Bow Grip (19 page)

We walked back to the motel without another word, the square set of Hector’s shoulders telling me to just keep my mouth shut. I guess I had stumbled across some unmarked line, and he was letting me know with every tight step he took that this conversation was definitely and permanently over.

He bid me a good day with a tip of an invisible hat and a curt nod, twisting the toe of his boot to put out his half-smoked cigarette, still not looking right at me. Pulled his door shut behind him with a click.

I stood there for a minute, staring at the brass numbers screwed to his door. Someone had replaced one of the brass screws with a cheap metal one at some point, and a trickle of rust bled from it, down the belly of the number eight and into the peeling blue paint.

I thought about knocking, stumbling through some kind of apology, telling Hector I meant well, that in the future I would mind my own business. Then I heard the chain lock slide into place on the other side of his door, and saw his curtains drawn all the way closed.

I let out a long sigh and unlocked my own door. The bed had been made, and my room smelled like Pine-Sol. I pulled off the white ring of sterilized paper from the toilet seat, balled it up and dropped it into the empty trash can. Thought about calling Cecelia. Ran my hands over the white, white towels that Lenny’s wife had folded into perfectly uniform shapes and stacked on the wire rack next to the tub. I realized I didn’t even know her name. Her towels were thin, smelled faintly of bleach. Nothing soft about them. I knew she was from somewheres in eastern
Europe by the sound of her accent; I wondered what she had dreamed about this new life in Canada, what she had packed to bring with her, what she had to leave behind. What she wrote about this place in her letters to her sisters, how often she was able to call home. What it would be like to watch your nieces and nephews grow up only in photographs. I tried to imagine Lenny being kind to her, maybe on a quiet night in the off-season, when the tourists were long gone south and a heavy snowfall had silenced the traffic on the highway. Tried to imagine him finally closing the always open door that was always open at the back of the motel office, the door that led from the cluttered front counter into their private lives. I tried to conjure up a picture of him, running her a bath, then sitting on the toilet seat next to her as they talked until tears of steam ran down the frosted glass of their bathroom window, talking until her fingertips were all wrinkled and soft. Him passing her a crunchy towel that smelled like bleach to wrap her wet hair in, and another to fold around the thin lines and long bones of her body. Her tucking a worn corner of white terrycloth under one armpit, the skin there soft and wobbly, showing the blue lines of her long life, just below the surface.

I went out to get some water from the pop machine next to the laundry room. Lenny was in the office, leaning back in his chair with his fingers laced together behind his head, both feet up on his desk. He dragged his gaze from the flickering television in the corner when he heard me come in, the bells on the door tinkling as it swung shut behind me. I slid a five across the counter, asked him for some change. Then I asked him what his wife’s name was.

He narrowed his eyes, cocked his head to one side.

“What did she do now, she forget something? You need
anything, you just call me and ask, right? Like I told you before.”

“My room is fine. She does a great job, I just wondered what her name was, so when I see her around, I could say hello, you know, properly.”

“Her name is Petrovich, like my name. You call her that. Mrs Petrovich. But she don’t talk much to the customers, my wife, she is afraid of her English. You need something, it’s better you talk to me. Eleven years since we come to Canada, still she learns nothing in English.” Lenny shook his head, like I should feel sorry for him. Like I understood his troubles.

I took my stack of coins and left. Mrs Petrovich’s cart was parked in the courtyard next to the laundry room doors, and I followed the sound of a vacuum cleaner to a room whose door had been propped open with an old brick. She was inside, and looked a little startled when I waved at her from the doorway. She turned off the vacuum and stood up straight, tucked a stray bit of hair back behind her ear, nervous.

“You need more towels?” she almost whispered it, her eyes fixed on the carpet right in front of her feet.

I smiled wide. “I don’t need a thing. I just wanted to thank you for your hard work. My room is always so clean, Mrs Petrovich. You do such a good job around here.”

She covered her smile with one hand, and shooed me off with the other, shaking her head and blushing, suddenly ten years younger. Turned the vacuum back on to change the subject, waiting for me to leave before going back to work.

Back in my room, I opened my journal and thought for a long minute before picking up my pen.

T
he front of Caroline’s house had a sideways grin on its dilapidated face. The front stairs had once been given a thick coat of lipstick red, but now they sagged in a sorry pout, the paint long worn into the cracks. There was a loop of baling wire twisted into an oval noose that I had to lift off a picket in the fence to open the gate, leaving rust rings on my fingers.

I stood on the porch, the bottom of the cello case resting on the top of my boot in the soft spot behind my steel toe, my journal tucked into the warmth under my arm. Two freshly sharpened pencils and a brand new eraser in my coat pocket. I was sucking on some Tic Tacs just in case, as I wasn’t sure what kind of physical proximity might be involved in demonstrating proper cello technique.

I knocked on the door in three separate bursts, but there was no answer. Then I heard the gate squeak open and shut behind me.

“You must be Joseph? Sorry I’m late.”

I assumed this must be Caroline, negotiating the baling wire loop around a backpack and a bunch of dry cleaning. Her dry cleaning bag got caught on the gate and she let forth a stream of swear words which would have made my mother blush, especially coming from a woman no older than twenty-five.

“This place should be condemned. Good thing it’s so cheap.”

She jangled up the walk towards me, wearing what I would estimate at a pound of bangles on each wrist, stacked
like slinkies halfway up both arms. Her fingers all rings and black nail polish. She breezed past me, a huge ring of keys adding to the clatter, and unlocked the door, kicking it open with a knee-high boot. Went straight for the thermostat in the hallway, cranked it up.

“Fucking see my breath in here. Can’t play the cello with gloves on. Come on in already, and close the door. Jeezus. I’ll make us some tea while it warms up in here a bit. Don’t worry about your boots.”

She disappeared down a narrow hall wallpapered with band posters, blowing into her hands. She left her coat on, which looked like it was made from the same stuff they make those matching bathroom sets, except hers was dark violet, whereas the set in my mom’s guest bathroom was more light pink, to match the little shell-shaped hand soaps you weren’t actually supposed to wash your hands with, because they were matching.

I followed her into the kitchen, feeling weird for still wearing my boots all the way inside someone else’s house. She came to a brief stop, just long enough for me to get a close look at her. Her face all angles, but somehow prettier than that sounds, a thumbtack of a nose, her lips wine-coloured, with an even darker outline, like a cartoon pin-up girl’s mouth. Eyebrows thinned almost into obscurity. Black caterpillars for eyelashes, and what looked like super fine sparkles winking from her cheeks and chest. She rinsed out two mugs in the sink and lit a burner on the gas stove with a wooden match, blowing it out with a musical shake of her wrist.

“You don’t look like how you sounded on the phone,” she said.

“How’s that?”

“You don’t look like your average cello player, is all.”

“I could say the same thing about you. Let me guess. I look more like the electric guitar type to you? That’s what everybody else says.”

“I was going to say banjo or fiddle, maybe, no offense.”

“None taken. I’m Irish, or at least my grandparents were.”

“I’m half-New York Jewish intellectual, half-Californian draft dodger. I’ve got the therapy bills to prove it. Is that a pack of cigarettes I see in your pocket? Wanna step onto the back porch and have one before we get started? I haven’t had one all day. Work was a fucking nightmare.”

She led me through a sliding glass door and we sat down in a couple of wooden chairs. The back deck was covered by a sighing frame of two-by-fours that supported a leaf-laden section of corrugated plastic roofing. The wooden railing around the deck was adorned with a rusting collection of mismatched metal bits, chrome hubcaps, and painted table-saw blades screwed to its flaking pickets, what looked like a fireplace grate bolted to the handrails, and strung with little Christmas lights shaped like chili peppers and cowboy boots and Mexican sombrero hats. My mother would have called it an eyesore and complained about bohemian renters driving down the property values, but I kind of liked it.

“So, task at hand, then. How long have you been playing the cello?”

I counted on my fingers, tapping them on the knees of my corduroys. “Going on two whole weeks, now.”

“What made you pick the cello? Most of my students are rich little twelve-year-old brats with mothers from the ladies’ auxiliary.”

“It’s my mother’s fault. She’s been all over me lately to
get a hobby, and the cello just sort of came along at the right moment, I guess. Traded a car for it.” I lit two cigarettes and passed her one. “But I actually really like it, and I want to learn how to play it the right way,” I added, just in case she thought I wouldn’t be a dedicated student. “Like, proper technique and what have you. Need some direction.”

“That’s what I’m here for. They don’t call me the cello bitch for nothing.”

“Is that what they call you?”

“Among other things. At work I’m the Ice Queen.”

“Where do you work?”

“I’m a check-out girl at Red Hot Video. I only meant to work there for a couple of months, but here I still am, two years later. The customers love me because I abuse them. Porn addicts, they love the verbal abuse. My boss is so scared I’m going to quit that he lets me take whatever nights off I need to do gigs, no hassle, so I can’t seem to leave. One of my roommates works there too. Beats making lattes.”

“You must meet all sorts.”

“Different versions of the same sort, more like. Business suit or steel-toed boots, they all have the same eyes. You get so you can see them coming a mile away. Our band wrote a song about it. The lyrics are all cheesy titles of movies. ‘Back Door Betty,’ it’s called. You should check it out, I’ll dig a CD out for you before you go. I’m playing electric cello on a couple tracks too. Is that the kettle? We should head in. My nipples are about to leave me behind.”

This last part made me blush, which I tried to hide, so she wouldn’t think I was uptight.

“It’s starting to thaw in here a little. Should be warm enough to pull your cello out now. Bring your baby in, let’s take a look at it.”

I retrieved the case from the hallway and laid it down in one corner of the kitchen. Caroline was pouring boiling water out of a saucepan into a chipped brown teapot. Covered it with a fabric cozy sewn in the shape of a fat tomato and sat it on the counter. She removed all of her bracelets and rings and laid them on the counter.

I brandished the cello in the fading daylight coming through the kitchen window. Its varnish glowed warm and red-brown. I had rubbed every last thumbprint in its finish off with the soft chamois before I had come over.

Caroline was pouring our tea into mugs. When she looked up, she sucked in her breath and reached out to take the cello from me. She let out a long, thin whistle.

“What kind of car did you say you traded for this?” She tilted it towards the light and peered through what I had recently learned were the F-holes.

“Late-eighties Volvo station wagon.”

“Well someone got ripped off, and it wasn’t you. Ebony fingerboard. Ivory fine tuners. I think the back and sides are mahogany. Usually it’s maple.”

“It’s actually rosewood, I’m pretty sure.”

“Rosewood? Never heard of that. It’s a fucking beauty, Joseph. I’ve never seen one like it, ever. Mind if I tune it up and play it a little? Just to see what we’re working with here?”

“I’d love to hear someone who knows how to play it. I mostly sound like a tomcat, so far.”

“Hold this.” She passed me the neck of the cello to hold while she ran upstairs with a thump of her boots, reappearing momentarily with a bow, which she tightened up as she walked.

She sat down on a straight-backed chair and spun the
cello seamlessly into position in the semi-circle between her thighs. Elbows akimbo, she lowered her head to bring the strings close to her ear, and thumped her thumb on the first string, cocking her head to one side. Then the next string, then all four. “When was the last time you tuned this thing? It’s still perfectly in tune. That’s weird, for November. Cellos don’t usually like changes in the temperature much.”

“I tuned it this morning, with my new fork. It’s an ‘A’.”

“Well, you did a good job.” She picked up her bow from the kitchen table, drew it towards her belly, her face a serious mask.

The cello sounded up with a sigh, and Caroline’s left hand stretched like a spider on the fingerboard. I had never heard someone play the cello live in front of me, and I could feel the hair on my arms rise up inside my shirtsleeves as the sound thrummed alive in the floorboards beneath my feet. She played a few long low strokes, and then began shaping a melody with her fingers, her right hand a combination of strokes and taps with the bow, effortless and beautiful, mesmerizing, even. I found myself holding my breath, my lips parted and suddenly dry.