The Music Stalker

A Covo Family Saga

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Black Rose Writing
Published by: Black Rose Writing
Release Date: October 28, 2021
Pages: 355
ISBN13: 978-1684337910

 
Synopsis

Kayla Covo is a child piano prodigy. In mid-1970's New York City, she vaults to fame, holding audiences in awe with her uncanny musical ability and warm smile. But deep within her lie the seeds of destruction: the paranoid fear of being stalked by a murderous fan. The Music Stalker closely examines how genius and love might survive in a close-knit family torn by trauma, insanity, and jealousy.

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Praise

“What drives the characters of The Music Stalker to their highs and lows, their togetherness and their times apart, is also what artfully holds them locked in patterns of an intricate harmony. The heliotropic center of this novel is desire: desire for the Other; desire for talent; desire to be seen; desire to be held; desire for safety and peace of mind; even the desire to be left alone. Bruce Berger exhibits a sensational knack for imagining lives, real lives lived with triumph and weakness, mental illness and ordered reason, as well as daily flubs and foibles. His skills make for a page turner …”
-David Keplinger, author of The World To Come

“Although Berger’s work [The Music Stalker] is replete with depictions of life with mental illness, it’s never reductive or one-dimensional. Instead, it immerses readers in the lives and perceptions of those with psychological differences. It’s also about the power of family members to pull loved ones back from isolation and distress, even when they’re suffering themselves. … A tale that shines a light on the redemptive power of religion and relationships.”
-Kirkus Reviews 

“Bruce J. Berger’s The Music Stalker is a thoughtful, enjoyable story and an interesting study of mental illness, spirituality, and artistic genius—and the possible relationship between them. … [He] writes with warmth and attention to detail, bringing the Covo family’s experience to life. His exploration of mental illness makes Adel a fully-fledged character, a woman aware of her brain’s misfirings and yet helpless against them in many ways. And if Kayla’s own mental imbalance is obviously telegraphed, his exploration of its connection to her rapturous, effortless musical genius is fascinating.”
-IndieReader Reviews 

 

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Excerpt

Prologue

West Caldwell, New Jersey, March 1999

Kayla Covo emerges from her bedroom at six, listens for sounds that might indicate an intruder, and, hearing none, sighs with relief, offers up a quick prayer of thanks to Hashem. She dresses modestly in a long black skirt and long-sleeved grey blouse buttoned all the way up. Her dark brown hair, once kept long to emphasize her femininity, is now short, falling to just touch her pale white neck. She wears under her blouse a small Star of David necklace given to her when she was a child, a remembrance of the mother whose instability Kayla has inherited. No one but her ever sees it now.

She makes her way downstairs to make breakfast. In minutes, she sets Jackie’s eggs and toast on a plate, knocks on his door to wake him, and slips out of the house to drive to the morning service. The men at Chabad don’t count her as one of the minyan, the ten needed for communal prayers, but she doesn’t care. A couple will occasionally great her with a vague smile and wish her good day, but she’s ignored by the rest. They feel she’s out of place, she knows, inhibiting them by her presence, yet she’s compelled to be there at a quarter to seven every weekday morning, and she’ll often return for the evening service. Her hands shake from the medicine, but not so much she can’t drive to West Orange or hold the prayer book when she gets there. She sometimes stops at intersections when she has the right of way, pulling over to check the traffic behind her for anyone who might be following. She takes twenty minutes to get to Chabad when the trip should take only ten.

By the time she returns, Jackie’s already off to school. She makes sure that he’s taken his clarinet with him, hoping to avoid chasing the school bus again because he’s forgotten. He’s good at the clarinet, good enough to be a file leader in the band next year, but he’s not particularly musical. Kayla’s not worried, though. Music has been her life, but it doesn’t have to be Jackie’s. Yet, she forced him to study piano a year before allowing him to switch to the clarinet at age six. The music instruction she’s insisted upon will help Jackie, whatever career he pursues. She thinks a lot about Jackie’s path through life, how he views being black and Jewish as paving his way to a good college and beyond. She concedes to herself that he’s casual in his studies and could do better, because he’s smart. All he needs is better focus, more motivation.

Kayla changes into a blue sweat suit, dons her Brooklyn Dodgers cap, and goes for a long walk around the hilly, wooded neighborhood. Her doctor tells her she needs the exercise to avoid gaining weight, so she manages at least a couple of miles every day. She varies her route, associating each street with the different bird songs she can distinguish. She’s constantly turning over the sounds in her brain and imagining new melodies for violin and cello based on what she hears. Music fills her mind even while she sleeps, and she often wakes in the middle of a violin sonata thrumming through her head, her arm muscles twitching as she plays the complicated piano part. It might be Beethoven; it might be something she’s composed in her dreams. If it’s new, she’ll turn on her bedside lamp and jot notes on the staff paper she keeps at hand.

When she returns to the house, Kayla sits at the Steinway she’s played all her life. She might amuse herself with a Chopin waltz or struggle through his B-Minor Scherzo, cringing occasionally if she fails to corral into coherence the blizzard of notes. She’s long past the point where she can perform publicly. Although she remembers the excitement and happiness of her brief career and from time to time looks through her scrapbooks—she would never wear such revealing clothes now—she does not resent the way things turned out.

Her brother Max, who often explains how the law is a demanding mistress, gets home from the city late, even on most Fridays. The three of them share their Shabbat dinner when he arrives. She wishes Max would try to be observant and serve as a Jewish male role model for Jackie, but Max is just not that kind of person. For him, religion is little more than a charade and a waste of time, but he cares for her enough to keep their house kosher and to be mindful of not turning on the television in the family room on Shabbat.

Jackie’s still undecided on religion, she knows, but walks with her to shul on Shabbat and says his prayers dutifully. He, too, draws stares from the more traditional Chabad members, but they’re always polite. Jackie’s status as a Jew makes him a bit of a mystery to his black friends, a situation Jackie enjoys. He’s invited quite a few to Shabbat dinner over the years.

Whenever Max gets back from the city, unless it’s Friday, he’ll often come to where Kayla sits at the table in her small bedroom, absorbed in her composing. He’ll often kiss her on top of her head, putting his hands on her shoulders briefly, gently squeezing hello. She’ll smile and ask how his day went. He’ll occasionally remark upon her work: the notes, the tempo markings, the dynamics, the harmonic modulations, whatever strikes him. He knows a lot about music, too, and she values his suggestions.

From time to time, she plays for him. When the two of them are focused on the Steinway, Jackie shrugs his shoulders and puts on his headphones so he doesn’t have to hear. If it’s not a Sousa march or a jazzy band arrangement of “Memory” from Cats, then he’s not interested.

Kayla’s friends at the Bellington School of Music help her get her musical creations out to the performers who love them. Her old piano instructor is now an emeritus professor and looks after her musical reputation as if he still feels guilty for how things ended. Occasionally, Max and Kayla attend a Sunday matinee in New York at Bellington or Carnegie Recital Hall to hear one of her compositions – a cello sonata or a string quartet, perhaps – played by the world’s best musicians. She’s cautious as they take their seats, always in the last row, so she can monitor the entire audience and be close to the exit in case she has to run.

When the audiences love her music and heartily applaud, as they always do, Kayla’s warm smile returns. Max sees her smile, pleased.

Chapter 1

Dear Joseph and Rosina,

This will certainly be a long letter, long overdue, and it’s a letter I have to write, but it’s one I might not send. Why bother sending something your mother will shred if she gets her hands on it before you even see it? And if you did read it? You might just laugh and throw it in the trash.

You’re not bad kids, not at all, but you’ve been brainwashed. Sadly, I would add, and there’s little I can do about it. I stand where millions of fathers have stood before, separated from meaningful contact with their children because …? Because being a father means little in our society, especially little when judges have to decide custody disputes.

You’ll be thirteen this summer, the first time you’re required, based on the present court order, to visit me in New Jersey. And yes, I know you hate this idea, screwing up whatever other plans you might’ve made, but it’s only for three goddam weeks in June. Your mother has told you that you have to visit – which she must do unless she wants to go back to court and revisit the whole unpleasant thing – so that’s that.

So this letter is the story of my family or, more precisely, the story of your Aunt Kayla, whom of course I live with. And it’s the story of your grandfather, Nicky Covo, and your cousin, Jackie, whom you’ll also spend time with. And it’s the story of Adel Covo, your grandmother, long deceased, whom I know you don’t recall.

When you come, keep an open mind about our living arrangements and try to see why things came to be this way. You can snigger behind my back, that’s what teenagers do, but in the long run, because I want our relationship to improve, these are things I think you should know.

Keep reading.

No one recognizes her.