Sweeter Life (40 page)

He did what she asked and noticed that she’d bought Hank a synthesizer only slightly less sophisticated than the one Cyrus’s keyboard player used. It had to have cost her two grand at least. If she had asked him for advice he would have told her she was nuts to buy an instrument like that for someone who didn’t know how to play “Chopsticks.” But of course she never asked his opinion.

IT COULD BE IT HAD SOMETHING
to do with the showbiz nature of her job, standing in front of people all day doing the same song and dance, but Cyrus was amazed Isabel could breeze into the den like she had never had a tantrum, like Clarence and Ruby were frequent guests at her house and she at theirs, like everything was the way it should be and not the way it was. There she was, all fresh and powdered and expensively dressed, her face beaming with pleasure because it was so good to see them. Really. And supper smelled so good. And wasn’t the table lovely? And look at Hank and Cy—why, they looked almost like gentlemen.

Ruby and Clarence’s act was equally surreal, like they were sitting with the queen, afraid to breathe lest they spoil everything.

After a few minutes of chit-chat, everyone moved to the table, where Cyrus served them goulash in bowls, with little side plates for rye bread and carrot-and-apple salad. And who would have thought such a thing could happen? Not Ruby or Clarence, not Hank or Isabel, not even Cyrus. Before long the combination of food and drink began to loosen tongues and inhibitions. Little by little they became more themselves, not always a good thing, but in this case, maybe.

Cyrus mentioned that he and Hank had driven around town and how disappointing it had been. Oil wells with their industrial stink and blight. Acres of housing where there’d once been open fields. Acres of greenhouse glass, too, as more and more farmers opted for greater control over the elements. A downtown area that was rundown and decrepit because most shoppers flocked to the new mall down by the lake or preferred to drive all the way to Hounslow.

He hadn’t meant to criticize Isabel, but to her ears it sounded that way. Many of his complaints were about deals she’d arranged—the mall, for example, and the Jenner subdivision—but she’d heard it all before. She dabbed at her lips and, in a condescending tone, said, “You can’t stop progress, brother dear. People want new homes. They want to shop where it’s convenient. It’s only human nature.”

Hank sucked at his teeth and said, “They can bulldoze the whole damn town, you ask me. Nothing but bad memories.”

Clarence, who had yet to utter a word at the table, cleared his throat and said, “Funny thing about memories, Hank, is how stubborn they are. Those oilmen already knocked down your house and your dad’s barns. They’ve covered the farm with more metal than a scrapyard so you wouldn’t half recognize it. And I don’t imagine that’s helped your memories one iota. Or has it?”

Hank nodded at the old man’s wisdom. “You’re right, Clarence.” Tapping his forehead with his index finger, he added, “It’s up here I need to do some bulldozing.”

After dinner Cyrus made coffee and they sat in the den with cake he had
bought at the bakery. Soon it was time for gifts.

Ruby and Clarence gave Hank a brown cardigan sweater that was total Perry Como. Hank was a good sport about it. He put it on without comment and did up all the buttons. Cyrus, who had already given Hank his present in Hounslow, had to offer him something at the party, so he handed him the cassette of his demo. “My own stuff,” he said with a shrug. “Hope you like it.” Then Izzy and Cyrus disappeared and came back carrying the synthesizer, which they laid across the arms of Hank’s wheelchair. While he poked stupidly at the buttons, everyone else looked from the keyboard to Isabel, their faces full of questions.

In response she said, “He’s up all night listening to music. I thought, you know, if he loves it that much …”

“Sure,” Clarence said, nodding soberly, “a person has to stay busy.”

Isabel looked at everyone and wanted to scream, because no one got it. It wasn’t about staying busy. And it wasn’t about buying affection or impressing everyone with her generosity. It was about hope—for Hank and, in a way, for all of them. She wouldn’t have been able to say much more than that. It was all pretty vague in her mind. But when she closed her eyes in bed sometimes and gave thanks for the way her life had changed, she often thought about the day Sheldon Demeter rubbed her nose in Gerry’s infidelity, the day she sat in her car and found her strength. And if she could wish one thing for Hank, it was that he would find
his
strength—the way she had found hers, the way Cyrus, the little prick, had always been strong—and that one day he would reach inside where he felt most empty and find what he most needed.

After everyone had oohed and ahhed over the keyboard, Izzy said, “We’ll let you practise a little before we expect a recital.” Then she and Cyrus carried the synthesizer into Hank’s room.

Before the Mitchells went home, Ruby dug some snapshots out of her purse and passed them around: Hank as a toddler, all chubby cheeks and pink skin with a mop of dark brown curls; as a five-year-old, perched on his father’s shoulders and squealing with glee; at ten, scrubbed squeaky clean and modelling his new Sunday suit from the Eaton’s catalogue; as a sixteen-year-old rebel with greasy hair, his arm around the buxom Amy Brousseau.

“You were such a beautiful little boy,” Ruby said wistfully.

Izzy couldn’t get over the picture of the clean-cut fellow in the new suit. “Look at you,” she said, a note of laughter in her voice. “Look at your leg. You’re modelling like you’re in the catalogue, for crying out loud.”

Cyrus brought over the photo of the young dude with his babe. “And look at this one,” he crowed. “Talk about Mr. Cool.”

Hank wasn’t laughing. People could tell him he’d been happy once, they could show him pictures of a bright-eyed boy, but it meant no more to him than the idea that we are all descendants of apes. Maybe it was true, and maybe it was important, but it all happened a long time ago and, anyway, what could you do with information like that? So he nodded stupidly and said, “Look at that. Some getup.” But his heart wasn’t in it. He breathed a sigh of relief when Ruby and Clarence got up to leave.

He followed them to the door and thanked them for coming. “And for the sweater,” he added hastily. “It’s nice and warm.”

“Well,” Ruby said, “you won’t need it for a few weeks yet. But this winter it should come in handy.” Then she knelt down and kissed his cheek. “I know your sister’s awful busy, so any time you need a ride somewhere, you give me a tinkle, will you? I’ll be your chauffeur for the day.”

Cyrus suddenly pictured Ruby sitting with Peggy Spinks while Hank had an afternoon rendezvous. It was such a surprising yet satisfying image that he nearly laughed out loud.

Izzy stood behind Hank’s chair, like an anxious mother with a sick child, one hand resting on his shoulder, the other smoothing his cowlick. “Oh, now,” Izzy was saying, “I’m not all that busy. And you’ve already got enough to worry about with Clarence. We can muddle along.”

HANK’S ROUTINE WAS SHOT TO HELL
. Normally he’d watch television after Izzy went to bed, flipping through the channels until he was blind with fatigue. But Cyrus’s presence meant he had to hang out in his room.

He poked at the synthesizer awhile, but he wasn’t in the mood for making that much effort, so he pulled on his headphones and listened to his favourite radio station until he’d heard the same ads two or three times. By then the steam had left his system, and he settled back a bit and worked his way through his cassettes, none of them from the current
decade. He didn’t rock his head or tap his fingers as he listened, just stared out the window at the writhing dance of the maple across the street.

He’d seen ghosts out there in the shifting shapes of the night, seen his father’s face pressed to the window, the gas station attendant sitting in the tree, Golden Reynolds crouched by the windowsill. It made no difference when Hank closed his eyes because the faces were inside his head. Because of that, sleep was nearly impossible. The only thing that worked was the routine; the only sleep he found was at the end of his endurance when darkness fell upon him in a blink. Even there the faces intruded, shaking him awake a few hours later.

After he’d listened to every tape in his collection, he put on the cassette Cyrus had given him. He was curious, but he also remembered the last time he had heard his brother play in Toronto and how miserable it had made him feel.

He leaned forward uneasily, his head full of tape hiss and electronic hum, the amplified whisper of his own breathing. Then, rising out of that background noise, a tremulous sound reminding him of the way poplars quake before a storm. A chord on a keyboard, five notes. And he closes his eyes in a kind of swoon, and sees the driveway of their farm and the poplars that line both sides. Bass and drums creep behind the chord, the kind of rhythm that makes him want to walk, not marching music really but walking music, a rolling gait that moves him step by step down that driveway. He sees the red-brick path that leads to the house. And with the chord quivering and the bass and drums loping along, the guitar begins to sing its melody, leading him up that path, past his mother’s spice garden and into the mud room. It’s all there, everything the way it’s supposed to be. He takes off his rubber boots and his jacket and walks into the old kitchen where his mother sits at the table, feeding dry bread and vegetables and quartered apples into a meat grinder because it’s Thanksgiving and she’s making stuffing for the turkey, the bread-and-vegetable mixture spilling out of the grinder like a rainbow. And she opens her arms and says, “Come here, honey. Give Mommy a hug.” He runs into her velvet embrace, and the smell of onion and carrot and celery mixes with the poultry seasoning and her lilac dusting powder and makes him go shivery and goosebumpy all over.…

Hank played the song again. And again. And each time he saw more of
her: the way she curled her hair around her index finger when she was thinking; her laughter when he tickled her; the sound of her singing around the house, always singing, in a voice that made people think of Doris Day.

As he sat in the darkness of his room, lit only by the street light and the eerie glow of his stereo, he realized that throughout his entire life he had bumped against the same pains, the same horrors—the man with the belt, the man with the freckled face, the man with the radio, the man with the friends and favours—but never a trace of her, coming to believe that he would never see her face again, that she had slipped irretrievably into the blackness. And how ironic that a man without a future, a man whose every waking moment had been indelibly stamped by the past, would find it so hard to remember. He could speak her name but feel nothing, see nothing but a few bland images. Now suddenly there she was. She was in his brother’s music, a living, breathing presence again.

R
onnie had not only made the most money from the Jimmy Waters Revival, he had gained the most respect. Perhaps he wasn’t in the same league as Colonel Tom Parker or Brian Epstein, but look what he had to work with. Jimmy Waters was an impossible act to sell compared to Elvis and the Beatles. That Ronnie had succeeded at all was regarded as a matter of brilliance.

As a result, when he went shopping his new band around, people were eager to accommodate him, wanting to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. “Jangle,” they said, “yes, we are very interested.” With a minimum of effort he arranged a showcase in Hollywood at the Troubadour. Every A&R director of every major label would be there.

Throughout the autumn, Ronnie’s staff worked on a promo package while he hired a road crew. (No luck talking Adrian or Kerry or Tommy Mac back into the fold.) Raoul Dupree had settled on a design he called “quotidian chaos,” the very look of a sound check in mid-stride, with cases and cables and equipment scattered everywhere, and the road crew’s muscular shuffle an integral part of the show. When the band was established and able to fill large venues, there would be a suspension bridge that would rise above the clutter and, at certain key moments in the show, extend into the audience so that Cyrus could wander among his fans.

From November to just before Christmas, Nate Wroxeter booked a series of club dates so the band could work out the kinks, test their set for weak spots and awkward transitions, and give Cyrus, a lifelong sideman, a chance to rev up his stage presence. The crowds were largely enthusiastic, and each gig made the whole project seem larger and more inevitable. By the end of the stress test, Ronnie knew he had a roadworthy machine. The band members were strong, confident, and required little or no maintenance, their edges and angles fitting together like cogs of a wheel. The crew worked equally well. And because there were natural leaders in both groups, Ronnie’s job would be a cinch.

Finally, on January 24, 1982, the band walked onstage at the Troubadour. Cyrus said, “I’d like to tell you a story now, if I may.” And they launched into the dreamy intro of “The Bridge.” Cyrus managed to move around the stage and look comfortable doing so, but he was mostly unconscious of who he was and what he was doing. He was blinded by the lights, deaf to any sound other than the band, numb to any feeling other than the music of his life passing through him like a flood.

THE VISIBLE PART OF THE EAR
, the seashell, collects sound waves from the world and funnels them down the waxy canal to the eardrum, which converts those waves—crest, trough and amplitude—into mechanical vibrations. The eardrum also separates the outer ear from the middle ear, which is an ingenious little gizmo not unlike the tubes of an amplifier. With the help of three small connected bones—the malleus, the incus and the stapes—the middle ear amplifies the vibrations from the eardrum and passes them on to a much smaller opening called the oval window, which looks on to the inner ear. It’s there, in a snail-like contraption called the cochlea, that the business of hearing gets interesting. The cochlea is filled with fluid and thousands of special nerve endings called hair cells. When the mechanical vibrations on the oval window disturb the fluid, the hair cells dance like seaweed on the ocean floor, and that movement sends an electric impulse through the auditory nerve to the brain, which is where it all comes together. Our ears don’t hear words or melody or silence. They are a fancy bit of science designed to receive energy, modify it, break it down and pass it on.