She had turned aside the question. “Granddad, this is Carnegie Hall,” she had told him. “It’s different.”
He had then spent Thursday and Friday renewing old friendships, while she practiced with her New York coach.
On Friday evening, at dinner, he talked about his visit to St. Clement’s and having learned of the theft of Bishop Santori’s chalice. “Apparently that same night a baby was abandoned there,” he said as he studied the menu, absorbed as always in the task at hand. “It seems to have been the subject of a recent newspaper article.” He paused. “Grilled Dover sole and a salad,” he announced, then he looked across the table at her, his eyes probing. “When I take you to Le Cirque 2000, my dear, at least have the courtesy to look interested in the menu.”
The next day, when he came to hear her practice, she could read the disappointment in his eyes. She was rehearsing a Beethoven sonata, and while she knew her playing was technically perfect, she was also aware that there was neither passion nor fire in her music. And she knew that her granddad was aware as well.
When she was finished, he shrugged. “Your technique is marvelous; it can’t be faulted. But you have always withheld something of yourself from your music. Why, I don’t know. Now you are withholding everything.” He looked at her sternly. “Sondra, keep it up, and you will appear and immediately disappear from the major concert stage, like that!” He snapped his fingers. ‘What is wrong? You withhold yourself from a man who loves you, and whom I believe you love in return. You resent me. I do not know why, but I have been aware of it for years. Does nothing touch you?”
With a shrug of dismay and resignation, he turned and began walking toward the studio exit.
“I am the mother of the baby who was abandoned at St. Clement’s,” she shouted at him, the words hanging in the air.
He stopped and turned, his expression incredulous, but with a look of deep concern in his eyes.
With little expression in either her face or her voice, Sondra told him everything, the words rushing out of her.
When she was finished, there was a long silence. Then he nodded. “So that is it. And I see that, in a way, you blame me because you let her go. Maybe you are right and maybe you are not. It is no matter. We will move heaven and earth to find her. We will tell Gary; he has enormous resources at his disposal. And if he does not understand, then he is not worthy of you. Now,” he picked up Sondra’s violin and thrust it into her hands. “Now play with all your heart to the child you are seeking.”
Sondra tucked the violin under her chin and reached for her bow. In her mind she could see her child. But would she have blond hair like her own, or would it be like her father’s-silky, dark? Her eyes-were they still blue or brown like hers, or dark hazel like his? He was a man she had known so briefly, and in the end cared not a whit about, but he had fathered her child. She will be like me, Sondra decided. She will look as I did at her age.
She’s seven now; music must be in her soul, she reflected as she drew the bow across the strings. She still eludes me, but I see her in the distance. I hear her footsteps. I feel her presence. She senses that I want her. Forgetting her grandfather, Sondra began to play.
I never gave her a name, she thought. What would I have called her? What do I call her in my heart? She sought the answer as she played, but could not find it.
When the last notes faded into silence, after a long pause, her grandfather nodded. “Now you are becoming a true musician. You are still holding back, but that was an infinite improvement. You will be required to play an encore. What have you chosen?”
Sondra did not know what her answer would be until she heard herself say it: “A simple song of Christmas,” she told him. “‘All Through the Night.’”
27
On Sunday morning Alvirah and Willy went to Mass at St. Clement’s. Kate Durkin was in attendance as well, and, at her insistence, they went back to the townhouse for coffee.
When they arrived, the Bakers were just going out. “Linda and I are on our way to pick up the morning papers,” Vic said jovially. “We always take a crack at the Sunday Times puzzle.”
“I knew a guy who claimed to ace it every week, but when somebody checked him once, they found he was cheating, putting down gobbledygook to fill in the blanks,” Willy said. “A friend of yours maybe?”
Baker’s smile froze. Linda shrugged and tugged at his sleeve. “Come on, hon,” she pleaded.
“I see he put away his black tie,” Willy observed, as he watched them walk down the block arm in arm.
“It’s a wonder she doesn’t break her neck in those high heels,” Alvirah observed. “There are patches of ice all over the sidewalk.”
“Trust me, she won’t fall,” Kate said. “She’s a pro in those things-wears them all the time.” Kate turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door. “Come on in. That wind goes right through you.”
“Let’s have our coffee in the parlor,” she said as they took off their coats. “I lit the fire in there this morning, and it feels cozy. Bessie loved to Sit in the parlor and have coffee and my fresh-baked crumb cake after Mass on Sundays.”
Kate refused to allow Alvirah to assist her in setting things out. “What’s a few cups and plates! You’ve been running around on my behalf all week. Go in and sit down.”
“I always liked this room,” Willy observed as he settled into the deep leather chair that had been the treasured possession of Judge Aloysius Maher, whose portrait in judicial robes still looked down at them benignly from the wall over the mantel.
“It’s a wonderful room,” Alvirah agreed. “You don’t get these high ceilings and carved mantels anymore. Just look at the details on the windows. That’s workmanship. I can’t stand it that poor Kate isn’t going to get to enjoy all this for the rest of her life.” She turned around, then sighed. “Well, I guess Bessie won’t mind if I take her favorite chair. I can just see her sitting here, her feet on the hassock, watching her shows-and woe betide you if you interrupted her during One Life to Live or General Hospital. Then what does she do with her next-to-last breath? She sneaks upstairs when Kate’s back is turned, and just to do her out of this house. Why, that means she missed at least one of her shows on her very last day on earth.”
“Maybe they have Soap Opera Digest in heaven, and she’s been able to catch up,” Willy suggested.
Kate came in carrying a tray, which she placed on the coffee table. “Oh, Willy,” she said, “would you mind closing the door. ‘Hon’ and ‘Dearie’ will be back with the papers any time now, and I don’t want them to come in and bother us.”
“My pleasure, Kate,” Willy said with a grunt as he got up.
At the mention of the Bakers, the subject of the will came up. As a reflex gesture, Alvirah turned on the microphone in her sunburst pin.
“Bessie always wrote with the judge’s pen, and she never used blue ink in it,” Kate said when Alvirah talked about the differing shades of blue ink on the will and the attestation clause. “But then again, she did a lot of crazy things during those last few days.”
“What about her typewriter?” Alvirah asked. “I thought she said something about it on Thanksgiving.”
“I’m not sure,” Kate murmured.
“All right. How bad was her eyesight?” Alvirah queried.
“She had bifocals; you know that. But the prescription for the reading lenses needed to be strengthened. If she didn’t hold something up close to her face, she had trouble making it out. She may have signed those papers thinking she was signing for a delivery of paint or varnish or tools,” Alvirah said. “I was here once when Baker brought her a receipt to sign for a delivery. He handed her his pen.”
“All of which won’t help you in court,” Willy observed. “Kate, I’d walk a mile for a piece of that crumb cake.”
Kate smiled. “No need to do that-there’s plenty right here. Bessie loved it too. Told me that even after she was gone, I should fix a piece for her and set it out in this room on Sunday mornings. She said she’d haunt me if I forgot.”
And then along came the Bakers, Alvirah thought. From the foyer she heard the click of the outside door. “The heirs are back,” she murmured, and then watched in dismay as the door to the parlor swung open and Vic and
