The Gravedigger’S Daughter (56 page)

He would sleep through much of the day. Hazel would not disturb him. By late afternoon he would return to the piano renewed, and practice until late evening. And Gallagher, listening in the hallway would shake his head in wonder.

She knew!

(He had to wonder what she’d meant in her playful teasing way
Mr
.
Jones is dead now
. If she meant that his father was dead? His long-ago father who had shouted into his face and shaken him like a rag doll and beat him and threw him against the wall yet who had hugged him too, and kissed him wetly on the edge of his mouth leaving a spittle-taste of tobacco behind.
Hey: love ya!
As his fingers executed the rapidly and vividly descending treble notes in the final ecstatic bars of the Beethoven sonata he had to wonder.)

Strange: that Chet Gallagher was losing interest in his career. Had lost interest in his career. Following the abrupt and shameful ending of the Vietnam War the most protracted and shameful war in American history strange, ironic how bored he’d become almost overnight with public life, politics. Even as his career as
Chet Gallagher
soared. (The newspaper column, 350 words Gallagher boasted he could type out in his sleep with his left hand, was nationally reprinted and admired. The TV interview program he’d been asked to host in 1973 was steadily gaining an audience. Also in 1973 a collection of prose pieces he’d cobbled together whimsically titled
Some Pieces of (My) Mind
became an unexpected bestseller in paperback.)

Losing interest in
Chet Gallagher
in proportion as he was becoming obsessed with
Zacharias Jones
. For here was a gifted young pianist, a truly gifted young pianist Gallagher had personally discovered up in Malin Head Bay one memorable winter night…

“It happens, he’s my adopted son. My
son
.”

Gallagher had to concede this was a phenomenon his own father had been denied. For he’d let his father down.
He
had failed as a classical pianist. Maybe to spite his father he’d failed but in any case
he had failed
, all that was finished. He played jazz piano only occasionally now, local gigs, fund-raisers and benefits and sometimes on TV, but not serious jazz any longer, Gallagher had become so Caucasian bourgeois, damned boring middle-aged husband and father, and
happy
. There’s no edge to
happy
. There’s no jazz-cool to
happy
. So devoted to his little family he’d even given up smoking.

How strange life was! He would manage the boy’s career for the responsibility lay with Chet Gallagher.

Not to push the boy of course. From the first he’d cautioned the boy’s mother.

“We’ll take it slow. One thing at a time. Must be realistic. Even André Watts, after his early fantastic success, burned out. And so did Van Cliburn. Temporarily.” Gallagher was not seriously expecting Zack to win a top prize at the San Francisco Competition: for one so young and relatively inexperienced, it was a remarkable honor simply to have qualified. The judges were of various ethnic backgrounds and would not favor a young Caucasian-American male. (Or would they? Zack was playing the “Appassionata.”) Zack would be competing with prize-winning pianists from Russia, China, Japan, Germany who had trained with pianists more distinguished than his teacher at the Delaware Conservatory. To be realistic, Gallagher was planning, plotting: the Tokyo International Piano Competition in May 1975.

Her name was Frieda Bruegger.

She was a student at the Conservatory, a cellist. Beautiful blunt-featured girl with almond-shaped eyes, thick dark bristling hair exploding about her head, a young animated very shapely body. Her voice was a penetrating soprano: “Mrs. Gallagher! Hel
lo
.”

Hazel was smiling and fully in control but staring rather vacantly at the girl Zack had brought home, whom he had introduced to her as a friend he was preparing a sonata with, for an upcoming recital at the Conservatory. Hazel was admiring the beautiful gleaming cello in the girl’s hands, she would ask questions about the instrument, but something was wrong, why were the young people looking at her so oddly? She realized she hadn’t replied. Numbly her lips moved, “Hello, Frieda.”

Frieda! The name was so strangely resonant to her, she felt almost faint.

Realizing that she’d seen this girl before, at the music school. She had even seen the girl with Zack though the two had not been alone together. Following a recital, among a group of young musicians.

It’s her
.
She’s the one
.
He is sleeping with her. Is he?

So without warning Zack had brought the girl home with him, Hazel wasn’t prepared. She’d expected him to be secretive, circumspect. Yet here the girl stood before Hazel calling her “Mrs. Gallagher.” Really she was a young woman, twenty years old. Beside her Zack was still a boy, though taller than she was by several inches. And awkward in his body, uncertain. In personal relations Zack had not the zestful agility and grace he had at the piano. He was swiping at his nose now, nervously. He would not look at Hazel, not fully. He was excited, defiant. Gallagher had told Hazel it was the most natural thing in the world for a boy Zack’s age to have a girlfriend, in fact girlfriends, you had to assume that kids were sexually active today as they generally had not been in Hazel’s generation, hell it was fine as long as they took precautions and he’d had a talk (how awkward, Hazel could only imagine) with Zack so there was nothing to worry about.

And so Zack had brought home this bluntly beautiful girl with almond-shaped eyes and rather heavy dark unplucked eyebrows and the most astonishing explosive hair: Frieda Bruegger.

Informing Hazel that they would be performing a Fauré sonata for cello and piano at a Conservatory recital in mid-December. This was the first Hazel had heard of it and did not know how to respond. ( What about the “Appassionata”? What about San Francisco, in eight days?) But Hazel’s opinion was not being sought. The matter had been decided.

“It will be my first recital in that series, Mrs. Gallagher. I’m very nervous!”

Wanting Hazel to share in her excitement, the drama of her young life. And Hazel held back from her, resisting.

Yet Hazel remained in the music room longer than she might have expected. Busying herself with small housewifely tasks: straightening the small pillows on the window seat, opening the venetian blinds wide. The young people talked together earnestly about the sonata, looking through their photocopied sheets of music. Hazel saw that the girl stood rather close to Zack. She smiled frequently, her teeth were large and perfectly white, a small charming gap between the two front teeth. Her skin was beautifully smooth, with a faint burnished cast beneath. Her upper lip was covered in the faintest down. She was so animated! Zack held back from her, just perceptibly. Yet he was amused by her. Zack had several times brought other young musicians home to practice with him, he was a favored piano accompanist at the Conservatory. Possibly the girl was only a friend of his, a classmate. Except less experienced musically than Zack and so she would depend upon his judgment, she would defer to him musically. She brandished her beautiful cello as if it were a simulacrum of herself: her beautiful female body.

Hazel was forgetting the girl’s name. She felt a vague fluttery panic, this was happening too quickly.

For a student at the Conservatory, the girl was provocatively dressed: lime green sweater that fitted her ample breasts tightly, metal-studded jeans that fitted her ample buttocks tightly. She had a nervous mannerism of wetting her lips, breathing through her mouth. Yet she did not seem truly ill-at-ease, rather more self-dramatizing, self-displaying. A rich girl, was she? Something in her manner suggested such a background. She was assured of being cherished. Assured of being admired. On her right wrist she wore an expensive-looking watch. Her hands were not extraordinary for a cellist, rather small, stubby. Not so slender as Zack’s hands. Her nails were plain, filed short. Hazel glanced at her own impeccably polished nails, that matched her coral lipstick…Yet the girl was so young, and suffused with life! Hazel stared and stared lost in wonder.

She heard herself ask if the young people would like something to drink? Cola, coffee…

Politely they declined, no.

The terrible thought came to Hazel
They are waiting for me to leave them alone
.

Yet she heard herself ask, “This sonata, what is it like? Is it�familiar? Something I’ve heard?”

Frieda was the one to answer, bright and enthusiastic as a schoolgirl: “It’s a beautiful sonata, Mrs. Gallagher. But you probably haven’t heard it, Fauré’s sonatas aren’t very well known. He was old and sick when he wrote it, in 1921, it’s one of his last compositions but you would never guess! Fauré was a true poet, a pure musician. In this sonata there’s a surprise, the way the mood shifts, the ‘funeral theme’ becomes something you wouldn’t expect, almost ethereal, joyous. Like, if you were an old man, and sick, and soon to die, still you could lift yourself out of your body that is failing you…” The girl spoke with such sudden intensity, Hazel felt uneasy.

Why is she talking to me like this, does she believe that I am old? Sick?

As it had been Hazel’s custom to place flowers on the Steinway grand piano in the display window at Zimmerman Brothers, so it was Hazel’s practice to place flowers on the piano in the music room. Zack took no notice of course. In the Gallagher household Zack seemed to take notice of very little, only music fully absorbed him. But his friend would notice the flowers. Already she had noticed. She had noticed the polished hardwood floor, the scattered carpets, the brightly colored pillows arranged on the window seat, the tall windows overlooking the vividly green back lawn where in wet weather (it was raining now, a fine porous mist) the air glowed as if undersea. Brought into the house and led through the downstairs by Zack she would certainly have noticed how beautifully furnished the Gallaghers’ house was. She would go away marveling
Zack’s mother is so
…

Hazel stood forlorn, uncertain. She knew she should leave the young musicians to their practice but another time she heard herself ask if they needed anything from the kitchen and another time they politely declined
no
.

As Hazel left, Frieda called after her, “Mrs. Gallagher, thanks! It was so nice to meet you.”

But you will meet me again won’t you? You will
.

Yet Hazel lingered outside the door of the music room, waiting for the practice to begin. The cellist tuned her instrument: Zack would be seated at the piano. Hazel felt a pang of envy, hearing the young musicians begin. The cello was so rich, so vivid: Hazel’s favorite instrument, after the piano. She much preferred the cello to the violin. After a few bars, the music ceased. They would return to the beginning. Zack played, the girl listened. Zack spoke. Another time they began the sonata, and another time ceased. And another time began…Hazel listened, fascinated. For here was beauty she could comprehend: not the thunderous cascading of piano notes that left the listener breathless, not the strongly hammered repetitions, the isolation of the great Beethoven sonata but the more subtle, delicately entwined sounds of two instruments. The cello was predominant, the piano rather muted. Or so Zack chose to play it. Twined together, cello and piano. Hazel listened for some time, deeply moved.

She went away. She had work to do. Elsewhere in the house, her own work. But she could not concentrate, away from the music room. She returned, lingering in the hall. Inside, the young musicians were talking together. A girl’s quick robust laughter. A boy’s low-pitched voice. Was the practice over for the day? It was nearing 6
P
.
M
. And when would they practice again? On the other side of the door, the youthful voices were animated, melodic. Zack’s voice was so warmly entwined with the girl’s, they were so at ease together, as if they spoke together often, laughed together. How strange: Zack had become wary with Hazel, guarded and reticent. She was losing him. She had lost him. It was very recent in her memory, when Zack’s voice had changed: his voice that had been a child’s thin high-pitched voice for so long. Even now sometimes it wavered, cracked. He was not yet a man though no longer a boy. Of course, a boy of seventeen is sexually mature. A girl of Frieda’s type, full-bodied, sensual, would have matured sexually at a much younger age. Hazel had not seen her son naked in a very long time nor did she wish to see him naked but she had occasional glimpses of coarse dark hair sprouting in his armpits, she saw that his forearms and legs were covered in dark hairs. The girl would be less of a stranger to Hazel than Zack: for the girl’s body would be known to her, familiar as her own lost girl’s body.

Frieda must have been answering a question of Zack’s, she was speaking now of her family. Her father was an eye surgeon in Buffalo, he’d been born in that city. Her mother had been born in a small German village near the Czechoslovakian border. As a girl she’d been transported to Dachau with all of her family, relatives, neighbors but later she was reassigned to a labor camp in Czechoslovakia, she’d managed to escape with three other Jewish girls, she’d been a “displaced person” after the liberation and she’d emigrated to Palestine and in 1953 she’d emigrated to the United States, aged twenty-five. The Nazis had exterminated all of her family: there was no one remaining. But she had this belief: “There should be some reason why she survived. She really believes it!” Frieda laughed to show that she understood that her mother’s belief was naive, she wished to dissociate herself from it. Zack said, “But there was, Frieda. So that you can play Fauré’s second sonata, and I can accompany you.”

Hazel went away from the music room feeling as if her soul had been annihilated, extinguished.

So lonely!

She could not cry, there was only futility in crying. With no one to witness, a waste of tears.