Rhapsody

by Mitchell James Kaplan

  The hefty workload distracted her from her loneliness now that George was back in L.A. She and Al shared an office suite halfway up the RCA Building and got along famously. Strolling to work in high heels, a leopard coat, and a matching hat, her clutch bag tucked under her arm, she was now “a recognizable fixture on Broadway,” as Popular Songs magazine put it in a feature article devoted to her, with a picture on the cover under the banner: “She Is the Envy of Songwriters Everywhere.”

  Sometimes she worked all night. Other evenings, she brought her sketches home. Her apartment was so quiet these days. She fixed herself a martini and collapsed on the sofa wondering what George was doing at that moment.

  * * *

  Kay phoned Washington every week to ask about the girls, to speak with them and share sorrows and laughter. Andrea and Kathleen visited every month. They spent happy moments together in ice cream shops and concert halls—ironically, moments more joyous than before the divorce. But April refused any encounter. Sometimes Kay and Jimmy conversed, but like April, he did not wish to see her. “Perhaps in six months or a year we’ll all get past the disappointment,” he said.

  From the tabloids, Kay learned about Jimmy’s engagement to a certain Phyllis and of George’s flirtations or possible affairs in Los Angeles. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. She ruminated about the future Mrs. Warburg’s—Phyllis’s—interactions with her daughters. She closed her eyes and listened to her breathing and then dived back into her work.

  Late one night the phone rang. She was half asleep. A dreamless snooze. Who in her mad world could be calling her at this hour?

  “Kay?”

  She had not heard from him in weeks. “George! It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “I’m feeling droopy, Kay. So droopy and burned. This place is not home. I’m tired. How’s life in the City? And you, how are things going at RCA?”

  “You know me, George. Working. Coping. The city looks beautiful these days.”

  “These movie fellas, they can have their swimming pools, their motorcars, their starlets. It ain’t New York. You can’t even get a decent pastrami sandwich here.”

  She smiled. “On rye with mustard? From a guy named Meier?”

  “I miss you, Kay.” He said it with such gravitas she felt fearful.

  Her voice softened. “Oh, George, I miss you too.”

  “Plenty of lookers here but you’re one in a million.”

  “Ah, yes. Lookers!” said Kay. “Like that siren, Paulette Goddard and… who was it? Simone Simon. What a name!”

  “Listen, Kay, I’ve been thinking.”

  “How are Fred and Ginger?”

  “They’re the new Fred and Adele. As I was saying—”

  “—that I was one in a million? Only one in a million, George?”

  “I’m through with it all. The dames, the games…”

  “Is that a promise? What’s your plan?”

  “I’m beat. That’s the long and short of it.”

  “I’m here, George. How are the headaches?”

  “The other day it smacked me hard. Middle of the New York Concerto. San Francisco. The whole city was there. The mayor. Abe and Mabel Gump. Walter and Elise Haas. I’m about to play my cadenza and, boom! Everything’s gone. I forget where I am, what I’m doing.”

  She missed a heartbeat. The phone line filled with sadness. She was lost in a dark field staring at a moonless sky.

  “I’m finished, Kay.”

  She closed her eyes, biting her lips.

  “You’ll never be finished, George. Don’t talk like that.”

  “Too much pressure. Too many years. What have I been trying to prove?”

  “Whatever it is,” said Kay, “you’ve proven it. But that doesn’t mean you’re finished. Just another phase.”

  “I just want to sew up this contract and fly home. To settle down. To write music at my own tempo. Rubato. Maybe in Valhalla, like Sergei. Would you like that?”

  “Me? Wherever you like, George,” said Kay.

  “’Cause if I get my way, you’re going to be Misses George Gershwin.” He almost whispered it.

  She had given up hoping to hear these words.

  “Kay? You there, Kay?”

  A lump was obstructing her throat. She wiped her eyes, thankful he could not see her.

  “Kay?”

  “Valhalla, Peru, wherever you like. Oh, George, George, you rascal.”

  “Let’s not waste any more time, my love.”

  “I’m ready,” said Kay.

  “It’s late now in New York, isn’t it. I didn’t wake you, did I? What a knucklehead I am.”

  “The best wakeup call I ever received.”

  “Go back to sleep, then.”

  “Good night to you, too, George.”

  “Good night, my love.”

  She let her tears flow. She had reached a turning point. She had failed in many ways but succeeded beyond her dreams in others. Soon George and she would be reunited. This time for real. The girls would visit at their country house. They would ride horses. Certainly Andrea and Kathleen, and with time April, too. They would squabble. They would reconcile. They would delight in each other’s company in a new place, at a new rhythm. She would atone for her sins. And all would be forgiven.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  JULY 11, 1937

  In the distance, the rising howl of a siren, calling to mind the klezmer-style clarinet wail at the beginning of George’s Rhapsody. And in that lament, so much humor, so much melody, so much pain. Kay opened the ashtray in the door handle of the black DeSoto and snuffed out her cigarette. The rain abated as she rolled into the Upper East Side. Fewer pedestrians here. “Shall We Dance” playing in her head. Dah-da-daah, da da da dah dah. Dah-da-dah. Da da da deee. So George. She closed her eyes to listen. But why this dread?

  In her apartment the telephone was ringing. Apprehensive, she ran to pick it up. It was Ira. “Kay, where have you been?” His voice weak, unsteady. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “I was watching Shall We Dance in the theater. What is it, Ira?”

  A pause.

  “It’s about George,” Kay heard herself say. She covered her mouth as if stifling a wail.

  “George is gone, Kay.”

  She held onto the telephone stand. “What are you saying?”

  “Last night,” said Ira. “He… he passed away.”

  She swallowed. “But I… I just talked to him last night.”

  “I know. He called me. Couldn’t stop talking about you. About settling down. A new phase. New songs. New everything.”

  The phone fell from her hand. All her hopes. All their plans. She heard Ira’s voice in the distance. “He went to the piano. Wrote a song. For you, Kay.”

  She brought the receiver back to her ear. “Ira. Ira. What happened?”

  “He must have stood up and passed out, just like that. Left the song on the piano. Never came out of it. Brain tumor.”

  Brain tumor? “How can that be? He was healthy. So much energy.”

  “He seemed healthy. But those headaches…”

  “Oh, God.” So it was not neurosis, after all.

  “They called the White House. Tracked down the best surgeon in the country. Too late.” Ira was sobbing. Kay leaned against the wall, trying to absorb the news.

  * * *

  The phone rang continuously but she ignored it. Nor did she venture out. She spoke only with Ira. They arranged to have George’s body flown east. Olin Downes, long George’s detractor, wrote the front-page obituary that appeared in the New York Times:

  No other American composer had such a funeral service. Not a MacDowell, not a Chadwick, not a Stephen Foster or Dan Emmett or John Philip Sousa received such parting honors. Authors, editors, playwrights, and critics; national figures of the stage, the screen, the radio, the ballet; celebrated musicians, from Paul Whiteman to Walter Damrosch, composers as well as executants, gathered to say hail and farewell. This was eloquen
t of the place Gershwin held in the public esteem… He was a born melodist, with a native instinct for exotic harmonic effects and rhythmical ingenuity… Jazz gained a new consideration with Gershwin, and Gershwin, in turn, contributed individual genius to the form. When the tumult and shouting are over, he will have a secure place in the American tonal art.

  Memorial programs played George’s music from morning until night nationwide. Arnold Schoenberg, Irving Berlin, and Jerome Kern published tributes. The New York Herald Tribune printed details about the valuation of Gershwin’s intellectual property. Some of his individual works were worth tens of thousands of 1937 dollars based on projected future sales. Of all his compositions and songs, the least consequential, in strict financial terms, was deemed to be Porgy and Bess. That entire score was valued at twenty dollars. In his will, George expressed the desire that it never be performed except by an all-Negro cast. No blackface.

  Simultaneous funeral services were held on both coasts. The synagogues filled to capacity and thousands of mourners stood outside in the rain in New York.

  Kay entered Temple Emanu-El. A sea of mourners filled the hall and side rooms. Paul Mueller led her down the carpeted central aisle. Midway through the synagogue, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see Jimmy. All three of their daughters stood at his side. “I am so sorry, Kay.” He blinked twice. She nodded. He embraced her and caressed her hair the way a father soothes his tearful daughter. They stood there for a long moment, indifferent to the gaze of others. Finally he moved to accommodate his daughters. Andrea threw her arms around Kay, crying. April pushed Andrea aside to hug her mother. She kissed her daughter’s forehead. She patted Kathleen’s hair.

  At the front of the viewing line, she stood beside Ira. He squeezed her hand as he wept. George lay in his mahogany coffin dressed in his pin-striped gray flannel suit, his favorite—his hands clasped on his belly, his face serene, the hint of a smile on his lips. The mortician had pomaded his hair, rouged his thirty-eight-year-old cheeks, and inserted a red carnation in his lapel and a silk square in his breast pocket. George would have hated the painted cheeks and the carnation. Kay leaned down to offer him one last kiss, pulled the flower from his lapel, and threw it to the ground. No one reacted. She wiped her tears from his cheeks and whispered, “Good night, my sweet love.”

  On the bimah, Ella Logan sang George’s last song. The one he was drafting after his phone call to Kay. The one he had dedicated to her. Ira titled it “Love Is Here To Stay.” Looking regal and fragile, Kay Swift listened, her face drenched in tears behind her dark veil.

  In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble,

  They’re only made of clay,

  But our love is here to stay.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  History is the rough draft. Our minds do not easily assimilate its raw form. It is messy, often chaotic. We yearn for catharsis, and that is a matter of form as well as content.

  A good historical novel differs from most good “narrative nonfiction” in three respects: gaps in the historical record are filled in; more emphasis is placed on subjective human experience; dialogue and thoughts are provided. Some historical novelists place a premium on entertainment value, others on authenticity, yet others on style. I think of all these aspects as interconnected and consider it my obligation to value them equally. Similarly, some write intimate novels that just happen to be set in the past, while others write epic novels that fill broad tableaux with names and intersecting story lines. Again, I try to provide both the small frame and the context, but in a streamlined and concise way.

  The job of the historical novelist is to comb out the noise, find the dramatic arc, and shape events into a psychologically and emotionally cogent argument. Inevitably, this involves some reorganization of the raw material. I strive to modify the order of events as minimally as possible. However, storytelling remains paramount. As a result I have had to shift some events. Among these modifications:

  The meetings with Dr. Zilboorg (who, it seems, did assault Kay sexually) commenced later than as related in this telling, probably in 1934 or 1935. I needed this sequence to build slowly, rather than suddenly.

  Adele Astaire married Charles Cavendish in 1932, a little later than suggested here.

  George Gershwin moved to 33 Riverside Drive in 1929, not in 1932.

  The first time Kay visited George, Paul Mueller did not yet work for him. In fact, it was Kay who convinced George to hire a valet, and found Paul for him.

  George Gershwin dated Paulette Goddard during his second sojourn in Los Angeles, not his first.

  I’m not by any means sure Kay met Faye Hubbard in Reno. But it does seem to me that in certain ways her trip to Reno did set up her later marriage to him.

  I do not know that Gershwin had to provide thirty percent of the budget for Porgy. I have used this round number to dramatize the risk for him, which was considerable.

  The lyrics of “Little White Lies” have been lost, so I made them up.

  Roanoke, Virginia, January 6, 2020

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Jackie Cantor, my editor at Gallery Books, was enormously helpful and always a pleasure to deal with. My cousin Marc Kramer and my college pal Anne Russell read the manuscript and provided sensible, highly appreciated advice. Another college friend, Peter Russell, shared some of his vast knowledge of music, especially insights regarding Porgy and Bess. My wife, Annie, read every draft of the manuscript and offered indispensable comments every step of the way. My mother (who happens to be a professor of literature) also read several drafts and provided helpful comments. Thanks again to all, and to my wonderful friends in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Roanoke, Paris, New York, and elsewhere, who have always been there for me. A special shout-out to Jeff Sacre, who provided encouragement and support in a very different but equally important area of my life.

  My gratitude to my wife, my children, Ariel and Zeke, and my “other son” Jack cannot be overstated.

  My father’s spirit inspired this novel. I will always remember him playing clarinet along with a phonograph record of Rhapsody in Blue, or with Mozart’s elegant and ethereal Clarinet Concerto in A Major, or any of a number of Benny Goodman recordings. Thank you, Dad.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © LILLYMAC PHOTO

  MITCHELL JAMES KAPLAN is the award-winning author of two previous novels: By Fire, By Water and Into the Unbounded Night. A graduate of Yale, he has lived in Paris and Los Angeles, and currently lives with his family in Roanoke, Virginia.

  FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:

  SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Mitchell-James-Kaplan

  SimonandSchuster.com

  @GalleryBooks

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Mitchell James Kaplan

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  First Gallery Books hardcover edition March 2021

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  Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

  Jacket design by Donna Cheng

  Jacket photographs © Lesley Aggar/Trevillion Images and Tom Baril/Getty Images

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-9821-0400-9

  ISBN 978-1-9821-0402-3 (ebook)