All six were past words. But Jonah floated above the stage. He sang like someone from beyond the grave who’d managed to return for one remembering moment to don again the surprise of flesh. Everyone in the cathedral fell back against their pews. My brother had confessed to me the source of that perfection when we’d spoken over the phone. He’d tapped into the pure, voluptuous power of indifference, the sound of how good all sounds will sound to us once we’re past them.
After the second burst of applause, he seemed to see me, ten pews back. But the smile was too small for even professional recognition. He gave no sign for the rest of the performance that he felt anything but disembodied grace. He’d gotten beyond not only race. He’d gone beyond being anything at all.
My impatience blotted out the second half of that rapturous program. The lovelier the sound, the more criminal I felt sitting and listening. By the second encore, John Sheppard’s In manus tuas, I replayed in my mind every petty betrayal I’d ever committed. The fiercely applauding audience made the group sing two more encores.
I was a wreck by the time I found my way into the receiving line. Jonah sprang forward when he saw me near the head of the queue. But the light in his face dulled a little as he approached me. “You’re by yourself? Sorry, Joey. That’s not what I meant.”
“Of course I’m by myself.” When were we ever anything else?
“They didn’t want to come?” It seemed to confirm his worst suspicions.
Every lie we’d ever told ourselves occurred to me. I spared him all of them.
We were surrounded by packs of envious people who just wanted to stand close to these singers who’d thrown off all chains and could make sounds others only dreamed of. All nearby heads appraised us with that look that listens while pretending not to. Jonah stared at me. “Why not? Why wouldn’t she? How long…” I lifted my palms, pleading. He pursed his lips. “Fine.” He put his hand around my shoulders and led me back to where the other antique voices stood. “So what did you think of that Taverner? Was that the closest thing you’ve ever heard to God?”
Then there were the others. Hans Lauscher greeted me with awkward affection. Marjoleine deGroot swore I looked younger than when I’d left. Peter Chance patted my back. “How long has it been?”
I smiled as well as I could. “Since at least 1610.”
Everyone wanted the reunion to end as quickly as possible. Jonah had to return to attending to his fans. He was grace itself. He signed programs and smiled for pictures with the heavy donors. Total strangers wanted to invite him to fancy dinners, introduce him to celebrities, throw parties in his honor. Although this was ensemble work of the most selfless order, even the tone-deaf could hear where the magic came from. The gentry of the silicon age wanted my brother to love them as they already loved him. I stood by and watched Jonah charm his admirers like some high-art faith healer. It was after midnight by the time we were alone.
“You promised me a tour of your backwater,” Jonah said.
“Not this late. They’ll shoot us. Come say hello to Ruth. Tomorrow morning.”
He shook his head. “She doesn’t want that.”
“She doesn’t? Or you don’t? Somebody has to go first, Jonah.”
He put his hands on my chest. “You’ve got some new forte hints in there, brother.” His smile died at my silence. He withdrew his hand. “I can’t. I can’t force myself on them.”
“Come to school on Monday. Meet the kids. She’ll be there. It’ll be easy.”
“I wish I could. We leave tomorrow.” It seemed almost to save him.
“Come over in the morning at least. No ambushes. I’ll buy you breakfast.”
“You’re on. Draw me a map.”
He came to the apartment. By the time I opened the door, he’d had a chance to compose his face. “We’ve lived in worse,” I reminded him.
“Beats where I’m living now, actually. Celeste kept the Brandstraat place.” He pored over every American commodity in my kitchen — peanut butter, corn on the cob, cold cereal. “Look at this!” He held a cardboard box of oat squares with a picture of two little mixed-race kids, their smiling faces labeledTWIN PACK.
“Multiracialism’s hot,” I told him.
“That was our problem, Mule, a million years ago. We didn’t have the right marketing!”
I took him to my habitual breakfast place, second-guessing the choice a hundred times. We walked. Jonah took in the blocks, crumbling or gentrifying, rising up or succumbing to a war fought house to house, a war he’d spent his life evading. He walked alongside me, nodding. I gave him running color commentary — who’d been evicted, who’d been bilked out, who’d gotten arrested. My neighbors waved or called out Saturday breakfast greetings. I called back, making no introductions.
“It reminds me of the old neighborhood,” Jonah said.
“What old neighborhood?”
“You know. The Heights. Our childhood?”
I stopped and gaped. “It’s nothing like New York. It couldn’t be further from our childhood if you—”
“I know that, Joseph. That doesn’t mean it can’t remind me.”
Milky’s was its usual Saturday-morning carnival. Parents of my students, my colleagues, my neighbors, the staff and regulars: Everyone asked about Ruth and the boys, how the latest school expansion plans were going, how I’d been, who the hell this foreigner was. Milky himself came to greet us in full green silk Chinese pajamas with a navy pea coat over them. “Your brother, you say? Never shit a shitter, Joe Strom.”
Only after we slipped into a booth did I get a chance to breathe. Jonah grinned from across the linoleum table. “You sly mother. You’re more famous than I am.” He insisted on ordering everything I did. “It’s Denver tonight. The Alps. I’m screwed for air supply already, the way it is.”
All breakfast long, he asked about his nephews. I gave him the facts: Kwame’s cage-rattling, word-battling rap. Little Robert’s lightning speed with reading, writing, and, most of all, numbers. Jonah kept nodding and pressing for details.
We passed through the greetings gauntlet again on the way out. By now, the funky foreigner with the ironed T-shirt and creased khakis was a regular, and all my friends urged him to come back next week.
“I’ll be here,” Jonah lied. Bald-faced. “Have my usual ready.” Milky and company laughed, and I hated my brother. Two weeks and he, too, might have belonged.
“Come to Ruth’s,” I said outside the diner.
“Can’t. I have to meet the group at the airport in fifty minutes.”
“You’ll never make it.”
“I’ll set my watch back.” We turned down my street, Jonah in thought. “So you’re good, then? This is it? This is all that you need?”
I nodded, ready to lie to him. Ruth, the school, my students: They were considerable. But they were not, in truth, all I needed. I was missing something I could not even name. Something in my past was waiting to be permitted. Some piece inside me needed scoring out, the one I’d once promised Will Hart I’d write down. But I could no longer hear where my notes were pointing. The chance to compose them had passed me by.
We stopped on the sidewalk in front of my building. I looked at my brother, his clothes flapping in that clement breeze. I was not good, not altogether. Not even close, in fact. I was still working for someone else. Some other blood-relation claim on me. But I wasn’t about to give Jonah the satisfaction of hearing as much. “Yep,” I said. “This is it. All anyone could ask for.”
“What are you teaching them? Your fourth graders. What kind of music?”
“K through three. And I’m teaching them everything.”