P.S. Here’s an old photo of your father that I was saving, but you keep it. Maybe he’ll make himself clearer to you, if you think on his picture. He’s right smart in that outfit, don’t you think?

Chapter 18

Leroy had been gone nearly two months. At first they thought he’d just be gone for the summer jazz festivals in Europe—Groningen, Moers, Antibes, Berlin, Nice—with a few days in Paris. A whole summer spent on the Trans-Europe Express, watching out not to get paid with counterfeit money; hearing Dutch and Norwegian imitations of Mingus, Leadbelly, Lester Young; with a Japanese band masquerading as the Cecil Taylor Unit. Every which way you turned there were always two things: dope and pussy, both of questionable quality. Leroy was sure there would come a day when no black cats from the States were ever “invited” to these festivals again.

“See, Cypress, every headlining black group is on a bill with three or four all-European bands. How long do you think it’s gonna take them to say, ‘We play just as good as those niggers; we know what they are doing with the music; we don’t need to bring them over here any more. We play jazz now.’ ”

Cypress had laughed till she cried as Leroy mimicked the European producers who were always telling Afro-Americans what they didn’t need. “ ‘Oh, you don’t need to rehearse, it’s natural with you.’ ‘Don’t bother about accommodations, we have some nice tents and outhouses.’ ” But it wasn’t funny. Because it was still true that coverage in Jazz Hot and Le Jazz or records on a French label opened doors that would never open in the States. So Leroy went to Europe.

Cypress fought admitting it, but Leroy had mediated her relationship with the City of New York. She couldn’t stand it when he was gone. His horns and his arms had offered her horizons where she was free to see what she chose, feel what she had to, be what she dreamed. Now she was constrained by cement, noise, thousands of people she’d never had to take seriously. Whole blocks of black people without trees. Dance studios that looked into other dance studios. Or vacant lots crammed with tires, garbage, used strollers, broken bottles, and stench. Leroy alone had shielded her from this. Now her landscape had no natural elements. In California, one was cognizant of the planet: that the earth and sea were forces to contend with. New York without Leroy was bereft of any humility, dwarfing the sun, violating the waters, crowding nature into a yard called Central Park.