Chapter 21: The Telegram from Lincoln Center
By Wednesday afternoon, the front room at 412 14th Street had ceased to function as a private residence.
The narrow hallway was lined with three dozen floral arrangements: massive bouquets of white calla lilies from the management of the Philadelphia Orchestra, baskets of autumn roses from the servers and busboys of Maison Lauron, and an enormous spray of blue hydrangeas with a card signed simply: From the Longshoremen of Local 1291.
Mrs. Gable from across the street had taken it upon herself to sit on the porch with an aluminum clipboard, screening visitors, accepting courier deliveries, and chasing away freelance paparazzi who attempted to aim telephoto lenses through the front lace curtains.
Inside the parlor, the 1968 Baldwin upright was covered in thick stacks of sheet music.
Nia sat on the piano bench, wearing a clean white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her pencil tucked behind her ear. Della sat in her floral armchair, holding a stack of opened telegrams and letters in her lap, her face illuminated by the soft afternoon light.
"Here's another one, Nia," Della said, adjusting her glasses and squinting at a heavy linen letterhead bearing an embossed gold seal. "This one says... Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. That in Germany?"
"Munich, Mama," Nia answered with a quiet smile, not looking up from her manuscript paper where she was correcting an errant dynamic marking in Yuri’s score. "That's the Bavarian Radio Symphony."
"They're offering thirty-five thousand dollars for three nights in December," Della said, her voice still carrying that childlike, stunned reverence that had settled over her since Friday morning. "Nia, thirty-five thousand dollars... for three nights of playing the piano?"
"Classical music pays well when you don't let the middlemen take seventy percent, Mama," Nia said softly.
The front door opened with its familiar low creak, and Elena Rostov walked in, accompanied by Antoine Laurent.
Antoine was carrying a silver ice bucket containing a vintage bottle of Dom Pérignon and four crystal flutes, his mustache twitching with uncontainable professional pride.
"I took the liberty of raiding my own cellar, Coleman," Antoine announced, setting the bucket on the small side table beside Della’s afghan. "Maison Lauron has received four hundred reservation requests for this Friday alone. Patrons are offering five hundred dollars a seat just to sit at the table where you cleared the glasses."
"I am not playing dinner sets at Maison Lauron, Antoine," Nia said, looking up from the piano with an amused, affectionate glance.
"Of course you are not!" Antoine threw his hands into the air with dramatic French despair. "If you played in my dining room now, the fire marshal would revoke my license within ten minutes! You belong on a concert stage, Coleman. I have already printed a brass plaque to be mounted on the fallboard of the Steinway in the dining room: Here played Nia Coleman, October 23. It will remain unplayed forever. A monument."
Elena Rostov did not touch the champagne. She stepped up to the Baldwin, set a thick, cream-colored envelope on top of Nia’s sheet music, and tapped it with her long, elegant forefinger.
The envelope bore the iconic, embossed black square seal of the Juilliard School of Music and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Nia looked at the seal. Her breath hitched in her throat.
The room seemed to fall away: the flowers, the champagne, the stacks of telegrams, the memory of Pier 41. She was seventeen years old again, standing on the frost-covered platform of the Trenton train station, holding an empty wallet while the morning express to New York roared past without her, carrying her dream away into the winter mist.
"Open it," Elena said gently. The fierce Russian drillmaster had vanished; in her eyes was only the quiet, profound respect of one artist recognizing another.
Nia reached out with steady fingers, broke the wax seal, and unfolded the heavy cotton parchment.
The letter was signed by Dr. Julian Vance-Holloway, Chairman of the Avery Fisher Artist Program and Dean of the Piano Faculty at Juilliard.
Dear Ms. Coleman, the letter read.
The committee has reviewed the archival audio and video recordings of your performance of Yuri Rostov’s Liturgy of the Silt at Pier 41 on the evening of October 25. By unanimous decree of the executive panel, and pursuant to the extraordinary provisions of our charter, the Board of Trustees has voted to bestow upon you the Avery Fisher Career Grant for the current academic year.
Furthermore, we have the distinct honor of inviting you to make your formal New York subscription debut at David Geffen Hall on December 14, performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the New York Philharmonic, under the baton of Maestro Gustavo Dudamel.
Fifteen years ago, an administrative tragedy prevented your matriculation into this institution. We cannot return those fifteen years to your hands, Ms. Coleman. But we can ensure that the stage which was prepared for you as a child is finally yours to claim.
Nia lowered the letter.
She did not cry. The tears had all been spent on the linoleum floors of 14th Street years ago.
She turned her head slowly, looking past the open fallboard of the Baldwin, through the lace curtains, out toward the narrow street where the children of the neighborhood were currently riding their bicycles over the cracked asphalt, their laughter rising through the crisp autumn air.
She reached into her pocket. Her fingers found the old copper penny Mrs. Gertrude Vance had placed on the back of her hand thirty years ago.
She pulled it out, laid it gently on the polished walnut wood of the piano desk right above middle C, and closed her eyes.
"Pack your good coat, Mama," Nia said, her voice clear, calm, and resonant as an iron bell. "We're going to New York."