Chapter 29: The Porch on 14th Street
On a cool Tuesday evening in late May, Nia Coleman drove her modest station wagon down the narrow asphalt lane of 14th Street in East Trenton.
The street looked largely as it had for forty years, but there were subtle, persistent signs of renewal that had begun to take root since the autumn. The cracked concrete sidewalks had been repaired by a municipal crew whose supervisor had grown up two doors down from Esther; window boxes with red geraniums and yellow marigolds had appeared along five consecutive row houses; and the vacant lot at the corner of Mercer Street had been cleared of rusted car chassis and transformed into a clean community vegetable garden surrounded by a white picket fence.
Number 412 looked brand new, yet entirely unchanged.
The sagging porch had been rebuilt with sturdy white-cedar timber that smelled sweet in the evening damp. A fresh coat of forest-green paint gleamed on the shutters, and on the front porch sat two high-backed wooden rocking chairs flanking a low wicker side table.
Della Coleman sat in the left-hand rocker, wrapped in a light woolen shawl, holding a porcelain cup of peppermint tea.
Beside her, in the second chair, sat Marcus Vance.
The seventy-year-old patrician wore a comfortable brown tweed jacket with elbow patches and corduroy trousers, his silver hair catching the amber rays of the setting sun. He was peeling an orange with a small pocket knife, offering slices to Della on a paper napkin with the unhurried, comfortable intimacy of an old family friend.
"You're giving him the sweet half, Mama," Nia said with a smile, stepping up the cedar stairs and leaning over the railing to kiss her mother’s forehead.
"Marcus brought the oranges from that fancy market near Rittenhouse Square, baby," Della scolded gently, her clouded eyes shining behind her clean glasses. "He's entitled to the sweet ones. How was the train from New York?"
"On time for once," Nia replied. She pulled an old wooden folding chair from against the brick wall, set it between the two rockers, and sat down, leaning her head back against the brickwork of her childhood home.
For fifteen minutes, none of them spoke.
They listened to the evening sounds of 14th Street: children shouting three doors down as they played tag between the parked sedans; a radio through an open second-floor window playing an old Stevie Wonder ballad; the distant, rhythmic clack-clack of the evening commuter train rattling over the iron bridge two miles down the valley.
"I received a letter from Lisbon yesterday, Nia," Marcus said quietly, not looking up from his orange.
Nia watched the twilight deepen along the rooftops across the street. "From Richard?"
"From his attorneys," Marcus corrected. "The estate in the Algarve is pleasant, apparently. Olive trees, ocean views, walled gardens. But the local social club in Cascais declined his sponsorship application last week. It seems the Portuguese aristocracy watches American internet broadcasts after all. He spends his days sitting on a stone terrace overlooking the Atlantic with a case of vintage port, complaining to his house staff that the world is full of ingrates."
Marcus closed his pocket knife with a soft, metallic snap.
"He asked if I would consider sending him an audio recording of the Lincoln Center concert," Marcus added, his voice dropping into a quiet, meditative register. "He said he wanted to hear what it sounded like through a high-end stereo system."
Della stopped rocking. Her hand reached out and rested gently on Marcus’s forearm.
"Did you send it to him, Marcus?" Della asked softly.
Marcus looked down at the old woman's work-worn knuckles. "I haven't decided yet, Della. Sometimes mercy feels like a betrayal of the people who were hurt."
"No, it ain't, son," Della said, her voice carrying the ancient, immovable authority of fifty years in church basements. "Mercy ain't about the man who did the hurting. Mercy is about the person doing the forgiving. You send him the record, Marcus. Let him hear what God gave this girl. If it burns his ears, that's between him and the Lord. But don't you keep the music in the dark just to spite a blind man."
Marcus stared at Della for a long, quiet moment, his throat working slightly, before he bowed his head with deep, reverent obedience. "Yes, ma'am. I'll send it tomorrow."
From inside the house, through the screen door, the soft chime of a grandfather clock sounded eight times.
Nia stood up, walked to the screen door, and stepped into the small front parlor.
The room was bathed in the blue twilight. Against the north wall, where the blank unpainted rectangle on the wallpaper had once stood like a tombstone, rested the 1968 Baldwin upright, its dark walnut case gleaming with paste wax.
On the music desk, resting side-by-side above the fallboard, were two objects: Gertrude Vance's tarnished copper penny, and Yuri Rostov's handwritten, coffee-stained manuscript of The Liturgy of the Silt.
Nia sat down on the leather bench.
She did not turn on the lamp. She let her fingers find the cool, responsive keys in the dark.
She did not play Rachmaninoff. She did not play Bach.
She played "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"—the old gospel hymn Esther had played at New Mount Zion every communion Sunday. She played it with soft, rolling chords, the harmonies drifting out through the screen door, floating over the cedar porch where her mother and Marcus Vance rocked in the twilight, and drifting down the narrow sidewalks of 14th Street like a warm, protective mantle.