The Confessions of Frances Godwin (37 page)

Read The Confessions of Frances Godwin Online

Authors: Robert Hellenga

“Open the bottle now,” I said. “Make sure everyone has at least one glass of wine before I start playing, maybe two.”

I took a shower while he tweaked the piano.

I didn’t have a proper evening dress. I was tempted to wear one of the half dozen spaghetti-strap dresses that Paul had given me, but decided against it. I put on the same outfit I’d worn to
Norma—
a light cashmere sweater over a black skirt that hugged my butt, but not too tightly, and then flared out a little. I heard the dog bark. I put on a little makeup, and when I came out, Stella and Ruthy and Tommy were talking to Karl. Or listening to Karl, who was showing off the piano.

“Pour some wine, Karl,” I said.

Lois and Jack arrived, and then my new neighbor, Anna.

I arranged the open bottles of wine on the coffee table, in easy reach, but I left the bread on the harvest table because of the dog. Tommy had brought wine too.

While people were drinking wine and eating bread and spiced olives I handed out the programs and then played a few scales to see if my fingers were still working, and then I stood in the curve of the piano till everyone was seated and waited till I had everyone’s attention. I said something about the piano, which had originally come from Leipzig, and something about Paul’s mother, who’d bought the piano at Lyon & Healy, and about Karl and his theory about the loops that Bach had drawn on the manuscript of
Das Wohltemperierte Klavier.
I passed around a photocopy of the manuscript with the loops, and then I sat down at the piano, stretched out my arms till my wrists stuck out of the sleeves of my sweater, and started to play the Fugue in C Minor.

The alto stated the subject in the tonic key, the soprano answered in the dominant. The bass introduced the counter subject in the tonic again, and the three voices chased each other around the block—Latin
fuga
means “flee”—till the explosion of clashing chords just before the end when beauty breaks through and I could hear the music of the spheres, not coming
through
the notes but
in
the notes themselves, and I knew I’d get through this recital without making a fool of myself.

As I played through the Chopin preludes and the Brahms waltzes and began to go deeper into the music itself, I experienced not longing but completion, not loss but joy, not homesickness but its opposite. I don’t think there’s a word for it.

“Don’t overdo the rubato,” Karl had advised, but what’s Chopin without rubato? What’s “C. C. Rider” without rubato?

“C. C. Rider”’ was the next to last number. The blues notes reminded me of Chopin.

The music seemed to be coming out of me, out of the Rube Goldberg contraption under my fingers as they set in motion series of chain reactions: fingers to keys to capstans to wippens to jacks to hammer knuckles to damper lever to strings to jack toes to regulating screws to repetition levers to back checks. Somewhere along the chain the spirit becomes incarnate. Something welled up inside me and I started to sing. I couldn’t stop myself.

“C. C. Rider,

See what you done done,

C. C. Rider,

See what you done done.

You made me love you,

Now your man done come.

And then I started to improvise.

Singing Hey, Hey, Hey Hey,

Singing Hey, Hey, Hey Hey.

I couldn’t stop singing “Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey.”

Singing Hey, Hey, Hey Hey,

Singing Hey, Hey, Hey Hey.

The last piece on the program was the Chopin étude. It’s a simple sequence of ascending and descending arpeggios. The first note in each measure sings the melody, but there is (according to Karl) considerable controversy over where to place the rest of the accents. I’d been practicing slowly—the piano teacher’s cure for all ills—till I could move from one arpeggio to the next without clunking. They’re just notes, I told myself, but the simple chord progressions—with a lot of dissonance at the top—are themselves overwhelming.

I took a deep breath, but instead of plunging into the étude, I stood up and bowed from the waist. I didn’t apologize. I didn’t explain. I just stood up and bowed from the waist. No one seemed to notice that I hadn’t played the last number on the program, and I wondered if my guests had heard what I had heard.

The applause was gratifying. Enough to justify an encore, but I’d done what I’d set out to do, so I brushed off compliments and busied myself in the kitchen. It was time to feed people. Everything was ready: the white bean salad on the counter, the prosciutto and thinly sliced
arista
and roasted turkey breast on a tray in the refrigerator; good bread on the table. A bowl of fruit.

One of Stella’s poems, one of my favorites—“Setting the Table, Eating What Is Served”—came to mind, not the whole thing, just the ending, and I clinked my glass with a knife and kept clinking till everyone was silent, and then I proposed a toast.

Earth is our banquet,

our hall; the feast, richly concocted of desire,

murder, limitation, serves us all.

I’m not dead yet, but I’m going to end my story here.

Do we ever see clearly? Ever see things the way they really are? How many times have I answered yes to these questions—only to realize later that I’d been deceiving myself. How many times have I realized that everything in my life has been leading up to this moment or that moment only to realize, a minute later, that this is always the case, that every moment of your life is leading up to where you are now. That’s how you got here, to this moment. And tomorrow you’ll see how everything that happened today, which will now be yesterday, was already leading up to tomorrow, which will now be today.

But is this really the case? What about the lightning that bolts out of a clear blue sky? It does happen. We have an expression for it: “a bolt from the blue.” What about Paul’s cancer? What about the Shelby Cobra in the garage? What about Jimmy? What about June Anderson at the Lyric Opera? What about the young couple in Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere? Did everything in my life lead up to these moments? I didn’t think so.

Have I got this right? Am I thinking clearly? Am I seeing things the way they really are?

Once again. I think I’ve come to the end of my story, but of course it can’t be the end, can it, unless I drop dead on the spot, right now. Which is not impossible, given the level of anxiety, or is it joy, that I’m experiencing. I made a good confession in Rome. Or at least a confession. I cleaned out my attic. But what about satisfaction? What about absolution?

If absolution is going to come from anywhere it will have to come from Tommy, of course. Or if not from Tommy, then from you, Dear Reader. I can imagine you turning your face away, as God will turn his face away from the damned at the Last Judgment; or smiling, like Father Viglietti, and saying, “Is that all? Frances, what you need is a grappa, and a nap.”

Whatever happens, it won’t matter to the universe. The universe is indifferent. The stars are indifferent, the quasars, the galaxies, the nebulae, the planets. All indifferent. The molecules and atoms, electrons and quarks, all indifferent. The chemical elements are indifferent. Hydrogen, helium, carbon, silver, gold. They don’t care whether I go to Naples and Reggio Calabria with Stella and Ruthy and Tommy or whether I stay at home, whether I step out of the shadows into the light, or whether I remain right where I am. Maybe I’m already standing in the light.

What I need, I think, is the glass of dark red wine that Tommy has poured for me. I’m like Stella looking down from the Fourth Street bridge and watching a man hop a freight train. I am that man, the man in Stella’s poem. And I am on the bridge, too, looking down at myself. After all these years I still don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going to find out.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my first three readers for their encouragement and support: my wife, Virginia; my agent, Henry Dunow; and my editor, Nancy Miller. I would also like to thank other readers at Bloomsbury for their careful work: Lea Beresford, Nathaniel Knaebel, copyeditor Janet McDonald, proofreader Nicole Lanctot, and publicist Theresa Collier.

Special thanks for their expertise to the Latin teachers in my life: my mother (1901–1984); my wife; Tom Sienkewicz, Minnie Billings Capron Professor of Classics at Monmouth College; and Brian Tibbets, Monmouth-Roseville High School; and for their expertise in other areas: to Garry Goddard (Shelby Cobras); Chuck Schulz (astronomy); Jeremy Karlin (legal assistance); Tim Barker (sharpshooter); Glenn Gore (piano tech); and Rev. Father William Miller I.C. (Corpus Christi Church).

A Note on the Author

Robert Hellenga
was educated at the University of Michigan and Princeton University. He is an emeritus professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and the author of the novels
Snakewoman of Little Egypt
,
The Sixteen Pleasures
,
The Fall of a Sparrow
,
Blues Lessons
,
Philosophy Made Simple
, and
The Italian Lover
. He lives in Galesburg, Illinois.