The Gravedigger’S Daughter (43 page)

Stunned. Struck to the heart. Somehow her son had known, his father had owned a gun.

Somehow, the son had memorized certain of the father’s expressions. That look of disgust. That look of righteous fury, you dared not approach even to touch in helpless love.

Fallin
’
in love with love
.

Savin
’
all my love
.
For you
.

It was in the early winter of 1962 that he began to see the young woman in the smoky piano bar of the Malin Head Inn. Where he was
CHET GALLAGHER JAZZ PIANO
advertised in a blown-up glossy photo on display in the hotel lobby.

At first half-disbelieving his eyes, it could be her. The usherette from the Bay Palace Theater.

The one whose name Gallagher had learned from his friend who managed the theater. ( Though he had not made use of this information, and vowed he would not.)

She arrived early at the piano bar, about 8
P
.
M
. Sat alone at one of the small round zinc-topped tables beside the wall. Left before the lounge became really crowded, shortly after 10
P
.
M
. Always she was alone. Conspicuously alone. Declining offers of drinks from other, male patrons. Declining offers of company from other, male patrons. She smiled, to soften her refusal. You could see that she was resolved to listen to the jazz pianist, not to be drawn into conversation with a stranger.

Each time, she ordered two drinks. She did not smoke. She sat watching Gallagher, attentively. Her applause was quicker and more enthusiastic than the applause of most of the other patrons as if she wasn’t accustomed to applauding in a public place.

“Hazel Jones.”

He mouthed the name to himself. He smiled, it was so innocent and naive a name. Purely American.

The first time Gallagher saw her had been one of his brooding evenings. Picking his way through Thelonious Monk’s “Round About Midnight.” Minimalist, meditative. Like making your way through the dream of another person and it’s easy to lose your way. Gallagher loved Monk. There was a side of him that
was Monk
. Unyielding, maybe a little cranky. Eccentric. Beautiful music Gallagher believed it, this very cool black jazz. He wanted so badly for others to hear it as he did. To care about it as he did.

That’s the problem. To be supremely cool, you don’t care. But Gallagher cared.

It’s her. Is it her?

A woman by herself in the Piano Bar. You expect a man to join her, but no one does. This striking young woman in what appeared to be a cocktail dress of some cheaply glamorous dark red material threaded with silver. Her hair was feathery and floating at the nape of her neck. She smiled vaguely about her not seeing the frank stares of men and as the waiter approached she looked up at him, appealing. As if to ask
Is it all right, that I am here? I hope I am welcome
.

Gallagher fumbled a few notes. Finished the meandering Monk piece to scattered applause and his agile fingers leapt to something more animated, rhythmic, sexy-urgent “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby.” Which Gallagher hadn’t played in a very long time.

Hadn’t realized he’d been thinking of her. “Hazel Jones.” In a way, he resented thinking of any woman. He’d have thought that he was beyond that, the tight hot sensation in his chest and groin. Since
The Miracle Worker
that summer he’d returned to the Bay Palace Theater only once; and that evening he hadn’t allowed himself to seek out the pretty usherette, to inveigle her into speaking with him. No, no! Afterward he’d been proud of himself for avoiding her.

The compulsion to be happy only complicates life. Gallagher had had enough of complications.

That night, Gallagher took his break without glancing out at the young woman. He walked quickly away. When he returned, her table was occupied by someone else.

Too bad. But just as well.

Had to ask the waiter what the young woman had been drinking and was told Coke on ice. She’d left a thirty-five-cent tip, dimes and nickels.

This curious phase of Chet Gallagher’s life: woke up one morning to find himself an affable small-town eccentric who played jazz piano at the Malin Head Inn, Wednesday/Thursday/Friday evenings. (Saturday was a country-and-western dance combo.) He lived in a small wood-frame house near the riverfront, sometimes drove out to the family camp on Grindstone Island for a few days in seclusion. It was off-season in the Thousand Islands, there were few tourists. Locals who lived year-round on the islands were not exactly sociable. Not long ago Gallagher might have brought a woman friend to stay with him on the island. In an earlier phase, the woman would have been his wife. But no longer.

Too damned much trouble to be shaving every morning. Too much trouble to be warmly humorous, “upbeat.”

The compulsion to be upbeat only exhausts. He knew!

Gallagher’s family lived on the farther side of the state, in Albany and vicinity. In their own intense world of exclusivity, family “destiny.” He hadn’t spoken to any of them in months and not to his father since the previous Fourth of July, at the Grindstone camp.

And so he’d become an entertainer in the sometime hire of the Malin Head Inn, whose owner was a friend of Gallagher’s, a longtime acquaintance of his father Thaddeus Gallagher. The Malin Head was the largest resort hotel in the area, but in the off-season only about a fifth of its rooms were occupied even on weekends. Gallagher played piano Hoagy Carmichael style, loose-jointed frame hunched over the keyboard, long agile fingers ranging up and down the keys like making love, cigarette drooping from his lips. Didn’t sing like Carmichael but frequently hummed, laughed to himself. In jazz there are many private jokes. Gallagher was an impassioned interpreter of the music of Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Monk. In the Piano Bar, he received requests for “Begin the Beguine,” “Happy Birthday to You,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Cry.” Smiled his fleeting polite smile and continued playing the music he liked, with strains of cruder music woven in. He was versatile, playful. Good-natured. Not mocking and not malicious. A man of youthful middle age whom most other men liked, and to whom some women were powerfully attracted. And not often drunk.

Some nights, Gallagher drank only tonic water on ice, spiked with lime gratings. Tall glass beading with moisture on the piano top, ashtray beside it.

Gallagher had local admirers. Some drove up from Watertown. Not many, but a few. They came to hear chet gallagher jazz piano, they were mostly men, like himself unmarried, formerly married, separated. Men losing their hair, gone flaccid at the waist, stark-eyed, needing to laugh. Needing sympathy. Men for whom “Stormy Weather,” “Mood Indigo,” “St. James Infirmary,” “Night Train” made perfect sense. There were a few local women who liked jazz, but only a few. ( For how could you dance to “Brilliant Corners”? You could not.) The hotel guests were a mixed bag, especially during the tourist season. Sometimes there were true jazz enthusiasts. Most often, not. Customers came into the lounge to drink, smoke. Listened a while, became restless and departed for the less restrained atmosphere of the tap room where there was a jukebox. Or they stayed. They drank, and they stayed. Sometimes they talked loudly, laughed. They were not intentionally rude, they were supremely indifferent. You couldn’t help but know, if you were Chet Gallagher, that they were disrespectful of the musical culture that meant so much to him, Gallagher wasn’t so damned affable he didn’t feel the sting of insult not to himself but to the music.
Privileged white sonsofbitches
he thought them, having eased into the dark subversive skin of jazz.

It was one of the things his father detested in him. An old story between them. Gallagher’s politics, his “pinko”�“Commie”�tendencies. Soft-hearted about Negroes, voted for Kennedy not Nixon, Stevenson not Eisenhower, Truman not Dewey back in ’48.

That had been the supreme insult: Truman not Dewey. Thaddeus Gallagher was an old friend of Dewey’s, he’d given plenty of money to Dewey’s campaign.

Lucky for Gallagher he didn’t drink much any longer. When his thoughts swerved in certain directions, he could feel his temperature rise.
Privileged white sonsofbitches
he’d been surrounded by most of his life.
Fuck what do you care
.
You don’t care
.
The music doesn’t depend on you
.
A privileged white sonofabitch yourself, face it, Gallagher
.
What you do at the piano is not serious
.
Nothing you do is serious
.
A man without a family, not serious
.
Playing piano at the Malin Head isn’t a real job only something you do with your time
.
As your life isn’t a real life any longer only something you do with your time
.

“Blue Moon” he was playing. Slow, melancholy. Maudlin raised to its highest pitch. It was mid-December, a snow-flurried evening. Languid flakes blown out of the black sky above the St. Lawrence River. Gallagher never allowed himself to expect Hazel Jones to turn up in the Piano Bar as he never allowed himself to expect anyone to turn up. She’d come several times, and departed early. Always alone. He had to wonder if she worked alternate Friday evenings at the Bay Palace or maybe she’d quit altogether. He’d made inquiries and knew that ushering paid pitifully little. Maybe he could help her find better employment.

His friend who managed the Bay Palace had told him that Hazel was from somewhere downstate. She knew no one in the area. She was somewhat secretive but an excellent worker, very reliable. Always friendly, or friendly-seeming. Very good selling tickets. “Personality plus.” That smile! Good with troublesome (male) patrons. You hired a good-looking girl to fill out the usherette uniform but you didn’t want trouble. Unlike the other female ushers Hazel Jones didn’t become upset when (male) patrons behaved aggressively with her. She spoke calmly to them, smiled and eased away to call the manager. Never raised her voice. The way a man might do, not letting on what he’s feeling.
Like Hazel is older than she looks
.
She’s been through more
.
Anything now is chicken shit to her
.

Gallagher glanced out into the smoky lounge, saw a young woman just coming in, heading for an empty table near the wall.
Her!

He smiled to himself. He made no eye contact with her. He felt good! Improvising, liking how his lean fingers flashed. He eased from “Blue Moon” to “Honeysuckle Rose” playing vintage Ellington for one who he guessed knew little of jazz, still less of Ellington. Badly wanting her to hear, to know. The yearning he felt. Thinking
She came to me
.
To me!
In a showy run of notes to the top of the keyboard Chet Gallagher fell in love with the woman known to him as Hazel Jones.

At his break, Gallagher went directly to her table.

Looming over the surprised young woman who’d clapped with such childlike enthusiasm.

He thanked her, said he’d been noticing her. Introduced himself, as if she wouldn’t have known his name. And stooped to hear the name she told him: “‘Hazel’�what? I didn’t quite hear.”

“Hazel Jones.”

Gallagher laughed with the pleasure of a thief fitting a key into a lock.

“Mind if I join you for a few minutes, Hazel Jones?”

He could see that she was flattered he’d approached her. Other patrons had been waiting to speak with the pianist but he’d brushed past them heedless. Yet Gallagher would recall afterward to his chagrin that Hazel Jones had hesitated, staring at him. Smiling, but her eyes had gone slightly flat. Maybe she was alarmed by him, looming over her so suddenly. He was six foot three, whippet-lean and loose-jointed and his high balding dome of a head glowed warm with the effort of his stint at the piano; his eyes were shadowy, kindly but intense. Hazel Jones had no choice but to move her chair to make room for him. The zinc-topped table was small, their knees bumped beneath.

Close up, Gallagher saw that the young woman’s face was carefully made up, her mouth very red. Hers was a poster-face at the Bay Palace. And she was wearing the cocktail dress made of some dark red glittery fabric that fitted her breasts and shoulders tightly. The upper sleeves were puffed, the wrists tight. In the smoky twilight of the cocktail lounge she exuded an air both sexual and apprehensive. Politely she declined Gallagher’s offer to buy her something stronger than Coke: “Thank you, Mr. Gallagher. But I have to leave soon.”

He laughed, hurt. Protested, “Please call me Chet, Hazel. ‘Mr. Gallagher’ is my sixty-seven-year-old father way off in Albany.”

Their conversation was wayward, clumsy. Like climbing into a canoe with a stranger, and no oars. Exhilarating and also treacherous. Yet Gallagher heard himself laughing. And Hazel Jones laughed, so he must have been amusing.

How flattered a man is, that a woman should laugh at his jokes!

How childlike in his soul, wishing to trust a woman. Because she is attractive, and young. Because she is alone.

Gallagher had to concede, he was excited by Hazel Jones. In the Bay Palace in her ridiculous uniform, now in the Piano Bar in her glittery-red cocktail dress. Her eyebrows were less heavy than he recalled, she must have plucked and shaped them. Her hair was cut in feathery, floating layers, like a loose cap on her head. Brunette, streaked with russet-red highlights. And her skin very pale. It was like leaning toward an open flame, leaning toward Hazel Jones. The sensation Gallagher felt was tinged with dread for he was not a young man, hadn’t been a young man for a long time, and these feelings were those he’d had as a young man and they were associated with hurt, disappointment.

Yet, here was Hazel Jones smiling at him. She, too, was edgy, nervous. Unlike other women of Gallagher’s wide acquaintance, Hazel seemed to speak without subterfuge. There was something missing in her, Gallagher decided: the mask-like veneer, the scrim of will that came between him and so many women, his former wife, certain of his lovers, his sisters from whom he was estranged. With girlish aplomb Hazel was telling him that she admired his “piano playing”�though jazz was “hard to follow, to see where it’s going.” Surprising him by saying that she’d used to listen to jazz music on a late-night program on a Buffalo radio station, years ago.