And the Dark Sacred Night by Julia Glass

Author:Julia Glass [Glass, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Retail
ISBN: 9780307908636
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

How proud they were when Mal was accepted to that famous music camp. To prepare for auditions, he had worked with his flute teacher four afternoons a week for two months. Only then, as she eavesdropped on these lessons from the kitchen, did Lucinda realize that her son had real talent.

Because the camp was in Vermont, most of the young musicians came from New England and New York, but a few came from farther away, even from Europe. Some were prodigies who, not even finished with high school, had already left conventional schooling behind. Zeke would never have allowed Mal to take that risk; to him, Mal was just a boy who loved to play his flute and, having played it with such dedication for nearly ten years, had forged his own talent, a source of pleasure and self-discipline more than a “gift” pointing him toward a predestined profession. But Lucinda, as she mingled with some of the other parents and mentors at the camp’s orientation, began to envision her son on the stages of concert halls in cities all over the world.

Mal was barely sixteen, but because he had skipped sixth grade, he had already graduated from high school. A common refrain on his report cards was how “old” he seemed for his age. At his flute teacher’s urging, he had applied to conservatories as well as nearby colleges, and halfway through that summer he was offered a place at Juilliard. Lucinda was elated. But to her surprise, Mal wrote her a letter to say that he had decided to take a year off. One of his instructors at the camp knew a New York record producer who had a satellite studio in Burlington; the man agreed to hire Mal as an office assistant. Lucinda was even more surprised when Zeke approved. “Any business experience is money in the bank of pragmatic living,” he said. “Especially if my son’s going to make a bid for Carnegie Hall!” Later, Mal would say that he never believed he had what it took to be a marquee performer, but Lucinda had to wonder if she and Zeke were to blame for letting themselves believe all the flattering nonsense about their son’s exceptional maturity. It is still unbearable to imagine how Mal must have felt when he learned just how badly he had let them down.

Not that Lucinda knew a thing about what happened at the camp until the letter she received in October: this completely unknown girl writing to tell Lucinda that she was pregnant with Mal’s baby. Dear Mrs. Burns, What I have to tell you will come as a shock, and I apologize for that.… Had there been a second Malachy at the camp? She took out the programs she had saved from the two concerts she and Zeke had attended.… Yes, there she was, this Daphne Browning, Violincello, but that did not mean …

Should she call Mal, at his job in Burlington? She pictured him in an office filled with strangers, answering the phone for someone else.

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