The Sweetest Sound

The Sweetest Sound

The man wanted a concert, so a concert he shall have. Naturally, only the finest would do, so it was off to New York in mid-March to let the old man have his final gasping moment of marshalled adoration. Cristalina couldn’t even remember the official name her father came up with for the event, even with the program in her hand she could only think of it as the Hospice Hoedown.


Clap.


She wandered the empty hall, its red-felt seats, the low, reverant lighting a firm reminder that this was hallowed ground.


Clap.


Cristalina closed her eyes each time, letting the echoing reverberations rebuild the hall in her mind’s eye as they pinged off the hard surfaces.


Clap.


On stage, it was different. Here she could feel the focus, the attention, the expectation to wow nothing more than an audience of shadows. She heard her breath, could hear it as it funneled it’s way down into her lungs, felt the expansion of her body as her lungs pushed her ribcage outwards, and the decompression as she freed the air back into the world quiet as a door being shut in the night.


“Cristalina! ¡Ven aquí, tenemos que terminar de discutir las cosas!”


Motherfucker, Cristalina thought at the sound of her father’s voice. She barely registered his arm waving from the second-floor balcony before she gathered herself to talk to him.


Emilio was passing a Cohiba cigar under his nose, the fog of smoke that used to surround him replaced by the low buzz of his oxygen tank and the wet shifting of his colostomy bag.


“The lung is what usually gets the most attention,” she said as she got close to him. “But true connoisseurs can always pick up the throat and heart disease skulking about on the edges of such fine Havana aroma.”


Emilio, not looking up at his daughter, slowed the movement of his hands for one final breath.


“You would think,” he said, “A girl would have more respect for her dying father.”


“And yet,” Cristalina answered, “She doesn’t. What blight has fallen on the world to make it so?”


“You take too much after your sister, mijita-”


“Which one?”


Emilio let the slow trickle of fluid into his bag answer for him.


“Oh,” Cristalina said, “Amélie, of course.”


“She is a stain on everything I’ve ever accomplished,” Emilio scowled.


“I wonder if that’s how all our mother’s feel about you.”


Cristalina replaced the cigar in its tubular container and stowed them with the rest in the bag attached to Emilio’s wheelchair. When she returned to her seat, she pulled her embroidered black leather folder out, flipping through the music. Emilio recoiled at the sight of it.


“Anything you want to go over before the rehearsals start,” Cristalina asked, opening up the music folder.


“Just be sure that girl makes no further mockery of my work,” Emilio said through gritted teeth pointing at the folder, “And get something other than that shameful object before you go on stage.”


“The first, is no problem” Cristalina said before closing it again, “The second, well, you’re free to stand and take it from me.”


When all Emilio had to offer was a glare at his standing daughter, Cristalina shrugged, “Settles that, then.”





Bitter winter air hit Cristalina has she stepped outside to the loading bay. It wasn’t going to be spring for a few more weeks, but she could feel the season make its quick dashing appearances before is full arrival. The days were still cool and the nights still freezing, but neither had the relentless creeping cold underneath them anymore. In the end-of-life sessions Cristalina had been going to with Emilio in the last few months, the doctors told her- separately, of course- that when the time came, it was likely she would see a final surge, so to speak, of life in her father.


All his ailments would seem not to bother him, clarity would come back to his eyes and speech, he may even show signs of vigor again. The doctor told her this so she could learn to expect it, to recognize it as the final step before the end so she wouldn’t have any- “And I do apologize for how this will sound”- misguided hope of recovery only to have it dashed so quickly thereafter. Cristalina gave her thanks, and waited until the doctor was out of sight before letting her mind make its turn toward glee at the news. She watched him closer after that, looking for any sign that he was feeling better, had some more pep in his step, anything to tip her off that he was finally going to let her be done with him.


She popped two orange nicotine gum pieces into her mouth, worked her way past the revolting sour taste until she could find the bliss of being onstage again.


Smoke being exhaled into her face interrupted her, a voice almost as deep as her own said, “I know I’m the bitch of the family but,” Cristalina cleared the smoke from her face to see her sister Amélie drawing off her cigar holding a copy of The Village Voice before exhaling through her nose, “But is he fucking serious with this shit?.”


Cristalina looked, rolled her eyes at the open spread of Emilio’s last interview.


“Any fool can make music,” he explained to the Times interviewer who rather innocently asked him why he was so infuriated when his work was referred to as music, “it is nothing more than the the cacophonous by-product of nature.”


“To make compositions, that is the thing,” he went on. “Any two sounds- the blathering of a fool, a backfiring car, a wet diaper plopping into the trash- can be made into music if you just put them next to each other and change the order they occur in.”


“But composing,” he said, assuming a more stately tone, “composing is the art of picking the right sounds, in the right order, and building them from the ground up. I’m not some kind of busking musician begging for a hat full of change; no, I am an architect of sound,” Cristalina could see in perfect detail the large sweeping arch hand motion Emilio surely used to emphasise his achievement.


“You know,” Amélie said to Cristalina, “It’s nice to be the shunted off child,” she took a moment to blow a steady line of smoke over the insert picture of their father, “I’ll never have to worry about him publicly humiliating me like that.”


“On purpose, anyway,” Cristalina said, eyes roaming the page.


“That’s what I mean,” Amélie answered. “He’s a pain in the ass, sure, but he doesn’t pay me enough thought to deliberately mention how inferior I am to perform his compositions,” Amélie said with Emilio’s insistent flair.


“I guess I see you’re point,” Cristalina said, “you can’t be discarded if he’s never thought to use you up.”


“Exactly. I’m not our mothers, his proteges, or you,” she said,counting people off with her fingers. “All in all I’d say being the ignored spawn of his loins is working out pretty well for me.”


Cristalina paused, spit the pieces of gum out at Amelie’s feet, then looked her sister in the eye.


“I’m sorry, what?”


“I’m not you,” Amelie repeated, folding the paper in her hands. “Look, you’re ragged, run down, chewing on fake-ass cigarette gum to hold yourself together all so you help someone you can’t wait to put in the ground pull off a tribute to himself.”


“If that’s all his attention has to give,” Amelie continued, “why the fuck would I want any part of it?”





The worst of it was, they had been friends. Cristalina had met Inés during her time at Tulane, she lived in Tremé, the Crescent City’s music neighborhood. They had met taking in a second line performance; Cristalina wanted to get a sense of the walking brass band’s call-and-response musical flow to adapt it into her own burgeoning works. It was the first time she had heard music that wasn’t strictly filtered through her father, to hear music that demanded to be moved to, that craved exuberance, it was the first time she realized how shackled her life in music had been so far; under Emilio’s tutelage music was something to be analyzed, scrutinized, or justified into existence, there was no room for life or the sloppy freedom of excitement that came with it.


Inés must have seen her, standing bound on the sidewalk as the line passed by, but all Cristalina could remember was being pulled into the line, parasol forced into her empty hand, and then after that, a blur of dancing as she connected to all the Cuban rhythms Emilio had spent his whole career starving.


“You new to town?” Inés asked once the parading ended.


Breathless, Cristalina nodded.


“Come out with us,” Inés said, “We’ll show a better night than you can find in the Quarter.”


From there, the two became nearly inseparable. When Cristalina told Inés who her father was Inés’ response was,


“See, I knew you had to smart.”


“Why?”


“Because,” Inés answered, “Growing up wit’ him, only thing you could be is a bitch.” She held out her hand at Cristalina’s confused expression, “But you figured out for yo’ self how to be the right kind a bitch. That shows smarts, shows character.”


“That,” Cristalina said, “is the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me.”


She would go on to tell her of the the soundproof her father ended up building in their house when she was about twelve-years-old. It was in the the back corner of the house, tucked away behind sharp corners and special padding. “So my work won’t be a nuisance to the two of you,” he told Cristalina and her mother. Her mother’s restrained, solemn nod confused Cristalina at the time, but as more and more women came through only to disappear and then reappear a year later, the more she understood. After the first two, she began playing a game in her mind, laying odds which would be the next to suddenly be in a Broadway touring company or who got a part in the newest show across the sea in West End, but she stopped after the third and fourth-she called former, put middling odds on the latter- brought her mother nothing but grayer hair and hollow eyes.


“No,” Inés said, the rum sloshing in her cup, “He brought them into the house for you to see?”


Cristalina finished her drink slammed the glass down on the table.


“Yep, right through the fucking kitchen,” she said, refilling for another shot. “There were times, when it was my turn to practice, I had to stand in a different spot because parts of the floor would still be wet.”


For her senior recital, Inés gave her a hand-crafted black leather folder, embroidered with the white cross of Papa Legba.


“Legba is the one who lets you through,” Inés said, “You wanna talk Ioa, you gotta go through him.” He lets us go from one world to the other, see? Without ‘im, we’d be talking here, but none could hear us, so he makes the way for our voices to carry.”


“You, you do the same when you sing,” Inés closed her hands over Cristalina’s, “you carry them away, to something they never knew or maybe they forgot, once upon a time.”


Cristalina felt the leather in her hand, the dry skin giving way to the yarn of cross.


“My father always hated that I was alto.”


Inés waived the idea away as if it were a buzzing gnat to be swatted. “Your voice comes from the earth, that’s how they know what they’re feeling is true. It comes from somewhere deep, someplace that’s got roots.”


Two years later, Emilio began the tour of his Ofrenda de la Santa Sangre, his orchestral Passion Play serving as his comeback moment after the scandal of his now five illegitimate children broke in the divorce. Inés got a part as a second soprano and would go on tour with the show has it made it’s through New York, London, Paris, and Rome.


“Be careful,” Cristalina told her before it all started, the words ringing hollow when Inés came back, not showing yet, but with pleading, shame filled eyes.


“You have to get them to slow down, mijita,” her father wheezed in her ear. The two-way radio had been Cristalina’s peace offering, to allow Emilio to direct the performers without tiring himself out before the concert itself. All she had to do was repeat what he said, verbatim. After an hour of this, Cristalina chastised herself for being too old to let sentimental motives ruin her judgement.


“Sopranos, tenors, and baritones, you have to hold your notes until you’re directed off them,” Cristalina started, “take your breath on the ‘and’ of three in the preceding phrase; you’re supposed to be the lingering grace of the Immaculate Conception, not the wheezing exhale of a freshly popped bride.”


“Basses and altos: watch the vibrato, cellos,” Cristalina inclined her head to her sister Amélie, “you’re there to be the seed of Our Lord taking shape in the womb, you are the first sound the Savior will ever make in this world. Make Him sound like a two-dollar whore again and you’ll be using your instruments for kindling.”


Cristalina drew her breath, guiding the ensemble through the last run-through without interruption.


“Good, good,” her ear said. “Come on up, mijita.”


Cristalina watched Amèlie pack up her cello, the iron tools, bow and arrow, and rooster-mounted silver chalice of Los Guerros running down her right forearm.


“Did you have to get him so worked up?” Cristalina asked.


“Oh, that,” Amèlie answered, “I’m just touched he was listening,” she said, batting her eyes as the corners of her mouth inched their way to a smile.


“Great,” Cristalina answered, pulling at her sister’s elbow, “you got him mad, now I gotta talk to him alone.”


Amèlie made a contrite face as she pulled a nicotine patch from her instrument bag.


“You’re going to give any kids you have an addiction to those things,” Cristalina said.


“We’ll bond over our shared struggle,” Amèlie answered, adjusting her shirt.


“A true mother in the making,” Cristalina said. “Be where I can find you later.”


When she got to Emilio, he was setting his flask of rum back into the bag hanging on his wheelchair and gently swirling a bottle of Coke around, the dark brown turning to a blacker coffee color as the alcohol mixed in.


“How much of that did you add?” Cristalina asked.


“Poco, mijita, poco,” Emilio said, stretching his fingers from top of the wrapping to just where the bottle’s shape began to widen. “Just enough to put some spirit into the thing and have some left over for me.”


“You’re gonna drink that and still sit out there under the lights later?” Cristalina pressed.


Emilio took a sip in trembling hands.


“Why wouldn’t I?”


Cristalina could just cup her head in the palm of her hand as Emilio’s steadier hands held the bottle to his lips for longer and longer sips.





The first time Cristalina met Amélie, her sister was fifteen-years-old. Cristalina was in L.A. for an album release party, and heard about this punk band calling themselves The Furious Furcia’s was playing at some low-rent club off Sunset. A loud night out at thirty-nine seemed ridiculous, but a low-rent snotty club of drunk idiots on Sunset seemed a safe harbor from any mentions or discussions of Emilio, so off she went. She glared at the bouncer who stuttered when he asked for her I.D. and was thankful for not having to repeat it when she ordered mid-shelf rum from the bartender. She was flagged down by the singer whose record she just produced who had planted herself down near the stage. A security detail that enclosed her would ensure she got the loud experience, but would be spared any grabby hands when the pits started.


After twenty minutes, the band came on, guitarist, singer, drummer, then bass. As soon as she came on stage, Cristalina knew. Her skin was the same tone of her mother’s, that 3 a.m. shade of black that’s just starting to break blue. Her face though, was the dead give away- she had Emilio’s eyes and his mouth. The mouth that at every moment was ready to break into a smile as it breezed by whatever trivial difficulties the world placed in front of her and the eyes that blazed the message that those obstacles could move or be crushed in her stead.


Cristalina turned her head, trying to find an escape route, but the match box bar had filled to brim with bodies primed for violence; once she edged herself out of the protective circle, she’d be on her own. Whatever thought she had was shattered as Amélie hit a distorted power chord on her bass, sending the crowd jumping in excitement until the drummer counted the band down into the set as the bodies began slamming into each other with reckless abandon.


Battering as it was, Cristalina had to admit, Amélie was good. She was, by far, the youngest person on stage, yet the band seemed to be doing all it could to survive her intensity. It was like they played as loud and aggressive so they wouldn’t be swept away by rumbling maelstrom..


A struggling shirtless kid caught Cristalina’s attention as he tumbled onto the stage. He got up, prepared to jump for his body surfing, but took one last moment to slap Amélie’s ass. Cristalina ‘s hands immediately tightened around her glass. If she could break it, get through the crowd, she’d use the shards to skin that boy alive, bloody hand be damned. She moved to push her way past the security ring, but stopped when she noticed Amélie wasn’t playing anymore.


Amélie had backed herself up next to her amps, horrible feedback coming out of them as she slung her bass off over her shoulders. Her eyes were dead center on the guy who groped her, the crowd, excited at her intention, had stopped moving the boy who started flailing once he realized too late why he wasn’t moving anymore. Amélie crouched, then broke into a dead sprint, leaping off the stage, knees and elbows crashing into the boys stomach and groin as they collapsed into the crowd.


Shoving her way through the bodyguards and sweaty punks, Cristaline reached Amélie trying to use the boy for leverage so she could stand up straight when Cristalina reached her hand out and yelled over the near-berserk crowd,


“Hey, I’m your sister. That was a badass stunt you just pulled.”


Amélie smiled, wiped the hair out of her face with her left hand, grabbed Cristalina’s with her right.


“I know.”





Later, Cristalina was making sure her score for the orchestral-choral finale was all in order, giving out final reminders to the queued up performers in their tuxedos and sheer dark green dresses about how she would queue them up for their entrances, and for any ambitious sopranos, unless Cristalina specifically told them, they were not-repeat, not-to attempt the C6 on the doubled violin line.


She found Amélie, leaning against the concrete wall, cello propped up against her body, speaking to Inés.


“Oh hey sis,” Amélie said. Inés turned, a demure smile in her eyes.


“Hello, Cristalina,” she said, “it’s been a long time.”


Amélie stood, moving behind Cristalina and pushing her into the spot on the wall next to Inés.


“Yeah, it has, it has,” Cristalina said, straightening herself up. “How’ve you been? Well, I hope.”


Inés laughed, opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the emcee on the loudspeaker introducing Emilio to the microphone.


“Thank you, thank you,” he started, “it’s always nice to see your compositions performed by friends who haven’t lost a step on the most beautiful stage in the world,” he paused to let the gathered high society of New York to applaud itself and the cathedral they used to show the world the transcendence of their tastes.


“Of course,” he continued, “it’s even better to see those who are, let’s say, slower these days know me well enough to sit back and appreciate the work of others, so not to sully this wonderous evening.”


The crowd gave its obligatory chuckle at Emilio’s trademark “difficult” style of humor.


“I see he’s back to his old self,” Inés said.


Cristalina involuntarily scowled.


“He’s only got the one way,” she said.


Inés shook her head, “You should have seen him at the beginning of the tour,” she shook her head side to side, “it was quite the performance.”


“Obviously it was compelling enough for some.”


Cristalina focused on the floor, avoiding the glare on Inés’ face.


“Quick question,” she said, “why didn’t you come to any stop on the tour? I know Emilio invited you. Paris, Rome, London, New York. Even Istanbul. And you never showed. Why?”


“I never wanted anything to do with him.”


“And yet, here you are now,” Inés pressed. “You two are a lot alike you know, stubborn, vindictive, and uncompromising. Prone to throwing away people you think are tarnished.”


Cristalina clutched the folder to her chest.


“Yeah,” Inés continued, “you know, all you had to do was show up, just once, just once in two years. Even after, all you had to do was show up, and we could’ve found a way.”


“Instead,” Inés said, “you wanted to show you really are your father’s daughter.”


Cristalina was about to agree when their attention was returned to the loudspeaker. Their father’s speech had turned from his droning, pontificating style- weakened though he was, it’s the one thing he’d made the effort to keep- to a halting, interrupted flow. Cristalina’s eyes widened as she recognized the start of what always came before the post-chemo session racked Emilio. Too far away to rush out and wheel him away, Cristalina stood stock still, listening to the silence of the crowd transition from patient listeners to horrified observers as his coughs turned to deep dry-heaves.


Even through the speaker, the sound of Emilio’s final heave racking his boiled skin gave way to the wet splashing sound of vomit hitting the wooden stage, followed by the rippling echoes across the hall played out their pitter patter in unescapable detail.


Cristalina stood up from the wall, scanning the hallway for anyone she could pull to help clean Emilio up. She turned back to Inés.


“I’m sorry, I have to go I-





“I know.”