Heart and Soul (3 page)

“Yuh.” I started fiddling with a corkscrew of hair. Each strand is like that ribbon you curl with the flat edge of a pair of scissors. When I start yanking on it, you can be sure I'm on my way to panic meltdown.

I went home and phoned David Montagnier. His voice sounded so neutral that I thought he was the machine and I began leaving a complicated message. I got as far as my phone number when I heard him chuckle.

“How's tomorrow?” he asked.

“Absolutely dandy,” I said. I wondered if he had a bucket in his broom closet, just in case.

He lived in a landmark building across the street from Carnegie Hall, with a fancy gold lobby that made you feel like genuflecting. I rode up in the elevator reciting my mantra:
Be still my heart
—left over from another failed experiment to tame my phobia.

He stood in the doorway with his hair all rumpled, wearing a pair of white jeans and a T-shirt. He had a mug of coffee in one hand, and his feet were bare. Damn, how rare are nice-looking male toes, I'd like to know? He ran a hand through his hair and yawned. “I'm so sorry, Bess. I didn't get to bed until four.”

“I can come back another time,” I said, and felt the color rising into my cheeks just from hearing him say my name with that accent of his.
Uh
oh, I thought. The last time I felt this way, I wound up in a bed I had no business jumping into.

“No, no, it's fine,” he said. “Let me get you some coffee.”

I shook my head. Any more stimulation of my nervous system and my EKG would sound like Rimsky-Korsakov's
Flight of the Bumble Bee.
He drew me over to his pianos, two concert Steinways side by side in front of a million-dollar view of Central Park. “Jesus F. Christ,” I breathed.

“The sad thing is, I hardly ever look out of the window.”

“How come the pianos aren't facing each other?” I'd only seen two-piano pairs perform that way.

“There's a choreography to it, Bess, like ballet. You want to rehearse so you can see one another's arms and hands, so that your gestures will be similar in performance when the pianos are separated.” He sat me down, went to the other piano, and began running through some warm-ups. “C-sharp,” he said. “Come on, I'll race you.”

I was still holding my music, which had a damp dent in it from my grip. I set it down, stretched my fingers, and dove in. It was a responsive keyboard with the athletic action I like. We played around like that for ten minutes with David switching from one exercise to the next and me scrambling to keep up. It was fun and loosened me up a little.

“All right,” David said. “Ready for the
Scaramouche
?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I lied.

He came over and put a large sheet of music on the piano. “What's this?” I asked.

“Your copy of the Milhaud. I always reduce the pages and glue them together.”

Duo-pianists don't ordinarily memorize their music, but this was new to me. “You don't use page-turners?”

“Never. They belong in hell with the music critics. They turn too early or too late, they have terrible breath, they moan in your ear. Either we learn by memory or we fix the pages so we can manage ourselves. You set the tempo.”

Instead of trusting my memory, I struggled with the unfamiliar score.

“That's fine,” David said. “Don't worry about mistakes. I don't care about that.”

And then we played. I was hesitant at first, afraid that I was dragging him down.

“Again, Bess,” he said. “You're doing well. Stop worrying about your fingers and listen to the music.”

The second time through, I started paying attention to our exchange. Then, finally, on the third try, it all came together. The music soared between us, our fingers asking and answering questions in a nearly flawless, intimate conversation.

We stared at each other for a moment, acknowledging that something amazing had just happened. “Again?” he asked.

I nodded.

We played the
Scaramouche
twice more, each time becoming more like one voice. Then David asked if I would like to read through some other more substantial things. We must have worked for more than two hours, mainly on Beethoven, which isn't so difficult to sight-read.

“You must be tired,” David said finally. “We'd better stop.”

“I'm fine,” I assured him, although I could feel my spine fusing into a painful column under my sweater. The thing was, I couldn't stand for it to end.

“Haven't you had enough?” David asked.

I shook my head, and to my amazement, felt tears starting. I looked out the window to hide my face. The next thing I knew, David was standing behind me with his hands on my shoulders.

“You're crying,” he said. “Why?”

I shook my head. The word “rapture” was on my self-improvement vocabulary list. I had learned what it was supposed to mean, lying there flat on the same page as “rapacious” and “rapid transit.” But I had never imagined that I'd experience it. As if I was about to die, the history of my life spooled out against the tear-blurred landscape of Central Park. All those childhood nights with my ear stuck to the radio by my pillow, clinging desperately to some dream I couldn't even begin to describe. Furtive hours with Amadoofus, alternating Bach with Billy Joel so I wouldn't irritate my father and risk losing my piano lessons. The lonely, exhausting, thrilling years at Juilliard. It all seemed to lead to this sun-drenched room and this man whose music was like an embrace. I was crying with joy and with the fear that this was the first and last time I would ever feel this way.

I wiped my eyes and stood up, hoping to get out of there before I made even more of an ass of myself.

“Will you come again?” David asked.

I liked that he didn't press me to explain my overwrought state. “Of course,” I answered. “I'll come.”

He walked me to the elevator. My legs were wobbly stems that barely held me up.

“I think I'd better put you in a taxi,” David said.

“No. No. I'm fine.” I needed to walk, to breathe cool air, to remember everything, every note, every chord.

“I have to be in Paris for a few days,” he said. “I'll phone you when I get back.”

He leaned down to give me a kiss on the cheek. He had a clean smell, like laundry drying in the sun. Then I took the elevator and headed for the park. As I walked north, I had the sensation that I was shedding, that there was trash trailing in my wake: dry husks of fear, anger, loneliness—there they go, litter in the breeze, twisting higher and higher above the city trees to blow out to sea and vanish.

The sensation of nakedness made me tremble even more, so I sat down on a bench by the pond and watched a little boy feed the ducks. He kept shouting to his nanny in French. David might have looked like that once upon a time, the dark swatch of hair and tanned skin. The trembling didn't stop. As I gazed around me, it seemed that it wasn't just me. The entire world was vibrating, the leaves, the clouds in the sky, everything was humming. The words of the song were simple enough. They merely confirmed what I'd known for a while.

“Bess is in love,” they said. “Bess is in love.”

And that's how it all began.

W
henever anything important happened in my life, the first thing I did was spill it all to Jake Minello and my sister Angelina. Strangely enough though, I didn't feel like telling anybody about this thing with David. I thought about him constantly and in silence for three days, which for me was the equivalent of about thirty years. But by Saturday, it was getting too heavy to hang on to by myself. I hopped on the Long Island Railroad for the hour-long trip past everybody's backyard barbeques and August-fried gardens.

Rocky Beach isn't rocky unless you count the veteran's memorial boulder in front of the bank, and the beach is a mile from town. Jake told me the name came from a Native American word—
roshibak,
or something like that, but he was probably bullshitting me, which was one of Jake's primary forms of entertainment. Anyway, the first thing I always did when I got off the train was to stop by the firehouse. It's not that I was wild to see my father, who'd been working there for twenty-five years. Our relationship was what I guess you'd call contentious, but the other guys felt like family. I had a Jewish boyfriend once who every time he walked into his apartment touched this thing called a mezuzah, a religious decoration nailed to the door frame. Stopping by the firehouse was my way of tapping the mezuzah. It made me feel more like I was home than when I was home.

“Yo, Bess, whassup?” Corny O'Halloran was six-four and three hundred pounds. Unless he was off somewhere fighting fires, he sat by the door reading James Joyce, drinking tea from a china cup, and dunking a doughnut with his pinky sticking out. Corny thought my father didn't put enough emphasis on education (zero isn't a lot) so when I was little he used to make me repeat the multiplication tables and the state capitals. I love it when they do state capitals on
Jeopardy.
I absolutely rock. Anyhow, if I got everything right, Corny would fish into his shirt pocket and reward me with toffees that were very excellent at yanking out loose teeth. When I got older, I started baby-sitting for his daughter Mary Louise, who had cerebral palsy. It was hard work, and sad. I didn't like getting paid for it but Corny insisted. What I did was recycle by buying presents for Mary Louise with the money. Corny never found out as far as I know.

“You're always a knockout,” Corny said. “But I've gotta say, today you look like you swallowed a beauty pill.”

I felt different, that's for sure, and it was on the tip of my tongue about David when my father ambled in from the bunk room, rubbing his face, which meant he'd been sleeping and would be crankier than usual. Suddenly my stomach felt like it was trying to digest a rock, and talking about being in love was the furthest thing from my mind.

“Did you get me the aftershave?” he asked, ruffling my hair, which always made me feel six years old and just about as helpless.

“Well, hello to you too, Dad,” I said.

“You know what, Dutch?” Corny said to my father. “You're a pain in the rectillium.” He rolled his eyes at me and went off to the kitchen, where life begins and ends in any firehouse. My father's nickname refers to the fact that his mother was Dutch. Looking at his square blond face, you'd never guess there was even a teaspoon of marinara sauce in his blood.

He pointed a finger the size of a cigar at me. “Hey, I'm working six days a week here,” he said. “You got nothing better to do so far as I know.” He started leafing through the
Daily News
that was always on the table.

“One, you're not working, you're napping,” I said. “And two, last I knew there's a Duane Reade in Elmont.” The rock in my stomach melted into lava and started to bubble. I hated to let him see he was getting to me. It gave him too much satisfaction.

“Don't go getting high and mighty on me, girl.” He picked up another chair like it was made of toothpicks and set it down so he could put his feet up. He hadn't given me more than a glance.

“Three, I'm not living at home,” I said. “I don't have to do your errands anymore.”

He finally looked at me out of his beefy face. I had to admit he was physically imposing in the bulky menacing way of your basic albino grizzly bear.

“You watch your mouth,” he muttered. “And tell your mother I'll be home about four.” He opened the newspaper to Ann Landers and made a show of ignoring me. I stood there for a minute, trying to figure out why his favorite column usually featured complaints about people like him. It was hard to remember that once upon a time we had been capable of having fun together. Then I took the aftershave out of my bag, plunked it down on the table, and left. He didn't thank me.

It was a tribute to how far gone I was that I'd only made it a few steps when I forgot about being pissed at my father and started daydreaming about David Montagnier again. I was taking a bow with him from the stage at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. We were holding hands and David was giving me a private signal, squeezing my hand in the “shave-and-a-haircut” rhythm which he probably doesn't even know about since he was brought up in France, or so my extensive research told me. But suddenly somebody grabbed me from behind. I figured it was Dad so I swung around, ready for trouble.

“Uh
oh,” my sister said. She had an armload of books. “I guess I know where you just were.”

“When they build the asshole museum, he'll be the star attraction.”

“You'll be out of here by then.” Angie's conversational style took some getting used to. I knew she didn't mean I'd be gone by the time they built the museum, only before Dutch got home at four o'clock. Angie made leaps and didn't bother to fill you in. She paid me back for the effort to keep up by supplying me with vocabulary words. She fell into step with me as the noon whistle blew. It used to be a B-flat but over the years it had slipped down to an A. These days they could tune an orchestra to it.

“I don't know how you stand living with him,” I told her.

“Oh, I was found in a basket,” she said. Meaning that Dutch considered her an outsider because she didn't look like anyone else in the family. Mumma and I and all the cousins were brown-eyed with brown hair but Angie had silky black hair and gray eyes. Her skin was pale. It was true that my father pretty much left Angie alone, which sometimes hurt her feelings, but she was better off looking breakable. Dutch was the kind of bully who only picked on people he knew could give him a contest, like me. There was nobody else who came in for anywhere near the same kind of shit I had to put up with.

As usual, being around Angelina had already calmed me down. For being only eighteen, she was a very wise person. The need to tell her about David was suddenly physical, like when you have a tickle in your throat and absolutely have to cough it out or you'll choke to death.

“Angie, don't go in yet,” I said. “I've got something to say.” I reached for her books. She never looked as if she was strong enough to lift a paper towel. “I'm in love. I'm crazed. I'm a total goner.”

She was silent for a moment. I appreciated her grave expression, her instant understanding that this time I wasn't kidding around. “Are you going to tell me who with?” she asked.

“David Montagnier,” I said.

“Not the real one,” Angie replied, with such total confidence that I burst out laughing.

“Oh, he's real all right. He has beautiful feet.”

“Already?”

“No, I haven't slept with him. We played two-piano stuff in his apartment. Honey, it was way better than sex.”

She looked at me in disbelief. Her Bess professing that anything was better than sex?

“Are you two just going to stand out there?” Mumma yelled, leaning out the front door. “Lunch is ready!” She wore her old faded apron, a housedress, and beat-up slippers. I was irritated already. This was not the 'fifties. This was not Iran. She should go back to school already and become a person.

“Coming!” I called back. And she should tell my father to go fuck himself.

“You can't leave me in suspense,” Angie said.

“We'll walk to the beach after lunch,” I said. “Is Jake coming?”

“He'll be sweaty.” Meaning he'd be stopping by after his jog. Jake had free reign in our house. His favorite towel, the big wraparound one, was kept laundered and ready on a peg in the bathroom so he could shower after his runs.

We hurried up the crumbling steps. It was a two-family house that we shared with the Schultzes in a long-term relationship that resembled a good marriage, better than either of the actual unions on either side of the front porch.

Mumma was dragging a big platter of ziti out of the oven. “Jesus, Mumma,” I said, “it's only about four hundred degrees in here. You couldn't throw together a little Caesar salad and call it a day?”

We kissed right on the mouth, which is another Stallone thing. We all do that, even Dad when he isn't in a piss-poor mood. Then I held her away to check her out. Same brown curly hair, brown eyes, and suntanned face. As usual, she seemed blurred, out of focus. Sometimes I thought she'd decided to be a symbolic Italian mother instead of a real person.

“Come sit down, girls,” she said. “We'll have a nice ladies' lunch.”

We sat at the cramped table in the kitchen. Angie was shooting me wide-eyed looks as I rambled on about running into Pauline Sabatino in Bloomingdale's, which was only the sixth time she'd ever been to Manhattan. We were both thinking about David Montagnier but I was certainly not going to mention him to my mother. She didn't get the music thing, but she knew a star when she saw one and David definitely qualified. First thing, she'd be on the phone to all her relatives in Sheepshead Bay.

“Have you played in any concerts this week?” Mumma asked me. She wasn't really interested, but it was nice of her to make the gesture.

“No, nothing much going on,” I told her, and tried to look enthusiastic about the ziti she'd heaped on my plate. It had olives in it, which she knew I loved, but the view from David Montagnier's window was floating in front of my eyes. I blinked to make the picture go away. Angie was gawking at me with a face full of questions.

“You look flushed, Bess,” Mumma said. “Have you been wearing sunblock? I could swear you're running a fever.”

The front door slammed. I felt my stomach lurch with the thought that my father had come home early, but then a familiar voice called, “Bess? You here?”

I smiled at Angie. “Nope!” I yelled back. So much for the ladies' lunch.

Jake appeared in the doorway, half-naked and dripping wet from a run on the beach. He was medium height with a great body, the sight of which ordinarily produced a little electric buzz in my most important spots. It interested me that I didn't feel it this time. He bent over to give me a kiss, also on the lips but with a little lingering, semifake groan like he couldn't tear himself away. We'd been doing this routine since seventh grade, and except for once, it never went any further. Jake and I did better as friends. I wanted to tell him then and there:
Jake, you'll never believe, something huge has happened.
Mumma handed him a plate, pressed him into my father's seat, and went down to the cellar for more soda.

“You in love or what?” he asked me.

I gaped at him. “What makes you say that?”

“I wasn't born yesterday.”

“Shh,” I hissed as Mumma emerged with a six-pack of Coke.

Jake reached out and gave me a pinch at waist level. “Putting on a little weight?”

“Fuck you,” I said genially. My mother used to nag me about my language but she gave up when she realized she couldn't compete with the guys at the firehouse.

“Do you get any vacation this month?” Mumma asked Jake. He was working full-time in construction and taking courses for his master's in education at the state university. Jake was the kind of person who could teach a mathematical idiot—me—to understand calculus. Patient, clear, and in no rush.

“Yeah, today,” he said with a grin, and then looked pointedly at Angie. “So?” he said.

“What?” she said.

“So have you heard anything, dummy?”

Angie shot him a look that said, Shut
up.

“About what?” I wanted to know.

“The SATs,” Jake said.

“Which SATs?” Mumma asked.

A tiny smile fought with the irritation on Angie's face. The pale pink spots that showed up on her cheeks were her definition of a blush.

“You aced 'em,” Jake guessed.

“725 in math and 760 in English,” she admitted, almost as if she was ashamed of herself.

I got up out of my chair and scooped her into a hug. “You genius!” Out there on Planet Montagnier, I'd forgotten all about my sister's scores.

Angie shoved me back in my chair and said, “It's not a good idea.”

I knew what she meant but Mumma needed help. “To tell Dutch,” Jake explained.

There was silence while this sank in, and then Mumma said, “I suppose that would be best.” My father wanted Angie to go to computer school, where with her brains he thought she'd have the best chance at making big bucks. Angie wanted to study literature. Those test scores were going to rock my father's rowboat till it took on water.

After lunch, Mumma told us she'd clean up if we wanted to go to the beach. “I don't have anything to do anyway,” she said with a hint of resentment that annoyed me. I knew there was no point in offering to help her because she'd only refuse.

From long habit, the three of us always walked in the same pattern, me in the middle, Jake to my right, and Angie to my left. We'd been doing that for so many years that if somebody switched positions, we could hardly talk to each other. Heat was shimmering over the sidewalk. Weeds looking for water pushed up through the cracks and fried. My blood was boiling anyhow from not talking about David. I felt bad enough that I'd been so preoccupied I hadn't remembered to ask Angie about her SATs. I figured as soon as we put some space between us and Mumma, I'd be spilling my guts about David Montagnier but for some reason, I couldn't. It was almost a mile to the beach and whoever was brave enough to be out on their tiny patch of lawn waved or said hello. Funny about Rocky Beach. I'd lived there all my life and part of me felt completely at home. But my musical side, well, that was a different story altogether. There was only one person who truly understood what I was all about, which was Mrs. Fasio. And, of course, the entire population of Rocky Beach thought she was a freak. So I waved back and thought, Nice to see you, but you don't know me.