Spring 1948

Late one night in the spring of his first year at music school, Ned Baer was brooding in his dorm room, too discouraged to finish his counterpoint assignment.

He hated it here. Back home, he was a star. Here, everybody was a star. Back home they all loved him; here they all yelled at him. After his first semester, he'd been placed on probation. Now he was flunking out.

The phone rang out in the hall. It was his brother Mickey, calling from home.

"What's up, Mr. Mick?"

"Are you happy?"

"No."

"I didn't think so."

There was a pause. Ned listened, sick with longing for home. But the house was silent behind Mickey's breathing.

"So what can I do for you, Mick?"

"How come you're not happy?"

"I hate music."

"Yeah."

Another pause. Ned glanced at the wall clock. It was almost three in the morning.

"Uh, Mickey, how come you're calling so late?"

"Dad isn't home from work yet."

"Didn't he call?"

"No."

"God, Mom must be losing her mind."

"She went to pick him up."

"When?!"

"Usual time."

Ned was suddenly very cold, very still.

Mickey tried to deadpan. "You don't think they ran away from home, do you?"

The phone slipped out of Ned's hand, kicked like a hanged man at the end of its cord. Mickey's voice echoed against the cinder block wall.

"Uh, Ned? Could you come home now?"

It had taken three seconds to make the boys orphans. The Baers had slammed head-on into a drunk doing eighty the wrong way in their lane. The drunk's car was a new 1948 Cadillac, and weighed three and a half tons. The Baers' was a '40 Ford coupe, and weighed a little under two. The drunk got a fat lip bouncing his face off the padded steering wheel.

Mr. Baer had wanted to do the drive home, as he always did. There wasn't much left of him. Mrs. Baer's head and right arm had gone through the windshield on the passenger side. One eye was open, one was closed.

"Looks like she's swimming," one of the cops said. The other turned away and threw up.

In July, an envelope arrived, containing Ned's grade report: straight Fs. Also inside was a letter from the Director of the Conservatory, inviting Ned not to come back. This last disaster was typical of the way his life was going these days.

His grandfather hit the roof.

"Didn't you ask for a leave of absence?" he yelled at Ned.

"I meant to." Great, Ned thought. Now I got you yelling at me. Typical.

"Then why didn't you?"

"I forgot."

"You what?!"

"Don't yell at him, Daddy," his grandmother said. "The boy's had a traumatic experience."

Ned's grandfather didn't stop yelling. "We haven't?!"

"Well ..." she said, and her face crumpled up.

Ned rolled his eyes. She did that a lot, her face crumpled up and she started to cry. It didn't seem to take much.

"Now, Mother ..." his grandfather began, trying to pat her shoulder. But she pulled away from him, wiping at her eyes with the handkerchief she always kept stuffed in her bosom.

Seeing that familiar gesture, Ned suddenly remembered sitting on his grandmother's lap, his ear against that bosom, listening to her heartbeat as she rocked and rocked. Her skin there was always fragrant with perfume.

Ned's grandfather wheeled back on him. "I'm driving you up there tomorrow," he growled, "and you will explain to this Director what happened." He rattled the letter in Ned's face.

"School's closed for the summer."

"Then you will send him a letter, and you will mail it tomorrow."

"Yes, sir."

"You will begin writing that letter now."

"Yes, sir." Ned started toward the door.

"And you will let me see it when it's finished."

"OK."

"Stand up straight, dear," his grandmother said in a quaky voice.

Ned stopped dead in the doorway. He wanted to bash their faces in, both of them. He turned around, glaring.

But they had forgotten him, and were rocking in each other's arms.

Somehow, the school was persuaded to let Ned return, on the condition that he start over from the beginning. Ned liked this idea — most of the material would be familiar to him. He also would be reprieved from having to spend any more time with his grandparents. He had outgrown them, couldn't wait to get away. So he invented some story about reinstatement meetings and left for the city in the middle of August.

On the curb in front of the train station, Ned waved as his grandfather eased the car into traffic. His grandmother sat in front, blowing her nose. Mickey smiled and flapped his hand in the rear window as the car pulled away, then turned around and faced front. As he watched the back of his little brother's head recede in the distance, Ned realized that, in his rush to escape, he'd forgotten he was leaving Mickey behind with those impossible hicks.

Ned's advisor was Dr. Patterson, head of the vocal division. Of all the people who yelled at him, Patterson was the worst. A tiny man with a sharp metallic voice, Patterson seemed to make a point of reducing every one of his pupils to tears at least once per term. The voice students said that if you could make it through four years of Patterson without killing yourself or him, you'd either be a saint or a damn good singer.

As he stood outside the office, Ned realized that he was no longer terrified of Patterson. He had been about to knock, but now he lowered his arm, and let this thought complete itself.

It occurred to him that one day even Patterson would die, and suddenly the image of his teacher raging at him for some piddling mistake filled Ned not with anger or shame but with sorrow.

"How excited we get about everything," he thought. "How blind and helpless we are! But how brave!" His eyes filled.

Patterson's voice cut through the closed door like a saw. "Mr. Baer! Is that you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, come in, then. You're late!"

Ned wiped his face, turned the handle.

Patterson sat at the piano, rummaging papers. The music rack was lying flat, and Ned saw papers with his name on them spread out on it. Patterson was looking for something, and didn't even glance at him.

"Shut the door. Sit down. No, over here, next to me." Patterson spoke, as always, louder than necessary. Ned sat down on the bench, rubbed his eyes again.

"The registrar is in a perfect snit. You could have let her know what you were doing when you disappeared last spring. You could have let me know."

"I'm sorry, sir, I meant to."

Patterson's voice softened a little. "I know." He stopped shuffling paper, drew a breath. "You lost your scholarship. I tried to get it back, once I found out what had happened, but it was too late. They'd already given it to someone else. I'm sorry."

"Oh."

"I don't suppose you're rich."

"No."

"Well, then, we'll have to work something out. You play keyboard?"

"Uh, yes, a little."

"Sight-read this hymn for me." He opened a hymnal, dropped it on top of Ned's file, stood up. Ned slid over on the bench, fumbled at the keys.

"Two sharps."

"Right." Ned started over, stopped, started again, and managed to make it through to the end of a verse with only a couple more think-pauses.

"Fine. You'll play the carillon in the chapel every week night from five to five-thirty. That will pay for your voice lessons. How's your falsetto?"

"Pardon?"

"Move." Ned got up, and Patterson slid back onto the bench, flipping pages in the hymnal as he did so. "Sing the alto." He played the last line as an introduction, then started the hymn at the beginning, sounding only the soprano, tenor, and bass parts. Ned peered over his shoulder, struggling to find the missing note in each chord. His voice squeaked and cracked.

"Don't yodel. Do it all falsetto. Keep the tempo, you're dragging. Open your mouth! Don't stop when you make a mistake, keep going! Next verse." Patterson bullied him through to the end of the hymn, then pitched the hymnal onto the windowsill. "You religious?"

"Sort of."

"Doesn't matter, really. Unless it's against your principles to take money for singing in church." Ned realized this was a joke, but was too surprised to smile.

"My star countertenor will be on tour until after Christmas. That should just about cover Fall tuition. Rehearsal Thursday night from six to nine. Rehearsal Sunday at ten, Mass at eleven-fifteen, Evensong at four, but get there by three-thirty. God bless the Protestant Episcopal Church."

Ned couldn't stop blinking. The cathedral where Patterson was the music director had one of the most famous choirs in the country.

Patterson was rummaging in the file again. "How are you fixed for pocket money?"

"Uh ...not too bad. The estate — "

"None of my business unless I can help. Ever do Anglican chant?"

"Is it like Gregorian?"

"Not much. Here." Patterson thrust a book into Ned's hand. "Figure it out before Thursday. It looks easy until you try to get everybody to do it at the same time. If one person screws up, it ruins the whole thing. Don't be that one person."

"I'll try."

"Succeed. This is a professional choir. You will not be paid to make mistakes."

"Yes, sir."

"When you practice, keep the vibrato out of your voice. Sing straight. It's a pain, but the effect is stunning. We'll work on it, at your lessons. Now get out of here, I've got to go placate the registrar."

Ned stumbled toward the door.

"Mr. Baer."

"Yes, sir?"

"I'm sorry about your parents. Both of mine are still alive, and I don't know what I'd do without them."

Only now did Ned realize that Patterson hadn't looked at him once the whole time.

The rehearsals were exhausting: three straight hours of sight-reading the hardest music he'd ever seen.

Ned found that singing falsetto required twice as much breath for half as much sound, and a few times during his first weeks in the choir he would hyperventilate and have to put his head down on the music desk in front of him.

But as he gradually mastered the task of "singing like an old lady," as he described it to Mickey, he became more and more enchanted with it. It was a peculiar sound, the countertenor voice: otherworldly, sexless, almost non-human. It was totally wrong for certain kinds of music, but in its element — Renaissance motets and some really modern stuff — there was nothing like it.

And music now opened its secret heart to Ned. Singing had always been fun, even exciting on occasion, but so was baseball and necking with girls. Now, however, even the most saccharine chord change could draw sudden tears, and put an odd ache in his breast he's never had before. It was delicious.

One night after rehearsal Ned called Mickey and tried to describe these new feelings. It took half an hour, during which time Mickey listened without making a sound. Finally Ned was spent. After a pause, thinking Mickey might have gone to sleep, he said, "Well? What do you think?"

Mickey sighed. "Must be God," he said.

"What?"

"It's the only thing I can think of," said Mickey.

Their father and mother had taught Ned how to kneel down beside his bed, fold his hands and close his eyes, and recite "Now eye lamey down to sleep..." and "Gob less Mom-mom and Pop-pop..." in a sing-song voice, like a lullaby. When Mickey started talking, Ned helped teach him the same soothing ritual, which they had kept doing together until Ned started high school, and he felt he had to put away childish things.

Mickey, however, was always a religious child, and still said his prayers after Ned left home for the conservatory. But Ned, before this, had spent more time thinking about girls' breasts than he did about God.

Now he paid attention during the sermons, listened thoughtfully to the Scripture readings, and repeated out loud the Creed and the prayers. He started crossing himself when everybody else did. He even bought a little prayer book to follow the service, and soon was carrying it with him every day. At odd moments he would open it at random and read a prayer to see what it said. And he began to understand how these archaic sentences embodied the sudden sympathy for all his fellow creatures that he had felt that day outside Patterson's office.

The other second alto in the choir was a large Negro homosexual named Linden Peters. Linden had taken Ned under his fleshy wing in the first month or so, helping him to decipher the order of service, guiding him through the ritual movements of the Mass and Evensong, taking up the slack in rehearsal while Ned got his bearings. Linden was the perfect chorister. He led the whole alto section without dominating it, he blended with everyone, and he sight-read flawlessly. And he certainly went out of his way to smooth any newcomer's path.

One Sunday, a few weeks before Christmas, he detained Ned in the robing room after Evensong. "Getting religion, are we?" he asked, gesturing at Ned's new prayer book.

Ned blushed. "I don't know," he said softly. Linden folded and refolded the white surplice he had just taken off. "I hope you're not becoming one of those pious boys," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, it's a beautiful pageant we provide — fancy gowns, smells and bells — "

"It's not just a pageant." Ned said, a little hotly. "There really is something behind it."

"You can't fool the Choir Mother. You love playing dress-up, we all do, it's why we do it — "

"Not me."

" — it's why we do it this way. If you really want to commune with God, go out into the desert, eat locusts and wild honey."

"God isn't just out in the desert!"

Linden raised his eyebrows and peered at Ned over his glasses. "That far gone, are we?" He closed his locker door. "Pity," he sighed. "You show great promise as a chorister."

Ned blushed again. "Thanks, Linden."

"That is not a compliment. It's a warning. Your religious types, especially priests, make the worst musicians in the world, be they never so promising."

"Why?"

"They regard music as the handmaiden of liturgy. Music doesn't work that way, and it deserts them."

"Well, I'm not going to be a priest."

"Not going out into the desert?"

Ned tried to joke. "Not yet, anyway."

"I'm glad. The second altos need you."

"Aren't there just the two of us?"

Linden did not smile. "Be very careful, not yet Father Ned. If you love music, don't get drunk on God."

The next day, Monday, as Ned let himself into the shadowy school chapel to play the carillon, he smiled as he remembered Linden's solemn face. "If he only knew," he said softly, shaking his head. Ned was surprised at himself, watching the growing number of his religious observances with amused disbelief. At the moment, for example, he was fasting, had been since Friday evening. It was really an accident: he had played the carillon straight through the dinner hour, and then didn't have enough money to go to a coffee shop or deli. Saturday he got up too late for breakfast, and by noon discovered that the idea of eating was faintly repugnant. So he decided to experiment, and stayed in his room, reading here and there in the prayer book.

By Saturday evening, the lightness he felt almost made him giddy. He also gazed about in wonder, for everything, even the ordinary objects in his room, were glowing with life, as if lit from within.

Sunday morning, he broke his fast only to take Communion. He knew this was vaguely illegal — he had never formally joined this church — but, he said to himself, no one asks for ID when you go to the rail. The papery wafer had no taste, but the mouthful of wine made him sway, and its warm glow stayed with him the rest of the day.

Now, as he stood in the back of the silent chapel at the school, he realized how easy it would be to just keep going. The very air around him glistened, throbbing with atoms. All he had to do to remain in this state was just not go to dinner. As a test, he tried to picture himself biting into a hamburger. He gagged.

Outside, somewhere beyond the silence he was standing in, a tower clock chimed five. Ned was reluctant to move, but there were still a few sinews binding him to the world of the flesh. One of them was his job playing carillon. So he dragged himself over to the stairs leading up to the back gallery.

Halfway up he missed a step and tumbled back down. He lay for a time on the stone floor of the stairwell, his heart skittering. Then there arose before his mind's eye a newspaper headline: "Would-Be Ascetic Breaks Butt", and he laughed out loud.

At five-thirty he locked up the carillon and went to supper.

Mickey was disappointed his brother wasn't coming home for Christmas.

"I have all these extra services, you see," Ned explained on the phone. "Patterson would fire me. This job pays my tuition."

This wasn't the whole truth. For all he knew, Patterson would understand if Ned asked to miss a service or two to be with what was left of his family. The fact was, church totally intoxicated him. He now went every day to Evening Prayer, a wispy ritual of readings and petitions that rarely lasted fifteen minutes, and whose congregation was often only Ned and one or two others.

And he felt caught up in the great crescendo of the season, with its special music and extra rehearsals. He knew he should be shopping for presents along with the rest of the city, but he ended up going to the Cathedral every time he got a spare half hour, and if nothing else was happening, just sitting there, drinking in what he felt must be the presence of God. He even cut classes to go to church.

"Gee," Mickey said, "this'll be our first Christmas without you."

"I know, Mick, and I'm sorry," Ned lied. "Maybe in January, when things calm down a little ...."

"Yeah," Mickey sighed. "Then again, Mom and Dad won't be here either. Might as well change everything all at once."

Ned's heart clenched. He knew Mickey was lonesome, but what could he say? He wasn't going home, he couldn't leave this marvelous new life he'd found, not even for a couple of days. He was afraid it would be gone when he got back.

But there was a new note in his brother's voice, something sad, of course, but somehow worse. Mickey sounded exhausted, as if he didn't really care whether Ned came home or not.

"Maybe you could come up here, Mick."

"Nah. Gramma and Grampa have this whole thing planned. They'll be mad."

"Well ...."

"Don't worry about it. I'll explain everything." Mickey sighed again. A dead silence hung between them.

"Well, g'bye, Ned."

"I'll call after service on Christmas morning, and you can tell me what you got."

"OK." Mickey hung up. Ned stood for a while with the phone in his hand, and almost called right back to say he'd changed his mind. But the temptation passed, and Ned slowly put the phone back on its hook.

At midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, Ned lost control. His heart had been humming all day long, and by the time he got into his cassock and surplice just before the service, his breath was coming in sudden gasps. Linden noticed this, and hovered close by, as if Ned were a toddler on the stairs.

The processional hymn was Veni Emmanuel, a dark and insistent plainsong melody, which Patterson had restored to its ancient dignity by stripping away the sentimental harmony parts that usually accompanied it. The lights were off, but everyone had a candle, and the cathedral was packed. Incense drifted everywhere, swirling in the wake of anything that moved. Towards the end of the hymn, Ned's voice began to shudder, and he swayed against Linden, who grabbed him under the arm and held him up.

Thus supported, Ned managed to make it into the choir stalls, and by the time they sat down, after a long opening prayer, he felt calm enough to turn to Linden and say thank you.

"You scared me, Ned," Linden whispered. "Are you all right?"

"Sure," Ned replied, though he wasn't sure at all. "Thanks," he repeated.

Linden didn't look too sure either. "Are you sick?"

Ned laughed and shook his head. "I don't know — it's so beautiful — "

Linden frowned, but said no more.

Nothing much happened for the next few minutes except for readings and prayers that were so familiar Ned didn't need to listen.

Then the choir began its first anthem. Ned lost it again, and couldn't sing a note without starting to cry. Finally, he had to sit down. The sermon was to follow, and as the preacher climbed into the pulpit, Linden hauled Ned up from his seat and out a side door hidden in the wall behind the choir.

A short corridor gave onto the tiny chapel where weekday Evening Prayer was held. Linden sat Ned down, none too gently, and closed the door. "What the hell's the matter with you?" he whispered fiercely.

All restraint abandoned Ned. "I can't help it," he sobbed. "It's so — it's so —"

Linden towered over him. "Listen, Mr. Religious Ecstasy. You are being paid to sing the Lord's praises, not weep like a saint over the fucking beauty of it all. Now pull yourself together and act like a professional."

Ned wailed louder. "Don't be mad at me. I can't stop."

Linden grabbed Ned's arms and shook him. "Do I have to smack you?" he hissed in Ned's face.

Ned stopped crying. Linden released him and straightened up. "Here. Wipe your nose," he said, handing Ned a handkerchief.

Ned did so, then tried to hand the handkerchief back.

"Keep it for now," Linden said. He opened the door. "You'd better stay here and get a grip on yourself," he said, his voice softened somewhat. Then he levelled a finger at Ned's face. "But don't come back until you're sure. I need you in there. But I need all of you." He left the door open.

Ned could hear the rich echo of the preacher's voice, and recognized by its cadence that the sermon was nearing its close. He started to get up, but still felt too weak. "What the hell is the matter with me?" he whispered. And for the first time, Ned began to be afraid of this God who was drawing him so powerfully into Himself. For a moment, the future opened like a hinged altarpiece before Ned's eyes. And there he saw himself, in the guise of one of the Desert Fathers, emaciated, filthy, and foaming at the mouth.

He jerked to his feet. Out in the church, the congregation was stirring, and he fled into the protection of its numbers.

Twenty years later, as Ned was moving out of his house for the first of several trial separations from his wife, he ran across a mysterious cloth bundle in the bottom of an old footlocker. The ribbon binding the parcel fell apart at the first tug, and inside the cloth wrapping Ned found his prayer book, its cover still flexible, and its flimsy thin pages as supple as ever.

"They don't make nothing like they used to," he muttered, stroking the leather spine. The image of an altarpiece rose up in his mind briefly, but its wings remained closed. Ned frowned, trying to remember.

To the best of his recollection, the last time he had seen the prayer book was when he deliberately left it behind in the choir stall at the end of that Christmas Eve service. He had then gone back to his room, packed up his things, and taken the next train home.

A month later he returned to the conservatory, but not to the cathedral choir, Patterson having found him another scholarship. How had he gotten the prayer book back?

Something about these memories made Ned uneasy, and he had long ago learned that stirring up old dust wasn't always a great idea. So he shrugged it off, and tossed the book at the cardboard box of trash behind him. It hit the box edge-on, partially dislodging a yellowed square of paper stuck between its leaves.

Ned hesitated, then pulled the note out. It was dated Feast of the Epiphany, Anno Domini 1949. "Dear Father Ned," it began:

Dr. Patterson informs me you have fallen out of love with the Church. In a way, I'm relieved. You took it much too seriously. It's good to remember that one cannot look upon the face of God and live.
I shall miss you, however. It's been years since singing the Lord's praises has given me such joy. You were only a boy with a voice when I met you. Now you are a musician. It is always a privilege to be witness to that transformation. For that opportunity, I am deeply grateful.
The star countertenor whose position you temporarily filled has returned, more conceited and self-important than ever. Once he was a person; now he's a diva, exactly what a musician is not. Whatever your obsessions of the moment, you have a musical soul. Keep it fed. And never forget that when we say we make music, it is in truth the other way round.
But most of all, I thank you for the honor of allowing me to care for you when you were in need. Once upon a time, a dear friend saved me from sliding into the Pit of a Dangerous Infatuation. I never got a chance to thank him, but perhaps it's better for us to pass these things along than to try to repay them.
Good bye, Father Ned. Remember me in your prayers.
Love in Christ,
Linden Peters.

Ned grabbed up the piece of cloth from the floor. In one corner was the monogram "LP".

Then he gaped in sudden grief. Linden Peters had been dead fifteen years.