No Matter How Much You Promise Page 32

  “But I can’t, baby,” he said, stopping in midsentence. “Most of the time I’m hiding.”

  She was stunned and looked at him in the early-afternoon light coming in through the unwashed glass of the window. He had finally admitted it. She had been right and it struck her as significant that he was using the very same words she had thought. He had been hiding, but now he realized it. She knew enough about psychology to know that this was a significant moment. He thought a few seconds and knew that he had spoken accurately, but he couldn’t say what in fact it was that he was hiding from. He knew it had to do with Joey, but … what?

  After a while he stood up and with his arm around her said that they should go and get some lunch, suggesting that rather than going home they should go to Katz’s and get a hotdog or a kasha knish and a root beer soda. She said that was fine but that she wasn’t moving unless he gave her his word that he’d try playing again.

  “Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say, boss.”

  He was kidding with her, trying to avoid the subject. He locked the door of the apartment and they walked north on Ludlow Street, her step bouncy and her heart soaring as she imagined telling Cookie about it. Her smile was so wide that people looked at her and couldn’t help smiling. As they got halfway down the block between Rivington and Stanton Streets she saw the piano shop and immediately ran across the street and motioned him to come over.

  “It’s an omen, Daddy,” she said. “Look at them. Pianos. All kinds. New ones, used ones. Wow! Of all places! Right under our noses!” She looked up and remarked on the fact that here they were, on Ludlow Street, almost on the corner of Stanton Street. “This is very strange. A definite omen.”

  He came over tentatively and stood on the sidewalk, looking at the pianos inside the store, waiting for his head to begin hurting, but nothing happened. She took his right hand and held it tight, making the knuckles of his missing fingers tingle. He didn’t feel the pain in his head, but inside of him everything was racing and wanting to get away from the front of the store as soon as possible.

  “Let’s go, baby,” he said.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise what?” he said, angrily. “Stop it, okay?” He tore away from her and continued down the street, crossing and heading toward Katz’s. She followed him and when she caught up, she matched him stride for stride until they were inside the restaurant and had taken their tickets and gone to the counter. After they got their food and sat down, he said he was sorry for being angry.

  “Forget it,” she said. “You got plenty to be angry about.” And then she surprised him and herself. “If it was me I’d be so pissed, I’d be punching people every other fucking day.”

  “No, that’s not right. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

  “That may be, but I’d be pretty angry, so I don’t blame you,” she said, noting that he had softened up considerably. “That doesn’t mean I’m gonna let up on you,” she added.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That I’m gonna keep bugging you about playing the piano.”

  “You’re too much,” he said. “You know who you remind me of?”

  “Grandma Maud.”

  “Nope.”

  “Who?”

  “My old man,” he said. “Kevin Farrell. Your grandpa.” And then his eyes clouded over and filled with tears. “He woulda loved you, and you woulda loved him. You’re just like him.” And then he was talking to her openly about being with his father, recalling a time when they had gone sledding and he’d fallen off his sled on the way down the hill and didn’t want to do it anymore, but his father just stayed on him, not mean or anything, but talking to him about how he was the greatest kid any father ever had and the best sledder in the whole state of New York—no, the whole United States—no, the whole world—no, the whole universe. On and on, until he was delirious with laughter and back on the sled, flying down the hill and had totally forgotten the spill, unafraid and free, so that when he got down below all he could see was his father standing above silhouetted against the snow, smiling at him, his fist up in the air in triumph so that he had no choice but to do the same. And then right in the middle of the restaurant he was laughing uproariously, crazily, his eyes crinkled and his face suddenly red, laughing like she’d never seen him, so that at first it frightened her, then after a while she was laughing right along with him while people in the restaurant looked at them. After a while he stopped himself and his jaw hurt, as if muscles long unused had been strained to their limit.

  “I just figured something out,” he said. “The reason that you remind me of him is that you both have the same gift of blarney.”

  “What?” she said. “Blarney?”

  “Yeah, the gift of talking,” he said, looking at her so admiringly that she was slightly embarrassed, and a little frightened by his intensity. “It comes from a stone in a castle in Cork back in Ireland. You have to hang upside down and if you kiss the stone you develop the gift for talking smooth like you do. It’s the first time I’ve realized how Irish you are. I always thought of you as this beautiful Puerto Rican girl, but you’re Irish. I mean, you’re both, but I now recognize you. You’re more like my cousins Rose and Deidre and the girls I grew up with than you are like your mother. You know what my old man used to say to me?”

  “What?”

  “May the Lord keep you in His hand and never close His fist too tight on you,” he said, raising his bottle of root beer soda so that she had no choice but to raise her orange soda and clink his. “That’s what he’d say whenever we were drinking a soda. And then he’d tell me stories that my grandfather, Seamus Farrell, had told him.”

  “About what?”

  “About fairies and leprechauns,” he said, leaning over to her conspiratorially. “Leprechauns have bags of gold, and if you catch one they have to give them to you. I had a leprechaun friend. His name was Mr. McQuinlan. He was a black leprechaun.”

  “Black?”

  “Yeah, black. Very well dressed. I always talked to him before I played music. The piano. This is too much! You remind me of my dad. Oh, man, he could praise you, my father. And you’re the same. After a while you find yourself caught up in the words.”

  “That’s the same thing Mr. Butterworth said about your playing,” she said.

  “See, there you go again,” he said.

  “No, honest.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You know who you are?”

  “Who?”

  “Beara,” he said, except it sounded like Beohrrah to her.

  “Who’s that?” she said, scrunching up her face.

  “She was the daughter of the king of Spain.”

  “Spain?”

  “Oh, Spain and Ireland have a long history together. Study it and you’ll see. Anyway, it was told in a prophecy that she’d find her husband in the river Eibhear. Some people say that’s the Ebro River in Spain. Anyway, a salmon showed up in shining armor. It was the salmon of wisdom. Beara took him as her husband and she was able to know everything that was going to happen in Ireland. It’s just a story that my grandfather Seamus Farrell used to tell. But that could be you. My grandma Caitlin swore it was the truth.”

  They continued eating, and, scarred for life or not, Billy was suddenly talking about things he had buried in his childhood. Whenever she attempted to talk about his life as a young man, with as much gift for gab as he accused her of having, he steered the conversation away from that part of his life and talked about his childhood and the times he’d spent with his father and mother prior to his father’s death.

  29. Blind Walking

  When Billy and Vidamía were done eating, they went back to the apartment and finished clearing it. She then accompanied him while he sold the few items of value which he’d found. Around two in the afternoon they returned to the loft with nearly a hundred dollars. More important, she had obtained a promise that he’d go with her and try to play the piano at a dance studio one evening that week
. Her end of the bargain was that she was not to tell Lurleen or the kids about it, nor about his talking as he had, and certainly not about his laughing. She asked why, and he said that he didn’t want them to think that he would be like that all the time and he didn’t want them to be disappointed. She said that maybe he would be, but his eyes were far away again and he nodded patiently, pleading silently with her. She agreed and said it would be their secret. On their way home she asked him if she was really like his father, Kevin Farrell. He said she sure reminded him of his father and she asked if he believed in reincarnation.

  “Like when people come back as something else?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Buddhists believe in reincarnation. I went to a meeting a few years ago and they talked about that.”

  He thought a moment and said that he didn’t think so, and that he never saw it happen, but monks in Vietnam had burned themselves alive to protest the war.

  “They poured gasoline over themselves and lit a match,” he said. “I guess they believe in that kind of stuff. They figured they were going to come back, so why worry, right?”

  “At the meeting they said that human life was the most important thing in the world. Once a human, always a human, but you come back a different person. So maybe this time around, even though I’m a girl, deep inside I’m your father,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he chuckled. “Maybe you’re right. Except you’re bossier than he was.”

  The thought intrigued her and she said nothing more, thinking about her resolve to take care of him. She wondered if she was up to the task. The idea frightened her a little bit.

  Three days later Vidamía explained to Lurleen that she had made plans to meet her friend Rosalind to help her with her summer-school math course. She’d be back no later than ten. Lurleen saw no problem with that, knowing that Vidamía was up to something and that it had to do with Billy and the discussion she and Vidamía had had about Billy’s being able to play again and her friend Elizabeth, who had a sister at Juilliard. Vidamía left at seven o’clock and waited for Billy near the Grand Street subway station, watching the hustle and bustle of early evening. It was hot and muggy and each waiting minute made her more anxious. A couple of guys around twenty came by and eyed her. Another tried to start a conversation, but she turned away, took a file out of her pocketbook and began filing her fingernails as Cookie had said she should do. “They get real scared when you pull out the nail file,” she said. “Like you’re gonna stab them in the eyes. Which is what you gotta do if they try to, like, do something to you.” The guy shrugged his shoulders and went off, saying something like there’s other fish in the sea.

  About ten minutes later she saw her father walking up the street, his head down and his hands in his pockets, his fatigue jacket on, even in the heat. When he saw her he smiled, nodded his head, and said let’s go. She had never seen him so frightened, but she steeled herself to whatever was to happen. They went down the stairs into the subway. She was certain her father would have turned around and gone back had the train not come right away. They rode up to Fiftieth Street, in the Theater District. The subway car was air-conditioned, and most people sat comfortably. He, on the other hand, was nearly shivering, hugging himself against some perceived cold. When they emerged into the street the sun had gone down and the bright lights of Broadway made him flinch and shrink back for a moment, his eyes opened wide. He pointed at a topless bar but said nothing. She asked him what was the matter, but he just shook his head, having recalled that the place, which now advertised a cure for lonely men, had once been the most famous of all jazz clubs, Birdland, named after the legendary Charlie Parker. He wanted to tell her that Pop Butterworth had brought him to the club in 1964 to hear Miles Davis rehearse. He was only fourteen years old, but he was big and so withdrawn that, wearing his suit and tie, he looked like another one of the musicians. But the words couldn’t come out because if he started talking, then he’d have to tell her about not wanting to play and record with Miles and his quintet, and then his head would hurt worse than it was hurting at that moment.

  “I know about Birdland,” she said.

  “You do? Who told you?”

  “Mr. Butterworth.”

  “Did he tell you anything else?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “What things?”

  “He told me how great you were and how you could’ve played with Miles Davis,” she said resolutely, unafraid, certain that the truth would win out.

  “I wish he hadn’t,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You could try again.”

  “But—”

  “You promised, Daddy,” she said. “It’s nothing but straight ahead now,” she added, borrowing Buck Sanderson’s phrase.

  He recognized the phrase, and the fact that the music—bebop—was also called that. The music he loved was also called “straight ahead,” and he had promised. But the fear was no less, and he tried bearing it as he had walking through the jungle, his machine gun on his shoulder, hearing the bugs and the birds, aware that the enemy was out there, tightening up so that he wouldn’t pee in his pants.

  They continued walking until they came to a building. She then pulled on the sleeve of his jacket for him to stop. Taking a slip of paper out of her jeans, she checked it and went inside. Rosalind Louden, whose mother owned the dance studio, had assured Vidamía that there would be no one there. She had handed her the keys, shrugging her shoulders and saying they could stay as long as they wanted and told her exactly where the lights were so that when they got out of the elevator on the third floor Vidamía guided herself with her right hand on the wall until she found the door. With her left she held on to her father’s hand, feeling his nervousness and sweat and his heart pounding from fear. She let go of his hand and found the lights exactly where Rosalind had said, switching them on so that the big studio with its mirrors and barre were illuminated brightly and, at the far end, like a dark shadow, like some primeval beast, its maw opened and ready to swallow its prey, sat the grand piano in all its splendor.

  Vidamía took his hand again but it was like cold stone, his body frozen to the spot where he had stopped, his eyes unseeing and the fear burning forth from them. She pulled at him and he came forward reluctantly, the weight of him, not his size but the heavy pain he was carrying, making her struggle so that before long she was sweating and finding it hard to breathe, such was the effort. When they finally got to the piano she was exhausted and simply pointed to the bench for him to sit down. But he was unseeing and simply stared out into the night to the theater and neon lights of Broadway.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “We should go,” he replied without turning.

  “Please sit down. You have to try, please.”

  He took a big breath and saw himself in the mirror and closed his eyes at the shock of his image. He hardly ever looked into a mirror. It was one of the reasons he never shaved. Whenever he had to wash up, brush his teeth, or comb his hair he avoided the mirror, but now everywhere he looked he saw himself. His head was bursting, the pain unbearable, so that even his face hurt, and his eyes were tearing from the effort he was making not to scream and bolt. He felt the flashback coming. Suddenly he was there again, the automatic fire coming in spurts, the thudding of the mortars dull as they whooshed and then hit, and overhead the choppers blasting away, beyond them the screaming of the jets as they dove and whined to drop their napalm and rise once more into the sky.

  “I can’t, baby,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  And then she hit on an idea. She went to the light switches, turned them off and asked him to close his eyes. He insisted that they should go, but she asked him again to close his eyes.

  “Just make believe you’re blind,” she said, taking him by the arm.

  “Blind?”

  “Yes, blind. Like Ray Charles.”

  He shook his head but did as she told him, letting the warm darkness envelop h
im so that he was traveling away from the war into some other place where he’d never been. Even his step seemed oddly buoyant as she held his arm and walked him to what he imagined was his eventual destination, which was the piano. But they walked and walked and never got there, going round and round the dance studio, Billy wanting to open his eyes but in spite of himself enjoying the effect the enforced blindness had on him. She didn’t know where the idea had come from; perhaps she had read it in a book, or overheard it in a conversation between her mother and a colleague; perhaps from a television program, but it didn’t matter.

  After five minutes they had not yet reached the piano. Guided by the lights outside, she walked him around the perimeter of the room, avoiding the triangle of half of the room where the piano sat, tracing a trajectory along the opposite three sides of the make-believe triangle, asking him if he smelled anything. He laughed and said he could smell nothing. She insisted and after a while he said he could smell her perfume.

  “What else?” she said.

  “They mopped the floor.”

  “What do you smell?”

  “Floor wax. I don’t know. Soap.”

  “What else?”

  “Leather. Sweat.”

  “Do you smell the piano?”

  “The piano?”

  “Yes, the piano. Can you smell it?”