Chapter 2

One winter well after Leo and the piano had become “best friends,” he came down with a lingering case of the flu, one that kept him home from school, which he hardly ever missed. His uncle, Dr. Brady Marble with his thick glasses and reassuring smile, was vigilant with his house calls and assured his sister-inlaw Louisa that he had “seen much worse around town” that winter and that Leo would recover sooner rather than later, despite appearances to the contrary. Still, it wasn’t fun for Leo running a fever, having a cough and the sniffles and being confined to bed.

Just at the point he didn’t think he could stand being sick and cooped up another day, his mother came into his room one afternoon with his lunch tray. It was his favorite—a toasted cheese sandwich cut diagonally and a big bowl of tomato soup with an island of nearly melted butter floating in the middle. She propped up his pillows and balanced the tray perfectly on his lap, handing over the spoon.

“I have a wonderful surprise for you,” she told him. “Start eating your lunch, and I’ll go get it.”

Leo blew on his first spoonful and swallowed dutifully. Tomato soup was something that reassured him even when he was well.

His mother entered the room with something that looked like a thin, oddly shaped book with a colorful picture on the cover. But it wasn’t a book.

“This is the cast album of the movie of Carousel that just came out,” she began. “I went down to Miz Lilly’s Records and bought it for you.” There was a brief pause. “And for me, too.”

It was then that she told him that she had seen a performance of the original Broadway production in New York ten years earlier while she was pregnant with him and had fallen in love with the story and the songs. She carefully explained the plot that took place one summer on the coast of Maine with Billy Bigelow the carnival barker falling in love with and marrying Julie Jordan, the sweet, trusting mill girl; and the troubles that followed them up until the very end of their marriage which ended with his tragic death during an attempted robbery.

“I thought listening to the songs might get your mind off being sick and help you get well. As a matter of fact, the first time I ever felt you kick was right in the middle of Billy Bigelow singing about becoming a father. A mother never forgets the first time she feels her baby move like that.”

Then she opened the album and put the vinyl 45 on the little record player that she and Joseph had given their son for Christmas the year before.

Leo continued to slurp his soup and munch on his cheese sandwich while the music played. He listened mesmerized as his mother provided an ongoing narration.

“The entire first act is called the Carousel Waltz. No one speaks. It’s all mimed.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s when people move their lips and gesture, but they don’t speak or sing.”

“Then how do you understand it?”

“The music and the action tell the story. Billy bumps into Julie in the crowd and then gives her a free ticket to ride on his carousel. It’s his way of telling her that he likes her. Billy is used to getting his way in life.”

Leo loved the sound of the music. It did have a “merry-goround feel” to it. He imagined the scene his mother was describing by focusing on the album cover picture of Gordon McRae as Billy Bigelow and Shirley Jones as Julie Jordan. Their names were on the cover in big, block lettering, and he was leaning against her, looking into her eyes as she sat astride one of his colorful carousel horses.

As the album continued throughout his lunch, Leo was drawn ever more deeply into the score. One memorable tune after another delighted him: “If I Loved You,” “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over,” “What’s The Use of Wond’rin?” and most of all, the tour-de-force of “Soliloquy” throughout which Billy Bigelow pondered his impending fatherhood. As his mother had predicted, it drew him out of his illness, and he was soon back in school with his classmates. For months after that, in fact, he played the album on his little turntable, practically obsessed with it.

For Christmas the year Leo turned twelve, his parents bought him a hardcover collection containing the entire repertoire of songs from all the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals—the majority of which were from Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific and The King and I. His mother had written at the top of the title page: “Buddha plays Broadway.” The nickname Buddha, trotted out occasionally, was a leftover from the days when Louisa had bathed her little boy with all his baby fat in the sink. Leo energetically tackled every one of the songs until he could nearly play them by memory. It turned out to be the best gift since his parents had bought the upright for his lessons.