Joplin's Ghost (49 page)

N
ew York, New York—
ARE YOU READY TO GET BUSY?
”

The MC’s voice screamed over the theater speakers, buttressed with frenetic bursts and scratches from his turntable. The hyped-up crowd met his challenge in a wave of booming cheers. The audience was almost loud enough to silence the presence nesting in Phoenix’s mind, the voice that was more restless with her every breath.

Sing for me.
Scott’s voice.

Phoenix stood posed with her crew for “Party Patrol” on the dark stage. Phoenix silently drummed the keys of her Liberation, which was strapped across her shoulder, ready. She was so happy to be holding her keyboard, her fingertips were pulsing. She should have known how much she had missed playing music on the stage. Who had she been trying to fool?

Sing, Freddie. Sing for me.

Phoenix’s heart thundered as dizziness swayed the stage. She heard piano refrains, the Overture from
Treemonisha,
as if the opera blared from the theater’s speakers. The sound of the music was a homecoming. Phoenix’s heart ached when she felt Scott’s cool breath dance across the back of her neck, his familiar caress.

Sing “The Bag of Luck,” “The Corn Huskers” and “We’re Goin’ Around.” There are seventeen hundred sets of ears to hear your tribute the way it was intended. Sing “Aunt Dinah Has Blowed the Horn” and “When Villains Ramble Far and Near.” March onward for me, Freddie. Sing for me.
An unseen hand guided her fingers to the keys of his choosing.

“I…can’t,” Phoenix whispered to the spirit, and wrested her hand away.

Phoenix’s eyes desperately sought out a face to keep her rooted. Behind her, she could see only the silhouettes of Serena and the singers, and shadows of dancers splayed on the floor in their poses. Sarge wasn’t in sight, and Phoenix couldn’t remember if Carlos had decided to watch from backstage or in the audience. Protected in the stage’s shadows, Phoenix scanned the seats to look for Carlos, hoping his face might keep Scott away.

Instead, she saw her mother. Mom, Gloria, Aunt Livvy and Uncle Dave were in the second row, not quite center, made conspicuous by their pale skin and formal dress, as if they were at a theater on Broadway. Malcolm sat beside them, grinning as he talked to a man who looked like industry, someone here to work instead of having a good time.

Phoenix waved out to her family, before she remembered she was invisible in the dark folds. Still, seeing them helped. Her family was here watching her. She had something to fight for. The next voice that filled her mind was hers alone.
I’m going to sing
“Party Patrol”
and
“Love the One You’re With.”
I am NOT Freddie Alexander. I am…

I am…

The theater speakers gusted with a symphony of Egyptian strings. Just when she needed it most, Phoenix heard the MC shout her name.

C
ome on, Phee. You can do it. You can do it, linda.

Carlos Harris felt sick to his stomach as he clung to the tattered black curtain backstage. He had an unobstructed view of Phoenix now that the stage lights were up, and he could see she wasn’t well. By now, maybe everyone could see it.

In the carnival of colored lights sweeping the stage, Serena and the singers were swaying, and the dancers were on their feet, nearly synchronized in their vaults and landings. Phoenix, center stage, was the only one who wasn’t in motion. Phoenix was a statue with a keytar across her shoulder, the instrument’s neck pointed upward, still and mute, like a medieval sword.

Carlos tugged at his hair, distraught. He was to blame. He should have broken off Phoenix’s union with the entity the first time he saw her at her keyboard in her apartment, playing Scott Joplin in her sleep. Where was his judgment? If he hadn’t been so blinded by his vain desire to attach himself to something extraordinary, he would have known she was at risk.

Phoenix’s father stood watching the stage near him, a pensive bear. Perhaps this man had been right about him all along, Carlos thought. Perhaps his blindness made him a monster.

“She shouldn’t be on that stage,” Carlos said.

Marcus Smalls looked back at him, startled. Carlos was amazed the man had heard him over the deafening music tracks, but a father’s ears were sharp. For only the second time since Carlos had met this man, Marcus Smalls wore a neutral expression, devoid of loathing. His eyes were clear the way they’d been when warned about Phoenix’s fainting spell. Phoenix’s father opened his mouth to answer, but didn’t have time before a voice drew them back to the stage.

“Me and my crew’s gonna roll
…
we’re on a Party Patrol…”

Phoenix was singing, her voice clear and strong. She snapped her body in line with her dancers, mirroring their cross-kicks. Still dancing, she made a swooping motion with her keytar like a marcher in a black college band, eliciting calls from the audience, and her sure-handed notes on her synthesizer blended with the prerecorded bass line from “Skin Tight.” The biggest show of Phoenix’s career was under way, and she was here to witness it this time.

Perhaps he
hadn’t
destroyed this girl.

Carlos never would have believed he would be so happy to hear “Party Patrol,” which had made him wince when the demo landed on his desk.
Phoenix, what have you done to yourself?
he’d muttered, shaking his head. It wasn’t as bad as MC Hammer trying to thug himself out for his foray into gangsta rap, but the sound hadn’t fit her. “Party Patrol” was a bland summertime paean, the kind of song that would be blaring from teenagers’ open windows and boom boxes until school took them hostage again in the fall.

Carlos had known it would be a hit right away, and that made him hate it all the more. The sampling and lack of imagination in its bright, overproduced tracks hurt his ears. Where was
Phoenix
? Some of Phoenix’s keyboard solos on her two other CDs had been lustrous, reminiscent of
Purple Rain
–era Prince. He’d recognized Phoenix’s violin and her homage to Hossam Ramzy in the “Party Patrol” intro, a spark of hope, but then Phoenix had vanished altogether, a painfully lean voice singing over someone else’s music.

In “Party Patrol,” Carlos had heard what Phoenix traded away. Maybe that was why he hadn’t been more worried about the ghost. If Phoenix’s soul was already for sale, he’d figured, why not entrust it to more capable hands—even if they were dead?

“I think I’m losing control
…
out on this Party Patrol…”

But Phoenix was evolving on the stage tonight. Carlos felt it.

The woman who had been fainting in her hotel room only three hours ago was not only kicking ass with the choreography, but she was singing and playing with new life. Phoenix’s voice charged above the chorus of backup singers with the coarseness in the higher register she’d used effectively on
Trial by Fire,
more rock than R&B, but better than pretending to have a church soloist’s voice when she didn’t. She was singing like she meant it.

Good girl, Phoenix. Make your voice work for you. Be yourself.

Phoenix’s keyboard solo—a fat, funked-up synth voice that barged into the song and rearranged it—was breathtaking. Carlos had laughed at Phoenix’s keytar, an instrument most musicians had abandoned in the 1980s and would always remind Carlos of bad music. Not tonight. Phoenix’s synthesizer crossed the time barrier with relish. She played one-handed, but her fingers were as true as they were wild. Phoenix set the stage afire.

The crowd cheered, awakening from their stupor. Like almost two thousand others in the theater, Carlos could not take his eyes off of her. His ears were captive to the passion pouring from Phoenix’s fingertips. Lauryn Hill. Marc Anthony. OutKast. Beyoncé. Juanes. The Black Eyed Peas. He’d known they were stars the first time he’d seen them perform. He knew what he was witnessing. This wasn’t the coronation of a hit song—it was the birth of a star. The woman on the stage was not the one who shared his bed. This creature only appeared under bright lights, her own act of creation.

Carlos felt someone stir near him. G-Ronn had slid up to him, shoulder to shoulder. He was gazing at the stage with his arms folded across his broad chest, his face dispassionate, as if he were studying his portfolio. Carlos couldn’t help the instant aversion that came from contrasting himself to a man who was bigger and wealthier. His eyes fell on the massive diamond stud in G-Ronn’s ear, and he remembered the diamonds on the ghost that had passed him in the hall.
That earring cost him more than I could afford for an engagement ring
.

“God damn,” G-Ronn said, his voice full of awe. “She’s good.”

“Yes,” Carlos said, smiling. “She’s here forever.”

T
here were times, although not often, when Marcus Smalls was happy to be wrong.

A man who had made as many mistakes as Marcus learned how to spot them before the real damage was done. Marcus was through with mistakes. His cup had runneth over and flooded his soul. He was vigilant in his search for hidden motives, selfishness and foibles. Like Malcolm X said,
The price of freedom is death.
If he was to be free of blame, his assumptions about himself had to die a little more each day.

So when Leah told him over fried chicken and turnip greens at B. Smith’s the other night that she didn’t think Phoenix had the heart to be a pop star—that Phoenix had only pursued her high school dream this long to try to win his time and approval—Marcus couldn’t be angry or surprised. Leah only confirmed a theory he had been entertaining late at night, when he meditated for a half hour before bed and cataloged his human flaws, the lifesaving technique a Buddhist brother had taught him at Raiford. Meditating last night, he’d decided he agreed with Leah. The longer he thought about it, the more he realized he had known it all along.

Phoenix was doing it for him. And maybe—just maybe—so was he.

It fit the dimensions of the puzzle exactly: Marcus hadn’t been in prison when Phoenix was young, but he’d been on the road, which was no different to her. And the minute she said she wanted to be Janet Jackson, he had given her his full attention—because
that
was something he knew how to do. Phoenix had no interest in politics or philosophy—but music? Now,
there
was something they could both relate to. He’d failed Serena and his boys, but he could make his second-chance child larger than life.

Self-reflection was a bitch, Marcus thought. No
wonder
Phoenix had started fighting the minute she got within arm’s length of what she’d claimed she wanted.

And then there was the ghost.

Marcus hadn’t seen anything like the events in Phoenix’s hotel room since he spent the summer at Grandmama’s house when he was seven. She and Big Papa had bought a colonial house that had once been a plantation, complete with ramshackle slave quarters in the overgrown yard. The ghosts in that house made Marcus’s life a living hell, between the slamming doors and profane messages written in lipstick on Grandmama’s mirror, which brought her running to his room with a switch every other night. He never spoke of that time, but he would take Phoenix to that old house one day and tell her about his adventures. He’d lost a few hours’ sleep after Leah told him she never brought that piano to the house, but in retrospect he could accept that, too. Apparently, ghosts were a part of the family. It was time Phoenix knew how far back it went.

But as a man of ideas, Marcus had to look beyond Joplin’s ghost itself to what the ghost
meant
. He didn’t understand why the piano had chosen her, but there was a reason Phoenix had invited Joplin into her life, even if she didn’t know what it was. This ghost was one more obstacle to prevent her stardom.

Some artists needed to be famous, and others were happy to play for regular crowds on weekend gigs. Maybe Phoenix was the latter. Let Phoenix go to school and have a stable life like Leah wanted her to, then. If Phoenix didn’t need to be famous, God bless her. She was one of the lucky ones. Maybe she was shelving her old dream the way she’d put away her toys when she was ten.

Would her voice fail her? Would she trip over her feet and blow out a knee? Would she relinquish herself to the ghost and get booed off the stage trying to sing a damn opera?

Marcus didn’t know how it would happen, but he had steeled himself to watch the demise of his daughter’s pop career. He had already rehearsed his speech for after the show:
Sometimes, Peanut, the hardest thing is knowing when it’s time to let go.

Marcus knew that better than most. He and Leah had been creeping around the edges of surrender for years, neither of them courageous enough to say the words. But all journeys end—and as Earth Wind & Fire would say, that’s the way of the world. He and Leah might end up accidentally married forever, but now Marcus had accepted that Phoenix would never be a star.