Shades of Blue (13 page)

“I hadn’t planned on it, why?”

“Oh I just thought it would be nice and Milton misses you.”

“Well give him a pat for me. I’m going up to see my mother for a couple of days. I’ll see how things go. You haven’t had any more calls or visits from Brent Sergent have you?”

“No, not a word.”

“Okay, well get back to work.”

“Yeah, I will. Bye, Evan.”

Back at the hotel, I call around the airlines and manage to get a round trip to Boston on a shuttle without too much trouble, going up Saturday morning and coming back late Sunday evening. I call my mother to let her know.

“That’s fine,” she says when I give her the flight information. “Your dad will pick you up.”

“That’s not necessary, mom. I can get a cab.”

“No, he wants to.”

“Well, okay then. See you tomorrow.”

***

The apartment Cameron Brody is staying in is in the West Village. He buzzes me in and I walk up to the second floor. The door is open and Brody is sitting on the couch, leaning over his laptop computer.

“Be right with you,” he says. “Just doing a little research.”

I sit down next to him and watch his fingers fly over the keys, the screens changing like a slide projector. He finally ends on a screen with a lot of figures and dates, mumbles something, then shuts down and closes the lid.

“Okay.”

“What was all that?”

“The reason I’m in New York. I’ve been tracking this blues singer. He doesn’t know it but he’s got a valid claim for some royalties on something he wrote years ago. With all this nostalgia thing happening, some newer group recorded one of his songs and it took off. So I got a check for him but he moved and didn’t leave any forwarding address.”

“And you can do all that on the computer.”

Brody smiles. “It’s amazing man, just amazing what you can do with one of these puppies if you know where and how to look.”

“Ever do any family history searches, genealogy, that kind of thing?”

He shakes his head. “No, but I can. Got somebody you want to look up?”

“Maybe later. Let’s get some dinner.”

Brody leads me to a steak house near the Village Vanguard. It’s down a few stairs below street level and about half full as we’re early. We get the whole scene—Caesar salad, baked potato, and a juicy New York cut of course, grilled to perfection. We share a carafe of burgundy and finally lean back sated and satisfied.

“So what are you plans now?” Brody stirs as coffee arrives.

“I’m going up to Boston to see my folks for a couple of days, then I guess back to San Francisco. What about you?”

“I have to take care of this royalty thing. I have an open ticket so I can go anytime. You coming back to New York or going straight from Boston?”

“I’ll come back here, I guess.” I realized how pumped I still was from the recording session, the energy of New York, and although I was anxious to get back to Andie, at the same time I was reluctant to leave the city.

Brody studies me a moment. “How serious are you about tracking down the
Birth of the Cool
recordings, seeing if your friend was responsible for some of the tunes?”

“Very. Why?”

“While you’re in Boston, let me do some searching. Hell, they were done right here. Why not check it out? The family search you have in mind, the woman you mentioned. What was her name? Lane?”

“Yeah, Jean Lane. Well, I don’t want to put you to any trouble. You have your own work.”

“Are you kidding? I love a good mystery too, and I owe you for Roy Haynes. You know what that would mean if we could find out your friend wrote any of those tunes?” He was grinning now, excited at the idea of the hunt. He takes out a small notebook and pen from his pocket. “Give me as much as you got.”

I give him Cal, Jean Lane, Kansas City, any other things and then I remember another name. Al Beckwood.

Brody looks up. “Who’s he?”

“I’m not sure, but he called a couple of times after Cal died. He left a number but I’ve never been able to get him.” I dig the number out of my wallet and he adds it to his list. He looks at the number for moment. “Something familiar about this name.” He shuts the notebook and puts it away. “It’ll come to me. Doesn’t sound too hard, man,” he says. “It’s not easy to disappear these days. People leave paper trails wherever they go.”

“Thanks. I appreciate this,” I say.

“Don’t mention it. I met Roy Haynes, played on his drums thanks to you. That’s worth a lot. Oh, give me your cell phone number too, in case I need to check with you.”

We walk outside and amble back toward Brody’s borrowed apartment.

“Want to catch some music? There’s the Vanguard, the Blue Note. Not sure who’s there.”

I catch myself yawning. “No, I think I’ll pass, just get some sleep. I’ve got an early flight in the morning and I’m still on west coast time.”

At his street, we shake hands and I wave down a cab. “Thanks again for dinner.”

“No problem. When you come back, you can crash with me. The couch is pretty comfortable.”

No calls or messages back at the hotel. I watch a little television but nod off a couple of times and finally turn it off. After that, I don’t remember a thing.

Chapter Ten

At Logan Airport in Boston, I catch sight of my dad’s dark blue van, emblazoned with
Horne Printing & Copy Centers
as soon as I come out of baggage claim. He pulls over and opens the door for me and claps me on the shoulder as I climb in. “Hey, Evan, good to see you.”

“You too, dad.” I throw my bag in the back and we’re off. Neither of us has much to say, the old awkwardness still there, as he maneuvers through the airport traffic, out into the city’s maze of one-way streets, working his way north, toward I-90. It’s only a few minutes till we’re on I-60, merging with the Saturday morning traffic headed for Medford.

“How’s mom?” I ask, reaching for my cigarettes. I still have that nagging feeling that something is wrong.

“Oh she’s fine, looking forward to seeing you. I have to run down to the Cape so you’ll have some time together. I won’t be back till late tonight.”

“Oh?”

He doesn’t respond, just keeps his hands on the wheel, and pulls the Red Sox baseball cap down more over his eyes.

“You mind if I smoke?”

“No, just crack the window if you will.”

Rolling down the window, I light up, holding the cigarette outside for the most part, watching the half familiar scenery fly by, feeling the chilly fall air rushing in despite the bright sun. The leaves are starting to turn bright orange and red.

I hadn’t spent much time here. My folks had moved from Santa Monica long after I left home, so I’d never actually lived here. There were some weekends when I was studying at the Berklee school in Boston, but never any long visits. It was a different life, a different world from the beach in Santa Monica, the small house just above Wilshire, where Danny Cooper and I had spent countless hours playing pool in the garage and shooting baskets in the driveway.

It takes less than a half hour from Logan until we pull up in the driveway of the Horne house. Like the others on the street, it’s white clapboard, shutters, and a large front porch. The house looks freshly painted and the shutters are a dark green now. I see my mother sitting on the front porch, a cup of coffee in hand. She stands up and waves as I get out of the van. I turn to my Dad and reach behind the seat for my bag, but he’s still got the engine running, waiting for me to get out.

“Aren’t you coming in?”

“No, I have to get going.” He’s looking straight ahead. “You need to spend some time with your mother for this.”

I get out and look at him, before I close the door. “For what?”

But he’s already backing out of the driveway and pulling away. I look up at my mother. She’s standing now and briefly waves at the departing van, then turns to me. “Hi, son. Come on in.”

She has on a denim smock kind of dress with oversized pockets over a red turtle neck sweater. I walk up the few steps to the porch and hug her, then step back, my hands still on her shoulders. “What’s going on, Mom? Are you sick or something?” I search her face, flashing on everything possible—heart, cancer, stroke, some kind of surgery.

But she manages a smile and shakes her head. “No, honey, I’m fine. We just need to talk.” She motions to the two chairs. “Let’s sit out here and we can both smoke.”

I see an ashtray, a package of cigarettes and matches on the small table between two chairs. “When did you start smoking again?”

My mother had smoked much of her adult life, at least as far back as I can remember. I used to sneak cigarettes out of her packs of unfiltered Pall Malls, but she’d quit some years ago.

She sighs and looks at me. “I guess the day you called to tell me you were coming. Can I get you some coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

“Sure.” She takes her cup and goes inside. I sit down, more puzzled than ever. Since the day I called? I was still trying to remember the uneasiness I’d felt after that call, about something she’d said, but I still haven’t figured out what it is.

She comes back out carrying a small tray with two mugs of coffee, two spoons, a half pint carton of half and half, and a small bowl of sugar. She sets everything on the table and leans the tray against her chair. “So how did the recording go?”

“Fine. Look, Mom what’s going on?”

She sits down. I see weariness on her face now, although she still looks good. Her hair is grayer and the glasses, attached to a chain around her neck seem thicker, but otherwise she looks healthy.

“Evan,” she begins tentatively, “I don’t hardly know how to tell you this.” She takes a cigarette out of her pack and nervously strikes three matches before she can get it lit. Taking a deep drag, she blows the smoke out. She looks at the cigarette and smiles. “It’s so easy to start again, isn’t it?”

I wait, watching her, trying to read her expression. “Are you and dad splitting up? Is that what this is about?”

She laughs and shakes her head. “No, this isn’t about your dad and me. This is about you.” She takes a folded piece of paper out of one of the large pockets in her dress and hands it to me. “I’ve been carrying this around with me since you called, wondering how I was going to do this.” She gets up and walks to the other end of the porch.

I open it and look at it, suddenly feeling like I did when I found Cal’s note. Scanning over it quickly at first, then focusing more closely. Thicker than regular paper with some official looking seals and signatures, it’s creased from many folding.

A birth certificate. In the middle of the page is my name, only it’s not my name.

I don’t know how long I stare trying to make sense of it. I look away then back several times. My mother is staring straight ahead, the cigarette in her hand. Then suddenly, it hits me, what I was trying to remember when I’d called her from Guerneville, when I’d told her about Cal’s death.
Oh yes, your friend from Kansas City,
she’d said. And that’s what had been wrong.

I’d never mentioned where Cal was from, then or ever.

I stand up and pace around the porch, the paper in my hand, looking at it again and again but still unable to digest what it means. “I don’t understand, Mom. What is this?”

She comes back, sits down and stubs out her cigarette and sighs deeply. She won’t look at me. “We, I, should have told you a long time ago, I know that, but we put it off, hid it, I don’t know. The longer we waited, the harder it was to do. Then you were gone and…” Her voice trails off and she shrugs.

I lean back against the porch railing and close my eyes, my stomach churning.

When I was about thirteen or fourteen and learning to body surf, I took a wave one hot afternoon that was way too big. Two of my buddies shouted—Danny Cooper was one I think—“No, not this one,” but it was too late. I was already shooting down the face of the wave, my arms at my sides, feeling its force and power take me. I don’t know how long the slide was, but for a second, as the wave began its curl, I was in the air for a few seconds, suspended, between the crest of the wave and the flat dark surface of the water that seemed so far below. Then, I hit the water flat, felt tons more fall and crush me, throwing me around like a toy. Under water, the whirling and churning continued, the salt water stinging my eyes. My lungs ached for air. I fought in a panic, but I was so disoriented I didn’t know where the surface was. Whirling and twisting and being thrown about, till I saw a faint light and dug for the surface. I broke through, gasping for breath, trying to keep my head above water, but I was thrown around by two more waves till I finally washed up on the beach and crawled up to the dry sand. I lay there, gasping, spitting up water, trying to get my breath back. That’s how it feels now as I look at the birth certificate again, my birth certificate.

My mother’s eyes finally meet mine. “I’m sorry, Evan, I’m so sorry.”

“But how? Who else knew?”

“Most of the family, some close friends. We had two anniversary dates to account for you. The real one when your father,” she pauses and corrects herself, “your stepfather and I got married, and another one to take in your birth. You were two when Richard and I got married.”

Richard. Dad. Yes, suddenly the man I believed to be my father is now somebody else. Somebody called Richard Horne.

“Whenever you needed your birth certificate for school or something, we always took care of it. We had adoption papers, and since I was your birth mother, well, it wasn’t that difficult and you were too young to worry about it.”

I sit down again and feel the questions swirling around in my mind. Such an elaborate scheme to cover things up, keep the truth from me. The truth that Calvin Hughes, whose ashes I had scattered in Santa Monica Bay was my father.

“But why, Mom?” I look again at the certificate. “And Lane isn’t your maiden name, or is it?”

She sighs again. “No.” Her eyes well up then. She takes a swallow of coffee and lights another cigarette. “I was married again briefly, just a few months, between…between Calvin and Richard.” She glances at me briefly then looks away. “I didn’t want you to know about that. I made such a terrible mistake, I know that. Richard wanted me to tell you so many times, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

I stare dumbly at her. “So all these years you let me think I was somebody else, that somebody else was my father. Didn’t you think I had a right to know?” I feel the anger rising up in me now as the truth starts to seep in my mind. “Jesus Christ, Mom, I had a right to know. You should have told me.”

“Oh I know. Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I spent so much time trying to think how I’d tell you. I…I was trying to protect you, but I see that was wrong.”

“Protect me? From what?”

She sighs again, her voice is quieter. “Calvin, your father, wasn’t always a nice man. There were other women and I didn’t want…” She doesn’t finish for a moment. “When you first told me you’d met him, were studying with him, I knew then this day would come. He never said anything, hinted at it?”

I think back, trying to remember, but no, there was never anything. Just my surprise that Calvin agreed to take me on as a student, and later, a friend and mentor.

“No, there was nothing.” I reach for my bag, unzip it and pull out the file folder with Cal’s papers, the music sheets and the photo. I hand the photo to her and point. “That’s me isn’t it, in the carriage,” I say, hearing my voice tremble.

She takes the photo and looks at it, puts her hand to her mouth as tears slide down her face. “Yes.” Her voice is almost a whisper. “Where did you get this?” She wipes away the tears and looks at me.

“I found it with Cal’s things.” I tell her about the note and the photo, how Cal had left it.

She nods, studying the photo. “And he kept it all these years.” She shakes her head again and looks up at me. “You’re right, Evan, you did have a right to know and for that I’m so sorry. I just…I just hope you can find some way to forgive me.”

I can see her steeling herself as she lights another cigarette. I hope I can too. I fish the lighter out of my pocket. I’d been carrying it around. “This is yours too.”

She curls her fingers around it, her head bows slightly. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

***

“I was working in Kansas City,” she begins, “my first time away from home, going a little wild I guess if you can imagine that. I shared an apartment with two other girls. There were parties, going out to clubs and dances, everything I’d never been able to do. One night we went to hear this band. Calvin, your father, was the piano player. I don’t know why I was so drawn to him. I just stood in front of the band listening to the music, watching him play.

“He caught me looking at him a couple of times, smiled at me. We talked during the intermissions and later, we went out for something to eat. He was so ambitious, so dedicated to music, I was just…mesmerized. I’d never known anybody so passionate about something. Music, playing the piano was important to me, but nothing like that, and I never had any idea of a career in music.”

I sit very still just listening to her, hearing for the first time about another life altogether.

“I met him again the next night and nearly every night for the two weeks they played. Then, well, things happened. I fell in love but the band was going on the road. They’d be gone for a month he said, but they were coming back to Kansas City. It was one of those territory bands. They traveled on a bus. It was a hard life but Calvin loved it. He called a lot, wrote me notes, cards, and I could hardly wait till he got back.

“The band he was with got another long term job in Kansas City, but he wanted to leave the band, go to New York. He said he’d missed his chance once and it wasn’t going to happen again. I never knew what he was talking about and he never explained what he meant.”

“We spent nearly two months together and finally, on his day off, we got married. Just the two of us and a couple of friends from the band as witnesses. Then he was gone again, another road trip, leaving me alone in a small studio apartment we’d found.”

I glance over at her then, watch her sigh deeply.

“When he came back again, I was pregnant with you. He wanted to go to New York. That’s all he talked about and he wanted me to go with him, but I was scared. I didn’t want to be stuck in New York while he traveled, not knowing anybody, so I stayed in Kansas City. At least I had a few friends there. Then he called, said he had a chance to go to Europe on a tour and couldn’t turn it down.”

She stops then, sighs and lights another cigarette, takes a drink of coffee. “I knew it was a big chance for him, he was so determined to make good, but it was months before he came back. I waited, working as long as I could, until just before you were born. He didn’t even call me at first, but I found out where he was playing, where he was staying.” She points to the photo. “That’s when that photo was taken, right outside his hotel. I don’t know what happened while he was in Europe, maybe another woman, but he was different somehow. I realized then how foolish I’d been, but it wasn’t just me now. I had a child.”

“We spent a week talking about things, what we were going to do and finally I made him choose. You and me. His baby, or the road. It wasn’t going to be any life I wanted. He’d be gone all the time and it was too lonely for me. Well, you can imagine what his choice was. He went back out on the road again and that was the last time I saw Calvin Hughes. He wrote occasionally, sent me money but I never responded. I was working, trying to raise you, trying to forget how silly I’d been. It was just too much. I couldn’t cope with it all.”