Fran thinks about the multitude of days she has taken the elevator to the 10th floor, walked down the hall to the blue door, put the key into the lock. Now, for the last time, she will open that door to her Play it Again music shop, maybe the last one in the country. It is a cherished space for her, and for the conductors, composers, musicians, opera singers and others for almost 40 years.
Fran turns the key to the familiar sounds of the creaking door and tinkle of a bronze bell, which in the last few days had not stopped ringing. Dozens of "guests" (as she called her customers), and well-wishers braved the wintry weather to visit the shop for a farewell--some for the first time, but all for the last.
She stands disoriented at the open door in temporary parlysis. Although she had anticipated this day for months, even years, she seems unable to step across the threshold. For a moment, she thinks she hears the strains of the music she loves—symphonies, fugues, concertos and sonatas emanating from the sheet music, now is boxes waiting for movers to take away to be archived at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.
Taking a deep breath, she enters the familiar space with nothing to do now, except ponder the years spent here, and the memory of how guests thought Fran’s stewardship of the thousands of sheets of classical music, many rare, made her comparable to a maestro herself, orchestrating the vast collection: organizing, moving, expertly arranging, according to composer, edition, composition, or other more subtle aspects only she knows about.
Guests have wondered about Fran's uncanny insights and intuitions, which she shared with so many, both extraordinary and ordinary guests--always charmed by her dark eyes and flash of a smile that could seemingly fill the space with light. There was also light in Fran’s whole being for the love of music yet to be discovered, played and heard by others. No wonder she affectionately became known as, “the beating heart and soul of classical music.”
Fran had been preparing for some time for the inevitable oblivion of the shop and its wares. There was no long a need for a brick and mortar shop,with the vapid sources on the internet, one could research, browse and download free anything and everything related to music and with oncerts performed with downloaded music to laptops instead of sheet music on stands. Rarely do musicians have that experience of touching and seeing music on paper, holding sheets in hand, turning pages, or even tucking them away somewhere until found again on a shelf, like treasured old books.
Guests who had heard about the shop's fate came by often over this last week to Fran's universe of unheard music to take in again, or for the first time, the familiar ambiance of the space: that certain slant of afternoon light; the sound of distant traffic below, the mood of anticipation of what they would experience--like a concert hall before the conductor walks on and the overture begins.
Last week, when interviewed by a nice young man from the New York Times about the shop's closure, she had told him that hers was, “a place where there was one of everything. I just love that moment when you put something on the counter and the person says, ‘Ah! I can’t believe you have this.' " But, she always did, even if guests didn't know exactly what they were looking for. Her hands would deftly lift each sheet to lay before them, pointing out the uniqueness of a score, the subtleties of a particular version—like a mother who knows so well the virtues and foibles of each of her children.
Over the years, new guests were not only amazed to learn of the scope and depth of her colossal collection, but also were curious about the basket of eggs and bunches of rosemary, sage and basil on the front desk. Frequent visitors knew that Fran had a little farm in western Massachusetts where she raised chickens and tended gardens. So, often guests left the shop with eggs and herbs along with their sheet music and receipts—always handwritten in pencil by Fran herself--all part of what she called, her “little stage,” happy that every day she got to “do her act.”
When business began to dwindle to a few guests a day, then on some days not even one, she felt herself at the edge of a cliff about to fall over. If she herself could create a composition to accompany this last day, it would be a lamentation for the passing of an era, not able to hold on to it forever. That was not to be, as she conjured a memory of long ago--that fleeting moment of holding the stars in her hands.
She is moved to listen to Mendelssohn's The Hebrides Overture throughout the day, the strains transporting her to another time and place: she a young woman on the isle of Uist in the Outer Hebrides in a crofter’s cottage. While at first she had experienced the remote landscape of the island as start and austere, day by day she began to notice the subtlties of color of land and sea, to feel the purity of the air, to bask in brilliant sunlight, and to appreciate a simpler life, as she learned to collect seaweed, tend gardens and shear sheep.
Her last "guest," this day then, was the memory of the her last evening in Scotland, spent with the MacKays, who had welcomed her for a time into their family. As the sun went down, they took a simple meal together, drank a wee bit of whisky, and recited and sang Robby Burns’ poetry and songs. Filled with the kind of sadness as now, she had spoken to the MacKays of her gratitude for their hospitality and for experiencing all the wild and beautiful things around them: Eagles flying high above, the wide drifts of flowers beyond the white sand beaches; the thatched-roofed cottages with their driftwood or whalebone timbers, the lovely low stone walls; and, most of all, the kindness and generosity of the MacKays.
“I will never forget any of it, or you,” she had promised.
“You haven’t seen everything yet, Lass," said Mr. Mackay. "Come with us now, but keep your eyes closed." Fran was led into the dark night by the two older MacKay children on to a narrow path approaching the sea, to the sound of slow waves on the shore. Then, she opened her eyes to the bright stars of the heavens perfectly reflected across the calm sea.
Fran has never returned to the Hebrides, but on this day in her beloved shop, and as on many days since, she recalls that night-- "catching the stars," a memory of magic: wading into the sea, cupping the stars in her hands, even as they slipped through her fingers back into the dark water.
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