The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Gallagher glanced out into the smoky lounge, saw a young woman just coming in, heading for an empty table near the wall. Her!

  He smiled to himself. He made no eye contact with her. He felt good! Improvising, liking how his lean fingers flashed. He eased from “Blue Moon” to “Honeysuckle Rose” playing vintage Ellington for one who he guessed knew little of jazz, still less of Ellington. Badly wanting her to hear, to know. The yearning he felt. Thinking She came to me. To me! In a showy run of notes to the top of the keyboard Chet Gallagher fell in love with the woman known to him as Hazel Jones.

  At his break, Gallagher went directly to her table.

  Looming over the surprised young woman who’d clapped with such childlike enthusiasm.

  He thanked her, said he’d been noticing her. Introduced himself, as if she wouldn’t have known his name. And stooped to hear the name she told him: “‘Hazel’�what? I didn’t quite hear.”

  “Hazel Jones.”

  Gallagher laughed with the pleasure of a thief fitting a key into a lock.

  “Mind if I join you for a few minutes, Hazel Jones?”

  He could see that she was flattered he’d approached her. Other patrons had been waiting to speak with the pianist but he’d brushed past them heedless. Yet Gallagher would recall afterward to his chagrin that Hazel Jones had hesitated, staring at him. Smiling, but her eyes had gone slightly flat. Maybe she was alarmed by him, looming over her so suddenly. He was six foot three, whippet-lean and loose-jointed and his high balding dome of a head glowed warm with the effort of his stint at the piano; his eyes were shadowy, kindly but intense. Hazel Jones had no choice but to move her chair to make room for him. The zinc-topped table was small, their knees bumped beneath.

  Close up, Gallagher saw that the young woman’s face was carefully made up, her mouth very red. Hers was a poster-face at the Bay Palace. And she was wearing the cocktail dress made of some dark red glittery fabric that fitted her breasts and shoulders tightly. The upper sleeves were puffed, the wrists tight. In the smoky twilight of the cocktail lounge she exuded an air both sexual and apprehensive. Politely she declined Gallagher’s offer to buy her something stronger than Coke: “Thank you, Mr. Gallagher. But I have to leave soon.”

  He laughed, hurt. Protested, “Please call me Chet, Hazel. ‘Mr. Gallagher’ is my sixty-seven-year-old father way off in Albany.”

  Their conversation was wayward, clumsy. Like climbing into a canoe with a stranger, and no oars. Exhilarating and also treacherous. Yet Gallagher heard himself laughing. And Hazel Jones laughed, so he must have been amusing.

  How flattered a man is, that a woman should laugh at his jokes!

  How childlike in his soul, wishing to trust a woman. Because she is attractive, and young. Because she is alone.

  Gallagher had to concede, he was excited by Hazel Jones. In the Bay Palace in her ridiculous uniform, now in the Piano Bar in her glittery-red cocktail dress. Her eyebrows were less heavy than he recalled, she must have plucked and shaped them. Her hair was cut in feathery, floating layers, like a loose cap on her head. Brunette, streaked with russet-red highlights. And her skin very pale. It was like leaning toward an open flame, leaning toward Hazel Jones. The sensation Gallagher felt was tinged with dread for he was not a young man, hadn’t been a young man for a long time, and these feelings were those he’d had as a young man and they were associated with hurt, disappointment.

  Yet, here was Hazel Jones smiling at him. She, too, was edgy, nervous. Unlike other women of Gallagher’s wide acquaintance, Hazel seemed to speak without subterfuge. There was something missing in her, Gallagher decided: the mask-like veneer, the scrim of will that came between him and so many women, his former wife, certain of his lovers, his sisters from whom he was estranged. With girlish aplomb Hazel was telling him that she admired his “piano playing”�though jazz was “hard to follow, to see where it’s going.” Surprising him by saying that she’d used to listen to jazz music on a late-night program on a Buffalo radio station, years ago.

  Immediately Gallagher identified the program: “Zack Zacharias” on WBEN.

  Hazel seemed surprised, Gallagher knew the program. Gallagher had to resist telling her that late-night jazz programming on a number of stations through the state was his, Chet Gallagher’s idea. WBEN was an affiliate of Gallagher Media, one of the stronger urban stations.

  “Do you know him? ‘Zack Zacharias’? I always wondered if he was�you know, Negro.”

  Delicately Hazel enunciated the word: Ne-gro. As if to be Ne-gro was a kind of invalidism.

  Gallagher laughed. “His name isn’t ‘Zack Zacharias’ and he’s no more Negro than I am. But he knows good jazz, the program is in its ninth year.”

  Hazel smiled, as if confused. He didn’t want to seem to be laughing at her.

  “You’re from Buffalo, are you?”

  “No.”

  “But western New York, right? I can hear the accent.”

  Hazel smiled again, uncertainly. Accent? She had never heard the flat nasal vowels, herself.

  Gallagher didn’t want to make her self-conscious. She was so vulnerable, trusting.

  “Why’ve you come so far north? Malin Head Bay? Must’ve come here in the summer, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “D’you know people here? Relatives?”

  This blunt question Hazel seemed not to hear. Surprising Gallagher with a remark he’d have had to take as flirtatious, from another woman: “You haven’t been back to the movies for a long time, Mr. Gallagher. At least, I haven’t seen you.”

  Gallagher was flattered, Hazel remembered him. And was willing to allow him to know that she remembered him.

  Telling her again, poking at her arm, please call him Chet.

  Now Gallagher leaned over Hazel feeling the blood course warm and exhilarated in his veins. How pretty she was! How desperately grateful he was, she’d come back! A man plays jazz piano hoping to attract a woman like this one. Telling her that really he didn’t like movies, much. He wasn’t very American, very normal in that regard. His family background was “media”�not films, but newspapers, radio, TV. Trading in images, dreams. Always the film industry had been primed to sell tickets, that was its aim. If you knew this, you were not so likely to be seduced. What Gallagher most disliked about Hollywood films was the music. The “score.” Usually it grated against his nerves. The sentimental employment of music to evoke emotions, to “set scenes” offended him. A holdover from silent films when an organist played in each theater. All was exaggerated, perverse. Sometimes he shut his ears against the music. Sometimes he shut his eyes against the images.

  Hazel laughed. Gallagher was himself exaggerating, to be amusing. He loved seeing her laugh. He guessed that, in other circumstances, Hazel didn’t laugh much. A warm flush rose into her face. One of her mannerisms was to brush unconsciously at her hair, lifting and letting fall the neatly scissor-cut bangs that lay across her forehead. It was a childlike gesture that called attention to her serene face, her shining hair, ringless fingers and red-painted nails. Also, she shifted her shoulders in the tight dress, leaning forward, and back. Her body seemed awkward to her, as if she’d grown up too soon. The red-glittery dress was a costume like the usherette’s costume; Gallagher knew without needing to check that Hazel would be wearing very high-heeled shoes.

  Gallagher wanted to protect this young woman from the hurt that such naiveté would surely bring her. He wanted to make her trust him. He wanted to make her adore him. Wanted to caress her cheek, her slender throat. That squirmy, partly bared shoulder. Wanting to cup her breast in his hand. He felt a swoon of desire, imagining Hazel naked inside her clothes. The shock of it, seeing a woman naked for the first time, such trust.

  Gallagher was talking rapidly. This was all coming fast, careening at him. And he hadn’t had anything stronger than beer all evening. Just he was a little drunk with Hazel Jones.

  That old familiar shiver of dread. Yet a perverse comfort in it. Never had
Gallagher made love to a woman without that anticipatory sensation of dread. Except in his marriage, he’d become numbed to extremes of emotion. As soon as sex becomes companionable, habitual, it ceases to be sex and becomes something else.

  This one, you won’t marry.

  Wishing to comfort himself.

  Gallagher heard himself ask Hazel how she liked movies?�having to see them continuously as she did.

  He cared nothing for her reply. Her voice engaged him, not her words. Yet she surprised him, saying she saw only fragments of movies at the Bay Palace, never anything whole. And before working as an usherette she had not seen many movies�“My parents didn’t approve of movies.” So now she saw just broken parts of movies and these many times repeated. She saw the ends of scenes hours before she saw the beginnings. She saw the beginnings of movies soon after having seen their dramatic endings. Stories looped back upon themselves. No one got anywhere. She knew beforehand what actors would say, even as the camera opened upon a “new” scene. She knew when an audience would laugh, though each audience was new and their laughter was spontaneous. She knew what music cues signaled even when she wasn’t watching the screen. It gave you a confused sense of what to expect in life. For in life there is no music, you have no cues. Most things happen in silence. You live your life forward and remember only backward. Nothing is relived, only just remembered and that incompletely. And life isn’t simple like a movie story, there is too much to remember.

  “And all that you forget, it’s gone as if it has never been. Instead of crying you might as well laugh.”

  And Hazel laughed, a thin anxious girl’s laugh that ceased as abruptly as it began.

  Gallagher was astonished by the young woman’s outburst. He had no idea what she was talking about. And her curious emphasis upon the word laugh as if English were a foreign, acquired language to her. He didn’t want to think he’d underestimated her intelligence yet he couldn’t quite grant to a young woman who looked like Hazel Jones any subtlety of analysis, reasoning; it had been Gallagher’s experience that most women spoke out of their emotions. He laughed again, as if she’d meant to be amusing. Took her hand in his, in a gesture that could be interpreted as gallant, playful. Her fingers, chilled from her cold glass, were unexpectedly strong, not small-boned or delicate; her skin was slightly roughened. Gallagher’s pretext to touch her was a handshake of reluctant farewell for he must return to the piano, his break was over.

  It was nearly 9:30 P.M. More customers were entering the Piano Bar. Nearly all the tables were taken. Gallagher was feeling good, he’d have a sizable audience and Hazel would be further impressed.

  “Any requests, Hazel? I’m at your command.”

  Hazel appeared to be pondering the question. A small frown appeared between her eyebrows.

  A young woman to take all questions seriously, Gallagher saw.

  “Play the song that makes you happiest, Mr. Gallagher.”

  “‘Chet,’ honey! My name is ‘Chet.’”

  “Play what makes you happiest, Chet. That’s what I would like to hear.”

  11

  It was the New Year. Zack was made to understand by certain veiled and enigmatic remarks of his mother’s that there would be a surprise for him, soon.

  “Better than Christmas. Much better!”

  Much had been made of Christmas at school. Now in the New Year much was made of 1963. All first-graders had to learn to spell JANUARY not forgetting the U. Stony-faced Zacharias Jones drummed his fingers on his desk top lost in a trance of invisible notes, chords. Or, if his teacher scolded him, he folded his arms tight across his chest and depressed his fingers secretly, compulsively. Scales, formula patterns, contrary motions, arpeggio root positions and inversions. He didn’t know the names for these exercises, he simply played them. So vividly did he hear the notes in his head, he always heard a misstrike. When he made a mistake, he was obliged to return to the very beginning of the exercise and start over. Mr. Sarrantini was an invisible presence in the first-grade classroom. Out of Miss Humphrey’s sallow-skinned face emerged the fattish flushed face of the piano teacher. Neither Miss Humphrey nor Mr. Sarrantini was more than grudging in their praise of Zacharias Jones. Clearly, Mr. Sarrantini disliked his youngest pupil. No matter how fluently Zack executed his weekly lesson, always there was something less-than-perfect. This new scale, F minor with four flats. After only a day of intensive practicing Zack could play it as fluently as he played the scale of C major with no sharps or flats. Yet he knew beforehand that Mr. Sarrantini would make the wet chiding sound with his lips.

  Smirking Here’s little Wolfgang. Eh!

  Miss Humphrey was nicer than Mr. Sarrantini. Mostly she was nicer. Though sometimes she became exasperated and snapped her fingers under Zack’s nose to wake him causing the other children to giggle. She had not liked it when the entire class was instructed to make construction-paper Santa Claus figures and paste silky white fluff on them as “hair” and Zack had been clumsy�purposefully, Miss Humphrey believed�with scissors, paper, glue. She had told the child’s anxious mother that Zack read at the sixth grade level and his math skills were even better but Your son has problems of deportment, attitude. Social skills. Either he’s restless and can’t sit still or he goes into a trance and doesn’t seem to hear me.

  He was six years old. Already the knowledge lodged in him sharp as a sliver in flesh that if people don’t like you it doesn’t matter how smart, how talented you are. Doesn’t seem to hear me was the charge.

  Mrs. Jones apologized for her son. Promised he would “try harder” in the New Year.

  In the New Year it was bitter cold. Minus-twenty degrees Fahrenheit “warming” to a high of minus-five if the sun appeared through layers of sullen cloud. At such times Hazel was practical-minded, uncomplaining. Laughed at the radio forecaster’s dour tone. It was comical, how the local radio station played the brightest, most cheerful music�“Sunny Side of the Street,” “Blue Skies,” “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?”�on the darkest winter mornings.

  Heavy mugs of steaming hot chocolate Mommy prepared for Zack and herself. It was the principle of the thermos bottle, Mommy said: hot liquid in your tummy, you’ll be kept warm until you get to where you’re going.

  On blizzard days, no one was expected to go anywhere. What happiness! Zack was allowed to stay home from school luxuriating in snowy quiet and Hazel could stay home from the Bay Palace Theater. No need to make up her face like a movie poster or brush-brush-brush her hair till it gleamed like fire. Singing slyly under her breath Savin’ all my love for you! glancing sidelong at her son so fiercely absorbed in piano practice at the kitchen table. On those blindingly sunny mornings that often followed blizzards, Mommy would bundle Zack up in long woollen itchy underwear, shirt and two sweaters, zip him into his stiff new sheepskin jacket from Sears, pull his woollen cap down low on his head and wrap a woollen muffler ’round and ’round his neck covering his mouth as well so that if Zack breathed through his mouth outdoors, and not his nose, which he couldn’t help doing, the wool dampened, and smelled bad. Two pairs of winter socks inside his rubber boots, also newly purchased at Sears. And two pairs of mittens forced on his hands, the outer pair made of fake leather lined with fake fur. “Your precious fingers, Zack! Your little toes can freeze and fall off, honey, but not your fingers. These fingers will be worth a fortune someday.”

  Laughing at what she called Zack’s pickle-puss, and kissing him wetly on the nose.

  12

  “You have a new friend, Zack! Come meet him.”

  He had not seen his mother so breathless, excited. She was taking him into the brightly lighted hotel on the river, the Malin Head Inn, he’d seen only from the exterior when, in warm weather, it seemed long ago they’d gathered the special stones along the beach.

  They were awkward together, stumbling into a single compartment of the revolving door. A blast of warm air struck their faces when they spilled out into the hotel lobby. So many peopl
e! Zack stood blinking. Mommy gripped his mittened hand tight and led him across the crowded floor. On all sides there was activity, movement. Too much to see. A rowdy party of skiers had only just arrived, moving to register at the front desk. They wore brightly colored canvas jackets and carried expensive skiing gear. Several of the young men observed Hazel Jones as she made her way through the lobby. Her cheeks smarted from the cold and she appeared distraught as if she’d been running. In a lounge area, she paused to unzip Zack’s sheepskin jacket and to remove her own shapeless coat which was made of a gray fuzzy material, with a hood. Beneath the coat, Hazel Jones was wearing one of her two “party” dresses as she called them. This one, Zack’s favorite, was dark purple jersey with tiny pearls across the bosom and a satin sash. Hazel had bought both dresses for nine dollars at a fire sale downtown. You’d have had to look close to see where the fabric of each dress was damaged.

  “He’s waiting, sweetie. This way!”

  Hazel grabbed Zack’s hand, now bare, and pulled him along. Zack liked it that there were no other children in the lobby. He was made to feel special for it was late for a child to be up: past 8:30 P.M. Zack rarely became sleepy until past ten o’clock, sometimes later if he was listening to music on the radio. He was hearing music now, and it excited him.

  “It’s a wedding. But I don’t see the bride.”

  Hazel had stopped outside an enormous ivory-and-gold ballroom where, on a raised platform against the farther wall, a five-piece band was playing dance music. This was music to make you smile, and want to dance: “swing.” Strange that most of the dressily attired men and women in the ballroom were not dancing but standing in tight clusters, holding drinks, talking and laughing loudly.