Page 39 of Echoes of a Silent Song
Outside, Makayla appeared with the second box of doughnuts, and Callum set down his hammer, lifted his cap, and drew an arm across his forehead, and Blair couldnotjust stand here staring at him.
She slapped the paint roller onto the wall and started rolling it more aggressively than before.“You’re an alumna of Peterson High, right?”she asked Peggy Sue.
“Yes, ma’am.Class of 1961.Went away to school and came back to Peterson as soon as I graduated.I was the librarian.Would’ve stayed here forever, but Roland got transferred to Decatur, so we moved there in seventy-two.But as soon as he retired, we moved back.”
Blair turned.“Were you here in sixty-nine to seventy, by chance?”
“Sure was.”Peggy Sue snapped her fingers.“That’s right.Your father mentioned when I saw him at church last week that you were curious about Iris Wallingford.”
“We found a piece of music in the choir library we think might be hers.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t doubt it.That girl was always writing music.Usually she ate her lunch quickly and then came to the library for the rest of the period.She never said much more to me than hello, and she never asked for books.She just sat at a table by the window with that notebook of hers.At first I thought she was drawing, but once I was shelving books near her and saw the music.Don’t know whether it was any good or not.”Peggy Sue grinned.“That’s above my pay grade.”
Certainty thudded in Blair’s chest at Peggy Sue’s confirmation.ItwasIris’s music they’d found.Outside, Callum had popped the last of a doughnut into his mouth and reached for the hammer again.She couldn’t wait to tell him.
“One time, toward the end of her life, though ...”Peggy Sue continued, “Iris came in with a boy.”Blair tore her gaze from the window.“A boy?Do you remember who?”
“Like it was yesterday,” Peggy Sue replied.“It was that tall boy, Victor Nelson.”
November 1969
My pencil flew across the staff paper on the table in the library.Victor and I had met there after school to work on our theory homework together, but I’d finished mine a few minutes ago.It was an easy assignment about secondary dominants.Mr.Gilbert had even made up a song to help us remember that they’re chromatic, and that song had launched another thread of melody that welled up inside me, demanding to be poured into my pencil and set free on paper.Demanding to live outside me.
Ideas blossomed everywhere now, with Victor and me spending nearly all our free time together, and my brain constantly hummed with music.I’d written so many scraps of songs the last few weeks.Sometimes they were destined to remain just that—scraps—but some held the promise of much more.
I needed to finish something, though, and soon, because the application deadline for Whitehall was just two weeks away.
Yes.Like Victor, I’d decided to apply to the Whitehall Conservatory.I hadn’t told my parents yet.Not much point really, since I doubted I’d get in.And even if by some miracle I did, my parents probably wouldn’t think a music career a suitable future plan for “a woman of our social stature.”
But even if I didn’t go, just getting admitted would prove to me that I had real talent.That I was actually good at this.Whether I became a student or not, if some faculty member saw something in my work, it might put my name out there.Establish some connection with the world outside boring little Peterson, Illinois.
And if I wasn’t any good?If I didn’t get in?Then I’d know a career in music wasn’t worth pursuing.Perhaps that would give me some peace about following the path my parents planned for me.Marrying some rich or socially prominent man—ideally both—and settling down to a vapid, meaningless, moneyed life of clinking champagne glasses, trilling laughter, and empty conversation.
If I did get into Whitehall, though, even if I couldn’t go, somehow that would reassure me that God hadn’t forgotten me.That he saw me and knew me and loved me as I was, not as others wished I were.That he had a plan for my music.That maybe people were meant to hear it.That maybe it didn’t exist just for me.
But first I needed to finish my audition piece.
Victor sat across the table from me.His black plastic glasses sat in a shaft of sunlight on the scarred table.The same shaft of sunlight fell across his face—the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the little divot in his chin, the smattering of pale-brown freckles across the bridge of his nose.He was so handsome, my Victor.And now I could call him mine.
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
The verse from Song of Songs popped into my head.I’d always been inspired by the book, ever since my parents told me it was too mature for me.Of course I sneaked away to read it the second I could.It was beautiful poetry, but I’d never understood it.Not really.Not until now.
I was Victor’s.
Victor was mine.
The words formed themselves into a melody, shifting and swirling in my heart until they crystallized.This melody differed from my other ideas.It felt more solid.More permanent.I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
I am my beloved’s.The phrase came to the sopranos first.Repeated then, with altos in harmony.
Then the tenors and basses echoed the second line.My beloved is mine.
Then maybe they—
A snap.A splintering.
That wasn’t in the music.It took a moment to process.To absorb the reality of the small tip of graphite that shot across my staff paper.A slight grayish smear in the upper left-hand corner.
