Shout Down the Moon

by Lisa Tucker

  After a moment, she takes a long drag. “You upset about something?”

  “I’m just tired.”

  We haven’t been talking much since I came home. She keeps bringing up Rick, and I don’t know what to say. She tried to talk about him almost as soon as I walked in the door, and then again last night after Willie went to bed, and then again this morning over coffee. The first time, I told her, “Come on, Mama, I just got home.” The next time, I said, “Can’t we forget about him for a while?” And today, I said, “You know I have to meet Fred in an hour. Cut me a break, okay? Don’t dredge all this up now.”

  What she wants is simple enough. I’m supposed to listen while she talks about how nervous she is. And then I’m supposed to reassure her that everything will be all right, like I always have before.

  It’s simple, but I just can’t do it. Not after Omaha.

  “What happened to all the pictures of Daddy?” I ask, a minute later. I’m thinking I’ve hit on a topic she’ll like. I noticed yesterday that the photos weren’t on the coffee table, where they always are. I figured she was having them reframed, cleaned, something.

  “I packed them up, put them in the basement.”

  “Really?” I can’t hide my surprise.

  She shrugs. “Willie likes to do his puzzles and coloring on the table. Now he’s got some room to spread out.”

  “Sounds good,” I manage, but I have to look away from her. Is it possible she doesn’t remember the fight we had about this?

  I was seven or eight, and I had a friend over for the first time in months. Everyone wanted to play with Alison because she had dozens and dozens of Barbie dolls. When she suggested using the coffee table for the Barbie doll party, I told her no, but then she said it was creepy to have all these pictures of a dead guy around anyway.

  “Your house is weird,” she concluded.

  I was afraid she’d tell the whole school, so I carefully moved all the pictures of Daddy to the kitchen. I planned to move them back before Mama got home from work, but I was having too much fun. Alison had every Barbie accessory imaginable. Just getting all the dolls dressed for the party had taken hours. I’d lost track of time.

  Mama walked in the door and told Alison to leave. Just like that. “Go home, little girl,” she said, and Alison started crying.

  “You’re mean,” I said, when Alison was gone and Mama was putting the pictures back on the coffee table. I was holding a tiny pink Barbie shoe that Alison had left behind. I was surprised she hadn’t left more things; she’d been in such a rush to get away from my mother.

  “Go to your room,” Mama said. “Right now.”

  I should have gone, but I was too mad. I threw the little shoe at her and repeated that she was mean. I told her that every girl in school had a nicer mother than I did.

  Then she started crying loudly, just like Alison had. She was crying as she shoved me into my room and shut the door. She was crying as she pushed the heavy cedar chest in front of the door, the way she always did, so I couldn’t get out.

  I couldn’t stop saying it though. “You’re mean,” I said through the walls. “You’re mean,” I yelled, when I realized she’d turned on the TV. “You’re mean,” I said, over and over, until I was dizzy and hoarse and half crazy.

  The click of her lighter startles me back to now.

  “You sure you’re not upset about something?” she says.

  I shake my head, and remind myself to focus on the important thing here. She packed up all the pictures of Daddy. I can hardly believe it. Maybe she’s ready to move on with her life, finally. And all because she wants Willie to have a place to play.

  No question about it, my little boy is doing her a world of good.

  When he wakes up from his nap, she insists on getting him. I figure he’ll yell for me anyway, but he doesn’t. A few minutes later, they come into the kitchen holding hands. He tells me Granny promised to give him a peanut butter cookie.

  He’s grinning like he’s getting away with something. Normally, I make him eat grapes for his afternoon snack.

  “You little goofball,” I say, and smile. “Your granny sure is spoiling you.”

  He giggles and stuffs half the cookie into his mouth before he says Granny gave him a present today.

  “He was tickled pink,” Mama tells me, as Willie dashes into his room to get it. “He must have played with it for over an hour.”

  When he comes back, he’s lugging a black Casio synthesizer that’s almost as big as he is. It isn’t full size like Jonathan’s, but it isn’t a toy either.

  “You shouldn’t have spent this kind of money, Mama. It’s not even his birthday.”

  “I got it at a garage sale down the street. It was only fifteen dollars.”

  “But still. He’s only two. He doesn’t need—”

  Willie is yelling. He has the keyboard on the floor and he’s kneeling over it. He wants me to listen.

  I’m surprised he knows how to turn it on. I’m even more surprised when he says, “Jingle Bells,” and pushes a button and it plays “Jingle Bells.” He plays along with it, hitting random notes with one finger and then taking his whole fist and pushing down five or six keys. When he’s finished, I clap and whistle and he’s beaming. Then he says, “I sound like Jonathan?” and I tell him yes, he’s a good little musician.

  “He’s been asking me that all morning,” Mama says. She glances at Willie but he’s hitting buttons, not paying attention. She laughs and whispers, “He even asked me if he looked like Jonathan.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said yes.”

  I laugh. “You lied to an innocent kid? How could you, Mama?”

  She frowns and crosses her arms. I tell her to lighten up, I was only teasing, but she mutters, “Say what you want, I’d sure rather that boy want to look like Jonathan than look like—”

  “Stop,” I whisper, nodding at Willie. “I don’t want him to hear this.”

  “Now you’re defending that man?”

  “No, but Willie does look like him. You know it. And I’m not going to let you imply there’s something wrong with that.”

  I walk over to Willie and sit down on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mama stomp out of the room. I know I should follow her and apologize, but I’m not sorry.

  Willie is telling me what the buttons do. Then he says he’s going to be in my band when he grows up. I smile. “You’ll be my keyboard player.”

  “Me and Jonathan. I sit with him on the big stage.”

  “Sure, buddy,” I say, patting his back.

  All morning, I’ve been forcing myself not to think about how much Willie likes the guys. Even if they don’t deserve his affection, it’s real and it’s understandable: he’s known them for almost half his life.

  This is another reason Fred’s plan is depressing: Willie will have to adjust to a whole new group. Maybe Ron’s band will be nicer to him, but I doubt it. If anything, they’ll probably resent being turned into my backup band after all those years as Mystery Train, and take it out on my son.

  I tell myself I have no choice, make the best of it. About an hour later, I listen to the rest of the tape and try to convince myself it’s not that bad. And then, while I’m eating a cheese sandwich, I run through all the reasons I wanted to leave Jonathan’s band. But it doesn’t work; I’m still depressed. Finally, around four thirty, I ask Mama if I can use her car again. I have to talk to Jonathan.

  She says yes, and I thank her. I’m digging in my purse, trying to find the car keys, when I realize she’s staring at me.

  I know she wants to say something. We haven’t spoken more than a few words to each other all afternoon.

  “Watch yourself,” she says, in an ominous voice.

  “I will.”

  “I mean it, Patty Ann. This is the first time you’ve been home since he got out of jail last June.”

  “I know.”

  “And if that parole violation didn’t stick, he�
�s back in Lewisville, only thirty miles from—”

  “Okay.”

  “He could show up any time. He could be out there waiting right now, for all you know. You can’t just—”

  “You think I don’t know this?” I snap my purse closed. “God, Mama, I’m not stupid!”

  I start to turn around, but then I catch a glimpse of her face. She looks both humiliated and confused, like a little kid whose parents have yelled at him for something he can’t even comprehend.

  After a moment, I take a deep breath, tell her I’m sorry. And then I say the rest. I’ll be super careful. Don’t worry. I can handle this. Everything will be fine.

  It works. Her shoulders loosen, her mouth relaxes into a weak smile, as she says she’s probably being silly. It’s only been three weeks. He had a gun. Of course he’s still in jail, right?

  “Right,” I tell her. And then I force a smile, give her another confident “Don’t worry,” before I blow Willie a kiss and hurry out the door.

  “Get gas,” she yells to my back.

  I nod, put it on my list. Get gas, be careful, talk to Jonathan. Oh, and make a decision that could affect my entire future—if I even have a future, after the way I acted with Fred. Some holiday.

  nine

  I wish I could call him first, but I don’t know his number over at the Balconies. I don’t even know which apartment he’s in, but that turns out not to be a problem. As soon as I walk in the carpeted front entrance hall, I hear his piano. It’s a tune I’ve never heard, but it’s unmistakably Jonathan, and I follow the sound to the back of the building, apartment 1C.

  I knock three times before the music stops. Even then he doesn’t come to the door, he just yells, “It’s open,” and goes back to playing.

  When I walk in, I have to be careful where I step. The living room is sparsely furnished and hotel generic, but the floor is cluttered with his equipment, sheet music, fake books and paperbacks, CDs. He’s unpacked the essentials, which don’t seem to include his clothes. He’s still wearing the blue-and-green-striped T-shirt he had on yesterday.

  The Fender Rhodes is set up facing the window. I’m about four feet behind him; he still hasn’t turned around, when he says, “Check this out.”

  I’m sure he thinks I’m one of the guys, but I don’t correct him. I walk to the couch, sit down, cross my legs. The song he’s playing is unusual, even for him. The chords are loud, rich, almost too bright, but the melody is sparse and more melancholy than any piece of his I’ve ever heard. The combined effect is weirdly haunting, like the background of a dream.

  When the last chord fades, it takes me a minute to remember where I am. He rubs his hands together and says, “Did you catch that key change?” before he spins around on his black stool and says, “Oh.” His voice is surprised but not unfriendly. “Patty. What are you doing here?”

  I tell him I need to talk about something; then I take a breath. “That piece you just did. It’s new, isn’t it?”

  He nods. “I’ve been working on it for the last few weeks.” He leans his elbows on the edge of the piano. “Did you like it?”

  “Yes. It’s really different.”

  “Um, I suppose I should offer you something. I don’t have any food, but I have Pepsi and beer.”

  “Pepsi sounds good.”

  “Coming right up.”

  When he disappears through a doorway on the right side of the room, I stand up and walk to the window. It’s a nice view: the back of the apartment faces Brush Creek. I hear him cursing the ice cube tray, then the slamming of the refrigerator door. When he walks back in, he’s holding a half-full glass of soda, like he was in such a rush he couldn’t wait for the foam to go down.

  It flickers across my mind that he’s in a hurry to get me out of here, but after he hands me the soda, he asks if I want to listen to the rest of the piece. “There are three movements,” he explains. “What you heard was the middle section. It sounds better in context.”

  I say, “Okay,” and he sits down at the Rhodes, adjusts a few knobs.

  “There may be some rough spots.” He glances at the wall behind me. “I’ve never played this for anyone before.”

  I’m very surprised and more than a little pleased. He’s never asked me to listen to one of his songs.

  I wish I was back on the couch, but he’s already playing; I don’t want to move and distract him. The opening is nothing like I expected: it’s confident, almost happy. When he asks if I notice the mood is different, I say, “Of course.”

  “It’s this chord progression. It’s all dominant sevenths.” He plays another few bars. “But when the right hand comes in with the melody, the left hand starts to change. It’s not minor, but it’s augmented sevenths. It sounds much less certain.”

  He plays for a long time without speaking. After a while, I’m leaning against the wall, engrossed in the music. When I realize he’s back to the part I’ve heard before, I’m surprised. The sparse melody is so different from the upbeat first part, but it fits perfectly. I don’t know how he did it, but it feels like this melancholy was there all along, a part of the happiness, even though you couldn’t hear it before.

  We’re up to the third movement, when he shouts, “All right. Can you hear the chords becoming responsive?”

  I have to shout too. This part is very loud. “I’m not sure.”

  “What I mean is, do they seem to be supporting the right hand?”

  “I think so. I mean, they seem sadder now too.”

  “Exactly. They’re not fighting the melody anymore; they’re cooperating, giving it more of a voice. It’s not simply a harmonic resolution though. I think of it as a deeper resolution, a movement toward compassion.”

  It seems true. The last few bars are so full and rich that the silence when he finishes is painful, like waking up from a dream of color into a world of only gray.

  For more than a minute, neither one of us speaks. Then he turns off the Rhodes and crosses his arms. “What did you think?”

  “I’ve never heard anything like it,” I begin. I don’t want to gush, but I can’t stop myself. “It was wonderful, Jonathan. So beautiful. All those different feelings, like listening to the music of an entire life.”

  “Thanks,” he says calmly, but then he smiles.

  He has a nice smile; I’ve noticed that before, watching him with other people. His face is too pale, his nose is a little bit sharp, but his smile is just right. And right now, his blue eyes look serious, sensitive, and not at all sarcastic. No trace of boredom. No attempt to be cool.

  I can’t believe I was dreading this visit. We’re getting along so well.

  Of course I still haven’t mentioned the problem I came to discuss. When I remind him we need to talk, he says, “Right,” and motions me over to the couch. He pushes some cords out of the way with his foot and sits down on the floor, on the other side of the coffee table.

  I have to plunge in and get this over with. I tell him I had a meeting with Fred this morning. I leave out the part about Fred firing them, but I say Fred wants me to record some songs with Mystery Train.

  “It’s a bad idea,” Jonathan says flatly. “I know their leader, Ron Whitburn. He’s a hack and a charlatan.”

  “Their tape isn’t very good. But Fred is really putting on the pressure.” I force a laugh. “He even claimed you said you’d rather lick a toilet bowl than write for me.”

  He crosses his hands. His voice is still flat. “I did say that, Patty.”

  “I figured as much. He said it was a month ago. But I was hoping you’d changed—”

  “I refuse to write pop songs. Not for you, not for him, not for anyone.”

  “But they wouldn’t have to be pop. Didn’t Fred say they could be jazz, as long as they had crossover potential?”

  “Yes.” Jonathan rubs his palm against his forehead. “But Fred doesn’t understand the problem that presents.”

  He pauses for a moment, taps his fingers together. “Let’s sa
y I agreed. It’s not something I’ve done before, write with lyrics, but it’s not impossible. The word crossover is meaningless. It’s marketing crap; it has nothing to do with creating art.”

  His mouth looks like he’s just swallowed something so bitter he’s resisting the urge to spit. And more important, he seems to have forgotten the topic. He’s bitching about Fred: how he always emphasizes the trivial, how he doesn’t understand that music is about having something to say, not about promotion and marketing and all that meaningless stuff. At some point, I say, “Fine, forget crossover,” to get him to continue.

  “All right,” he says. “If I wrote these pieces, they would be jazz. They would have to be, because that’s what I compose.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t. I’m supposed to be writing these for you. That’s what Fred wants, what you want.”

  “But Fred likes your music, I think he’d—”

  “He would probably go along, yes.”

  I look at him. “Well, you know I’d go along.” I feel a little embarrassed. “I mean, I always like your songs.”

  “I do appreciate that. The problem is I don’t think you’d be capable of singing them.”

  “What?” I sputter. “You said I wasn’t a weak singer.”

  “For pop. You don’t know anything about jazz.”

  My face is hot, but I snap, “It can’t be that hard.”

  He laughs. “Tell that to Betty Carter. Tell that to Abbey Lincoln or Shirley Horn. You’ve never heard of them though, have you?”

  “Well no, but—”

  “They’re jazz singers. And they worked for years to become good. Like Harry and I did, starting when we were kids. Like Carl and Dennis will, if they keep going.” He looks at me and shakes his head. “You aren’t serious about music, Patty. You have talent, but talent is cheap. You have no devotion, no dedication. To you, this is just a good gig.”

  I slump into the couch, stare at the wall. I feel miserable, but I can’t think of a reply. Even Fred doesn’t think I’m serious about music. Apparently, nobody does.