Jane drove through the brilliant fall colors of North Carolina in early November, enjoying the vivid reds, incandescent oranges and even the browns. More than just the yellows of Colorado. Once she’d decided to come to Winston-Salem, the arrangements had fallen into place easily. She’d booked an early flight to Greensboro from Denver. As for work, she really didn’t care when they got their computers back.
She angled off the interstate and headed down Main Street with its rows of white wood-framed houses. She slowed at the one her parents had lived in when she’d been born. No white flowers bordered the walk now. Anna Szeges had urged her to get to Miss Essig’s as quickly as possible, so she passed the turn that led to her grandfather’s old farmhouse. His fields had sprouted houses since then, instead of the harvest of vegetables her grandmother and aunts had canned in that hot kitchen over a wood stove. She’d have to save the full-blown nostalgia tour for later.
Yet when she turned down toward the Washington Park neighborhood and slowed a bit, the memories flew at her like bugs hitting a windshield. There was the house where her brother had mowed the lawn, next the large brick ranch house where she’d first eaten pizza, and the small white one where she’d learned about sex from the book her friend’s mother had bought. She shook her head against the swarm. On the next block she steeled herself, then pulled in front of the English Tudor belonging to Miss Essig, the house that still appeared in her dreams after all these years, the one that as a child she’d secretly pretended belonged to her family.
The front looked much the same with the tall, spreading evergreens sheltering the horse-shoe drive that disappeared behind the house, the neat rows of trimmed hedges lining the front walk, the golden and brown house itself rising majestic and unexpected in this mixed-up neighborhood. The lands surrounding these colonial mansions had been sold off, leaving only the four surrounding the old church. The buyers had cut the trees and built first the large, respectable brick houses of lawyers, doctors and dentists, then the smaller white cottages of factory workers, each with the same floor plan. Her grandfather’s farm had sold them vegetables and eggs.
She wondered if Miss Essig had kept the full acre her house occupied, surrounded then by boxwoods and containing the most wondrous gardens, at least the most wondrous a six-year-old could imagine. Jane parked and made her way up the walk, past the ginkgo tree with its green fans for leaves, the first tree to turn a bright yellow in fall. This late in the year it was bare. She stepped up to the covered porch and paused, gathering herself, then knocked.
For a few minutes, no one answered and she admired the ivy in the beds next to the house, the flagstone path that led to the screened-in porch on the side. A sound interrupted the nostalgia she’d promised not to indulge in. The dark oak door opened to reveal a tall woman, her grey hair caught up in a bun. She wore a navy dress that buttoned down the front covered by a white apron. Steel-rimmed glasses finished the look. Cool blue eyes assessed Jane. “May I help you?”
Jane recognized the voice of Anna Szeges. “I’m Jane Frey.”
The cool veneer melted and Anna pushed open the screen door. “Thank God. You’ve made it just in the nick of time. I was beginning to doubt.” She said this as if chiding herself. “Please come in.”
Jane stepped into the familiar foyer, the cool soothing her. A coat rack still stood to the right accompanied by the umbrella stand. Her eyes strayed to the left to catch the gleam of a mahogany dining table and the small crystal chandelier. Everything was the same.
Anna grasped her forearm and said in a low voice, “Let’s go right up.” She stepped forward, but Jane didn’t move with her. Anna frowned. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you.”
Now that the moment was upon her, Jane was unprepared to meet her dying mentor, but she’d flown here to do just that, so she followed Anna up the stairs and down the hall, past the laundry chute she’d longed to jump down as a child—she’d never found the nerve—into the master bedroom. Several women about the same age as Anna clustered around the four-poster bed. The room smelled of medicine and sickness. A hint of lavender almost masked the unpleasantness. At the head of the bed, a man with dark hair and matching intense brown eyes read from a bible open in his hands. A white sash decorated with a lamb carrying a cross was tucked under the lapels of his suit coat. He looked up at Anna and paused.
Anna nodded and turned toward the bed. “Jane is here, dear.”
A fragile hand, the veins large and blue, reached up and a frail voice asked, “Jane? Where is she?”
Anna turned and reached for Jane, pulling her close. Miss Essig’s emaciated body barely raised the covers. Her arms were the sticks of birch trees, and her cheeks almost transparent. But those eyes, the blue of a pale winter sky, were the same. “Here I am,” Jane said.
Sibilant whispers rose like a gentle wind from the chorus of women behind her. Miss Essig reached her bony hands out for Jane, who sat on the edge of the bed, capturing them in her own. They were cold and spoke of the grave, but Jane remembered them fleshed out, with her one pearl and ruby ring flashing as they danced over white and black keys, calling forth the most beautiful music she had ever heard.
“I’m happy to be going home, Jane. Remember this is a time to rejoice.” Her voice was as thin as an onion skin.
“Yes, Miss Essig,” Jane said, as she had said so many times before, “I remember.”
Someone started to play the grand piano in the living room on the floor just below them. A violin joined in, then a woodwind. Miss Essig closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed. Anna settled on the opposite side of the bed, and the minister watched from a comfortable distance behind Jane’s shoulder. The women started to hum the tune, faint and soft, their complex harmonies twining like the ivy outside. Peace filled the room.
“Just think, Anna.” Miss Essig strained to speak. They all leaned forward to hear her. “Soon I’ll see Him—and all our old friends.”
“Yes, dear.” Anna patted her shoulder. They listened to the music for another minute, then she said, “Perhaps you should tell Jane why you’ve called for her.”
“Oh, yes.” Miss Essig opened her eyes, which shone with an almost childlike joy. “You see, Jane, I must find just the right woman.” Everyone in the room nodded as if this were plain as day. Miss Essig caught her breath and said, “The lot went to you, my dear.”
“So you said, Miss Essig,” Jane said, “but I don’t really know what that means.”
“Oh, don’t worry, dear. Anna will explain it all.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again, her brow furrowing. “But will you accept it?”
Jane hesitated, not wanting to vex a dying woman. “Accept what?”
Miss Essig looked surprised. “Why, my house, of course.”
Jane shook her head to clear it. Surely she’d heard wrong. “Your house?” she repeated.
Miss Essig nodded.
“But you must have family or someone close.” She glanced around the room, but all eyes were on the dying woman.
Miss Essig shook her head slightly, then struggled to catch her breath. “No, you,” was all she could manage.
What in the world was happening? Jane looked around at the group, the women humming, their eyes moist but at peace. Anna sat waiting, collected, offering no pressure to decide one way or another. They were losing their close friend, but showed no agitation or fear.
Jane realized she still loved this frail bird of a woman, whose elegance and manners camouflaged a steel will, an uncompromising moral compass that she never forced on anyone, but that had left Jane yearning for that kind of certainty within herself. And her talent. Her music had soared and whispered, flirted and comforted, finally leading Jane and all who could accompany her to a silent, secret place inside that answered all questions and soothed all aches.
Anna’s voice broke her reverie. She repeated the question that Miss Essig, who lay on the bed struggling for breath, could not ask again. “Will you accept this house and all that it entails?”
Jane looked up at her, hearing something more in the question. “Entails?”
Miss Essig’s breath took on an ominous rattle and her eyes lost focus, yet her hands clung to Jane’s.
“I don’t—” Jane began.
“I’ll explain everything later,” Anna interrupted, “but she needs to hear your answer.”
It was all happening too quickly. Jane shook her head.
“No?” Anna asked. “Are you refusing this offer?”
Miss Essig struggled and caught one breath. “Please, Jane.”
A sharp pain tore Jane’s heart, as if a dagger had cut open some covering and exposed her rawest emotion. Her left hand flew to her chest, pressing against her breast bone to ease the ache. Her right still cradled Miss Essig’s feather-light hands. Jane nodded her head, hot tears splashing onto the cold fingers. “All right.”
“You accept?” the relentless Anna asked.
But Jane’s answer was for Miss Essig. “Yes. I’ll take care of things for you.” How much trouble could it be, after all, to see to her meager belongings, sell the house and distribute the proceeds properly? Then her old childhood passion for the place and all that it had meant to her swelled up like a chorus of violins. “I’ll cherish your home for you. I always have. I’ll always love you.”
“Thank you, Jane.” The cold hand reached up and touched Jane’s star pendant that had slipped out from under her blouse. “You still have it. And the ribbon?”
Jane had forgotten about that. Miss Essig had given her a pink ribbon—“For your cap,” she’d said—at the special ceremony her family held after her confirmation. She’d been thirteen and rolled her eyes. Moravian girls didn’t wear caps in the twentieth century, but she’d accepted it gracefully and tucked it in a special box for keepsakes.
“Yes, I still have it.”
“You were always such—” Miss Essig struggled for a breath. Caught it. “—a good girl.”
This last cracked the dam and Jane broke down. Arms lifted her, guided her out of the room and down the stairs to a chair in the living room, where a wind quartet played softly, the piano now silent. Listening to them, Jane remembered her deeper childhood dream, not that she wanted to live in a fancy house, but to lead others with her own music to the silence Miss Essig had shown her. These people were doing just that—ushering a beloved friend through her death, spreading balm on the pain and fear of loss.
Jane squeezed her eyes shut, tears cascading down her cheeks. She’d never had the discipline or the passion to accomplish her goal. Certainly not the patience to teach children, to sit through their fumbling scales, the delicacy and surety to embarrass a gum-chewing neophyte and usher her little by little into graceful womanhood and mastery of music. Instead, she had settled for money. Jane got up and tiptoed into the library where she closed the door, threw herself on the chintz sofa and wept. The music swelled, soothing her battered heart.
✬ ✬ ✬
The sound of a door opening reached into Jane’s dream. She’d been conducting a symphony in some gilded hall. The last strains of the music still filled her head. Startled, she sat up and looked around. For a few seconds, she couldn’t remember where she was. Then the shapes of the familiar room, the rows of books around the windows, the desk in the corner, the stone fireplace, the silhouettes of chairs in the dusk brought it all back.
Someone flicked on a floor lamp in the corner. The light shone amber through a Tiffany shade, revealing one of the women she’d seen upstairs. “I’m sorry to wake you,” she said.
“No, it’s all right.” Jane sat up and rubbed her eyes. “I apologize for falling asleep on Miss Essig’s sofa.”
The woman lowered her rotund body to the edge of an armchair and leaned forward. “Emma passed into the more immediate presence of our Lord about an hour ago.”
Jane flinched, her hand reaching out for—something.
“She went peacefully. There was no pain or struggle.” The woman’s tone was soothing.
Jane absorbed this. No tears came. Her fit of weeping had left her stripped clean like a tree after the first violent winter storm. She felt like herself again for the first time since sitting down in Mr. Davis’s office.
“Anna said to bring you some tea.” She held out a plain, white mug like they used in lovefeasts.
“Thank you, but—”
“It’s chamomile.”
Jane accepted the mug with another word of thanks. Then she noticed a tan and white English bulldog sitting by the door. His head drooped and his eyes expressed a soulful sadness.
“Oh, that’s Winston. He’s—was Miss Essig’s dog.” She patted the side of her leg. “Come here, boy.”
The dog ignored her.
“I wanted a bulldog when I was little.” Jane took a sip of tea, then squared her shoulders. “What can I do to help?”
The woman’s brow soothed a bit, but her hands still twisted in her lap. “The funeral home took her not half an hour ago.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss . . .” Jane paused, hoping the woman would supply her name, but she didn’t notice. She just shook her head, trying not to cry, but silver tears traced a path down her weathered cheeks. She took out a white handkerchief and wiped them.
“I will miss our dear Emma, but she led a rich and blessed life.”
Jane murmured her agreement.
“Oh, it might not have seemed that way from the outside.” She lifted an eyebrow. Jane blushed, wondering if this woman guessed how out of place she felt with all the ‘Lords’ and ‘blesseds’ being dropped.
“Miss Essig taught me much more than music,” Jane said.
The woman nodded and sat back in the armchair and gazed out the window at the deepening dark. Then she straightened her back. “Well, we have work to do. Sister Anna asked me to invite you to eat with us if you’d like. Or you could stay here. There’s food in the kitchen.”
A chilly wave ran up Jane’s spine, a combination of Miss Essig’s recent death and being left on her own to face the blank page of her life. “I think I’d like the company.”
“Good. In about an hour. Anna will show you the way. She’s still tidying up Emma’s room.” She hopped up, nimble for her size.
“Thank you . . .” She let the sentence hang in the air and this time the woman did supply her name.
“Dorothea,” she answered. “Come on, boy.”
Winston looked up at Dorothea, then trotted over to Jane. He circled around and laid down, his rump on her feet.
Dorothea nodded. “Good,” she said.
Jane sat alone for a few more minutes trying to gather her thoughts. She should call her family, tell her aunts and uncles and assorted cousins she was here—at least until she could sort out the house. She pulled her Blackberry out of her pocket and checked for missed calls, but it had been uncharacteristically silent since her dismissal from her job. Tami had probably contacted her clients and reassigned them. She pulled up her family list and scrolled through the names, but couldn’t decide who to call first. And what would she say?
I just got fired and I don’t have enough money, but don’t worry. Miss Essig died and left me her house, so I’m moving back and fulfilling my childhood dream of being a musician.
Was it an adult’s dream, she wondered. Uncle Pat would be sure to tell her she was headed for hell fire mixing with those Moravians who weren’t Pentecostal and therefore not real Christians. That’s what he’d told his own sister after she’d married one, but Jane would have to pay him a visit anyway. How that stiff necked old codger had survived all his siblings was a mystery to her. She closed the list without calling anyone, switched the phone to vibrate and stuck it back in her pocket. She didn’t know where all this would lead. Best to do the work that was immediately at hand.
Jane walked outside and drove her rental around the curved driveway into one of the stalls of the three-car garage. She parked next to an ancient blue Buick that sat at the end, at least forty years old but still gleaming. She retrieved her small suitcase and climbed the back steps. The door to the screen porch was open and she stepped into the hallway, paused to listen. Someone was coming down the steps, so she walked toward the front foyer she’d entered as a guest just a few hours ago.
“Oh, there you are.” Anna’s voice was subdued, but still the essence of competence. She took in the overnight bag. “Shall we put you in the room at the top of the stairs?”
“That sounds fine.”
“I’ve given you fresh sheets and laid out towels. You should find everything you need.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble,” Jane murmured the prescribed Southernism, true this time, and followed Anna up the stairs, trying not to slip into her childhood again. “You have so much to do. Please let me help.”
Anna turned at the door of the room, relief flitting across her face. She acknowledged the offer with a nod. With a flick of her wrist, light flooded the room revealing a single bed with a star-burst quilt, pine night table and chest of drawers, both the color of dark honey. An old fashioned lady’s dressing table with its three-paneled mirror took up one wall. Only a bottle of scent and hand mirror remained. A few dresses still hung in the closet. She glanced at Anna. “I don’t want to turn anyone out.”
“Dorothea’s already moving back into our other house. She was here to take care of Emma.” Anna dried her eyes with the back of her hand. “We all took turns, but Dorothea trained as a nurse.” She looked around, twitched the quilt straighter, then said, “I’ll let you freshen up, then we’ll walk over in say fifteen minutes?”
Jane nodded, still wondering what she meant by ‘our other house’. She’d figure it all out later. Anna shut the door and Jane sat in the rocker by the window, released from the competent ministrations of these German women who had kept her childhood running smoothly —but Szeges was a Czech or Polish name probably. When she’d stayed here as a child, another twin bed had taken up the wall where the dressing table now stood. Miss Essig had babysat for many families in the neighborhood. She and her old friend Shirley had loved this room because when the old ladies went to bed, they could slip out onto the balcony and then up the narrow stairs into the gloomy attic stuffed with old furniture, clothes, boxes of books and games—all kinds of treasures. The house had been full of beautiful things, old ladies and music—always music.
Jane went into the bathroom and washed her face, then changed into slacks and a nice shirt. She’d just finished running a brush through her hair when Anna knocked on her door. Jane followed her outside and into the back yard, where they walked through a tunnel of Chinese cherry trees, a few leaves still clinging to their branches—she’d have to stay a year to see them bloom again. Anna ducked through the opening in the hedge next to the old pear tree. Jane followed, shaking her head against the swarm of memories rising like the yellow jackets had from a fallen pear she picked up from the ground. But she’d have time for all this later. Nothing but time.
They walked east a block in the dusk, passing three small, white cottages like the ones on Broad Street, then the New Marienborn Moravian Church in its own circle of land. The roads ran off from it like spokes on a wheel. On the next block, they turned up the back drive of the brick Colonial mansion across from Washington Park. So this was the mysterious other house Anna had mentioned. She’d drooled over this one as a child too, but never gotten inside. She wondered who owned it.
Once inside, they made their way down a white hallway with a polished wood floor, then entered a long dining room where about a dozen women of varying ages sat along a rectangular table that ran the length of the room. Chatter stopped, all heads turned, and a dozen sets of eyes studied her, many kind, some frankly curious. Anna went to the head of the table, stood in front of her chair, and motioned for Jane to take a seat about half way down one side of the table. Anna sat, and everyone followed suit. They bowed their heads and recited the Moravian Blessing. Jane remembered the words from her childhood—short and simple: “Come Lord Jesus our guest to be, and bless these gifts bestowed by thee.” She intoned “Amen” and reached for a piece of bread, but the others added another verse she’d never learned. “And bless our loved ones everywhere.” She snatched her hand back. “And keep them in Your loving care.” Around the table a few lips twitched in amusement.
After the prayer, all eyes turned to Anna. “You are all aware that our sister Emma passed away this afternoon. It was a peaceful death and we’ll have prayers for her after supper. Jane Frey has agreed to take on her house.”
Nods of approval and murmurs of welcome came from around the table. Jane had to admit she was pleased not to hear any “Thank the Lords.”
Two women carried in large white tureens of soup, set them down at either end of the table and lifted the tops with a bit of flourish. The aroma of earthy vegetables and green herbs filled the room, and Jane’s stomach woke up for the first time in two days. She accepted two ladles when her turn came—potato soup, thick and creamy, with a faint hint of dill served with plenty of vegetables. Crusty bread fresh from the oven sat in baskets around the table. She spread butter thick on a slice. They ate mostly in silence at first, all needing this comfort food that filled the hollow places left by loss and grief. The root vegetable whispered to them of saving the spark of life through the cold of winter and waiting for spring rain and warm sun to grow once more.
After a few minutes, her immediate neighbor introduced herself as Roxanne and asked where she had been living. Jane filled her in briefly on her return to business school and her financial career that had taken her to New York, then Chicago and finally Denver.
“I’m surprised you didn’t stay in music. You sang the best ‘Morning Star’ I’ve ever heard.”
“Oh, you’re that Roxanne.” Jane’s hand covered her face for a second. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognize you.”
Roxanne just shook her head. “We were in children’s choir together, but I didn’t expect you to remember after all these years.”
“And you? What have you been doing?”
“I married. Those are my teenagers.” Two gorgeous blonds who could give Tami a run for her money sat toward the end of the long table, their heads bent over cell phones, fingers flying. “My husband is in the mission field now. We often spend time with the sisters when he’s gone a long time.”
Jane looked around. There were certainly no men here. Before she could ask who were her sisters, Anna’s chair scraped back and all eyes turned to her. She announced a Bible reading in the library, then looked at Jane. “You’re welcome to attend, of course.”
“Thank you, but I think I’ll be getting back.”
Dorothea scooted her chair back. “Let me just get you a key.”
Jane followed her into the kitchen, a surprisingly modern affair with a bank of ovens and a huge stove with six burners and a grill top. Copper pots gleamed above it. An industrial size refrigerator took up part of a wall. Dorothea waddled to the end of the room and rummaged through a drawer. She pulled out a keychain with a single key dangling from it, then scribbled a phone number on a notepad by the wall phone. She tore off the sheet and handed it to Jane. “In case you need anything during the night. The first night in a new place can sometimes be difficult, especially under the circumstances.”
“I’m sorry to take your room,” Jane began, but Dorothea waved her hands.
“I used to stay here—” she used the African American expression “—before Sister Emma took ill. I’m returning home, just as you are.”
Jane’s eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them back. It was true. She was coming home.
✬ ✬ ✬
The next three days ran together in a blur. Miss Essig’s funeral was first and foremost a musical extravaganza. Crowds clogged the viewing at the colonial brick funeral home on Main Street. Jane paid her respects to Miss Essig from a distance, preferring not to view the corpse. Her memories of seeing her parents laid out, their bodies stiff and cold in their Sunday best, one death following so closely on the other, still haunted her. In a separate room, musicians took turns playing tributes to their teacher. Clusters of people stood or sat, listening to the music or reminiscing quietly. Most played familiar Moravian hymns, muted for the occasion. A violist offered Bach’s Air on a G String, a pianist performed Bach’s Gymnopedies #3, then a brass band stood outside and played more hymns.
Someone touched her elbow and Jane turned to find Anna Szeges standing beside her. “Emma’s family would like to meet you.”
“Certainly.” Jane’s shoulders tightened. She’d come to think Miss Essig hadn’t had any family left. Anna led her to a small room where a middle-age couple waited. Two children sat in the corner, bored and fidgety. The girl swung legs encased in white stockings and ending in black patent leather shoes. The boy pulled at his bowtie and his father kept telling him to leave it alone. Some things never changed.
The woman had Miss Essig’s eyes, but not her gift for peace. She twisted a handkerchief between her fingers and dabbed her red and swollen eyes, trying to keep her mascara from streaking down her face. She’d been successful for the most part. When Anna introduced Jane, she burst out with fresh tears, shaking her head. Jane’s stomach twisted, anticipating a family feud.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve taken my great aunt’s house.”
Jane tried not to let the relief show on her face. “We had no idea what to do when Aunt Emma called to say she was so ill.”
“I see.” Jane had to say something. Then she caught herself. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Fresh tears streaked down the niece’s face. Her husband took over. “I have a large medical practice in California and we just couldn’t move back. Of course, the house can’t be sold, so . . .” He trailed off when his wife blew her nose.
Jane didn’t feel this was the time to ask why not. She frowned at Anna, who was watching the niece and didn’t notice.
The niece recovered enough to ask, “You were her student?”
“Yes, she taught me piano as a child, then was one of my faculty at Salem College.” Jane leaned forward. “Your aunt woke my love of music.”
She nodded. “I’m glad you have the house, then. There’s so much happening over there. Our family would be in the way.”
“Of course not,” the ever-composed Anna said.
The niece smiled, “That’s nice of you to say, but I know what goes on—”
“Will you be staying long after the funeral?” Anna interrupted.
Jane frowned at the discourtesy. The strain must be reaching even Anna.
The husband looked back and forth between Jane and Anna, then answered in a stiff voice, “I have to get back right after the funeral, but my wife and children will be staying in town for a few days.”
Jane intervened. “Please feel free to come over and spend some time in the house. Look through Miss Essig’s things and take what you like.”
Anna shifted in her chair. The niece looked at the two women, then angled her body toward Jane. “That is very kind of you.”
Jane jotted down her cell number on an old business card and handed it to the niece, who stuffed it into her purse and stood up. “I think I’m ready to go,” she said to her husband.
He gave Anna a curt nod, but smiled at Jane. “Aunt Emma made a good choice.”
“Thank you,” Jane answered. The couple gathered their children and left.
“What was that about?” Jane asked after the door had closed.
Anna slumped in the chair.
Jane reached out her hand, alarmed at this sudden show of weakness.
“It’s a long story. Can we talk in a few days?”
“Yes, you’ve been working nonstop. Have you slept or had a minute to yourself?”
A single tear ran down Anna’s cheek. She wiped it away impatiently, then took a deep breath and stood. “I’m needed elsewhere.”
“Of course. What can I do?”
But Anna just shook her head and left the room.
✬ ✬ ✬
The next morning Miss Essig’s students—old, young and in-between—gave a concert in her honor. The funeral services followed in the afternoon. Both were held in the old church just across from Miss Essig’s property. Many of her former students, her friends, and people in the church from around the Carolinas, Pennsylvania and even Germany and the Czech Republic came for what they now called a celebration of her life. With only three days’ notice, Jane wondered how the Europeans had made it. She hadn’t realized her old mentor had enjoyed an international reputation—at least amongst the Unitas Fratrum, the official name of the Moravian Church.
Jane attended with her favorite cousin, Frank, who seemed to have already heard about the inheritance. “I’m glad I’ll be seeing more of you,” he whispered to her in the pew before the funeral began. After the church service, they drove together down to God’s Acre, leaving their car in the visitor’s lot for Old Salem since the funeral was so crowded. They walked past Home Church, Jane’s square-heeled shoes doing well on the cobble stones. Frank told her how one of the big hurricanes had knocked down several of the old trees in the square years back. The band started playing and the two fell silent, listening, Jane remembering the other services she’d attended here. They followed the music. Miss Essig would be interred in the Single Sister’s section, an area with a few spots still left in the original part of the cemetery.
In the early eighteenth century, Jane’s ancestors had lived communally, dividing themselves by choirs. As far as she knew, the practice had started when they’d founded their village, Herrnhut, in Saxony. Count Zinzendorf had taken in the religious refugees. In the choir system, infants lived with their mother, but moved to the nursery around eighteen months, where they stayed in the Little Boys’ or Little Girls’ Choirs. At twelve, they graduated to the Older Boys’ or Girls’ Choir, and at eighteen joined the Single Brethren or Sisters’ Choir, as the case might be. Each group lived, ate and attended daily worship together, sleeping in dormitories in their choir house. When people married, they joined the Married Brethren or Married Sisters’ Choir. At the death of a spouse, they moved to the Widows’ or Widowers’ Choir. As the frontier turned into towns, married couples started living more and more in their own homes as nuclear families.
The choirs had been an excellent support system. People who shared a certain station in life understood each other. Each member was surrounded by choir and family members. There was always someone to talk to. People worked for their choirs and were cared for in turn. And women had been freed from doing only domestic work. Jane had always been proud of this innovative lifestyle. Of course, choir supervisors had poked their noses into how people were living and doled out discipline. They’d been strict. She’d read reports on her own ancestors from the archives. But for the most part, the choir system had made for tight, supportive communities. These days the only remnant of the system was being buried with your choir.
Jane and Frank walked up the slope of the cemetery toward the large crowd gathered around the grave with the family sitting in a row of chairs at the front. She and Frank stood toward the back, making the proper responses in the liturgy. Jane chided herself for not feeling grief now. After all, this woman had meant so much to her. But she remembered holding Miss Essig’s cold hand on her last day, how her pale blue eyes seemed to look through the film of this world into the next as if it were the real one and not this solid earth. Perhaps she was listening now to that great circle of archangels whose only job was to sing at the throne of God, ready to suggest improvements. Jane wished her a good concert.
When the final words were spoken, Frank turned to her. “Shall we go and visit our relatives?”
“Sure,” Jane said.
First they found their aunt who had died in the 1918 influenza epidemic in the Single Sisters’ section, then their grandparents’ graves, one across the cemetery under a big tree, the other all the way down the hill. After that, they strolled down the paved sidewalks to the newer section, which stretched up a hill to the east, women on the left, men on the right. Burials were by date, which made finding a relative tricky until someone had posted an electronic map. Frank steered her through the rows of white headstones, all the identical size and shape since all were equal in death, and pointed out the family graves, catching her up on deaths, marriages and births, even some gossip. By the time he dropped her off at Miss Essig’s house, they’d reestablished their easy childhood friendship.
The next evening brought yet another concert. The local symphony performed Mozart’s Requiem in Miss Essig’s honor. Jane imagined it was a piece they kept honed if they could perform it on such short notice. Local singers added selections from Puccini and Bach. A young monk in orange robes offered overtone chanting in the Tibetan style. His deep tones opened Jane completely, allowing all the knots to loosen. It was now that the grief rose up—the loss of Miss Essig, of childhood innocence. The waste of all that time advising companies to invest in a better world, only to have them pursue money with no regard to the trail of carnage left behind. Suggesting to her new female colleagues that bringing a woman’s perspective to business would make for more justice, only to find them as greedy and unscrupulous as the current CEOs.
The conductor picked up his baton again, and the symphony began to play Barber’s Adagio for Strings, a piece dedicated to love, but expressing the unutterable sadness of loss of all that is beautiful, a piece grieving for the heroism of humanity reaching again and again for perfection, and the inevitability of those efforts to somehow fall short or even become corrupt. Silent tears flowed down Jane’s cheeks. She wiped them, unashamed, and once the tears were spent, the piece lifted her into serenity, into the inexpressible beauty of the world she dreamed of, the world the piece somehow promised was real—a place of harmony and peace and light.
The conductor, eyes closed, a beatific look on his face, closed his fingers, and the music faded into the silence that now ruled Jane’s heart. After the cellos had sounded their last deep note and the bows were lifted from the violins, the sound hung in the air, pure and light and vibrating with all the yearning of humanity for that golden dream. The audience waited and she wished fervently that they would rise and leave in that silence, but of course respect was due the musicians, so the clapping began. It swelled and the audience stood, an offering for music and for her music teacher.
Jane slipped out of the auditorium, thoroughly marinated in sound, her heart tranquil, certain that her decision was right. She would go back to her childhood dream of making music. She would practice again so she could play with this kind of power and help people believe in beauty again. Maybe she’d believe again, too.