Richard Powers - The Time of Our Singing

“I do,” Jonah said. Just that: I. I was dispatched to whatever family would have me.

Linwell sat silent, fighting embarrassment. “Would you…” he began, seeking out some sordid favor. “Would you mind…” He gestured toward the piano. It took me a moment. He didn’t believe us. He wanted proof.

Jonah and I took up our battle stations so routinely, I almost slipped and bowed out of sheer habit. Jonah made the massive turn without even thinking about it. He looked at me, inhaled, lifted imperceptibly, and on the downbeat we were there, tied together, on “Time Stands Still.” We finished into the silence that the music named. I patted the piano lid and looked at Crispin Linwell. His eyes were wet. This man, who hadn’t listened to music for pleasure for longer than I’d been alive, remembered, for three minutes, where he came from.

“Why would anyone want to give that up?”

Jonah blinked, deciding how real the question was. He’d have smiled right through, but Mr. Linwell waited for an answer. Someone doing what he was born to do, someone who could bring down a little corner of eternity onto earth wanted to throw it all over for pumped-up, gaudy spectacle. I could think of no reason big enough, except one. You boys can be anything you want to be.

Jonah leaned against the piano and drew his hand along the back of his neck. His eyebrows played with the question, still innocent. “Oh, you know.” I winced and dug down into the piano stool. “It’s more fun to sing with other people.” He slipped down into a basso profundo. “Ahm-a tarred of livin’ alone.”

Crispin Linwell didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. He only shook his head. “Be careful what you wish for.” He pulled his glasses from his forehead and tapped the tip of his pen on the clipboard’s clip, a rapid motor rhythm. His whole body drew up in his chair and professionalized. “We can find something for you. You will sing with us. With…other people. Your agent’s number’s on the vita?… Fine. Tell him to expect a call.” He shook our hands and dismissed us. But before we could go, Linwell stopped Jonah with one hand to the shoulder. I knew what he was going to say before he said it. I’d heard it often, impossible lifetimes ago, although, back then, always in the plural. “You are one of a kind.”

Out on Broadway, in the late-winter air, Jonah whooped like a banshee. “‘One of a kind,’ Mule. ‘Expect a call.’”

“I’m happy for you,” I told him.

We expected the call through the whole spring. Mr. Weisman called with festivals, competitions, and concert series — Wolf Trap, Blossom, Aspen — but nothing from the Met. When Jonah bugged Mr. Weisman to nudge someone over in Linwell’s office, our agent just laughed. “The wheels of opera grind exceeding slow, and not all that fine. You’ll hear when you hear. Meanwhile, find something more useful to worry about.”

Weisman did call with word from Harmondial in early summer. On slow but steady sales of the first recording, they were turning a profit. The record had gone into a fourth reprinting. There’d be a royalty check, not enough to pay for phone bills, but cash all the same. Harmondial wanted to talk about a follow-up. Two days after Jonah agreed in principle to a new contract over the phone, central Newark burned down. That industrious city just a handful of minutes by the PATH train from where we lived: gutted, as bad as the Hanoi neighborhoods Johnson had been targeting. It was July. Central Detroit followed the week after. Forty-one people dead and fourteen square miles of the city in cinders.

I went to Jonah in a panic. “We can’t do this record. Tell them we’re out.”

“Mule! You nuts? Our public needs us.” He shook me by the shoulders, a slapstick attack. “What are you worried about? You’re not losing your nerve, are you? Not afraid of a little eternity? So what if people will be listening to you after your death? We can fix anything, on tape.”

“That’s not it.”

“What is it, then?”

“Tell them we can’t. Tell them we need to just…wait awhile.”

He laughed me off. “Can’t, Joey. It’s all agreed to. Verbal contract. You’re legally bound and gagged already. You don’t own yourself no more, brother.”

“Did I ever?” It didn’t often happen that he looked away first.

Around the time Jonah began preparing for the second record, we started getting hang-up calls. He’d answer the phone, thinking it was Weisman or Harmondial or even Crispin Linwell. But the moment Jonah said hello, the line would go dead. He had as many theories as there were walk-ons in Aida. He even thought it might be Gina Hills. I was home alone one afternoon in August when the phone rang. Jonah was out vocalizing in a practice room at NYU downtown. I answered, and a voice more familiar than my own asked, “Are you alone?”

“Ruthie! Oh, God, Ruthie, where are you?”

“Easy, Joey. I’m all right. I’m just fine. Is he there? Can you talk?”

“Who, Jonah? He’s out. What’s wrong? Why are you doing this to us?”

“Doing? Oh, Joey. If you don’t know by now…” She fought for control of her voice. I don’t know which of us was worse off. “Joey, how are you? You okay?”

“I’m good. We’re all good. Da and Jonah. Everything’s…moving along. Except for worrying about you, Ruth. We’ve been sick to death—”

“Stop it. Don’t make me hang up on you.” I heard her holding the mouthpiece away, fighting sobs. She came back. “I’d like to see you.” She asked to meet at a bar on the northwest corner of Union Square. “Just you, Joey. I swear, if you bring anyone else with you, I’ll run.”

I left a note for Jonah, saying I wouldn’t be back for dinner. I scrambled over to Union Square and hunted down the place she’d named. Ruth was there, sitting in a back booth. I’d have fallen all over her, but she wasn’t alone. She had brought a bodyguard. She sat on the same side of the booth as a man a couple of years older than Jonah and several shades darker. He had a two-inch picked-out Afro and wore a denim vest, paisley shirt, and a silver neck chain with a little fist clenched around a dangling peace symbol.

“Joseph.” My sister fought for a breezy neutral. “This is Robert. Robert Rider.”

“Nice to meet you.”

Robert Rider lifted his gaze, half a nod. “Same here,” he said through a hard smile. I reached out to shake his hand, but his fingers wrapped up around my thumb, forcing mine to do the same.

I slung into the booth across from them. Ruth looked different. She had on a bright green minidress and boots. I tried to remember how she was dressed when I saw her last. I wore the tan dress shirt and black slacks I’d been wearing for two years. There was something odd about her hair. I nodded what I hoped was approval. “You’ve changed. What did you do?”

She snorted. “Thanks, Joey. It’s not what I did. It’s what I’m not doing. No more hot iron. No more relaxants. No more nothing but what I got.”

Next to her, Robert grinned. “That’s right, baby. Nappy and happy.” She leaned into the man, touched her palm to his.

A waitress came by to see what I wanted. She was black, pretty, and about twenty. She and my sister had already made friends. “My brother,” Ruth said. The waitress laughed, as if that could only be a joke. I ordered a ginger ale, and the waitress laughed again.

“You look great, Ruth.” I didn’t know what else to say. She did. She looked good and strong. She just didn’t look like my sister.

“Don’t sound so surprised.” I could tell by her glance: I looked pale. She wasn’t going to say anything.

“Are you all right? Where are you living? How are you making ends meet?”

Ruth stared at me, twisting her mouth and shaking her head. “Am I all right? How am I making ends meet? Oh, Joey. I’m not the one you should be worried about. There are twenty million people in this country whose lives aren’t worth your monthly take-home.” She glanced at the man next to her. Robert Rider nodded.