“But what if you get it?”
“No point in thinking about that. It’s a long shot.”
“But you’ve thought about it, haven’t you? They could give you the green light. There’s a chance. And I’m sure you’ve considered that and dreamt up another whole life for yourself.”
“It could help both of us.”
“That’s shit and you know it. Shore isn’t looking for a bass player. And that isn’t the point. We’ve got something here. We’ve got a sound and people who come to hear us play. And this is a good town for music. And nobody’s telling us what we have to do or when we have to do it. But you’re willing to piss on that.” Brian kicks the snow. “Like they say at the Mill, CBT stands for ‘Chicago’s Best.’ Only you don’t buy it.”
“It’s just a shot. I need to find out what it’s like.”
“I understand that. I do. But you could’ve let me in on it before you made your plans, before you dragged me out here in the snow and started complaining about your lousy socks.”
“I’m sorry. Is that what you want?”
“No. I want you to go. Have a great audition. I hope you get the gig. It’ll be great for both of us.” Brian stops at the door. “Get the right shoes,” he says. “It snows in Philly, too.”
JEN’S waiting in the kitchen when he gets home. She puts two bowls of vegetable soup on the table and throws the ladle in the sink. He fills a glass with ice, pulls out the vodka, and pours himself a double.
“So you told him,” she says.
He sips his drink and nods.
“Is he happy for you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. He said it’ll be great for both of us.”
“What else did he say?”
“He told me to get the right shoes.”
“You mean he told you where to get off. Was he angry, hurt?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, you can be sure about me – I’m angry.”
He stirs his soup.
“It isn’t what you want that bothers me,” she says. “It’s just that your timing is bad.”
“Tom says I have a great sense of time.”
She sweeps her hair to one side and secures it with a silver clip. “You’re impatient.”
“You’ve mentioned that before.”
“You go too fast. You want everything right now.”
“So what’s the alternative? I suppose you’d like me at home doing the laundry or watching TV?”
“That’s a ridiculous thing to say. The alternative is to find time for me, for your friends. Everything you do has an edge to it. Where’s the joy?”
“It’s hard for me to let things slide.”
“That’s because you’re out to prove something.”
“Can we eat?” he says. “The soup is getting cold.”
“It’s all about him,” says Jen.
“Leave my father out of it.”
“Why? You say you failed him. So until you decide otherwise, it’ll always be about him.”
“I’d like to change the subject,” he says.
“All right,” she says. “Let’s talk about your mother instead.”
“Fine.”
“Too bad you couldn’t take her to the airport. We had quite a chat.”
“What about?”
“I’m not sure how to describe it. Social climbing, I guess.”
“Her family’s from Bloomfield Hills. It was a step down marrying my father.”
“It wasn’t that,” says Jen. “She thinks when two people are in love, when they’re committed to each other’s dreams and doing good work, other people are drawn to them. She said it’s dangerous to attract admirers with happiness and talent, especially when you’re inexperienced. She said it’s easy to get used.”
He puts down his spoon. “I’ve never heard her say anything like that.”
“Well, that’s pretty much what she said – right before she got out of the car.”
He pours more vodka.
“You’re going to miss my sister’s wedding.”
“Your sister won’t miss me.”
“Probably not,” says Jen.
ALREADY he sees a thin layer of snow where he just shoveled. He likes the look of it, inviting in a stark sort of way. When Heather comes, she’ll have a good place to park. There’s less visibility, he thinks, now that the wind’s kicked up. He turns his back to the gust and tries to rub some warmth into his hands.
Through the blowing snow, he makes out a shape that seems to be a station wagon. I’ve paid the rent, he thinks, walking to the foot of the driveway, carrying his shovel like a weapon. I won’t let her pull in – no time now for a visit. But as the car approaches, he realizes that he has it all wrong. It’s a foreign job, elongated but sleek, and at the wheel is a gloved and bearded man, rather than his born-again landlord. The car glides by as if it were floating on the snow.
He hears a sound in the distance, maybe a chain saw or a snowblower – a nasal whine like a voice through a bullhorn, like a woman announcing the imminent departure of a bus.
The station overflows with people. His ragged suitcase sits on the wet pavement, but he won’t put down his guitar. “You need to get a winter coat,” he says. “Your lips are turning blue.” Jen huddles against him.
“When will you be home?”
“Early next week,” he says. “Tell your sister congratulations. When I get back, we’ll go to the Green Mill for a drink.”
She shivers but is otherwise still. She seems frozen to his body. He kisses her.
“It’s time,” he says. The wind pushes him onto the bus. He gives his ticket to the driver and then turns to see Jen, pale and stiff, disappearing into the crowd.
It’s been a long afternoon, he thinks. He opens the garage, stamps his feet, and leans the shovel against the wall. He trips on a paint can and stumbles, catching his arm on the truck’s side-view mirror. His workbench, tools, and accumulated boxes allow less and less room to maneuver. Parking the pickup in front of the house would be an easy solution, but he doesn’t like the idea of turning his garage into an attic. He struggles to unlace his boots. He has the first one off when Heather pulls into the driveway. He hobbles out to greet her. She tells him to go inside. “You can’t come out here in one boot,” she says.
Heather follows him into the house brushing off snow and untying her scarf, and her red hair catching the hallway light makes the dullness of the afternoon and the tedium of the leaking faucet suddenly disappear.
He pours milk in a saucepan and sets it on a low flame. “No marshmallows for me,” says Heather. He spoons chocolate powder into large mugs and puts blue paper napkins on the counter. “Hungry?” he says.
“Not really.” She checks the photographs taped to the freezer door. “Look at you,” she says, “with that long hair. And Brian James. Now he was a handsome man.”
He keeps an eye on the milk. “Thanks a lot,” he says.
She moves in closer. “Was this up the last time I was here? Jennifer took this, didn’t she? You’ve been cleaning out your closet again.” Heather tips her head and frowns. “You know, you can take down these old pictures of me whenever you want. Maybe you could replace ’em with my senior portrait.”
He chuckles. “How’d it turn out?”
She picks up the napkins and walks over to the kitchen table. “Oh, the pictures aren’t in yet. I’m not sure when they’ll be ready.”
He hands her a steaming mug. They sit across from each other stirring the hot chocolate.
“Has that new boyfriend of yours booked you for the prom?”
“No, he hasn’t. And what’s the deal? You never ask about boys.”
“I know. I’ve decided to change my ways.”
“Has Mom been talking to you?”
“Not about this. I just thought that if it’s important to you, maybe I should know about it.”
“Okay,” says Heather. “So how’s your love life these days?”
/> “That hurts,” he says.
She puts on a serious expression. “C’mon, Dad. If it’s important to you, I should probably know about it.”
“You think you’re pretty damn clever, don’t you?”
“You can’t blame me for inheriting your brains.”
“First sarcasm and now flattery.”
“I watch and learn,” she says.
“What would you like to talk about?”
“I don’t know.” She looks out the window. “Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know anything about. A snowy day is good for that.”
“Like what?”
“Like one of your stories about H.M.” Her eyes wander back to the freezer door. “Of course, you’ve never said much about Jennifer.”
“Havelock Moore was a pirate. I’ve told you that story.”
“Well, Jennifer then. The only thing I know about her is that Mom says you should’ve married her.”
“Your mother said that?”
“More than once.”
He wants to ask if Maureen said it with bitterness or sympathy. But he knows better than to ask Heather for that kind of judgment. “How about Brian James?” he says. “You seem pretty interested in him.”
“You bet,” she says. “Let’s move to the living room.”
He settles on the couch and Heather flops down next to him. He balances the mug of hot chocolate on his leg and takes a moment to collect his thoughts. Then he begins the story of Crystal James, a blues singer, a churchgoer, and Brian’s mother.
“Everybody who heard her sing and who knew her last name thought she was the sister of Etta James,” he says. “‘Crystal can make a hard man cry,’ they said. ‘If you listen too long, she’ll break your heart and leave you with the pieces.’”
“That sounds like a song,” says Heather.
“It is.”
She smiles. She reaches over and presses his right hand between her two smaller hands.
He continues: “Crystal got married young. Her husband, a drummer, managed their band and booked gigs all over Chicago. Then Brian was born. He listened to his mother in church. He said she praised God and railed against sin. But the preacher didn’t like it that two members of his congregation were ‘prostituting their God-given talent.’ So the preacher started talking to Crystal. He wanted to make himself the band’s new manager – that’s what Brian always said.”
He sips his hot chocolate. “I could tell you a different story.”
“No. This one’s fine,” says Heather.
“It isn’t really about Brian. You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“All right,” he says, not entirely convinced. “Crystal went on singing and trying to explain things to the preacher. She sang until a new baby began to show, until the crowded clubs and the late hours made her sick. She ran a high fever and went to a doctor too late. When the fever spiked, she lost the child. The preacher said afterward that her loss was a punishment for wasting her God-given talent – ‘for singing sinful songs in houses of sin!’”
“How old is Brian?” says Heather.
“Close to my age,” he says. “If he isn’t fifty already, he will be soon enough.”
He watches Heather’s face as she rubs the bones and joints of his hand. He hates that his fingers are crooked, almost swollen.
“After the miscarriage,” he says, “she figured the Lord was speaking to her through the preacher, ordering her to sing only in church. When she told her husband, he picked up a lamp and threw it across the room.”
He stops but Heather nods, urging him to finish. He says, “The band went for a while without a singer, but they eventually split up, and Brian’s father drifted away, taking his drums and the family car. Crystal James sang only in church after that. By the time I met Brian, she no longer sang at all.”
“Is that true?” says Heather.
“There it is – always the same question. Don’t you believe my stories? Do you think I make them up?”
She giggles. “What about the Black & White Club?”
“What do you mean? What happens there is true.” He smiles. “Well, maybe not all of it.”
“Why are your stories always so sad?”
“Sad stories are easy to remember,” he says.
“My life isn’t like that,” says Heather.
“That’s a good thing. Do you want more hot chocolate?”
“No thanks. I want you to play a song.”
He looks at the black case in the corner of the room. “Not today,” he says. “The strings need changing.”
“That’s a crummy excuse. Next you’ll say you don’t know where you put the amplifier.”
“I know where it is. But it hasn’t been fired up in a long time.”
“Well, let’s find out if it still works.”
Heather hurries across the room. She sees a thick layer of dust on the case. She grabs it and swings it around, steps between the couch and the chair, pushes a stack of magazines on the floor, and lays it on the coffee table. She opens the case.
She recognizes the guitar: the pear-shaped body with f-holes and a venetian cutaway at the top, the sunburst finish, a dark edge that bleeds to red and then yellow, and the gold-plated pickups. “It’s beautiful,” she says. “Even more than I remember.”
He disappears down the hall and returns with a small amplifier. He slips off the cover and plugs in the power line. He pulls the guitar out of its case and rests it on his leg. “Open that compartment,” he says, “and grab me a cord.” He checks the action. The strings feel all right. He rearranges the extra pillows on his end of the couch, positions the amp and the coffee table so that the space feels uncluttered, and then flips the power switch and gives the tubes a minute to warm up.
He turns up the volume and starts tuning, making faces when the strings won’t cooperate. Having come this far, he feels exhausted. The guitar sits heavy on his thigh and the neck is cold.
“How are your fingers?” says Heather.
“Okay,” he says, wishing for a moment that she didn’t know the truth. He shakes out his left hand like a wet rag. “What should I play?”
“An old song,” she says. “Something you and Brian used to do.”
He lets out a deep breath. He starts with three notes that to Heather sound almost uncertain, though afterward she’ll think of them as leaves falling. Then he plays the first chords, a sound so rich that later when she learns the title, “September Song,” she’ll say that somehow she could picture the colors of autumn – bright reds and yellows, the warmth of gold becoming brown. But for now, she listens, hearing him sing a few words under his breath, watching his face for any sign of pain.
The song keeps him from thinking. Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December. He moves by instinct, hearing what his fingers produce in the second before he plays it. The only time is the beat, the temporal quality of the measure that he now seems to shorten or lengthen, phrasing and rephrasing the melody as the mood demands. Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few . . .
As the final notes fade, he glances at Heather. He sees her curled up on the other end of the couch, her eyes closed.
The amplifier pops when he shuts it off.
“Don’t stop,” she says. “I’m not sleeping.”
He rubs his left hand. “Did I pass the audition?”
Heather opens her eyes. “You always pass the audition,” she says.
“Jesus – ”
“What’s wrong?” she says.
“That’s what Brian said. More than once.”
“Isn’t it good to pass an audition?”
“Not always,” he says.
“Why not?” says Heather.
“Forget it.” He unplugs the guitar and puts the cord away. He wipes the neck and the fingerboard with a soft cloth. He lays the guitar in the case, flips the top down, and snaps the latches closed.
chapter three
HAVELOCK MOORE, drawn irresistibly t
o the radio, turns up the volume. He recognizes the tune, “Stardust,” and finds himself speaking the words under his breath. The melody . . . haunts my reverie, and I am once again with you . . .
The music buoys him up. It carries him forward and back. He floats in time, returning to the river, the silver Detroit River, a luminous streak that inspires him, even at this juncture, to dream.
He stares at the gold dial.
He tries to stop thinking. He concentrates, hoping for a steady calm, but the borders in his mind give way. Now, no matter the effort, none of it can be forgotten, not the Great War or the wars that followed, not the crossings or the tricks of navigation, and certainly not the lies, expedient though they were, or the grim betrayals, the costs, the necessities of doing business.
Be smart, he thinks, hold fast to a line – but the song and the river run . . .
HE TAKES up the planks and lowers the first case into the bilge.
The air is thick with humidity. A cold sweat streams down his face. He wears leather gloves and lifts one case at a time. He feels grateful for the weather: clouds, no wind, and a deep, impenetrable darkness.
It is 1932. He’s made the crossing without trouble. Stepping off the boat, he turns and looks at Detroit.
He does most of his work after midnight. He starts from the Detroit shore and travels less than a mile without running lights to the Windsor shore, where he moors at an unlit pier and loads the waiting cargo. He moves with rehearsed precision and keeps noise to an absolute minimum.
WHEN the work requires silence, he thinks of his mother mending a tear in his shirt or trousers and wanting him to stay with her in the hush of their apartment, only the two of them, his father dead before the War. He sees with the clarity of a picture the peeling brown door, its dead bolt thrown, the gap between the door and the threshold stuffed with a thin rug to keep out the winter draft. Then he sees his mother’s long hair swept to one side, and her thick hands pushing and pulling a needle through coarse fabric, drawing and cinching the thread, the hypnotic rhythm of a woman stitching sails. And again, like a recurring dream, her breathing, the silence spun by her steady hands, and the longed-for peace of the living room vanish with the creaking of wooden steps, with footfalls that approach and finally stop at the peeling door. His mother looks up.
Of Song and Water Page 5