How disappointing, the cosmopolitan rainbow of her city life fading back into the colorless air of the flat, drab prairie. Through family contacts, she landed a county government clerical job. The tasks were boring, and her coworkers small-minded and backstabbing, but the hours were regular. Once she left the office, there was freedom to swim in the waters of the regional music scene, church choirs and musicals and Viennese light opera, where all acclaimed her a genius. One monotonous year followed another. No possibility of marriage in such a provincial town.
She helped her mother caretake her father for five years until his death. A decade later, her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Patricia took a leave from work and stayed with her mother around the clock. Linda came over with flowers a few times, but fled after a half-hour, bawling, “I can’t stand to see mom like this!” In six months the swift-metastasizing tumors had done their deadly work. Immediately after the funeral the bungalow was sold, and the $50,000 in proceeds split between the two sisters. Linda went on an exuberant spending spree, and was back to ground zero within the year. Patricia opened a five-year CD for $20,000, and the rest she spent on new clothes and furniture for an apartment.
Soon after Patricia’s mother died, Scott Polk had joined the church choir she directed. He was a widower, a trial attorney, with one son from his first marriage, now away at college. Scott’s untrained baritone voice developed artful control under her expert tutelage. He came, he sang, and she conquered his heart. They envisioned a life together of elegant sufficiency, enriched by books and music. The couple had married in a solemn high nuptial Catholic Mass six years ago.
VI
Linda lived five miles away, near the old railroad yard, in a double-wide with three rescue cats. She had thirty years in with the county, and planned to retire in ten years with a pension greater than her salary. Her daughter Jessica had been born late by Spencerville standards, when Linda was thirty. Reese had skipped out when Jessica was two. Linda had in hand a divorce decree and numerous demands for child support, but the money never seemed to materialize, nor was Reese interested in visiting his only child.
Aunt Patti doted on Jessica, spending time with her, buying her dolls and clothes, driving her to Chicago to visit the museums and to revel in the palatial ambience of the Walnut Room at Marshall Field’s. During her teens, the girl started to party with a slacker clique of cocaine-snorting, acting-out peers. Three years ago, a few weeks before high school graduation, Jessica became pregnant after a one-night stand with a muscular tattooed young man of twenty-five, who worked the graveyard shift as a private security guard at an industrial park.
Patricia had learned the disturbing news one Sunday afternoon from Linda, as the two sisters cleaned up the kitchen after a student recital held at Patricia’s home. Linda could be relied upon to help with post-recital hospitality, to concoct lime sherbet-and-7Up punch and to arrange store-bought cookies on lacy paper doilies on Patricia’s weddinggift china platters.
Patricia felt faint. Was getting “knocked up” a family curse that would repeat generation to generation? Patricia let out a drawn-out “Oh no,” and a reproach slipped out unthinkingly.
“After all my efforts to instill in her good morals, and love for the higher things, this is how she repays me! I mean us, of course. What’s wrong with our family? Can’t we ever do anything in the proper order, in the right way?”
Linda said, “Get real, Patti. There’s nothing wrong with our family. Sex is natural, and I’m not ashamed.”
Patricia said, “I suppose she’ll give the baby up for adoption.”
Linda clanked coffee cups as she loaded them in the dishwasher. “I’ll take her to Planned Parenthood for an abortion, then she can get on with her life.”
Patricia blanched. “What? You told her to get an abortion?”
Linda usually glossed over conflict with an agreeable smile and then did what she wanted anyway. But her mouth was now set in a grim frown. “Don’t get all mushy Catholic on me. You know the church is hopelessly out of date on this. Don’t you dare say anything to her against the idea. It’s not your place.”
But the headstrong Jessica had a plan of her own: to go it alone as a single mother. She requested that both her mother Linda and her Aunt Patti be present in the hospital delivery room. Patricia heard the newborn girl’s first cries, and cradled the infant in her arms.
And now, as a toddler, Kayla most often demanded neither her MaMa, her mother Jessica, nor her NaNa, her grandmother Linda, but her GaGa—only her great-aunt Patricia would do. “Where GaGa?” Wails and flailing of fists and feet, till GaGa materialized.
Patricia would bounce Kayla on her knee and sing to her, a favorite song from Barney, the purple dinosaur, about the raindrops transformed into lemon drops and gum-drops. Squealing and clapping her hands, the little girl opened her mouth wide and thrust her face toward an imaginary sky.
“More,” she insisted.
She reveled in the magic of GaGa’s music room.
“Kayla, would you like to play the piano?” Patricia would place her on the bench. The child stood on her sturdy legs, banging on the ivory keys. She loved Patricia’s recordings of Brahms symphonies and Puccini operas. What benign spirit had kindled such a fancy in this youngster? No one knew. MaMa Jessica and NaNa Linda blasted the bass speakers on their stereos, Jessica lip-syncing Eminem, Linda slow-dancing to the Eagles and Barry Manilow.
VII
Mother Beata, at age ninety-six, lived in the Benedictine motherhouse in the countryside, fifty miles outside town in a small second story room overlooking a flower garden. She was wheelchair-bound now, cared for tenderly by the younger nuns. The room was furnished with a spinet piano and an antique pine dry sink in which many musical scores were stashed. Every day the wrinkled nun would sit in her wheelchair, warmed by blankets, gazing at the piano keys. Sometimes a caretaker would take out some of the scores and show them to the elderly woman, who nodded feebly and whispered the names of composers, Chopin or Beethoven or Bach.
Patricia visited Mother Beata twice yearly, just before Easter and during the Christmas season. “What would you like to hear, Mother?” Patricia would ask, and the nun would smile and nod, and whisper “Anything, darling.” So Patricia would dig into the pile of scores, find melancholic Chopin or percussive Beethoven or mathematical Bach, which she had once memorized and performed but no longer knew by heart, and sight-read the pieces. The nuns and the caretakers and the clerical staff would come running and crowd the room, eager to hear the impromptu recital. Visitors would start to congregate outside in the hall. For the finale, Patricia would play the instrumental part of the Franck “Panis Angelicus” at Easter, and at Christmas, the Adolphe Adam “O Holy Night,” and Patricia’s college girlfriend, Sister Mary Francis, with her trained soprano voice, would lead off the solo. All the crowd would join in the chorus, the voices heard by the gardeners and the visitors on the grounds outside, who would stop still and gaze upward toward Mother Beata’s window. Was this a Millet painting?
And so, over Palm Sunday weekend, Patricia prepared for her visit to the motherhouse. It was Saturday, and Scott was at the office working against deadline on a legal brief. The phone rang, Jessica on the line, blubbering.
“I can’t find Mom. Please, please take Kayla. This is last minute, and I’ll make it up to you. But the hospital called me, my friend Britney’s just been admitted, you met her, remember? She’s overdosed on something, I need to get over there.”
Patricia sighed. Kayla was too young to visit the motherhouse, and yet the appointment was set-in-stone, impossible to reschedule, so she’d have to take the child with her. Jessica took seriously the responsibility of raising her daughter on meager wages as a receptionist in a dental office, and Patricia sympathized with the exhausted young woman. She and Scott kicked in half Jessica’s rent on a rundown cottage in a neighborhood of ninety-year-old shotgun houses, all peeling paint and sagging porches. Though this shabbiness might alarm a
middle-class rubbernecker unfamiliar with the locale, in fact the crime rate was low. But Patricia worried that Jessica was still involved with low-lives. This frantic telephone call seemed proof that Jessica hadn’t severed ties with her old druggie circle.
Within fifteen minutes Jessica’s junker Chevy Malibu was parked in Patricia’s driveway, and the young mother lifted Kayla from the car and set her down on the concrete. Kayla spotted Patricia standing in the doorway. The child screeched “GaGa!” and ran over and grasped Patricia’s legs. The great-aunt caressed the little girl’s hair.
Jessica bussed Patricia on the cheek, said a hurried “Thanks, I’ll make it up to you, Aunt Patti,” and turned to go.
“Wait, Jessica, tell me what’s going on.”
“I told you, I have to go to the hospital to help a friend.”
The words came out of Patricia’s mouth before she could censure them. “I hope you’re not still hanging out with that bad crowd. You’ve a child to think about.”
Jessica’s protest was immediate and loud. “I don’t need you to scold me! You know I’m a good mother. I thought you were on my side.”
Patricia managed a stiff smile. “I’m sorry, Jessica. I shouldn’t have said that, I take it back. You’re an excellent mother. It’s good of you to be there for a friend.”
Jessica nodded acknowledgment, and waved her right hand, gabbling, “Bye, bye,” to her daughter, as she sprinted back to the car, then floored the accelerator, peeling away from the curb.
Patricia dressed Kayla, and tossed plush animal toys and alphabet blocks into a canvas tote bag to keep the child amused. During the hour drive the little girl fell asleep, and when Patricia waked her she fussed at first, but then calmed down and walked willingly hand in hand from the parking lot into the lobby of the motherhouse. The teenage girl on duty at the front desk welcomed them, and exclaimed over the pretty toddler dressed in a pink cotton frilly dress, black patent Mary Janes, and grasping a worn, pink fluffy bunny. There was a special room and a babysitter for children, would Patricia like the adorable princess to join the other kids? Patricia said yes, in a little while, but first she’d like Mother Beata to meet Kayla.
Patricia walked into Mother Beata’s room with Kayla. She let go of the child’s hand to approach Mother Beata sitting in her wheelchair, and bent down to hug and kiss the old nun.
Kayla stared from the doorway and sucked her thumb. Then she mewled, “GaGa,” and then shrieked several times, “GaGa, GaGa!”
Patricia took Kayla’s hand and approached the wheelchair. “Kayla, sweetheart, say hello to Mother Beata. She was GaGa to me when I was growing up.”
Kayla quieted, and sucking her thumb, looked dubiously at the old woman, who in her turn examined the tiny visitor, puzzlement, or was it dismay? on her dried-apple-doll face.
Patricia picked up the thread of her usual conversation with Mother Beata.
“What would you like to hear, Mother? How about Chopin today?”
She let go of Kayla’s hand, walked over to the dry sink, removed a well-thumbed Schirmer collection of Chopin Etudes, and settled at the piano. Kayla toddled toward the piano bench.
“Kay-ya pay, GaGa.”
“No honey, not now. You can watch GaGa play.”
“No, no.” Kayla pulled on the legs of the piano bench.
All this time Mother Beata sat complacently in her wheelchair. She didn’t seem to understand who this child was, but she didn’t seem particularly to mind the disturbance.
Patricia signaled to a young nun she knew from her prior visits, who stood just inside the room.
“Could you please take Kayla to the children’s room? Kayla, this nice lady will take you to play with the other children.”
The young nun smiled and walked over and took Kayla’s hand. “C’mon you precious, I have some nice candy for you. And we have lots of toys and games here.”
Instinctually, Kayla trusted this gentle blue-eyed young woman. Clenching her bunny a little tighter, the child left without further protest.
Patricia played for an hour, as the crowd gathered, and finally all joined in the Franck chorus. When the recital was over, the crowd dispersed, and Patricia was left alone with Mother Beata. She set the piano bench close to the wheelchair, sat down, and took into her own hands the nun’s arthritis-gnarled hands.
“Mother, that child is my niece Jessica’s daughter, you remember Jessica, she’s all grown up now. I told you my worries, she’s raising the little girl all by herself, she has no money. I see so much of myself in the child. She has musical talent, and needs careful nurturing. But my dear husband Scott, I’m afraid he may not like me to get enmeshed in my family troubles.”
The old nun’s eyes were vacant, gazing into some far distance. Then she whispered, haltingly, so that Patricia strained to understand the words.
“I know you, don’t I? I taught you, you had talent. Long years ago now.”
“Yes mother, you were my salvation. Saint Anthony sent you to me.”
The old nun smiled, and closed her eyes. Her head drooped a bit, and then she was asleep.
VIII
Six weeks later, on a Sunday afternoon in June, Scott, a history buff, sat reading the McCullough biography of John Adams in the leather club chair in the living room. Patricia reclined on the sofa, and studied the score of a Beethoven piano trio, while tapping out the meter with her fingertips. They were watching Kayla while Jessica shopped at the mall with Linda.
Kayla ran around in circles, bobbing and hopping, somersaulting and giggling. Suddenly, she flung her right arm straight out and pointed with her tiny index finger to the built-in bookcase crammed with Scott’s books.
“Kay-ya read, GaGa.” She pulled out several hardcover Harvard Classics from the bottom shelf and piled them on the floor. She grasped Plutarch’s Lives and opening it upside down, sat there, gazing solemnly up at the two adults and then looking down at the book. “Read, read, Kay-ya read.”
“Yes honey, soon you’ll be reading.” Patricia imagined this precocious child in forty-odd years, a classics scholar, a tenured professor at the University of Chicago, all because of GaGa and Uncle Scott.
Kayla clamored her joy, and dragging the book, bounced up and ran over to Scott. She knocked over Patricia’s glass of diet Pepsi on the coffee table. Ice cubes and brown liquid spattered everywhere, on the book, the table, the oak-planked floor, the club chair, Kayla’s unicorn-pattern T-shirt. Patricia scurried to the kitchen for paper towels. Scott didn’t scold Kayla, but pressed the pages of the book and left it open on top of an antique cupboard to dry out, only shaking his head a little. She guessed his frustration. He had paid top dollar for the leather-bound, gilt-edged set of classics.
Early on the following Saturday, Jessica dropped off Kayla at GaGa’s house for the entire weekend. She and Linda were attending the wedding of a distant Brown cousin whose family ran a prosperous hog farm a hundred miles away. They planned to overnight and return late on Sunday. In mid-morning, Patricia drove the child for the first time to the public library, a sprawling four-story concrete government building that had replaced the stone, neoclassical Carnegie-era edifice she remembered from her girlhood.
The children’s room had been designed to accommodate cherubs and hobbits: pint-sized plastic chairs and tables in bold reds and blues and greens. Patricia selected two Beatrix Potter tales. She wanted to expose Kayla to glossy illustrated Edwardian British children’s books that were shelved in the private libraries of Chicago mansions. Patricia had given piano recitals, Chopin and Schubert and Debussy, during afternoon teas in these great Romanesque Revival brick and stone houses, her patronesses in little silk dresses and kitten-heel pumps, their Catherine Deneuve hair swept into chignons belle époque.
“Look, Kayla, aren’t these rabbits adorable? And see, here’s a picture of mean Mr. McGregor’s boot.” Kayla’s taste ran to Saturday morning cartoon characters. She was sucking her thumb and stamping her foot.
“No, no. S
cooby Doo!”
“No darling, Beatrix Potter. Peter Rabbit. Yummy blackberries and cute round cabbages.”
“NO! NO!”
“Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and—”
“NOOO!”
She whined until Patricia found the popular TV Great Dane. After twenty minutes, Kayla had chosen six books. Patricia added Peter Rabbit to the stack. All the books would be kept at GaGa’s house, to be read to Kayla whenever the little girl stayed over.
Kayla clutched Patricia’s hand as they walked back to the entrance. Patricia piled the books on the checkout counter. The child begged to be picked up to watch, and Patricia obliged. When the librarian, a pink-faced, overweight woman reeking of Zest soap, reached for the books to scan their barcodes, Kayla howled, “Mine,” and wriggling to escape Patricia’s arms, kicked one of the books to the floor. The librarian grimaced and ducked below the counter to retrieve the book.
“What a darling little girl,” she said as she processed the books, never once looking up.
Patricia glanced uneasily at the line of patrons waiting for their turns. Some smiled, but others scowled, seeming to disapprove. Patricia flinched. There was always that nagging residuum of poisonous shame, that she and her family were somehow not-normal, not-good-enough, that they didn’t know how to bring up children who behaved properly and who achieved great things.
On the way home, Patricia stopped at the fourth-generation German bakery downtown and bought an oversized piece of Scott’s favorite, the bakery’s secret-recipe apple strudel.
IX
And now, in the dark, Patricia snuggled against Scott, searching for words to respond to him. Yes, she thought, he’s upset, and he’s justified. After all, he had already raised a child, and had married her on the implicit understanding there would be no more children. He had brought this up before, and she thought that his words were becoming more forceful. Patricia knew she must somehow frame an answer.
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