Autobiography of Us (23 page)

“Please tell me you’ll at least think about it.”

He sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

It was quiet a moment.

“Unwilling to what?”

I looked up, startled. “Oh—nothing. Mother said that once.
I find myself unwilling.
I always wondered what she meant.”

He twisted his napkin between his fingers; I recognized it as something my mother had begun to do that last year I lived at home, one of the many small tics she’d developed in the absence of her sewing. “She was a woman with a great many desires,” he said slowly. “Some of which I was able to fulfill and others, regrettably, I was not.”

I reached out impulsively and covered his hand with mine, the skin of his knuckles like a lizard’s against my palm, cool and dry. “You did your best. Honestly, Daddy. She didn’t exactly make it easy.”

“Nothing worth anything has ever proven itself to be easy. I should think you’d have discovered that by now.”

“You were a wonderful husband,” I said firmly. “A saint.”

He made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a cough. “I ought to have taken more care.”

“You did everything she wanted.”

“I won’t dignify that with a reply.”

“A saint,” I repeated.

“That’s enough—”

“You should eat something.” I looked at his plate of food, untouched save a bite of mashed potatoes he’d pushed to one side. “You need your strength.”

“There’s too much food,” he said, with a trace of irritation. “Everyone keeps bringing food. They must think I’ve got an army hidden under the floorboards.”

“They’re being nice.”

“I’d rather be left alone,” he said forcefully, and as I looked at him bent over in his chair, brittle in that way people who have just lost someone always appear, breakable, as though their loss has drained them of something, some vital element that has otherwise kept them supple, intact, it occurred to me that he had not declined my invitation to come to New York out of politeness. He was simply telling the truth: He was no more capable of leaving that house than he was of flying to the moon. He would, I thought, likely die under its roof, in this very room, perhaps, in that chair.

“It’s strange here without her, isn’t it?” I looked around as though noticing for the first time that she wasn’t there at the table, smoke curling up from her cigarette. “Quiet. We should play a record or something. Maybe one of—”

“No,” he interrupted, and then again, quieter, “no, thank you.”

“It was just an idea.” I took my napkin from my lap and folded it into a square, smoothing the corners with the flat of my hand as though that had been the problem all along. I hardly knew what to say. It all seemed so difficult. Tricky, as though the wrong word might undo him, snap him in two. Of course, he was much stronger than I gave him credit for. People nearly always are during periods of duress, you know, though at the time I don’t believe I’d experienced enough of those to understand.

My father cleared his throat. “It was your mother’s wish that certain facts remain obscured from you while she was alive, and I respected that. However.” He frowned down at his plate. “It seems important now that you gain a greater understanding. Suppose I held out the hope that she might tell you herself one day. I see now that was an erroneous supposition.”

“Tell me what?” I looked at him. “What is it?”

He raised his gaze to meet mine. “The piano,” he said gently. “She might have proven a real talent. There was talk of her playing professionally.”

“But she turned pages,” I said, genuinely confused. “She said her hands were too small. That she was too—”

“Stupid,” he finished for me. “It was of the utmost importance to her that you not think of her as someone who had failed. I’m not sure you can appreciate the enormous pressure she placed on herself—”

“You’re saying she wanted to be a pianist,” I interrupted. “That she was talented.”

“She had a number of mentors who seemed to think so. Older musicians who took her under their wing. Provided advice, the occasional lesson. Men, mostly. Of course, she was, as you know, quite beautiful.” He cleared his throat again. “Never had the money for anything regular, though, and therein lay the problem. She would have needed a proper teacher to develop her talent into anything of significance. Regular coaching. She was entirely self-taught until she arrived in California, besides what little her father had passed along. There was no money for a teacher as she got older, and once the piano was gone—well, she had very little choice.” He mimed running his fingers over a keyboard. “Played the dining table. And when they took that away too, she played the countertops. Incredible what the mind is capable of.”

I remembered the feel of my mother’s fingers tap-tapping that afternoon before I left for the U, the way they had run the length of my arm, light as air. “And Henry Girard?”

He looked at me. “Afraid he was getting on in his years by the time she arrived. He’d read her letters—found them pleasing, I believe. Flattering. Shame he didn’t have time for pupils.”

“I see,” I said slowly.

“It’s difficult to tell with these kinds of things.” He fiddled with the edge of the runner. “Promise so often comes to nothing. Still, she might have had a chance.”

“But what? She fell in love?”

He winced a little. “Something like that.”

“She always said you swept her off her feet.”

“I know what she said.”

“And?”

But he sat there a moment without saying a word. “We took you to a recital once at the old town hall when you were very young, no more than four or so. You won’t remember, I don’t think. You might have been as young as two. Anyway, it was Paganini, if I’m not mistaken—fantastic piece. Big, thundering thing, orchestra and everything. I believe it was the only music I ever found myself truly moved by, not that I knew much of anything about it. Still, hard not to be moved by something like that. The young man who played it went on to become quite well known, I believe. A Russian. They often were in those days.” He frowned. “I’ve forgotten his name. In any case, your mother insisted you were old enough. She bought the tickets as an early Christmas present—it was all she wanted, she said, and you know how your mother got when she set her heart on something. I thought for sure it would turn out to be a disaster.” He shook his head. “But from the moment he started playing, you were at the edge of your seat. There you sat, still as a mouse from start to finish. Positively enchanted. Your mother told me later she felt if she hadn’t been holding your hand, you would have run right up onstage.”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember.”

“She considered lessons for you after that. Must have thought she saw something that night, a natural proclivity. She talked about it for a week or so—looked around for teachers, started drawing up a budget…” His voice trailed off.

“And then what?”

“She came down to breakfast one morning not long after and said she was looking into dance class for the following year. It was what all the other girls your age were doing, she said.” He glanced at me. “She only ever wanted what was best for you.”

My head felt overfull, filled to brimming. “What else?”

He sagged forward in his chair. “Rebecca—”

“The truth,” I said loudly. “I think I’m owed at least that.”

He bowed his head a moment. He was a man with no real friends to speak of, who had just lost his wife; I’m sorry to say I thought nothing of asking him all my questions, demanding answers. In retrospect I understand how painful it must have been, how everything he was saying must have felt like a betrayal. At the time, I thought only of myself. “Fair enough,” he said finally. “The truth.” And then he began.

* * *

“It wasn’t a restaurant where we met. Your mother worked as a waitress in a bar—one of half a dozen jobs she held down to make ends meet. I’d only just recently arrived home—there was a crew of us who’d shipped back at the same time. The walking wounded, we called ourselves. Morale was pretty damn low. Afraid we took to drinking with perhaps more than the appropriate enthusiasm.” He turned his fork over on the table, resting the tines on the wood. “In any case. One night we wandered into the bar where your mother worked. I noticed her right away—we all did. She was years younger than the other waitresses, face like an angel. She took her time coming over to our table. Straightened her apron, ran a rag over the counter. Stopped on the way to change the record on the player. I remember it like it was yesterday—she did it all so casually, as though she hadn’t seen us sitting there, thirsty as hell in the heat, pounding the table with our hands … already drunk off our rockers, I’m afraid. And then this—this
sound
. I’d never heard anything like it. And in a bar, for God’s sake. Girard, of course, though at the time I didn’t have a clue. Anyway. When she finally comes over to take our order, she sits right down at our table, bold as brass. Asks if any of us has a light. Says she’s dying for a cigarette.” He gave me a grim smile. “I thought she was after my friend Jim. Girls were always asking for a light from Jim.”

“But she fell for you.”

He looked away. “They called me Lieutenant. A joke. I happened to be the tallest, that’s all. We were all privates, not a decoration among us. Soldiers with a handful of Purple Hearts and a few less limbs than we left with.”

“And?”

“Afraid I allowed the illusion of grandeur to linger, that’s all.”

“She thought you were a lieutenant.”

“Long enough to let me take her to dinner.”

“And when she found out the truth?”

He let out a sigh. “She was angry. Wouldn’t talk to me for weeks. Refused to serve me, sent over one of the other waitresses instead.” He raised his eyes to meet mine. “Already too late, I’m afraid. She was, as I said, very beautiful.”

“So then what? You up and proposed, just like that?”

“The heart wants what it wants, Queenie,” he said slowly.

“She chose you.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“And the piano?”

He looked pained. “Things were different back then.”

“I understand that.”

“I don’t know if you do.” He coughed. “There were certain expectations.”

“Meaning?”

“We were forced to make certain decisions.”

“Marriage.” I frowned. “But why?”

He squared his shoulders. “It was the honorable thing to do.”

And then, of course, I understood.

* * *

I did not sleep well in my old bed. The mattress was soft and the sheets musty. There was the faint animal odor of dust. By the time light began to leak through the curtains, I’d been awake for what felt like hours. Outside in the orange tree, a phoebe began its morning exercises—
tsee-tsee
,
tsee-tsee.
They are, Oliver had told me once, particularly social birds, prone to congregating anywhere they can feed or roost, but that morning as I lay in bed, I heard only the song of a single bird sounding over and over again.
Tsee-tsee, tsee-tsee.

The light was still dim when I got up and went out into the hall; in that last hour or two before the sun began to stream through the windows in earnest, I went through the house top to bottom. I don’t know what I thought I might find. One of those letters to Henry Girard. A note. A diary, the pages opening to reveal my mother’s round, looping script.
I find myself unwilling
, she might have written.
I find myself with child.
I imagined as I searched that my mother’s life was a series of dark rooms, one leading into the next. I thought if only I could locate a clue, a lone beam of light, I could move through her past, illuminating all those dark corners: the old Georgian in Virginia; her father at the piano, fingers curved over the keys; that bus ride across America, Henry Girard glimmering in the distance, her North Star; the disappointment of those first weeks; the bar where she worked, the tables tacky with residue from the drinks the soldiers ordered, her hands playing hidden scales over the tops of the chairs. I went into my parents’ bedroom and rummaged through the drawers of my mother’s bureau while my father slept; I took the books out of every bookcase in the study, holding them upside down and leafing through the pages; I ransacked the old apothecary chest in the hallway; I ran my hands along the rough wood paneling until my fingertips were full of splinters. But my mother had been nothing if not relentless with her cleaning, and I gave up at a certain point, closing everything back up and dusting off my knees.

Downstairs in the kitchen, I poured myself a glass of water, pushing the old screen door open as I came out onto the patio. The sky was orange as I walked down to the roses, the Cressidas big and sunset pink, the Queen Elizabeths behind them, and the blowsy raspberry-colored Sophie’s Perpetuals behind them. The last row was all American Beauties—these my mother’s favorites, the Beauties, their bright red a color she’d deemed
heavenly.
I had always liked the Dark Ladies best myself, their blossoms close to purple and big as a man’s hand, so heavy they bowed down nearly to the ground.

I’d never picked so much as a single rose before that morning; it wasn’t allowed. When my mother gathered her roses to arrange for a friend or to sell, as she occasionally did, at a flower shop downtown, she did it with a pair of special shears, following a particular pruning technique whose complicated rules I had never so much as hazarded a guess at. But that morning I walked along the rows and took what I liked. Two in one row, three in another. My hands were scratched and bleeding a little by the time I’d collected a bouquet, but I walked over to the chair and sat down anyway, rubbing the petals between my fingers until they filled my lap with color.

I don’t know what I believe about the dead—whether I think they inhabit a particular space or if I believe, as some religions do, that they are everywhere, or nowhere. It occurs to me now that I have never managed to come to any conclusion, that the morning in question I simply sat in my mother’s garden long after the sun had risen over the far hills—the petals, when at last I stood, scattering everywhere. But then I have only ever looked for answers to those particular questions in the moment of losing someone. It is only when someone dear to me is dead and gone that I go sifting through the many possibilities—the what if’s and the maybe so’s. Searching, I mean, for something that might allow me to believe that he or she still remains, in one form or another, close by.