Bow Grip

by Coyote, Ivan E.

  “Have a seat, I’ll put the kettle on for us,” Ally said when we were done. “Take off your coat. I want to talk to you about something.”

  Sit down, I want to talk to you about something. What happened the last time she said something like that to me? I mentally reached for my stress journal, remembered it was sitting on the front seat of my truck, the pen clipped to its front cover.

  I sat down in the armchair but kept my jacket on.

  Ally brought us some tea. Chamomile. Thank Christ, I thought. Anything but peppermint. At least this time if I passed out I was already sitting in an armchair, and wouldn’t knock myself out.

  Ally sat on the couch, her feet tucked underneath her.

  “So tell me how your life is these days. I mean, I get the bare facts from your mom, but I want details.”

  “I’ve been all right. Fair to middling, I’d say. Better lately. Aside from a panic attack and the stitches in my head, I’d say this little vacation’s been real good to me. I’m looking forward to my cello lesson. I like playing the thing, a lot more than I thought. Gives me something to do.”

  “We should jam sometime. Give me an excuse to dust off my oboe. Haven’t touched it since we got this place. I’m mostly into taking pictures now, and stuff for school. I’m taking a textile course, a darkroom class, some computer stuff. I love going to school. I need the discipline. I never seem to get much done without a deadline.”

  This would have been the ideal opportunity for me to ask her about her Master’s degree, and if it was anything I did that made her feel like she couldn’t tell me she wanted to go back to school, but I rolled all my questions around in the back of my mouth, then swallowed them. Washed them down with herbal tea. We were getting along so well. The past was done. I missed her, and just wanted to talk, didn’t want to get all heavy. I looked at my watch.

  10:25 a.m. Talking to my ex-wife about why she left stresses me out so much I avoid it at all costs. Even though it might help if I knew.

  I wrote it down in my head, for later.

  “You need to be somewhere? That’s the third time you’ve looked at your watch in the last twenty minutes.”

  “Sorry, Al. Force of habit. I bill out by the hour. This is only my fifth day off, and I don’t know what to do with my hands. I think maybe I’m a workaholic.”

  “You’re just figuring that out now?”

  “Better late than never, right?”

  Allyson shifted around on the couch. I could tell she was about to change the subject.

  “Speaking of which, I have something I need to tell you. Kathleen and I … we’re having a baby.”

  “Both of you?”

  “We’re a couple.”

  “I know that, Allyson. I mean, which one of you is pregnant?”

  “Kathleen is. I couldn’t face all that again, the pee tests, the ovulating calendar. She’s thirty-six, and she really misses Mitch’s kids. She’s always wanted kids of her own.”

  10:35 a.m. My wife is having a lesbian love child. And for some reason this also stresses me out.

  “Can I ask who the daddy is?” I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to know, but on the other hand, I didn’t want to be the only one who didn’t know.

  “The donor. We did it by artificial insemination. He’s married, an old friend of Kathleen’s. Nice guy.”

  “How do they do that exactly? Did she have to go to the hospital to get it done?”

  “Do you really want to know the how and where?”

  “Probably not, actually.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  We sat there for a minute, staring into our teacups. “So how do you feel about this, Joseph?”

  She hardly ever called me Joseph.

  “How am I supposed to feel? You just told me five seconds ago. It wasn’t exactly on my list of things I thought were gonna happen. No offense, but it’s like me taking up the cello. Who would have seen that one coming? I guess the first thing it makes me feel is like I have a low sperm count. Like I’m a lemon. A recallable model.”

  “Well, that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. What Kathleen and I were going to talk to you about the other day. We want to ask you if you would consider being a part of our child’s life. You’re my family, Joey, and so is Ruth. Even Sarah. You always will be. I was an only child, a lonely one, you know that. I want something different for my kid. I want him or her to have a real family. A grandma. I don’t even remember what my mom looked like, except from pictures. And I know how much you want to be a father. I’ve thought about it a lot. I want you to be our baby’s co-parent.”

  “What about Kathleen? What does she think about all this?”

  “She feels the same way. We’ve talked about it quite a bit. Ruth is all for it, too. She’s already making a quilt.”

  “My mom knows about all this? Jesus fuck me, why am I always the last one to get told about everything? I had a heart to heart with her just the other day, and she didn’t breathe a word about any of this.”

  “I asked her to let me tell you when you came to town. Face to face.”

  “What does being a co-parent mean, exactly?”

  “It means we want the baby to have a father, and we want it to be you.”

  I took a deep breath and sunk deeper into the armchair. There was a time when the thing I wanted most in the world was to raise up a baby with Allyson. I just never imagined this was what it would look like.

  “What about the … sperm guy? How does he feel about having me around his kid?”

  “It won’t be his kid. He already has a family. He agreed to be our donor, not a father. We’re asking you. I always said you would make a great daddy, and I still think that.”

  “Can I think about it?”

  “You can take the next seven months to think about it. It’s not like we have anyone else lined up. It’s not like that.”

  “I’m really flattered, Ally. Kind of blown away, to be honest. I need to think about it, though. I was just trying to get over the fact I wasn’t ever going to be anyone’s dad. It’s a bit much for me to wrap my head around, all at once.”

  “Take your time. Whatever time you need.”

  I shook my head, trying to bend it around all of what she was really asking me. “So say I was the kid’s father, and obviously Kathleen would be the mother, then what is it going to call you?”

  “Allyson? Maybe mom, too. We’ll figure that out when we need to. We’ll let the kid decide.” She was leaning forward now, her eyes bright.

  “I wonder what my dad would have to say about all this.”

  “He would have loved being a grandpa, and you know it. But I’m not asking your dad, I’m asking you. I only ever really had the one parent, Joey, and he was never much of a father. I would have given everything to have a mother, and this baby will have two. Three parents would be even better.”

  “My buddy Hector was just saying this morning that not having children gave you more freedom. His wife thought childbirth enslaved women. What does that mean for lesbian parents?”

  “It’s the patriarchal concept of the nuclear family that keeps people stuck in the system, not the act of child-rearing itself. It takes a village to raise a true villager.”

  I looked at her sideways. “Did you learn that in art school?”

  “Simone de Beauvoir, I think it was. Or maybe it was Hillary Clinton, I can’t remember.”

  The sun slanted in wide beams through the window behind her. She looked good with short hair. I hugged her before I left, and she hugged me back, long and hard.

  It wasn’t until I got outside the building and the wind hit my face that I realized I was crying. What the fuck was up with me?

  10:40 a.m. Allyson just asked me to co-parent the baby her girlfriend is going to have. A three-way family unit. I’m already hoping it’s a boy, I must admit. Three women might be a little too much for me to deal with. A son. I could teach him how to fix cars. Only if he wants to, though. Fuck it, I cou
ld teach him how to play the cello.

  Stress level: surprisingly low, all things considered. Weather: periodic sunny breaks. Mood: elated, like a brand new father.

  I wrote with the book open in my lap in the cab of my truck, then drove straight back to the motel. Hector’s truck was missing from the parking lot. I went to my room to see if I had a message from the cello lady.

  Caroline had called me back. Lenny’s wife answered the phone at the front desk and gave me the message. I was extra nice to her on the phone, since I now knew what a bastard her husband was.

  I called Caroline right away.

  “Caroline here.”

  “Hi, it’s Joseph Cooper here. I got your number from Rupert, the uh, percussion guy at the music store? I’m looking for cello lessons. The beginner kind.”

  “Hi, Joseph. What do you need to know?”

  “Well, are you available over this weekend? I’m from Drumheller, and going back Monday.”

  “You don’t want to ask me about my credentials?”

  “Do you know how to play the cello?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And can you teach me how to play?”

  She let out a laugh. “Of course I can. I teach little kids in the youth orchestra.”

  “Well, perfect then. That’s about my skill level, too. How much you want me to pay you?”

  “Thirty bucks an hour?”

  Not even half of what I charge, I thought. “Sounds good to me. How about tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Come to my house at three. You got a pen?”

  I wrote down the address of Caroline Daws, my new cello teacher, on the first page of my stress journal, right underneath the phone number of Cecelia Carson.

  “What should I bring?”

  “Just yourself and your cello.”

  I hung up the phone, noticed my hands were sweating.

  1 p.m. I now have a cello teacher. And I think I’m going to be a father. Spermless me is getting a second chance.

  Stress level: minimal to none, just a bit of nerves about my first lesson. Weather: it’s cold in my motel room. Mood: the last time I can remember feeling anything even close to this was the time I got my first dirt bike, the two-stroke, the summer I turned eleven. It’s something like that, that’s as close as I can get. I’d have to call it some kind of bliss.

  I closed my stress journal. So far, the thing was really working.

  I took out my cello and the library books. The tuning fork. Flipped to the first couple pages of How To Play a Stringed Instrument, to ascertain once and for all just exactly how to tune the thing. I didn’t want to show up on Caroline’s doorstep totally clueless.

  I started with the A string, just like the book told me to. It didn’t take me as long as I thought. Just had to feel around for it with my ears, finding the right place for the tuning peg to sit, the note, that place that made the right colour ring inside my head.

  A fifth above, or a fourth below, depending on how you looked at it, the book told me. I could feel when it sounded good when I tuned the next string to the first. Like putting the roof on a house that I had just finished framing. Like finding the value of x in algebra class. I could feel my lips relax back into my face when I got it sounding right.

  I put the TV on and turned it to the public broadcasting channel again, hoping for another Bollywood movie, but instead there was a yodeling program on, which I found impossible to play along with. Picked up the book again. C-G-D-A. Those were the names of the strings. Cats Go Down Alleys, it said, a rhyme to help remember it.

  C-G-D-A.

  I wrote it down on a clean page so I wouldn’t have to bring a kids’ cello book in a clear plastic library jacket with me to my lesson tomorrow. Then I drew a sketch of my own cello, more detailed than the one in the book, with shading and shadows, and the names of all the bits, and little lines pointing, like in a parts catalogue or repair manual.

  Scroll, nut, neck. Fingerboard, belly, bridge. Ribs, back, sides, and tailpiece. F holes, used to increase the resonance of the instrument’s body.

  Like parts of a body. All the good ones.

  The name cello is an abbreviation of the Italian violoncello, which means ‘little violone.’

  The violone is an obsolete instrument, a large viol, similar to a modern double bass.

  I copied it straight out of my library book.

  Tuned exactly one octave below the viola.

  Whatever that means, I thought, but didn’t write it down. The little tin of wax stuff turned out to be rosin.

  Rosin allows the horsehair on the bow to grip the strings, increasing their resonance. Apply rosin with short strokes to the hair near the frog. Then apply rosin with longer strokes to the full length of the bow. The frog is the part of the bow one holds. Proper bow grip is the first thing you need to establish before continuing.

  I grabbed my bow by the frog and rosined it up.

  You should never touch the bow hair with your fingers (except near the frog, when the fingers may contact the hair in normal playing position), and never touch the cello strings in the area where the bow is applied to them. Even when you’ve just washed your hands, there is oil on the surface of your fingers. This oil will prevent proper adhesion between the bow and the string, resulting in a loss of tone.

  Problems: if the fingerboard, sound post, or bridge comes loose or breaks, or if you find cracks or openings, loosen the strings right away and take it to the violin shop. If the strings buzz or dig deeply into the bridge, or feel too high or too low, take it to the violin shop. Never glue anything yourself and certainly not the bridge or sound post!

  Move fine-tuning pegs by turning between thumb and forefinger, counterclockwise if sharp, clockwise if flat.

  To me, sharp sounded sour, and flat sounded lukewarm. I drew the bow towards me, across the first two strings at the same time. This time they sounded dark and basement and solid. I loved how it felt, like a bottom-feeding live thing bellowing between my legs. But only if I got everything right, all at the same time. When I got it to work, I could feel my face split into a smile all on its own, like the cello was humming the bummed-out right out of me.

  Vibrato.

  I wrote it down because I liked the sound of the word.

  Arpeggio. Do not ever lie the cello on its back on the floor. Put it on its side if you must lay it down outside of its case.

  I plonked and bowed and whined around on the thing until a weird muscle under my shoulder that I never felt before began to sing in protest, and my right knee started to quake uncontrollably.

  Then came Hector’s efficient triple rap at my door.

  “Hello, Joseph. I haven’t interrupted you in a moment of inspiration, have I? I can come back if I have.”

  “No, Hector, as a matter of fact, you’re just the man I wanted to see.”

  I stashed my cello away in its case, grabbed my smokes out of my coat. Hector followed me to our little bench outside.

  Stress level: none, except for thinking about the kid’s college fund. Weather outside: cloud cover disappearing by the early afternoon, giving way to a mix of sunny disposition mixed with periodic precipitation. Mood: never better, at least in the last year.

  I closed the book in my lap. Hector was looking at me. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he wanted to ask.

  “Sorry. Just making notes in my stress journal.” Hector sat back, waited for me to continue.

  “For the shrink. She thinks it will keep me off the Prozac maybe, or whatever.”

  “Am I causing you stress?”

  “Not at all, Hector.”

  “Glad to hear it. I keep a journal myself. Not as regular as I should, but I’ve kept it up over the years. A history of my travels, the names of the people I meet, things like that. Because you forget. You really do. That was the one thing about growing old that really snuck up on me. I thought I would always remember the things that really mattered. But that is not what happened at all. Some things I just
forgot.”

  Hector pulled out his tobacco pouch from the inside pocket of his suede coat.

  A gentleman carries his wallet in his inside pocket. My dad used to tell me stuff like that when I was a teenager and he was fixing my tie or explaining the finer points of cufflinks. Only the hired help keep their wallets in their hind pockets. Kind of ironic, I used to think, coming from a man with permanent grease worked into the cracks in his hands. Always keep a clean handkerchief in your pocket. You never know.

  Hector rolled a perfectly uniform cigarette and tossed it up, caught it between his lips. Bet he knew a couple Zippo tricks, too, I thought. I leaned over and cupped a hand against the wind as I lit his cigarette for him. “I just had a visit with the ex-wife.”

  “It looks like you survived.”

  “Well, Allyson had some pretty big news for me. Her and Kathleen are going to have a baby.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Now you see, that’s what I asked too. Just Kathleen. Two months along.”

  “Are congratulations in order then? Or is her news unplanned, or unwanted?”

  “They’re lesbians, Hector. They don’t get pregnant by accident. I don’t think.”

  “Well, a guy shouldn’t assume anything these days.”

  “True enough. Anyways, they planned it all out, I guess, because they did the artificial insemination thing.” I paused. “And they want me to co-parent.”

  Hector blew smoke up into the sky around him.

  “I thought you said the young lady was already two months along.”

  “That’s the sperm bit, Hector, the part I can’t do, unfortunately. That’s already been taken care of. They want me to father the kid. Like, be a father. To it. With them. The three of us.”

  “I see.”

  “Not a sexual thing. A raise-up-the-kid-together thing.”

  “I understand.”

  “So spill it, Hector. What do you think? I told Ally I need to think about it. I’m asking your honest opinion.”

  “The only opinion you should be concerned with is your own. You have fallen upon interesting times, Joseph. A very untraditional conundrum. What’s a man to do? It’s not as though you can ask your priest for guidance.”