looking for a war. In the interim, its contradictions are played out on the battlegrounds of music and art and status. Los Angeles is swollen with hope and infected with aspiration. But there are good places to eat and an ocean.

He starts away, then turns back. He says, ”Hey, Pearl, it's eleven hours before the world ends. What kind of music do you play on the violin?”

”Bluegra.s.s,” I tell him.

This surprises him. Franklin fancies himself a bluegra.s.s guitar player. He thinks I fancy myself a cla.s.sical musician. But I am curiously devoid of knowledge in that area. I present the music to my students- the cold, complicated sheets of notation required to emulate the greats. But I cleave to the mountain music, the made-up stuff, the accident of pa.s.sion converging on intellectual restriction. The marriage of ignorance and ideals. This is where music is really found.

Franklin doesn't accept that being born in the wrong place is keeping him from making truly beautiful sounds come out of his guitar. That's why he wants to be a session musician. That's what you do when you give up.

”You? Bluegra.s.s?” he asks, his face an open question mark.