Tender Deception: A Novel of Romance (6 page)

It was a neighborhood of modest houses. Her attention was drawn to a small, white frame home. She stopped before the house. The front porch had a weary sag. The house had long needed a coat of paint. A window screen was torn.

A child’s battered tricycle had rolled near the curb. Lilly got out, retrieved the toy and put it in the front yard among the weeds. She gazed at the house through a mist of tears.

She knew who she was.

She had been born in this house.

Her name was Lilly Parker.

CHAPTER THREE

The flood of memory that began as a trickle now became a torrent that totally engulfed her.

There was no turning back now. She had to remember it all, the joyous moments of falling in love with Jimmy LaCross, her childhood sweetheart; the high points when her heart was swept heavenward, and the dark parts, when she was crushed to earth; and Kirk Remington. A shiver ran through her as his presence swept through her mind, shoving aside the other memories. Through her tears she looked down at her wedding band that now seemed to burn her finger. Yes it was all there—her childhood, her music, the men in her life. She had to face it and accept it; it added up to the person she was.

Much of Lilly Parker was the music that had played such a vital part in her life and had eventually taken her from this bleak little town to her life’s drama in distant cities.

Her parents had been Martha and William Parker. She remembered them vividly, seeing them before her mind’s eye, hearing again the sound of their voices. William had been a child of the Great Depression and never seemed to outgrow its trauma. He worked at various jobs in the small community, doing the best a man could who had but a sketchy grammar school education and a minimal amount of ambition.

The strongest influence in Lilly’s young life had been her Uncle Daniel Webster LeDeaux, a fiery backwoods evangelist preacher. Lilly remembered him vividly too—a huge, towering man who wore a broad-brimmed hat and black coat and spoke in a thunderous voice. Himself childless, he had taken a great interest in his niece, Lilly, who was his sister’s only child. He had discovered that the child had a sweet, pure singing voice. He had taken her with him on his crusades through the rural South, standing her on the platform in his tattered revival tent. She captivated the congregations with her singing while her uncle pumped away lustily at his wheezing, portable organ.

She had barely been five when her uncle had made an astounding discovery about the extent of her natural talent. When not on one of his traveling crusades, he preached in a small frame tabernacle on the outskirts of town. The tabernacle boasted a real piano. Uncle LeDeaux made it his mission to give Lilly an education in music, teaching her the notes out of a frayed hymn book and guiding her chubby little fingers over the black and white keys.

One day he was plunking on the piano and pointing to the corresponding notes in the hymnal, asking her to identify them. It suddenly dawned on him that she was devoting all her attention to a rag doll on her lap and none to the hymn book or piano but still calling out the notes correctly.

He stared at the child with an expression of astonishment that bordered on fright. Cautiously, he touched a note on the piano. “Lilly, honey, what note was that I just played?”

Lilly, busily adjusting the dress on her Raggedy Ann doll said, “D.”

“And this?”

“F sharp. Same as G flat.”

The Reverend Daniel LeDeaux fell on his knees crying “Praise the Lord!” He gave his niece a mighty hug. “The Lord has richly blessed you with a rare gift, child. He’s given you perfect pitch. Do you understand what that means?”

Lilly shook her head.

“Why, child, it means you have a perfect musical ear. You can hear any sound and tell right off what the pitch is without looking at the notes or the instrument. Not one person in ten thousand has such a perfect musical ear. The Lord has destined you to go far with your talent.”

Remembering those childhood scenes flooded her with emotion. Lilly bowed her head and wept.

Several sources had fed her growing knowledge of music when she was a child. Her uncle, the Reverend LeDeaux, had given her what he could from his limited, self-taught knowledge of music. He had given her a basic understanding of the keyboard and musical notes. Later, a dedicated public school teacher, Miss Wilma Andrews, coached her singing voice and increased her understanding of the classics.

Another influence had come from a black family who lived on “the street behind the Parkers,” the Willard Washingtons. Lilly grew up playing with the Washington kids. Their father, Willard, was a blues singer of some reputation in the area. Lilly often sat entranced in the evenings, listening to Willard as he sat on his front porch in a rickety old hide-bottom chair tipped back against the wall and wrung wailing blues melodies from his battered acoustic guitar, sliding a bottle neck lovingly across the strings.

Willard, who had grown up in New Orleans, remembered hearing in person many of the great New Orleans musicians—Bunk Johnson, Alphonse Picou, Louis Armstrong, Barney Bigard. He had an extensive record library. Lilly listened by the hour to the classic blues singers—Blind Lemon Jefferson, Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, T-Bone Walker and B. B. King...and, above all, the great Bessie Smith. The jazz library included early recordings of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke and Duke Ellington.

Willard Washington’s love of the blues and his jazz records had a lasting influence on Lilly. She loved the music. She memorized all of Bessie Smith’s blues vocals and tried to imitate that great singer. When her uncle wasn’t around to catch her, she experimented with jazz improvisations on the tabernacle piano.

As Lilly grew older and could earn spending money from baby sitting, she accumulated a modest record library of her own of jazz pianists—Art Tatum, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Jess Stacy, Oscar Peterson.

The school choir director, Miss Andrews, discovered Lilly’s talent when she entered junior high and took over her musical education where Uncle LeDeaux had left off. Because of her singing and playing talent, Lilly was often called on to perform for school and community functions.

Her first year in high school was the great turning point in her young life, and her life would never be the same afterward. That was the year she fell in love with Jimmy LaCross. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a reckless grin and a mop of blond hair that he’d push back from his forehead with a habitual, careless gesture, Jimmy was the most handsome boy in Millerdale High. He was a senior and as unattainable as a Hollywood movie star. Realistically, Lilly expected no more of life than to be allowed to worship him from a humble distance.

But the magic alchemy of music that was so strongly shaping her life intervened to bring them together. Jimmy, too, had been blessed with musical talent. His young life revolved around his souped-up Chevy convertible and his golden trumpet; one supported the other. His parents were no better off financially than Lilly’s. But he had been playing for Saturday night dances, the
fais-dodo
of the lusty bayou Cajun people, since he was in junior high and whatever money he earned from blowing his horn went into his beloved car. A common sight in Millerdale was Jimmy LaCross speeding down main street in his convertible filled with adoring high school girls.

Jimmy’s brilliant, flashing trumpet was the pride of the Millerdale High band. He was also the hope of the music department that would send him to the state competition, hoping to win first place in the solo trumpet division with his flawless performance of
The Carnival of Venice.

When the band director cast about for a pianist to accompany the trumpet solo, Lilly’s name immediately came up. Her heart almost forgot to beat when the choir director, Miss Andrews, called her out of English class to tell her, “Lilly, Mr. Clemmons, our band director, asked if I’d speak to you. As you know, Jimmy LaCross is going to the state music meet in Baton Rouge. He’s going to need a piano accompanist when he plays his trumpet solo. Would you be interested in doing that? You’re certainly the best pianist in this school, probably the best in town. Both Mr. Clemmons and I will be going along as chaperones. Of course, it would mean spending some time practicing with Jimmy before the meet.”

Lilly found it hard to breathe. Speaking was out of the question. She had just been offered a place in heaven. The best she could manage by way of reply was to gulp and nod.

In that moment, Lilly uttered a silent, fervent prayer of thanks for the long hours she had spent practicing. All the years she was growing up, the piano had been her friend and companion. She’d loved it more than playing games with other children. Somewhat shy and introverted, she hadn’t made friends easily. But the piano never teased her or played cruel tricks the way children often did. The times she was happiest were the hours she spent at the keyboard.

Her father promised each year that he was going, somehow, to buy her a piano, but he never succeeded. Fortunately, she had the tabernacle piano to use when she was little, and once she was going to school, the music department allowed her to play on the school piano in the auditorium after classes.

The day Miss Andrews told her the breathtaking news about being chosen to accompany Jimmy LaCross, Lilly was to meet him after school in the auditorium for their first practice session. She arrived fifteen minutes before the appointed time. Her stomach was a nesting place for butterflies. Her hands were icy.

To get her mind off her nervousness, Lilly ran her hands over the keyboard. She played through some classical études to limber her fingers. Then, becoming relaxed, she allowed her left hand to move idly over a boogie-woogie, eight-to-the-bar bass pattern. Compelled by the rhythm, her right hand touched the keys lightly, improvising jazz phrases.

She became so engrossed with the music that she forgot her surroundings. Her fingers, long and supple for a girl, found rich chords while the rhythm of her left hand matched a primitive racial heartbeat deep within her soul. Her eyes were closed; her shoulders moved to the beat. She ended with her musical signature, a complex thirteenth chord.

Only then did she become aware that she was not alone. Hearing a clapping of hands behind her, she spun around. There stood Jimmy LaCross, grinning and handsome, trumpet under one arm as he applauded. “Very cool. Very groovy. You blow up a storm on that box, little girl.”

Lilly shriveled up with self-consciousness, her tongue again paralyzed. She could only stare at her beloved first love with wide and timid eyes, and think,
I’m not a little girl, Jimmy; I’m fourteen, and as much in love with you as a grown woman.

But he was eighteen, a staggering age difference in the teen-age world. To her fourteen-year-old eyes, he was worldly, sophisticated, self-assured. He’d “been around.” He “knew the score.” He was a man. And she was awed in his presence.

“I’ve heard you played a lot of piano,” Jimmy went on. “I didn’t believe a girl could play jazz like that, but you’re really good. How did you learn to play that way?”

Lilly clutched the crumbs of praise to her heart, wanting to remember every word forever. She tried desperately to think of a reply that would sound cool. But her mind had turned to mush. She mumbled a reply so stupid that she wished she would forever be struck dumb. She said, “At the tabernacle.”

Jimmy gave her a lopsided grin that wrenched at her heart. “At the tabernacle? Do they play that kind of music there? I’m going to have to start going to church.”

“N—no,” she stammered, wanting to drop dead on the spot. “I m—meant I practiced there. My uncle is the pastor. I—I learned about jazz by listening to records.”

Jimmy wiped his trumpet mouthpiece on his sleeve, raised the instrument to his lips and blew a mellow warm-up phrase that sent a shiver down Lilly’s spine.

“Well,” Jimmy said, “from the way you were playing, I’d say you’ve been listening to the right records. We’ll have to get together sometime. I’ve got some pretty good disks too. Not many guys my age dig good jazz. Maybe you and I speak the same language, kid.”

She was willing to forgive his calling her “kid” in exchange for this incredible possibility he had offered her—that he might want to spend some time with her, that they shared something special, an understanding and love of the same kind of music, which the glamorous senior pep squad leaders who rode around with him in his convertible did not.

“Well, I guess we’d better run over this solo,” he said then, placing before her on the piano the score she was to play.

They spent the next half hour concentrating on the solo he would play at the state music competition. But then he grew tired of that. He rattled the keys of his trumpet, blowing water from the spit valve, then played a casual jazz riff.

“Bet you don’t know
Indiana
,” he challenged.

“Bet I do,” Lilly grinned, beginning to feel more relaxed with him. “What tempo?”

He tapped the rhythm with a toe. Lilly picked up the beat and played a four bar introduction. Jimmy stuck close to the melody the first time around, but improvised on the second chorus. Lilly backed up his riffs with harmonic and rhythmic figurations. It was the most thrilling experience of her young life up to that moment. She and Jimmy were speaking the same language, elevated to a creative plane of consciousness where they exchanged ideas and inspirations. The mundane world around them was forgotten. Together, they were exploring a different kind of world of pure feeling and ideas.