MacGregor Tells the World

by Elizabeth Mckenzie

  “We’ve done our best. It was very difficult.”

  Now on a flat surface at the top, the piano moved down the hall and into the man’s apartment. Mac caught a glimpse of a clock. It was midnight. Damn!

  “I’m not complaining. I have all the scrolls—you boys want to hear some Gershwin?” The man’s eyes were sparkling with excitement. “Haven’t seen this old thing since my wife passed away.”

  Among the dusty scrolls in the basket he had: “The Steamboat,” the “Whoa Nellie,” and the “Temptation Rag,” “The Georgia Giggle,” and “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.” After they removed the blanket and straps and positioned the piano against the wall, he inserted a cartridge and plugged in the cord, and the ivory keys began to move in ghostly fashion. It was “The Entertainer,” which Mac used to play, on demand, for his mother.

  He slept until noon, which meant that he missed the next job in the morning. He grabbed his phone and called in.

  “Good morning, Dwight,” he croaked out. “Sorry I’m late—” “Where are you?”

  “I just woke up. I didn’t get home until after midnight.” “Neither did the Africans, and they were here bright and early.” “Did you know what that job was going to be like?” “Shouldn’t have taken that long, and shouldn’t have required another man.”

  “What the hell? I hear you underestimated the bid and they weren’t going to make any money at all on it.”

  “Well, neither are you, because you’re out, and don’t come anywhere near here again, or some of my guys’ll beat the crap out of you.” “What? I killed myself yesterday, and so did Henry and Ahmed!” “Go kill yourself today,” said Dwight Dixon, and the line went dead.

  Huh? He fell back on his sweaty pillow. Why did people take such pleasure in firing him? Was it a reaction against expectation? On first impression, maybe he came off firm and solid, a go-getter, a guy with a future, so when he faltered or strayed, they lashed out at him harder than if he’d just looked mediocre to begin with.

  Carolyn would be happy. After a while he got up and smoked a cigarette and kicked a pile of clothes and papers away from his feet. He’d clean up the place today. He was supposed to go to a party tonight with the Wares for Galeotto House. But after he stumbled into the kitchen and made a strong cup of coffee, his first order of the day was calling information in Boston and asking for a certain Margaret Sullivan. The Margaret Sullivans of Boston were multitudinous, but only three lived in Watertown, where she’d lived. He took down every number. And called the first one on his list.

  “Hello?” said a woman.

  “Is this Margaret Sullivan the piano teacher?” he asked, already suspecting it wasn’t.

  “This is Margaret Sullivan the oboe teacher,” the woman replied. “You’re thinking of Margaret Sullivan on Mount Auburn. I can give you her number. This happens all the time, don’t worry.”

  Mount Auburn, that was it. “Thanks,” said Mac. She gave him one of the numbers he already had.

  Taking a deep breath, he phoned again.

  “Yes?” came the familiar voice. He wondered why he hadn’t tried her sooner.

  “Miss Sullivan?” he said. “It’s MacGregor West, your former student. Remember me?”

  “Yes, of course I remember you,” she said. “How nice to hear from you!”

  “How are you?”

  “Very well, thank you. How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-two,” said Mac.

  “Oh, how time flies.”

  “Are you still teaching?”

  “Yes, I have twelve students right now—mostly beginners.” That voice! It reminded him of the bowl of dusty butter mints sitting on the top of her spinet.

  “And, you’re still in the same house?”

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “Where are you living now?”

  “California,” he said. “Bay Area. Listen, the reason I’m calling—” He stopped a moment. Perhaps she’d never heard the news. “You knew my mother passed away, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t. I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Yeah. Tragic. Because—” He stopped again. There was no need for a because. “Anyway, I’ve been trying to figure out some stuff, and one thing I don’t quite get is how my mom afforded my lessons with you. Did you two have any special arrangements about that?”

  “You were my only student who didn’t have his own piano,” she said, and boy, did he know it—all those afternoons he’d duck into the meeting hall at the nearby church.

  “Somehow I thought maybe you gave her a cut rate. We barely had enough money to eat.”

  “Now that I think of it, I believe she had to wait on some money coming in before she could pay me, and sometimes it was late, so she’d send along a note instead.”

  “You mean her paycheck? Or something else.”

  “None of my business. She didn’t share the particulars of your home life with me, though I wondered. Seemed to me you were quite on your own. At first I thought you’d been sent to me by St. Jude’s! You’d show up here like Huckleberry Finn.”

  “Oh!” The voice was pulling him back. “My mother had some strange ideas about clothes. So you didn’t get to know her very well?”

  “No. She was— No.”

  This woman was a gold mine. “Go ahead, say what’s on your mind. I’m piecing things together. Say whatever you want.”

  “All right, I suppose I do remember a few things. One day— oh, this must’ve been a few years after you’d come to me—a man showed up to give you a ride, and you’d never seen him before and you wouldn’t go with him. You came back in while I was giving my next lesson, sat there and refused. I went and spoke with the man— kind of a ratty type; he was to take you to a dental school for a free cleaning. Well, I decided to call your mother and make sure. Do you remember this at all?”

  “Not exactly,” said Mac, staring at a spot on the floor in dismay.

  “I couldn’t reach her. But when I looked out the window again, the man had taken off. Hours later her car pulled up, and you ran out there with your music bag, and I witnessed her reading you the riot act! Yelling her head off at you. I thought it was my fault, and felt very sorry about it. But how could I have sent you off with a strange man you were afraid of?”

  Sometimes friends of his mothers were asked to pick him up, and if he knew them, it was okay, but if he didn’t, he hated the smell of their breath and the crummy small talk in the front seat. Leading who knew where. One time, one of them tried to hold his hand.

  “I’m not wanting to stir up bad feelings,” she said. “She was young and unreliable. I could never pin her down to enter you in competitions. I’d send home notices, the day would arrive, and you wouldn’t show up! It was a pity. You were definitely handicapped by your situation, but you did very well, all things considered.”

  He didn’t remember it that well; this was slightly shocking.

  “Nice talking to you, MacGregor. Have your own piano now?”

  “No, but I moved one up some stairs last night, and it got all scratched and gouged up.” For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he had some satisfaction in telling her this.

  “Oh, heavens!” she said.

  He had to laugh, thinking of her thin wrists and pilled cardigans, and the velveteen davenport where the next child always sat.

  7

  The thirtieth anniversary of Galeotto House was an occasion of note, a cause for celebration, for the press had started whimsically but had thrived, and thrived well. In those years, the colophon of the shrunken head—once considered rebellious and sly—had become as ordinary and often seen as penguins and roosters and Russian wolfhounds and all the rest. This gala had been long in the making. Elaborate invitations—Mac did not receive one but saw the small bound books—announced a soiree not to be missed. Contributors, employees from over the years, writers, editors, and friends would come from all over to make merry and pay their respects. But Galeotto?

  “He’s not coming?” Mac asked Caro
lyn.

  “He’s a shut-in these days,” she replied. “He has some health problems.”

  The party was being held in the editorial offices of Galeotto House, on the fourth floor of an old building on Jackson Street in North Beach, where the press had been for years. Mac met Carolyn in the lobby. She had arrived early, with her parents. She was wearing a soft blue sweater with a wide neck that showed her collarbones. “You look beautiful,” he told her, and she said, “I’m glad you wore that coat.” It was his “Edwardian” coat. His shoulders were bunched and sore, and his back felt as if he’d carried cargo over a mountain like a yak, but pride would not allow him to complain about any of that. He told her he had quit the piano job, and this made her feel he had done it for her, which was probably not a great idea, but what the hell, and they kissed, and he escorted her up in the elevator, watching a certain mild anxiety play on her features before the lift came to a halt and they arrived in the big, bright, jostling room packed with guests. No sooner had they entered than they were presented with glasses of wine by a white-shirted waiter with a tray. The clip on his pocket said MR. BACCHUS.

  “Thanks, Mr. Bacchus,” said Mac.

  “Mr. Bacchus is the business. I’m Craig.”

  Mac downed the wine like a shot. He spotted Adela Ware, across the room, in a nubby brown dress like a naked field in winter, alone on the fringes of the frontier—for what else was a room full of strangers? And then he saw Daniel LaPlante and Tom Roth-man together, LaPlante craning his long white neck to scope the crowd.

  All at once, Carolyn said, “Freddie!”

  A sandy-haired guy with Dumbo ears was giving Carolyn a kiss on the cheek. He looked like a shortstop, or somebody’s freckly, nondescript brother. Carolyn said, “Mac, this is—”

  The guy held out his hand. “Freddie Heald. Say, I’ve heard all about you.” He kept shaking Mac’s hand. “You’ve really swept her off her feet.”

  “Well, you know, you give it your best shot.”

  “I know, believe me, I know!” he cried.

  Was this the ex? Carolyn wasn’t listening. She was already being preyed upon by LaPlante and Rothman. “I don’t think your father realizes we’re here,” Mac heard Rothman say. “We’ll try to talk to him later, when he’s less besieged.”

  “Don’t worry,” LaPlante said. “Tom’s nervous. His novel is outside, waiting in the cold.”

  “Bring it in,” Freddie spoke up. “This is the local shelter for lost novels. I’ll show you where to put it. There’s a room here stacked to the ceiling with them.”

  LaPlante looked at Freddie with contempt. “He is expecting Tom’s novel.”

  The din in the room made speaking a small effort, and the five of them settled into mute observation. To be mute alongside them apparently made LaPlante and Rothman feel more at ease, for La-Plante’s neck ceased to crane, and both he and Rothman embarked on a steady, nervous rocking on their heels. The walls of this room, Mac began to see, were covered with nude women. Dozens of them. A gallery of lips and eyes and breasts and thighs.

  “Who’s into this stuff?” he asked Carolyn.

  “That’s right, it’s your first time here. I don’t notice anymore.”

  Just then, the sound in the room shifted. They turned their heads to the source. From the center of a dense core, Ware’s figure was trying to emerge. As he moved through the surge, he was stopped and grabbed, and Mac saw his ears being filled with secrets and salutations. Ware laughed in the way Mac envied—a laugh that made one man his own audience.

  LaPlante and Rothman braced for the encounter; the effort was not required. Ware hardly appeared to notice them. He wrapped an arm around Freddie. “I want you all to know that this is our best. A fantastic editor; a superb businessman—” Freddie beamed. “Freddie has been a wizard with the books for years,” Ware went on. “With the reorganization, he has a new title.”

  “It’s embarrassing.” Freddie grinned.

  “Freddie Heald,” Ware boomed. “Controller!”

  “Isn’t that too much?” Freddie laughed. “People will ask me what I do. And I’ll have to answer, ‘I’m the Controller.’ Spoken like the true megalomaniac I am.” Ware nodded, and Freddie said, “I’m honored, sir, really.”

  Ware shook his hand again and said, “We're honored.” Then he nodded to the rest of them and continued to make his way through the crowd.

  LaPlante was heard to say, “It’s okay, Tom, it’ll happen later.”

  Craig of Mr. Bacchus made his rounds with goblets of wine, and Carolyn was caught up talking with two older women; Mac was ready to discard his fast-emptied glass. He saw that their friends, LaPlante and Rothman, had found a target. They were now engaged in flaying Freddie Heald—Mac gathered by his expression that he didn’t mind.

  “What about Ware’s books?” LaPlante was asking.

  “Oh, he’s our bread and butter!” Freddie said cheerfully.

  “All of his work?” Rothman asked. “I mean, are they still a go— Parnassus? The Chicago Papers? Satyrs of San Francisco?”

  “Sure,” Freddie said. “They’re workhorses. I’ll tell you something, though. This will impress you. You know what our top title is? Year after year?”

  Rothman nodded reverentially. “Tangier,” he murmured.

  Freddie smiled. “You know it.”

  As though in a stupor, Mac had been listening to this gossip and staring as he did at Adela Ware, who swayed in her own lost repose against one of the niches containing a breast-clutching maiden. She seemed ineffectual and broken in this crowd. How did she feel about her husband’s relationship to Galeotto? Had her husband ever mustered for her what he had for his friend?

  Mac battered through the room and found a place beside her.

  “Hello, Mrs. Ware.”

  Her eyes came up to his. They were as deep and wet as pools. “Hello, Mac.”

  Carolyn was wrong, absolutely wrong, that she did not resemble her mother. Something about the way Adela and she held their heads when they talked was very alike. Carolyn and Adela Ware weren’t balancing pots on their heads in finishing school; they were letting them slide off and crash to the ground. Mrs. Ware seemed glad to see him.

  “Enjoying yourself?” he said.

  “I can’t, I just can’t.” Her voice was deep and sticky. “I can’t stand it here.”

  “Don’t like parties much myself,” Mac said.

  “Why can’t they do something fun? These parties have no plan.”

  “You mean like a game or something? Speeches?”

  “I mean, people who enjoy each other,” she said.

  “Well, I guess we can try to enjoy each other,” he offered.

  “Yes, we can. What I really need is some help. I have a small job for the right person.”

  “What is it?”

  “Transcribing my tapes. I’ve made quite a few of them. Probably nonsense, but I’d like to sort them out and see what’s there.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Mac said, thinking such work could be strangely fascinating, and also unaccustomed to being offered anything.

  Then she remarked, “It’s hard on me, being here, because, you see, Chloe was once my closest friend.”

  “Galeotto’s wife?”

  “Yes. I feel her presence here, still; but in a sad and sorry way. This room is filled with things she bought and collected.”

  “His wife collected this stuff?”

  “Oh, yes. She was out at auctions at dawn; and she searched all the galleries and studios. I went along with her, I ought to know!

  How much nervous energy does it take to get a woman up at dawn to look for things she despises? She hated these things, all of them.”

  Mac followed the explicit canvases around the room. “Then why—”

  “For him. Everything always for him.”

  “Mrs. Ware,” he said, “did you tell your friend she wasn’t doing a very sensible thing?”

  “We didn’t know anything! We were ninnies. We were f
ools. We were afraid.”

  “And now?”

  It seemed she wouldn’t answer—she drank her glass to the bottom, and the wet eyes gazed away. But then she spoke. “Chloe is long dead. No, Mac—now I’m very brave. Too late!”

  And at that moment Carolyn joined them, braided an arm through his. “I want to show Mac around, Mother. Have you seen Lorraine Ogier? She’s here tonight. Go over and say hello.”

  “I loathe Lorraine Ogier,” Adela said. “Where is she?”

  And with that Carolyn interrupted what was the most unnerving conversation he’d had so far with anyone in her family, pulled him away, down a corridor and around a corner and through a door, and together they entered another party, a secret party. “This is Bill’s office,” Carolyn told him. The room was long and low and had paneled walls, cool and dark like a fox warren. Charles Ware sat at the head of a long table cluttered with empty bottles. Three people flanked him. Ware was pouring burgundy into glasses reaching for him like the frantic, stretched mouths of baby birds.

  He was laughing. “Who are these people? Why are you telling me this?”

  “I know, I know!” said a woman, who had bright red hair cut like a mixing bowl. “Whenever I see you, I end up telling you the most god-awful things!”

  The man next to her said, “Say ‘book’ and it’s written.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Ware laughed. “No one actually writes; I have to say ‘dollars and cents’ before anything gets written!”

  Then he seemed to notice them. “Welcome to the inner sanctum. Away from the madding crowd!”

  “It’s your madding crowd, Charles,” the woman said.

  “Come, come.” He beckoned with the wine bottle, and they extended their glasses into his reach.

  Carolyn said, “This is Marci Croudther and this is John Medders and this is Samuel Groom. Everyone, this is MacGregor West.”

  Marci Croudther’s dress crawled with paisleys, John Medders was the man at her side. Samuel Groom had the puffy face of an old lush.

  “Carolyn Ware, are you flaunting this man?” said Marci Croudther. “He’s very good-looking. And tall.”