Joplin's Ghost (47 page)

He might never have immortality without
Treemonisha
. With the flood of awful music and bawdy lyrics to poison the name of ragtime, Scott felt more certain every day that the public would not take wider notice of his rags. No one except Lottie, perhaps, and a handful of artists like James Scott and white composer Joseph Lamb, who had both sought him out—men who understood that lasting art was born of fine composition and thoughtful execution. Ragtime was treated like a greater scourge each year, and he’d been called its king.

And what would you render for immortality, Scott?

The question came to his head as if it had flown in through the open window, whispered in a voice that was not his, that was not the voice of anyone he knew—a voice, in fact, that wasn’t from anyone or anything in particular as much as it was a rustle nearly shrouded in the silence.

“Anything,” Scott whispered, a tear rolling from his chin to further wash the keys he had scrubbed lovingly with his failing hand. “I would render everything.”

That night, for the first time in years, Scott dreamed about Freddie.

H
aving a piano in the apartment renewed Scott’s spirit.

The next morning, he set out right away to plan a performance of
Treemonisha
on his own, without backers. He found his luck at last when he turned a corner and ran into a friend from Harlem who offered to try and convince a theater owner to rent Scott his stage on West 135th Street at a lower price on Sunday afternoon, when the doors were usually closed. By the next day, Scott had his answer:
The stage is yours.

But the offer was for Sunday and that Sunday only, which meant Scott had only two days to prepare. He would have no time to post notices or place an ad in
New York Age,
even if he could have afforded the expense. He and Sam wouldn’t have time to finish the orchestrations, much less cobble together an orchestra. Two days meant no sets and no costumes, since the cast would have enough work bringing their voices up to the opera’s demands.

Still, it was something, and they all knew it.

The cast members were excited, letting out such a cheer at his announcement that they might have thought they were singing in full costume at the Metropolitan Opera instead of in their own clothes at the Lincoln Theatre near Lenox Avenue in Harlem. They improvised dance steps in their basement rehearsals, but agreed to save their most ambitious dances for the scottische, dude walk and slow drag at the finale.

During those two days, the air was crisper and Scott felt a snap to his step. He had his stage, and that was enough. Sally would be his Treemonisha, and he would invite as many influential people as he could to the two-hundred-seat theater, so his opera could fly free into the world. Freddie
would
live again. He would see to it.

But Sunday arrived with all the promise of storm clouds. First, the performance was delayed a half hour because the employee who was supposed to come with the keys to the theater was nowhere to be found. He finally ambled up to their waiting huddle with a flask of whiskey, claiming he’d just come back from services at Abyssinian Baptist Church.

The electricity wasn’t working properly, flowing to a few lamps but no footlights, so the theater was nearly dark except for whatever light could force its way past the screened windows. The theater’s piano was also alarmingly out of tune, something Scott had forgotten to check beforehand. He would
never
have made such an oversight if he’d been at his best! After his warm-up scales, the cast assured him that the piano sounded fine, but they were lying to themselves. Still, the piano hardly mattered, in the end.

“Ladies and gentlemen—
Treemonisha,
” Scott said with all the heart he could command.

At the piano, Scott’s hands ached during the overture and never stopped. Sally sang like a warrior, but just when Scott was telling himself it might turn out fine after all, confusion reigned at the beginning of the second act, when an epidemic of forgetfulness ran through the cast. Without costumes, the “Frolic of the Bears” was nonsensical, even embarrassing. The finale was the saving grace: The dance numbers looked as well as they might have in Atlantic City, with everyone remembering their steps and lyrics, but by then Scott was nearly in tears because his unsteady hands were in mutiny and he missed note after note.

Scott was relieved when a lukewarm dribbling of applause signaled that he had survived the ordeal. The cast was happy with itself, each of them silently noting their personal triumphs as they took their bows, but there were more than twice the number of people crowding the stage than there were sitting in the audience. Only seventeen people had witnessed the opera’s performance, and Scott was glad there hadn’t been more.

It’s only a start,
he told himself, but he didn’t believe it. That doubt made him a prophet.

It was the only production of
Treemonisha
Scott Joplin would live to see.

B
e quiet Be quiet Be quiet

One hour to rest—only sixty minutes—and someone was playing piano music so loudly through her hotel room wall that Phoenix couldn’t sleep.
For FUCK’S sake
,
SHUT UP.

The day had been torture from the time she’d opened her eyes. She wished she had listened to Carlos’s warning not to stay up writing two nights straight, or that she
could
have listened. Last night, after a day of interviews and rehearsals, Phoenix had dropped into bed nearly unconscious by ten, and she’d still felt like a rag doll all day, her eyes only painted open.

And the Osiris show was today.

At the theater early with Serena, Arturo and the others for a three-hour rehearsal they were lucky to get, Phoenix had liberated herself by wearing her Moog Liberation shoulder synth. She’d brought it with her to New York, for once, so Arturo had to help her modify her dance steps so she could keep up with the choreography of “Party Patrol.” No small feat wearing a fourteen-pound synth, but she had done it, and behind Arturo’s lead, they finally looked like a unit. And since she’d complained about the canned sound of the background vocal tracks on “Love the One You’re With,” yesterday, Sarge had rounded up a dozen kids from a teen choir in Harlem willing to sing for a small contribution to their church. The extra singers were a logistical nightmare (and the groggy sound man had glared at Phoenix for the last-hour change), but the kids sounded great, especially with Serena belting the more aggressive power notes. Manny had nearly wet himself when he heard their last take at sound check.
Damn, Phoenix, what do you think this is, the Grammys?
Her crew was ready.

But Phoenix wasn’t. She’d sung in a whisper at most of the rehearsal, trying to save her voice, and she hoped that would be enough to get her through the show.
One hour
. That was all the time she had for a nap. In one hour, she had to get up so Serena could fix her hair and makeup. The concert started at seven, and she was the opener, so Sarge said she had to arrive at the Osiris no later than six.
One hour
.

Majestic, self-important piano music thumped through her wall, relentless. Who the fuck was playing a piano on this floor? The music was so loud, it sounded like it was in her ear.

BE QUIET

“Babe, can you please call the front desk and complain about this effing noise?” Phoenix mumbled to Carlos, who had curled beside her to guard her from interruptions.

Carlos didn’t answer, and his silence set off a domino effect of enlightenment in Phoenix’s mind.
Shit.
Why would there be a piano on this floor? There wasn’t, of course. She must be dreaming the music, then. Phoenix refused to open her eyes, trying to wish the dream away.

I can’t do this now, Scott. Please let me rest. Come back tomorrow, after the show.

This piano music sounded like
Treemonisha
—she’d listened to the opera’s CD enough to recognize it—but some of the passages sounded different, veering out of place. Van Milton had told her Scott was revising his opera at the end of this life, but those pages had been lost with so many others. Phoenix felt herself sob inside. She had never been this tired, not ever. She couldn’t let Scott rob her of her last nap before her show. Too many people were counting on her, including twelve kids from Harlem.

I can’t fix everything, Scott. It’s not my fault it’s gone. Please let me rest, just once.

The music grew louder, willful. A growling run in the lowest octave shook her teeth.

When Phoenix gave up and opened her eyes, she saw that she wasn’t in her king-sized bed in a midtown–New York hotel room. No panoramic view of the city waited for her now. Carlos, the bed and her room were gone. Yes, this was a dream, like the others.

Except that she also wasn’t in Solomon Dixon’s boardinghouse lying in Freddie Alexander’s deathbed. Instead, she was outside in a field, curled on the ground, penned in by green stalks. Sitting up, Phoenix realized she was surrounded by ripening plants in an endless cornfield. The sky was dark except for a stifled glow, pinks and grays. Sunrise or dusk.

Phoenix was relieved she had learned how to tell the difference between her waking and dreaming lives. Her dreams had very few
smells,
for one thing. When she grabbed a clump of damp, moist soil and raised it to her nose, she didn’t smell a thing. Images shifted very quickly in her dreams, too. She saw a scarecrow not too far from her, and she was almost sure it hadn’t been there when she first opened her eyes. The scarecrow was erected on a pole, its straw arms outstretched, Christlike, while six black crows sat across its arms in a row, one atop the scarecrow’s dangling head. The way the figure hung, listing to one side, it looked more like a man than clothes stuffed with straw. Phoenix was afraid it would move, but it didn’t. She looked away from it quickly.

The music played on, sounding very close to her, hidden beyond the stalks of corn.
Scott is here,
she remembered. Scott hadn’t invited himself into her sleep in a long time, and now that he was here, she was excited to see him.

What was I so worried about? What could be more important than seeing Scott?

Following the stirring strains from “A Real Slow Drag,” Phoenix walked until the forest of corn thinned, and she saw a clearing ahead where ten or twelve men and women sat over straw baskets, shucking the corn with disciplined snatches. They worked diligently, and Phoenix thought their arms might be moving in synchronization to the music.

A horn pealed from somewhere. The sound reminded Phoenix of the
shofar
the rabbi blew at her mother’s temple on Yom Kippur, one of two High Holy Days her mother observed. The corn-shuckers stopped working when they heard the horn, standing up to stretch their legs and backs, groaning and arching toward the sky. One by one, they took their baskets and disappeared into the cornstalks. The clearing was now empty except for a man in a white shirt playing a piano, his back facing her. Somehow, she hadn’t seen him before. His arms stretched from one end of the keyboard to the other as he played in a frenzy.

Phoenix’s heart swelled, and light brightened the sky. “Scott?” she said.

Scott stopped playing and turned around. His face, usually so somber, gave way to a joyous grin that seemed more heartbreaking, somehow.
“Freddie?”
he said. He looked like he couldn’t believe he was seeing her, as if he were the one waking inside a dream.

The instant she thought about moving closer, she was standing beside him, moving in a way only dreams allowed. She dropped her hand to his shoulder, gently kneading his muscles. Touching him broke her heart. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

“No, dear heart,
I’ve
missed
you,
” he said, his eyes brimming. “Where have you been?”

“Where I’ve always been,” she said.

He stood up to face her, bringing his chest against hers, and she noticed for the first time that they were almost the exact height, although her hair made her taller. Her hair was wrapped in a tall mound atop her head, the way she’d worn it when she went to Liberty Park Hall to hear him—the way she’d worn her hair in the photograph Scott used on the cover sheet of “Bethena,” the song he wrote for her.
Was that really me in Sedalia? Was it me in Scott’s arms all along?

Scott suddenly clamped his palms to her cheeks, holding her so tightly that she felt her face pucker. Her cheeks vibrated, as if they could absorb his flesh into hers. “Don’t leave me again, Freddie,” Scott whispered. “You promised.”

“I…”
Had
she promised him? “I…didn’t want to leave.”

“Then
why
?” Scott said. “I looked away a minute, and you were gone.”

She didn’t know why she had left him, or how anyone could. She couldn’t speak.

Scott smiled again. “I wrote another opera. The girl in it, Treemonisha, has your soul.”

“I know. I heard you playing.” But confusion came again.
How
had she heard him playing here when she had been somewhere else, somewhere far away?

Suddenly, she knew: the piano. Phoenix didn’t want to look at the piano again—this was a piano that could be provoked, and curious things happened to her when she gazed on it, she remembered—but she felt as compelled by the piano as she did by Scott’s touch.

The piano sat waiting for her, patient. It had looked new when she first saw Scott playing it in this clearing, but now it had aged by centuries, a scarred relic. It wore a dusty lizard’s skin, like before. This was the piano she knew and did not know, the one she had once touched. She couldn’t read the manufacturer’s proud label, because it had long ago faded away. The keys were stained dark brown, not white. The rest were covered in blood.

Startled, Phoenix pulled Scott’s hands from her face to look at them. His palms, too, were caked in blood. Watery blood spattered his white shirt. She pulled his palm to her nose and sniffed it, and the barbed scent tore its way into her nostrils, as real as her own. She raised her fingers to her cheeks, where Scott had touched her, and her fingertips slid against the sticky dampness of it. Blood was everywhere.

“I’m sorry, Freddie,” Scott said more loudly, his voice urgent. “I didn’t know.”

Why does he keep calling me that? What’s my name?
She combed her memory, seeking herself, and could find only a void.

A monstrous racket made her look at the piano again, and the wood of its cabinet splintered along its scars, shards cracking, breaking apart. As she watched, the piano crumbled to dust; a silent mound, unrecognizable. The stoic low echo its last low C-sharp rumbled, resounding against Phoenix’s bones until they shook.

“What have you done?” she said to Scott.

“Stay with me,” he said, and leaned closer, his lips entreating hers. “Sing for me.”

Her lips quivered, fervid for his lifeless touch.

P
hoenix? Are you listening to me?
You don’t have to do this concert
.”

Carlos could be at the other end of the Holland Tunnel, he sounded so far from her, but Phoenix felt steady pressure as he squeezed her hand. She had to answer him, she remembered. Her long silence had wrought panic in his voice.

“Yes. I do,” she said. It was mumbling, but she was almost sure she’d said it aloud.

“She’s not hearing me,” Carlos’s apparition said again. Phoenix tried to see Carlos, but couldn’t quite make him out; everything was jellied and unfocused, shades of light and dark.

“Yes, I hear you, Carlos. I
have
to.” She was still mumbling, but louder this time.

Carlos cursed and muttered in Spanish, something he’d never done while talking to her. She must be remembering herself, she thought, because it pissed her off not to understand what Carlos was saying about her, even if she could comprehend his panic just fine. She didn’t blame him. If her head were more clear, she would be panicked, too.

“Maybe she’s all right now,” Serena said.

“Bullshit. She fainted. She never faints.” That was Gloria, who would know.

“Maybe she’s just nervous. Shit, ya’ll, I know
I
am.”

“She just gets diarrhea when she’s nervous,” Gloria said. “Something’s wrong with her.”

Please stop talking about me like I’m not here,
Phoenix thought, but since she couldn’t speak aloud without tiring herself, what if she
wasn’t
here? That thought triggered her mantra:
I have a show at the Osiris. I’m going to sing “Party Patrol” and “Love the One You’re With.” I am not Freddie Alexander. I am Phoenix Smalls, and I am still alive. I am not dead.

Her memory rebelled even as she spoke the words, making her forget their meaning. She might be awake, but she hadn’t escaped Scott. He had his own plans for her today.

Sing for me.

Phoenix’s nostrils and throat clogged with a harsh, piercing scent, and her head popped back hard against her headrest as she cried out. Was Scott stealing her away?

“Calm down, cuz. It’s just smelling salts,” Gloria said.

When Phoenix opened her eyes, she saw her cousin’s tanned, manicured hand in front of her face, holding a small vial. The late-afternoon light was bright, almost blinding, but suddenly she could see clearly, without the viscous, ethereal film. She was in the backseat of a Town Car with gray seats and tinted windows. She was in the middle, Carlos sat to her left, Gloria to her right. Serena was up front with the uniformed driver, her arm propped on the seat as she stared back at them. Phoenix saw a street sign marking Seventh Avenue. When she blinked, she saw the stately row of refurbished Victorian town houses on Strivers Row. What year was this?