by Jon McDonald
And since Dad was to be here for a whole two weeks it also meant haircuts for Tommy and me - executed by him - with us in a chair in the kitchen, towels tied around our necks. What good that did I never understood as the cut hair always fell in our laps and on the floor but never on the towel. He would clean our necks with his antique hand clippers that always nicked us and pulled at the hair rather than cutting it. Believe me, if I’d had my way I would have much preferred living in a tree as a Wild Child during the summer.
Today was lesson day. Mom was hanging out the laundry on the line by the side of the cottage that got the most sun and had the best breeze off the lake. The music stand and a folding chair were placed under a tree and I was ordered outside, clarinet in hand, and music book under my arm. Dad stood above and behind me, and I began, as always, by playing scales. Now let it be officially noted that my clarinet playing had all the grace and subtlety of a hippopotamus walking in mud. My heart was never in this, and I sounded terrible. The whole reason I was playing this stupid thing in the first place was because my father had played it in his high school band, and it was now my turn to suffer. I figured it was some kind of institutional family torture passed down from father to son since the days of Genghis Khan. When I played, I squeaked. My fingers never quite covered the holes, and spit would dribble down my chin. I would get so nervous with Dad standing over me - always behind, so I couldn’t see when the next blow would come - that my eyes would unfocus and my vision would go all blurry, and I couldn’t even see the music, let alone play it. And today, with the rather brisk breeze, the lesson book kept blowing off the music stand and I would have to catch it in the middle of a trill.
Mom finally took pity on me and came over from the clothesline with a hand-full of clothespins and snapped a few to the music stand to anchor the music.
“That’s a C not a god damned G. Play it again,” he bellowed.
I blew out another reluctant G. It sounded like a bleating calf.
“No, you played G again. Didn’t you hear me? – C – C.”
I finally blew a tepid, squeaky C.
“I don’t know…. I really don’t know why I bother. It seems like we’ve been on this same god damned lesson ever since last Christmas. I’ll bet you haven’t been practicing one little bit since you’ve been up here at the lake, have you?” He looked at me. He looked over at mother, and she knew what that meant.
“Don’t you care? Don’t you care at all about the clarinet?”
Boy, I bet he sure didn’t want to hear my real answer to that question!
“I’ve just about had it with you, young man. It’s deliberate. You are deliberately trying to thwart me. Aren’t you?”
I cowered. My head down - the clarinet shaking slightly in my hands.
“Aren’t you?”
I hated this clarinet. And I hated my Dad for making me play it.
He raised his hand up in the air and paused just a brief moment, and in that moment Mom appeared behind the music stand, directly facing Dad.
“Don’t you dare,” she almost whispered.
◘ ◘ ◘
We heard the sirens long before we were aware of anything else. They echoed around the lake. They were far away and only momentarily surfaced in our consciousness. I went back to my reading. When the sirens finally turned down our road though, both mother and I looked up from our books and then at each other. The sirens passed our house and stopped just a few cottages away. We hurried outside. There was a lot of activity two doors down at the Duncan cottage. Two firemen were crouched on the pier, pulling something out of the lake.
Lonnie and Kevin Duncan were ten and six. Lonnie and I often played together, scouting the creeks for salamanders and crawdads. Lonnie had a funny foot but I soon got used to it and didn’t even see it anymore. Tommy and Kevin liked to construct forts out of boxes they scavenged from behind Friedrich’s.
I started to run over to see what was happening, but Mom grabbed me by my shirt and held tightly. Tommy snuggled up close to Mom as we watched from our yard.
It was hard at first to see what was going on, as there were so many firemen, police officers, and neighbors crowded around the pier. But all at once the neighbors backed away as the firemen moved down the pier and on to the lawn shaded by several large trees. The Firemen were carrying something, and like a trick of stage magic a white sheet flew up into the air and settled on the ground, revealing a small form underneath. Mom gave the tiniest, hesitant gasp, and took hold of Tommy. Mom had let go of my shirt and I ran over to a large maple tree at the edge of our yard and leaned against it and peered around the side.
From this closer angle I could see more clearly that the shape under the sheet was that of a small child. Mrs. Duncan was holding Lonnie tightly on their cabin porch, while Mr. Duncan conferred with the officers down at the pier. Several of the neighbor ladies went over to Mrs. Duncan and put their arms around her. She leaned her head against one woman’s shoulder. Another neighbor took Lonnie inside the Duncan cottage.
Tommy broke free of Mom and rushed over to me and peered around the edge of the tree next to me. He reached up and took my hand.
Several firemen came around the side of the Duncan cottage with a stretcher. They placed it on the ground next to the sheet. It took only one fireman to place the covered body on the stretcher, and then it was promptly carried away. The crowd began to thin as the onlookers moved back to their cabins.
Mom came over, took both our hands and took us inside.
The next day I went over to see how Lonnie was doing but their cabin was shut up tight and dark, their car gone, and their rowboat rocked gently at the end of the pier.
◘ ◘ ◘
Tommy had already gone to bed. Mom had finished the dishes and was preparing to snuggle down for the evening with the book she’d been reading all summer - but first she put a record on the Victrola. She sighed as she settled in by the reading lamp in our old beat up sofa that looked like a sleeping buffalo. She was reading some massive Tolstoy epic. I jokingly called it her epidemic. She patted the sofa for me to join her. I came over and lay down with my head in her lap, while she began to read.
The wind blew the screen door and it snapped against the doorframe. There were flashes of lightning and the rumble of thunder moving across the lake and lighting up our yard like a million 4th of July sparklers.
I closed my eyes and listened to the music.
“Are the Duncans coming back?” I asked, looking up at Mom.
She put down the book and thought for a moment. “I haven’t heard.”
Neither of us spoke for quite a while; then she picked up her book and began reading again.
I listened to the music – the Mozart Clarinet Concerto. I had heard it many times before, of course, but tonight, for the first time, I finally connected the dots and realized that the clarinet on the record was the same instrument that I was torturing so badly in my not very subtle rebellion every time I practiced; and I thought that maybe, just maybe, if I tried a little bit harder – then one day, I too, might make it sound as beautiful as that.
Welcome to Good-bye
Clair thinks Abigail is an aggressive, greedy bitch. That’s because Abigail covets Brandon’s very valuable Picasso dove drawing. Abigail insists Brandon said it was meant for her before he died, but Clair refuses to acknowledge the bequest. Brandon told Abigail he acquired it from the Master himself after a night of communal drinking in a string of French bars in the late 60’s, and Brandon said it perfectly captured her youthful spirit, and meant for her to have it when he died. He had, in fact, signed the frame’s backing to that effect. However, Clair had scratched out that little detail, and continues to play dumb. And as Clair was once married to Brandon, she asserts hereditary possession, and refuses to acknowledge Abigail’s legitimate claim. It is all very clumsy and messy. However, the will was to be read later that afternoon, and who knew what surprises the crafty Brandon might have devised. But Clair was certain it would all
be sorted out in her favor.
“More Champaign, dear?” Claire was poised with the bottle of chilled wine over Abigail’s nearly empty glass.
“So gracious,” Abigail smiled, accepting the offer, and then abruptly turning away to chat with Melissa Stapleton, the cartoonist who penned the very successful comic strip Scrappy – a feisty, hard-assed pooch - syndicated in 180 newspapers nationwide. She had made a fortune on Scrappy books, plush stuffed Scrappies, Scrappy coffee mugs, and Scrappy calendars.
“How in the world do you ever come up with all those clever original ideas? Just imagine a new strip every single day. It must be exhausting,” Abigail commented, looking over Melissa’s shoulder as the hunky Grover Farley sauntered over from the kitchen area. Abigail knew him by sight from many SOHO gallery openings, but they had never been properly introduced. She was determined, however, to rectify that grave error immediately.
Melissa started to answer, but Abigail was already on her way over to corral Grover up against Brandon’s massive desk.
“Abigail Williams,” she smiled, extending her hand to Grover. “I don’t believe we’ve met before. How did you know Brandon?”
“We used to fuck.” Grover beamed, so pleased with himself for his shocking honesty.
“Oh my.” Abigail’s eyes widened, and she backed away, blushing, but delighted to have some juicy new gossip. Now this was a whole new dimension to the Brandon so cherished and beloved by the female New York literary world. She could hardly wait to rush over to Bunny Feldman with the Breaking Eyewitness News. But she bumped right into, and was thwarted by, Milton Sauer, literary critic for The Uptown Courier.
“Abby, you sweet delicious thing, you. How have you been keeping yourself?” Milton did a little torch dance in front of her - all three hundred and twenty pounds of him - a jolly, prancing Ganesha. He was obviously sloshed.
“Milton, cool it.” She rushed past him and headed again towards Bunny. But Bunny was now intimately engrossed in conversation with Tabby Raught, who Abigail ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT STAND. The news for Bunny would just have to wait for now.
“Wasn’t it a lovely memorial service?” Carson whispered in Abigail’s ear with his sardine breath, as he leaned forward and took her arm in his clammy hand. “At least it didn’t rain. Tell me why it is that in almost every movie where there is a funeral it is always raining? I mean, even if it was it the middle of the Sahara Desert, they would depict it raining at a funeral. Why is that, do you think? Huh? Did you ever think about that? All those black umbrellas bunched up together like barnacles on the bottom of a boat.” Carson adjusted his thick glasses and ran his hand over his oily slicked hair. He reached over again and ran his moist hand up Abigail’s arm towards her shoulder.
“I haven’t the slightest idea, Carson,” she answered, pulling away from his grip and heading towards the buffet table. The revelation of this secret side of Brandon had fragmented and scattered her. She wondered how long Brandon had been this way. Had he dallied with men when they were still together? Had he been cruising the streets of the west village on his way back from the deli whenever he said he was going out to pick up a pack of smokes, or a ham and cheese sub? Was he picking up men instead?
She tried to compose herself with a spoonful of tender caviar on a water cracker with chopped egg, a sprinkle of finely diced onion, and a squeeze of lemon. How the finer delicacies of life soothed her turbulent landscape. She took a deep breath, and another sip of champagne. Ah, now that was much better.
◘ ◘ ◘
Brandon Bonaventura - renowned author, a fixture of the New York literary and arts social scene, world traveler, cavalier lover, and cherished friend – lived a well ordered and somewhat fastidious life. His wife, Clair, and his other occasional romantic partners, often complained about his obsessive compulsive need to have his world ordered exactly to liking, no matter how his partners felt, or what they wanted.
For example, he always slept with the bedroom windows wide open, even on the coldest January night (infuriating everyone), and piled a Cascade Mountain range of blankets and comforters over himself, with just his eyes and nose peeking out of the little cave constructed around his head. He looked like a blind mole investigating new frontiers. As a consequence, Brandon always placed his slippers by the side of his bed in a very exact and precise arrangement - which no one dare disturb - so that when he got up in the morning he could slip his feet into the warm fuzzy slippers without touching the cold cement floor, even if he was still half asleep.
Having grown up in Minnesota he had become accustomed to cold bracing air, and suffered greatly when he visited the tropics. He needed to crank up the AC to minus twenty below to fall asleep.
And he had a very fixed routine on the days he wrote. Up at six. Gallons of coffee, with a breakfast of fruit, yogurt, and the New York Times, and still in his pajamas he padded across the loft to his desk by the big windows overlooking the Hudson River.
Never able to segue from longhand to computer, he still wrote out his novels, essays, and short stories on yellow legal pads. He had a secretary, trained by years of exposure to his felt tip hieroglyphics, to type out his manuscripts every afternoon when he napped, or went shopping at the local farmer’s market.
However, he was an avid fan of the internet’s search capabilities, and often used his laptop for detailed investigations. Early in his career he had spent endless hours in various NYC libraries doing his extensive research for whatever opus he was currently working on - and that was precious time away from his urgent writing projects. Nowadays it was just a quick log-on, and he could be surfing the world, naked, with Bach cranked up till the windows rattled.
This morning he was barefoot in shorts and a tee shirt. The windows were open to let in the soft summer morning breeze, and Bossa Nova was sexing in the background. He arched his back to relieve the pain. He thought he might have to get a new chair, or he might have reached up to grab something on a high shelf in the wrong way. He had been noticing a discomfort in his back for about a month now.
He turned to his legal pad. He stared at it as he focused and unfocused his eyes trying to get a clearer read on what he had scribbled out yesterday, but he realized it wasn’t so much his sight as it was his mind. He looked at what he had written, but he couldn’t make any sense of it. It was like it was written in Hebrew. Not a good start to a morning of writing. He struggled for about half an hour, then decided it would be better to do some research instead. He jiggled his mouse to awaken his computer, and began to research the symptoms of pancreatic cancer. The wife of Brancusi - his main character - was about to be dispatched, so his hero would be free to travel to Lebanon, where he would soon discover a lost stone tablet, which would enable the hero to decipher the mysterious language of Atlantis, eventually leading to a vast undiscovered treasure. Brandon had decided pancreatic cancer would do the trick in dispatching the inconvenient wife, and he set out to research the symptoms of the disease.
Let’s see now – loss of appetite, weight loss, yellowing of skin and whites of eyes, upper abdominal pain that radiates to the back, depression, blood clots. Okay, he could work with that. He printed out the research and laid it out in front of him on his desk to study. He leaned back in his chair and began to focus on his findings in earnest. Huh. Loss of appetite, yes, he had not been very hungry lately. Weight loss – he’d dropped twenty pounds in the last few months without dieting. And his eyes had looked very strange lately - blood-shot with a distinct daffodil tinge. And then there was the pain…. He reached for the phone and made an appointment with his doctor.
◘ ◘ ◘
Clair still had her key, and she let herself into Brandon’s loft after he had not responded to her incessant knocking. She looked around as she entered. Even though it was late on a winter’s afternoon there were no warm welcoming lights. It was dreary and dark, every object in the loft edged with a blue-silver tinge. Had he been napping?
“Brandon!” she called out, maneuvering her
way around the heavy furniture, stacks of magazines, books, and dirty clothes. What in the world had happened to him? He would never have allowed his living environment to become disordered like this when they were together. She ran her finger along the library table and collected a ploughed field of dust. She wiped it on a kitchen towel thrown over the back of a lounge chair. She paused, looked around the vastness of the loft, and sighed.
“In here, Clair,” Brandon called out from his cubby of a bedroom, constructed at the far end of the loft, next to the kitchen.
Clair made her way into the even darker inner sanctum of Brandon’s dream chamber, as he liked to call his bedroom. He was stretched out on his bed with a Guatemalan throw tucked up securely around his neck.
“Come sit by me,” Brandon instructed, indicating a chair pulled up in anticipation of her arrival by the head of his bed. She made her way through the gloom and sat beside him very primly, hands folded on her lap. She felt like an orphaned character in a Dickens novel, awaiting final pronouncements (which would forever change her life) from a very rich, but dying great aunt.
Brandon reached over towards the bedside table, fumbling for a piece of paper. He couldn’t quite reach it. “Please….” he indicated the paper. Claire handed it to him, with a desperate urge to sneak a peek at it, but knew it would not go unnoticed if she did.
Brandon scooted himself into a seated position, turned on the bedside light and struggled to put on his reading glasses. “Now, then….” He studied the paper a moment, but declined to speak further, as he seemed to be gathering his thoughts.
“Oh Brandon, what is all this silliness? Really, you’ve been totally unavailable to all your friends for months. Now you call me over here on this miserable afternoon for who knows what, and all you can do is slouch in bed and moan like a bored panda. Do you mind telling me what this is all about, please?”