20

by John Edgar Wideman

  “They'll probably need the bathroom anyway.”

  “Opal, will you please stop it? You aren't helping. You really aren't.”

  “I'm sorry. I've just turned fifty. It's made me touchy.”

  Theophane considers, decides to say nothing, opens and reads again the letter from her friend, a nun in Indianapolis.

  Why are joy and sadness so inextricably mixed? Memory and desire. I have a third-year student who is setting parts of The Waste Land to music for women's choir. She rehearses her singers in a basement room where someone is growing an ivy philodendron on a high windowsill. I listen to the voices, study the deep green of leaves spilling over the cool basement wall, and it seems to me there is some important thing I need to know, hidden in the voices of these young women.

  One day last week I drove home by St. Luke's Hospital where nuns still wear habits. I paid a dollar to a parking attendant and sat quietly in the lobby of the hospital for an hour to watch the nuns. This recalled for me, oddly, not my childhood among teaching sisters but nuns in old films, moving across the landscape of faraway countries bringing succor to the needy. I saw a priest who looked like actor Barry Fitzgerald.

  An hour later, moving through the glut of Chicago traffic, this experience lost all reality for me. I wondered if I had, indeed, been at St. Luke's. Sometimes this happens to me when I am teaching. I fancy a student will suddenly look at me and discover I am not a teacher at all, but an uncertain young woman like herself, masquerading in a middle-aged body. The two things are not precisely the same.

  ————

  “Fifty,” I say in the dark, moving close to Howie.

  “I'm glad you're not fat,” he says against my throat. It is the lopsided compliment too-thin women receive all of their lives. “Jack Webster's wife must be three feet across in the butt.” He strokes my skinny butt gratefully.

  “Howie, I need to know something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you think about girls? I want you to tell me.”

  “All the time,” he answers promptly. “That's all I think about, naked girls standing in long lines, day and night.”

  “Please, I want to know. I'm not young anymore.”

  “Neither am I,” says Howie, refusing to play games.

  I do this to him almost daily, compulsively.

  ————

  Theophane, my closest friend, is silent across the table. I wonder what her fantasies are, what nuns dream about.

  ————

  Howie is an engineer, of the old school: get the work out. Georgia Tech, class of ’51. He does not spend time planning utopias as many of the younger men do. Such things may come. Howie has no objection. But he isn't counting on it.

  He flies to Boston (often) to supervise the installation of packaging machinery. In his pockets and in the expensive briefcase I gave him for Christmas he carries calipers, socket wrenches, locking pliers, a set of screwdrivers. Traveling, he is a walking hardware store. When he goes through airport security, he buzzes. Howie always buzzes. In an illogical, ridiculous way this pleases me. I'm glad I am married to a man who buzzes in airport security.

  “Bring me something from Boston,” I say petulantly.

  Howie dutifully complies. At the end of the week he returns, bringing me two rolls of Lifesavers and a coffee mug. You can't shop in airports.

  I thank him with a thin smile, set the mug on a kitchen shelf, serve dinner with cool, elaborate gestures, making it clear that I have been wounded.

  At four in the morning I wake suddenly, gripped with remorse, gut-wrenching terror. Howie sleeping peacefully beside me is fifty-four, could die at any time. He has passed the age where people say, “What a tragedy, so young.” They would say, “Howard Franklin? What did he have?” I slip from bed in the darkness, go to a hall closet and dig out the old air force jacket Howie wore in college, bury my face in it and weep piteously, seeing my husband in his grave and wondering what I should do with the second car. I have never learned to make out an automobile title. I determine to learn at once. This small decision calms me and I am glad Howie has not heard nor seen me. My hands release the jacket and I picture this calm, capable woman I have become: giving directions, signing papers, saying, “What, after all, is death? A change in mode from major to minor, a shift in tempo, a variation on a theme.” All of our children are dead. Why not Howie? Why not me? Such things are easy. That's it, isn't it?

  ————

  My mother never understood why all of our babies died. One two three four five. Like little Indians.

  “Darling, people have one miscarriage,” she said, visiting me at the hospital. “Everyone has one miscarriage. It's common.” Somehow this was meant as instruction, like telling me to whip the fudge just until it loses its glossy sheen.

  I swam up from a fuzzy sea of contradictions and drugs—scopolamine in those days—and pressed my fingertips against the outline of my uterus, a curious, swollen mass lying just beneath the skin of my abdomen. Then, for the one and only time in my life, I had a vision. I saw my mother going through supermarkets and department stores, making her private survey, stopping women with plump babies and curly-headed toddlers. All of them told her they had, indeed, had one miscarriage, between babies, probably a deformed fetus and all for the good. And mother, nodding, made check marks on a piece of paper that looked like a birth announcement. Scopolamine works on the mind.

  Mother twisted her handkerchief, displayed courage, was admirable. Then bitter, shivery little sobs forced themselves from her throat. Against her will, she cried. Pushed past her limit, by me. Life until that time had been a trick done with mirrors; then the mirrors were snatched away.

  This memory is self-serving. I savor the delicious tang of betrayal like rich dessert across my tongue, pity poor Theophane who has not suffered as I have, feel generous toward her because of this.

  ————

  What, after all, is death? I know death the way I know a student composition. “Wait until you hear it!” cries the eager student. But I hear it already, just looking at the score. Epistemology of music notation.

  ————

  After the fifth and final miscarriage, Howie and I lay side by side in the darkness, numb and shaken. “It's going to be all right,” he said protectively, but with a hostile edge to his voice. Someone was to blame. Soon he would find the target for his anger. Any minute now. But he never did. Howie never got revenge. What he got was a promotion.

  I got Robert, eleven years old, near-sighted. “Mrs. Franklin?” Robert's mother was an eager, huffy little voice in the telephone. “I understand you used to play violin with the symphony.” When excited, she talked through her nose.

  “I don't play any more. I don't teach.”

  “Robert isn't doing at all well in the class at school. We want private lessons for him with a skilled person.” She came down hard on “skilled.” Had she already interviewed and rejected a dozen teachers? Robert's mother was formidable. She did all of the right things for the wrong reasons, knew that any violinist who refused to teach her son had to be good. Damned good. “Don't give me an answer today, Mrs. Franklin.” Robert's mother eventually found her true vocation, now sells insurance.

  ————

  “Vibrate slowly,” I said to Robert, “like an owl Who-uh, who-uh, who-uh. After you smooth out the wiggle-waggle, you can speed up.” Nobody had ever said this to Robert before and he didn't mind trying it. He was fascinated with a teacher who wore velvet pants and chain-smoked through the lesson.

  “Can I ride in your Porsche?” he asked. At the end of the lesson, his mother handed me a five-dollar bill.

  That night at dinner I showed the money to Howie. “I can buy my own cigarettes.” He grinned, then he got up and put brandy in the coffee. I carried the bill folded in my wallet all week, and walked through shops looking at things that cost five dollars.

  Incredibly, Robert liked me. He brought me sticks of Dentyne gum and told me jokes.<
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  “To read a signature in sharps,” I said to him “look at the last sharp on the right and go up one.

  “Jesus, that's a neat trick,” said Robert, who was just learning to swear.

  I laid plans to steal Robert and flee to Australia. I'd call Howie from Brisbane and make him understand. Or maybe Canada. Howie could commute while the litigation dragged out.

  Robert, who was ordinary, brought in his wake Clarissa, who was exceptional. Plain, stout, brilliant. Eyes as cool and clever as a leopard's. She was fifteen, and she hated me. Her vibrato was pure, no wiggle-waggle, and she knew it. She knew everything.

  “All music imitates the human voice,” I told her.

  “I know that,” said Clarissa.

  “Sing the music as you play. When you're able to do that, you can just breathe with it. The length of one breath is the basis for all phrasing.”

  “I know that,” said Clarissa, a reflex. She was an inch taller than I with powerful arms and hands and the perfect apple skin that plump little girls often carry into adolescence. When she is forty, I thought, she will be a handsome woman. She reminded me of pictures I had seen of Anna Freud. Except for the hatred in her face.

  But she came back week after week, often with her lesson memorized. “Your instincts are good,” I said to her. “Trust them. When the wispy little business starts in your head, don't cut it off. Nurture it.” Her attack was masterly, a thick, brown bite, slightly bitter, understated, theatrical.

  I wanted to steal her, run away to Argentina. “You'll like Buenos Aires,” I'd say, and Clarissa would answer, “I know that.”

  I received the first phone call from her grandfather. Elderly, Russian-born, he called Leningrad St. Petersburg. He loved the violin the way some men love beautiful women. “The child sounds better. Thank you.”

  “She's doing it herself.” Which was true.

  “I am now prepared to buy her a better instrument.” He named the amount he was willing to spend.

  It caught me off guard. “You can't be serious.” I stammered, gushed, sounded ridiculous. “For that money you could have a Guarnerius.”

  A Guarnerius, it seemed, was exactly what he had in mind. “What if she stops practicing?” I asked.

  He chuckled. “She won't, and a fiddle is always an investment. I can't lose.” Although he did not play himself, he had already owned a Stradivarius, sold it, now missed it. “I'd rather pay the finder's fee to you, Mrs. Franklin. You know the child best.”

  ————

  “Me,” I told Howie.

  “You can do it,” he said. “Why not?”

  “When he sees me he'll change his mind.”

  But the grandfather came over the following evening, shook my hand, and seemed satisfied. He smoked a cigar and drank Scotch with Howie. As a young student in Germany he had met Clara Schumann, heard her tell the wonderful stories about Brahms. I put it together—Clara, Clarissa. “Mrs. Franklin,” he said, “Clarissa is modeling herself after you. She has purchased a pair of shoes exactly like the ones you are wearing.”

  “Clarissa?” It was news to me.

  That night I dreamed I telephoned Clara Schumann and asked her to find a fiddle. She was barefoot, offered to trade a fiddle for a pair of shoes. In the dream I spoke fluent German, a language I do not know.

  Actually, I called Altman, my own former teacher, retired in San Diego. “Opal!” he cried. “Bring Howie and come to California. We'll eat clams, just like the old days in Chicago. My wife died. Did you know that?” Altman said, “Zenger's the best. In Cleveland. You call Zenger.” Zenger said he'd talk to St. Louis and get back to me.

  Clarissa's Guarnerius was in Amsterdam. A rich, winey beauty. With it, she caught fire, plunged into Paganini, Sarasate, Saint-Saëns, Wieniawski. I had to call Altman again. “She needs a teacher. She plays better than I do.”

  “Listen, Opal,” said Altman, “I can get you into a quartet out here. It's hard today, very hard. The kids coming on are good. They show up knowing all the standard repertoire already. But I can get you in.” He wanted to hear Clarissa play.

  “On the telephone?”

  “Yes.”

  But the grandfather found out and didn't like it. He bought airline tickets and sent Clarissa and me to California.

  Flying terrified Clarissa. She clutched her fiddle case, fought nausea, turned white, bit her lips. And finally surrendered. “Mrs. Franklin, do you know why I hate you so much?” Her voice was a gray wisp, devoid of hope.

  “Yes,” I said. Gently, oh so gently. “Because I'm thin…and you think thin is beautiful.”

  Then her tears came, and small, bitter sobs. “I want to change. You'll help me…I know you will.”

  “Like hell I will,” I said, capturing her in my arms. “You're a wonderful, marvelous person, just as you are.” So I told her about the babies. I told her about Brisbane and Buenos Aires. I even told her about my mother and scopolamine.

  “So nobody gets everything,” said Clarissa, sniffling.

  We landed, not healed, but holding hands. Eight years later, while on tour, Clarissa sent me a postcard from Buenos Aires: “Hey, I'm here! Come on down! Love always, Clarissa.”

  Altman said, “Juilliard.”

  “That's what I thought,” I said, but the grandfather paid for everything and seemed pleased.

  He met our return plane. “She'll need a high school equivalency,” I told him.

  “We'll get a tutor,” he said. “Go ahead with her preparation.”

  When I got Clarissa past her auditions, the grandfather appeared at my door with roses and kissed my hand.

  ————

  After Clarissa came Dwight, Stephen, Mary Ruth, Annette. Twin brothers who went into country music and still send me chocolates at Christmas. A quiet boy who loved Debussy and became a Lutheran minister. A gentle girl with white hands who, incredibly, committed suicide. More names than I can remember. But never another Clarissa.

  ————

  In the same month, Altman died and St. Theresa's offered me a job. I received a call from Sister Mary Elizabeth. “Mrs. Franklin? Sister Theophane wants you for our music department.” Mary Elizabeth is nothing like her fragile name. President of St. Theresa's, one hundred pounds of intensity, tough, formidable fund-raiser, frequenter of Chicago boardrooms.

  “Sister, I'm afraid I'm not a very good Catholic.”

  “Who is these days? I wasn't proposing to hire you as a theologian. We already have a couple of those. We're looking for a violin teacher. You graduated from St. Theresa's, also studied privately, and played professionally. That combination makes you interesting to us. Come in and we'll talk about it.”

  “All right. Has everything changed?”

  “Yes and no.”

  ————

  Sister Mary Elizabeth, wearing a gabardine suit, received me in her small, pleasant rooms: sliced cheese, poured cider. “We're putting together a music performance major. We've never offered it before. We've turned out school teachers, nurses, and secretaries.”

  “I can't imagine St. Theresa's changing. It looks the same.”

  “Read Father Newman, unfolding revelation. Our mission is to educate women. On any two successive days that means two different things, at least two.”

  “Ah!” Sister Theophane came in and settled into a chair. “If you're going to cite Father Newman then cite Prometheus as well.”

  Mary Elizabeth smiled. “Sister means we've been criticized, but that's nothing new. There's always been something a little illicit about educating people, especially women. For years our simplicity was protective coloration—cloisters, high walls, habits—to cover what we were really doing.”

  “Committing a crime?” Theophane asked cheerfully. “The first women composers were nuns. The orders sheltered them. And in the Middle Ages if you were fleeing an enemy you could run into a convent and claim sanctuary. And many people did. It's never been strawberries and cream, keeping the flame and all that.�
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  ————

  And so the sisters took me in, and now I have that commodity above price: a place to get up in the morning and go to.

  ————

  “Opal?”

  “I'm sorry, Sister. What did you say?”

  “I asked if you were going to eat dinner with me tonight.”

  “No, I'm going home to eat. Look, you've managed St. Theresa's Fine Arts Series for nine years, three programs a year, almost without a flaw. I really think everything will be all right.”

  Theophane is not convinced. “I think I'll close up my office and see you in the morning.”

  “And I'd better call my husband.”

  ————

  “Howie?”

  “Hi.”

  “I'll be here another hour.”

  “No problem.”

  “Sister Theophane's upset. She's afraid the Suzuki kids will play out of tune.”

  Howie likes Theophane, immediately takes sides. “Do you believe this guy really has fourteen prodigies?”

  “Suzuki? He claims they aren't prodigies, just ordinary children taught by his method.”

  “Baloney,” says Howie loyally. “Does Suzuki come with them?”

  “No, he's too old to travel. He sends his assistant. Guess what the assistant's name is.”

  “What?”

  “Honda.”

  “You made that up.”

  At the far end of the cafeteria the serving line opens and the first boarding students drift in. At St. Theresa's the median age of students used to be nineteen. Today it is twenty-six. The numbers are weighted by part-time students, day students, evening students. Our oldest student is a woman of seventy-one who is studying art history.

  ————

  “Opal, you're still here!” Winifred Orbison in blue jeans brings her brown bag dinner to my table. Thirty-seven, mother of two, political science major, she does not have time for music. “I can't get one damned person to picket O'Hare Saturday afternoon.”

  “O'Hare?”

  “A military air show. I can usually count on at least ten people, but everybody's going to hear those Japanese kids play. Opal, I don't mean to be rude but what the hell is your music going to be worth if they drop the bombs?” She eats her sandwich without tasting it. “Try a cookie. My daughter made them. She's twelve.”