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“What do you want to play?” the music teacher had asked. She was smiling and sweet-faced, with pale lips and wearing a high turtleneck. The woman wasn’t wearing makeup—Remy’s parents would never have allowed the kids to take class with her if she had been. Her cheeks were nonetheless rosy, and her slightly crooked teeth were bright white from a diet void of coffee and soda.
The room was filled with secondhand instruments, brought via a volunteer’s pickup truck. Until now, the monthly “extra” lesson was art or sometimes gymnastics; getting a music class put into rotation had been a very big deal. When church services had ended, and the congregation had kissed the pads of their three middle fingers then held them to the sky—their traditional farewell to one another and the Lord—the children had rushed from the chapel to the activities room, ruffly skirts and shiny shoes roaring into the tiny space.
Val had gone wild. He picked up every instrument, playing with each one for a few moments. A tambourine, a guitar, the drumsticks, a ukulele, and a marimba missing the top few resonators. He crashed through the music room the same way he’d crashed through kickball and choir and each and every church bake sale. Val wasn’t afraid of breaking things.
Remy, on the other hand, had merely watched his brother for the first few moments. The other students were showing off the handful of hymns they already knew how to plunk out on the piano, or strumming an out-of-tune guitar, or giggling as they tried (in vain) to produce a decent sound on a weathered trumpet. It wasn’t that Remy couldn’t decide which to play; it was just that the instruments merely looked like different ways to make noise. He failed to see the point.
Finally, at the music teacher’s prodding, he wandered to a snare drum that had been recently abandoned by twin girls one year his senior. He tapped the drum gently with his fingertips, creating a quiet sound, like rain on a nice roof.
“Ah, yes. The drums are very important, you know,” the music teacher, who’d followed him over, said wisely. She had picked up the drumsticks from where they’d been discarded on the floor. The sticks were beaten and grayed with age, but Remy liked them all the more for that. They felt storied, hitting him with the same sense of displaced nostalgia he’d had when he and Val snuck TV and saw R2-D2 inStar Wars. Dusty and beaten. That robot and these drumsticks had tales.
Remy hit the little snare drum lightly, grinning at the rattling sound that rose from it. The teacher smiled back.
“The drummer is the heartbeat of the band,” she had said. “Without the drummer, everything falls apart.”
