THE AUCHINCLOSS CONCERT AUDITORIUM HAD ABOUT fifty rows of dark-blue-velvet-upholstered seats, opera-style boxes up in the wings, and another couple dozen rows of gold-velvet-upholstered seats up in the balcony. Huge acoustic baffles loomed behind the stage. Six rows of stage lights stared down. And somewhere up there was a chandelier shaped like—I swear—a lion’s head.
We got there a half hour before the concert to stake out a front-row perch—only to discover that gold-velvet ropes on the aisles were blocking off the first twenty rows: RESERVED FOR FACULTY, ADMINISTRATION, AND PARENTS OF THE MUSICIANS read the signs hanging from the ropes. Programs in blue leather binders had been carefully placed on each of the roped-off seats.
“Okay, so we can’t hop onstage as quick—no big deal,” I said as coolly as I could, as we took four seats on the aisle—twenty-one rows back.
“We’re fucked,” Josh said. “We’ll never get up there in time.”
“We’ll just have to hustle a little more,” Danny said.
“Jack, you sure your guys are in on this?” Simon said.
“They’ll be there. They’ll have our backs.” I believed it. I really did.
• • •
I grabbed a leather program and read the evening’s agenda: After the symphony played the Fifth, Mario Miles would, indeed, be playing selections from Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. He was going to go for it all.
The Thanksgiving concert was obviously High Ritual. The faculty started to file in wearing suits and dresses. Parents were dressed to the hilt. Perfume, cologne, the jingle of jewelry. I tried to cool out, to remember Jarvis: Let go, or be dragged.
In the front row, Carlton wore a tuxedo, sitting next to guys who had to be honcho board members: suits, school ties. Booth and Ward were working their way up and down the aisles, taking attendance. Mandatory attendance had been announced that week.
“The famous band!” said Ward, in a buoyant mood, as he checked off our names. “You’re in for some real music, gentlemen. Enjoy the concert.”
“I’m sure we will, sir,” said Josh. “We’re very excited. But hey, what’s with the attendance thing? I mean, the term’s technically over, right?”
“TV.” He pointed to a camera crew up in one of the opera boxes. “WGBH, Boston. We don’t want empty seats, do we?”
• • •
Exactly at seven P.M., the symphony entered, to loud applause. Sam carried his cello, Seo Woon her viola. And then I saw the third-seat flute: hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a sleeveless black gown and a single strand of pearls . . . Man, did she look great.
Hopper came out from the wings to mild applause, wearing white tie and tails. “I can’t thank you all enough for coming and helping Oakhurst Hall support the arts,” the maestro said, cheerily. “You’re in for a very special evening. As you all know, in the past, our brilliant young musicians have put on many truly remarkable performances. But tonight, I think, promises to be a truly memorable event.”
“You got that right,” said Simon.
The lights went down. Hopper turned and raised his baton, Beethoven’s most famous four notes exploded into the hall, and for the next forty minutes, the Oakhurst Symphony, I had to admit, was spectacular. It didn’t sound like it was going through the motions to me.
By the third movement, I was too nervous to pay much attention. Part of me worried whether we could make it onto the stage when Mario finished, without the faculty—well, Ward and Booth—heading us off. Those aisles were pretty thin.
But mostly I was suddenly wondering whether our own song was even half as good as I thought it was. More than wondering. Kind of panicking. I’d been so freaked about pulling this thing off, I hadn’t really stopped to wonder whether we were kidding ourselves. I mean, except for Jill McGregor everyone who liked it was a friend. What if we sucked? What if we’d just Krazy-Glued pieces of three hundred years of music into a quarter hour of randomness and we were going to make total fools of ourselves? Was I mistaking all the encouragement for politeness?
And what would the consequences be? What if I do really leave this place, like, tonight? Where else am I going to grow up?
No. Unh-unh. We might not be the Who, but we didn’t suck. If I was wrong about that, then I was wrong about everything.
• • •
When the Fifth was finished, with its amazing final flourish, the musicians stood and bowed, to a standing ovation. Then they filed off, carrying their music stands, as the maintenance crew—in collared shirts and khakis—took the folding chairs into the wings and gently wheeled a Steinway grand onto center stage. The one Hopper had mentioned that first day. 1859. Maple filigree and gold-embossed lettering.
The auditorium silenced in anticipation.
Mario walked onto the stage, and I had to laugh: his tuxedo was about three sizes too small, and his bowtie was off-center. Plus, he was blushing like a ripe tomato. At least he hadn’t worn an anarchy-symbol T-shirt. As applause rippled through the room, he gave an awkward bow, sat down, lowered his hands to the keys, and began to play . . .
. . . Gershwin’s Three Preludes for Piano.
Maybe it was like an appetizer, I thought. A little warm-up to sneak in before the real fireworks. For fun.
For the next few minutes—nine to be exact, the total length of the preludes—I stopped worrying, blown away by Mario’s amazing gift. This was as beautifully as I’d ever heard anyone play the piano.
When he finished the last allegro, he tucked his hands back into his lap and lowered his head. I waited for those first, ominous, heavy Rach 3 notes.
But instead, Mario stood up and reached for the microphone that had been hovering over the piano’s strings.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you to Mr. Hopper, and to Oakhurst Hall for all its support of this great music program. Now, please enjoy the rest of the show. The fun has just begun.”
And he walked off the stage. The crowd began to murmur: in front, worried. In back, excited.
What about the Rach?
There was no Rach.
The next thing I saw was Martin coming out of the right wings carrying Simon’s bass drum and cymbal, followed by Clune coming out of the left wings with a snare and a tom-tom . . . and Mario now coming back out onto the stage—carrying two amps and a bunch of cords, followed by Alex, who frantically started plugging them all in.
“Come on, let’s GO!” Josh said, pushing me. The rest of the band piled into the aisle and walked quickly down the carpet. I was last. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Carlton and Ward down in the front row, talking like madmen.
I glanced up at the stage. Clune and Martin were carrying Josh’s guitar and Danny’s bass, and Alex and Mario were tapping the mikes.
The rest of the band was already on the stage when I heard Carlton’s angry voice behind me: “Jack! What is going on here?”
I turned to see Ward in my face. “Lefferts, you have gone way over the line!”
I looked back at Carlton. He had turned around to look at the crowd. I think he wanted to shout out some sort of speech. A few faculty were on their feet, but the parents and their jewelry were still in their seats. Meanwhile, all the kids seemed to be cheering and clapping.
Now the head’s eyes met mine. He was caught. For once, the man in charge didn’t know what to do. This one was something he hadn’t seen coming.
I grabbed the lip of the stage, vaulted myself up, and walked quickly to the sacred Steinway.
Mario had poised the mike above the piano wires: one piano man looking out for another. I stared at the keys. All eighty-eight of them.
The crowd was quieting. Somehow, we’d made it to the stage. And somewhere I had the feeling that, right now, it was our school now.
I saw Carlton sit down. His eyes were closed. He was probably praying.
I looked around at the band and then I saw three extra chairs, with three extra microphones in front of them. And now, from the wings, Sam walked onto the stage with his cello, Seo Woon with her viola—and Caroline, fingering her flute, gracefully lowering herself into her seat, in her cool, long black dress, adjusting her microphone.
Then she was smiling over at me.
The huge auditorium was now completely silent. Not a squeak. Not a breath. Time was frozen, waiting for me.
“Go ahead,” Caroline whispered, loud enough for everyone onstage to hear. “It’s okay, Jack. You’ve done it. You’ve won. So play, you idiot,” she said.
I took a deep breath, looked around at the band—the ensemble!—and gave a nod. The next thing I heard was Josh’s guitar: the lively notes of a bird at dawn . . . only this time, each note was doubled by Caroline’s flute.
My fingers played the Schubert notes, on their own . . . and I heard Sam and Seo Woon’s strings backing me, harmonizing, the two of them watching me lead.
Now Simon snared the drum . . . and Danny’s bass notes began to rise . . . and we played. No. This time, the song not only seemed to be playing itself, it seemed to be swelling, sounding even bigger, sweeter, grander in this acoustic-perfect cathedral—which, despite all the gilt, suddenly seemed to be a room.
I allowed myself a glance down at the crowd, too nervous to focus, but I could tell, as my eyes and brain took in everything at hyperspeed, as the notes unfolded on their own, and my fingers played, free of my brain, that hundreds of faces were smiling. Heads were nodding.
They liked it.
We shifted into the second movement, when the music began to rock—and with it, so did the students. In the back rows, kids were standing up and swaying and dancing to the sound of Simon’s driving drums, Danny’s hard, angry bass. Josh’s guitar notes soared, climbing, angrily, deliriously.
Off to my left, Seo Woon’s hair was flying from side to side as she played her rock viola. Sam was sawing at the strings of his cello. Caroline, flute on lap, was nodding and waiting for the next piece of quiet. And smiling.
And then we moved into the final movement, drifting toward the calm. The simple, clean melody took us home, to one last surprise: Caroline’s flute, in the final measures, echoing the birdsong from the beginning . . . and closing it up like a sort of, well, symphony. With her final, drifting, plaintive notes, it was over. The echo of the flute receded into the last recesses of the hall.
Silence. Not a sound from the auditorium.
I glanced around the stage. My friends were all looking back at me, with expressions of delight and bewilderment, glee and triumph.
Did that just really happen?
And now what?
I knew what.
I stuck a fist high into the air—Bruno style—and I was only dimly aware of the eruption of applause in front of me, of the audience rising to its feet, in waves.
And of Jill McGregor shouting “Bravo!” from the second row.
And of Carlton, just below me, expressionless, like he’d been steamrollered.
And of angry Ward, seeing blood.
And of the band high-fiving and whooping all around me.
And then, of Caroline throwing her arms around me.
“You did it,” she said into my ear.
“I love you,” I said.
She didn’t answer. Moving slowly. “See you next week, right?”
“That’s up to the powers.”
“I have a feeling you pulled it off. Okay, gotta run. Long drive back.”
With that, she hopped off the stage. I walked to the edge to watch her dash up the aisle. Then a guy in a black suit and a white T-shirt came up to the stage.
“Nice stuff, guys. I’m Jim Trabucco. Sony.” He was holding a card up in the air. Josh and I looked at each other.
Josh leaned down to take the card. “You liked it?”
“Don’t get too excited. I’m with the classics side. But nobody told me about you guys. I’d like to hear more sometime.” And with that, he was gone.
“Yes!” said Danny.
“Yeah,” said Simon. “Except we don’t have any more songs.”
“No worries,” said Danny. “It was great. We were great. And no matter what happens next,” he said, nodding at Ward, who was now standing ominously beneath us, arms crossed, “this is a day dear old Oakhurst Hall’s’s never going to forget.”
Then, one by one, we dropped down to the floor. To face the music.
• • •
“This is serious shit, assholes,” Ward said, trying to keep his composure. Behind him, I saw a half dozen parents congratulating the headmaster, smiling, shaking his hand, just vaguely aware of Ward’s voice:
“. . . defying the headmaster’s order not to play your song . . . disrupting . . . grandest traditions . . . taking the spotlight off those who deserved it . . . you will be hearing from me during vacation. I will be contacting all of your parents. And during that time, I want to you to consider the gravity of what you have done.”
He stalked away.
We stood in silence. Then Josh laughed. “It was so worth it, whatever happens.”
Now Carlton was at my side. “Young man, let’s step outside for a moment.”
I led the way, pushing open the emergency-exit door. I hoped I was ready for this.
It had stopped snowing. I steeled myself for the lecture.
“Like a postcard, isn’t it?” Carlton said.
What?
It was true, though: half a foot of white stuff frosted the ground around us, and the bushes, and the perfectly hewn trees, like a blanket with little diamond-winks in it.
The lights through the auditorium windows cast slanted yellow rectangles onto the snow.
“Jack,” he said, “you have put me in a very difficult position.”
I tried to keep my mouth shut. I really did. But he seemed so quiet, almost normal, that I figured I might as well take my shot. “Maybe, sir,” I said, “you helped put yourself there.”
I waited for the eruption. Instead came the silence of the snowscape. Then he spoke quietly. “It’s not as if I haven’t tried to encourage the students to think outside the box,” he said, sort of to me, and sort of to himself.
“Oakhurst Hall is a box, sir,” I said. “But the rest of the world isn’t boxed in anymore. There aren’t any boxes. There are clouds. And I know that you think you have to follow some unwritten set of rules about how if we teach kids to get rich, they’ll give money back to dear old—”
“It’s not unwritten, Jack,” he interrupted, but that was okay, because I could tell that for once, we were on an even playing field. “It’s called ‘the Board.’ Speaking of which, two members have already congratulated me about your . . . performance. One of them even thought the whole thing was my idea.” He smiled a real smile. “I believe Willis Thorn’s words were, ‘Glad to see you’re ushering the place into the twenty-first century.’ Pompous ass, that man. But he did suggest that he’d be the point man on fund-raising for a new arts building.”
“Like, all the arts, sir?” I said. “Like making paintings with a phone app? Like taping oral histories? Like learning how to draw graphic novels?”
“Jack, be serious. There have to be boundaries.”
“Well, yeah, sure. We’re not against rules. But the thing is . . . you have to trust us. Come on, how many kids here actually dream about getting a Christmas bonus from First Boston—not because their parents want them to, but they want to?”
He had no answer.
Then he bent down, made a snowball, and whipped it into the darkness. It splatted perfectly against the middle of a tree trunk. Carlton had been a quarterback.
“Does this mean I can come back?” I said.
“You want to?” he said.
“If things can change.”
He sort of smiled. “Jack, remember when you asked me if I was listening? If I heard it? The music?”
“Yes sir.”
“I heard it tonight, son. Happy Thanksgiving.” His handshake was cold. “Look forward to seeing you in a week.” He put his hand on the doorknob, then stopped. “You don’t happen to play basketball, do you, Jack?”
“No, sir,” I said. “In the winter, my sport is sledding.”
• • •
I walked over to the window and looked inside. Kids were milling around, enjoying the vibe. Madden was actually helping Clune and Martin lug equipment offstage. They had it under control. And Josh had somehow corralled the Sony guy. No doubt telling him about the other songs we hadn’t even thought of yet.
And, of course, Tom and Ginny were talking with Ms. Booth, frowning about the end of twenty-first-century civilization.
I turned around and walked a few yards through the snow, facing the mountain. Maybe that’s why I wanted to come back to this stupid place: the mountain. I really liked that mountain.
It began to snow again: whirls of perfect, white flakes.
I heard the door open and turned around. At first, I didn’t recognize him in the half dark. He was dressed in some full-length cashmere coat, and his hair had been gelled perfectly, and the suit had to have cost five grand. But the broken nose of the old hockey player gave him away.
“You made it,” I said.
“I made it,” Dad said. “All the Cayennes were booked.”
“Did you see it all? The concert? The game?”
“Every minute,” he said. “Those were some tough hits you took.”
“But why didn’t you tell me you were here?”
Because today was your day. Come on, let’s get out of here. I’m freezing.”
We tromped up the path to the parking lot, and as he shook snow off his wing tips, Dad hit the key to unlock the Lexus.
I piled into the passenger seat, and he turned the heat on. The seat smelled like Grace’s perfume. This time, it didn’t bother me. I kind of even liked it.
“You have to go by the dorm, get stuff?” he said. “Sign out?”
I probably should have. But for right now, I was done with the rules.
“Nah,” I said. “It’s not like I won’t be back pretty soon. Let’s go.”
“Good,” he said. “Let’s bop down to Boston. I got us a suite at the Eliot. Four stars. You can wear those clothes till tomorrow.”
We rode down the winding drive. Covered in snow, that weird sculpture looked almost pretty.
“That was a hell of a catch, at the end there, setting up the winning score,” he said. “A hell of a catch. But why didn’t they throw it to you for the winner?”
“Maybe next year,” I said.
“Too bad you’re so small. Otherwise—”
I interrupted him. “Otherwise I could go on to play college football? Use it to network . . . for the rest of my life?”
He laughed. “Something like that.”
“That’s then, Dad. That’s the future. This is now. Like you said: This is my time. I’m going to enjoy it. Let me have it, okay?”
He looked over, his face bathed by the blue dashboard lights. He nodded.
• • •
We were about to pass Jarvis’s house. His study light was on. I asked Dad to pull over, then knocked on the door. Jarvis was there in a dress shirt open to a T-shirt, with a cigarette in his mouth.
“Hey,” he said. “Nice game. Nice song too. Well played, sir. Well played. Come on in.”
“Naw, my dad’s waiting out there. But I was wondering if you’d do me a favor.”
“Sure.”
A few minutes later, we were back on the road toward Boston. I was thumbing through the latest V. R. Hamilton epic by the light of the radio—the book autographed to Luke. He was going to flip.