Middle C (22 page)

I have two forearms.

You’re quick. But a tabula rasa.

I will ask you lots of questions. What’s a rasa?

You’re a blank page.

I’m a clean sheet.

Okay, Joseph. She gave Joey a piece of paper with a dollar figure on it. Accept this and you’ve got the job.

14

First, he walked around the town. It was located in a valley that had one obviously open end because you could follow the accelerating water of the creek, as well as the main drag that paralleled it, in order to see now and then at some distance the broad blue Ohio into which the fast stream poured, earning for itself the name Quick Creek, though the natives said Quick Crick, since the stream was often like a line of ink and also because they couldn’t help themselves. The many elms that once shaded most roads were ill, but not all of them had been taken down. Squeezed as it was between hills, Urichstown was only a few streets thick, and cross streets were short, stopping at the crick or giving out like a winded runner some small way up a slope. Apart from a square of judicial buildings that had been set to one side as if by a picky eater, the main points of public meeting were the three brief bridges that spanned the Quick, and kept the two halves of the town together. They were said to be “brief” because they had no great distance to span and because spring floods often rushed roiling water through the town to wash one or more of the crossings away. These floods were consequently measured by the spans they engulfed—“one bridge,” “two bridge,” or “three bridge,” as sometimes proved to be the case. Only when the Ohio was so full it forced itself up its tributaries, and the rapid water from the hills ran into the river like a truck into a train, was the flood actually fierce enough to endanger homes or public buildings.

Joseph sat on a bench at the bus stop whiling away the half hour he had until the posted time of its arrival, and then the fifteen minutes more that would pass before its actual appearance. The weather was perfect. Sun ran over his calves and flooded his feet. There weren’t many people about, and those he could see kept to their missions and paid him no mind. Traffic was subdued. He thought how differently he felt about this change in his circumstances. For many such moves he had been but a burden with a runny nose, a loud sore throat, and a pair of frightened eyes, someone who inconveniently remained the same armload of duties wherever his mother and sister bore him. However, since then he had begun to strike out on his own. After all, hadn’t he half chosen Mr.

Hirk, sought out the High Note, and taken all the ceremonial opportunities that came his way to play “Beautiful Ohio,” even if he did so with a notable lack of enthusiasm? As for Augs—he hadn’t enjoyed it very much. He’d rarely been stirred the way he had been when playing Mr. Hirk a new tune or even receiving the polite applause of mothers or finding a record worth a turn. Instead, he had become confused. Augs was education? However, the tidy little library with its rosy round-faced librarian appeared so welcoming, and the look of the books gave him heart they seemed so available, as did the quiet of the reading rooms with their promise of repose (a purposeful quiet in which one might sit as if in a pause between movements), that Joseph was encouraged to approach his future with a confidence and an enthusiasm he had rarely known. He wasn’t fleeing from, he was running toward, and what he hoped to learn would be free and unassigned, known only to himself; so that, consequently, to the world Joseph would remain undefined—a vague reference.

For the first few miles the only other passenger was a vast woman with spiky hair carrying a teddy bear. Joseph preferred to think that she had boarded the bus at the last minute in order to save him the embarrassment of being the lone ticket, but she chose to sit in the aisle seat next to him and his window because “We’uns the onlies here, might as well chat to spare the hollows.” Joseph wondered whether she hadn’t been inflated like a float toy by someone fearful of the water. The enormous lady was a comfortable talker and as redolent of goodwill as she was of cologne. He stared at his own glass-imprisoned face—wan, transparent, and stuffed with trees, grass, and bushes—while her chat went on, rarely addressed to him, mostly headed for the ear of the bear. We needs the warmth of this weather, she said. I don’t know where you bin, but I bin here, and we needs the warmth of this weather. It’s misery—and I am witness to it—when—even here—at the bottom of April—clothes freeze on the line. Joseph felt obliged to nod. Like they’d of died—that stiff. And Billy Bear’s blankit here—frosted like windy glass. Her hair as stiff as ’cicles, too, Joseph thought. It must be rather wonderful to assume that the world would receive with interest whatever came into your head. As Joseph was considering the distance between himself and this crazy creature, in order to marvel at it, he remembered that it had always been his job to hang the wash, pinning even Debbie’s panties, bras, and blouses to the line that hung behind the house, carefully stretching the sleeves
out with clothespins at the cuffs so she wouldn’t complain of wrinkles; and at that moment he shared this overlarge lady’s hatred of hanging damp trousers up with freezing fingers. Billy Bear likes to travel, see sumthin of the whorl, so sumtimes I jus git a tickit and come on for him to injoy the trip. Nice day for it, Joseph offered. Oh gawd yes but not today, today aint for him, we bin to town on bizness an now we’re goin back to LouElla. Lowell was a village the size of an intersection. Joseph was grateful for the information, because Lowell was the next stop; even now from the crest of a hill he could see where the train tracks turned toward its station. So you live in Lowell, he felt himself safe enough to venture. Sum of the time. Sum of the time I live in Whichstown. Sum of the time I live in Gale. Sum of the time it seem I live on dis bus. Her flesh shook, the heavy flesh of her arms shook when she laughed. That’s a bit unusual, isn’t it? to live so many different places—I suppose not all at once—but so near one another. Oh you guessed it, dear—all at once, shure. But Billy Bear live in only LouElla. Hey, we is home, honey. And she heaved herself up from her seat and waddled toward the driver as the bus brakes sighed and they entered Lowell. Bydeebyby, she tossed to him over Billy Bear’s shoulder. He saw that, though the hair on top of her head was drawn up in teepee-shaped points, it fell like a flap over her neck in back. In a moment, Joseph became the sole passenger on the bus again, but now he was cuddling a mystery against his chest the way Miss Spiky-hair carried her bear.

As far as Joseph could see, Lowell consisted of a wooden warehouse, very weathered, whose southerly lean lacked conviction, a gas station with a porch roof shading the pumps, a store of some kind hidden behind rusted signs, and a junkyard cum car lot that sprawled alongside the road as if everything it contained had been tossed there by someone passing. Joseph couldn’t decide what was more emphatic: lot, junk, or car. A worn sign threatened that not far from the highway a trailer park lurked.

The bus boarded a pair of passengers from Lowell and added one or two every three to five miles until it was about a fourth full by nightfall, when it reached Woodbine. Joseph followed the failing light with a pleasure that caught him by surprise. The bus is returning me to Woodbine, but I am starting afresh in Urichstown. I’m out of the reach of Madame Mieux. I’m out of the grasp of Rector Luthardt. And beyond Ponsonby’s reach. No. Ponsonby was in a book. On his left the hills were as dark as those on his right were bright. Shadows fattened or shrank as the
bus turned, showing no signs of indecision. Now and then a window would come alive: disclose the entrance to a low, otherwise lost road, feature a fruit stand not yet in business, or a gate with its mailbox like a sentry—each vision as romantic as his ignorance could make them. He would learn of the world now—even if from books—the way he’d learned to play: by ear, by hunt-and-peck, by instinct, by guess and by gosh—by means of his inner talent. The bus lights blew down High Street sweeping obscurities from gutters, walks, benches, and façades. Joseph stepped off a block from the Point and whistled his way home, rehearsing the piano opening of a Brahms quartet, the first one in G major, with Rubenstein and the Guarneri, pretending to be the piano as it tiptoes down a short flight of stairs into the strings.

After Joseph had been shown around the library, Marjorie Bruss handed him several employment forms to fill out. For tax purposes he would need a social security number, which Joseph realized he didn’t have because he wasn’t in fact a citizen. As a refugee his mother had been given something she called an alien labor letter along with other dispensations, but Joseph, though born in London, was still an Austrian to the bureaucracy, a fact that filled him with delight but was now a real difficulty. It occurred to him that in all likelihood not a single penny he had ever been paid for selling records or playing music had been reported to the government. You could study and become a citizen, and then apply for a number by which you would be forever known; or, for a simple work permit, you could allow yourself to be caught in the inky coils of a distant and indifferent bureaucratic squid. Joseph had Miriam’s distrust of officials, and, though his English was as American as the next guy’s, and his invented numbers had been accepted by everyone throughout his schooling, he had absorbed from Miriam the uncertainty of one who wasn’t native. Nor did he wish to ride the bus with the frequency boasted of by Miss Spike, whom he might also meet going to and fro from Whichstown, Gale, and LouElla with her bear. These demands meant he’d have to purchase a car, however cheaply, learn to drive it, and get a license upon which, he feared, the social security number he didn’t have would need to be prominently posted.

Joey immediately reported his good news to Miriam, who disapproved of his salary, questioned the distance, and worried about where he’d live—in a tent, on a dime, at the edge of the earth. After a few more
congratulations of this kind, Joey described his quandary: on the forms he had been given there were blanks aplenty for a social security number. Your mother is a resident alien, a mother from the moon, she said.

But you must have one?

Yes, yes, now, yes, it took years, yes, I have one, but you don’t, you are an unregistered resident alien.

And what is Debbie, then? Is she numberless, too?

Your sister doesn’t have to work. She doesn’t have to drive. She married well, a man who nearly went to Yale.

That’s how it’s done? to live numberless you need to marry?

It’s true, you do lose your real name.

You can hide behind your husband’s credit, I suppose. Live in his house.

Bear his kids. Slice his beef. But you can’t drive his car.

She has her own chauffeur. She gets to sit in the back, wave to the crowd.

If she’s so well off now why doesn’t she come around sometimes? She could help you with a few things.

Wither her husband went, she goes, Miriam said in her quotational voice. He’s busy planting potatoes. She can’t drive. So she drops a line, sends a card.

She went into another county, not another country.

Deborah has her proper social number … somehow … I’m sure.

With this ID I thee wed, said Joseph in a copycat voice that managed to be harsh.

She’ll be by … I’m sure.

Joseph called around and was told to pick up some more forms at the post office.

An applicant for an original social security number card must submit documentary evidence of age, United States citizenship or alien status, and true identity
.

Evidence of age could be supplied by a birth certificate, a religious or hospital record, or a passport. He returned to the office of Miriam Skizzen
with a request for his birth certificate. Who do you think I am, she said, bristling at what Joey thought was a routine request. Who do you think I am? a clerk of the city? a recorder of deeds? This is not the house of courts. Days went by during which Joey kept a prudent silence but an intimidating presence. From a shoe box, wrapped in rubber bands that the postman had once slipped around bundles of mail, she withdrew an official-looking paper—not a birth certificate but a hospital record of the arrival at a London lying-in of one Yussel Fixel, infant, to Yankel and Miriam Fixel, weight six pounds five ounces, baby blue eyes, trace of brown hair, print of foot. Oooh, look at that, so small!

Liberal feelings, a desire to help the unfortunate, led to sloppy record keeping and sorry observation of the law, with the present confusion its unhappy result. If he submitted this certificate as proof of who he was (“who” is good, he heard Ms. Bruss say), he’d be Yussel Fixel forever—butt of jokes, object of scorn and derision, laughingstock. Yussel. Yussel. Yussel. Mother of God, Miriam exclaimed, I am a Mother Fixel. Undo this calamity, Joey, do undo it please, undo it, she said, unaware of any oddness in her words. He stared, as if thoughtful, at the unbanded box and the wormy rolls of elastic. It can’t be undone, he told her, but it can be ignored.

Just then a bit of grammar bit him: “as proof of whom” or “who he was”? What would Ms. Bruss say? Stay with “who he was.” That had been a close call. It would not do to be caught in an un-Americanism. And be found out.

An applicant for an original social security number card must submit documentary evidence of … true identity
.

Ignoring statements and citations was a skill both Fixels had perfected. They would quite forget this shitty piece of paper: fold it as it had been folded, slip it back into its box, lid it, and snap rubber bands about its cardboard bulk, six to each end, find a remote spot to lodge it, stiffen their backs before decisively turning them, pinch each nose, squinch each eye, zip up lips, shutter minds. The carton with its new elasticated cover would be shelved in a closet behind hats, gloves, and mufflers, so that soon—thus wooled, furred, and felted—it would cease to exist. However, the fix Joey found himself in would not hide itself away as simply.
He would need a new “true identity.” Further research, which Joey sullenly undertook, suggested that the salary Miriam had ridiculed was probably so small he would not have to file a tax return, or the library to admit the presence of his person to any authority. Joey could catalog and shelve as if he had rung the doorbell and asked to rake the lawn of its leaves. Moreover, driver’s licenses were regularly used to cash checks or to prove your age if you wished admission to a dance hall, bar, or club, and they did not have to have your sosec number on them. However, if your license number wasn’t your sosec number, wouldn’t that be suspicious? But at a glance, who would know? He had to manage a license somehow. To have an identity in this country you had to be considered capable of driving a car. Otherwise you had to have a husband who did. And if you opened an account at a bank, you would soon receive, in the mail, an application for a credit card. Your identity would then be as secure as a dime in a dollar.