An American Tune

by Barbara Shoup

  I was afraid . . .

  You were always afraid, you haven’t changed. So are you ever going to do anything about it? You know something? I’m glad Pete saw you. I’m glad everything fell apart because maybe, maybe you’ll open your freaking eyes and see what you’ve seen all along. You hold all the cards with Tom, you always held all the cards with Tom. You decide.

  But I did decide. I chose Charlie.

  Bridget went silent then, leaving her alone to contemplate the wreck she’d made of her life, the hurt that could never be undone. “Who loves me?” Charlie had asked that night in the Hummingbird Café when she had told him everything. “Isn’t that the real problem? I don’t know who you are.”

  The first week of February, Nora sat at the bar at The Regulator, nursing a bottle of beer, half-watching Tom play pool with Pete, half-watching Colin Powell on the television mounted in the corner of the room. The contrast fascinated her: Tom, in jeans and a sweatshirt, leaning over the pool table, cue poised, utterly absorbed in the game; Powell, in his dark suit and red power tie, leaning into the camera, his index finger raised in accusation.

  “This terror network is teaching its operatives how to produce Ricin and other poisons,” Powell said. “Let me remind you how Ricin works. Less than a pinch – imagine a pinch of salt . . .” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “Less than a pinch of Ricin – eating just this amount in your food – would cause shock, followed by circulatory failure. Death comes within seventy-two hours, and there is no antidote. There is no cure. It is fatal.”

  “This is such total bullshit,” Nora said. “He should be ashamed.”

  The woman sitting next to her raised her beer, tipped it toward Nora. “Asshole,” she said.

  When the pool game was over, Tom pulled up a bar stool and sat down. “Goddamn it,” he said, cheerfully. “He beats me every fucking time. Look at him!” He nodded toward Pete, who’d taken on a burly guy in a Harley tee shirt and was moving methodically around the table, making one perfect shot after another. “He’s unconscious.”

  “He’s got a little more time to practice than most people,” Nora said.

  “True.” Tom laughed. “You’ve got a point there.”

  On the television, Colin Powell continued cataloging the imminent dangers to the U.S. The camera panned the curved tables where the UN representatives sat, listening intently, then returned to him. “Given Saddam Hussein’s history of aggression,” he said, “given what we know of his grandiose plans . . .”

  They watched awhile, then the woman sitting next to them said, “The truth is, 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to them. You’ve got to admit it’s brilliant how they’ve used it to scare the shit out of people so they can do whatever they want.”

  Tom shrugged, signaled for another beer. “People are idiots,” he said.

  Powell’s voice disappeared into the buzz of conversation, the laughter, the Eagles playing on the sound system. “Desperado.” Nora remembered driving cross-country alone in one of the awful beater cars she owned after leaving Tom, listening to that song on the radio. When, exactly – or where – she couldn’t remember. Just the chronic ache of loneliness she lived with then, the sense that she belonged nowhere, with no one. That there would never again be a place where she might feel at home. She had turned off the radio that day, driven on for miles in absolute silence. Afterward, if she listened to the radio, she tuned to a station with music that carried no memories with it. Then all those years with Charlie, the radio tuned to classical music on NPR.

  She thought of him now, saw him sitting in his favorite chair, oblivious to everything except Beethoven or the Bach Goldberg Variations he so loved booming from the stereo, as loud as he wanted it to be – and Charlie loved music loud. It was a trait Nora had always found odd and endearing in a person who lived so quietly, most comfortable in the shadows, and some part of her longed for the countless evenings she’d spent sitting near him, a book in her lap, abandoned to the beauty of the music surrounding them.

  “You got quiet,” Tom said, walking home. “I know. What’s to say? Jesus, though, I’m beginning to feel like I could be a bona fide revolutionary this time. You know what we need here, don’t you? The draft. Call up all those chicken-shit Congressmen’s kids and the kids of all these corporate CEOs set to make billions of dollars on government contracts. Call up the fucking Bush twins, for that matter –”

  Nora stopped. “It’s not that. Iraq.”

  Tom stopped, too. “What then?” he asked.

  “I was thinking about Charlie,” she said. “Thinking he was probably listening to music while that speech was going on, probably still is, right now, and maybe he’ll turn the late news on and hear about it, but probably he won’t. And he’s always going to be that way. It’s a big part of what I loved about him, you know? Our world together was so small and safe. But that’s not really love, is it?

  “Or not enough. Not now. Even if I wanted to go back, even if I wanted to try to work things out, the fact remains that I lied to him about who I was. I can’t fix that; I don’t think he can forgive me for it. I lied to myself, marrying him when I knew how I would always, always feel about you. Which is the real problem, isn’t it? That still I love you. That I can’t lie to myself about it anymore. I can’t –”

  “Jane.” He drew her to him, brushed her lips with his fingertips to quiet her, then kissed her – and she fell back into her body, came home to it, only then realizing, how fully she had been away.

  28

  “The Sunshine of Your Love”

  On a shelf in Tom’s basement there was a box marked “Jane,” filled with the things she’d left behind the night of the bombing. Her birth certificate, her high school yearbooks, her college diploma. The leather ring binder she’d splurged on her freshman year, worn from years of use, neatly organized with notes from her last semester of classes – and extra packages of paper, narrow-ruled. Yellowed with age. A dozen or so battered, annotated paperbacks she had particularly loved, an odd assortment – everything from Pride and Prejudice to Black Like Me. The hardback copy of Little Women a favorite uncle had given her for Christmas when she was in the fourth grade, its thin pages worn as soft as cloth from reading and rereading it. The ratty, washed-out IU sweatshirt she’d bought when she was a freshman and had never been able to part with.

  Photographs. Fraternity dances: Tom and herself, Bridget and Pete, arms wound around each other, grinning. Pictures of herself with Bridget mugging for the camera, time passing in the clothes they wore – wheat jeans and madras shirts to embroidered bell-bottom jeans and hippy blouses. One Bridget had taken at Bean Blossom: Tom standing behind Jane, his arms wrapped around her, Lake Lemon shimmering in the background, ringed by trees in autumn color. They leaned into the frame of the picture, sun-struck, smiling.

  There were Bobby’s letters and the letter Daniel Pettus had sent to her when her student teaching was done, the brown, ruled paper it was written on crinkled at the edges. There were class pictures from every year she’d taught, the reports on ancient Egypt she’d meant to grade over Christmas break, still in the canvas bag she carried back and forth to school each day. The sight of the children’s handwriting, their voices on the page brought them back to her so vividly – and the sorrow she had felt at disappearing so suddenly and completely from their lives. They were grown now, well into their thirties. What had become of them?

  She and Tom had kissed their way home that first night, hesitating only for a moment before going inside. “Jesus,” he said. “I feel like I did that day I went over to the dorm to see if you really wanted to go out with me.”

  She smiled. “I did want to,” she said. “What I’m thinking about is that first time, at Pete’s. Remember that?”

  He kissed her again, turned the key in the lock. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I remember.”

  They made love, slept, finally, in each other’s arms – Maxine, curled up at the foot of the bed, having observed them intently throu
gh it all, her head cocked, as if to say, “What’s going on here, anyway?”

  The next morning, Tom had brought the box up from the basement and set it before her. Opening it, taking out the objects one by one, Nora felt like an archaeologist of her own life. Each thing Tom had saved, an artifact that might have been lost forever. Each one a small, tangible piece of what her life once was – and might have been.

  The sight of the children’s handwriting had brought back winter mornings in her classroom, the sense of anticipation she’d always felt as the yellow school buses pulled into the parking lot. The pure joy of the children entering the room, surrounding her like a flock of beautiful birds. She remembered in her body the utter confidence she had felt teaching, the knowledge that being with the children was the single thing in her whole life that was absolutely good and right – and she was struck with an overpowering sense of loss for what she had believed would be her life’s work. Washed with longing for that place and time, the sense of purpose and possibility she’d felt in her classroom, the lives of her students in her hands.

  “You can teach again, if you want to,” Tom said, when she dissolved into tears trying to explain this. “You have a savings account, remember? And nearly thirty years of interest on whatever was in it. More than enough to take any classes you’d need to take to renew your license.”

  She was shocked to realize the money was still there, taken aback by the possibility of resuming a teaching career after all these years – and cried harder.

  “Jane,” Tom said. “Nora. Nora. You can do anything. Nothing. I don’t care. I’m just saying the money’s there for when you need it.”

  “But I don’t know what I want to do. I can’t even imagine –”

  “You don’t have to. You know you’ve got the money; we’ll go from there.”

  We, Nora thought – and remembered how, to Tom, they had been “we” from the start.

  “I’m coming,” Diane said, when Nora finally told her that she’d moved down to Tom’s house. “I mean, is it okay if I come? I’m going to Chicago to see Henry this weekend, how about if I come down afterward? Nora, we need to talk.”

  When she got there late Sunday afternoon, she hugged Nora hard. Letting go, she held out her hand to Tom. “Listen,” she said. “I’m not here to try to drag her back to Michigan, in case that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “No,” he said. “No, I didn’t think that.”

  But something changed in his face that made Nora think that, until that moment, he had. “Can I get you a beer?” he asked Diane. “A glass of wine?”

  “A beer would be fabulous. First, though –” She took a small photo album from the depths of her bag and held it out to him. “You’ll want to fully admire Henry, the wonder-child.”

  He laughed, paged through it obediently, Nora peering over his shoulder.

  “Clearly a genius,” he pronounced.

  “He’s perfect.” Nora smiled.

  “Well,” Diane said. “I knew it was the right thing to drive down here and see you.” And had them laughing within minutes, telling about Mo’s encounter with her ex-husband, Bob.

  “They instantly took against each other, no surprise, but I’m sitting there watching the two of them glower at each other, thinking, Hey, Bob, asshole, you’re the one who dropped in with no invitation, why don’t you just get the hell out of here, and it suddenly strikes me as hilarious that the two great loves of my life are Republicans. Not that Bob was exactly – oh, well. You know what I mean. I married him, for whatever that’s worth. Though I was pregnant,” she added, to Tom.

  “Still. I do vaguely remember being in love with him. Or misplaced lust. Whatever.

  “Mo’s coming around, though,” she went on. “God knows, I’ve been working on her night and day. Even she admits the Colin Powell thing was a debacle. And the Brits and their phony dossier? Totally absurd. I’ll tell you, though. Northern Michigan is full of ‘patriots.’ Every other car with a flag stuck on it somewhere and those idiotic bumper stickers.”

  “They’re everywhere,” Tom said.

  They walked to the square for dinner, Diane and Tom still talking about Iraq, Nora happy at the new sound their familiar voices mingling made.

  “I just needed to see you with him,” Diane said to Nora over coffee in Tom’s kitchen after he’d gone to work the next morning. “I couldn’t think about you, I couldn’t think about anything until –” Her voice went wobbly. “I like him. Tom. You’re different with him. It’s like you’re standing in the sun. But what are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know what to do. All I know is I can’t even think about walking away from him again, I don’t want to think about it. But I don’t know what that means. And I feel so horrible about –” Nora took a deep breath, blew it out. “Tell me about Charlie,” she said.

  “There’s not much to tell,” Diane said. “He won’t talk about it, not even to Mo. He goes on through the days the way he always has, except you’re not there. He keeps Astro with him all the time, that’s the only thing different. It’s awful, you know? Not that I’m saying –”

  “What? It’s not my fault? I should go back? It is my fault; I should go back. I have to, eventually. I know that. But –”

  “It’s Claire I’m worried about,” Diane said. “That’s the other reason I came. She won’t talk to you, I have no idea what she and Charlie talk about, if they’ve talked about this at all, and both Mo and I are afraid she’ll come home for spring break and be shocked by the shape he’s in. Plus, somebody needs to see her, see how she is.

  “Do you think she’d talk to me?” she went on. “I mean, what if I just call her? I’m her co-godmother, for Pete’s sake. What’s she going to do, hang up on me?”

  “She might,” Nora said.

  “Well, if she does, she does.”

  “Go for it,” Nora said. “It can’t hurt to give it a try.”

  Diane took out her cell phone, hit Claire’s number on speed dial.

  “Hey, Claire,” she said, after a few moments. “It is. Well, I just knew you were probably thinking, why doesn’t somebody call me up and give me a full report on that baby! Oh, my gosh, Claire, he is so – amazing.” She described Henry, laughed. “Of course, it would be virtually impossible for any child to be cuter than you were, but I’ve got to say he’s right up there. I can’t wait for you to see him. Honey, how are you?”

  She was quiet a while, listening. “Mmmm,” she said, occasionally. Or, “I know.”

  Nora got up, poured another cup of coffee, straightened the newspaper Tom had left on the table.

  “Listen, can I come see you?” Diane asked. “I probably should have said this right off, but I was just so glad to hear your voice and I – well, I’m here, in Bloomington. With your mom.” She glanced at Nora, raised an eyebrow hopefully.

  Then she said, “It’s okay. I totally understand. I’ll come alone. Just tell me where.” She paused. “Right. I’m sure I can find it.”

  Diane punched the “off” button and put the phone back in her bag. “We’re meeting in an hour. At the Student Union, in the Commons, wherever that is.”

  “Oh, God,” Nora said. “That’s where I met Tom.”

  “Well,” Diane said. “I sure as hell won’t tell her that. So, okay, let’s get dressed and walk ourselves into some kind of state of – okay, calm would be too much to ask. We’ll just walk. Then you can take me to the Commons and we’ll figure out a place to meet afterwards.

  “How did she sound?” Nora asked.

  Diane shrugged. “A little lost. Pissed. But –”

  “I know,” Nora said. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  They set out walking soon afterwards, bundled up in their parkas. It was overcast and gray, the cars on Kirkwood Avenue filthy with the salt and slush kicked up from the street. The Petoskey stone Nora had picked up the morning she met Tom on the beach was still in her pocket. She’d forgotten to throw it back into the lake. She fing
ered it now, wondering what Lake Michigan looked like this morning. Blue, silver, green, gray. She thought about how in the coldest weather ice balls – some as big as snowmen – formed near the shore, bobbling in the water, how the beach looked marbled sometimes, tan and white with melting snow.

  They’d walked through the campus gates by then. There was the old library, where she and Tom had studied sometimes that first year. The Student Union, Wylie Hall, where she had sat enthralled, listening to Professor Berkowitz lecture about The Canterbury Tales. Past Ballantine Hall, they took the path down through the woods that Nora used to walk to class from her dorm. No voices, no scales coming from the closed windows of the music building. The greenhouse windows at Jordan Hall were fogged over, showing only the occasional gargantuan palm leaf pressed against the glass. Students hurried past them, bent into the cold.

  They made their way back to the Union twenty minutes before Claire would arrive. There was music playing on the jukebox in the Commons – something Nora didn’t recognize. Dim light seeped in through the narrow leaded windows, slanting wanly across the wooden tables.

  “Where were you?” Diane asked. “When you met Tom?”

  “Where the Burger King kitchen is now. They’ve changed everything. He and Pete went out that same revolving door over there just after I met him, though. I remember that. And Bridget and I being all whipped up into a frenzy because they’d just asked us to a party at the fraternity house the next night.”

  “God, do you believe how fucking old we are?” Diane asked.

  They arranged to meet at the Starbucks just across from the university gates when Diane was finished talking with Claire. Nora couldn’t just go sit, though. She walked a while longer, glad for the raw, wet wind that made her face sting. She wished she had thought to bring Tom’s iPod, which she’d borrowed other mornings when she walked. He had hundreds of old songs on it that played randomly. She never knew what would come up, what memories would come with it. If they were too painful, all she had to do was touch the button for a new song and the memories it brought, which – with luck – would be happier, or at least easier to bear.