No Matter How Much You Promise

by Edgardo Vega

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What does a piano smell like?”

  “I never thought about it …” he said, his voice trailing off. He wanted to open his eyes, but he felt good walking as he did. “Oil … brass … wood …”

  “Did you play with your eyes closed?” she asked.

  They had stopped and she felt him suddenly relax.

  “Yes, with my eyes closed,” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “Don’t open your eyes, and take me to the piano. I’m closing my eyes, too,” she said.

  He kept his eyes closed as Vidamía had asked, more out of a need to shut out the moment than a willingness to participate in his daughter’s experiment. He stood rooted to the spot where he was standing. She said nothing and he waited, swaying a little. Surprisingly, his headache was gone and he began drifting off as if he were in a dream. With his right hand out, sniffing the air, he took about six steps, found the piano, felt along the keyboard, found the leather-covered bench, and sat down, guiding her until she was sitting next to him.

  The keys felt cold to the touch, but as if his fingers were filled with iron filaments and the black-and-white keyboard were a magnet, he felt drawn uncannily to hear its tone. He played a few chords and was surprised at the clarity of the sound that emerged from the piano.

  Vidamía stood up and asked him to play something for her.

  “What?” he asked, recalling that at one time he had known over three hundred and fifty tunes from memory.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Something you like.”

  And then he was once again a boy and he was sitting at the piano at Grandpa Sanderson’s house and it was his father’s birthday and he was asked to play and he’d said what? and his father had said please play “Danny Boy” and he’d played and his father had sung the song in a surprisingly beautiful tenor voice:

  Oh Danny Boy the pipes,

  The pipes are calling.

  From glen to glen

  And down the mountain side.

  The summer’s gone

  And all the flowers are falling.

  ‘Tis you, ’tis you

  Must go and I must bide.

  But come ye back

  When summer’s in the meadow

  Or when the valley’s hushed

  And white with snow …

  He was surprised that he’d found the melody with his right hand. She asked him what the song was, because it was so sad and beautiful, and he told her, and she asked if it had words.

  “It has words.”

  “How do they go?”

  He recited the words and she said they were beautiful.

  “Could you play it again? Please.”

  He played it again and she hummed, her voice finding the notes easily. He was pleased that she could hear the music as well as she did. When he finished he said that they should go, and he opened his eyes. They were in the dark. Outside the window the lights of Broadway were shining inside the dance studio, making long shadows of the barre and the piano, the images reflected in the mirrors. Although he still felt quite anxious, he felt oddly relieved, literally as if a great weight had been removed from his shoulders. In its place, however, the dreaded thought that he’d caused Joey Santiago’s death had grown larger. Why did the idea persist? What had really happened? More important, what had been his part in it?

  In order to please her, he went back to the studio with her a few more times, but then summer came to an end and she went back to school in Tarrytown and he went back to his routine, promising her that he’d find a place in the neighborhood to practice but never doing so. Even though the idea of a piano no longer induced in him the same panic as before, the notion that he could actually play as he once had, made him consider dreams, and at this juncture in his life that was the worst possible thing that could happen. He wanted no dreams, no future, no expectations of tomorrows or ambitions of glory or goals to attain. Silence and solitude were his aims, and nothing would stand in his way of achieving them.

  But she was relentless. In November she came down to the city, met Butterworth and the two of them went to the loft. She was now a woman proper, looking much older than she did during the summer when she went around in jeans; now wearing a skirt and sweater and heels and a long leather coat, her hair cut in a blunt style, her makeup perfect, her green eyes huge and confident.

  “Daddy, Mr. Butterworth says you can go over and practice at NYU. Not officially, but there won’t be any problem. I know you haven’t been able to find a place to practice, so I spoke to him. You can use one of the practice rooms there. No problem at all. Okay?”

  He looked at Pop Butterworth and his old friend nodded.

  “That’s right, son,” he said. He gave Billy the address and said, “Just come in, go upstairs, and take one of the practice rooms.”

  “Yeah, sure, I guess,” Billy said, grateful for their caring.

  She spent Thanksgiving with her father and his family. Billy’d gone and practiced at the university, enjoying walking in and taking the elevator and being alone in the soundproof cubicle, acquainting himself once again with the piano. There was always a bit of panic, but it passed quickly, and he was able to recall old standards, mostly ballads, which he would play in long, lugubrious improvisations, but staying away from the more upbeat, hard-driving jazz tunes that would force him to reach into his life. He actually felt grateful that Vidamía had been so persistent, because he knew now that the piano presented no threat. This knowledge, however, did nothing to banish his recurring doubts about how Joey Santiago had died. Why had he said all these years that it had been Viet Cong? There had been none in the area for months, and no one ever found traces of them afterward.

  By Christmastime, when Vidamía came down to celebrate the holidays, he was practicing three or four times a week, at times for three hours at a stretch, the music drawing him as if the piano possessed a magnet that pulled consistently at him, its power growing stronger. She asked if she could go with him one day and had stood spellbound, watching him, the music transporting her to another level of awareness where she forgot that the person bent over the piano was her father. She knew then that she was helping him come out of himself and felt profound satisfaction. She wanted to share this with her mother when she returned home, but the opportunity never came up and she had to be content with discussing her elation with her grandmother Maud. Her grandmother, with typical Irish pessimism, having experienced a lifetime of disappointments, cautioned her about becoming too hopeful. Vidamía nodded patiently, hugged and kissed her, and, as was her style in reassuring the adults around her, said that she shouldn’t worry.

  30. The Idea

  As the spring of 1989 rolled around, it became apparent that the upcoming summer would be different from previous ones. Both Cliff and Cookie, whether out of teen rebellion proper or because playing in the subways would be too embarrassing for them if any of their classmates saw them, announced one day that they didn’t want to play in the family band anymore.

  They had spoken to Lurleen and that was fine with her. Cookie was already waiting tables at a Tex-Mex restaurant called Sometimes down in SoHo, having obtained identification that listed her as eighteen years old. She managed to charm the owner, Pam Morgan, a tough Texas cowgirl, or so she described herself, who had worked on Madison Avenue as a copywriter, dabbled in the stock market, got lucky, and eventually, in the mid-eighties, went to school and became a chef. Within a week of working there, Cookie was able to get Cliff a job bussing tables. A couple of evenings a week they worked at the restaurant. Within a month Pam Morgan promised both of them steady employment during the summer. Cookie asked Vidamía if she wanted to work there during the summer.

  “We can work together, Vee,” she said. “Check it out, it’ll be cool. Maybe you’ll meet somebody. All kinds of people come in there. Movie stars and everything. There’s some cute guys who wait tables. I’m sure you could meet somebody.”

  Vidamía replied
that she wasn’t interested in meeting anyone since she was going out with Taylor Breitenbach, a very nice young man studying at Yale who wrote her very nice letters.

  “He’s studying classics and wants to become an Egyptologist. When he comes home, we spend a lot of time talking and he doesn’t have his hands all over me every second.”

  It occurred to Vidamía at that moment that things in her family were changing rapidly and everyone was growing up quickly. She had to take the SATs the following year and had to do better than she had in her PSATs—at least break 1,500. She’d have to take advanced placement tests in all the sciences, plus history and English. She was determined to go to Harvard, or even join Taylor at Yale. If neither of those schools accepted her, she’d go to Cornell or Brown, but she definitely wanted to be out of New York and away from home.

  Whenever Taylor came in, he would pick her up in his car and they’d take long drives or else park somewhere and talk and look at the Hudson River. Sometimes when they kissed, she began to feel extremely strong sexual urges, but the more passionate she became, the more distant Taylor grew. He would break off the embrace and in the most charming way he would begin telling her about sarcophagus construction or the different methods of embalming used in ancient Egypt. His all-consuming passion was antiquity, and, as brilliant a conversationalist as he was, she began to feel that she was risking nothing with him, that she had chosen him precisely because he wouldn’t go beyond a certain point.

  Her seventeenth birthday was nothing like the extravaganza of the previous year. Her friends came to the small party and gave her books and tapes. Elsa, with great ceremony, gave her a gold bracelet, pendant, and matching earrings, each holding a tiny ruby. Barry gave her a leather bag that had a dozen small pockets inside where she could place books, papers, pens and pencils, calendar, stapler, and other school supplies. The leather was soft but sturdy and, as with everything in their lives, expensive-looking. Inside was a very delicate envelope with a note saying that whatever college she chose, he would handle all the fees, and that she would be assured the use of her gold card without limitation for personal expenses, including living off campus if she so wished. Mrs. Alvarez gave her a poncho from the mountains of Colombia which she said was called a ruana. Her grandmother gave her Maja talc and face soap from Spain.

  Two days after her birthday she went into New York to meet Cookie on a Saturday. Cookie gave her a new Madonna tape as a present and they talked about how trashy she was. Secretly they both admired the singer’s style and cool. They were both attired beautifully in layers of mismatched clothing, mostly silk things they had picked up in thrift shops around lower Manhattan. Each wore high heels, carried big bags, and featured heavy earrings and bracelets. Lurleen said they looked like “high-fashion gypsies.” They were done up to emulate Madonna’s style, the heavily painted eyebrows, dark lipsticks, fifties-type hairdos, and very pale makeup. Cookie, who was almost sixteen, was already on the pill. She was becoming voluptuous and confident so that when she played her saxophone nobody could focus on the music, only on her beautiful haughty face and her shapely body.

  Vidamía and Cookie chose an Italian restaurant near Bleecker Street in the Village, and ordered salads and linguine with seafood. They also ordered a bottle of white wine and got thoroughly plastered. No one questioned them regarding their age since they had mastered, particularly Cookie, the art of acting older. When the check came, Vidamía placed her gold card on the tray with the bill and through the alcoholic haze asked Cookie if she thought their father was going to be all right not having the band.

  “I mean, do you think he can handle it?” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Cookie replied. “He’s cool with it. He goes over to NYU almost every day and practices. Something’s up with him. I don’t know what it is, but he’s cool.”

  “Whatta you mean, ‘something’s up’?”

  “Oh, the other day we were bringing groceries up and this cab came too close to us when we were crossing the street and he began yelling at the cabdriver.”

  “Yelling at him? Daddy?”

  “Yeah, Daddy. Shocked the hell outta me, too.”

  “Yelling?”

  “Yeah, yelling. ‘Son of a bitch,’ and ‘stupid mothafucka’,’” Cookie whispered and giggled. “Are we drunk?” she asked.

  “I think you are,” Vidamía said. “I’m not.”

  “Oh, sure,” Cookie said, and they both giggled.

  The waiter came over, asked for the fourth time if everything was all right, and Cookie, playing the sophisticate, said, “Quite all right, thank you.” It was as Vidamía began slipping the card back in her wallet that the idea finally burst forth and began to wiggle and turn in the sunlight. When the waiter went away, they both looked at each other and began giggling again. And then all at once Vidamía was very serious and Cookie looked at her.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “I was thinking maybe I’ll get him a piano.”

  “Get who a piano? Daddy?”

  “Yeah, for his birthday.”

  “A piano? Are you fucking crazy?” Cookie said, loud enough so that a number of people looked in their direction and frowned. “Sorry, folks,” she said. “This girl wants me to go home with her and we just met. I mean it’s okay being a lesbian, but be cool, right?”

  “Cookie!”

  “The hell with them,” Cookie said. “They want a show, I’ll give ’em one. Come on, let’s get outta here.”

  “Yeah, let’s go downtown and get dessert and coffee,” Vidamía said.

  “Whatever,” Cookie said, and, slinging her scarf back over her shoulder so that it flared out and came to rest perfectly on her other shoulder, darted a look of disdain at a table of very stately people, gave her blond hair a delicate shake, turned her head away theatrically, and made the grandest exit the restaurant had seen since Sophia Loren visited the place back in 1960 after she’d finished filming The Black Orchid with Anthony Quinn.

  Arm in arm, their balance a bit awry, they managed to make it to Houston Street, where they hailed a cab, got in, and told the driver to take them to Little Italy. In the cab, Cookie ascertained that Vidamía was serious about purchasing a piano for their father.

  “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Girl, you’re crazy. Más tostá que una bolsa ’e maní, mamita.”

  “What? What’s that supposed to mean? I’m more toasted than a bag of … what?”

  “Peanuts, mama. More roasted than a bag of peanuts. Your brains are fried, honey. A piano? Girl, get real, okay? Where you gonna get ahold of that kind of money?”

  “How much can it cost?” Vidamía said.

  “Don’t even think about it. We better talk to Mama when we get back.”

  “No way. I don’t want her to know. You gotta promise. When it’s done we’ll tell her.”

  “No good, Vee. We gotta tell her. She knows about shit like that. I mean, a piano, a good one could cost as much as twenty-five thousand bucks. If you get a piece of junk, it won’t do him any good. You gotta figure all kinds of things. You seen the way he plays. Even with those eight fingers, the piano’s gonna take a beating. He can be très lyrical on ballads but, honey, on up-tempo shit the man goes crazy. Brubeck and his vertical style is a summer breeze compared to Daddy.”

  “Like what? How much?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. That’s why we gotta talk to her. You gotta make sure the frame’s in good shape, that the mechanism is okay, and the keyboard is balanced. It’s a lot of work. Why don’t you just forget it. He’s doing good going over to NYU. Ever since you came down before Thanksgiving and hooked him up, he goes over there almost every afternoon. With Mr. Butterworth being over there and everything, he’s cool. He’s been acting a little weird the last few days, like I said, but you know. He’s a moody guy.”

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” Vidamía said, with considerable annoyance. “Could we get one for, like, un
der ten thousand?”

  “Oh, shoot the messenger time, will you? Relax, girl. Ten thousand? You’re gonna spend ten thousand on a piano? How?”

  “I’ll put it on my card,” Vidamía said, patting her pocketbook. “The same way I paid for dinner. I’ve been thinking about it. If we’re not gonna have the band, then that’s what I’d like to do. You have to help me, Cookie. Maybe Fawn could learn how to play, too.”

  “You’re crazier than I thought, honey,” Cookie said, the alcohol no longer a factor. “Maybe your mother was right. She should’ve never let you come down here. You’re getting like some of my homegirls, totally in the clouds about things. You have to be more practical about stuff.”

  “Oh, excuse me,” Vidamía said with considerable attitude.

  “What now, Ms. Cranky, I’m having a bad day and whatnot?”

  “You’re getting like Taylor,” Vidamía said, haughtily. “Very uptight and conservative.”

  “Bitch,” Cookie said, laughing.

  “Takes one to call one,” Vidamía said, wanting to laugh but maintaining her posture and looking at Cookie like they were in the playground and some badass jeba walked in and was trying to intimidate them, her lips pursed and her head turned like get outta my face.

  “Tu madre,” Cookie said, as if to say go take that attitude to your mother, knowing that to every Rican, the mention of their mom in that way is a big insult.

  “La tuya que es mi comadre,” Vidamía said, employing the traditional retort in which you turn the insult back to the other person’s mother, a type of dozens, a oneupmanship game.

  The bantering escalated. Cookie told Vidamía where she could go with her harebrained idea.

  “Vete pa’l carajo,” she said.

  “Contigo abajo,” Vidamía replied, the two of them laughing and pushing at each other, enjoying this bit of male-oriented cursing.

  “Fine,” Cookie said, accepting the latest insult, feigning hurt and looking out the window of the cab.