Thank You for the Music

by Jane McCafferty

  It’s dinner alone in a tiny restaurant. Families, babies, lovers. Outside an African man sits on a yellow blanket selling hand-carved wooden giraffes. She buys the tiniest giraffe of all, holds it in her open hand, then clenches it tightly. “A famous poet once said this is small enough to take with you when you die,” says the man, and smiles up at her. His beauty catches in her throat. She puts the giraffe in the pocket of her overalls and walks on.

  The gondoliers wave the tourists over to the canals. Julie goes and sits on the steps of the train station.

  Night falls. She puts her head down into her arms. Her mother’s face sweeps through her mind, and back again. I’m sorry.

  And then, a dog is suddenly beside her.

  It’s a dignified mutt. Some black lab in there. God knows what else. It sits beside Julie, staring straight ahead. Julie looks over at the dog, then stares straight ahead as if to fathom his vision. The dog looks over at Julie. From the corner of her eye she sees this. She turns her head to see the dog’s eyes, not quite looking at Julie’s eyes, avoiding them the way dogs do, as if they’re afraid of what they might find. The evening is lowering down, early October air like silk, cooling.

  Julie moves her hand to pet the dog’s back. Just a few strokes. The dog’s mouth opens, a little smile. She doesn’t want the dog to feel her loneliness. She doesn’t want this creature to bolt. The dog’s ear rises as if her touch makes an interesting sound.

  “Hey, buddy,” she finally says.

  The dog lowers his head. She pets it. She can feel the dog’s lovely bones. It wears no tags.

  Soon the dog stands up and places his head in Julie’s lap. This simple offering fills her with hope.

  “Hey, buddy.”

  She’d never had a dog, but visited the neighborhood dogs when she was small, and this Venetian dog reminds her of one of those—Cookie was his name, and he was owned by the Dunnigan family, who’d lost their oldest son in Vietnam. The mother stayed indoors after that, neighbors early on would go to her window and say, “Mary, we miss you.” The father would let Julie into the fence to play with Cookie. This dog here in Venice has the same gentleness, and a similar coat.

  They sit together for a long time. A child approaches, asks a question in what might be Portuguese, and Julie knows the question is “Can I pet him?” and she nods. The child sits and pets the dog. Another child does the same, this one a little English girl who’s been dressed to look like a sexy young woman. “Get away from that dog!” a woman calls to her. “That dog could be rabid!” And when the girl pretends not to hear, the woman nudges a man, and the man comes and scoops the girl in her tiny high heels up into his arms, and carries her away.

  After an hour of petting the dog, who seems sleepy, Julie decides to test the relationship. She gets up. Will the dog get up? Yes, it will. She walks down the steps, and the dog follows. She goes back to the restaurant, and orders some beef to go, telling the dog, “Wait.” She doesn’t care that buying the meat means she won’t be renting a room tonight. She’s slept in train stations before.

  When she comes out, the dog is trotting away.

  “Hey!”

  He stops. (It is a he, she sees now.)

  “Come here, boy!”

  He comes.

  She feeds him a little meat, and likes how his tongue licks his chops. She’s crouched down against the side wall of a tiny café now. An old man peeks his head around the corner, “Ciao! Che c’e?!” he says. “Come va?” He looks at the dog, waves them in.

  She and the dog go into the tiny café, where all the old men speak Italian and drink from tiny glasses. They speak Italian to the dog, too, and buy Julie wine.

  The dog gets a bone. Bravissimo. As if they’d been waiting for him. He chews on that, then Julie gives him the rest of the beef. They ask the dog questions in Italian. They pet the dog. They love the dog, who lays down by Julie’s feet. She leans on the bar.

  The only other woman in there is from Germany, older, a tall, big-boned artist named Ingeborg, and Ingeborg invites Julie and the dog to sleep in her room that night. “Two beds,” she tells Julie. “And I am not there later on. I am probably in bed with one of these men.” She draws Julie a map of the pensione, and shows her a large, brassy key. “I’m turning fifty tomorrow,” she whispers in Julie’s ear. “I am not sleeping alone tonight! Better to get some love, right?”

  “Right!” Julie says, and a man gives her another glass of the most excellent wine. “Grazie.”

  He winks, makes a kissing sound.

  Ingeborg and an older, smiling man with Einstein’s sadly soulful eyes and a birthmark like grapejuice spilled down his neck accompany Julie and the dog across a moonlit square, through a red door, up a narrow stairway, into a dark hall. They are speaking French to one another. Ingeborg opens the door, tells Julie to leave the key on the table in the morning. Then both the old man and Ingeborg kiss Julie’s cheeks, and the dog’s head, and then they are gone, giggling down the steps together.

  Julie smiles down at the dog. “Hey, boy,” she whispers.

  She is so tired. Someone outside is playing a flute. The dog is old, she realizes suddenly. His coat is still lovely enough, but the way his bones poke through, you can tell he’s no spring chicken. She takes off her brown boots, her overalls, her embroidered blouse. Stands in her underwear in the dimly lit room, tiny flowers raining down the ancient wallpaper. So very quiet. The dog sits looking past Julie, out the window. It’s as if the dog wishes he too could take off his clothes. A long hesitation fills the room. Julie kneels down beside him, pets him, and for the first time he makes a sound. It’s almost a whimper. She stands up. Takes off her bra. Gets into the little bed under the window, props herself up on her elbows so she can see the dog, who continues to look toward the window. The moonlit dog.

  “Come here, boy,” she whispers, and pats the bed beside her.

  The dog ignores her.

  “Here, sweet boy,” she says, a little louder. “Come on up.”

  He doesn’t move. It occurs to her that he might be thirsty. There’s a cup on the table, and she gets up to fill it with water in the tiny bathroom. Is very happy when the dog follows her in. She can feel his warm body against her legs. Kneels down, lets his tongue lap the water from the cup. “Just what I wanted,” he seems to say. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  She fills it again, again he drinks, sloshing it all over her.

  “Okay, now let’s just get some sleep,” she says, and knows the dog will join her on the bed. She slips off her underwear, kicks them off her foot, white with blue stars.

  It is so wonderful, the way the dog stretches out, warm and dark, its head turned sideways on the pillow, its eyes for one moment looking into hers, then closing. To be naked in bed with a warm, dark dog in the city of Venice.

  “Good night, boy. Sweet dreams.”

  He licks her face.

  She kisses his head.

  Feels his body, solid and close.

  Says a prayer for her mother, another for the whole world.

  Another for her mother.

  Sleeps.

  DEAR MISTER SPRINGSTEEN

  August 12, 2002

  Dear Mister Springsteen,

  I can hardly bear to listen to you singing on The Rising.

  And yet I do bear it: I don’t want my heart locked up, I want it torn out of my chest where it belongs, so thank you, Mr. Springsteen.

  I know most of your fans would not address you so formally, but for me you’ve been like a revered teacher, and I just can’t go calling you by your first name.

  I’ve spent most of my life listening to you, and it’s all been good, but this new album makes me feel I’m diving into the dark throat of the last ocean only to find a light waiting to swallow me whole.

  It’s you singing “But love and duty called you someplace higher/somewhere up the stairs into the fire.”

  I didn’t know those rescue workers personally, but listening to your song, I know transcend
ence is real as smoke, and the music puts it deeper in my blood.

  What is this pleasure we take in sorrow? Why do I stay up late into the night, spinning your CD until my whole body is one large ear? Finally I fall into a dream, where often you’re waiting for me, in some dive bar with bad lighting, battered guitar in hand, glass of water shining on a table behind you. (I’ve been dreaming of you for almost thirty years, why stop now?) In the last dream you gave me tips on how to make my garden organic, then you rubbed ashes on my forehead like a priest.

  The Rising sidles me up next to the doorway of death, and tells me that beyond that door is something wildly unimaginable and beautiful. In other words, I believe in heaven when I listen. With every song, heaven gets bigger, the sky opening and opening beyond the music.

  And on this side of the heaven door, our lives with their kitchens and kisses, bloodstains and backpacks; they seem so beautifully small, like when the astronauts first photographed Earth from space.

  And because certain people went up the stairs, into the fire, here I am in my living room in the middle of the night, pacing, unable to sleep, but not tired.

  I’ve never felt less tired, Mr. Springsteen.

  Had I not been up so late listening to you three nights ago, I would’ve missed the knock that came at my door. Normally, at three in the morning, if a knock came at my door, I’d run upstairs and spy down from the bathroom window to see who it was. If it was anyone strange, I’d not even think of answering it; I live in a neighborhood where people get robbed, and just a few miles from a place where young people get shot in boarded-up buildings. And now that my husband doesn’t live here anymore, I’m even warier, not that he ever had a gun or anything, but I’d invested him with all sorts of power.

  But this record of yours had transported me into another realm night after night, six nights in a row, and my kids were visiting their father in Chicago for two long weeks, so alongside of missing them, because of your music, my nights were dreamy with a kind of forgiveness, and I walked in a trance to the door and opened it to this black boy who stood looking off to the side as if he’d forgotten what he was going to say. Or as if he expected me to tell him why he was there. He wore a hooded sweatshirt, despite the heat. Maybe he was thirteen. The sight of him rendered me speechless. Finally he looked at me and said, which in retrospect I find funny, “Why you up?”

  He was skinny, with long arms and long, beautiful hands. He reminded me of someone. He looked over my shoulder toward your voice in my house, as if you might appear smiling from around a corner. “Why am I up?” I said. “Because life is short. And why did you knock at my door?” I looked at his dark, steady eyes. I was devoid of fear; when your veins are so filled with a certain kind of music, I guess there’s no room for fear. Besides, he just seemed lost.

  “I seen the light was on.”

  “Then come in, sir,” I said. I kept trying to figure out who he reminded me of.

  He walked into the house, his hands shoved into the sweatshirt, his eyes big and settling on the abandoned piano my husband and I hauled into our house last year. He walked over to it. On top of the piano were some family pictures: my father in front of his Plymouth, my brother in his army uniform in 1969, my husband on a bike on a rainy day, my daughter spinning in a field the year she was three, her face thrown back to the sun.

  “Why you let me in?” he said, looking quickly over at me, then turning back toward the pictures.

  “Because you knocked.”

  “I could be a killer.”

  He had the softest voice.

  “But you aren’t. Come sit down with me. Come listen to this song.” I walked over toward the couch.

  “Or a crackhead.” He stayed there by the piano, his head bowed down now, as if with some sudden, heavy thought.

  “You’re no crackhead.”

  “I have a gun.”

  “On you?”

  For a keen moment my trust wavered like heat in the air between us. For that moment I knew that this music of yours had made me crazy. I was glad my kids were off in Chicago with their reasonable father. My pounding heart said I was putting my life on the line like a fool. But then he turned around and said, “No.”

  “So where’s your gun then?”

  He shrugged. His eyes flashed up at me and I saw who he must have been when he was five. One of those kids with an infectious laugh, eyes so soft and trusting they made strangers on buses stare in wonder or guilt. I could see he’d had to work hard to mold himself a mask of suspicion.

  I sat down on the gray couch and tipped my head back to call him over. “Come sit down. I don’t bite.” He slowly walked over, took a tentative seat, waited a second, then slouched down in the lamplight as if fatigue had ordered him to do so. He smelled of night air. His body, though thin and gangly, was surprisingly still. Not like I’d expected; no bouncing leg, no snapping fingers like most boys his age. In his stillness he seemed heavy despite his slender frame, and he closed his eyes and said he was tired; he’d been out walking all night long.

  “Why?”

  “Because I got to.” Now he opened his eyes and stole a glance my way. It hit me at once who he reminded me of. A boy named Desean who’d lived next door to my mother in Baltimore before she died. Desean Hughes, with his smart, wide-set eyes, was a fifth-grade author of a play called Try to Be Good! He’d told me all about it, years ago, when I visited my mother for Christmas. All these kids trying hard to be good, but it was just impossible, was the theme of his play.

  “You remind me of a boy I once knew. A playwright.”

  He didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes again. His weariness might have been contagious, had I not been possessed by “The Fuse.”

  “You like this music?” I said.

  “S’okay.”

  “It’s Bruce Springsteen.”

  “Who?”

  “Bruce Springsteen.”

  His right shoulder twitched in an attempted shrug.

  “You’ve never heard of Bruce?”

  “Bruce Willis.”

  “You’ve never even heard of Springsteen? And you’re from Pittsburgh?” (I was mostly teasing; I know your audience tends to be pale people who don’t like their jobs much, like me.)

  “Ain’t from Pittsburgh, I just moved here. I’m from Allentown.” Again he stole a glance at me.

  “That’s close enough.”

  “He like a country singer?”

  I laughed. “No! What do you like? Rap?”

  “Hip-hop and doo-wop.”

  “Doo-wop? What?”

  “Doo-wop,” he said, emphatic, a little perturbed.

  “Why? I mean, how?”

  “My great grandpap’s a doo-wop man. He was Horace Pope. Horace Pope and the Blue Tenders, later just called the Blue Tenders.”

  “The Blue Tenders,” I said. “Horace Pope and the Blue Tenders. I like it.”

  He sat up straight now, and seemed prepared to be energized. He widened his eyes. “Blue Tenders were from Allentown. They were truly famous. My great grandpap wrote all their songs.”

  “I like the sound of the Blue Tenders,” I said. “I’d like to hear them.”

  “Some of the brothers is dead now.”

  “Still, I’d like to hear the old records.”

  “Hard to get. Very hard to get. Grandiose collector items.”

  He put his head back again and closed his eyes and I saw his beauty was a boy’s beauty on the brink. I wanted to kiss his forehead, I wanted him to live in a different world. I wondered if he’d ever had to hear people say his kind was an endangered species.

  “Listen to this song. Okay?”

  I stood up and put on the perfect “My City of Ruins.” I gave him the little book of lyrics, opened up to the last page, and he sat up and held his eyes wide and read them as you sang.

  When it was over, he looked at me and said, “That’s a prayer.”

  “That’s right. You a believer?”

  “Sometimes. Read t
he Bible, fight truth decay.” Again his child eyes flashed.

  “Hmmm. You go to church?”

  “Back in Allentown. Sometimes now, over in Wilkinsburg.” He turned and looked at me. “So why you stay up so late?”

  “Why do you?”

  “I got to walk.”

  In the distance we heard a siren.

  I reached over and grabbed his hand and held it with both of mine. His eyes narrowed, he tried to pull his hand back, and I let it go. Silence. No eye contact. “Can we hear that song again?” he said.

  “‘City of Ruins’? Comin’ up. You have good taste.” I put the song on again, this time a little louder. I came back and sat beside him. We listened in silence for a while, our eyes lowered.

  I thought of how I loved you, Mr. Springsteen, when I was sixteen, and took a bus all the way to Asbury Park, New Jersey, three years of listening to you already in my heart. I just walked around that town alone singing “4th of July, Asbury Park” and “Incident on 57th Street.”

  My husband, in the early years, used to make me tell him that story again and again.

  And how the next year in psychology class Sister Berenice had us write down our peak experiences in life; we were learning about Abraham Maslow. I wrote down three things: getting a dog when I was nine, the day my brother came back from Vietnam, and the day I walked around Asbury Park, New Jersey.

  Your city of ruins.

  Pittsburgh’s got its ruins, too.

  All kinds of ruins, some you can see, most you can’t.

  “I got to go to Peabody High School soon,” he said. He stood up suddenly, as if he suddenly remembered school was starting not in two weeks but now. He walked to the window and looked out at the dark. “You know Peabody High School?” he said to the night.

  It was right down the street, beyond ugly, a typical punishment of a building. No real windows. Gunfire on the premises more than once. A failing school, as they called it.