The Night Singers (20 page)

“That's it!” she says brightly. “I've been wanting to pare down for years and here they certainly give you the opportunity.”

King Lear should have taken equanimity lessons from Cecilia.

“Will Madame join me for a walk?” you ask, extending an elbow.

“As soon as Madame pulls herself together.” She rummages around her micro-home for purse, hat and jacket.

You think how she used to have so much more to pull together, how when you met your dissertation advisor three decades before, she was wonder woman, teaching university, writing books, raising children, agitating to end the war and reform the prison system. She was what your own students today would call a “mentor.” You didn't know that word then, wouldn't have used it. Cecilia was more a second mother, although at the time you had a perfectly good mother—a heroic woman from another country, class and time.

Cecilia fostered your unlikely academic ambitions while your own mother worried about your fiscal solvency. Despite her responsibilities to the large world, Cecilia always had time for you. Over the years, she's read your books in draft, scoffing at the grammar (you finally learned to write “as if” instead of “like” in your mid-thirties) as well as making cogent intellectual interventions. She attended your wedding, understood your divorce, invited you to dinner with an array of girlfriends and boyfriends, bragged about you to her colleagues. Once even helped you get a job. In recent years, she quit teaching, but continued to write and visit Luis on death row, to march, write protest letters and to keep in touch with you long distance. You'll never forget that evening five years before when she phoned you during a London sabbatical just because you might be lonely. And of course it
had
been one of those bitter, rainy, desolate English evenings. You visit her whenever you come south, every four or five months. It's been over a year, this time, you realise abruptly.

Now Cecilia is putting her purse—a transparent cosmetic bag, no doubt suggested by a senior helper—as well as her jacket and hat, into a paper grocery sack. What happened to the charming carrier bag you brought her back from Santorini?

Off you go.

“So how is Maynard? Are you settled in the new house?”

Walking slowly down the overly bright corridor, she pats your shoulder affectionately.

“Yes, yes,” you tune in. “We love the place.” You're smiling at the thought of your boyfriend's bald black head under the reading lamp.

“And is he still making up for your shameful lack of industry in the garden?”

“He wanted to send you flowers, all the way from New Jersey,” you laugh.

She smiles. “Give him my love.”

It dawns on you that the elevator takes its time because the doors need to remain open long enough for the careful residents to embark and disembark.

Finally outside, you're relieved to see that Cecilia is still a good walker, but short legs take short strides.

Each time you reach a curb, you're sure Cecilia is going to trip. You remember walking with your own mother along these streets, alerting her. “We're coming to a curb, Mom.” Even now you can see her indignation. So many things you did wrong in her last years. She was 10-15 years older than your friends' parents and there weren't any models, you absolved yourself then. Really, all you had needed was patience.

With Cecilia, you'll do things differently. You pointedly hesitate as you reach a curb, then step down deliberately. She doesn't seem to notice. More importantly, she doesn't fall.

Cecilia wants to walk in the cemetery.

But it's only twenty minutes to the regional park where the two of you used to hike together until
you
got tired.

“We could go to the hills, hike there, if you like.” Immediately you regret the invitation because of errands and other visits before Clarence's dinner party.

“No thanks, Henry,” she waves those knobby fingers impatiently. “I've been having some trouble with my hip. The cemetery is flat. It's close. Furthermore, I know you don't have all day.”

You shrug, guiltily, wondering if she heard reluctance in the invitation, and open the car door for her.

“Besides, they have such lovely flowers there.”

In the one o'clock heat, you wish you had brought a hat. The drought has taken care of the flowers. And the grass. Cecilia strolls steadfastly, her faith in exercise larger than faith in any god. You notice her sturdy new tennis shoes and stop fretting about the curbs.

Mid-day, mid-August, is not the time she'd choose for an amble, but you're the busy one now. This is the time slot you had, between flying in this morning, going to the archives, and seeing other friends later today. She talks about Luis in the new facility, the restrictions, his last parole board meeting.

You ask a few questions.

Most of the conversation is Cecilia talking, talking. Sometimes repeating, but then don't you do that yourself?

In the crowded cemetery monuments tilt precariously toward each other, as if in drunken stupors. Because of the earthquake?

She tells you for the third time about moving from her home, packing, giving away, storing, abandoning.

So many headstones. Some 19th century deaths. Then a lot of fatalities from World War I and the flu epidemic. Mostly WASP names until recent years. Now more Latinos. Here you noticed a Leung. And there—a cenotaph covered in Chinese calligraphy.

Cecilia is striding ahead and you hurry to catch up. Why does she like this place? (Years ago she told you about her bargain contract with the crematorium. No sense taking up room in the city once you're dead, she had hooted.) Does she find companionship here? No, Cecilia has never been sentimental. Flat. The sidewalk is flat. Her hip hurts.

Driving back to Lurline Vista, you ask, tentatively, how she likes her new home.

“Not much.” She closes her eyes.

“I'm sorry. Maybe there's another …”

“No, they're all pretty much the same. I checked. You know, it's funny, old people used to shop for coffins and I thought I'd saved myself all that trouble. But old people are
older
now and we shop for retirement homes. It's a sellers' market.”

Coffins for the living, you hold your tongue.

“So do you take any of the craft classes?”

“No, so far I've been too busy going to the prison, visiting the grandchildren.”

“Great that you're so busy.”

She shrugs.

“And is it quiet down here, in the middle of town, to write, to sleep?”

“Sometimes it's loud in the evenings—all the banging of car doors after the last movie. Shouts from the street. And on Saturday nights, a group of young people gather in the park next door to sing.”

You're about to protest, to offer to speak to the manager of Lurline Vista. Finally, something you can do for Cecilia.

“They have lovely voices,” she muses. “I don't know where they come from, the young people, I mean. It's nothing formal or organised.” She tips her head back reflectively.

Is she imagining these concerts? Old people do create their own worlds as they head off to …

“Yes, this is Saturday. I have the music to look forward to tonight.”

Hugging Cecilia, you're reluctant to release her. You have a full life: a splendid partner, a great job, good health, but you miss Cecilia's—what to call it—Grace? Magic? This is ridiculous. Everyone has to let go sometime. And it's not as if she's sick or dying. You'll visit longer next time. Holding back tears, you manage, “Love you.”

“I love you too, Henry.”

Now you've lost interest in errands at the university, coffee with Bobby, dinner with Clarence. You hold her tighter.

She steps back, smiling enigmatically. “Did you wish to say something, Henry?”

You want to ask if you can sleep on her couch tonight, with the window open, listening to the night singers.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for residency fellowships at MacDowell, Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. I also acknowledge support from The McKnight Foundation and the University of Minnesota.

Many thanks to the writers who gave me invaluable responses to drafts of these stories over a period of years: Margaret Love Denman, Heid Erdrich, Pamela Fletcher, Jana Harris, Lori Lei Hokyo, Helen Longino, Leslie Adrienne Miller, Martha Roth, Lex Williford and Susan Welch. I appreciate the excellent editorial help of Lori Hokyo and Andria Williams. I thank publisher Ross Bradshaw for inviting me to be part of this inaugural series of short fiction.

The following stories have appeared in journals or been broadcast (sometimes in a slightly different incarnation). I am grateful to my fine editors. “On Earth,”
The Virginia Quarterly Review;
“Until Spring,”
Witness;
“The Palace of Physical Culture,” BBC Radio 4; “Japanese Vase,”
The Berkeley Fiction Review;
“Impermanence,” BBC Radio 4; “Flat World,”
Gargoyle
.

About the Author

Valerie Miner is the award-winning author of fourteen books, including novels, short fiction collections, and nonfiction. Miner's work has appeared in the
Georgia Review
,
TriQuarterly
,
Salmagundi
,
New Letters
,
Ploughshares
, the
Village Voice
,
Prairie Schooner
, the
Gettysburg Review
, the
Times Literary Supplement
, the
Women's Review of Books
, the
Nation
, and other journals. Her stories and essays have been published in more than sixty anthologies. A number of her pieces have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her work has been translated into German, Turkish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish, and Dutch. She has won fellowships and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Heinz Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, Fundación Valparaiso, the Australia Council Literary Arts Board, and numerous other organizations. She has received Fulbright fellowships to Tunisia, India, and Indonesia. Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award, she has taught for over twenty-five years and is now a professor and artist in residence at Stanford University. She travels internationally giving readings, lectures, and workshops. Her website is
www.valerieminer.com.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2004 by Valerie Miner

Cover design by Julianna Lee

ISBN: 978-1-4976-4842-5

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

EBOOKS BY VALERIE MINER

FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA