Between the months of April and September there were countless gatherings to attend. I clipped on bowties and shook hands over and over again. We were shuttled around town in private cars and we attended fundraisers for charities. I would be introduced to Mr. Levitz, Marketing Advisor and Dr. Thompson, professor of Psychology at Brown University. There were many others, too.
It all started at Christmas. Stumbling upon his grandmother’s rotting piano for the first time, he laid his fingers on the ivory keys and constructed an original symphony in a single afternoon. A few days later, he copied the score on the back of his closet door with a green crayon, where it would be found months later by his older sister, Caroline.
It wasn’t until the following summer when the rest of the children went off to camps and swimming pools that we found the rest of his work. After we cleaned out his room, we found a dozen or so symphonies, written in a variety of crayon colors everywhere throughout the house. They were carefully placed in the most obscure locations. The inside of the lowest kitchen cabinets, under the coffee table, on his bed sheets. We wrote them down frantically and brought them to a family friend, who played them on his grand piano immediately. Crisp, classical melodies.
That afternoon, my wife and I sat on the back porch in silence. We never said it out loud. Our son, Langston, had been a musical prodigy. He must have gotten it from his grandfather, who had played a permanent gig on a Carnival cruise line for twenty years or so before his death. That was the only explanation we could conjure. No one else in the last century of either of our families had more musical experience and talent than my father-in-law. My son was an anomaly, and I didn’t care.
All of the experts were ecstatic. They couldn’t wait to meet me and my wife. We refused to make more appearances after the first few. We couldn’t bear the chatter and the fresh memories. I hated to think about everyone else thinking about him. He was ours to remember, not theirs. They would ask question after question. Didn’t he show any signs of musical genius? Had we never noticed our own son’s talents? Was he possibly autistic? It makes me sick.
I lost it the other day. A Psychology graduate student doing research had invited my wife and I to an interview session at a coffee shop down the street. He was polite, but he asked the wrong questions. Did I regret not showcasing his talent more? I stood up, spilling my coffee over the table, and pushed him in the chest. He toppled over, regained composure, and said he would be leaving. My wife just looked at the ground. He staggered away, glancing over his shoulder at the pair of us. My eyes never left his. After that, it was no more interviews. No more anything. It was way too soon. Couldn’t anyone see that?
We buried him in the same cemetery as my mother, which was only a few miles from our house. He was pale and calm in a gray suit. There was a large gash on his left temple where they had tried to operate. My wife didn’t cry at the funeral. She didn’t do much of anything in the months that followed. We barely spoke for weeks at a time. Our daughter went to stay with my father in the city.
My son was dead, not a genius.
Luke T. Jones 