The Clarinet Polka (70 page)

“Well, I'll never forget you either. You were so nice to me that summer.”

“It wasn't something, you know, that I had to work at.”

“Thanks,” she said, like I'd just paid her a compliment.

Well, we talked about this and that—I don't remember what—and I was thinking it was finally okay, that we'd got through the hard part and maybe tomorrow I'd take her out for coffee, and maybe we could end up being friends—or being
something
, I wasn't sure what. To tell you the truth, I didn't know what I wanted—except I knew I had to see her again.

Then right out of the blue she says, “Jimmy? When you came back to talk to me—you know, just before we started to play—that must have been really hard for you.”

“Oh, yeah. It was kind of hard, I've got to admit.”

“For all you knew, I might have told you to go straight to hell.”

“That thought did cross my mind.”

“Well, I've got something I want to say to you too. It's something I've wanted to say for a long time—”

“Yeah? So go ahead.”

“There's, you know, things I'm sorry about too.”

“Aw, come on, Janice, there's nothing you've got to be sorry about.”

“Yes, there is. I listened to you, okay? Just listen to me for a minute.” And then she started—well, I guess you'd have to say it was like a confession.

“Remember all the way back right after we first met?” she said. “That night when you drove me home and it was raining so hard? And we sat in your car and talked and you told me about that time you flew to Labrador? When you thought it was nuclear war?

“You'd never talked to me before, and I was so pleased with myself because I'd got you to talk to me—and we'd had a real conversation. A serious conversation. And I went to bed that night, and I lay there listening to the rain on my window, and I thought, oh, what a nice boy. I sure like him a lot. And I got him to talk to me—maybe I could get him to
like me
too. I didn't know what I was doing. I was only fifteen. It never once crossed my mind to say, ‘Hey, Janice, come on. He's ten years older than you are.'”

I could see how embarrassed she was. “Hey,” I said, “that's not a big deal. Lots of teenage girls do things like that, right?”

“I'm not talking about lots of girls. I'm talking about
me
. And yes, it was a big deal. I was like a kid playing with matches. Oh, I can't believe I'm saying any of this!”

“Look,” I told her, “you don't have to say anything more. There's no problem that I can see.”

“Just shut up, okay? I've been thinking about this for years, okay?”

I was feeling this kind of harsh buzz. Like I didn't know where any of this was going and it made me, I guess you could say, real apprehensive.

“Oh, boy, did I have a thing for you,” she said.

I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach. “Yeah,” I said, “I knew that.”

“You probably didn't know how bad it was,” she said. “I was just a kid. I was— Oh, this is so hard for me! No, don't say anything— I was such a little romantic. Such a little mush brain. I thought I was— I don't know what. I thought I was Zosia in
Pan Tadeusz
or—like the girl in that waltz.
Dziewczyno, gdzie mieszkasz?
And I was the
dziewczyna
, the lovely young girl, and you were supposed to be the lovesick man who follows me home and plants roses under my window—” She was kind of laughing when she said that.

“And we were supposed to go on together eating our hearts out in this lovely dove-gray-and-pastel-pink romantic mist forever,” she said, shaking her head over how silly she'd been. It was like she was inviting me to join her in having a good laugh at herself. Well, the way she'd said it was funny, but I didn't think what she was saying was the least bit funny.

“And then I had to go and ruin everything,” she said. She took a deep breath. “That night I kissed you— It just ruined everything. We couldn't go on after that. And I'm really sorry.”

I didn't know what to say. She was right. That kiss had been like the absolute end of the road.

I guess she thought maybe I wasn't getting the picture. “It was really unfair of me,” she said. “I wouldn't have kissed you if I hadn't liked you, but I was just being bratty. I wanted to see if I could do it. I wanted to see if—if I could really
get to you
. Do you see how bratty that was? It was really rotten of me. And I've regretted it for years. And I just wanted to tell you I'm really sorry.”

Well, all of a sudden she wasn't the only one who was shivering. Even my teeth were chattering. “Hey,” I said, “you don't have to feel sorry. You got what you wanted, you know.”

She didn't say anything.

“You're not too young now,” I said. “Would you go out with me now?”

She still didn't say anything. Not for the longest damn time. Then she said, “What are you talking about, Jimmy? How can I go out with you? You live in Texas.”

“Aw, hell, Janice, maybe I don't have to stay in Texas.”

She looked real annoyed with me. “You said you loved it out there. You said you had a great job, and— You said you were doing just fine.”

“Yeah, well, it's true. I am doing just fine. But maybe I don't have to stay there.”

“You're kidding me.”

“No, I'm not kidding you. If I told you how much I'm not kidding you, you wouldn't believe me.”

“Try me.”

If you think I knew what I was doing, you're crazy. “I love you,” I said.

She just stared at me. Then she giggled. I mean, really giggled. You know, hysterically. She slapped her hand over her mouth.

I didn't know what was going on. I felt sick, and, you know, deflated. I didn't think it was that funny.

She tried to say something, but it wouldn't come out. Then she did something really weird. She took my hand. I didn't know what she was doing, but I let her take it. She pressed it against her chest, on the left side, you know, just below her collarbone. Then I felt her heart. It was going about a million beats to the minute, and each one of those beats was so hard it felt like it was going to pop right out of her and up into my hand.

She said,
“Ja ciebie też.”
That's what you say in Polish if somebody says, “I love you,” and you want to say you love them too.

She said, “Oh, great. Oh, terrific. There goes all my cool right down the drain—and I was doing so well too. Oh, God, I think I'm going to die. Please tell me you're not kidding.”

“I'm not kidding.”

I took my hand off her chest and put my arms around her, and— Well, it's funny how you remember the damnedest things. I remember her jacket fell off her shoulders, and the sound it made hitting the ground—whump—and then we just hung on to each other.

“I wanted you to wait for me,” she said, “but I never thought you would.”

Well, hell, I hadn't been waiting for her. But then again, maybe I had.

“I know why you left,” she said. “I know why you never called me or wrote to me or anything. There wasn't anything else you could do. I didn't understand it at first. It took me—maybe a year. And then I got it. I thought, oh, what if he loved me? That would explain everything.

“I couldn't let myself believe it. But I thought, okay, if it's true—if there's even a tiny little chance it's true—then he'll come back for me— Oh, you're crying,” and she wiped the tears off my face. I hadn't known I was crying.

“Oh, God,” she said, “this can't be happening. This can't be real. What if it isn't real?” She started crying too.

“I was so unhappy,” she said. “I thought, I will
not
be miserable. I
refuse
to be miserable.”

“You refused, huh?”

“Oh, yeah.” And we must've both needed a good laugh because we sure got one over that dumb thing.

“So I kept my grades up,” she said, “and I went out with Tony, and I said, okay, I'm going to be a polka star—and I am one—and I still wanted you to wait for me. I didn't dare think about it. And I knew maybe it wasn't true. And if it wasn't true, I had my music, and— Oh, my God,
polkas!
We've got to get back!”

So we just took off running like a couple idiots, holding hands and sprinting back up to the church. “What do we do now?” she said.

“I don't know. Ask me later.”

“You want to go to Mass with me tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said. “What do you go to, the eight o'clock? I'll pick you up at seven-thirty.”

We went running into the church, out of breath, and she was going, “How am I supposed to play? Oh, I'm so upset. But I'm so happy. Are you happy?”

I'll never forget this. We were in the hallway just outside the parish hall. Somebody saw us, and I heard all these girls' voices—Bev and Patty and my sister—going, “Janice, Janice, Janice.” But we'd just stopped there, frozen, and I finally got it.

Hell, I thought, this is serious. This is just about as serious as it gets. Wait a minute, this is all happening too damn fast, and maybe that's not what she meant anyway. But I knew perfectly well that's what she meant. But it was crazy. We hadn't even kissed each other yet.

It was all worked out in her mind. I guess she'd always had it all worked out in her mind, except there'd been like this one important factor missing—and that was me—but there I was right on time and so far I'd fit right into everything just the way she'd always wanted me to, so who was I to come up with any objections? And what objections was I supposed to have? Like, hey, let's just wait one little minute here, kid. We've got to slow down on this one, and be adult about it, and think everything through, and make sure we're doing the right thing, and take it one step at a time and see what happens, and so on, and so on—all that crap. I didn't believe any of that crap. Sometimes adult is just another word for chickenshit.

She'd sure hung onto her dreams all right, but everybody knows that little girls' dreams can't come true. Oh, hell, no. They've got to grow up and get bitter and disillusioned just like the rest of us. But why shouldn't little girls' dreams come true? Although, God knows, it was hard for me to see myself as much of a Prince Charming.

But then, when you got right down to it, didn't I have a dream or two of my own? And here she was, not a dream at all but standing right in front of me, all sweaty and scared. My life's pretty much like yours, right? And most of the time you just stumble along doing the best you can, and you don't hardly ever get a chance to do exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. Well, that was one time I got the chance, and I knew it, and I took it, and it turned out to be the best thing I ever did in my life. “Janice,” I said, “will you marry me?”

And she said, “Yes.”

We go running into the parish hall, and the girls are yelling at her, “Janice, come
on!
” She jumps up on the stage, all out of breath and her cheeks pink from the cold—and from all that adrenaline that must have been kicking through her—and they had their next tune lined up and ready to go, but that's not what she wanted to play.

Like I've said a million times, everybody in South Raysburg knows everybody else's business, but Janice got one jump ahead of the rumor mill and just flat-out announced it to everybody in the hall. She grabbed the mike, and she said, “This next tune's going out to Jimmy Koprowski—
od mego serca.
” That means, “from the bottom of my heart.” If I'd had a chance to think about it, I could have guessed what she'd play for me. It was “The Clarinet Polka.”

*   *   *

So that's how I ended up getting engaged during the break between sets at a polka dance to somebody I hadn't laid eyes on in three and a half years. Our daughter Sophie loves hearing that story. She just can't believe it. “You guys must have been absolutely nuts,” she always says, and Janice always says, “If we hadn't been nuts, sweetheart, you wouldn't be here.”

Yeah, we've got three kids. They're great kids. I mean, they're not angels—far from it—but we've got nothing to complain about. It was a rough road at times, especially when the kids were little and I was just getting my business started, and marriage, you know, is not always a bed of roses—anybody who's been married longer than ten minutes will tell you that—but that doesn't mean you never get
any
roses, and I've got to admit we've had a rose or two along the way.

So I don't know what else to tell you. Taking it one day at a time, it's getting on to damn near thirty years since my last drink. And I'd have to say what Janice's dad said that night we were sitting out on his back lawn—“God has blessed us.” Yeah, He has—a hell of a lot more than I deserve.

So listen to me, you sorry asshole. Here comes the sermon. I don't care how much you lost. I don't care how far down you sunk. I don't care how hopeless you feel. I don't care about any of the shitty things you've done. There's a way back for you if you want to take it, and, believe me, you can get your life back. And you know what? You can even get a lot more than you deserve—because if we all got what we deserved, we'd every one of us be down there shoveling the coals where, you know, they keep things pretty hot.

So that's my story. Now you tell me yours. Don't worry if it takes awhile. I got as long as you need to take.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND NOTES

The Clarinet Polka
is the seventh novel I have set either partially or entirely in my fictional town of Raysburg, West Virginia. In the course of writing these books I gradually became aware that I was attempting to create a large, complex portrait of Raysburg from many points of view and that to do so, I would be required to write in various languages, some of them alien to others and even in conflict with them. Although my own life had been profoundly touched by the Polish-American community in my hometown, I initially resisted writing about Polish Americans because I did not feel adequate to the task. Then two of my friends died within months of each other, and the struggles of their lives, completed in their deaths, convinced me—although I'd be hard put to explain exactly how—that this was a book I was required to write, no matter how I felt. Although neither of these two friends appears directly in the text and neither of their stories is told here, their shaping spirits hover over the work.