Songs without Words (17 page)

As she took the first swallow from her glass, a boy appeared in the kitchen doorway, as if he had materialized out of thin air. He had made no sound. He was slight, maybe eleven or twelve, with a close-cropped Afro. His face was turned to Harper, but his eyes looked past her.

“Andrew,” Wilona said, seeing him there. “Come here, baby.”

He walked toward her and let himself be engulfed by her arms. Then she turned him to face Harper and said, “Harper, this is my grandson, Andrew. This is the lady I told you about. Her name is Harper. She’ll be visiting us for a few days.”

The boy extended his hand and said, “How do you do?”

He still didn’t seem to see her. Harper suddenly realized that he was blind. She stepped toward him and took his hand, shaking it firmly. “Nice to meet you, Andrew.”

“Now you go change your clothes for dinner,” Wilona told him. “Your shirt has grape jelly stains all over it.”

Andrew hurried out of the kitchen.

“Grandson?” Harper asked, bewildered. “I didn’t even know you had a son. Daughter?”

“Daughter.”

“Really? I made a documentary about your life, and it never came up that you had a daughter and a grandson.”

“The documentary wasn’t about my life. It was about my work.” Harper heard what Wilona said, but it was still not making sense to her.

“My daughter is at a religious retreat in the Colorado Rockies,” Wilona continued. “It’s just an excuse to escape her responsibilities, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve had Andrew a few times before, but I think this time it’s for good.”

“Is that okay with you?” Harper asked.

Wilona nodded. “Better than okay. I love that little guy. And he deserves as good as he can get.”

“But you’ve always been such a free spirit,” Harper said. “Coming and going as you please, traveling all over the world, pursuing your art.”

“‘Free spirit’?” Wilona repeated, obviously amused. “Harper, I’ve always had things that came before my art. For me, photography was an escape, but only in the sense that it allowed me to flee in my imagination, not for real. My life has always been grounded in the here and now. When I was fourteen, my mother developed a slow-growing brain cancer that took away her hearing and the use of her legs, caused horrible seizures and eventually killed her when I was nineteen. For all those years, she was helpless and I had to do everything for her, which, believe me, wasn’t pretty. Then I got pregnant with my daughter and spent the next eighteen years raising her as a single mother. She’s bipolar and has never been able to support herself for more than a few months at a time, so even as an adult, she’s needed a lot of help. Then there was Andrew. That girl couldn’t even look after herself, so you can imagine what our lives were like when she ended up having a baby. Even if he hadn’t been blind, he would have been too much for her, although when she’s on her meds she functions okay.”

“I had no idea,” Harper said, stunned. “What about all those talks we had about what’s important in life? Why didn’t it come up?”

“But you remember, don’t you, that we were mainly talking about you and Chelsea? You needed to talk about that. Besides, I don’t like to dwell on my problems. I don’t want to seem to be complaining. It’s more fun to talk about photography, and you, of course, have always been most interested in my life as an artist, so that’s what I try to be for you. But I’ve never been a free spirit and that’s okay with me. I’ll continue my work. I’ve always found a way to do that. Andrew can come along. You’ll see that he’s a pleasure to be around. He’s a joyful child.”

Harper felt a little battered. In the course of a few minutes, her entire view of Wilona’s life had been upended. Wilona hadn’t changed, obviously. Harper’s view of her had just been wrong, wrong in the most fundamental way. She had imagined Wilona as carefree, concerning herself with no one’s needs but her own. In Harper’s view, the art had been the single focus, the thing that defined Wilona. She was a photographer. Now it was obvious that the focus had been too narrow.
What does this mean?
Harper wondered, feeling disoriented.

When dinner was ready, the three of them ate in the kitchen, birds twittering through the open window. Wilona pulled the crust off her bread and left it on the sill for the birds. Andrew, listening, named each bird as it sang—sparrow, blue jay.

“I hear a woodpecker,” he said at the end of the meal.

“Really?” Wilona asked, cocking her head to listen. “I don’t hear it.”

“Do you hear it, Harper?” Andrew asked.

Harper strained to listen. “Yes, I do. Very faint. Your hearing is remarkable.”

“That’s true,” Wilona said. “And my hearing is getting worse and worse. Andrew is becoming my ears.”

“And you’re my eyes,” he said, grinning.

“That’s right,” she agreed.

“Do you like to listen to music, Andrew?” Harper asked.

“Yes!”

“Music is a big part of his life,” Wilona said.

“Oh, do you play an instrument?”

He shook his head.

“I wish I could teach him,” Wilona said, “but I know nothing about it. This fall I’m going to enroll him in a class, though. If there’s space available.” After dinner, Andrew showed Harper his CD collection and MP3 player and they listened to some of his music. He had memorized an extraordinary number of songs and could sing them perfectly in tune. His musical tastes were varied but were clearly influenced by his grandmother, as evidenced by a preponderance of old-school rhythm and blues. On her way from Andrew’s room back to the living room, Harper paused to admire a photo of a cardinal. Andrew stood beside her and said, “This is my favorite.”

Startled, Harper asked, “The photograph?”

“Yes. I like the way the shadows from the leaves change the color on the bird’s feathers.”

Harper turned to catch Wilona’s eye. She was sitting in a rocking chair, rocking just a couple of inches to and fro. She grinned. “I describe them to him,” she explained. “He has a finely detailed mind image, a more detailed image than you probably have.”

Harper looked back at the photo, trying to imagine what Andrew’s mind image of it was like. Up until this moment, she had thought it sad that Andrew had never seen one of his grandmother’s stunning photos. Harper wouldn’t have been surprised if Andrew had turned to her then and said, “You still have much to learn, Grasshopper.”

Quite frequently, Harper closed her eyes while playing music, but she’d never thought about why. She supposed it was to allow herself to see the music as Andrew did, as he saw the photograph, without any visual interference. It wasn’t easy to do because even when you closed your eyes, you tended to see images of piano keys or notes. To see the music itself required a more concentrated blocking of the visual. Harper had learned to do that, over time. She could see the music itself when she worked at it—waves of colors, gliding, flowing, marching, bouncing.

“That cardinal is going into my next book,” Wilona said.

“Oh, I meant to ask you about that.” Harper sat on the sofa next to Wilona’s chair. “How is it coming?”

“All of the photos have been chosen. We’re working on page layout and narrative. I’m hoping to see it in print by winter. I wanted to talk to you anyway, Harper, about this one.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve made a pitch to my publisher to include a DVD with the book.”

“A DVD? What would be on it?”

“Among other things, your biography of me.”

“My video? You want to sell that with your book?”

“Yes. My publisher thinks it’s a good idea. Usually we just have a foreword or introduction in the book with some biographical information and a photo. This would be something more intriguing, I think, and now that a few people actually know who I am, there might be some interest in me as well as the photos. At least my publisher thinks so.”

“Yes! I mean, you’re well-known now. People are curious about the artist. Sure. I think it’s a wonderful idea. But are you sure it’s good enough? Are you sure you don’t want to have one professionally made?”

Wilona smiled affectionately. “It’s good enough. It tells exactly what I want to tell people about my technique and my relationship with my subject. Would that be okay with you, then, to use it?”

“Okay? Absolutely.”

“Good. I know you haven’t really had any aspirations like that. From what you’ve said, you’re doing this just for the pleasure of it, but I assume you have no objection to commercial success. Maybe we can get you a small piece of the royalty split.” Wilona laughed good-naturedly. “A very small piece.”

“That’s not necessary, but I won’t turn it down. It would be kind of nice, you know, to be a part of a commercial product like that and such a beautiful one as well.”

“Well, thank you. We’re quite the mutual admiration society here!”

Just before sunset, Wilona suggested a walk. Her house occupied a clearing in a sparse conifer forest. The smell of pines and the lacy afternoon sunshine filtering through them left Harper feeling peaceful. She breathed deeply, absorbing the fresh spirit of life in the woods. They ambled alongside a shallow brook. Harper peered into the water of the stream, sometimes seeing the surface mirror of it, sometimes looking through that to the rounded rocks below. In the sound of the water rushing over boulders, she heard a marimba, accompanied shortly by maracas. It was a light, regular rhythm, a pleasant, calming tune. Harper was feeling humbled. First, she had discovered that Roxie had been living an entirely different life than she’d understood. Now she had discovered that Wilona too had a much different life than she’d imagined.

She wasn’t the only one for whom Roxie’s lifestyle would be a revelation, though. There was no way she could have known about that. It had been a secret, after all. She didn’t know why Roxie thought she could have guessed. Still, it bothered her that their friendship had turned out to be so superficial. At least that’s how it seemed to Harper now. After all, if they had been as close as Harper thought, Roxie couldn’t possibly have kept so much of her emotional life hidden.

And now Wilona... Obviously her senses were flawed. It was as if she were color blind. Or partially deaf. There were whole ranges of the lives of her friends that she didn’t hear, that were beyond her upper and lower registers.

This has been going on a long time
, Harper realized, thinking about Peggy, another good friend she hadn’t really known. She wondered who else she thought she knew, but didn’t. Chelsea came to mind, of course. She had been so certain that she knew Chelsea’s feelings. Was it possible that she was wrong about that too, that Chelsea had never had the depth of feeling that she had thought? Maybe it had only been about sex for Chelsea. Maybe it still was.

More disturbing than the lack of awareness about the true inner lives of her friends was Harper’s sudden doubt in her ability to know herself.
Is my view of myself as flawed as my view of other people?
she wondered. She had been thirty-six, after all, before she recognized that she was a lesbian, despite numerous hints along the way. Not only had she been involved in a phony relationship with Eliot for nearly seventeen years, but she had also spent decades searching for spiritual and emotional fulfillment without having a clue about how that might manifest itself. She had given equal validity to all comers in that arena, congratulating herself for her open mind. Perhaps her mind wasn’t quite so much open as vacant, she thought.
Is there
anything
I really know about myself? About my desires and my passions?

There was the music. That seemed certain enough.