Every day she would play the piano for an hour or so, reading from the sheet music, and the music was fine enough, Ben thought, old and formal, though her playing seemed correct but sort of dry. She would play while Ben worked away inside or outside, not seeming to mind if he was sawing or hammering.
He came inside one afternoon, about three weeks after she’d arrived, to tell her that the floor of the veranda was fixed and ready to be painted, and found her sitting at the piano, staring at nothing.
“This is what it was supposed to be like,” she said tonelessly.
“Sorry?”
“This is what it was supposed to be like. Living here, playing the piano, cheating at cards, getting old.”
Ben just looked at her, confused.
“My husband and I,” she explained. “This is what we had planned. And then he died on me. Damn fool.”
And she went upstairs, and he didn’t see her again that day.
Maybe that’s why, the next day, she played the phonograph in the afternoon. Maybe there was another reason. It didn’t matter.
He was scraping the paint at the front of the house. It was the last big job left, though there were lots of odds and ends to finish after that. She was changing the color of the cottage from green to dark gray — “I can’t believe Wainwright would ever have sanctioned green,” she maintained — and the shutters were going to be black instead of brown. Maybe it would look nicer, maybe it wouldn’t; it seemed to Ben that white was probably fine for everything. But it certainly meant more work, which was good. After three weeks he had earned fifty-four dollars, taking only Sundays off to help Henry at the Landing, and that money would mean new winter clothes for all of them, and maybe another cow or a new engine for the boat; Henry hadn’t decided yet. Ben knew he was doing a good job and was proud of it. Nothing egregious this time.
As he perched on a stepladder, attacking some stubborn flakes beneath the eaves of the veranda, she put on a record. It wasn’t something she had done before during the day, though he’d heard music drifting across the water at night, which he had imagined signaled the switch from gin to Scotch. The Victrola didn’t sound too bad (as far as he could tell from that far away) for an old-fashioned wind-up machine, which was the only thing anyone could use on the lakes, since there was no electricity.
She was having a moody day, which she had sometimes, when she talked less and drank and smoked more, and he was keeping out of her way, because she could be curt with him if he disturbed her when she was like that, and for whatever reason she wound up the machine and put the record on.
A violin. Alone. No, not alone. There were strings, pulsing beneath, quietly. The violin hovered, then ascended, like a gull surfing an updraft, trembling, suspended, then plunging down, into the guttural notes of the first fret. Instinctively, Ben’s left hand flexed, searching for the fingering.
But this violin, this violinist, this music, was going places Ben had never heard a violin go before, plunging, swooping, scampering up the scales, double-stop after double-stop — that was playing two notes at once; Ben could do it if he was careful and there was nothing hard before or after, but in a thousand years he couldn’t attempt this — with a huge orchestra chasing, catching up, trying to wrestle away the music, the violin struggling to hold on.
And the music! The main tune — if that was the right word for it — was severe, like a January dawn. Other ideas came and went, interweaving, disappearing, and there! — there was the main tune again, or a snatch of it, almost hidden in the clamor. It was masterful, beyond human. The violin would take a melody, flip it on its head, while the basses grumbled below, and the orchestra would burst in, then recede, with the violin again taking the lead — long, sad, singing notes, so quiet, at times you could hardly hear — then speeding up, the notes short and sharp, as though the music was running out of time. Steely music, cold and urgent, even threatening, and now the violin was alone, dashing up and down ridiculously complicated scales, the orchestra completely silenced, in awe, then returning, asserting itself, and the struggle began again.
Impossible music, impossible notes, so far beyond anything anyone could play, yet someone was playing it. And, oh, it was beautiful, and everything else, every jig and reel and hymn and scale that Ben had played and practiced, meant nothing now compared to this, this aching, wide-open sound, this music, this real music. Ben wanted to cry, with joy, with frustration, that there could be such music, that a violin could make such sounds but he couldn’t.
Swish, swish …
It was over, the violin plunging into the orchestra on one final, brassy chord. Why didn’t she pick up the needle? He turned. She was standing there on the veranda, staring at him, arms folded, head slightly cocked, a smile playing around the edges of her mouth.
He blushed. “I’m sorry.”
“What for? You like classical music?”
“I dunno.” Pause. “I mean, yeah, I guess. Haven’t heard much. Nothing like that.”
“That’s Sibelius.”
“The violinist?”
“No, the composer. Finnish. Wrote it about thirty years ago. Not all that well-known, really, but it’s my favorite. Even over the Beethoven. Especially when Heifitz plays it. That was Heifitz. He plays like the devil himself.”
“Yes! Like the devil!” That was exactly it. Ambrose Heidman had told him once after one of their lessons that to really play the violin, you shouldn’t play like an angel, you should play like the devil. That player had the devil in him.
“So, you like the violin?” she asked.
“Yeah. I kind of play it. But nothing like that. Just fiddle music.”
She shook her head. “Playing is playing.”
“Well, I just play at weddings and dances and stuff.”
“So keep practicing and maybe one day you’ll play the Sibelius yourself.”
He shook his head. “No. There’s no one to teach me.”
“Ah, I guess not.” And she went back inside.
She played the rest of the concerto, though this time Ben made himself keep scraping the paint, straining to catch every note. And before he left she put on some more Sibelius: the Fifth Symphony she said it was, which ended with a series of sharp blasts with huge pauses in between, so that by the end Ben was laughing.
“Of all the things that would finally make you laugh,” she smiled as she lit a cigarette, watching him clean the paintbrush.
It was so strange, he thought, rowing back to the Landing at the end of the afternoon. She had never really ignored him, but she hadn’t seemed all that interested in him, either. She just seemed to like rattling on about things, and he was her excuse — someone to talk to besides herself. But they had just had a real conversation, and it was about music, of all things. And she was rich and knew all these famous writers, and yet she was actually paying attention to him, because of the music.
It was different after that. He kept working, and worked hard, scraping and sanding, though he wasn’t so anxious to get the job finished. Because she played music every day now, different pieces, and she’d come outside and talk to him about them.
“That’s Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. For piano players like me, it’s the ultimate. Nothing matches it, not even Brahms.
“This is Mozart. What do you think? Most people don’t like him at first. Sometimes they never like him. Tiddly-poo music, a friend of mine calls it. But you have to have your ears on. And when you finally hear it, it’s so wise …
“What do you think of the string quartet? A lot of people don’t like chamber music. Too small-scale.”
“No, no, it’s great. You can hear every strand.”
“Exactly.”
She played the piano more now. And she started to swear if she missed a note. One morning he heard her playing as he rowed over, and a couple of hours later, while he was finishing the last of the
sanding on the north side, she played the same again. She had practiced for him. She was performing for him. He didn’t know what to make of it. Part of him was embarrassed. It wasn’t right. He was just working on her cottage, that was all. But part of him liked it.
He practiced differently, now. The scales, the studies — he’d always known they mattered. But now he saw them as steps that built toward something bigger, finer. Sibelius. Except they were such small steps, steps for beginners. He tried to push himself harder, to play faster but with more precision, with less blurring of the notes. But it was hard, and there was no one to help him, and Sibelius was so far away.
He’d finished work on the cottage for the day and was already home doing the afternoon chores when Ruth Chapman visited the Landing. She had gone out in the boat and stayed gone for hours. He was on his way to the barn when he heard the growly engine of the Greavette, and the boat arced around the tip of Pine Island, full speed as always. Only, instead of heading for her own dock she was headed for the Landing, and he knew why. He hurried down to the dock as the boat eased up against it.
“John Players it is,” she grinned ruefully.
That was all they had in the way of tobacco: a couple of tins of John Players Navy Cut. They kept it in the kitchen pantry, along with salt and flour and other supplies. They bought the stuff wholesale from Fielding’s in town and split the profits with them. It was another way to earn a dollar, and every dollar helped.
Ruth Chapman normally smoked Dunhills, which came from England in fancy red cartons with gold lettering. She had brought half a dozen cartons with her, but already she had started to run low, and the new supply hadn’t arrived yet.
“I was going to cut back,” she had explained earlier that day, after asking if they sold cigarettes at the Landing. “You’d think I’d learn to stop making promises.” He wished she would cut back: her coughing fits — rasping, hacking, phlegm-filled — seemed to go on forever.
“We have a couple of tins of John Players,” he had told her. “But you’d have to roll your own.”
“You think I can’t roll my own cigarettes?” she shot back, one eyebrow raised in disapproval. “I rolled my first cigarette when I was thirteen.”
So it would be roll-your-owns for awhile, but that was life at a cottage.
“Mom, this is Ruth Chapman. Mrs. Chapman, this is my mom.” His mother had come out of the house as the boat neared the dock, and she was waiting by the kitchen door, wiping flour from her hands with her apron, as the two of them walked up.
Ben’s mom held out her hand, still with traces of flour, offering an apologetic smile. Ruth grasped it firmly.
“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Mercer.”
“Likewise. Won’t you come in?” Ben knew how curious his mom had been about this stranger who was employing her son, knew that she had wanted to meet her for weeks but would never, ever, have tried to invent some excuse. He grinned a bit inside as the two women sized each other up: the dress, the apron, the graying blond hair neatly tied back with a cheap clasp; the canvas pants, the man’s shirt with the tail in a knot, the gray hair wild from hours spent in an open boat. And the two faces: both lined, both open and intelligent, both wary, though, cautious of each other.
“Ben tells me that you have a couple of tins of tobacco for sale. I’d like to buy them.”
“Of course. But won’t you come in for tea? The kettle’s almost boiling.”
“Well, that’s very kind.”
Ben knew it wasn’t tea that Ruth Chapman wanted at three in the afternoon. But the Landing was dry; Henry used to drink more than he should have, but he quit cold turkey four years ago, after one drunken, angry night and a shamed morning.
They stepped inside, and Ben’s mom showed Ruth Chapman into the parlor, a small room with solid furniture from better times, and doilies to protect the heavy, wine-colored fabric from the grease men put in their hair when they got dressed up. The parlor was only used for company, and Ruth Chapman was the first visitor who’d been in it since the minister had come for his annual spring drop-in last May.
“Ben, would you make the tea? And bring in the tobacco.” Ben hurried into the kitchen, measured out four teaspoons of tea in the strainer, dropped it into the big ceramic pot that was always on the stove and poured the boiling water from the kettle. Then he went into the pantry, pulled out the two tins of tobacco and a couple of packs of rolling papers and brought them into the parlor.
“Tea’s steeping.”
“Thank you, Ben. I hope this will do, Mrs. Chapman.”
“Oh, it’ll do fine.”
“Ben, there are some sugar cookies in the tin, if you wouldn’t mind bringing them in.”
He did, and brought the tea in as well, using the good china cups and the silver-plated tray and milk pitcher, which he figured his mother was suggesting from the look she passed his way when she thought her guest wasn’t watching. Then he retreated to the kitchen and began to reorganize the pantry, not because the pantry needed reorganizing but because he wanted to eavesdrop.
They spoke carefully, as strangers getting to know each other do, about the weather and his mom’s garden.
“We’ve got some yellow beans ready for picking. Would you like some?”
“Of course! There’s nothing like steamed beans with butter.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Has it been a good year for the garden?”
“Not bad. We could have used more rain.”
And on like that for awhile, until …
“And how are you enjoying the cottage, Mrs. Chapman?”
“Oh, Ruth, please.”
“Mary.”
“I love the cottage, Mary. And thank the Lord for your son.”
“I hope he hasn’t been a nuisance.”
“Heavens, no. He’s a hard worker and good com-pany. He has a fine ear for music.”
“Yes, well, he’s always loved music. He plays the violin, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I must hear him play some time.”
Ben’s cheeks burned with embarrassment, and pleasure.
“He’s fixed up the dock and the veranda, and I think in a day or two we’ll have the outside painted. I’d have been sunk if it weren’t for the work your son and your husband put into the place.”
“Oh, Henry’s not my husband. He’s my brother.”
“Of course. He introduced Ben as his nephew. I’d completely forgotten.”
“I grew up here but moved into town when I got married. When my husband died, Ben and I moved back, and we’ve been here ever since.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Oh, six years now. It seems so long ago. An accident in the bush.”
A pause. Ruth Chapman’s voice was softer, quieter.
“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
“Well, it’s been six years.”
“But still.”
A pause.
“Ben said you lost your husband earlier this year.”
“Yes. A heart attack.”
“I’m sorry, Ruth.”
A longer pause. Then …
“It’s funny, you know. My husband, George, he was such a serious man. I love a good party, but I had to practically drag George out to anything.”
“Ben said you lived in New York.”
“Yes. He owned Chapman House.”
“The publishers?”
“Inherited it from his father. And he built that company up, you know, even in these times.”
“That must have been very hard.”
“Well, he knew business and he knew writers. And I was proud of him, and you always figure you’ll have your time together, later. Then he finally decides to retire and sells the firm, and he has a heart attack. After all that, it ends with a heart attack.”
&nbs
p; “I’m so sorry.”
“We’d already bought the cottage, so I decided I’d come up on my own. And it’s fine. But he’s not here, is he?”
“I know.”
They were silent. He heard a spoon stirring in a cup.
“It’s a hard thing, Mary, when your husband dies before his time.”
“Oh, Ruth, that’s so true.”
They drank their tea, and the conversation returned to neutral subjects. Ben left the kitchen as quietly as he could, hoping they didn’t know he’d been there, grabbed a pitchfork and went out to the barn.
A Party
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Ruth Chapman walked slowly, silently, around the cottage, Ben following nervously behind. He had walked the perimeter himself that morning three times, looking for missed spots or rough patches. Scraping the paint and sanding the boards until they were smooth had been the hardest task of all. It had taken a week, with July sweat stinging his eyes. A steady ache had settled into his shoulders and never really gone away. He had come home each day with his hair covered in paint flecks, and even the long swim that he started thinking about and longing for around lunchtime didn’t get it all out. But at last the sides of the house, the shutters, the veranda, the eaves — everything had been sanded baby smooth; you could run your hand along the boards and never get a splinter. And then he had laid down paint, two coats, the dark gray that she had chosen and sent away for, with black for the shutters and the trim. She was right: the gray looked better than the green, gave the cottage more style, or something like that. And he was proud of his paint job. The paint was quality, but he had applied it with care: three quick dabs, then a long stroke to smooth it out, and repeat, and repeat, the way Henry had taught him years ago. He actually wished Henry would come over to the island and look at the cottage. For once, even he might be impressed.
The Landing Page 5