The Violin Conspiracy(28)

“Why don’t we get some lunch while he’s fixing it,” she repeated. “There’s a Bob Evans across the parking lot and they serve a mean sausage biscuit.”

“I’m not real hungry,” he said, eyes on the music store.

“You can leave it for a minute,” she said. “It ain’t going anywhere.”

He shrugged. She patted his leg, sat with him for a few more minutes, watching him as he watched the music store. Finally, she stood. “Okay, I’ll be back.” She went to buy a dress she’d tried on earlier.

At exactly 12:20, Ray went back inside. An older woman with gray hair and a faded, tired face was examining the electric keyboards against one wall but turned to stare at him. He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back.

Eric was at his post at the counter. “Yeah?”

“I’m here to pick up my violin.”

“Right. Your violin. That thing is hardly a violin.” Eric disappeared and soon returned with the violin case. While he processed Ray’s debit card, Ray opened the case. The new pegs didn’t match. The tailpiece was plastic. The strings had cheap red labels and cost twenty-six dollars—Ray knew the price since that’s what he’d bought for the school instrument. He was no expert on repairs, but he knew he wasn’t getting what he’d paid for. “Excuse me. Do you carry Dominant-brand strings?”

“Why?”

“I was expecting a set of Dominant strings for $437.”

Ray could feel the woman watching both of them. Eric just stared for a moment and said, “Get the hell out of my store.”

“Why?” Ray said.

“Because I don’t like you. I don’t like any of you. You come in here, never buy anything, and steal half my shit. You’re always walking around like you own the world with your pants around your ass, but do you buy anything? No fucking way. You probably stole that piece of shit anyway. Get the fuck out before I call the cops.”

Out of the corner of his eye Ray saw Aunt Rochelle hesitating, one foot inside the shop. He thought she would come up, say something, but she didn’t—she just waited as the clerk’s words poured over him.

But her presence was enough for him to lift his chin high, square his shoulders, and pack up the violin. As he left the store, he said, “Merry Christmas.” Neither Eric nor the older lady replied.

Outside in the mall, Aunt Rochelle put her arm around his shoulders. “Asshole,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, his heart still beating hard. “But I got it fixed. I can play it for Grandma today.”

“You really love that old thing, don’t you?”

“Which old thing, the violin or Grandma?”

They both laughed. Ray’s was forced, but he tried to pretend he didn’t care about what had just happened.

“The violin,” she said. “Everybody loves Mama.”

“I really do love it,” he confessed. Perhaps it was the incident at the music store, but he found himself talking to her more than he ever had in the past. “I didn’t want it for me, before. I just wanted to find it and play it for Grandma. But if she’s given it to me—well, that just means so much. It means I won’t have to play with the crappy school instruments anymore. I’m the only kid of all the juniors and seniors who doesn’t have his own instrument.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. And all the other kids get private lessons, too. But that’s okay, I know my mom doesn’t get it.”

“Your mom’s a good person,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said without enthusiasm. “She doesn’t like my playing, though.”

“Well, if you love doing it, don’t let nobody stop you, you hear me?”

“You sound like Grandma,” he said.

She stopped in the parking lot and gave him a two-armed hug, shopping bags swinging against his back. “I want to hear you play, too.” She didn’t let him go. “You’re a good boy, you know that?”

He didn’t know what to say, so he just hugged her. Why had he never noticed Aunt Rochelle before? He’d always just lumped her in with the rest of his aunts and uncles—but now he realized that she was a pretty cool lady. She saw him as something more than a babysitter for his younger cousins. He wanted to spend more time with her.

When Ray and Aunt Rochelle got back to the house, Grandma Nora was sitting in her recliner in the living room. “Hey, baby. You get it fixed?”

He took it from its case, showed her the repaired instrument.

“Looks just like I remember,” she said. “All that white stuff. My PopPop used to say it was good luck, all that white stuff. He called it ‘Good Luck Dust.’?” She chuckled quietly to herself, marveling. “I’d forgotten that.”

Ray tucked the violin beneath his jaw and looked across the tailpiece, over the bridge, and past the fingerboard to the scroll. His own violin. His. Heavily coated with an extra thick coat of Good Luck Dust—which was his, too.

With his right hand he touched the bow to the string, rose into an A, and tuned the instrument, keenly making sure the A was a perfect 440. He pulled the bow from frog to tip and the note sang out clean, surprisingly piercing. Somehow the act of playing that one note had cemented his ownership of the violin; and he could feel the muscles in his arm vibrate almost as if they were adjusting themselves to its sound.