30 Pieces of a Novel (14 page)

He wants to call his mother today but it's so cool up here (and he knows how hot it is in New York) that he doesn't want to hear how bad it is for her. The room she stays in in her apartment is air-conditioned and he hopes the air conditioner's working, but she can't get out, she's stuck in that room because of the heat and what it does to her breathing, and she knows she'll probably be stuck like that for the next few days, which is how long the radio and newspaper say the heat wave's going to continue there.

When he got to her she was sitting in the cart with her back to him, holding a quarter between her fingertips and looking at the people on the sidewalk coming toward her. “Sally,” he said, and she turned to him and grinned and said, “Oh, wonderful, it's you; I was just looking for someone to phone you. I was beginning to think the man I asked hadn't done it,” and he said, “No, he got me, was very nice and precise: a good choice, followed your orders to a T-shirt—I only say that because mine's soaked and I want you to know I know it—and repeated your message just the way you gave it, it seemed. Jesus, it's hot. What the hell is it with this weather? Why would anyone ever want to live here, and for the old Dutch, even settle here?” and she said, “But he wouldn't even wait till I wrote your name and phone number on a paper. Just said he'd remember and would call you from the next street where he knows another public phone is, and, if that one's broken, then the street after that, and took my quarter and flew off.” “Well, he did his job; I'd ask him anytime. Now, what's the problem, other than the thing not moving?” and got on his knees and checked to see that all the wires were connected, and she said, “We went through that twice, some men here and I. In fact, one of them who said he's an auto technician, but not of battery-operated vehicles, traced every one of those lines,” and he said, “It doesn't need new batteries; we got these two last winter and they're supposed to be good for at least two years, and I only recharged them yesterday,” and she said, “The day before, but I haven't used it much since, so that can't be it.” He pulled out one of the battery containers, unplugged and opened it, and she said, “Wait, where's the wheelchair?” and he looked around and said, “Oh my gosh, I didn't bring it. I was in such a rush to get here…. I'll run back for it,” and she said, “But what am I going to do in the meantime? I have to pee,” and he said, “Wait wait wait,” and looked inside the container, everything seemed to be in order, closed it and went around to the other side of the cart and unfastened and unplugged and pulled out that container, opened it and saw a nut was loose, the end of some inside wire barely around the battery rod or whatever it's called; and he wrapped the wire tightly around the rod, tightened the nut with his fingers, closed both containers and slid them back onto their platforms and fastened them in and replugged the outside wires and said, “You might be moving, don't get startled,” set the speed dial to the lowest number, pushed the starter key all the way in, pressed the right side of the driving lever and the cart moved forward a few feet, pressed the left side and it went into reverse, and pulled the key halfway out of the starter so the cart wouldn't move. “You did it,” she said, “it's working,” and he said, “Really, I hardly knew what I was doing. Just figured it was maybe like a lamp that isn't working because of a loose wire, or one that isn't insulated right—the wire, I mean—and is causing some kind of short,” and she was beaming and said, “It's amazing. Not even the professional auto mechanic could figure it out or even consider that that's what it could be,” and he said, “He didn't have a vested interest to look deeper…. I bet he didn't even have a vest. Believe me, if it was his own wife—” when a young man said to her, “So, you got him,” and she said, “And he got it working,” and put the key all the way in and pressed the lever and the cart moved backward a foot, and the man said, “Fantastic, you didn't need your wheelchair,” and she said to Gould, “This is the gentleman who called you,” and the man said, “Hiya,” and then, to them both, “Well, see ya,” and Gould said, “Thanks for calling me; again, that was very kind,” and walked beside her as she drove on the sidewalk toward home, thinking, She's got to feel good about what he did, not so much in him coming but in figuring out what was wrong and fixing it, when someone tapped his shoulder; it was the young man, who said, “Listen, buddy, long as things are working now, I was thinking my call to you's worth a few bucks, don't you think that?” and he said, “Jeez, I don't know … I mean, you only made a phone call,” and she said, “I do, give it to him; he went out of his way,” and he said, “But he was heading that way—weren't you?” to the man, and the man said, “Sure, but I had to stop, wait for some guy to finish his call; that took me out of the way: in time,” and he said, “Well, you should be feeling good just that you did something good like that. Why does it always have to be money?” and she said, “Please, Gould, stop arguing and do it. He also helped push me to the broken phone with another man, and in this weather, and he would have pushed me to the next corner if I hadn't told him not to,” and the man said, “The lady's right, I forgot I wanted to do that,” and he said, “Still, who wouldn't do it for anybody? I'm just saying—” and the man said, “Hey, what am I asking for? I go out of my way, work up a fat sweat for her, then ask for a few dollars after, and you're holding back when your lady says to give?” and she got her wallet out of her belt bag, and Gould put his hand over it and said, “No, I'll do it, don't worry; but I just can't see why people don't stop and do these things all the time for people who are in trouble, and never with any thoughts of money in mind,” and the man said, “I didn't for money. It's something I only thought of asking for now. And it's fine if you don't need the cash and do these things, but I'm tight now and a little extra would help,” and he said, “Rich, medium income, or poor, even: everyone, if he or she has the strength, should stop. And when you don't do it for any kind of remuneration—money and stuff; a payback, as my dad liked to say—then you know you're really doing something good,” and the man said, “Oh, screw it, man,” and to Sally, “This here what you were about to give?”—she was holding a five—and Gould said, “Not five bucks, that's way too much,” and she said, “It would have cost us that much to get the cart home in a cab,” and he said, “Yes, but a cabby's got to charge; a Good Samaritan, though … well, one can't be called that if one's going to ask for money and take it,” and the man said, “I was what you said then, a Good what you said—I know what it is. But now, seeing how it all worked out so nice for you, I thought I could use the money and you'd feel good in giving it because of the way it went,” and Gould said, “Boy, does he have a line. Anyway, I give up,” and walked away and stopped, his back to them, and thought, She's probably giving the guy the five; or maybe he's now saying “Actually, if you have a ten that'd be even better,” and she'd give that too. She gives and gives. Whatever charity or institution or organization sends her an envelope through the mail asking for a donation, for this or that cause except for some blatantly crazy or politically antipathetic one, she writes out a check. “What's three dollars?” she's said, or “four,” or “five,” and he's said, “Not worth the time to write out the check and for them to cash it. But they put you on their sucker list, and other charities and do-gooding and-badding organizations buy those lists and every other month send you requests for dough, and you give three to five bucks to them without checking if they're legit or if ninety percent of the money they collect goes to soliciting that dough. And you also get on those groups' lists, and they're sold, and so on and so on, till we end up getting six to seven solicitations a day through the mail or over the phone and some so preposterously unethical in the way they ask for money—
URGENT
it'll say on what looks like an authentic express letter when it's actually been sent bulk rate—that they ought to be reported to the attorney general of the state,” and she's said, “Now you're exaggerating,” and he's said, “Maybe, but only by a little,” or “Hardly—I've barely touched the tip of the icepick.” She pulled up to him right after the incident with the man and said, “Now that was unnecessary,” and he said, “I'll clue you in as to what was unnecessary,” and she said, “Listen, sweetie, he helped me when I needed help the most, and that counts for something,” and he said, “He weaseled five to ten bucks out of you for what should have been … well, I already said too much about what it should have been for: the good feeling he was supposed to get,” and she said, “It could be he not only feels good now that he helped me but also feels a few measly dollars richer. So what's wrong with that if you're hard up for cash?” and he said, “Ah, you schmuck, you know nothing,” and she said “What!” and he said, “Sorry,” and she said, “No you're not; screw you too, you bastard,” and rode off, and he walked after her, and when she turned the corner at their street he thought, Oh, the hell with her, and ducked into the bookstore there to look through the literary magazines, and he wasn't in there a minute, holding a new magazine he hadn't known of but which looked good because of the artwork on its cover, when he thought, Will she make it all right into the elevator? She can do it by herself most times, but sometimes the cart gets stuck, especially when she backs out of the elevator into the lobby or hallway, and if she has to pee badly she can get flustered opening the apartment door and working the cart into the foyer; and he put the magazine back and left the store and ran down the block and caught up with her at the elevator, and the moment he stopped, sweat burst out of him again, even from his legs this time, it seemed, and he stood beside her, wiping his face with his wet handkerchief and then with the bottom of his wet shirt, till the elevator came and she drove the cart inside it while he kept his hand over the slot the door comes out of; then he got in and pressed their floor button and they rode up silently, she staring at the wall she faced.

MAN LOOKS AT
him and Gould thinks, Oh, no, is he going to do it again? and the man looks at his face even harder with the look I-know-you-from-someplace, and Gould says, “Hi,” and the man says, “Fritz?” and he says, “You know, you did the same thing last summer when we first saw each other, and I was almost going to head you off this time when you looked at me as if you knew me from a long time ago.” “I did it before? I thought you were Fritz?” and he says, “Yeah, at the market in town … really, maybe the first week after I got up here, just like now. And I asked you who you meant and you told me and I said what a coincidence because he was my music teacher at City College in New York. Not so much my music teacher but the head of the chorus, and I had tried out for it when I heard they were doing the
German Requiem
. And though—this is what I told you then—I had wanted to be a tenor in the chorus, he—” and the man says, “Have people done this to you before? Not just me but do others mistake you for him?” and he says, “No. I mean, why would they? Excuse me, it could be you haven't seen him for years, but he's got to be thirty years younger than me—I mean, of course, older.” “Not thirty, I don't think. And I saw him recently, or maybe not recently, but certainly in the last five to ten years, and closer to five, and he can't be thirty years older than you,” and he says, “You're the violist for the quartet at the Hall,” and the man says, “One of two of them—we alternate on the programs—and for trios, quartets, duos, anything we do, and I'm part of the faculty in the summer program there too. So, nice to see you, sir,” and he says, “Not at all,” and the man—who's been holding a tray with two fried clam rolls on it and a can of soda and what's probably an iced coffee, since the drink is dark and there are two half-and-halfs and some sugar packets and a stirrer next to the cup—goes to an outside picnic table where a woman's sitting. Gould recognizes the woman from some of the Sunday afternoon concerts he went to last summer with his wife and a couple of times with his kids.

“Why'd you say, ‘Not at all,' when the man said, ‘Nice to see you'?” his older daughter says, and he says, “Did I? I'm sure he knows I meant, Yes, it has been—you know: ‘Thank you very much…. Not at all,' meaning—well, ‘You don't have to thank me,'” and she says, “That's different; then you're answering him. I'm sure he felt insulted, that you were saying it wasn't at all nice to meet him,” and he says, “And I'm sure he didn't feel that and that he didn't even hear my response to his ‘So nice to see you, sir.' He's probably now telling his wife, ‘I can't believe it. For the second summer in a row I thought that man—you see him standing there with the girl, waiting for his order to be called?—was Fritz Sepulska. You remember, the pianist who has a summer home around here or, for all I know, now lives here full time. Fritz looks just like him, or did till a few years ago, when I last saw him. The resemblance is remarkable: same hairline, long face, the nose, height, slender build, narrow eyes. You'd think he'd be mistaken daily by people who know Fritz up here—he's very well known, particularly because of all the musicians around—and that if Fritz ever saw him he'd think he was seeing his long-lost never-known twin brother, or his brother a couple of years younger than him. But this guy says he's thirty years younger, or at least twenty-five. He can't be. Maybe he doesn't take care of himself and Fritz does; I know Fritz used to work out rigorously and was pretty much a teetotaler. And somehow because of that—well, other than for disease and drugs, nothing ruins you faster than heavy drinking, right?—and though there might be a vast age difference, they're physical look-alikes. Now you can see him; he's picking up his order. But actually, with a child that age … no, she's probably his granddaughter, not his own kid. In fact, maybe it
is
Fritz and he doesn't want to talk to me for some reason, or to anyone. But he said I made the same mistake last year, and I remember it, though not as well as he; he says it was in the market in town. But he could still be Fritz, and last year when he told me that it was also because he didn't want to speak to me or anyone. I haven't heard anything about this, but maybe Fritz has become a recluse of sorts, or simply gone nuts or lost his memory through some disease, so he doesn't even remember who he is. But then why wouldn't the girl have said something? “Excuse me, sir, but Grandpa Fritz has had some trouble the last few years….” Anyway, if he isn't Fritz—and really, he can't be; Fritz would have to be seventy-five by now, possibly eighty; he's been retired from teaching for ten to fifteen years, if my memory's right—then what do you think this man does, something in music or a related field? Certainly not a violist or violinist—no permanent abrasion under his chin from years of pressure of the instrument's body. He has the slumped posture and slight pot of a pianist, and I didn't look at his fingers and hands, but they could be as long and strong as a pianist's too. He also has the face of a musician—the unhealthy complexion and head lost in sounds. And, like most of us, not a very deep intellectual look, since I have to admit we don't read much but music scores and occasional escapist literature when we have the time, or have much interest in any other art or interpretive form or theory or even news but music. In other words, we're typically not big thinkers. We feel and express—that's us—and without that and the hours of practice we have to put in a day, what would we be? I bet that he's a high school music teacher who was trained as a serious pianist for a number of years but loves jazz and hated practice and rehearsals and in college where he got his education degree to teach music he played in an extemporaneous ragtime band and might even have been a disc jockey on the college radio station. And that those two kids—you see the second one who just joined him? Even younger than the first—are from a second marriage. And that he also has two from his first marriage, but they're grown up and maybe in college or past it and are interested in becoming, just as these two will be, anything but musicians or music teachers because of their father's meager income and displeasure with the profession. And his wife, the present one. Well, I don't know what she does; usually they're opera singers or musicians, or have been trained to be, or music teachers too. But for some reason I think she's very much like the first—in looks, build, hair color, and the way the hair's combed—and that both of them resemble his mother. But I see her reading a lot of serious books—women musicians are different that way from men—that she checks out of the library in town, every so often firing a piece she's made in some pottery class and cooking gourmet meals from recipes she's cut out of the
New York Times
. What he must be thinking of me, though? “Is that guy clear out of his head? Does he forget notes and whole musical passages when he plays as much as he forgets faces and potentially embarrassing mistakes from year to year?” Well, I can tell him I didn't forget his face; that I actually remembered it but put the wrong name to it, not that if he told me his a dozen times I'd remember it. I'm saying, I bump into him by mistake once a summer, so why should I be expected to remember his name or not to mix it up with someone else's every now and then? While he must see my name and photo in the program notes if he goes to the Hall's concerts, and I'm almost certain he does: a Sunday-goer with the wife—kids left with friends—rather than the Friday night concerts, since they don't want to leave their children with friends too late or at home alone. Or he's saying, “You see that gentleman over there?” Saying this now to his kids. “He's one of the two violists for the Hall's artist-faculty concerts and also a viola teacher of young student artists who come up to the Hall's chamber music school for seven weeks. He's pretty much a hotshot in his field, having helped found the Razumovsky Quartet, which was one of the best in America for many years. And from what I read in the local newspaper last year and in the area's arts free weekly just last week, he's made a couple of recordings and been a soloist over the last thirty years with some of the leading orchestras and chamber ensembles in this country and abroad, as well as being the principal violist for the Metropolitan Opera. Now why he thinks I'm Fritz Sepulska is a mystery to me. But you kids like to read mysteries—Nancy Drew and such—so maybe you can solve this one for me. Because do I look so old? Sepulska's got to be approaching eighty. So let's say this violist's eyesight isn't too good … so because of that we'll add ten years to the Fritz he sees. In other words, and not to get too confusing, though he thinks of me as eighty, he sees me as seventy but feels that's what a healthy eighty-year-old man looks like … but do I look that? Even sixty? I thought I looked pretty good for my age—fifty, maybe; possibly forty-five. I haven't lost all my hair and my jaw hasn't begun to slack, and my neck, in only the last year, I think, is beginning to get wrinkled and also a little hollow in front the way the necks of most older people do. And that pot that people past fifty-five seem to have no matter how thin they are and how much they purge themselves and exercise—well, that's starting to show despite every countermeasure I take, including sucking in my stomach while holding my breath. And the gray, if not even the white hair in places, like the sideburns and on my chest; and those webbed feet, I think they're called, off the ends of my eyes, and that deep quarter-moon gash running around both sides of my mouth … you know,” and, as would seem with this guy, because of the inarticulate way he spoke to me, he shows with his fingers what he means, since he doesn't have the words to explain it. “But my posture's pretty good—sturdy, straight, I'm not bent over at all—and my ankles are still strong and not turned in and my legs don't wobble and shake. And my arms because of the stretch band and ten-pound dumbbells I work out with are as solid if not solider than they were when I was twenty or thirty and never exercised. How old do you two think I look? Be honest,” and his younger daughter says, “When will they be ready with our order?” and he says, “Everything's freshly made here, though maybe a little preprepared, so if it had come out in a minute or two I'd have wondered how far in advance the dishes had been cooked,” and the older one says, “Shouldn't we have ordered the large portion of potato skins? It's only fifty cents more and you get twice as many pieces,” and he says, “Listen, last time we did, you left half of it here,” and she says, “We had what was left wrapped and took it home with us,” and he says, “And threw it out several days later. This time, you finish the small order, you can get another small order, and the second one will come out hot like the first one, just the way you like it, and with a new container of sour cream. But my biceps,” he says to them, “my forearms and arms—I mean, they're not, they couldn't be—the arms of a seventy-five- to eighty-year-old man. No man that age could have arms as solid and thick as mine, and if he did—well, it'd be highly unusual. And I just don't see a musician—and a pianist, no less, who has to take such delicate care of his hands and arms, and one still playing as I'm sure Sepulska does. Those guys never stop practicing and performing, with some of them in their nineties, and one of them—Mishaslavski or something—a hundred, but still banging away onstage when they're long past remembering their own names, even, or at least the names of their children. Anyway, I don't see any musician my age, except maybe a bass player or tympanist, and both of them mostly from dragging their instruments around, having the arms I do,” and his younger daughter says, “Show us your arm muscles. You always say you will someday but never do,” and he says, “It's too silly. I did it as a young boy and later as a joke to girlfriends, but I couldn't do it anymore and for sure not here,” and she says, “You can say we're now your girlfriends. Just show them once and we'll never ask again, agreed?” she says to her sister, and the older girl says, “Okay, agreed,” and he says, “When we're in the car maybe, or sitting down here, if no one's around or looking, and very quickly,” and the younger girl says, “Good,”'” when a woman in the enclosed stand where they take the orders and make the food yells over the loudspeaker, “Ninety-two!” and Gould says, “That's us, or maybe she's saying how old she thinks I am … anyone want to bet?” and Fanny says, “Don't be funny, Daddy,” and goes to the pickup window in the stand, their tray's waiting, and she carries it to a picnic table—the man's at the next table and looks at them and smiles and turns back to his wife—and Gould says to his daughters, “Ready?” and Josephine says, “Ready what?” and he says, “The muscle thing,” and Fanny says, “But people are around, and that man who called you Fritz is looking,” and he says, “Shh, don't rub it in by repeating it so he hears; I don't want him thinking something's wrong with his memory—older people get very sensitive about that, think maybe their mind's going or something,” and raises his arms and flexes his biceps, and Fanny touches one and Josephine the other, and Fanny says, “Oh, they're big, like the poster I saw of a big hockey star without his shirt,” and Josephine says, “Where'd you see that, in one of your teen magazines?” and he glances at the next table, and the man and his wife are looking at him and the man shakes his head, not disapprovingly, really no expression whatsoever that says anything, and looks away, and the woman nods while she smiles and seems to mouth something to him like, “Very pretty girls.”