by Julie Blair
The last song on Evans’s CD started and Liz turned up the volume. “This album was recorded fifty-three years before our last show in New York, almost to the day. And not ten minutes away by cab.” While dancing his fingers over the piano keys at the Vanguard on that Sunday in July, Evans hadn’t known his band would be demolished by tragedy not long after the show. Jac knew jazz history as well as she did, but Liz kept going, as if feeding Teri’s death into the long list of jazz musicians who’d died too young and her name into the long list of survivors forced to regroup after tragedy. “His bass player died ten days later in a car accident. That trio was his best group.” Maybe her best group had come and gone, too.
“Until today this was my favorite live jazz album.”
“I love his casual, singing melodies, balanced by those wonderful blocky chords. I feel like I’m looking at an impressionist’s painting when I hear him.” Liz opened her eyes. “The sunset is incredible. Oh, gosh, that was thoughtless.”
“Describe it to me.”
“Shades of orange and pink and—”
“What do you hear in it?” An inviting request, like when Jac asked her what she tasted in a glass of wine.
Liz hummed a melody as she stared at the colors evolving in the sky, translating what she saw and felt into notes. Change. Fading. Longing. Letting go. Liz brushed away tears. She’d used up her Kleenex at the studio.
“Yes. You have to let go to make room for the next moment,” Jac said, interpreting Liz’s melody perfectly. “You created beautiful music with Teri, and now it goes out into the world, and you begin a new cycle.”
“I’m afraid.” That awful emptiness felt like a huge dark hole swallowing her. On the edge of it sat doubt that she could make music without Teri and fear that her wrist might not recover. Her future, Regan and Sammy’s futures, depended on what felt like whims she had little control over.
“You have heart and courage and talent. You’ll find your future. It’s been an honor and a privilege to work on your album.” Jac stepped out of the SUV. After arching her back and stretching her arms above her head, she headed toward Peg’s house. Max, who’d stayed home because Alvin was allergic to dogs, ran to meet her, and she dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around him.
Liz’s phone rang. Her dad’s ring. She let it go to voice mail. She wished she hadn’t told him about Jac. Since she wouldn’t let him hear the mixes, he wanted to know everything Jac said and then argued with it. She couldn’t please him lately. She still hadn’t mustered the courage to tell Jac she’d told him. Peggy walked from the house and opened Liz’s car door. “You can’t leave until we have a toast.”
Liz should head home. There’d be heavy traffic and she had classes in the morning. But she wasn’t ready to leave yet. She’d spent so much time here working with Jac, meals with them, grilling lessons from Roger, helping Peggy with her garden. She’d miss all of it. They walked to the patio where Roger was opening a bottle of champagne at the table. He offered the glass to Jac.
Liz stopped, watching the tasting ritual. Jac said something to Roger, probably naming the vintage. He smiled and shook his head. “How does she do that?”
“Immense talent.” Peggy stood with arms crossed, head tilted, looking at her sister with that sad smile she often had when she talked about Jac. “It’s hard, isn’t it? When you put so much energy and focus into something and then it ends. Now that my show’s over I feel lost.”
Gone. Teri. Her music. The life they had. The love they had. She felt numb as they continued to the table and took the flutes of champagne Roger handed them.
Jac lifted her glass. “To—”
“To Teri,” Liz said, a little too loudly.
“To Teri,” Jac echoed. They all touched glasses and sipped in silence as the colorful sunset faded to twilight gray.
“I finished the painting for the album cover,” Peggy said. “It’s drying.” They walked to the studio and Peggy turned on lights.
She’d been deeply moved when Peggy offered to do the painting. “It’s beautiful,” Liz said, standing in front of the canvas—an energetic, impressionistic rendering of the four of them onstage in New York. The past. If only Peggy could paint her future. “Teri would love it.”
“It’s yours to keep.” Peggy hugged her for a long time. “I looked over the pictures you gave me of your grandmother’s garden and made a plant list. Some of what she grew isn’t available anymore and some I can’t identify. She had a keen eye for structure and used color sparingly. We can create that same style. When do you want to start?”
“Thursday.” Liz liked the idea of having a new project to fill the void left by the CD. It would also give her an excuse to continue to spend time in Carmel. “Maybe it’ll be good for my wrist.”
“How’s PT?”
“She says the range of motion is coming back nicely. We add resistance exercises next week. Too early to tell if I’ll be a hundred percent.” Four weeks to the CD-release party. She couldn’t play a song all the way through yet because of pain.
Jac appeared in the studio doorway. “I need to take Max down to the beach, and then I have a blog to write. I regret I can’t review your album publicly. It’s going to be the best jazz album of the year.” She came to Liz and hugged her. Briefly, but a hug. Then she ambled toward her home, Max matching her stride, tail waving regally.
Liz’s chest tightened and panic made her want to run after Jac. Without the album connecting them, they wouldn’t have a reason to spend so much time together. “Can I come with you?” Jac stopped but didn’t turn around. Liz took that as an invitation and trotted to catch up. Friends. She really wanted them to be friends.
*
Jac turned on her computer and opened a document. She wrote reviews of the three albums she’d listened to this week, making sure she wasn’t overly harsh because they weren’t of Liz’s caliber. Drumming her fingers on the desk, she formed what she wanted to say in the blog. A band had a sound, but so did each individual in it. Where was the line between the collaborative sound and the soloist’s voice?
Opening a new document, she wrote about how jazz invited the individual to step forward and claim her voice within the group. Noting some of the best soloists from bands stretching back to the start of jazz, she made the case that an individual could make a band, as with Liz, although she didn’t name her.
She filed it as a draft she’d edit in the morning before posting and went to the living room. She poured wine, gave Max treats, sat, and then got up and paced. She felt lost without the focus of working on the album. Music she woke up to and went to bed with. Dreamed about. She knew every note, every drumbeat, every nuanced phrase in Liz’s playing. And now that she knew Liz intimately, how would she let go?
She needed something to listen to, but what? Not jazz. Beethoven? No, her emotions needed something else. Billie Holiday. Putting several albums in the CD changer, she settled in her recliner. She stroked Max in his bed beside her and reached for the glass of wine next to the remote on the table. Everything was the way it should be, the way it had been before Liz. But everything was different.
Three raps on the door and it opened. Peg. “I brought chocolate cake, and Roger sent the bottle he bet you for naming the champagne. You’re quite the show-off.”
“Wasn’t I always?” The energy from the walk on the beach was wearing off, replaced by a bone-deep fatigue that made her feel heavy.
“Are you happy with the CD?”
“Immensely.”
“You know Liz wants to be your friend.”
“Our collaboration is done. She doesn’t need me any more.”
“Liz isn’t like that.” Peg set a plate on the side table and gave Max something he crunched.
“They’re all like that.”
“Is cynicism another of your talents?”
“What do you want me to say, Peg? I like her? All right, I like her.”
“She’s coming over Thursday. We’re going to start
on her garden. I invited her to dinner.”
Jac held up her hands in surrender. “You’ll have to give me lessons in friendship.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“I admit I want to see if she reaches her potential.” Jac took a bite of cake and chased it with wine.
“You think she won’t?”
“It could go either way.”
“You don’t think her wrist will heal?”
“I’m not sure her heart will. If it doesn’t, she won’t be able to move on and find the sound that’s truly hers. She’ll be a cover band, playing Teri’s music, maybe new songs in the same style, but it won’t be what she’s capable of.”
“How do you know?”
“I know how she thinks and feels about music, who her favorite musicians and composers are. That blues/rock slant is the band’s signature sound, but I don’t think it’s hers.”
“What is?”
“That I don’t know, but I want to be around when she finds it.”
Peg kissed her cheek. “You should be proud of yourself.”
“Thanks for the new bouquet. A couple of Mr. Lincolns, a couple of Double Delights, and one off the yellow rosebush near your studio that Mom planted and you don’t know the name of.”
“Show-off.” The door opened and then Peg spoke again. “Doesn’t working with Liz make you—”
“No.” She couldn’t afford to miss it. She turned up the volume as the voice that was made to sing the blues provided the perfect company to her mood. Anger roiled inside her. Guilt and regret joined it, and she was helpless as the storm of emotions battered her. She contained the pain, anchored it to the music. If only she’d kept her emotions under control ten years ago.
Chapter Fifteen
“We should have done the beach instead,” Jac grumbled when her shoes squished on the gravel driveway. She was twenty minutes slower than her usual pace because of having to wind through the extra-thick coating of tourists on the downtown streets. Max paused, accustomed to being let out of his harness. “Not yet, buddy. We need to get through the minefield.” Party paraphernalia—catering trucks in the driveway, tables and chairs all over the patio, people scurrying about as they set up. Memorial Day. The first of the summer-holiday parties started by her parents the year the house was completed. Peg had continued the tradition. Required socializing. No nap. Could this day get any worse?
An hour later she was sitting in her usual chair at Peg’s patio table, the sun warm on her shoulders. Max lay at her feet. She rubbed her fingers along his back to soothe herself as she endured an ever-changing array of people joining her and asking the same “catch-up” questions they asked every year. As if her life ever changed. Bursts of laughter erupted sporadically from the growing group of guests, and kids’ shrieks came from the bouncy-house Peg always rented for the parties. All the noise made her grate her teeth. “My parents are scuba diving in Australia,” she said for what felt like the hundredth time.
“I remember when they were building the house. Must have been…”
“Sixty-seven.” It was sad to hear the forgetfulness in Wayne’s voice. He’d been a fixture in her childhood, the trumpet player in her dad’s jazz band.
“We’d come over on weekends, play music, and have a bonfire on the beach. Those were the days.” He patted her shoulder and pushed his chair back. “I’m sorry about the way things turned out for you,” he said, before walking off.
Someone pulled back the chair next to her and she stiffened. Couldn’t she have a few minutes to herself?
“I wasn’t sure you actually had arms.” Liz tugged the edge of her sleeveless blouse. “Pretty color.”
Apparently gold still looked good on her. Irritation melted. Liz’s company was the one thing that would make this day tolerable. “Tell me what you’re wearing.”
“Boring khaki shorts…”
Jac filtered out surrounding conversations as she formed a picture in her mind. Orange short-sleeved blouse…the dangerous sandals from the night she tripped…Earrings? A necklace? Certainly the ring and watch she always wore. “Why aren’t you at your dad’s barbecue party?”
“It took me half an hour to go five miles, and to be honest, I didn’t want to. Over here people don’t know about Teri so I don’t have to worry about what they’re thinking—am I doing okay, is the band going to make it? And we always play music at any party. I don’t want the disappointed looks when I tell them I can’t.”
“Are you sure going ahead with the CD-release party is smart?” Jac tried not to sound judgmental. Liz already had enough stress over it.
“It won’t be my best performance, but I need to do it. I wish you’d come.”
“I can’t.” Every time Liz asked, she felt bad for saying no. She’d love to be there for her big night. “Try this.” She held out her glass. “Talbott Chardonnay. One of the best of the local wineries.”
“You’re not going to tell me how much it cost and ruin it for me, are you?”
One day soon Liz wouldn’t think hundred-dollar bottles of wine were expensive. Yes, her wrist was an unresolved problem, but if success didn’t happen this year, it would happen soon. Jac would make sure of it.
Nancy, the owner of Pilgrim’s Way bookstore and a longtime acquaintance, joined them. Jac half listened to their conversation about books as she snacked on cheese and crackers. The warm offshore breeze would keep the fog at bay, and the evening would be perfect for dancing. What would it be like to dance with Liz? Her heart skipped a beat and then another as she imagined Liz in her arms. Dare she ask her? An innocent dance with a friend? No. She crossed her arms and shut down that line of thought.
That’s how things had begun with Maria. Don’t be so provincial, darling. Just an innocent dance with a friend. Women dance with each other here. When in Rome…By the end of the dance Jac had been swept away by feelings she’d never felt before. A burning desire to touch and be touched. By the end of the night she knew what had been missing in her marriage. No, those kinds of feelings only led to disaster. She would not make that mistake again.
“What’s that?” Jac asked after Nancy left. Liz was humming.
“That blasted melody is teasing me again. It’s your fault. I heard it first the day we met.”
“Met?” Jac fingered her forehead where the cut had been.
“Don’t make me feel bad about that. You know you’re glad.” Liz rubbed her hand up and down Jac’s forearm.
Just a friend, she warned her heart when it skipped another beat.
“Give me your napkin,” Liz said. She rummaged in what sounded like her purse, then went back to humming. “Darn.” Hummed some more. “I need paper. I’m hearing more of the song. Lots more. I don’t want to lose it.”
“I’ll get the paper. Don’t break the mood.” Taking Max’s harness, Jac went to Peg’s office. She found the copier and grabbed paper from the tray. On her way back through the dining room, a hand on her arm stopped her.
“How are you?”
Of course Gwen would be here. She came every year, and every year it was awkward. “Good. I can’t talk right now.”
“Later?”
“All right.” Jac hurried back to the table and set the paper down, saying nothing lest she break Liz’s concentration. Scooting closer, she put her arm across Liz’s chair, hoping the implied intimacy would deflect anyone from joining them. If she leaned toward her she could catch a whiff of Liz’s perfume. Citrusy and sweet. Nice. Liz’s humming continued, broken by silences when it sounded like she was writing. It was thrilling to be with her as she created new music.
Finally, Liz sat back against the chair, her shoulders against Jac’s arm. “I think it’s a suite.” Liz’s voice was sparkling.
“Describe it.”
“The first part has…” Liz explained the technical elements, then hummed several different melodies as she tapped the edge of the table in a rapid beat.
“Reminds me of the day we met. Lunch at
the Bistro. The rain hitting the awning over our table.” She imitated Liz’s tapping. “The melodies sound like variations on Ellington.”
“Yes! The second part is more leisurely.” Liz hummed. “It’s how I feel when I’m walking downtown and meandering through art galleries. Then there’s a new part I haven’t heard before.”
“Ocean. Walking the beach,” Jac said after Liz hummed it.
“Yes!”
“Sketches of your life in Carmel.”
Liz laughed and tilted her head back, and her hair tickled Jac’s arm. “I guess it’s fitting that you name it. How about ‘Carmel Sketches’?”
“I’m honored.”
“It isn’t my usual style.” Liz sounded apologetic.
“Let it be what it wants to be.”
A cell phone rang and Liz answered it. “I’m sorry…I didn’t decide until this morning…I’m not avoiding you…Yes, we’re going to start rehearsing…Next week.” Silence and then, “Arrrgh. Regan. I love her dearly, but she’s driving me crazy.”
“Worried? Doesn’t handle change well? Give her time. Let her work it out through her guitar.”
“How do you always know the right thing to say?”
“I’ve been bragging about you to everyone,” Peg said, presumably to Liz. “A lot of people have heard of your band and want to meet you.”
“Is there somewhere I can put these?” Liz gathered the papers and knocked them on the table, as if to line them up.
“I’ll put them in my office,” Peg said.
Jac caught snippets of Liz’s voice as Peg took her around. Good. She needs to be reminded of who she is. An hour later Liz was back.
“Okay, that was surreal. Peggy introduced me to the head of the Carmel Bach Festival, who’s heard us perform, an artist whose work I love almost as much as Peggy’s, an author who’s one of my favorite mystery writers, and Clint Eastwood.”
“He drops by most years.”
“Easy for you to say. He’s a big fan of the Monterey Jazz Festival, and he knew Grandma from when she helped on his campaign for mayor. Dad’s not going to believe it.”
