Catching Heaven

by Sands Hall

  The woman at the piano drew out chords to end a song. Jake prepared to clap, but she segued into another tune without a break. He sipped his beer. Jeep returned, made a show of mopping the bar with a tiny white rag she carried coiled on her tray.

  “You look great, Jeep. You been working here long?” Keeping himself from asking about Lizzie.

  “It’s a factory. But the tips are great.”

  “You come in just for the sheer pleasure of looking at her?” Jake asked Rich. He sat with his back to them, brooding over his empty glass.

  “Sure is different—” Jeep started, speaking low. “Hold on. Back in a sec.” She darted off towards an arm waving in her direction.

  “We broke up,” Rich said.

  “Ah.”

  “She’s going to AA. Changing her act, so she says, and that includes me. Going back to school. Says she’s going to graduate this time.”

  “Ah,” Jake said. Although even that seemed like too much, and a betrayal of Jeep. The woman at the piano sang about love having no pride. The first time he’d heard Linda Ronstadt croon that lyric at him out of a car radio he’d thought it was pap. He took a long swig of beer. Over the years the song had grown on him. And I’d do anything to see you again.

  The woman’s voice tremored on the high notes. Wasn’t much of a player, either. Most of her tunes had easy chord changes. Skinny. Backbone knobbling up the shiny material of a turquoise corset. She’d piled her black hair on her head, topped it with a ridiculous ornament that looked like antennae. Jeep was wearing one too.

  He downed the last inch of beer, left several bills for the bartender. “Rent,” he said to Rich, who nodded, once.

  Jeep stopped him at the slatted swinging doors. “It’s so good to see you, you don’t know.”

  “Careful, now. You fraternizing with me again?”

  “Stupid Barney. Rules, rules, rules.” Jeep pushed her red-painted lips into a pout. Her cheeks were round the way a child’s were round. She was too young to wear the tarty uniform, the rouge, the heeled boots. “He’s in the back bawling out Veronica for spilling a drink. If the money wasn’t so good, none of us would be here.”

  Jake jangled his keys in his pocket. “Rich told me you guys split.”

  “I had to, Jake. I was just going nowhere, so fast, you wouldn’t know. I hit bottom, joined AA. ‘I am an alcoholic.’ ” She laughed. “Don’t look so shocked. Or irritated, whatever it is. You and Lizzie. Sometimes I think she drinks twice as much beer as she used to just to get my goat.”

  Something must have appeared on Jake’s face. “I’m sorry,” Jeep said. “I forgot you guys . . .”

  Jake shrugged. The piano player sang Joni Mitchell’s song about being able to drink a case of her lover and still be on her feet. “Jake?” Jeep looked upset.

  He patted her arm. “It’s fine.”

  “Anyway. I’m just determined to work my way out of this.” The wave of her arm took in the bar, the streets outside, her life. “Lizzie says—” She stopped. “So part of it was I called it quits with Rich. Months ago. I don’t know why he comes in here. To bug me, maybe, or to watch the new piano player. Omigod! You probably don’t know!” She pointed. “That’s Lizzie’s sister. The one playing the piano. She’s moved here, did you know?”

  Jake recognized her now. She played the last slow chords of a song, pulled the mike towards her. “I’m taking a little break here.” She’d adopted a bit of a southern drawl. “But I’ll be right back.”

  “She’s real nice,” Jeep said. “Want to say hi?”

  Jake stepped backwards. “No, thanks. Not tonight.”

  Canned music began to blare from speakers behind the bar. Jeep pressed his arm. “You take good care.” Wobbled on the high-heels as she headed towards a table filled with empty glasses. From the bar, Rich stared balefully at him from beneath the brim of his ridiculous hat.

  Jake slapped his way back out through the fake saloon doors. Cursed at the red lights that slowed his way down Main Street. Sue was right. He should climb Fable Mountain. But right now he needed his guitar, needed to hold the sleek, round, breasts and hips woman of her, needed to give to her and pull from her the song he could feel coming, something about loneliness and neon, the terror of love.

  CHAPTER 14

  M A U D

  Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

  Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

  Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

  Remembers me of all his gracious parts.

  Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:

  Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

  —KING JOHN

  Her first morning in the little house on Emerson Street, Maud lay face up on the futon she’d borrowed from Lizzie, willing away the all-too-familiar feeling of loosening and seepage within her womb.

  Her period was four weeks late. She’d held this knowledge to herself, vibrating between hope and fear, elation and tears. Her father once told her that the root of the word hysteria came from the Greek word for womb. This fact had always irritated her. Now it made sense.

  She had welcomed Lizzie’s encouragement to find a house of her own, mostly because of the faint possibility that there might be a child to share it with her. But she felt the flux descend, feeling the way the movement of lava down a mountain looked. And it would be that red, though not as hot. She moved to the bathroom, peed, wiped herself. There it was: the scarlet rose of blood on white tissue. Sign, signal, emblem that once again her womb had rejected what had been offered it.

  In these five weeks since she’d slept with Driver he had never been far from her mind. If she was pregnant, it was his; it had been a long time since she and Miles had made love. She stared at the faint yellow of her bathroom wall, remembering Driver’s belly moving against hers as he laughed, seeing him as she’d clambered up the ladder: his naked torso the color, and it had seemed to her the opacity, of wood smoke in the dawn. Perhaps we made a little half-breed.

  “We didn’t,” Maud told his memory. She found a tampon, debated taking an aspirin. One of the many deals she tried to make with God, the universe, the Powers That Be, was that if she forced herself to bear the cramps of menses, then might she, one day, be allowed to bear the pain of childbirth?

  She stood in the living room, rubbing her eyes, staring at the pile of boxes and the odd pieces of furniture Lizzie had loaned her. When Lizzie’d heard about the house, she’d run by to see it and came home describing it as “miniature.” She was right. From the outside it looked like something a benevolent uncle might build to house the doll collection of a spoiled niece: a tiny kitchen, a bedroom barely big enough for a double futon and a bureau, a living room with just enough wall space for a rented piano. Miles had promised to ship hers. That phone call was the last time they’d talked. “Sounds like you’re not planning to come back here anytime soon,” he said, with that ironic lilt in his voice that at one point she’d loved. “I don’t know,” she said. He closed the conversation then: “Well, if you decide you do know, give me a call.”

  In a kind of terrified astonishment she watched herself taking step after step, plodding mulishly away from the path she’d walked and planned for a decade. The job at the Red Garter. This house. And even now, as she dragged a box into the kitchen and began to unpack plates and bowls from their beds of wadded L.A. Times. Some force kept driving her away from the life she had envisoned, into this one, which seemed almost as familiar—as if all this time she’d been living a dual life and had simply jumped tracks.

  The shelves in the kitchen were hand-built, bookshelves rather than cupboards. She wondered if her dishes and glassware would gather dust. In Los Angeles, anything left uncovered developed a kind of sticky dark grime, its texture similar to the paste that kept labels on jars and as difficult to scrub off. This gluey-grime had come to represent L.A., the creeping, insidious darkness that seemed to have infested, infected, every pore of her being.

 
; She cleaned the kitchen with the energy and certain degree of fury her period always brought. She tried to ignore the cramps that coursed through her abdomen, that odd, mostly nonlocalized pain that sometimes forced her to bend over in pain. She gave in and took an aspirin: God didn’t seem to be interested in the barter anyway.

  In the living room, the various boxes sat where they’d been dumped during the hectic move-in the day before. Lizzie, carrying boxes, had marveled at how much Maud had managed to fit into her car. That car of yours is pretty packed up. Driver. You coming or going?

  Maud knelt beside a cardboard box marked MISC. Would that be kitchen misc., bedroom misc., music misc.? “Sheet music?” she said, pulling at the flaps. “Sheets and towels?”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  A little boy stood in the doorway, one hand on the knob. Behind him the unwatered lawn stretched more gold than green in the afternoon sun.

  Maud’s fingers moved to her throat, clichéd gesture of fear. But this was not L.A. She did not have to be jumpy about unexpected voices and turning doorknobs. “Hello.”

  The boy assessed her, lower lip pushed out. He was perhaps four or five years old. His face was round, his cheeks quite red. “Who are you talking to?”

  “God?” Maud pushed one of the boxes with her foot so that it slid across the floor.

  The boy stepped farther into the room and then retreated to the doorknob again. “What are you doing?”

  “Unpacking. Do you live around here?”

  The boy nodded. His shorts came down all the way to his knees, emphasizing sturdy calves. His bare feet were dirty.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Noah.” He watched her for a moment and then, as if it came up often, said, “It was raining.”

  “I see.”

  Noah watched as she tugged open the MISC. box. Folded tablecloths and napkins, candlesticks, packages of Trader Joe’s candles, never used.

  “Do you have something I could drink?” he asked. “Do you have pop?”

  Maud straightened, pushing hair out of her face. “I’m sorry, Noah. I haven’t been to the store yet.”

  “Oh boy,” Noah sighed, as if this were the last straw.

  “I’ll get you some when I do go.” She lifted a tablecloth, matching napkins. “Where should I put these?”

  Noah advanced into the room and placed his balled-up fists on his hips. “Did you bring any kids?”

  “I didn’t, Noah.”

  Noah screwed up his lips and looked off to one side, as if this disgusted him. “Why?”

  “Now that, Noah, is a good question.”

  “It’s not so funny.” His eyes grew shiny; his upper lip trembled. “Who am I s’posed to play with?”

  He disappeared off the front steps. Stroking the tablecloth she had over one arm, Maud looked after him. Someone with children had lived here, then moved away, taking Noah’s friends with them. Leaving him desolate, the first of many partings life would bring him. She wadded the cloth into a ball, pulled it against her stomach, and sat. She put her elbows on her folded knees, pressed the palms of her hands against her eye sockets, the half-packed boxes around her an atrocious, unbearable metaphor. “Miles,” she whispered.

  She needed at these times to remember why she’d left. The night she was on Tucker’s Larks, the first work of any size she’d done in over a year, he’d been at the studio, and came in the door after the show had started, his briefcase leaking its usual assortment of lead sheets and chord charts and the demos he sent out again and again to record companies. These CDs, marked MILES! in speedy italicized letters, made him sound as if he had a huge band playing behind him. In reality, it was only himself and his prodigious talent. She didn’t know why she wanted to hold this against him, but the lack of an actual band struck her as false advertising, misrepresentative. Although she couldn’t particularly say that her career was—had been?—any more honest, any less false, whatever the words might be.

  His blond hair was pulled back in a leather thong, straggly, unkempt. “I tried, Maud. I really did.” As he always said.

  The distance guy, Nikos called him once, when he couldn’t remember his name. It wasn’t a fair moniker; Miles was, in fact, capable of tremendous intimacy, as he’d proved over and over again, all the many times they’d broken up.

  “No big deal. It’s not as if I’m starring in the thing.”

  “Don’t start.” Miles got himself a beer and leaned against the kitchen door jamb. Maud kept her eyes on the television, although she knew he was watching her. The commercials ended. “You planning to watch?” she said, because she needed to say something.

  Miles sat on the arm of the couch. “So, who are you?”

  “I told you about this when I was shooting it.”

  Miles shook his head.

  “Yes I did. I’m the subplot. I’m a mom who doesn’t want, can’t keep, her baby—I know I told you about this.”

  “No.”

  “You said, ‘Typecasting,’ and laughed.”

  “Well, I don’t remember. I’m dense, I’m forgetful, I’m thoughtless, I don’t listen when you talk to me. These are things we’ve established. You want to tell me, or not?”

  Maud watched his profile for a moment. “I’m homeless. Can’t support my baby. So I ditch her in a Dumpster.”

  “At least this time they didn’t saddle you with some cute Marlboro man who does his best to get in your pants.”

  Maud closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Anyway.”

  “Joke, Maud. Yoo-hoo.” He waved his hand as if she were leaving on a train and he was right next to the window. “You take things so literally.”

  “Fuck you.” Nikos: Although “reveal” seems to have passed you by. “I do not.”

  Miles closed his eyes and rubbed his head. Maud stared at the television. Colored shapes and figures advanced and receded. Tears welled up. “I’m sorry, Miles. I’m sorry. God, I’m just so tired of it all.”

  Everything sounded like a script. A bad script, written by a bad writer who relied heavily on clichés. She reached for the remote and pushed the volume up. After a moment, Miles placed a hand on her thigh. It was an awkward transition. As an actor she would never buy it. She would want to run the moment again until they got it right. Suit the word to the action, the action to the word. . . . Obedient to something she couldn’t name, she placed her fingers on top of his. It was what the acting technique of Michael Chekhov would encourage—by doing the action associated with an emotion, you make the emotion come.

  But their hands were like two blocks of wood, one on top of another. Under the pretense of dimming the volume on yet another round of gunfire, she took hers away. And then there she was again, lit by a bright helicopter light, eyes large and black in a bleached-white face. “You look awful,” Miles whispered.

  “I’m supposed to,” she said. “All hope is gone.” She stood, arms stretched to either side, in a fusillade of bullets. She stared in the direction of the camera. A petal of blood, garish in the bright light of the hovering helicopter, drooled from a corner of her mouth. She collapsed, jerking from the onslaught of bullets.

  As the music of Tucker’s Larks swelled, the phone rang. “Let your machine get it,” Miles said. “It’s your mother, calling to say you’re wonderful, your talents are squandered, what are you doing with a man who doesn’t deserve you.”

  “Miles.” Maud stopped. She was holding fingers to her forehead in what she realized was the parody of someone with a headache, the gesture of someone who has had just about enough. She pulled her hand away and looked at it. “I wouldn’t mind if someone were calling me, you know, to say congratulations,” she said. “Or that they thought my work was good. Something.” But she’d let the machine turn on.

  Past-dweller, she heard Driver say. She stood up, refolded the tablecloth. She was a kite on a string. Or maybe a fish on a line. She kept swimming, feeling like she was getting away with something, fearing and hoping the je
rk would come that would reel her back in; she would be yanked towards a past she knew she didn’t want anymore but was terrified of leaving behind.

  It was also possible that no one had hold of the line. She might be the fish; she might also be the fisherman.

  Her mouth dry, heart beating too fast, she roamed the house. But the phone would not be installed until Wednesday. In any case, she told herself as she peered out windows she had to stoop to see through, found her purse, how could she call Miles? Call him only to let him know that she missed him upon occasion with a sensation that felt like a metal gum wrapper against a silver filling.

  She set out to walk the few blocks to a market she’d spotted the day before. Noah was playing in the yard of the house next door. She waved, but he peered ferociously away from her. But love is only chance, Cyrano said, so much anguish layered into that word, chance. Once she’d tried to explain to Miles how sad that idea made her. “But of course it’s chance,” he’d said. “What, you think two people wander the world until they find each other?” She pulled her mind back to the houses, all in need of paint, that lined the streets of the neighborhood.

  At the market, Maud found a phone booth and dialed Lizzie’s number. There was no answer, and she didn’t leave a message. “Buck up,” she told herself. She stared at the phone, but finally just called her own machine in Los Angeles, checking her messages. She wondered if Miles might be standing over the phone, listening as the messages replayed, tempted to pick up. Her agents, Scotty and Danielle, accepted that she was out of town “on family business,” so there were never any auditions. If she didn’t return, what would they do with the hundred photographs she’d given them only a few months before? One of these days she would have to let them know, and cancel her phone, but she couldn’t do it yet. Nor had she been inspired to contact her few L.A. friends, wax enthusiastic about what she was doing in a small town in the middle of nowhere. “Working in a bar,” laugh laugh laugh. “It’s called the Red Garter, do you believe it? No, not waitressing—I play the piano. I even slip in a few of my own songs now and again. No one listens, the pay’s abysmal, but the tips are good.” None of which addressed how quickly she had come to depend on the job, the meaning it gave her existence. What was she doing, at the age of forty-one, almost forty-two!, having pulled up the pathetic little roots of her life to play an upright piano in a bar, dressed in some demented designer’s image of women in the 1890s? She looked forward to—depended upon—seeing Jeep, the red-haired Ginger, the bartender Bart.