It is hard to ignore the music and in my mind I have decided it is the sound of a flute. A picture came to mind of someone standing beneath a bridge in Amsterdam - a woman flutist, wearing a traditional dress of the Dutch and wearing Dutch sandals, her flute of silver color glistening in the setting summer sun. I remember stopping, admiring the music she made with her flute, and fishing out a ten American dollar bill and gently placing it on the velvet lined case of her flute which lay open on the pavement by her feet. It was a scene from long ago, the summer of 81, when as a young exchange student, I had toured Europe to augment my historical and geographical knowledge.
At the turn, I realize the musician is a man. I can see him now. He has combed back dark curly hair that reaches down his shoulders. He wears a pair of glasses, the one side being held together by thin strips of gray duct tape. His frayed jacket, too small even for his thin frame, used to be the color of the sky but has now turned dirty gray. He holds a small blue instrument that sounded like a flute, cupping it delicately in his hands, his dirty fingers adeptly working the holes. It is an ocarina. My heart pounded at the recognition of the thought that suddenly asserted itself in front of my vision. Jeremiah.
I look at him again and at the same instant, he lifts his head and opens his eyes shaded by the glasses’ rim, one glass broken in two. He looks at me for a second then shifts his eyes, away. I see his mouth stiffens. He quickly brings the ocarina back to his lips and blows a note, then two, and starts to play a melody. He stops, looks down behind him, and pulls a small plastic stool. He sits down and tests his ocarina again. I stop right in front of him and wait for him to look up. He bends down and fixes the shoe lace of his worn out running shoes, his toes peeking. When he seems to have settled, he places the ocarina in his mouth and starts to play Ravel’s Bolero, softly, slowly, as the music should be. He closes his eyes, as if by doing so I will go away.
“Jeremiah,” I whisper. He misses a note but carries on with the music. I lean on the wall and I can feel the cold tiles through my thick winter jacket. My legs feel like noodles and my vision start to blur. Tears start to swell and my throat seems to close and I couldn’t breathe. “Jeremiah,” I say again, this time louder.
He turns the other way, and I can only see the side of his face and mostly his long hair. My son, my son, I cry in my head. I stand there and wait for the music to finish even though I know it is a long piece.
Three years ago, he left home. My baby, my first born. It broke my heart when he did, but I kept my hurt to myself. He had been out of school for two years, didn’t know exactly what to do after high school. He loved working on computers and I had hoped he would’ve wanted to enroll in a course. I pushed him into working, save enough money for a downpayment for tuition. I could not afford to send him to college. I chastised him for wasting his opportunities, 180 IQ, his adeptness at a lot of things, but he only settled for a part time job at Dunkin' Donuts. He had a girlfriend, Sarah, and he spent all his free time with her or talking to her on the phone and spending whatever money he had on her.
"Do you not realize that other people would’ve loved to have the good start you and your brother had?"
Then I ranted about how my siblings and I grew up poor, we never had the things he had; we were not smart but we had scholarships even partial ones just to get us to the next year of school because we studied hard. The older ones worked during daytime and schooled at night and scrimped on money to send us the younger ones to college. We never asked for anything back because we resolved we would give it back to our children, so they don’t experience that poverty we suffered.
With his meagre wage, he bought the ocarina. He was always short of money, borrowing from me, from his brother, from anyone. But he could afford to pay for that ocarina.
"What are you going to do with it?" I had asked. "That’s why you’re always short of money, if you’re not spending it on your girlfriend, you spend it on unnecessary things. What good will that thing do for you unless maybe you do that in the subway. Is that the life you want?"
And now, this is what he does. The subway music gig. With that blue ocarina. He continues to play but still would not look at me. As he plays, I see a tear flowing down his cheek. A young couple throws a tooney into the oversized hat in front of him. I open my purse and pull out a fifty-dollar bill. I reach over and put it in his jacket's pocket. "Jeremiah," I say. "Please come home." He continues to play, he does not open his eyes. "Or at least call." I stand near him and wait for him to stop and say something. But he is unmoved.
As I walk away, he switches his music to "Auld Lang Syne" again, until the sound is drowned by the coming subway train.
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