Joplin's Ghost (2 page)

“Help me, please,” Scott said, the three words in the English language he most despised.

“Say, that was pretty good, fella,” the attendant said. “You a jass minstrel?”

Scott shook his head. Lottie had a liking for jass music from New Orleans, but Scott had been too sick to go to a cabaret to hear a jass minstrel band. From the way Lottie described jass music, it sounded like ragtime sprinkled with blues, following its own rules.

“I’m a composer,” Scott said, but he was almost sure the attendant didn’t hear.

When the attendant lifted him by his armpits, helping him back to his wheelchair, Scott’s anguish tore at him, a dagger of fire in his chest. He should not have played, he realized. Why should he have remembered just to lose hands again? How had Beethoven survived his deafness? Maybe heartbreak
would
kill him just as Lottie always said, because death could not feel worse.

Why did you leave me, dear girl? Why can’t I be free, too?

Scott heard the sound of clapping hands, a meager audience.

He turned to look over his shoulder, blinking vision back to his eyes from the white-gray soup of his tears. He saw more than a dozen patients standing behind him, grinning while they staggered or swayed, gazing at him wide-eyed as if he were Prometheus and had just brought them fire. The men were Negro and white, equal in their suffering, and Scott had never seen a more grateful audience. To these men, at least, he would never be forgotten.

God help me, was this where my life was supposed to take me? All so I could be here today to ease the journey for a few wretched souls like me? Was this Your gift to me all along?

The patient who had been crying on the floor stood among them, a man so young he might be a teenager. His face was damp, but there were no tears in his bright, smiling eyes. He followed the wheelchair, patting Scott on the back with blows so earnest they hurt. “Say, you playing again tomorrow, mister?” he said, as if miracles could be commanded.

“I’ll do my best,” Scott said.
Allldooomabesssss,
his words came out.

But Scott Joplin never played again.

Scott visited his piano in the dayroom whenever he felt strong enough to return, always in a wheelchair, but he never tried to play, and by then he was too sick to be sad about it. Breathing was enough work to keep him occupied. He only came back to the piano because at a certain hour, when daylight and dusk mingled through the windowpanes, he always thought he heard Freddie’s voice calling. The Rosenkranz kept her close to him. That much he knew.

The other patients, meanwhile, avoided the piano as if it had been brushed by plague. Coming within three steps of it made them feel little bursts of electricity dancing across the hairs on their arms, or made their feet itch. That piano didn’t
want
to be played by anyone except Scott, so with their blessing, the piano grew a coat of dust.

When Scott Joplin died on a spring morning, he was in bed, not at his piano.

The start of the Great War buried the news of Scott’s passing, even in the few circles where his passing would have been news. At his funeral, Lottie remembered her promise to her dying husband, but how would it have looked to have a song as gay as “Maple Leaf Rag” played on a burial day? Lottie would regret her decision the rest of her life, but on the day Scott was put to rest in his pauper’s burial plot, no one so much as hummed her husband’s most beloved song.

Lord knew she’d done right by the man in every other way.

Lottie Joplin hadn’t been able to understand her husband’s last words to her, so she had comforted herself by imagining tenderness in Scotty’s weak murmurings. She had known his heart had private spaces the minute he told her he was a widower, but she liked to think his dying words might have been
Lottie Joplin, you’re the only woman I ever truly loved.

Or something gentle like that. Just not angry, for once. Not afraid.

Lottie was no child of God, truth be known—being in the sin trade, she’d had to let go of Jesus to make ends meet—but she prayed her dear husband’s last words were happy. Scott never got what he deserved, not a single day of his life.
Lord, give him peace at last,
she had thought, imagining calm surrender in the mangled whisper Scott had breathed into her face.

Scott’s last words to Lottie weren’t peaceful, calm or loving, and they would have surprised her if she had understood him—because his last words were an admonition.

Find the kerosene, Lottie. Burn that piano to Hell.

1991

Phoenix Smalls was ten years old the day she nearly died.

Years later, distant relatives and forgotten schoolteachers would claim they’d always seen a special spark in Phoenix, That Certain Something proclaiming she was going to make a deep groove in this world somehow. For the most part, these were lies. Until she nearly died, Phoenix Smalls had never done a single remarkable thing.

Phoenix got good grades, but her schooling hadn’t caught afire. She’d always liked to sing, but she had what her chorus teacher called a Fourth-Place voice, never likely to place in the top three. Phoenix studied violin, but with only enough diligence to keep her lessons from sounding like catfights. She’d been playing the piano her grandparents bought her since she was six, and she’d made it a good way through the Robert Whitford course, but her recitals weren’t inspired or impressive.

Phoenix’s father thought she could do better. He turned practicing the piano into a military exercise, with a timer. First twenty minutes, scale drills. Second twenty minutes, practice a required classical piece from her study book. Only in the third twenty minutes did she have free time to play what she liked from the sheet music in her
E-Z Hits of the ’80s
book (that had Madonna
and
Whitney Houston songs in it). Under her father’s arrangement, Phoenix hated practicing the piano more than she hated anything else in life. Phoenix had called her father
Sarge
by the time she was eight, and the nickname stuck. Sarge could take the fun out of anything.

Phoenix felt cursed to have been born into a family where
both
parents loved music: Her mother was a former ballet dancer who played piano and still owned the Silver Slipper, the jazz club Phoenix’s grandfather had opened on Miami Beach in the 1950s. Phoenix’s father occasionally played the piano one-handed, humming to himself, or he played his trumpet to old jazz records in the garage, in sporadic bursts and peals both on-key and off. He also managed musicians and bands, which kept him on the road more than Phoenix or her mother liked.

Whenever Sarge returned from the road—sometimes after days, sometimes after weeks—he had new stories when he thought Phoenix was asleep and couldn’t hear him and Mom sitting up half the night at the kitchen table.
You’d think they didn’t have mamas and daddies. You should have seen the mess they left in the hotel. He was so strung out, he fell asleep at the microphone.
Phoenix loved Sarge’s road stories. When she heard her parents going toward the kitchen, she climbed out of bed to hide just out of their sight, next to the china cabinet beyond the kitchen doorway. The stories were a window into a world without rules, perfect entertainment.
You don’t snort it, fool,
was one of the punch lines that made Mom scream from laughing so hard. (Phoenix’s cousin Gloria told her later that joke had something to do with drugs, inside knowledge Phoenix thought Gloria had no business knowing at eleven—but that was Gloria.)

Over time, though, Phoenix began to resent the performers her father worked for. It was bad enough Sarge was gone as often as he was home, but he was gone babysitting a pack of spoiled druggies who didn’t deserve him. By the time Phoenix was ten, show business seemed like one of the fancy chocolate candies her grandmother served from boxes every Thanksgiving: tempting on the outside, but likely to be licorice or cherry on the inside. Downright unappetizing, when you got to the taste of it.

Phoenix’s own dream was to be famous with
dignity,
chiefly by finding her way into the
Guinness Book of World Records.
Every day brought new inspiration: holding her breath (she made it up to fifty seconds), longest moonwalk (she practiced moonwalking across the kitchen floor every day after school) and longest kiss (even with Saran Wrap separating their lips, kissing Gloria was mostly gross—mostly—so she didn’t have anyone to practice with). It was only a matter of time before she discovered her hidden talent, whatever it was, so it was best to get started early. She would break or create
any
record, as long is it didn’t involve performances of any kind, or a stage.

Or, of course, a piano.

The Silver Slipper didn’t help reduce her aversion to show business. When Aunt Liv couldn’t babysit or the weekend shows went late, Phoenix was a fixture on the club’s cot in the office upstairs, sleeping through the throbbing bass drums and whining trumpets from the stage beneath her. The Slipper wasn’t a big or popular club, so the acts who came through usually weren’t happy to be there. Some were frustrated because they wanted to be farther along, and most because they had already been farther along and were on their way back. Each night, Phoenix witnessed their neat trick of suddenly remembering to smile before they took the stage, where their restlessness and resentment were in her plain view.

Her last shard of innocence was lost the night she heard her favorite singer say that if she had to do that
fucking
song from the radio again, she would lose her
fucking
mind, she swore to
fucking
G—d, which Phoenix was sure meant (1) her favorite singer wasn’t going to sing the song Phoenix had wanted to hear so badly that she’d begged her parents to stay up late on a school night, and (2) her favorite singer had blasphemed and was going straight to Hell.

At ten, Phoenix would have been very disappointed to learn that show business, and music, were in her future. Downright horrified, really.

Then came the piano. And the accident.

The old piano had sat inside 565 Alton Road since the two-story brick building first opened its doors in 1927 as an all-girls’ school, before the building fell from grace as a flophouse, then found salvation as a jazz club. The piano had been collecting dust against the wall in the upstairs storage room as long as anyone knew: from when Phoenix’s grandfather, Bud Rosen, sold his club to his daughter right before he was indicted for tax fraud in 1982; from when the Silver Slipper regularly drew Sinatra and Jackie Gleason to its linen-draped tables; and from the reigns of two or three owners before that who had their own stories to tell. The piano had a story, too. Anyone who gazed at its sullen, aged cabinet for more than a few seconds knew that, even if they didn’t know anything about the story except that it wasn’t a happy one.

Phoenix found the old piano in the storage room during a bored fit of exploration one summer day, when she discovered that the storage room wasn’t locked as it usually was. The room was little more than a closet, crowded with old sound equipment, boxes stamped with Dewars labels, and stacks of ratty chairs with broad backs that looked like patio castoffs. The piano sat in the middle of the floor, facing nothing in particular, misplaced even within disorder.

The piano was so ugly it was surly. The upright piano’s blond rosewood finish had rotted away, and its cabinet resembled old, cracked leather, riven with uneven checkers, like a dusty lizard’s skin. The ivory keys were so brown they looked coffee-stained, and the ones with missing key tops looked worse, stripped to the bone. The golden Rosenkranz label would have brightened it, but the lettering had been swallowed by rot. The piano’s twin candelabra, tarnished black, stood with defiant stateliness above the keys although no candles had burned to light this piano in lifetimes.

Phoenix loved the piano on sight.

Maybe it was the Sarge’s timer and the piano lessons. Maybe it was her boredom at being forced to sing along while her mother played “My Way,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and “Ebb Tide” on the living room piano after dinner on Friday nights, when Phoenix was
sure
there was something good on cable. Whatever it was, Phoenix liked the look of that rotted old piano. She liked its rot best of all.

As she did with all treasures, Phoenix wanted to share her discovery with her cousin Gloria, who was also her best friend. Gloria was from the white side of the family. She lived two blocks from Phoenix in the palm- and pine-lined suburbs of southwest Dade County, a Jewish girl with curly blond hair and faint freckles on her nose.

“This is an ugly effing piano,” Gloria announced when she saw it.

That stung. Gloria’s words often stung. Nothing gentle came out of her.

“Well, you’re wearing an ugly effing shirt. Hammer’s getting played out,” Phoenix said, answering her cousin’s truth with an outright lie. Phoenix envied the long-sleeved M. C. Hammer concert jersey Gloria wore to school at least twice a week and usually on weekends. Aunt Liv had spent fifty dollars on that shirt. Mom would never spend fifty dollars on a concert shirt, even if it was a concert for Jesus and his Second Coming Tour.

“You’re just effing jealous,” Gloria said.
Effing
was Gloria’s favorite new word.

“I am
not
fucking jealous,” Phoenix said, feeling bold.

“Ooh, I’m telling your dad, Phee.”

“Go ahead. I don’t care. He knows you cuss way worse than me.”

“It’s only cussing if you
say
it. I said
eff
-ing. You are in
trouble
.”

Durn. She would have to beg. “Don’t tell, Gloria.” She used her no-playing voice.

Gloria shrugged, dramatically rolling her eyes away.
Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.
“Does this thing even work?” Gloria said, turning her attention back to the piano. “It looks whack. Straight-up, girl. For real, though.”

Much to Phoenix’s irritation, her friends often remarked that her white cousin Gloria sounded more black than
she
did. Gloria could front all she wanted, but she didn’t have a real, deep-laughing black daddy like Sarge. Phoenix had cornrows and caramel-colored skin that stayed tan all year, and Gloria turned as red as a box of Cap’n Crunch if she was in the sun for five minutes. Gloria was just confused—but then again, so was Mom, since Christmas was Mom’s favorite time of year, and Mom’s own sister wouldn’t even let Gloria have a Christmas tree.

Phoenix pressed the piano’s middle-C key, and it was silent except for a muffled clicking sound. The D played, but it was soft and off-key. Phoenix’s piano teacher, Mrs. Abramowicz, would hate that sound. Ugly
and
broken. Maybe Gloria was right. Maybe it was an old broke-down piece of nothing after all. “I guess it’s not anything special,” Phoenix said.

“Naw, it’s all right, though. It’s not
that
whack,” Gloria said, arms linked behind her back like an archaeologist. “It’s got attitude.”

The piano
did
have attitude. If she had this piano instead of the respectable one Grandpa Bud and Grandma Oprah had bought her (no, not
that
Oprah; it was a Hebrew name before it became a brand name, Grandma Oprah always said), she might not mind Sarge’s practice sessions so much. This piano would make a racket. It would mangle
Für Elise
and put Beethoven to shame. Sarge would
beg
her to stop practicing.

“Maybe I can take it home,” Phoenix said.

Gloria looked at her like she was crazy. “Why?”

Because it’s sad,
Phoenix wanted to say, but she didn’t, because Gloria would laugh.

And besides, that wasn’t quite right, Phoenix thought as she let her hand glide across the piano’s rough cabinet, halfway expecting to pick up a splinter. The piano was
mad
. That was closer to the truth. Maybe it wouldn’t be mad anymore if she gave it a home. She wanted to take care of the piano more than she’d wanted to take care of her guinea pig, Grayboy, before he died last year. She loved the piano already, somehow. She had to have it for herself.

“Maybe this is the freaky piano my mom told me about,” Gloria said.

“What piano?”

“My mom told me there was this piano here she thought was haunted. She saw it move by itself, or some shit like that.” At first Phoenix thought her cousin was teasing her, but the half grin across Gloria’s face was more thoughtful than mischievous, and she wasn’t
that
good an actress.

“I don’t believe you,” Phoenix said.

“I don’t care if you do or not. I know what she told me. She said she was scared of it, and she’s still scared of pianos. And it made her feet itch.”

“That last part was stupid. You should lie better,” Phoenix said. “
My
mom’s not scared of no durn piano. If there was a haunted piano, both of them should be scared.”

Gloria shrugged. “Eff off. I know what my mom said.”

“You eff off.” Suddenly, Phoenix was tired of arguing. Maybe Gloria wasn’t lying, and the piano really was haunted. There could be a Guinness World Record for the spookiest piano! She would have to research this. Some of the records were very unusual.

“Come on. Let’s ask Mom and Sarge if I can have it,” Phoenix said.

Downstairs, walking along the rear wall of the lounge behind the sea of empty red-draped tables, they passed what Sarge called the Gallery of Greats, a row of poster-sized framed photographs of the jazz artists Phoenix’s father played in the garage. It was a parade in black and white, grinning faces in old-fashioned hats and clothes. Phoenix knew their names from their faces and labels, a game she’d devised when she was eight, and she named each in a whisper as she passed: Scott Joplin. Jelly Roll Morton. Louis Armstrong. Duke Ellington. Count Basie. Billie Holiday. Coleman Hawkins. Benny Goodman. Ella Fitzgerald. Lionel Hampton. Artie Shaw. Mary Lou Williams. Charlie Parker. John Coltrane. Miles Davis. Thelonious Monk.