The Music of Your Life (16 page)

Sometimes Burton thinks Dr. Lundy doesn't listen to him, which is not, he feels, a commendable characteristic in a therapist. It's bad enough that he has to drive the fifteen miles out of Colesville to get to the far side of North Raleigh, but then not to be listened to … Often, Burton has caught Dr. Lundy glancing out the window during a session, usually when Burton hit an embarrassing crying jag there on the couch. Once, as Burton was discussing one of his phone calls to Kent, Dr. Lundy even began to nod off. Burton keeps thinking he should change therapists, but it's difficult to do that after fourteen years with the same one. He's bad at breaking patterns, which is one of the topics he and Dr. Lundy have dealt with in their work together. But it has also occurred to him to find a second therapist simply for the sake of discussing the issues he has with Dr. Lundy. However, Blue Cross will not cover two therapists—he has checked.

The questions Dr. Lundy asks today are: 1) “And how did you feel after the last conversation you had with Kent—different or the same?” 2) “Did you continue to feel the same rage about conducting the
Messiah
at this week's choir practice that you felt last week?” 3) “Do you feel you're getting closer to telling the church people, specifically the ladies, the truth about your preferences?” 4) “How does the possibility that Mrs. Sloop may be trying to fix you up with a woman make you feel?”

The answers Burton gives are: 1) “The same.” 2) “I decided I don't hate the
Messiah
, just the ‘Alleluia Chorus.' And I
do
hate them for insisting on singing it every year.” 3) “Maybe a little. But I still feel it would jeopardize my job security.” 4) “Like I'd like to just about kill her, maybe beat her to death with the back of one of her Pappagallos, or choke her to death with her web belt.”

Then silence.

And after a few moments, Dr. Lundy gently offers Burton the Kleenex box, which Burton thinks is odd since he hasn't done any crying today. He takes one anyway, and blows, just to be polite, while Dr. Lundy looks down at his notes.

Silence.

Silence.

Clock ticking.

Burton wadding up the dry Kleenex and clenching it in his fist. Waiting.

Cars passing out on the highway.

Silence.

Finally Dr. Lundy saying in a voice of practiced calm, “Our time's up for today.”

Burton thanks him, then walks out of the office, nodding a discreet hello to the teenage girl sitting alone in the tiny waiting area. In the parking lot, he gets in his car and sits there for a very long minute and a half without starting the ignition. He keeps hearing the
Messiah
phrase “Lord God Omnipotent” repeating in his head. He thinks back to one late November afternoon in choir college when he and Kent sat side by side at
Messiah
rehearsal, and Kent kept singing the phrase “Lord God is Impotent” instead. He remembers how they giggled under their breath, like schoolboys half their age, and how Kent kept knocking his knee against Burton's for emphasis, to keep Burton in the giggling game. He can still see the stern, prune-faced looks of the dreaded old choirmaster, Dr. Otis, the one they imitated and made such mocking fun of, back in the safety of their dorm rooms late at night.

“Lord God is Impotent,” Burton half sings, half whispers in his car.

And then he begins to cry.

Jean Sloop is proud that she has a home where people are allowed to smoke, which accounts for many afternoons spent with other middle- and late-aged church choir altos. She smokes now, aware nonetheless that any minute she will be hosting Burton and Bitsy, two nonsmokers, in her home. She wonders if perhaps she should not smoke for their sakes, but then she thinks:
No, it's my home. And I'm a smoker
. Besides, Jean has gone to all this trouble today for the two of them, so they shouldn't mind a little nicotine in the air. In Jean's air. Oh, but there will be nothing negative here today, she thinks, because bringing Bitsy and Burton together like this is going to be wonderful for everybody; Jean even feels a palpable glimmer of pride when she thinks of how there may soon come a day when she'll be taking a little trip to New York to buy a smart new outfit to wear at a party for Burton and Bitsy. Images of the ladies' departments and the couture collections of Saks and Bergdorf Goodman swirl in Jean's head for a few dazzling minutes …
“So nice to see you again, Mrs. Sloop …” “Yes, and you too, Patrice … Ooh! I love these shoes, and … oh Lord, that's a fabulous blouse!” “It looks divine on you, Mrs. Sloop.” “These shoes … Oh my Lord, do I dare buy these shoes?” “Right this way. May I show you a new Christian Lacroix in your size?” “Have you seen the fall Versace line?” “Will you be putting this on your store charge?”

… But then she returns to her living room, her wonderfully appointed room where it all begins today for Burton and Bitsy, and Jean knows that is the most important thing. Today marks the realization of a plan in which Jean, clearly, has utmost faith. Faith—that is what it's all about. That is what it is always all about.

Jean has laid out tumblers, ice, bourbon, soda, on her heirloom Confederate silver serving trays. Jean's housekeeper (Jean is constantly reminding herself not to say “maid”), Darcy, fixed finger sandwiches this afternoon: fresh chicken salad, cucumber, watercress, the kinds Jean favors at the country club after golfing. They have been arranged in dainty circles on medium-sized blue and white Limoges china plates, on which pretty milkmaids in pigtails and even prettier Dutch boys in wooden shoes flirt innocently with each other all around the edges.

Jean's eighteenth-century cuckoo clock ticks away minutes in the otherwise silent room, on an otherwise sleepy spring afternoon, and Jean sits in her favorite fancy brocade occasional chair, languidly smoking a cigarette, and waiting.

Burton pulls up to Jean Sloop's house and sees the stranger's car parked in the driveway, behind Jean's Camry. It is a nondescript vehicle, really, just tannish and dusty, but at least there aren't any bumper stickers that say “Proud Parent of an Honor Student” or “Have You Hugged Your Child Today?” He waits in his own Jetta for a minute, wondering if he should just leave and call by cell phone with an excuse.

Bitsy wishes she were anywhere but here, sitting on her Aunt Jean's immaculately upholstered Colonial Williamsburg—inspired love seat. (“Sit on the
love
seat, Bits,” Aunt Jean had said, rather too emphatically, Bitsy thought.) Why, Bitsy wonders, is there such a thing as a love seat, but no such thing as a hate seat? Or an indifference seat? Or an
I'm bored, fuck this
seat? When her divorce is final, she will buy a new home, she decides. That is, when Riley comes through with the Big Bucks her lawyer has said she will get. She will also purchase all new furniture. And she will name it, every stick of it, after a recognizable human emotion. “Love seat” will sound mighty quaint after guests get a load of an “irritation ottoman” and a “pissed-off chest of drawers.”

Bitsy loathes the torturous ticking of a cuckoo clock. She will never have one. Aunt Jean keeps smiling and making small talk, but Bitsy can't concentrate on what she is saying. Outwardly, she remains calm, but inside, she feels like a substitute teacher about to face a particularly mean fifth grade. She would love to locate a fourteenth-century chalkboard somewhere in Jean's house and scrawl upon it this message: “Mrs. Evans. Recently separated. Facing divorce. Not young. Please be nice to me.”

Then she would run out the back door.

Burton stands on the porch. He is a gentleman, after all. He rings the bell.

Jean Nimocks Sloop, alto, is prepared with something when she opens the door:

“Alleluia!” she sings. “Alleluia! Alleluia! A-lay-ay-ay-loo-ya!”

She grins proudly and takes a big puff from her Merit Light.

And Burton, for lack of anything else he can come up with, standing on a rough, horsehair mat that spells out, in Olde English script,
ALL YE WOLCUM HERE
, gives Jean a polite round of applause, whereupon she invites him in, as though he's just whispered the secret password to the castle gate.

Burton enters Jean's living room and instantly feels smothered by the antiqueness of it, the overwhelming Old Confederacy-ness occupying every viewable inch. He considers the myriad of available objects with which he could bludgeon Jean: a silver salver, bronzed baby shoes, a heavy family Bible, opened, as always, to First Corinthians 13. Would he be relieved of his duties at First Church, he wonders, if he commenced to beating Jean Sloop over the head with her oversized King James version?

“Burton, this is my niece, Bitsy Nimocks,” Jean says, full of hostess bravura and deliberately leaving off the “Evans” part of Bitsy's name. “Bitsy, Burton Warren.”

Burton and Bitsy shake hands, exchange perfunctory pleasantries, and sit together on the love seat.

Minutes pass. Sandwiches are politely eaten, corners of mouths are gingerly daubed with crinkly linen cocktail napkins. At five o'clock, the cuckoo finally makes an appearance, startling Bitsy and Burton, but not Jean. Jean regales them with memories of past church choir days, such as when she and Burton were at a choir convention in Nashville and ended up locked out of their rooms at three o'clock in the morning, drunk as lords (meant to show Bitsy how much fun Burton can be). She then shares funny stories about Bitsy as a child, such as when, in the seventh grade, Bitsy wanted to go to the school Halloween carnival dressed as Cher, but switched to Mother Goose at the last minute after her mother burst into tears upon the sight of twelve-year-old Bitsy in long black wig, a bikini top, and gold hoop earrings (meant to show Burton what a good, sensitive girl Bitsy has always been). Jean is having a grand time in her own home and believes her guests are as well.

Bitsy watches and listens to Jean, and nods, and laughs dutifully, but soon Bitsy begins to check out, and in her vision Jean becomes a talking head from a TV screen on which someone has pressed the mute button. Bitsy steals glances at Burton, who steals them back at her. They smile at each other, and when Jean's head is turned, to readjust a grouping of marble Easter eggs on a side table, they trade a very long, knowing look, eyeball to eyeball, and they nearly begin to giggle simultaneously, but as soon as Jean turns back, they suppress it—in sync, like acting partners.

Smiling graciously at Jean, Bitsy drinks bourbon. She knows now, she gets it. Bitsy has been around a block or two in North Raleigh. She can clearly see that Burton is a lovely man—
anyone
could see that. But he will never, ever want her. At least not in the way she believes her aunt intends. And this, she can't help but feel, is a gigantic relief. Bitsy relaxes considerably.

Burton also listens attentively to the stories, but he too is accustomed to tuning Jean out, and does. He also drinks bourbon, and after a while, he is pretty sure Bitsy knows. Her eyes radiate intelligence and perception. He is almost certain they have shared the same unspoken thoughts in this antique-infested room. Bitsy is not at all like her aunt. She is modern, after all. She is going through a divorce. She'll grasp certain situations, things having to do with relationships. She'll
get
him. He wants, needs someone around here to get him—a man, a woman, anyone—someone he can talk to in person about anything, at any time, with no restrictions, someone who wouldn't expect to be paid to listen to him, someone who wouldn't say “time's up for today.” Burton finds himself hoping that he and Bitsy will become friends. He relaxes considerably. And he will not bludgeon Jean in her home this afternoon after all, if only because that would leave a serious gap in his alto section this coming Sunday.

“And that is why the good Lord saw fit to give tails to monkeys and not to snakes!” Jean says with a flourish, finishing a long story-joke that neither Burton nor Bitsy has heard one word of. Jean laughs heartily at her own retelling of this tale, a favorite of her first husband's. Suddenly getting the prompt, Burton and Bitsy laugh, too, which pleases Jean, because she knows she is a born raconteur.

And a born matchmaker. Jean Sloop relaxes in her favorite chair, and drinks bourbon, and smokes. She is always relaxed. She takes in the sight of Burton and Bitsy, two lonely about-to-be-middle-aged people sitting side by side on a love seat in the comfort of her beautiful living room, two people whose lives she has changed in the course of a small spring afternoon. She'll have to give Norma Davenport a call later and fill her in. Jean knows Norma will concur and agree that Jean was right about this all along. If Norma were here to see the way Burton and Bitsy are laughing, talking, enjoying each other's company, the way Jean can see it now, she'd know it for herself, without Jean having to tell her.
But
: Jean will tell her.

More bourbon, all around, and Jean, bowing out of conversation for the moment to allow Bitsy and Burton to converse more intimately on the love seat, lifts her tumbler silently to herself as a doer of good deeds, an exemplary Presbyterian, a modern woman. She has brought two people together who need each other. If it works out, and she believes it will, they will not be lonely, they will not be alone. And they will have her to thank.