Palouse - 12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Youth Symphony – Fall 1988

Six Months After the Guarneri

With Marcia Vilas entering the picture, Rudy Schmidt realized that there was not much left that he could add to what she did. It was time for Micah to move on – sadly for Rudy – and he had made some phone calls to see if what he had planned could work.

“Micah,” Rudy said as Betty looked on after one of Micah’s lessons, “I have a proposition for you.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t offer you what Marcia Vilas can, but I’d like to keep helping you. So, here’s my idea. You know about the Spokane Youth Symphony?”

Micah nodded his head.

“I’ve spoken with the director, and based on my recommendation, he’s willing to take you on in the violin section.”

“That’s wonderful,” Betty said.

“There’s more,” Rudy continued. “I’ve spoken with Marcia Vilas, and she’s willing to come to Spokane to continue to work with Micah during the time he is there for the Youth Symphony. In addition, I’ve contacted David Stirling, an old friend of mine who’s active on the Spokane Youth Symphony board, and he’s offered his home to Marcia for Micah’s lesson, plus he’s offered to let you, Micah, and your mother stay overnight between Marcia’s lessons and the symphony’s rehearsals. It will be a busy weekend for Micah, so Betty, if you can’t get away for two days, I’d be happy to drive Micah up there on Friday nights if you could pick him up on Sundays. That would save you a lot of driving and give you time with the rest of your family, or it would save you a lot of down time in Spokane. So, how does that sound, Micah?”

Micah thought for a nanosecond and smiled. “I’d like that.” He knew he was ready to move to the next step toward a professional career.

Two Fridays later Micah was in Rudy’s Saturn driving up U.S. 195 from Colfax to Spokane, trying to make sure Rudy’s attention was directed to the road in front of him. Stan had dropped them him at Rudy’s place on his way to buy supplies for the farm. Betty would meet them in Spokane and bring Micah home after the weekend.

After an hour and a quarter they arrived in front of a large, older house on the south hill of Spokane. Betty was waiting in her car for Rudy’s arrival. The late-afternoon sun was shining on the streets lined with autumn-gold, leaf-heavy trees. The houses of the South Hill neighborhood were substantial, most having been built in the 1920s on large parcels of land, many with pine trees standing like obelisks in their yards.

“This is the Stirlings’ house,” Rudy announced as he pulled onto a flagstone-paved strip alongside the driveway, with Betty right behind them. They got out of their cars and took the walkway up to a large, carved-wood front door, where Rudy rang the bell that was quickly answered by a boy about Micah’s age.

“Hi, I’m David,” the boy paused and stared at Micah before he turned and shouted back into the house, “Mom, they’re here.” David turned to Micah. “I know you. From years ago. Yes, we played video games on the plane from Phoenix to Spokane. You’re…uh, Micah”

“I remember you, too,” Micah said, smiling from the memory. “Hey!”

“You were the boy that diverted Micah’s attention away from leaving Phoenix to playing some video games. I remember, too,” Betty said. “You don’t know how sad Micah was when he left his foster home. Thank you for taking care of him and perking him up.”

Noting that everybody was still standing around, David ushered them from the large, pillared porch into the foyer. On the left was a living room rich with hardwood trim. Comfortable chairs and couches formed a U facing a large fireplace. Further on the left, a stairway in dark wood with an ornate railing rose to the second floor. On the immediate right was a large, formal dining room and, further down the hall on the right through a swinging door, was a kitchen.

A woman in her late 30s emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron tied around her waist. Her auburn hair fell in soft curls to her shoulders. Her facial features were sharp, aquiline. She looked very much like her son – or vice versa. “Hello, Rudy, good to see you again,” she said. “And this must be Micah. Welcome.” She extended her hand to Micah, first, and then to Rudy. “Micah looks awfully familiar.”

“Mom, Micah is the boy I met on the airplane from Phoenix when we went to Mesa Verde. We sat together,” David said.

“I remember now. Micah, we’re overjoyed to see you again, and we’re pleased that we can help out. We’ve heard much about you from Rudy. We want you to feel at home here.”

“Thank you very much, ma’am,” Micah said.

“Please call me Elizabeth. Now, come on into the kitchen, and we’ll have some lunch.”

Elizabeth had made Dungeness crab salads with a crusty French bread as an accompaniment. Crab was new to Micah, and he poked at his salad for a few minutes before taking a bite. After that, he was hooked on crab. The bread was as crunchy and tasty as anything he’d had in Seattle, and he knew he was hooked on French bread. Elizabeth observed Micah’s enjoyment and was pleased.

“David, would you please show Micah to the spare room while I talk to Rudy and Betty?”

David led Micah up the wide staircase and down a hall, helping him with his suitcase, while Micah carried his violin cases. The guest room, with twin beds, was the second on the left, just past David’s room. The bathroom was across the hall.

Micah set his suitcase on the bed and began to unpack the few clothes he needed for the weekend, putting them into the closet or a drawer of the dresser that David had opened for him.

David looked closely at this young violinist who his parents said was going to be a great musician. Micah had changed in the past four years – obviously. His face had become leaner with adolescence, but it still held the hints of Mongolian facial features – the flat face, the wide nose and the dark eyes. Micah wore his long, black hair now tied back in a ponytail. But there was more: Micah was stirring something within David, thoughts and desires that he knew he wasn’t supposed to have but couldn’t suppress.

“Do you want to see my room? It’s this way,” David said partly to change the direction of his thoughts. They walked down the hall and turned at the next door. David’s room was larger than the guest room, and there was a desk set up with a large computer monitor, a computer and two joysticks. “Pick out a video game while I get some pop. Coke okay?”

“Sure.”

David went downstairs to the kitchen, got two Cokes out of the refrigerator and returned to his room to find Micah staring at the shelf with the video games. He opened the can and handed Micah one of the Cokes.

“I don’t know anything about any of these games,” Micah announced after taking a swig of Coke. He looked helpless in front of a shelf of games. “We don’t have a computer yet. The last time I played a video game was with you.”

“I’ll start us with something easy,” David said.

Two hours later, the two boys sat side by side on the end of David’s bed, looking at cartoon characters on the television screen that they maneuvered with joysticks in their hands, laughter on their lips. David was surprised at how fast Micah learned the games and how adept he was with the joystick. Micah smirked as he took out one of David’s warriors.

“I guess I’ve gotten a little rusty,” David said, trying to excuse his poor performance in a game he had played many times before, though a few years earlier.

“Rusty is not an excuse except for a sunken ship,” Micah joshed. “It’s my beginner’s luck, I’m sure.” He paused. “Ten games in a row beginner’s luck, by my count.” There was a large grin on his face, and he bumped shoulders with David, who bumped him right back. That started a wrestling match on David’s bed, ending with a grinning Micah sitting astride David, holding his arms above his head. David looked into Micah’s eyes and felt that stirring of something new within him. Micah was oblivious.

The pattern of visits over the next few weeks stayed the same. David would introduce Micah to a new game, would win the first dozen or so, and then Micah would emerge as a consistent winner. “Beginner’s luck,” he would continue to say, with his bright eyes merry. Micah’s finger dexterity began to be appreciated by David. “It’s the violin,” Micah would say, and that phrase would become a standing joke between them.

After a couple of such weekends, David asked Micah if he wanted to sleep in his bedroom instead of the guest room set aside for him and his mother. Micah nodded yes. He didn’t mind sharing the bedroom with his mother, but he was afraid he might be embarrassed by, well, what 13-year-old boys frequently want to do in their bedrooms. Somehow he thought if he was quiet and even if David figured out what was happening, it would be less embarrassing than if his mother figured it out.

The Stirlings established a routine. Micah would arrive on Friday nights, either driven by Rudy or Betty, and the boys would play computer games, drink pop and eat junk food until bedtime – a diet that neither was allowed for the rest of the week and a bedtime that was “negotiated” between “time to go to bed” and “the lights will go out and the computer unplugged in 5 minutes”. On Saturday mornings, the Spokane Youth Symphony would have its practices, and there would be performances every few months on Sunday afternoons. Marcia Vilas would arrive from Seattle on Saturday or on Sunday morning for Micah’s lessons in the Stirlings’ music room. During the lessons, the Stirlings and Betty, if she had stayed over, would sit in the living room down the hall and listen to the wonder that Micah could produce; David got to sit in the music room with Marcia and Micah. After Marcia’s return to the airport and Sunday dinner, usually with Betty present, Micah and Betty would return to Endicott. It might be late if there was a Youth Symphony performance.

To David, Micah’s arrival was the highlight of his week. David was in awe watching the light in Micah’s eyes when he learned something new and seeing Marcia’s warm smile when Micah returned the following week having mastered what Marcia taught him. He knew also that he enjoyed being with a fellow teenager who could play a video game; he knew he was developing a camaraderie with Micah, a boy who had similar interests. But finally, there was growing within him a physical stirring well beyond camaraderie – the light touch of Micah’s shoulder or the back of his hand when they were playing games, his smile, his bright eyes, the glint reflecting from his raven-black hair tied into a pony tail. David’s feelings were more than hero worship; they were infused with something more profound – something that would take the next couple of years to fully form, something he knew was related to the Playgirl magazine hidden under his mattress.

* * * * *

On his first day at the youth symphony, Micah was assigned to the fourth chair of the violin section, one of the lowlier places in the orchestra but the typical place for a newcomer. Micah knew shortly that he was better than all the other violinists and should rightfully be assigned to the first chair if merit was the criterion.

“When do you have tryouts for first chair?” Micah asked the orchestra director, Joshua Bentley, one day after a practice. “I want to try for first chair.”

“Tryouts are next spring, but you need to know that seat will open up in a year when Madeleine leaves.”

“But I play far better than she does. It isn’t even close.”

“Well, nothing can happen until tryouts, so we’ll see then.” Bentley knew Micah was right about his playing, but he had to recognize constraints: he had several other violinists who had worked hard for years for their chairs. For political and morale reasons, it was difficult to promote someone from below immediately into the first chair. Fortunately, with the youth symphony, chairs always opened up as players left the orchestra. Besides, the younger players were normally not as accomplished as the older players, so seniority usually went hand in hand with skill level, and there were rarely problems with younger players deserving the higher chairs.

* * * * *

“I told Bentley today that I was better than the first chair and that I wanted to try out for it as soon as possible. Bentley just mumbled something like ‘we’ll see’. It really ticked me off,” Micah complained between video games.

“You’re just making a feeble excuse for losing the last game.” But David had noticed that Micah had been distracted all evening.

“Do you think your dad could help out? He’s on the symphony board, right?”

David was torn between his growing love for Micah, his sense of loyalty to the youth symphony and his reluctance to ask his father to interfere. However, he thought he might have a solution.

At breakfast the next morning, David pulled his father aside to the den and explained Micah’s feelings. As he suspected, his father bristled when the request for a favor was mentioned.

“I have an idea, though, Dad. Madeleine is the first chair in the violin section, but she’s terrified of soloing and refuses to do it. What if Bentley asks Micah to do the solos but leaves him in the fourth chair? That would let the symphony use Micah’s talents while keeping morale intact.”

“You’re wise beyond your years, young man. I’ll talk to Joshua about that.”

* * * * *

Micah was chosen after auditions, of course, to be soloist for the Mozart Violin Concerto in G Major, the new piece chosen for the youth symphony. There was never a doubt in Bentley’s mind that Micah would win the audition. He deliberately chose a difficult-enough piece, though, that he thought would force Micah to be somewhat more humble about his skills.

“How long will it take you to learn the Mozart?” the director asked after Micah had been selected and been given an hour to review the music.

“Oh, three or four weeks, I would say,” Micah responded.

“Don’t you mean months?”

“No, I think I can learn it in three or four weeks.”

The response wasn’t what Bentley expected, and he feared the possibility that Micah might be right. “Well, frankly, I can’t get the orchestra ready that soon, so what if we put you on the program in January? Okay?”

“Whenever you want, I’ll be ready.”

The next three weeks had Micah learning the Mozart concerto during the week; on the weekends he was back in Spokane practicing with the orchestra. He had the notes of the piece memorized the first week, was playing the composer’s notes on the score the second week, and by the third week Micah was playing with the nuance that he though Mozart intended or would have liked, his lips pursed in concentration, his dark eyes flashing, his deep black hair thrown back from time to time as his head snapped away from the violin.

The Sunday evening Mozart concert was a triumph both for the young Micah and the orchestra. The Spokesman Review music critic expressed his awe at the virtuosity of the pieces. “Dazzling,” sprang from the newspaper page as Micah and his family sat at breakfast the next morning. Betty was beaming with pride for her son.

Micah remembered little of the ride home the previous night, but he remembered the roar of the audience and knew he could become addicted to that sound. He remembered the congratulatory words from Marcia Vilas and Jake and Robbie Ellis-Cantwell, who had flown from Seattle for the event.

The next program of the youth symphony was changed to include Dvorak’s Concerto in A Minor for Violin and Orchestra after Micah agreed to solo again. After the second concert, Micah was mobbed by autograph seekers, and he signed each program put before him, acknowledging with a smile the adulation that was coming his and the orchestra’s way.

His photo topped the half-page article that had been written about him and the Spokane Youth Symphony on the event of their second concert – an article that was prominently displayed on the kitchen table for the whole Kingman family to read.

Back in Spokane, David tacked Micah’s picture onto his wall with a mixture of happiness, admiration, and sadness. He was happy at the recognition the Spokane Youth Symphony was getting, and he admired Micah for helping the orchestra get such public attention. But he knew Micah was on borrowed time with the orchestra. He soon would move beyond it into a different, more rarefied world. And the prospect of Micah’s departure was affecting him deeply; this was not the departure of a friend or colleague; it was something greater than that, the realization of which David would have to deal with.