by Noah Bly
“Far be it from me to join the lynch mob, dear,” I growled at Jeremy, “but for once I’m in agreement with your impatient siblings. Perhaps we should wait to do whatever you have in mind until your father is back from England. I would hate for him to miss out on all the extravagant fun we’re having.”
He ignored me. “I’m serious about the barge, you guys.” He giggled. “For your information, I happen to be a barge expert.”
Paul huffed in exasperation and his breath tickled my ear. “Can I smoke, Mom? If I have to sit in this goddamn freezing car at midnight with my lunatic brother holding us hostage, then I should at least get to smoke.”
I turned my head and gave him a loving peck on the cheek. “Of course you can, darling. So long as you’re at least twenty feet from the car, and standing downwind.”
“Amen,” Caitlin said. “Make it thirty feet.”
Paul jabbed her in the ribs and she jabbed him back.
“Quit it,” she commanded. “I can’t believe you let them smoke at all, Mother. Especially Jeremy. He’s still a minor.”
Arthur and I had forbidden the boys to smoke in our presence, or in the house, or in our vehicles. But we had also decided, after countless heated arguments and fruitless lectures, that it was a doomed effort to try to enforce any further discipline than that on them.
“It’s hardly as if I’ve given them my blessing, Caitlin,” I snapped. “If the knuckleheads want to kill themselves when I’m not around, there’s not much I can do about it.”
Jeremy proceeded with his patter, as if none of us had spoken. “As an example, this barge is only about six months old. The short feathers on the tips of its wings will fall out as it gets older.” He held the flashlight out the open window with his left arm and rested it on the side mirror, but he didn’t turn it on yet. “Another fascinating characteristic of barges is how they’ll disguise themselves as sticks or exotic grasses to blend in with the scenery. In the wild some have even been observed …” he abruptly cut off, and his voice dropped to a whisper as the barge passed directly in front of us. “Here we go.”
The flashlight flared to life in his hand and he pointed it straight at the cabin of the barge, presumably aiming it at the person who was steering the thing. The light hit the windows of the cabin and bounced from them, and Jeremy began to cackle.
The spotlight on the barge stopped dead and hovered in one spot for a few seconds, as if stunned by such blatant insolence, then it began to swing toward us in a slow arc, gathering speed as it hunted us down. It skittered over the last few feet of river in front of us and leapt over the bank, plowing through the dry reeds and gravel like a dog chasing a rabbit.
“What the hell?” Paul blurted behind me.
“Uh oh!” Jeremy wailed. “Here it comes!”
The light hit us full force and I fell back in my seat and threw up my arms to shield my eyes.
“Jesus Christ!” Caitlin screamed, as we were all dazzled and blinded in a circle of paralyzing white fire. The snow on the ground around the car flared up, too, reflecting the light tenfold.
Jeremy jerked the flashlight out of the window and buried his face in my shoulder. “Yeehaw!” he howled. “It’s pretty bright, isn’t it, Mom?”
“You fool!” I snapped. “Get us out of here immediately, before we all have to learn to read Braille!”
Caitlin slapped at the back of his head in indignation. “Jeremy! You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”
“Yep!” He dodged her blows. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
The barge pilot continued punishing us for a good half minute before he finally tired of the game and set us free. The light drifted off in mindless silence to seek the river again, nosing its way over drifts of snow and a small log sticking up out of the ice.
Jeremy sat up again, moving slowly. His breath was coming in hitches. “Goddamn, I’m seeing spots,” he gasped.
“Me, too.” Paul’s voice had a rare hint of hilarity in it. He’d collapsed back into his seat and was rubbing at his eyes. “Shit. You dick. I may never see again.”
“Yeah, I know.” Jeremy flicked off the flashlight in his lap to let our pupils adjust to the darkness again. “Sorry about that. But I didn’t want to spoil the surprise by warning you.” He patted my wrist. “I’ve done that about a dozen times now.”
Caitlin was calming down. “I see.” There was a trace of unwonted humor in her voice as well. “Any particular reason, or are you just out of your mind?”
He rolled up his window before answering, and in the pause I could somehow feel his good spirits vanish, as abruptly as if a switch had been thrown. The mood in the car altered in that instant as well; Paul and Caitlin were just as attuned to him as I was. Jeremy turned away from the rest of us and rested his forehead against the cold glass of the driver’s door.
“It’s like being an astronaut on the moon or something,” he said in the stillness. “Know what I mean?”
All the levity had fled from his voice, replaced by something somber and frightening we’d all heard there before, a kind of hopeless yearning that seemed to have no source and no boundaries. He fiddled with the key chain in the ignition but didn’t turn on the engine. “It’s as if I’m out walking around on craters and hills in the dark, and all of a sudden the sun comes over the horizon, and, bam! It’s instant obliteration.” He paused again and his words faded to a whisper. “I love it.”
Even as a baby he had been prone to bizarre changes in disposition like this, and I had grown accustomed to them to the degree that they no longer shocked me as much as they perhaps should have. They still disturbed me, of course, but I knew from long experience that he would rally soon enough, if I just left him alone.
Caitlin reached out a hand and put it in his hair. Gestures of affection like this from her were a rarity, but Jeremy somehow brought them out in her.
“What is it, Jeremy? What’s wrong?” she asked him.
He shook his head to dislodge her fingers. “Nothing.” He started the car. “I just wanted you guys to see this tonight, that’s all.”
“Great,” Paul muttered. “That’s just great.” The inexplicable longing in his brother’s voice always upset him whenever it surfaced, but being Paul, of course, he would never admit it. “Can we go home now?”
CHAPTER 15
About two years after Jeremy began teaching at Carson, Paul decided to move across town into one of the faculty bungalows on the grounds of the Conservatory. (These so-called bungalows—Jeremy referred to them as “bungholes,” irritating Paul to no end—are little more than a row of flimsy shacks the Conservatory put up next to the river around World War I, to provide low-income housing for some of its grossly underpaid faculty. Nowadays the salaries at Carson are more than adequate to buy a decent home in Bolton, of course, but many of the younger teachers still seem to find the shacks inexplicably charming.) Paul tried to convince Jeremy to move in with him, but Jeremy declined the invitation, preferring the attic apartment Paul was vacating. A few months later Caitlin began her master’s degree in Ann Arbor, and with her removal to Michigan and Paul’s conspicuous absence from our daily home life, Jeremy took on his role of “only child” with gusto.
He’d sit next to me by the fire in the evenings when Arthur was on the road, and peer up from his newspaper now and then with a quizzical expression.
“What is it, dear?” I’d ask.
He’d pull at his ear. “Well, it’s nothing really. I was just wondering why you didn’t smother Paul and Caitlin at birth.” He wouldn’t wait for an answer to questions such as these; he only asked them to amuse me. “I’m serious. I would have enjoyed my childhood so much more without having to share you and Dad with those two leeches.”
“Liar,” I’d murmur. “You adore Paul and Caitlin, and you know it.”
“Once upon a time, maybe.” He’d pour himself another shot of whatever we were drinking for a nightcap. “But Paul’s turning into something of an ogre, and Cait
lin is fast becoming a first-class shrew. You may not see it yet, but I do.” He’d hold his glass up for a toast. “Well, here’s to how they were before the body snatchers got to them.”
I thought he was joking. I didn’t know he had the gift of prophecy.
Quite often the two of us played music in the evenings until my wrist couldn’t take it anymore, wading through all the literature for horn and piano. We read everything from Saint-Saens to Mozart to Maxwell Davies, and even though I could only handle about five minutes at a time (with frequent stops for self-medication) we played the hell out of whatever caught our fancy until, at last, I’d be forced to cry uncle. I shouldn’t have done it, of course, because the pain was intense, and afterwards I’d always have to ice my hand like an injured athlete to reduce the swelling. But I could never resist the temptation; it brought me too much pleasure.
When Arthur was home the three of us would occasionally even tackle a little of the Brahms trio (one of my personal favorites, but far too demanding for me to endure more than a few pages in one sitting), and it’s a pity there are no recordings of those impromptu performances, because both Arthur and Jeremy were transcendent. There were only a handful of musicians in the world who could match either of them, and rather than competing for “alpha-musician” status as you might have expected a normal father and a son to do, they feasted on each other’s abilities with true joy, using the opportunity to explore all the extreme possibilities of their instruments. Arthur was slightly more refined, of course, and could never refrain from showing off what his additional years had taught him, but Jeremy had an intensity that Arthur could not rival.
And to Arthur’s credit, he didn’t try. He let Jeremy take the lead when it came to passion, and he contented himself with being witty and restrained, and the combination of Jeremy’s youthful fire and Arthur’s polished maturity was heartbreaking to hear. They were equals, and both knew it—even though admitting such a thing was beyond either of them.
Nor was I too shabby, myself.
I may have had a ruined wrist, but I was still more than able to hold my own, even in such rarefied company. When my left hand wouldn’t allow me to do what was required, I’d find a way to compensate by using right-hand techniques I’ve never seen another pianist do, or even attempt to do. And when that failed, I’d come up with methods to manipulate the music itself, employing artistic license with a vengeance to solve various problems imposed by my physical limitations. My disability gave me a new understanding of my own talent, and I tapped into a reservoir of resources I hadn’t known was at my disposal. I learned to shade every note with an entire palette of bewitching colors; I taught myself to fill each silence with texture and meaning.
One time I looked up in irritation when Arthur and Jeremy both missed an entrance at the end of a piano solo, only to find them gaping at me. When I asked what the problem was, neither answered at first.
“Why are you just sitting there?” I demanded. “Have you forgotten how to count?”
Arthur finally shook his head and cleared his throat. “That was exceptional, Hester. Truly.” His voice was full of wonder. “You’d never know you were injured.”
Jeremy nodded. “Yeah. Jesus, Mom. What’s gotten into you? That was fucking outrageous.”
I believe I actually blushed. It felt so wonderful to be admired again for my playing, especially by those two. It gave me no illusions about regaining my performance career, of course; I was permanently maimed, and we all knew it. No matter how I tried to gut it out, I simply could not make it through an entire movement without stopping, and therefore I was useless on the stage.
But I could still make my husband and my son look at me as if I’d just turned water into wine.
Anyway, that type of “family” activity, though splendid, was rare, because Jeremy tended to make himself scarce when Arthur was around. It’s not that the two of them didn’t get along; it’s more that Jeremy was slowly beginning to distance himself from everybody but me.
When I say “slowly,” I mean “glacially,” by the way. The only reason I noticed anything wrong at all was because I saw him every day, week after week, season after season, whenever he wasn’t touring. At first I attributed his darkening moods to the usual causes for such behavior—the weather, or a touch of the flu, or an argument with a co-worker. But as time passed by, I began to suspect something else was going on besides his native inclination to occasional crankiness and depression.
How do you know when somebody’s spirit is dissolving? When does it become apparent that the will to live is utterly gone?
I was with my mother when she died, and with her, the transition was obvious. She had severe cancer, she refused chemotherapy, and she chose to spend her last few days at home. I sat beside her bed and watched the light flee from her eyes all at once; she’d had enough pain, and that was it—she was gone, regardless of how much longer her body lived.
But with Jeremy, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t have cancer, he wasn’t sick. He had more good days than bad, he was often cheerful, he never seemed so far down that he couldn’t spring back from whatever was troubling him. To me, there was always light in his eyes.
A false light, it turned out. No more trustworthy than a reflection on the water.
So the years passed. He fell in love with several girls (red-haired, imbecilic Gina lasted the longest, but feckless, desperate Shelley was the most promising), yet none of these relationships panned out. As he grew older he began to tour less, preferring to stay home, but his playing didn’t suffer as a result; if anything, he continued to grow in mastery, and he started to develop a formidable reputation as a teacher as well. He never had any inclination to move out of the attic apartment, he spent more and more time alone, and he quarreled frequently with everybody, including me.
He laughed, he cried. He dreamed, he drank, he copulated, he made music. He smoked his cigarettes, and he taught his students, and sometimes he sat on the porch for hours, silent and still as St. Booger, staring at the street. He loved and was loved in return, he read thousands of books (he was particularly fond of science fiction and fantasy), he listened to the radio every evening before bed, and he read the sports section of the newspaper every morning during baseball season, tracking—with fanatical devotion—the progress of the Chicago Cubs, even though he never once went to see them play. He complained about the weather, he loathed politics and television, and he toyed with the idea of attending church every once in a while, even though he didn’t really believe in God and found the whole concept of organized religion incomprehensible.
In other words, he lived a somewhat normal life.
But through it all he was still Jeremy. Funny, manic Jeremy Donovan, brilliant and gifted, acerbic and impatient, sweet and generous. For more than a dozen years after he returned from Curtis, there was only the everyday fact of him in the house, the solid, living and breathing human being who was my middle child and became my closest friend.
And until the last few months of his life, it never crossed my mind he could ever be any different, or that a time might come when he would ask me to kill him.
I began to find him up on the roof every so often, usually after work, but sometimes in the mornings, too, before the neighborhood woke up. If it had been anyone else, this might not have seemed so odd—the view from our roof was spectacular, and there was a small, flat area on the east side of the house, overlooking the driveway, that was accessible from the kitchen window of the attic apartment. It could be quite pleasant to sit up there with the town of Bolton spread out before you, and watch the boat traffic on the Mississippi River in the distance.
But heights had always horrified Jeremy. When he was a child, he would never go near the windows in the attic apartment, let alone venture on the roof. As bad as Paul was about traveling, Jeremy was far worse about heights; whenever he’d go up a flight of stairs in our house he’d clutch at the banister for dear life and keep his eyes fixed on his feet until he reached
the landing. (Paul and Caitlin tormented him for this, of course, and would often follow him up the stairs, begging him to turn around and look down at them. He’d ignore them until they’d try to unbalance him by slapping at his heels, then he’d bellow for me to come intervene.) For some reason, his phobia of heights didn’t extend to airplanes; as long as he had an aisle seat in the plane, he said flying never bothered him. And in the attic he survived by keeping the window curtains closed all the time, and hanging sheets from ceiling to floor in his hallway, so he couldn’t see the staircase as he went from room to room.
Dear Lord, he was odd.
Be that as it may, the first time he did his roof walk, I saw him when I stepped out to the driveway to get in my car for an early morning meeting at Carson. As I put my hand on the handle of the car door, I heard my name called from far above me, and I spun around on the asphalt next to St. Booger and gawked up at Jeremy. He was standing on the flat area of the roof, the toes of his shoes sticking over the edge of the shingles.
“Jeremy!” I screamed. “What in the name of God are you doing up there? Come down this instant!”
His laugh reverberated off the walls of the carriage house behind me. “Okay! I’ll be right there!”
I ran back inside and made it up the stairs in about ten seconds flat (I was considerably younger then; nowadays it feels as if it takes me the better part of an afternoon to reach the attic from the ground floor), then I barreled through Jeremy’s kitchen and poked my head out the open window. The sun was in my face so I had to shield my eyes to see him. He was still perched on the edge of the roof like a massive, brooding dove, staring down at the driveway.
I didn’t say anything at first because I didn’t want to startle him, but he knew I was there anyway.
“Morning, Mother,” he said over his shoulder. It was the middle of May and there was a light, cool breeze blowing. His voice was calm and pleasant, but he wouldn’t turn to meet my eyes. “It’s lovely up here, isn’t it?”