Body & Soul (40 page)

"A mean drunk. Just got worse over the years, and getting to be an old man, really."

"He used to run the elevator when I practiced at the maestro's."

"Well, he got promoted to doorman. So one day he's on his break, dead drunk on that ratty old couch they use over by the storage rooms. I wake him up when it's time—I used to do that, you know, trying to be nice—and when he gets halfway up he gets the heaves, and pretty soon there's a mess on the floor. Since we just ate I won't go into details. Later, when he comes down from his shift, he wants to know why I ain't cleaned it up. I say I ain't cleaned it up because I ain't the one that done it. He say he going to get me fired."

"Mick trash," Emma said, her eyes narrowing. "Jumped-up mackerel snapper, pimping for the rich."

"And?" Claude asked.

"And that's what happened." Al leaned back and spread his long, tapering fingers across his belly. "I got fired."

"But, but, I mean how ...," Claude started.

"Doormen got a union, Claude. Mullins big in the union. Saperstein hated to do it, I believe the man, he truly hated to do it, but he had to. Told me he'd been trying to get rid of Mullins for years, but he'd lose his job if there was a strike."

"So you lose yours," Claude said.

Al shrugged. "Gave me three months pay."

"After fifteen years," Emma said.

The waiter brought tea and fortune cookies. Al poured three cups. "They're going to oil anyway. Don't need no coal man. But listen, we're doing all right. Got the down payment and the loan for another medallion. We'll have two cabs working, everything'll be fine. Be better this way."

Claude shook his head. "You're amazing."

"What?" Al wanted to know.

"I mean, you're not even angry. That's terrible what they did. It's outrageous."

Al turned his head and looked out the window, his body still and his face expressionless. After some time he said, "How do you know I'm not angry?"

Flustered, Claude fooled with his teacup. "It's just you seem so—I mean you don't seem..."

"I'm angry. I just don't give in to it." He sipped his tea and then put it down. "Stuff happens all the time. What'd you call it? Outrageous. Outrageous stuff make you so mad you can just burn yourself up with it. You got to decide if the mad runs you, or you run the mad."

Emma leaned forward with her big arms on the table. "It doesn't mean you roll over for everything, but you control yourself."

Claude looked at his mother's calm, wide, plain face, so different now in relative repose from the red, trembling, popeyed image he remembered from his childhood. She had changed in so many respects she seemed almost a different person, more easily given to gentle laughter, more temperate in the way she moved her large body.

"You're right," Claude said. "It makes sense."

"Anyway, things are changing," Al said. "I do believe. You see those people walking up and down with signs in front of Woolworth's on Second Avenue? Half of 'em white kids. They picket Woolworth's up
here
for what's happening in Woolworth's down south. Now that's something new."

"The movement." Claude nodded. "People at school talked about it. Nonviolent resistance to bring about social change. It's based on Gandhi and the independence movement in India."

Emma broke open her fortune cookie, read the slip, and snorted. " 'With age comes happiness.' Thanks a lot."

Al looked at his and hesitated a moment. " 'Your children are your greatest wealth.' I guess that means I'm flat broke."

"Mine is good," Claude said. " 'A journey of a thousand leagues begins with one step.' "

"A league? What's that?"

"Three miles," Claude said, proud of himself. "Roughly three miles."

In the back of his mind he'd thought it would go the way it went in the movies. When Elizabeth Taylor's father realized his daughter was in love with Montgomery Clift, he went out of his way to be nice to the young man, welcoming him to the fold despite his origins. Claude had been moved by that detail when he'd seen the film—a powerful mix to get both the girl
and
a good man as a surrogate father—and had in fact gotten teary during the episode. In dozens of other films dealing with similar situations it was always the young man's skill, courage, intelligence, and basic decency that counted. Further, Claude, who had polished his manners at Cadbury, had made it a point to be always on his best behavior with Mr. and Mrs. Powers. He called them "sir" and "ma'am," never went first through a door, controlled a tendency toward excitability in conversation, and in every way attempted to act like a gentleman. He even found himself remembering some pointers from old Franz. But it had not gone well when, after half a dozen dinners at the Seventy-third Street townhouse, Mr. Powers had suggested they stay at table for cigars while the ladies repaired to the other room. Claude had refused a cigar from the box opened before him by the Filipino maid, but had accepted a second glass of wine.

"I suppose you know," Mr. Powers said when they were alone, "that Lady has turned down young MacDonald's offer of marriage."

Startled, Claude looked up. Mr. Powers's square, handsome, vapid face was without expression as he stared at his cigar. "Yes, sir," Claude said.

Arthur MacDonald was the reason Lady had come back to New
York on weekends during college. Two years out of Yale Law School, he was, according to Lady, "sweet, thoughtful, dull, and a stuffed shirt." She had seen him, she said, because she'd had nothing better to do.

"The MacDonalds are old family friends," Mr. Powers said, "and Mrs. Powers and I are fond of Arthur. We're disappointed it didn't work out."

Claude didn't know how to respond, because he didn't know why Ted Powers was telling him what he was telling him. This situation had occurred a number of times, various remarks of Powers falling like lead. Surely at this moment the man could not expect commiseration, Claude thought. What does he want me to say?

"That was what we'd planned on," Powers said.

Claude's mind darted this way and that, searching for an opening but finally spinning in confusion. He said nothing.

"Lady will have many responsibilities in life." A slow puff at the cigar.

"I'm sure she will, sir." He had no idea what the man meant.

"Arthur could have helped her. He understands those kinds of things."

Claude could only look at his wine glass.

"Now what kind of responsibilities do you figure
you'll
have?" Powers asked. A trace of Montana had crept into his speech. He'd said something between "figure" and "figger." Lady had not given Claude much information about her father. She spoke of him rapidly and scornfully as a dimwitted self-pitying bully (Claude had felt a mixture of shock and glee at her words) and presented his history as if it were of no importance. He'd been born on the largest cattle ranch in Montana, which had been held by his family for generations, had "grown up in the saddle," come east to go to Dartmouth, where a large donation from his mother had assured his acceptance, met Linda, married her, and done nothing since, according to Lady, except for a soft officer's job in London during the war. "That man is nothing. The most important thing he does is cook dinner on the maid's night off."

"But doesn't he have a job?" Claude had asked.

"He has an office. He keeps track of family investments. Does the income tax. It's a fraud."

Somehow Claude could not believe it was that simple. He looked down the long table. "My responsibilities will have to do with music. I
should tell you about that." He had been surprised by a household so completely empty of music—no phonograph, no radio except in the kitchen, no instruments of any kind with which to break the silence. He'd never heard anyone so much as hum a tune within these walls. To do so would have seemed almost disrespectful. So Claude went slowly and carefully with Mr. Powers, telling him how he'd started with Mr. Weisfeld as a child, describing his other teachers and what he'd learned from them, emphasizing the importance of practice, scales, exercises, and a daily routine, waxed eloquent (he thought) on the mysterious power of music to move both the mind and the soul, and told of his ambitions as a player and composer. Everything he said felt remarkably sound, remarkably good, and even exciting in the abstract. He felt himself flushing with emotion.

Mr. Powers smoked his cigar and said nothing for a long time, staring at the ceiling. Finally he extinguished his butt, jabbing it energetically in the ashtray. "So you want to be an artist, is that it?"

"Yes, sir. Exactly."

"That's for women."

The remark was so blunt and so ridiculous Claude couldn't believe what he'd heard. "What?"

"You heard me." Mr. Powers got up from his chair. "It's for women. Women and pansies." Without another word he'd left the room.

Now Claude sat at the window of the Long Island Railroad carriage and watched the flat land drift by. At his feet was a small suitcase, a rather expensive item given to him by Otto Levits for his overnight engagements. "It's important to look good when you go someplace to play," Levits had said. "You're a performer, a serious artist. Shoes shined, suits pressed, quality accessories. It's a gesture of respect." Inside the suitcase were a change of clothes, some Bartók scores, a paperback edition of
The Great Gatsby,
and a round tin of marrons glacés.

As the train pulled into the station at Ashton he realized he was simultaneously jiggling his knee and gnawing on a fingernail. He stopped instantly, as if rebuked. A strange mood was upon him—a mixture of romantic and erotic excitement, apprehension about Ted and Linda Powers (particularly since he knew Lady had forced the invitation), simple curiosity, and a certain amount of repressed and unacknowledged anger. He was both thrilled and slightly sickened.

He stepped off the train and saw Lady standing in the sunlight on the platform. She wore tennis whites, a green ribbon in her brown hair, and sunglasses. Her long, perfect, tanned legs seemed even longer as she skipped to his side. "Hi, cutie!" She gave him a quick kiss. "Got your shining armor in there?"

"No, but I did bring a bathing suit."

"Super. Let's go."

It was a British sports car, dark green, with a leather strap over the hood and the top folded down into a recess behind the jump seat. "Ouch! It's hot," she said as she got into the leather seat and grabbed the wheel. She pulled out of the lot with a splash of gravel. "This is the village," she shouted as they accelerated down a street lined with small Tudor buildings housing shops with tasteful signs. Tall elm trees threw dappled shade. They passed a movie theater, and then a white church with a slender steeple. Soon they were on a winding country road between fieldstone walls, speeding under a canopy of green.

"Mother's off having tea," Lady cried. "Father's playing golf, thank God."

"I brought a house present," Claude shouted.

She geared down, double clutching with finesse, and turned the long nose of the car into a break in the wall. An ascending driveway, rising to a gravel turnaround and the house, sitting alone on the top of the hill. Claude had a moment of déjà vu. A large, white, two-story clapboard house with green shutters and trim and a portaled entranceway. The lawns, flowers, and shrubbery were tended to a point past perfection, lending the scene a tinge of unreality. It was the movies that made him think he'd seen this house, this impeccable setting, for indeed he'd seen its like from the balcony of the RKO many times. It was the sort of house within which might be found Walter Pidgeon, Greer Garson, or Ethel Barrymore. It made Claude feel better just to look at it.

"You're in the guest quarters," Lady said as they got out of the car.

They went through the front door into a wide hall. The living room was on the right—furnished with antiques and oriental rugs, much like the house on Seventy-third Street—dining room and kitchen off to the left. They walked straight across to a rear door and emerged onto a flagstone patio. There was a trellis, a small white building, and a swimming pool in the middle of the lawn, screened on two sides by rows of hedges. The clear blue-green water sparkled in the sun.

"The servants are in back," Lady said, opening a screen door, "and you're in here."

A bright room with hunting prints, a bureau, two small armchairs, and a four-poster bed. He put down his suitcase.

"This is very nice," Claude said.

Lady went to the bed and sat on the edge. "Comfortable bed." She fell back and threw her arms out to the side.

"Is it safe here?" he asked.

"Oh, absolutely," she said, her soft, breathy rasp more pronounced than usual. "Nobody comes in here."

He kissed the inside of her elbow and worked his way up to her mouth. She closed her eyes and accepted the weight of his body, her hands light on the back of his neck.

Later in the afternoon they swam in the pool. Claude lolled in the warm water while Lady did laps, her body moving smoothly and efficiently. Eight strokes, turn, eight strokes, turn, again and again until, breathing hard, she climbed out and lay on a towel. Claude spread one on the grass beside her and lay on his back, closing his eyes against the brightness of the sky. After a while he thought she might have gone to sleep, and he was just about to turn and look when she spoke.

"What's the difference between somebody who knows how to play the piano—I mean lots of people can play anything you put in front of them—somebody like that as against what you do, or Fredericks, or the famous ones."

Surprised, he opened his eyes and stared up at the blue dome. Lady had often asked him about how a concert had gone, or what sort of people he'd played with, or played for, or how much money he'd made, or what Minneapolis was like, but seldom more than that. It was as if his music were a given. "That's not such an easy question," he said.

"No?"

"Well, there are various levels. The higher you get, the harder it is to put into words, actually. Eventually it gets pretty mysterious."

He turned to find her watching him. He got up on his elbows. The side of her head was flat against the towel, her brown eyes steady. The afternoon air had become still and he heard bird cries in the distance, ascending loops like a child's doodles. Water lapped in the gutters of the pool. "I guess the first thing is control," he said. "No, that's wrong.
The first thing is probably the hand-eye thing. The way most kids are taught, there's so much emphasis on the eye, on the ability to sight-read, they become sort of input-output machines. You know, they just listen for mistakes, they don't listen for anything else. I was lucky. Right from the beginning the sound seemed so powerful and interesting I paid a lot of attention. Different key signatures meant my hands would assume different postures, and then those postures felt like emotions. C is a bright key, for instance. Cheerful. E-flat is darker, with more longing. It's like colors, almost. Anyway, there's something in there about the hands, a kind of feedback to deep inside you while your hands are moving and sort of tracing out the emotions there in the different key signatures, right there in the keyboard. I think you've got to have that right at the start." He turned on his side, facing her. "You sure you want to hear all this?"