Disturbances in the Field (42 page)

For the first time in my apartment, Bobby starts to cry. Those small half-whimpers to begin with, then bigger gasps, rattling breaths, till he has worked up to the standard infant howl. I can’t see him from my chair but can well imagine the red face and round open toothless mouth, the fists battering air. Alone with a howling infant, to the brash, assertive last movement of the “Trout,” I grow cold. So cold I shiver. Outside, the raining sky is the color of dusty pewter. Across the room the carriage shakes eerily. I go over. He rolls his head back and forth, catches sight of me and pauses for half a second, then resumes howling. I get very hot. I don’t feel sorry for him, a mere red blot on the pillow, but I need that terrible noise, that noise as much a part of me as my own name, to stop! How? My past has been scraped off me with a knife; I can’t summon up how. I jiggle the plastic toy dangling from the hood of the carriage. Not the way. His howls keep filling my empty house like clouds of smoke. I reach down and touch his cheek with a finger. Spit slides out the corners of his mouth. I open my hand and slowly lower it like a wrecking ball, till it rests lightly on his face, then spread the hand wide so the sound comes through the lattice of fingers. The hand is large, veined and articulated, the fingers stretched beyond their natural potential, a hand with a use. The fingers rest on his forehead and temples, the heel of the hand at his chin, and I imagine pressing down, hard. For an instant it seems I will do it. Then I race back to my chair to huddle deep, hugging my knees to my chest, squeezing and punishing the murderous wet right hand.

A key in the door. Hide the coloring book and crayons under the cushion and huddle up again.

“Hi.” Phil tosses his book bag onto the floor. “What’s wrong with him?”

I frown.

“Shouldn’t you pick him up or something?” Pushing six feet, he stands slumped, yet his boy’s body is tight under the corduroy pants and baggy sweatshirt. His hair is damp. His hands seem tense and chapped. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“Mm-hm.” What with the final jubilant bars of the “Trout” and the howls, my silence and Phil’s tangled presence, the room is oppressive, crammed to bursting. Phil casts me an odd, reproachful look, takes off his sweatshirt, and reaches into the carriage with his long gangly arms. He holds Bobby on his shoulder in the correct position, and as he paces, gently patting the baby’s back, the howls diminish. Phil pauses to stare out the wide front windows at the park and the river. In a moment the record stops, all is quiet. He looks at the baby with a kind, amused gaze I haven’t seen on his face in months. He touches Bobby’s chin and cheeks, pinches his plump feet, and makes shy cooing noises at him. Then Phil looks at me and grins. He actually smiles! When the doorbell rings I jump up. “I’ll get it.”

“I’m sorry it took longer than I thought,” Patricia says. “There was such a crowd at the butcher’s. I should have asked you if you wanted any meat. Did you?”

“No, I shopped before.”

Phil brings the baby out into the hall. Bobby is happy to see his mother—he smiles and vaults his body into her arms. I guess he is not brain-damaged after all.

“How was school?” I ask when they’ve gone. His smile is gone too.

“Okay.”

I follow him, limping, to the kitchen, where he opens the refrigerator and regards its contents with the obscurely dissatisfied air he has perfected.

“We have some good apples. Also banana bread. Or would you like some hot chocolate? It’s raining so hard—you must be chilly.”

“I’m not hungry.” He lets the door swing shut and takes a glass of water. He is once more armored, and the scene painted on his armor is resentment of the world. For the moment I represent the world. It is quite some time since I have heard his natural tone of voice, which was rich and combative. He is withholding his voice, himself, all but his body, from this house. As I watch him drink the water, with head back and eyes half-shut, I grow angry. I feel exactly as Althea does: living with him I might as well be alone. “Phil,” I say sharply. “I think you might speak to me when you come home. Just a few civil words would do. We’re still a family. And to Althea when you see her. And—” I stop to soften my tone. “I’d like you to speak to your father when he calls.”

“But if I have nothing to say to him ...”

“Yes you do. You can tell him you’re furious with him.”

“He must have figured that out for himself.”

“Come on now. Not speaking is so silly.”

“Can I go to Boston in two weeks with Henry for the weekend? There’s a Bruce Springsteen concert. His father got tickets and is driving us there and back and we’ll sleep in his uncle’s basement.”

I see the future—Cassandra! More and more time away, and soon he won’t feel he needs to ask. Two weeks: that will leave Althea and me. “I guess so.” I must arrange something to fill the space, though. The best one for this job is Esther. Tomorrow I will call her in Washington and request my semiannual visit, long overdue.

Phil retires to his bedroom and I to mine, with one of the thick-skinned expensive oranges I bought at the Korean store earlier, plucking as I go a paper napkin from the blue napkin holder made two years ago by, I think, Alan. It is five-thirty. I change into old clothes, and for a most indulgent treat, turn on the TV to
The Electric Company,
but not too loud, so Phil won’t hear. I’ve missed it. They had all outgrown it except Vivian, who happily shared certain of my regressive tastes. This last December, her last December, she was shut in with a cold and bored. I came home to find her stretched out on our old bed, her fine hair in braids and decorated with a tiara of Woolworth’s pearls. Wearing my blue velours robe with high-heeled shoes, as well as lipstick, iridescent eye shadow, and several ropes of beads, she raptly watched Jennifer of the Jungle swing from tree to tree in a leopard-skin costume while below an entourage sang, “Who looks so fine hanging on any vine? Jennifer of the Jungle. Who brings a smile to every Nile crocodile ... I stretched out beside her, tucking her under my arm like a baby. She smelled sweet and chocolaty and was warm with fever. When Jennifer was over I tapped her lightly on the chin and teased, “I think you may be getting too old for this.” “So are you,” she replied.

Well, just for old times’ sake—I wonder, do they still do Jennifer of the Jungle? Fargo North, Decoder? Your Rich Uncle Died and Left You All His ... ? Starts with an M. Marshmallows? Yes indeed they do. And here comes Vivian’s and my favorite: “Punctuation.” Rita Moreno sings in a heavy Spanish accent, “Now a period is just a little dot, But it occupies a very special spot,” and Victor Borge intersperses popping and slurping mouth noises to illustrate the period, the question mark, the comma, and his
piece de resistance,
the exclamation point. How on earth does he do that, she used to marvel.

When I’m done eating the quartered orange I start on the rinds, a slow process with small bites, since the rinds are so acidic. To Althea this habit verges on the disgusting; to Althea many innocuous things verge on the disgusting—they need only be things she has no inclination to do. “That’s no great accomplishment,” she once said in irritation. “Watch this.” She cut a lemon in quarters and sucked one quarter dry without wincing, though tears rolled down her cheeks. “Very good, Althea. That is an accomplishment. But I happen to like the orange peels. I was eating them long before you were born. I’m not trying to prove anything.” Vivian would stick up for me. Like Voltaire, she did not share my taste for orange peels but would defend to the death my right to eat them, and did.

After “Punctuation,” the Electric Company kids sing “Hard, Hard, Hard,” to demonstrate the “ar” sound, as I start on another stinging peel. “Oh yes, it’s hard, hard, hard, Nothing’s easy in this life, you see.” The song has barely begun when the telephone at my bedside rings. Rosalie, her hello as exuberant and breathy as if she has won a race. Who would ever suspect she is at her best in the plangent, exalted Andantes of Beethoven and Brahms?

“So, have you made up your mind?”

“Not yet. I listened to Hephzibah Menuhin do it this afternoon.”

“And?”

“Well, it’s a big job.”

“Yes, that’s what we need. Enough of this futzing around.”

“Mozart is futzing around?”

“You know what I mean. We need something with a broader line. For this concert anyway—we need to show some range. Maybe one of the Brahms. Faure. We have to work it out with Jasper very soon.”

“I’d rather do something by Telemann.”

“Playing it safe, aren’t you? Listen, I understand about the Romantics, but really, Lydia—”

“All right, all right.” She knows me too well. That music demands something different. Not simply emotion, as my floundering student would call it, but a consciousness of its infinite span. A certain expectant, welcoming embrace extended to emotion, in all its possible variations and modulations. To perform them with willing hands.

“Anyhow, you’ve done the ‘Trout’ before, you told me. Haven’t you?”

“Years ago.”

“Well, then it should be easy. What is that awful noise?”

(“Oh yes, it’s hard, hard, hard, If it’s good then you can bet it isn’t free”—they sound like a hard rock group, something Rosalie loathes.)

“Nothing. The TV. Hold on, I’ll turn it down Rosalie, did you know they’re using the fourth movement of the ‘Trout’ in wine commercials? I heard it on WNCN yesterday.”

“So what?”

“Maybe it’s becoming trite.”

“What do we care about wine commercials? You know very well it’s not trite. For a pianist you can’t do much better. It has everything.”

“I know, but ... I had this strange time listening to it. I could hear all the separate parts but they wouldn’t come together in my ear. I couldn’t get the mix right.”

“Don’t listen to it. Just do it.”

“Did you see Hephzibah’s obituary in the
Times
this winter?”

“Yes! I certainly did!” Indignation. I can see her smacking her knee, tossing her black hair. “‘Sister of Violinist’! But what can you expect from the
Times?
Look, Lydia, I have another idea. I’ve told Jasper and he likes it. I want to try some ragtime. Joplin.”

“I think that revival is about over. In one ear and out the other.”

“That’s exactly why. Now it can be done seriously. It’s a tremendous sound, and they have some arranged for string quartets. I could get Carla and someone else. I have this new friend, a kid at WBAI. He’s always looking for something slightly bizarre. You’ll play the original and we’ll do the arrangements. Then he’ll interview us, we’ll talk about its great classical qualities, the problems of adapting for a quartet, et cetera, et cetera. And they record.”

“I don’t think I’m in the mood for ragtime.”

“Oh, mood, schmood. We’ll even do something from
Treemonisha.
”

“Where are you going to dig up an arrangement of that?”

“I’ll do the arrangements.”

“Rosalie, that’s so much work.”

“So? I have time. I have no babies pulling at my skirts. Oh, by the way, I saw Karl again last night.” The husband she had her fill of a year and a half ago and has been unable to stop talking about since. “We had another—you should pardon the expression—date.”

“No kidding? What did you do on your date?”

“We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, then we went back to his apartment.”

“Ah! A very thorough date this time, sounds like. So, do you think he’s someone you’ll want to see again?”

“He seems to have recovered from that spell of premature ejaculation, for one thing.”

“Jeepers. To what do you attribute this miracle?”

“Other women. I suppose he figured out if he could do it for strangers he could do it for me. He says it’s because his hostility has decreased, but of course he has to say something like that. Frankly, Lydia, the whole evening was ... not bad. Not bad at all. I always did like the guy, you know.”

Rosalie! After your hours of recrimination! He called your mode of living acting out! The neurotic artistic temperament! And then his insane working hours. Psychiatry his mistress. Preoccupied: you didn’t know whether you felt more alone with him or without him. Controlling: opened your mail. Occasionally forgot his children’s names. Once a raised kitchen knife. Lesser-grade evils: Cigars in bed. Couldn’t cut the nails on his right hand. Congenitally incapable of refilling an ice-cube tray. I know this man so well I could have been married to him myself. The brief times I met him he seemed pleasant enough.

“I know exactly what you’re thinking. But after all, twenty-seven years. You become attached. Three children.”

“They’re all off on their own. Remember?”

“Well, we’ll see. I’m not rushing into anything. It was nice to be with someone who didn’t ask questions about what I like, for a change. I hate this new business of utilitarian discussions in bed, having to verbalize every little whim. How is Victor, speaking of ... ?”

“Oh, all right, I guess.”

“And the kids?”

“Phil’s okay. Althea’s away in Princeton till tomorrow. There’s some conference about Romance languages. She got special permission to go because of Middlebury.”

“She’s impressive, your little Althea.”

“Expressive, anyway. She does get around.”

“That reminds me. We are going north sometime in November, you and Jasper and I, maybe a few others, I’m not sure. New Haven, Boston, some of the college towns around there.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’ve been asked by some arts council. For two weeks. I’ll tell you the details tomorrow when we rehearse—they’re in my briefcase. Lyd, are you still there?”

“I can go, I guess.”

“Yes.” The dynamo stops for a moment. “Yes,” she says quietly, “you can easily go.”

“It is strange, isn’t it, how things turn out?” I can feel her listening. She does everything so intensely. “All I do is pack up and go. The kids can manage now. I can’t think of a single excuse.”

“Well, good. You’ll travel a lot, then. It’s what you always needed anyway. It’s why you didn’t—”

“Oh, it’s too late for rich and famous, Rosalie. I don’t need that.”

“You never know. Look, before I go there’s one more little thing.”