If at Birth You Don't Succeed (33 page)

On Saturday morning Gillian packed up the van, laundered the linens, emptied the fridge, swept the floors, took out the trash and recycling, and then, to my surprise, put all the garbage into the van. I still contributed nothing to the effort, but this time, instead of zoning out, I actually noticed all the work it took to get us both on the road. It was a start.

Before we left for the mainland, I got to see another special corner of Vinalhaven—the island dump. There was a smorgasbord of antique televisions in wooden cabinets that suggested the village of Vinalhaven had—after skipping over color TVs, flat screens, and high definition—collectively decided to take the plunge on 3-D. When Gillian got back in the car and headed us toward the ferry terminal, I described a man I'd seen throwing out cans of tuna fish.

“He was wearing a big straw ladies' hat and looked kinda like Richard Attenborough in
Jurassic Park
if he'd given up on breeding dinosaurs and just gotten a cat.”

She laughed and it was a small but meaningful reminder of why anyone might want to date me in the first place. I was glad we were ditching some of the emotional baggage we'd collected over the week along with our lobster shells and empty wine bottles.

We drove down to the ferry terminal and Gillian parked the car to go buy our tickets. When she returned, she seemed very relaxed for someone who had a ten-hour drive ahead of her.

“So, apparently there were some medical emergencies that bumped two ferries this morning. The ticket lady basically told me there's no way we're getting off the island today, so we're stuck here until two o'clock tomorrow afternoon.”

We decided to regroup at the island's one and only pizza joint. While we were waiting for our order, we got to eavesdrop on the people who call Vinalhaven home not just for the summers but year-round. I don't want to generalize, but I would describe a lot of Vinalhaven's residents as jolly in a life-threatening, type 2 diabetes kind of way. The gentleman behind us in line was in his midtwenties and roughly four hundred pounds. Most of his right leg was a swollen shade of purple. If this were a war movie, the doctor would have given him a swig of whiskey and something to bite down on, and just started amputating right there and then. But since this was Vinalhaven, no one really seemed to think much of it.

“So how's your leg there, Bobby?” our waitress asked casually.

“Eh,” he shrugged, “thing's about to burst. The doctor wanted to slice it open and wrap it up again, but I'll just hit it with the iodine and I think it'll be okay.”

“Ah yeah?” the waitress said, unfazed. “You want your usual?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Saw your dad the other day. Almost ran him over.”

“Ah yeah?” she said, kneading out the dough for our pizza, “with the car or with the truck?”

“Truck,” he replied flatly.

I loved being in a place where almost running over someone's parent and having gangrene was not noteworthy news. This man's leg was about to fall off, but he clearly wasn't in any rush to seek medical attention (which made me wonder what kind of horrific accident would constitute an emergency worthy of shutting down transportation to and from the island). But maybe Bobby was onto something. If he could find time to stop and enjoy a slice of pizza on his way to an amputation, then why couldn't we put the anxieties of an uncertain future on hold to appreciate this treasure trove of folksy banter? So that's exactly what we did. I didn't think I'd ever want to go back to Vinalhaven after this trip, but all it took was one four-hundred-pound man with super-diabetes to show me the joys of island living.

I'd spent the majority of that week wishing I was back at home, where I understood things. But while Vinalhaven had the landscape to match, I realized my life in Buffalo was its own sort of island. I'd grown up surrounded by people who only knew one way of life—the way of making things easy for me. It was simple. I could have stayed there forever and just said that the world I knew was all I needed. But it's impossible, once you've looked at the ocean, not to wonder what else is out there. Now I could finally see through the fog that there was something worth swimming toward.

A few days later, back in Buffalo, we watched Kevin and Kate get married at the historic Lafayette Hotel. In our Best Men speech, Andrew and I talked about the decade that these two obnoxiously gorgeous people had spent together. On the surface, they couldn't have been more different. Kate was an English teacher with impeccable grammar and diction while Kevin was an artist whose marriage proposal was a painting that included a comma between the words “will you” and “marry me.” They communicate differently but understand each other perfectly. Kevin and Kate had had a decade to figure each other out, grow together, and decide that they were right for each other. It was pretty baller to witness their union.

I didn't know what the future held for Gillian and me. There was really no way to tell where we'd be ten years down the line. What I did know for sure was that I was happy to have someone to dance with. I have no doubt that we strutted our stuff harder and had more fun than just about anyone else at that wedding. She took my hands and expertly twirled her way into my lap, somehow managing to make it look like I was dipping her, even though I was just sitting there watching the magic show that was my girlfriend. After thirtysomething hours of driving over the past few days, she was still up for five hours of dancing, and at the end of the night, I was the guy who got to carry her heels.

I didn't know how I was gonna get there, but the week on Vinalhaven had taught me that I wanted to be more than just a dance partner. I wanted to share someone's life. And when that person looked over at me at the end of the night, I wanted her to see not a child or a boyfriend or someone to take care of, but a person who was willing to take risks and finally put in the work necessary to earn the title of The Best Man.

 

CHAPTER 17

Grandma: The Musical!

I don't think it's exaggerating to say that I come from a family of musical geniuses. My aunt is a violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and she's married to the first chair bassoonist. My other aunts and uncles play the flute, the clarinet, and the cello. My father, the trombonist of the family, has musical tastes that are decidedly less refined. Still, he contributed to the Anner legacy with homespun cassette recordings of original songs, including such lo-fi '80s masterworks as “Pam and the Yellow Trans Am” and “Smash It, Crash It.” But the leader of the Anner band was my grandma Ruthie, who was a church organist and piano teacher for decades.

As for me? I never inherited any of that musical talent. Zero. When I was four years old and was asked to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” I would sort of sing, mumble, and then trail off as I forgot the words: “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star … Won't You Come and Play with Me?” In spite of a complete lack of talent, there was still a time when I had high hopes for my music career.

Fall of 1994. Fourth grade. That was the year when all the kids in my class finally got to join orchestra. The music teacher sized us all up and assigned us instruments according to our aptitude. I was excited because I thought I could play the saxophone. Or the sousaphone. Or the tuba. Whatever, as long as it was shiny. I liked the shiny ones. At some point in the fall, my music teachers and my physical therapist had convened without my knowledge and relegated me to percussion. Me. The kid whose very first action in life was to arrive two months early, completely off time. Maybe that kid could keep rhythm!

I remember that upon hearing this horrible news, I went to the teacher to sort out what I was sure was a mistake. Every student was asked to write down their top three instruments and I had clearly stated: saxophone, sousaphone, tuba! I would have settled for a trumpet. How could they possibly confuse blowing into something with banging onto something?! Only drummers think drums are cool. Have you ever gone to a concert that featured a drum solo of any kind? By the end of the solo,
no one
is into it but the guy banging the drums. I might have been able to become the sort of guy who drumrolls the table with his fingers every time Ringo comes in with the chorus of “Hey Jude.” But the problem is, I'm horrible at banging on things. I can bang into them. Just not on them. Plus, I knew tuba players got ALLLL the chicks.

Still, I dutifully tried to bond with my instrument, which was, I was further dismayed to learn, not even a drum but a wooden block with a piece of rubber on it. The practice pad was meant to spare my parents' ears, but my father, a purist, would have none of that. He tried to make the best of a bad situation by giving me a real drum. It looked like it was from the Civil War—the kind of big, booming snare drum that was meant to signify the death of several thousand people. Unfortunately, due to my parents' custody agreement, he would only get to hear this thunderous march one day a week, while my mom would enjoy the other six.

I tried to play that thing—I really did—but after two weeks of my disjointed doomsday booming effectively bringing orchestra practice to a halt, my music teachers came to the conclusion that perhaps it would be better if I received “individual instruction” rather than participating in band. I would now catch an early bus on Tuesdays and Thursdays as my presence was no longer necessary or welcome. It was like musical hospice. They decided there was nothing else they could do for me, so they just sent me home to be comfortable.

There was only one person who steadfastly believed I might have something more to offer the music world than the occasional poorly timed
clunk
—my grandma Ruthie.

I always knew her as the oldest person I knew. She had hair the texture of cobwebs that she swept up into a bun as white as a thousand mothballs. It kind of smelled that way too. Her entire face looked like the tips of fingers that had pruned in the bathtub too long. She didn't own a pair of pants and would wear floral dresses and knit cardigans on ninety-degree days. She once said of Ray Charles, “I don't understand why people like this new music.” That was in 2002. But when I was little and she would sit beside me and play “Somewhere over the Rainbow” on the organ after church—pulling out all of the stops and commanding two keyboards, a hundred pipes, and I don't know how many foot pedals—she wasn't just my grandma from a unfathomable time with milkmen and carriages: she was a magician.

For her, music was not just a passion but the means to her family's survival. When her husband died suddenly of an asthma attack, leaving behind only a $10,000 life insurance policy, she taught piano to raise their seven children by herself. By the time I came along, her house was mostly a museum of trinkets and toys left over from the '50s and '60s—Lincoln Logs and original Tonka trucks and Beatles paraphernalia from when the Beatles were just the One Direction of their day. The only thing that didn't seem like a relic in her house was the piano. Whenever we went over there for dinner, I would always ask her if I could sit at the bench and she would inevitably join me. This was the highlight of all my visits.

The lessons were fairly simple—basic scales, that sort of thing. Sometimes she'd play a chord and ask if I could find a note that fit with it, wince when I didn't on my first three tries, and then give a reassuring “Good!” when I finally found a note that wasn't dissonant. To boost my confidence, she'd say, “Just play the black keys.” That way I could play something that sounded nice, or, as she'd put it, “Oriental.” Then she'd bring out the
My Fair Lady
songbook and play “On the Street Where You Live.” I'd improvise a countermelody and wait for her to stop and teach me the one-finger version of what she was playing.

One time she came over to Dad's house to babysit after I had just gotten an electric Yamaha keyboard for Christmas. I played over the prefab bossa nova beats and pop/rock settings, mimicking the motions I'd seen her do at the piano. It sounded more like a family of squirrels being executed by machine-gun fire than any songs she played, but when I stopped for a second, she just looked at me and said, “Keep playing, Zachary, keep playing your beautiful music,” and from what I could tell, she meant it. This was a woman who had a well-earned reputation for being bluntly cruel when she didn't like something. Once, when my cousin was sharing photos of his new girlfriend, she remarked with a smile, “Oh, her sister's much prettier than she is. It's the face that's the problem.” But musically, at least, I received nothing but unwavering encouragement from her.

As I got older, my fascination with music grew into a deep appreciation. I discovered jazz and my favorite pianist was Oscar Peterson. While my friends were obsessed with “Thong Song” and that awful graduation/“Pachelbel's Canon” thing, I was diving deep into the Cole Porter and Duke Ellington songbooks. I bought every album of Oscar's I could, and as his lightning fingers flew over the keys with an effortless virtuosity, I would wheel up to the piano in the next room and try to find one or two notes to accompany his rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema.” I was too old to delude myself into thinking that I could ever play piano as well as he did, but I still dreamed about it every time I touched the keys. If some genie or
Extreme Makeover—Cripple Edition!
show had given me the choice between fully functional legs or fingers that could confidently navigate through “Sophisticated Lady,” I would have chosen having the coordination to play a musical instrument over walking in a heartbeat. Nobody has ever been moved to the point of tears by someone being able to stroll through an aisle and pick up sixty rolls of toilet paper from the top shelf at Costco—but music has soul!