A Gesture Life (3 page)

Of course, when you read something like a story, you can find yourself thinking too long about all sorts of ideas, which usually complicate rather than settle the questions at hand. And while we understand that art and literature mean to do this to us, is there not a serious, thinking person who sometimes wishes the questions would be answered directly by a reading, with clarity and resolve, so that he might move steadily onward, to be further enlightened, improved?

The fire sputters and needs quick fuel, and so I decide to take the opportunity to burn the decades-old files and papers and other expired and useless documents packed in the oak drawer units that line one wall of the family room. I’ve been secretly eager to get rid of such stuff as canceled checks and mortgage and bank statements, and I’m perversely pleased to find that I’ve kept it all so orderly, which makes the disposal somehow worry-free and simple. I haven’t yet changed into regular clothes, and though my robe is damp in the seat from my swim trunks, I no longer feel chilled in
the room. Soon enough the fire is burning fiercely with the sheaves of papers, as too much goes in at once, the flames nearly dying out from the smothering; but then in a combustive rush they begin leaping up and out, to lick the underside of the marble mantel. I’m oddly unconcerned. There is a purity in the startling heat, its crave and intent, and I don’t stop feeding in papers until I come to the folders of the most current documents, which I luckily notice before mistakenly tossing them in. I set them down on the carpet and pull the protective screen before the fire, and I go into the kitchen, where my breakfast is waiting.

I also nearly throw some old photographs into the flames, though not accidentally. This is always a difficult thing to do, even with pictures of no great consequence, which these are. There are scores of them, in rubber-banded shoe boxes, tucked at the backs of the file drawers—insurance shots of the store and its stock and equipment, and then many others of the house and its furnishings, the projects of steady construction of the patio and pool, the hothouse, the reroofing of the garage, and then the various cars and major tools and equipment I’ve owned through the years. I suppose it is the catalog of my life, my being’s fill of good fortune, though what an estate appraiser might accidentally find and think nothing of discarding.

I was never one to keep albums and framed personal pictures, and it was only during the time Sunny lived with me that I used my camera for those reasons. I believe that among the photographs I received from Mrs. Hickey, there’s one of Sunny at the piano, from her first year with me, when she needed a telephone book atop the bench to sit in the right position. Strangely enough, there isn’t, among the boxes I found, a picture of the piano itself, a Baldwin baby grand. The box that Mrs. Hickey gave me I stowed upstairs,
not in my room but in the hall table drawer, just outside the empty bedroom. I haven’t looked at the photographs yet, but I can conjure some of them from my memory, images of the two of us, here and there, posing amid the chaos of renovations.

Sunny, I’m afraid, always hated the house. In those days the place wasn’t as composed as it is now, and it seemed every door and molding and cabinet needed replacing, the lights flickering and burning brown, the plumbing fitful and spastic, the old structure nothing more than that, just simply old, and sliding swiftly into a final, dishonorable state. I had bought it on the confidence of the agent (not Liv Crawford, but someone very much like her), who assured me it was a solid investment, and also because my store was just beginning to do a steady business, the nearby county hospital having finally opened, and the land cleared and foundation laid for the large retirement home on Quaker’s Ridge. I paid $45,000 for it, perhaps too much then. Inside, the house was dark and spacious and poorly heated, just the type of creaky, murmuring structure they make up at amusement parks to amuse and frighten guests.

I remember first walking Sunny into the foyer, with all that dark wood paneling that was still up on the walls and ceiling, smelling from the inside of rot and dust, the lights fading now and then, and she actually began to titter and cry. I didn’t know what to do for her, as she seemed not to want me to touch her, and for some moments I stood apart from her while she wept, this shivering little girl of seven. She had learned some English at the orphanage, so I asked her not to worry or be afraid, that I would do my best to make a pleasant home, and that she should be happy to be in the United States and have a father now and maybe a mother someday soon. She kept crying but she looked at me and I saw her for the
first time, the helpless black of her eyes, and I could do little else but bend down and hold her until she stopped.

And so after her arrival, it seemed that my every spare moment away from the store was devoted to fixing the house, at first attempting the renovations myself, and then calling in tradesmen, and finally, after disappointments with slow, shoddy work and the high expense, again taking on the projects solo. And there were many projects, too numerous to remember, but one that stands out is the smallest of them, the time I had to change the mirror and vanity in her bathroom upstairs.

I was cleaning the house as always that Sunday morning, vacuuming and dusting and disinfecting the kitchen and bathrooms. Sunny was nearly ten years old, and though she was more than capable of helping, I didn’t think it was right to have her do such things. The house was still a terrible mess, and because I felt there was so much improving to do, it was clear I shouldn’t include my daughter in the mundane drudgeries. My wish, as I had always explained to her, was that she study hard and practice her piano and read as many books as she could bear, and of course, when there was free time, play with her friends from school. A child’s days are too short, and my sense then was that I should let her focus on activities that would most directly benefit her.

And so, besides the major ongoing renovations, I took up general maintenance of the house with the usual care and thoroughness, but as it happened every week something seemed to stall my efforts. Everything would go smoothly until a cabinet door wouldn’t catch, or a hinge began to squeak, or a drain was too slow, and then a vise-like tightness came over me. That time in Sunny’s bathroom, trying to rub out a persistent cloudy stain in the
vanity, I somehow cracked the mirror, and my fingers began bleeding from the edges of the spidery glass. I must have kept rubbing and blotting, for it was only some moments later that I realized Sunny was watching from the doorway, her splintered reflection looking up at me.

Her round face, pretty and dark in complexion, was serene and quiet.

“Have you already finished practicing your Chopin?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t hear you. What were you playing?”

“Nocturnes,” she said, staring at my hand. “The ones you like. From Opus Nine and Thirty-two.”

“I must have been vacuuming,” I said, wrapping a rag about my fingers. “Would you play some of them again?”

“Okay. But can I help you now?”

“No, dear,” I said to her, trying to stay the throbbing in my hand, my arm. “Why don’t you play some more? Your teacher wishes that you practice more than you do. You must push yourself. It may be difficult for you to see, but even great talent is easily wasted.”

“Yes.”

“Sunny?”

“Yes,” she said, folding the lacy hem of her green dress for Sunday school, where I would take her in the afternoon.

“Please leave the living room doors open, so the music can travel. And, Sunny?”

“Yes.”

“You should do what we talked about last week. About addressing me.”

“Yes,
Poppa,”
she said, saying the word softly but clearly.

She went downstairs, and I stood before the broken mirror, waiting for the first notes to rise up the stairs. She began playing Opus 32, 1, a piece she was preparing for an upcoming recital, and one I especially liked. The composition calmed me. Aside from the lyrical, impassioned musings, there are unlikely pauses in the piece, near-silences that make it seem as if the performer has suddenly decided to cease, cannot go on, even has disappeared. These silences are really quite magical and haunting. And just at the moment it seems the pianist has stopped, the lovely notes resume.

As I listened, Sunny played beautifully, with a style and presentation much beyond her years. She was as technically advanced as other gifted children, but she also seemed to have a deep understanding of a given piece of music, her playing rich with an arresting, mature feeling. And yet in the end, she never attained the virtuosity the best young performers must have in order to be promoted to the next ranks. In competitions Sunny was mostly magnificent, but it seemed that there were always a few difficult and even strangely blundering moments in her performances, perplexing passages marring what was otherwise wholesale surety and brilliance. It was perfection—or even near-perfection—that somehow eluded her, and as she grew up, the notion of attempting it seemed to fall farther and farther from her desire. Early in high school she ceased practicing seriously, and eventually she dropped playing altogether.

We had many arguments and bad feelings over her quitting, and for a long time during that period the two of us hardly acknowledged each other in the house. She was old enough then to move about as she pleased, and her friends with cars would often pick her up in the mornings before school, and not drop her off until late in the evening, ten or eleven at night. I’d hear the car roll up the
cobblestone drive, the sweep of its lights in my window, the slam of the passenger door, her restless keys, the lock, the quick shuffle that trailed straight to her room. And then the quiet again. This went on, I’m afraid, for many months. In the mornings she seemed to wait until I had begun my swim to come downstairs, when she would leave the house and walk down the block to await her rides.

Perhaps I grew too accustomed to our distance. Initially I had tried to leave indications that I was unhappy with our relationship, putting out a bowl and spoon and a box of cereal for her, a glass of juice, a soft-boiled egg, but each morning when I came in from my swim the setting was just as I had left it, unmoved, untouched. I knew she’d seen it. I had watched her once from the pool, my goggled eyes skimming along the surface of the water; she stood staring at the place at the table, as if it were some kind of museum display, not to be disturbed, and then she turned away. But I continued each morning, and eventually I began sitting down to eat the breakfast myself, with more a taste of sorrow than spite. It wasn’t long before I mostly forgot about Sunny refusing my offerings, and it became simply habit, part of my waking ritual that I still do now, without fail.

But then everything eventually shifts, accommodates. We began communicating again at some point, for no obvious reasons. This would prove a short time before she left the house for good. There was little warmth, I know, but at least she was hearing me, meeting my eyes. And there was talking, when it suited us. One day I went out to skim leaves and twigs from the pool, where she was sunbathing, and she asked if I was going to sell the piano.

“The piano?” I repeated, surprised by the notion. “Is there a reason why I should? I don’t understand. Besides, you might want to begin playing again someday.”

She didn’t answer, turning over onto her back. She had on
wraparound sunglasses, and was lying in the recliner in the full sun. She had just turned seventeen that June, and in the fall would start her final year at Bedley Run High School. I thought she was spending too much time going to the seniors’ post-graduation parties, staying out most of the night and then sleeping late, only coming out of her room to lie in the sun. I had often asked her if she would take better care with her skin, having seen certain patients come into the store suffering from melanoma, but in those days it was desirable to be tanned as dark as one could get, and Sunny was one who never had trouble in that regard.

“It’s stupid to have the piano, when no one’s ever going to play it.”

“I hope that’s not true,” I replied.

“It is true,” she said tersely, slinging her forearm over her face. “I don’t like having to see it every day. It sits there for no reason.”

“It doesn’t bother me. I like it.”

She didn’t reply immediately to this. I kept working, gathering the flotsam with the long net. After a moment, she spoke up again. “I think you like what it says.”

“I don’t quite understand,” I said.

“Of course you don’t,” she answered. “I’m saying, you like having it around for what it says. About me. How I’ve failed.”

“That’s not in the least true.”

“Sure it is,” she answered, almost affably. But there was real defeat in her voice also, a child’s broad welling of it.

I told her, “If anything, Sunny, I should see it as a symbol of my own failure, in inspiring the best in you.”

“That’s right. I’ve failed doubly. First myself, and then my good poppa, who’s loved and respected by all.”

“You can always twist my words,” I told her. “But you shouldn’t take everything I do so seriously. I’m not doing anything wrong by
keeping the piano. I would like you to play again, yes, this is true, but not because of me. Not anymore. I think it would improve you, like reading a book would improve you. Or even something as simple as swimming, which I’ve taken to heart. I don’t believe I’ve ever compelled you to do anything. I’ve made suggestions, advised about certain things, like taking up the piano, but I try to follow your interests. Though you don’t seem to like many things any longer, which I think I can fairly say.”

“You
only
fairly say.”

“Please, Sunny, I don’t always enjoy your word games.”

“Sorry, Doc.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

“I won’t, then,” she said, with some finality. Then she rose from the chaise. She wrapped the towel around her waist and headed for the house, and I didn’t see or hear her for the rest of the day. I thought perhaps that this would be the start of another strained period for us, but the next day she left a note saying she was going to Jones Beach with her friends, and would be staying in the city over the weekend, at someone’s apartment. She signed her name and added a “Don’t worry!” on the end. I was worried, of course, and was annoyed that she hadn’t mentioned her plans for the weekend earlier, but part of me was also greatly appreciative of the fact of the note, pleased by the simple thing of it, which she would have never thought to leave me some months before.