Of Song and Water (21 page)

“I'm told,” says the man, “that a guitar has a neck. A body. That a musician holds it and plays it like a precious thing.” The man offers his hand to the woman. She comes closer. He stands behind her and runs his index finger down the slope of her shoulder. “So I'm curious,” he says. “Did she play for you? Did she make the sounds you wanted?”

He can't make out the woman's face. “I wouldn't have – ” But one of the giants cuts off his air.

The man brushes the woman aside. “I'm a person of means, of property,” he says. “You owe me for unauthorized use.”

The giants drag him forward and the door of the limousine opens. The polished steel catches the street lamp and flashes. He looks down at the asphalt and sees the woman in fragments, the puddles like shards of glass reflecting her thighs, her hips, her dark hair. The opening door creates a breach, a gap that
widens like a mouth yawning. He wants to crawl into the limousine. Instead, a dead weight falls on his shoulders and drives him to his knees.

He struggles against the cold grip just below his wrists. He watches his hands being forced into the breach. The woman shrieks. In the next breath, the door slams. The bones in his hands shatter.

The parking lot pitches and slides away. He drifts. He feels the first fire of unending pain. He sees his guitar jammed beneath a tire, its black case like a coffin waiting nearby. Slowly, the door of the limousine opens as wide as it will go. Then, without conscience, it slams again.

HEATHER looks taller in her cap and gown. She must be wearing high heels, thinks Coleman. He hugs her and whispers in her ear, “You better walk like a girl in finishing school. It's a long way down from those shoes.”

She smiles with old friends and poses with the new guy who took her to the prom. A quick inspection of the boy, his face in Coleman's viewfinder, reveals a tight smile, a smartly trimmed goatee, and a rhinestone stud in the auricle of his left ear. His thin arms and narrow shoulders barely support his gown. Alongside Heather, the kid looks like a beanpole, a stick figure wrapped in a bedsheet.

A light wind moves through the trees making the sound of water. Heather gazes at the blue sky stretching to the horizon. “There's your invitation,” he says. “You need to get this done and go.”

He braces himself for the speeches. He knows exactly what to expect, particularly from the principal and the assistant principal. They'll swear like men
under oath that this graduating class represents a new hope for America, a treasure trove of diversity and talent.

He imagines school officials all over the country testifying in the same way, creating the illusion, for parents, grandparents, and teachers, that these graduates are somehow different – fresher, stronger, and smarter – than the kids who walked the boards last year or the year before. It's the hype, he says to himself. It starts early. It's like selling a record.

The crowd moves from the parking lot into the auditorium. The stage lights illuminate a podium, a microphone, and several rows of brown folding chairs. Near the podium and at the corners of the stage, clusters of mums and carnations, purple and white, the school's traditional colors, stand at crisp attention.

He sees Maureen sitting up front with a group of old neighbors and decides to sit toward the back where it's darker and less crowded. Despite the day's low humidity, the air in the auditorium feels sticky.

At three o'clock, faculty and staff walk down the side aisles and take their seats. Then “Pomp and Circumstance” comes through the PA system. The melody wavers. It groans and for a moment goes flat. A worn-out cassette, he thinks. I need to make a donation. I'll buy the school a CD player. I'll even buy the CD.

The doors for the center aisle swing open, and the class president, the valedictorian, and the salutatorian lead the procession. In their academic robes, the kids look like members of a religious sect. The uniformity grows hypnotic, so much so that his mind begins to drift. He dreams of an orchestra playing in perfect tune, celli and violins filling his ears with a silken whisper. He almost misses his daughter when she steps through the door, her hair tucked under her cap and her tassel on the wrong side.

He considers the fact that more than thirty years have gone by since he last
attended a commencement. He pictures his father seated in the first row looking proud but distracted. His mother struggles with a package of film. She opens the camera and loads it.

He remembers that the class of '73 seemed clumsy, too large for its own good. Even when a fourth of the students turned out to be no-shows, those waiting for their diplomas numbered six hundred. The missing seniors represented a protest, a boycott. They refused to be questioned and searched, frisked by security guards trying to confiscate dope and booze. This new policy came from the desk of Truant Officer Baines. The graduates, by his design, were forced to arrive two hours early. They formed a line so that men equipped with Mace and handcuffs could pat them down. One of the boys got slapped. “Any higher,” he'd said to the guard, “and you'll be yankin' my balls.”

A rising squeal of feedback causes everyone to clutch their heads, and then Principal Trip covers the microphone with his hand and makes it worse. It finally ends with a screech and a sonic boom.

“Testing,” says Principal Trip. “Testing one, two, three – ” He looks heavier under the lights. His pudgy hand clutches a hankie for mopping his forehead and chin. “Parents, family, friends, and graduates, welcome . . .”

I shouldn't have said it, he thinks, that remark about finishing school. She's not a girl anymore. She never acts like a teenager. In two months, she'll be packed and gone. She'll find a more hospitable climate, a place that becomes her. I love the tilt of her head and the electricity of her smile. She's like my mother, the way she glides into a room. But she's fearless. There's not one thing she's afraid of.

Principal Trip introduces the valedictorian. “She'll be attending the University of Chicago,” he says. He delivers this news with considerable glee, with the élan of a game-show host announcing the grand prize.

The valedictorian begins her speech, but the words pile up like water behind a dam. Rising around him, swiftly and without compassion, is a flood of
ghosts. He stares at his crooked hands and remembers the dark mahogany in the Green Mill. His mind dwells on the black limousine, on the window at Northwestern Memorial framing the gray expanse of Lake Michigan.

Brian collected him when he was discharged. “Where to now? You can't drive with those hands.”

He'd thought about going back to Gibraltar and finding a place close to Heather and Maureen. “I'll catch a plane to Detroit,” he said, “or maybe a train.” But even as he said it, he realized he wouldn't go.

Michigan, he knew, offered no refuge. His old house, a small colonial with a view of the Trenton Channel, was no longer his home. He thought of it now as belonging only to Maureen – a payment, reparation for his long habit of infidelity. But he wanted Maureen to have the house, if not for herself then for Heather.

Leaving the hospital, he found it difficult, even infuriating, to manage the simplest moves – opening the car door, buckling his seat belt, rubbing his eyes – so he leaned on Brian and stayed in Chicago. He can't say now whether he moved in for three years or four. Brian never asked him for money or raised the question of when he might leave. They ate dinners together, went to movies, and shared the same bathroom. He learned another man's habits like he once knew Jennifer's and Maureen's.

Always in those days the doctor kept repeating himself like a broken record. “It'll take time,” he said. “Rehabilitation is a tricky thing. It'll take a lot more time than you think.”

After that, he lived with the dull weight of plaster, surfaces of pure white that gradually showed crazing, soil, and stains. As the casts became smaller, he picked and scratched, the sloughed yellow skin falling to the floor like wood shavings.

The months piled up and he passed to the next level: braces made of plastic and steel; physical therapy three times a week. When the braces came off for
good, he kept his withered hands out of sight. He took them out only when necessary.

In the apartment was a battered, unstrung guitar. After a while, in moments of guaranteed privacy, he'd test his resolve by lifting the soundless antique from its half-hidden place. At first, he could barely hold it, but then, with each new effort, he found himself hanging on a bit longer, his body rocking, his hands grateful for the warp of old wood.

 

ON BAD days, lacking energy and resolve, he'd think of the shanty in Port Austin and his keen interest in Otis's black guitar, the Gibson ES-355, the sister of Lucille, and the thrill he felt when he got the nod from Otis and touched the neck for the first time, trying to keep his head, acting as if he knew all about Lucille so that Otis wouldn't think he was green. He took the guitar out of its stand, held it like a sacred object, like something brought back from a dream, and then rested the thin body on his leg and said, “So you're Lucille's sister. My name's Jason. Good to meet you.” And Otis laughed.

He supported the neck and tucked the body beneath his arm.

“That's good,” said Otis. “You shouldn't squeeze her too hard.” The old man stepped across the room and picked up a songbook and began reading and turning pages like someone engrossed in a novel. Against a backdrop of framed photographs, dressed in black pants and a crisp white shirt, he seemed altogether wise and serene, a figure frozen in time, his head bowed in meditation. After a long silence, he looked up and said, “A guitar should feel just like your girlfriend.”

“I don't have a girlfriend.”

Otis put down the book. “Then imagine what one would feel like.”

He wondered if a girl would be as heavy as this. The thought sidetracked him until Otis grabbed the fingers of his left hand and positioned them on the neck in a way that felt relaxed and natural. “Now strum,” said Otis.

The guitar wasn't plugged in but he could hear the chord, a cluster of notes that together made a perfect harmony.

“That's G,” said Otis.

The fact that he'd made any sound at all amazed him, distracted him again, until Otis plugged in the guitar and turned on the amplifier and took hold of his fingers and bunched them together on the first three strings. “Go ahead,” he said.

This time the sound was louder and fuller, more beautiful than before.

“That's D,” said Otis. “Now go back to the first position.”

He moved his fingers but couldn't remember the exact configuration. Otis set him up once more and this time when he played the note on the lowest string he felt the vibration in his chest. He giggled and almost stopped but then made the change to the D chord.

“Good,” said Otis. “And you're not getting tangled up and I don't hear any buzzing. Maybe the guitar suits you.”

 

NOW, HEARING the voice of the valedictorian, the long cadences of her speech, he thinks of Lucille's sister and the unstrung guitar in Brian's apartment. He remembers Brian coming home with a black Les Paul.

“I like the neck,” says Brian. “It's narrow, tighter than what you're used to. I figure it'll be easier on your hands.”

He stares at the guitar, afraid to pick it up.

Brian lifts the Les Paul out of its case and hands it over. “Just hold it,” he says. “I know it's heavy.” He opens the storage compartment in the case and takes out a cord. “I'll get an amp. We'll practice.”

He folds his arm around the Les Paul and supports the neck. He hears Brian's voice calling from the other room.

He looks up and sees unblemished students sitting in perfect rows. Most of them have straight teeth. He'd like to be disparaging but admits as well that he
envies their good looks and their view from the stage. They can't conceive of his long struggle, the starting over and the wasted time – repeating old lessons and rebuilding skills like a man recovering from a stroke – but for him there's no forgetting, even in the light of commencement, because the only thing he's able to see, beyond their bright eyes and shining faces, is the time they have, and he knows he'd steal from them if he could.

He remembers plugging the Les Paul into a small amplifier and tuning to Brian's bass. He opens and closes his left hand and then positions his thumb on the back of the neck behind his first and second fingers. He checks the action and makes sure that his palm stays clear of the neck. He plays a few chords, C, D, and G, in first position. His fingers feel stiff but workable.

He begins with scales and simple tunes, trying to find flashes of his lost dexterity and speed, his shattered technique.

He hangs back while Brian starts a walking figure in A. They keep it slow and he moves through the pattern without much trouble. They slip into the relative minor and he plays a large barre chord, F#-minor, pressing all six strings at the second fret with his first finger. The position hurts. He plays a B-minor chord after that and it forces him to stop.

He asks Brian what he paid for the Les Paul, for the case and the small amplifier. He worries that all of Brian's time and trouble will make no difference in the end. He massages his hand and thinks of the pain as something insidious and purposeful, a cruel force making its way like water.

When necessary, he visits the doctor and complains about his range of motion. “Accept it,” says the physician. “Your hands are now twice your age.”

He carps at the receptionist and demands an apology. He announces to everyone in the office that he can't pay, says he'd refuse even if he could. He walks out. Part of him wants to slam the door but the sudden twist in his gut makes him hold off. His left hand throbs like a hammered thumb.