Elegies for the Brokenhearted (16 page)

I sat listening to you for hours. Your strength as a performer had nothing to do with any particular quality in your own voice, but in your ability to mimic the singers you covered—the gravel and glee of Louis Armstrong, the low suavity of Dean Martin. You chattered with the couples between songs, the kind of banter common to performers.
Where are you folks from?
you said.
Are you enjoying yourselves? How long have you been married?
You spoke in the most earnest, delighted voice, like it was the greatest privilege of your life to be in their company.

From time to time, as a little joke to himself, the bartender came over and suggested high-priced bottles of wine, glasses of single-malt scotch. “Perhaps I can get you something to eat? An appetizer? A lobster dinner?”

“No,” I said, affecting an indifference that had nothing to do with money. “Not at the moment.”

Eventually there was only one couple left in the dining room. The woman had white meringue-like hair that stood up in peaks, and her pink lipstick was drawn far outside the lines of her mouth. Her husband was a fat silver-haired man who sat with his legs spread, his hands in his pockets. As you sang he stared at the floor, probably wondering about his stocks. In between songs you kept assuring these people that there was no need for them to leave just because the place was empty and it was midnight.
I have all the time in the world,
you said.
I'm here just for you.

The woman kept requesting Gershwin songs. As you played—lightly, dreamily—the woman sat staring at you with her hands pressed together, as if in prayer. Whenever you finished a song she stood up and clapped—Marvelous, Marvelous, she said—and you stood also, and gave her a little bow. Finally the man led his wife away by force, and as they left she kept turning and blowing you kisses. “I can't remember,” said the woman, “the last time I so enjoyed an evening.”

Well, thank you,
you said. You bowed again.
You made my evening as well
.

When they were out of earshot you said, in the high voice that was your own,
That miserable cunt. Two hours she sits there clapping her claws together and do you think she leaves a tip?
You had lit a cigarette and were waving it in the air.
I'm done,
you said.
I can't take it anymore. I quit. I fucking quit.
You emptied out your tip jar. You lined up the bills and counted them angrily, pulling them from one hand to the other.

Seventeen fucking dollars,
you said. You sat down on the stool next to me, and the bartender poured you a vodka.
Did I not play every goddamn Gershwin number ever written? Was I not flawless? Was I not charming?
Your voice was loud now, hysterical.

“You were charming,” I said.

From the inner pocket of your suit you produced a silver pill case. You opened it and offered a pill to the bartender, who took one and popped it in his mouth.
Would you care for a pill?
you asked me.

I inspected them—there were pills of all different shapes and colors. “I don't really take pills.”

Why not?
you asked, as if everyone in the world took unidentified pills from complete strangers.
How on earth do you get through a single day?

“I don't know.”

These,
you said, swallowing one,
are simply marvelous. I take one every night after work.
You shook another pill into your palm. It was pale blue, shaped like a flying saucer.
They have a marvelous effect,
you said.
They're very relaxing. Other people become tolerable.

I took the pill and swallowed it. “Hell is other people,” I said.

You raised your eyebrow, looked me up and down.
I'm surprised you're educated,
you said.
No offense. But considering who you're related to, I wasn't exactly expecting Sartre.

I shrugged.

I guess Malinda got the looks,
you said,
and you got the books!
You laughed, amused with yourself.
Being an only child, of course, you might say that I got it all—the looks, the brains, the whole package
.
I could have done anything I wanted in life, anything. I had the grades, the talent, the charisma. I could be President of the United States right now if I wanted.

Humphrey Bogart scoffed, but you ignored him.

Or an actor,
you said to me.
I would have had great success as an actor. People sometimes make comparisons between me and Paul Newman. Of course I never laid eyes on Paul Newman until I got to New York. We didn't even have a theater back home. The world could have ended and we wouldn't have known it. You know how it is in Arkansas.

I'd never been to Arkansas and did not know how it was. But this didn't matter to you. You carried on about the faults of your hometown—its narrow-mindedness, its poverty, the general stupidity of its population, its problem with mosquitoes, the chemicals sprayed on its crops by low-flying planes and your ensuing skin rashes, respiratory problems.
Which is why,
you said,
naturally I had to move on
.
A person of my abilities trapped in a place like that. It's amazing I survived.

One of the great curses of your life, you said, was that your brain was configured in such a way that you never forgot anything, and so Arkansas was as present to you as the glass in your hand. Every day of your life was preserved and filed away in your memory, a veritable card catalog.
I plan to donate my body to science,
you said,
so that my brain can be studied.
You claimed to have memories of infancy, of being held, of grasping your grandmother's pearls in your fist, of being rocked, you claimed to remember the dark shade of your pram casting a shadow on your face, the hot sun on your fat bare legs, you claimed to have spoken full sentences at the age of one.
Twelve months old and I was reciting the King James Bible,
you said,
and by the age of two I was reading it.

I had questions I wanted to ask you—I wanted to know more about Malinda, how she'd been—but you were caught up in your reminiscences. Your stories kept pouring forth, all of which portrayed you in the light of a biblical character, someone whose fortunes had taken wild and unprecedented turns. It was a blight, you said, to have been born a genius in a place like Arkansas. But then again there were moments in which you felt the full weight of your power. The time a tornado flattened all of the houses on your street except yours. The time you sat down at your grandmother's piano, age five, and spontaneously composed a song so beautiful that it brought the entire household to tears.
The next day Grandmother hired a piano teacher,
you said,
and within a week I was playing Beethoven
.

The bartender chimed in now, too. “My kid played piano,” he said, “but she's gone now, she moved to Tucson with my ex-wife and her new husband. Whenever I talk to her she just asks me for money.”

He'd just begun talking, and obviously had more to tell, but you interrupted him.
That's a charming story,
you said,
but I can't sit around chatting all night. I have to get my beauty sleep.
You hopped off the stool—your feet didn't quite reach the floor—and started for the door. I followed you, out through the restaurant, and then up the street.

“How well do you know Malinda?” I said.

Oh, completely,
you said.
Completely.

“Do you know where she stays when she gets in town?”

Probably with some boyfriend,
you said.
When she arrives for the season, you never know who she'll bring with her. She passes through people quite frequently.

“I know,” I said. “I haven't seen her in a long time.”

That's a shame,
you said, and yawned flagrantly.

“We were really close when we were younger. But then she left home, and we never really knew why. We always thought she'd come back any day, any minute, and then all of a sudden you turn around and it's been years.” The pill you'd given me had kicked in, and I saw my past as if a long corridor lined with doors, each opening up into a separate memory of Malinda. “Looking back,” I said, “I should have known she was leaving. She was burning her bridges. Not long before she left our father came to visit—we didn't see much of him but occasionally he'd stop by—and as he was sitting on the couch and telling us how sorry he was that he hadn't been around for us, Malinda just got up and went to the closet and got a hammer, and she very calmly walked outside, and then all of a sudden we heard this smashing and crashing, glass breaking, and we ran outside and saw that Malinda had broken his car windows, his windshield, she'd put dents in the hood. He was too scared to go near her, he just stood there holding his head and waited until she was finished and then he got in the car and drove away, with no windshield or anything, he must have been sitting on glass.”

Someone else's dog,
you said,
used to follow me to school every morning, and every afternoon when school was released it was waiting to walk me home. It couldn't get enough of me.

“That's so cute!” I said. Though I never used words like “cute.”

I hated it,
you said.
It had this stupid smile on its face all the time, its hair was all knotted and mangy, one of its eyes was crazy.

I started to get the feeling you were talking about me. “It's just that I don't have anywhere to go,” I said.

Well what were you planning on doing?
you asked.
If you didn't find Malinda. Or for that matter, if you found her?

“I don't know,” I said. “I hadn't really thought about it.”

Well where were you planning to sleep?
you said.

“My car?” I said. I'd spent the previous night in the parking lot of a grocery store, and had barely slept. In the morning I'd woken up with my face stuck to the vinyl seat.

Well this is absolutely pathetic,
you said. You stood with your hands on your hips, the universal posture of disappointment.
You're just going to have to come home with me.

 

Y
our grandparents' was the biggest house in that small Arkansas town, a three-story Victorian with a turret on its west side, a wraparound front porch. Your grandfather, who had made his money in paper and envelopes, was the richest man in the county, and he had built for himself a house so big, and so like a museum, that it was referred to by name—“the Butler Place.” Your grandmother was always having boxes delivered to the house, large and small, from all kinds of foreign destinations, and people wondered what treasures lined the walls, the china cabinet, the bookshelves. They came to the door under the pretense of selling raffle tickets, of seeking charitable donations, of wanting petitions signed, of looking for work, and they stood craning their necks, wanting to see inside. But your grandmother allowed no one in except the handyman and the maid, a married black couple who lived on the outskirts of town.

Mostly what your grandmother ordered were educational materials—books and music. She had been raised by what she referred to as “people of nobility”—many of her relatives had held positions of governance within the Confederacy—and though her family's stature had fallen into decline, she was determined, through her marriage and offspring, to redeem it. Your mother, unknown to you and shrouded in mystery, had proved a failure, and was never mentioned apart from the passing reference to the shame she'd inflicted on the family. Now you were your grandmother's only hope. She was obsessed with your proper upbringing, your education and advancement—it was her particular wish that you become a senator.

Before you started grade school you could read and write, add and subtract. You could identify all of the world's countries and their capitals. You could say
Hello, Please, Thank you,
and
Farewell
in ten different languages. By the time you were six your grandmother had already given you the social training of a diplomat. She kept a first edition of Emily Post's
Etiquette
laid open on a wooden stand, and whenever you violated a rule she made you stand before the book and recite the relevant passage twenty-five times.
When gentlemen are introduced to each other they always shake hands.

Music was your grandmother's one indulgence, the closest you were allowed to leisure. In the afternoons the two of you sat in your rocking chairs on the front porch, listening to records. She had records delivered to the house from shops all over the world, and by the time you were five you could name and recognize dozens of different composers. The summer before you entered the first grade your grandmother began to import, once a week from the nearby university, the services of a professor named Mr. Svevo, who taught you piano and foreign languages. Mr. Svevo was a thin, bald, dour-looking man who arrived every Saturday morning in a blue Cadillac. He dressed in fine suits, he wore polished shoes, cuff links, fedoras with bright feathers springing from their bands. Rumors swirled around this man, concerning his identity and his place in the household—it was supposed that he was your grandmother's lover, a Nazi war criminal, one of your grandmother's downtrodden relatives looking for Mr. Butler's money.

You'd taken an immediate liking to Mr. Svevo and adopted many of his airs. On the first day of grade school and every day thereafter, you arrived in a blue suit with a red pocket square. You made a habit of speaking in foreign phrases in front of your teachers and classmates.
Zut alors!
you said disgustedly whenever they exasperated you,
J'en ai marre!
Before you sat on a chair, you wiped it off with your handkerchief in an effort to protect yourself from the germs of commoners. You were, of course, despised.