The Violin Conspiracy(22)

Ray’s hands seemed suddenly clumsy, unable to pass the pie plates around. He dropped a fork and scrambled under the table to find it.

“Yes, Mama, we remember,” Ray’s mom said. She and Aunt Joyce burst out laughing.

“Your mama and your aunt Joyce never tried to play,” Grandma Nora said to him as he emerged with the fork. “They just didn’t want to. They thought they was too cute to play an instrument.”

“Where is it now?” he said.

“It’s up there somewhere in the attic,” she said. “Told you I never got rid of it.”

As Ray went up to his room to retrieve his school violin, he heard his mom say, “Well, I ain’t tryin’ to hear all that noise. Come on, Joyce. Let’s go sit in the living room. And bring that bottle.” The rest of the family followed them out.

So he and his grandmother were alone when he played for her—starting with “Rhosymedre” from the wedding, and then on to “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, “Jingle Bells,” and even the first half of L’Inverno. When at last he drew his bow across the strings in a final tremulous finish, she did her best to leap out of her seat as she applauded him. “Come here and let me give you a hug! That was beautiful! You sounded just like PopPop.”

“I hit a bunch of wrong notes.”

“Oh, you hush. It was beautiful. Just beautiful.”

As he slid the violin back into his case, he said as casually as he could, “Grandma, you really still have your PopPop’s fiddle?”

“I sure do. It’s up in that attic somewhere. We never threw nothin’ away, and I know your granddaddy didn’t get rid of it. I wouldn’t have let him.”

“Would you mind if—if I saw it? I’ve never seen a fiddle that old.”

She laughed. “You been in that attic? There’s probably fifty years of I-don’t-know-what-all piled on top of it.”

“Could I look, though?”

“Well, sure, you can look.”

PopPop’s fiddle haunted Ray for the rest of the evening. As his mother, Aunt Joyce, and Grandma Nora drank wine, told stories, and laughed so loud that they kept Ray awake, he could think of little else. What did it look like? PopPop died sometime in the 1930s—what happens to violins when they’ve sat for seventy or eighty or ninety years in an attic? Probably it was warped and ruined from the heat. But he could look, hold a part of his heritage. He imagined playing to his grandmother on PopPop’s fiddle, and couldn’t imagine a sweeter gift for her.

Later, Ray walked with her to her bedroom, helped her into bed. She was so tiny, so frail. He could pick her up almost with one arm. His heart ached with love for her, for the way her hand reached up and touched his cheek, so gentle, so warm. He put her walker off to the side, went back to kiss her.

“Thank you again for tonight, baby. You made Grandma so happy.”

“I’m glad I could do it. You sleep well.”

“I love you, you know that?”

“I love you, too,” he said to her, and realized in a flash that although he said those words fairly frequently—to his mom, sometimes to the twins—this time he understood how much they could mean. His heart ached with love. “Good night,” he told her, and turned off the light.

Next morning, before breakfast, on the upstairs hall landing, Ray grabbed the pull string and a cloud of dust poured down with the folded attic stairs. When had someone last been up here? He climbed. At the top he felt along the wall for a light switch, then, waving his hands in front of him, he ventured forward. Almost immediately a pull chain hit him in the face. He yanked. Bright light shone forth.

He groaned aloud. The attic ran the entire length of the house, branched into alcoves front and back. In the nearest corner, a bed sagged under a faded quilt. Ray seemed to remember that one of his uncles used to tell him stories of how he would bring his dates up here.

Except for the small space around the bed, the attic was filled with all kinds of everything. Lamps stacked on dishes, chairs crawled over more chairs, spindles poked out like needles. Chests and TVs crouched in front of what looked like an old Victrola, on top of which a stereo with one corner bashed in sat deteriorating. And among and between and below all of them: boxes—an endless sea—piled from floor to ceiling.

How would he even find something like a violin? It could be anywhere, in anything. It could be propped behind that cradle or tucked inside the carpet padding.

He lifted the flap of a nearby box. Nesting china teacups peered back at him.

He’d never find PopPop’s fiddle. He’d need a system. Given that the fiddle had been in the attic for as long as it had, in all likelihood it would be in one of the back corners, far from the door, with newer junk piled on top. He clambered over boxes and under hanging garden hoses to the far end of the attic.

And then he systematically opened box after box, sifting through piles of clothes, groping under a dressmaker’s dummy, pulling open each cabinet drawer, even if he had to shift the whole cabinet to get to it.

“Ray!” A voice wafted up. “Rayquan, what are you doing up there?”

“Looking for PopPop’s fiddle!”

“What?”

He had to repeat himself two or three times to be heard.

“No you ain’t. You’re coming down here. Right now,” his mother bellowed.