The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Now, making supper, Hazel glanced over to watch Zack’s hands moving over the paper keyboard. He was a demon, executing scales!

  “Sweetie. Too bad those damn keys don’t make any sound.”

  Without pausing in his playing Zack said, “But they do, Mommy. I can hear them.”

  8

  Now they were no longer keeping-going there was danger. Even in Malin Head Bay at the northern edge of the state by the Canadian border hundreds of miles from their old home in the Chautauqua Valley there was danger. Now that Zacharias Jones was enrolled in elementary school and Hazel Jones was working six days a week at the Bay Palace Theater where anyone could walk up and buy a ticket there was danger.

  He, him was the danger. His name unspoken he had become strangely powerful with the passage of time.

  It was like a fair, cloudless sky. Here at the edge of the lake you glanced up to see that the sky has become suddenly mottled with cloud, thunderheads blown across Lake Ontario within minutes.

  His mother’s games! Out of nowhere they came.

  He would struggle to comprehend the nature of the game even as he was playing it. For always there were rules. Games have rules. As music has rules. Where such rules come from, he had no idea.

  The Game-of-the-(Disappearing)-Pebbles.

  Fifteen pebbles of varying size and shapes Hazel placed on the windowsill of the largest of the windows overlooking the alley behind Hutt Pharmacy. One by one, these disappeared. By early winter only three remained.

  It was a rule of the game that Zack could note the absence of a pebble but not question who’d taken it, or why. For obviously his mother had taken it. ( Why?)

  In later years Zack would understand that these were childish games of necessity, not of choice.

  They’d gathered the pebbles on the stony beach by the bridge to St. Mary Island. One of their favorite walking places, at the edge of the St. Lawrence River. The pebbles were prized as “precious stones”�“good luck stones.” Several were strikingly beautiful, for common stones: smooth and striated with colors like a kind of marble. Zack never tired of staring at them, touching them. Other pebbles were not beautiful but dense and ugly, clenched like fists. Yet they exuded a special power. These Zack never touched but took a strange comfort in seeing on the windowsill each morning.

  In no discernible order, over a period of months the pebbles began to disappear. It seemed not to matter if a pebble was beautiful or ugly, one of the larger pebbles, or smaller. There was a randomness to the game that kept Zack in a state of perpetual uneasiness.

  Obviously, his mother was taking the pebbles away. Yet she would not admit to it, and Zack could not accuse her. It seemed to be an unspoken rule of the game that the pebbles disappeared during the night by a kind of magic.

  It was an unspoken rule, too, that Zack could not remove any of the pebbles. He’d taken one of the beautiful pebbles away to hide under the mattress of his bed but Mommy must have found it there for it, too, vanished.

  “If he doesn’t find us by the time all the pebbles are gone, it’s a sign he never will.”

  He, him. This was Daddy-must-not-be-named.

  Now that Hazel Jones was an usherette at the movie theater, she had a way of speaking in mimicry of certain Hollywood actresses. As Hazel Jones she could allude to things that Zack’s mother would not wish to allude to. There was Mommy who’d had another name in that time living in the big old farmhouse on the Poor Farm Road close by the canal where he’d played and there was Daddy who’d had a name not to be recalled for Mommy now would be very upset, he lived in dread of upsetting Mommy.

  There is Mommy now. Mommy will be all to you now.

  And so whatever Hazel Jones said in her airy insouciant way was somehow not “real” yet it could be used as a vehicle for “real” speech. As one might speak through the mouth of a mask hidden by the mask.

  The other game was the fearful game. For he could never be certain that it was a game.

  Sometimes on the street. Sometimes in a store. In any public place. He would sense his mother’s sudden apprehension, the way she froze in mid-speech, or squeezed his hand so that it hurt, staring at someone whom he, Zack, had not yet seen. And might not see. His mother might decide no, there was no danger, or his mother might suddenly panic and push him into a doorway, pull him into a store and hurry with him to the rear exit, paying no heed to others staring at them, the white-faced young mother and her child half-running as if in fear of their lives.

  Always it happened so quickly. Zack could not resist. He would not have wished to resist. There was such strength in Mommy’s desperation.

  Once, she’d pushed him down behind a parked car. Tried clumsily to shield him with her body.

  “Niley! I love you.”

  His old name, baby-name. Mommy had uttered it without realizing in her panic. Later he would realize that Mommy had expected to be killed, this was her farewell to him.

  Or, she’d expected him to be killed.

  Only a few times did Zack actually see the man his mother saw. He was tall, broad-backed. In profile, or turned away from them entirely. His face wasn’t clear. His hair was close-cropped, glinting gray. Once he was coming out of the Malin Head Inn, pausing beneath the marquee to light a cigarette. He wore a sport coat, a necktie. Another time he was just outside the IGA as Mommy and Zack were leaving with their shopping cart so that Mommy had to reverse her direction, panicked, colliding with another customer just behind them.

  (The cart containing their meager groceries, they’d had to abandon in their haste to escape by a rear exit. Fortunately by this time Hazel Jones was known to the IGA manager and her groceries would be set aside for her to retrieve the next morning.)

  Zack was left shaken, frightened by these encounters. For he knew that any one of them might be he, him. And that he and Mommy would be punished for whatever it was they’d done, he would never forgive.

  Back in the apartment, Mommy would pull down all the window blinds. At dusk she would switch on only a single lamp. Zack would help her drag their heaviest chair in front of the door that was locked, and double-locked. Neither would have much appetite for supper that evening and afterward practicing piano at the make-believe keyboard, Zack would be distracted hearing behind the sharp clear notes and chords of the imagined piano a man’s upraised voice incredulous and furious and not-to-be-placated by even a child’s abject terror.

  “It wasn’t him, Zack. I don’t think so. Not this time.”

  Hunched over the make-believe keyboard. His fingers striking the paper keys. The piano sound would drive out the other sound, if his fingers did not weaken.

  In the morning, the pebbles on the windowsill.

  If it was a clear day, sunshine flooded through the glass making the pebbles hot to the touch. Zack would realize the pebble-game was not a game merely. It was real as Daddy was real, though invisible.

  Mommy would not allude to what had happened the day before, or had almost happened. That was a rule of the game. Hugging him and giving him a smacking wet kiss saying in her brisk Hazel Jones voice to make him smile, “Got through the night! I knew we would.”

  A curious variant on the Game of He/Him gradually evolved. This was Zack’s game entirely, with Zack’s rules.

  By chance, Zack would sight the man, not Mommy. A man who closely enough resembled the man of whom they could not speak, yet somehow it happened that Mommy did not see him. Zack would wait, with mounting tension Zack would wait for Mommy to see this man, and to react; and if Mommy did not, or, seeing the man, took no special notice of him, Zack would feel something snap in his brain, he would lose control suddenly, pushing into his mother, nudging her.

  “Zack? What’s wrong?”

  Zack seemed furious suddenly. Pushing her, striking with his fists.

  “But�what is it? Honey�”

  By this time the danger might have passed. The man, the stranger, had turned a corner, disappeared. Possibly there’d been no man: Zack had i
magined him. Yet, in childish fury, Zack drew back his lip, baring his teeth. It was a facial mannerism of his father’s, to see it in the child was a terrifying sight.

  “You missed him! You never saw him! I saw him! He could walk right up to you and blam! blam! blam! shoot you in the face and blam! he’d shoot me and you couldn’t stop him! I hate you.”

  In astonishment Hazel Jones stared at her raging son. She could not speak.

  9

  Stunned. Struck to the heart. Somehow her son had known, his father had owned a gun.

  Somehow, the son had memorized certain of the father’s expressions. That look of disgust. That look of righteous fury, you dared not approach even to touch in helpless love.

  10

  Fallin’ in love with love.

  Savin’ all my love. For you.

  It was in the early winter of 1962 that he began to see the young woman in the smoky piano bar of the Malin Head Inn. Where he was CHET GALLAGHER JAZZ PIANO advertised in a blown-up glossy photo on display in the hotel lobby.

  At first half-disbelieving his eyes, it could be her. The usherette from the Bay Palace Theater.

  The one whose name Gallagher had learned from his friend who managed the theater. ( Though he had not made use of this information, and vowed he would not.)

  She arrived early at the piano bar, about 8 P.M. Sat alone at one of the small round zinc-topped tables beside the wall. Left before the lounge became really crowded, shortly after 10 P.M. Always she was alone. Conspicuously alone. Declining offers of drinks from other, male patrons. Declining offers of company from other, male patrons. She smiled, to soften her refusal. You could see that she was resolved to listen to the jazz pianist, not to be drawn into conversation with a stranger.

  Each time, she ordered two drinks. She did not smoke. She sat watching Gallagher, attentively. Her applause was quicker and more enthusiastic than the applause of most of the other patrons as if she wasn’t accustomed to applauding in a public place.

  “Hazel Jones.”

  He mouthed the name to himself. He smiled, it was so innocent and naive a name. Purely American.

  The first time Gallagher saw her had been one of his brooding evenings. Picking his way through Thelonious Monk’s “Round About Midnight.” Minimalist, meditative. Like making your way through the dream of another person and it’s easy to lose your way. Gallagher loved Monk. There was a side of him that was Monk. Unyielding, maybe a little cranky. Eccentric. Beautiful music Gallagher believed it, this very cool black jazz. He wanted so badly for others to hear it as he did. To care about it as he did.

  That’s the problem. To be supremely cool, you don’t care. But Gallagher cared.

  It’s her. Is it her?

  A woman by herself in the Piano Bar. You expect a man to join her, but no one does. This striking young woman in what appeared to be a cocktail dress of some cheaply glamorous dark red material threaded with silver. Her hair was feathery and floating at the nape of her neck. She smiled vaguely about her not seeing the frank stares of men and as the waiter approached she looked up at him, appealing. As if to ask Is it all right, that I am here? I hope I am welcome.

  Gallagher fumbled a few notes. Finished the meandering Monk piece to scattered applause and his agile fingers leapt to something more animated, rhythmic, sexy-urgent “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby.” Which Gallagher hadn’t played in a very long time.

  Hadn’t realized he’d been thinking of her. “Hazel Jones.” In a way, he resented thinking of any woman. He’d have thought that he was beyond that, the tight hot sensation in his chest and groin. Since The Miracle Worker that summer he’d returned to the Bay Palace Theater only once; and that evening he hadn’t allowed himself to seek out the pretty usherette, to inveigle her into speaking with him. No, no! Afterward he’d been proud of himself for avoiding her.

  The compulsion to be happy only complicates life. Gallagher had had enough of complications.

  That night, Gallagher took his break without glancing out at the young woman. He walked quickly away. When he returned, her table was occupied by someone else.

  Too bad. But just as well.

  Had to ask the waiter what the young woman had been drinking and was told Coke on ice. She’d left a thirty-five-cent tip, dimes and nickels.

  This curious phase of Chet Gallagher’s life: woke up one morning to find himself an affable small-town eccentric who played jazz piano at the Malin Head Inn, Wednesday/Thursday/Friday evenings. (Saturday was a country-and-western dance combo.) He lived in a small wood-frame house near the riverfront, sometimes drove out to the family camp on Grindstone Island for a few days in seclusion. It was off-season in the Thousand Islands, there were few tourists. Locals who lived year-round on the islands were not exactly sociable. Not long ago Gallagher might have brought a woman friend to stay with him on the island. In an earlier phase, the woman would have been his wife. But no longer.

  Too damned much trouble to be shaving every morning. Too much trouble to be warmly humorous, “upbeat.”

  The compulsion to be upbeat only exhausts. He knew!

  Gallagher’s family lived on the farther side of the state, in Albany and vicinity. In their own intense world of exclusivity, family “destiny.” He hadn’t spoken to any of them in months and not to his father since the previous Fourth of July, at the Grindstone camp.

  And so he’d become an entertainer in the sometime hire of the Malin Head Inn, whose owner was a friend of Gallagher’s, a longtime acquaintance of his father Thaddeus Gallagher. The Malin Head was the largest resort hotel in the area, but in the off-season only about a fifth of its rooms were occupied even on weekends. Gallagher played piano Hoagy Carmichael style, loose-jointed frame hunched over the keyboard, long agile fingers ranging up and down the keys like making love, cigarette drooping from his lips. Didn’t sing like Carmichael but frequently hummed, laughed to himself. In jazz there are many private jokes. Gallagher was an impassioned interpreter of the music of Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Monk. In the Piano Bar, he received requests for “Begin the Beguine,” “Happy Birthday to You,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Cry.” Smiled his fleeting polite smile and continued playing the music he liked, with strains of cruder music woven in. He was versatile, playful. Good-natured. Not mocking and not malicious. A man of youthful middle age whom most other men liked, and to whom some women were powerfully attracted. And not often drunk.

  Some nights, Gallagher drank only tonic water on ice, spiked with lime gratings. Tall glass beading with moisture on the piano top, ashtray beside it.

  Gallagher had local admirers. Some drove up from Watertown. Not many, but a few. They came to hear chet gallagher jazz piano, they were mostly men, like himself unmarried, formerly married, separated. Men losing their hair, gone flaccid at the waist, stark-eyed, needing to laugh. Needing sympathy. Men for whom “Stormy Weather,” “Mood Indigo,” “St. James Infirmary,” “Night Train” made perfect sense. There were a few local women who liked jazz, but only a few. ( For how could you dance to “Brilliant Corners”? You could not.) The hotel guests were a mixed bag, especially during the tourist season. Sometimes there were true jazz enthusiasts. Most often, not. Customers came into the lounge to drink, smoke. Listened a while, became restless and departed for the less restrained atmosphere of the tap room where there was a jukebox. Or they stayed. They drank, and they stayed. Sometimes they talked loudly, laughed. They were not intentionally rude, they were supremely indifferent. You couldn’t help but know, if you were Chet Gallagher, that they were disrespectful of the musical culture that meant so much to him, Gallagher wasn’t so damned affable he didn’t feel the sting of insult not to himself but to the music. Privileged white sonsofbitches he thought them, having eased into the dark subversive skin of jazz.

  It was one of the things his father detested in him. An old story between them. Gallagher’s politics, his “pinko”�“Commie”�tendencies. Soft-hearted about Negroes, voted for Kennedy not Nixon, S
tevenson not Eisenhower, Truman not Dewey back in ’48.

  That had been the supreme insult: Truman not Dewey. Thaddeus Gallagher was an old friend of Dewey’s, he’d given plenty of money to Dewey’s campaign.

  Lucky for Gallagher he didn’t drink much any longer. When his thoughts swerved in certain directions, he could feel his temperature rise. Privileged white sonsofbitches he’d been surrounded by most of his life. Fuck what do you care. You don’t care. The music doesn’t depend on you. A privileged white sonofabitch yourself, face it, Gallagher. What you do at the piano is not serious. Nothing you do is serious. A man without a family, not serious. Playing piano at the Malin Head isn’t a real job only something you do with your time. As your life isn’t a real life any longer only something you do with your time.

  “Blue Moon” he was playing. Slow, melancholy. Maudlin raised to its highest pitch. It was mid-December, a snow-flurried evening. Languid flakes blown out of the black sky above the St. Lawrence River. Gallagher never allowed himself to expect Hazel Jones to turn up in the Piano Bar as he never allowed himself to expect anyone to turn up. She’d come several times, and departed early. Always alone. He had to wonder if she worked alternate Friday evenings at the Bay Palace or maybe she’d quit altogether. He’d made inquiries and knew that ushering paid pitifully little. Maybe he could help her find better employment.

  His friend who managed the Bay Palace had told him that Hazel was from somewhere downstate. She knew no one in the area. She was somewhat secretive but an excellent worker, very reliable. Always friendly, or friendly-seeming. Very good selling tickets. “Personality plus.” That smile! Good with troublesome (male) patrons. You hired a good-looking girl to fill out the usherette uniform but you didn’t want trouble. Unlike the other female ushers Hazel Jones didn’t become upset when (male) patrons behaved aggressively with her. She spoke calmly to them, smiled and eased away to call the manager. Never raised her voice. The way a man might do, not letting on what he’s feeling. Like Hazel is older than she looks. She’s been through more. Anything now is chicken shit to her.