Twisting the Rope

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  “That’s across a street, Marty. A big street. Did somebody take you across?” Martha’s voice shook slightly, and the tears of five minutes before returned, making her blink. Marty looked away from her crying grandmother and said nothing.

  “Why did you do it, Marty? Weren’t we going to go to the beach when your Da—when Mayland came home?”

  This penetrated through Marty’s discomfort and confusion. She brightened. “Yes. I want to go to the beach!”

  Martha sighed and ran both hands through her hair. She sat down heavily in the doorway in tailor fashion, hiking up her dress. “You just were at the beach, honey, and that wasn’t good at all.”

  Marty’s little face screwed up and she sought support from Elen and then Pádraig, but the two of them said nothing, only waiting respectfully for Martha to do whatever grandparents do. “It wasn’t the beach. It wasn’t like the beach at all!”

  “Fog,” offered Elen. “That’s what she means. She was looking for this ‘Judy’ of hers in the fog. For a few minutes it was really thick out there.”

  Martha Macnamara blinked harder and glanced out the window at the blue sky. Elen giggled. “There was fog.”

  “Certainly there was,” added Pádraig, a touch protectively. He took a nervous step that put him in between Martha and Elen. “We would not lie about it.”

  Martha, stone-faced, hauled herself up and walked toward him. Pádraig’s shoulders slumped visibly and he looked again at the carpet. Martha’s embrace was as hearty as it was unexpected, and she kissed him twice, once on the nose as he jerked his head up and once on the left cheek. Then, lest Elen feel slighted, she hugged and kissed her the same way.

  “Thank you so much. For bringing her back to me. I am wonderfully grateful!” The tears standing in her delft-blue eyes became tears of relief.

  “How I ever was so blind in my work as to let her slip by me…” She sat down on the end of one bed.

  “Don’t worry,” said Elen, placing herself across from her, on the other bed. “I don’t think she even got chilled.”

  “I’m not chilled,” verified Marty, from the doorway. “I’m not dirty, either,” she added, hopefully. “Maybe we can go to the beach?”

  Elen and Pádraig left on that happy note, but Martha continued on the edge of the bed, gazing worriedly at Marty.

  “Who is Judy?” she asked.

  “Judy’s kind of my friend,” Marty answered, but she made a face as she said it. Martha thought very hard about what a three-year-old can understand and what she can’t.

  “Judy… isn’t here, is she?”

  Marty slumped down in the doorway and sat in the posture her grandmother had taken five minutes before.

  “Of course not. There’s you and me here. That’s all.”

  “Is Judy back at home?”

  Marty’s expression of bored patience flickered, as though Martha had finally asked a sensible question. “Not at home now. That’s why I had to go looking.”

  Now Martha spent some moments considering what a fifty-four-year-old can be expected to understand and what she can’t. “Tell me, Marty. Is Judy real? Real like you and me?”

  Marty’s tiny face drew into itself, until it bore a close approximation of her grandmother’s worry. “I don’t think so. Not like you and me.”

  Mayland Long came in to find Martha seated spraddle-legged on the bed, waving a long stick with horse-tail hairs at the end of it over her head. Her gaze was preoccupied.

  Though he was not in a bright mood, he made an effort at conviviality. “Here, madam, let me,” he said, taking the tangled violin bow from her hand. “The mandarin does not shoo flies for herself. It would be a loss of prestige.”

  Distracted, she looked up, and what she saw in his familiar face brought her out of her study. “What happened with the agent, darling?”

  He sat down beside her. Diffidently, he presented the deposit statement. She looked it over intently, and then chortled. “Hey! It’s even for the right amount. And on time. Huzza, huzza! You’re a miracle worker.”

  Long responded with no satisfaction whatsoever, and her enthusiasm leaked away. “Or… this isn’t your money, is it, Mayland. You aren’t trying to pay this out of your own…”

  “No,” he said, a bit harshly, and then broke into a fit of coughing. “No. It is Stoughie’s payment.” Disgustedly he added, I almost killed him to get it.”

  She looked closely at him. “That would have been bad.”

  Long barked a laugh that almost set him off again. “It would have gotten me in a great deal of trouble. You too. And the worst is that it would have been… almost accidental.”

  “That would be the worst?” she asked in a small voice.

  He turned toward her and at last he smiled. Touched her knee. “What I mean is that I assaulted the fellow with no thought. In a sudden rage.”

  Martha’s answering smile was sly. “Well, dear, I’ve been telling you for five years now to be spontaneous.”

  Instead of growing, his grin faded. “With this sickness, I have no self-control, Martha. I’m afraid of what I might do through sheer irritation.

  “And, I am not sure but that Donald Stoughie will have me arrested.”

  Martha sighed and bit her lip. Long coughed again. “This cold,” he said. “Eight weeks,” she said. They sat together at the foot of the motel bed, and he waved the broken violin bow over them both.

  It was George St. Ives’s curse, as it is that of every piper, that he spent a great deal of the time that ought to have been spent practicing, looking for a place where he could practice without having the police summoned. Today, at least, he had the empty theater.

  St. Ives was seated on a broken-cane stool in the green room, and Ted Poznan sat on the table next to him. Ted was changing the strings on a blond guitar that shone with abalone inlay. He was smiling in sleepy fashion, and occasionally he gave St. Ives a pleased, proprietary glance.

  St. Ives, falling victim to the other major piper’s curse, could not get a single reed out of his box of reeds to work properly. They sat on a towel in front of him, while his treasured uillean pipes lay ungainly across his lap-leather, like some strange pet lobster.

  “Hey.” Ted leaned over. “I guess Martha was having the same sort of trouble this morning. With her bow. Maybe the energies just aren’t right for putting little pieces together.”

  “Too dry,” replied St. Ives, slowly fitting the shard of wood into its frame.

  “Yeah. ’Swhat I said.” Ted watched the tiny operation closely. He leaned forward and his guitar followed the gesture, vibrating the long feelers of its new strings.

  George pushed the reed in and then pulled it out again. Very seriously he said, “I don’t know whether it’s tight enough.”

  Ted beamed. “Aw, sure it is, bro.” He hit the piper on the shoulder, in the style of Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin, but with nowhere near the force.

  St. Ives looked up, and the expression on his usually grim face was benign and almost shy. “Maybe it is after all,” he said, and he let the chanter down on his lap. His voice was thick with emotion.

  “Hey!” Ted said again, and repeated the affectionate punch. “Hey, great, isn’t it? I mean, really… it feels good, doesn’t it?”

  St. Ives put his hand into his beard and considered. He rocked ever’ so lightly back and forth on the stool. “Better than it’s been in a long time, Pozz. I’ll give you that.” The brown eyes in his bison face shifted right and left through the dingy little room and settled on Ted’s tanned young features.

  “You know, you’re goddamn pretty, Pozz.”

  The guitarist guffawed and made a face. “Gawsh, thanks.”

  “Naw. You are. Goddamn. You queer?”

  “Gay, you mean,” Ted corrected him almost unconsciously. “I’m not. Or not very. Not that I can really say.” His eyebrows drew together and he huddled across the body of his instrument. “Or more correctly, I guess I should say my level of experience, so far…
”

  “You are weird, though. You gotta admit that.”

  Ted looked tenderly down at George and sighed. “Yeah. I gotta admit that, I guess.” His glance sharpened. Why did you ask, George? Are you… is the stuff helping you to find in yourself…”

  St. Ives blew out through his beard. “Christ, no.” He sat up straighter, and then on impulse he pulled his gray Icelandic sweater over his head. Underneath was a rag knit of the same color.

  Ted watched the procedure. “Hey,” he said one more time. “You took off your sweater.”

  “It’s hot.”

  “Yeah, it’s hot and so you took off your sweater to be more comfortable. That’s a very good sign.”

  There was a little while of quiet in the room, which George broke with a sigh. “It’s not perfect yet,” he said, and he fished under the rag sweater. “In fact, in some ways it’s worse.”

  “What’s worse, fella?” Ted leaned perilously far out, following St. Ives’s hands. When he saw the small plastic vial his eyes widened in owlish alarm. “Hey, George. That’s not the best idea. Don’t crap the experience up with—”

  “Don’t get the idea I’m doing this for fun, Pozz. I need the pills.” He shook two red dots into his hand and then clapped it on his mouth. Dry.

  “Why. What?” Ted Poznan clambered down from the table, banging a protest out of his pretty guitar.

  “Pain pills. I need them.” St. Ives’s voice was so very mild.

  Ted on the other hand, was a bit disordered. “You mean narcotics? You’re hooked?”

  Very gently, and with only a hint of his usual irony, St. Ives corrected him. I mean I have pain.”

  “Where?”

  Everywhere. In my joints. Arthritis. Old… injuries. Bad teeth.” Before putting the vial away he looked down its throat.

  “As a matter of fact, Teddy, I’m getting low on these. Very low. You’ll have to get me some more.”

  Ted Poznan shook his multicolored head forcefully. “I’m sorry, George, but I think it’d be better if you just saw a doctor. A homeopath, maybe, or an Ayuervedic doctor. Narcs are not part of my realm.”

  George lifted his head on his bison-shoulders. This seemed to require effort. His eyes met Ted’s. “Aren’t they, Pozz? I had sort of thought they were. Narcs. Or had been.”

  Ted shied back with an astounded and slightly nervous expression. “Never, never, never.”

  St. Ives’s smile was unshaken. “Well, maybe I was wrong about that, Pozz, but I do know you have the connections to help me.”

  “Not that way.” Poznan laughed apologetically. He began to snip off the ends of the new guitar strings, which fell to the concrete floor and tinkled. “That’s no kind of real help.”

  “It’s what I need,” St. Ives explained gently. “To keep playing. After all, playing’s what I got left. And I think you’ll help me, once you’ve thought about it.” His eyes were dreamy and quite implacable. “I know about Cotati.”

  Ted dropped the dykes on the sound box of the guitar. They left a dent in the bright wood. He stood there staring at it.

  Though Martha refused to take any money for the tour from Mayland Long, that did not alter the fact that he was a wealthy man, and would not by his own choice live under the level of discomfort usual to touring musicians. He liked to eat in restaurants—good restaurants—and he liked to take her with him. He said liking to eat in restaurants was a universal Chinese characteristic.

  Their lunch at the Heavenly Goose had really improved the day for both of them. They had discussed yesterday’s “accident” and today’s altercation into insignificance. They had congratulated each other on surviving a very grainy tour.

  And when they and Marty met Elen Evans on Pacific Mall, coming out of a sandwich shop in the company of Sandy, who was wearing overalls, she felt a twinge of guilt. She wondered whether garlic and hot sauce on her breath would give her away. Marty, seeing the woman who had dragged her along on errands all of the previous morning, slid unobtrusively behind the concealment of Mr. Long’s legs.

  Elen was wearing lavender gauze. “Kiss, kiss,” she said, walking over to them with pointed toes and a great rolling of the hips. With every step her ubiquitous hand-knotted net bag knocked against her thigh, and the wooden handle of the wrench poked up like the head of a little animal. To Martha’s relief, however, she did not kiss them at all, but turned her head to show a shocking red stripe down the back. “Today I’m being femme. Sandy, to achieve cosmic balance, has dressed utterly in butch.”

  “I have to dig a French drain,” said the other woman, half-defensively. Her voice was slightly adenoidal, and she had very sloping shoulders, off which the overall straps threatened to slide.

  Martha looked at the burgundy stripe. “Very… Santa Cruz, I’m sure. Is it permanent?”

  “Oh, quite.” Elen gave a throaty giggle. “I couldn’t help but think of George all the while I was having it done. Won’t he be impressed?”

  No one gave her an answer.

  Sandy, the babysitter, left them at the post office corner and went off to dig her drain. She looked rather depressed about it.

  “Nice person, isn’t she?” asked Martha as they walked along.

  “Oh my, yes. Oldest friend,” replied Elen. She had left her exaggerated walk behind on the mall.

  “Why didn’t she stop by after the concert last night? I forgot to thank her for lunch.”

  Elen blinked at Martha. “Sandy was at the Great American Thursday. She wasn’t about to listen to us two nights in a row.”

  It occurred to Martha that perhaps Elen didn’t know about Sandy and George. It was certainly not Martha’s place to tell her. She kept her mouth shut.

  They heard music as they entered by the back door of the theater, and they stood blinking in the cool, dark air. “What’s that?” asked Martha. “Somebody practicing?”

  Elen cocked her head. “Sure. It’s George and Teddy, though what they’re playing I don’t know.”

  But Martha pursed her mouth and did not move. “I’ll give you Teddy,” she said. “But that’s not George St. Ives on the pipes.”

  “Maybe Teddy’s playing with a tape.” Elen scuffed forward along the cracked hall toward the stairs. Long followed, holding Marty as though she were a bulky shopping bag. Her round legs drummed thoughtlessly against his perfect silk suit. Martha came last of all, frowning horribly with concentration and shaking her head as she went. “Not a tape, I don’t think,” she said to the steps in front of her.

  They opened the door to the dressing room and stood there all in a row, unnoticed by the musicians within. They listened for a long time.

  “It’s not right,” Martha whispered at last, unhappily.

  Long, who deferred to her on all questions of taste, shot her an inquiring glance. “Because it’s not traditional?”

  “Not at all that. Half what we do is not traditional, dear. This is… just not right.”

  Elen hissed into her ear. “Teddy’s okay. He’s just being Teddy. Following. It’s George I can’t believe. He’s… He’s…”

  Martha sucked in her breath. “That’s it! That’s what makes it sound so unfinished. They’re both following. No leader. No beginnings and ends.”

  “Perhaps it is a useful exercise. A discipline.”

  Elen snickered and stepped back out of the door. “More likely they’re just stoned.”

  Marty, seeing one of her favorites sitting on the table, demanded her daddo put her down, which he did. Making a large, obvious circle around St. Ives, the little girl skipped over to Ted Poznan and began to talk up very loudly through the music. Long followed, to keep her out of trouble. Ted showed all his perfect teeth to Marty.

  Elen was still standing behind Martha in the hall, as though she could neither bring herself to enter the room nor to leave it alone. “Actually, Ted’s quite a nice-looking man, isn’t he?” she said to Martha in tones of some surprise.

  Though Martha immediately agreed that he was, El
en proceeded as though she said something different. “He really is. And he plays well and he means well, and he’s responsible and kids like him. Never knocks things over or has moods and has to be placated, like young Trouble Himself.

  “No. Certainly not.”

  “Much more attractive face and body than Pádraig’s.”

  Martha had to nod.

  “Then why is it that… that I…?”

  Martha didn’t pretend not to understand. “I think it’s the mucus-free diet, Elen. I wonder if it doesn’t depress sexual pheromones, or something like that.”

  Martha and Elen were called in by cries of gladness and so they had to come. They were pushed to get their instruments.

  They found themselves in an uncomfortable sort of jam in that hot room—so uncomfortable that only twenty minutes later Elen dropped out. Ostensibly this was because her harp had faded completely out of tune with the others, but in reality because she could not discover what effect it was that George and Ted were trying to produce, nor what she had to offer toward it. Besides, she doubted very much the harp was being heard.

  Martha stayed in longer, attempting a takeover of leadership with her fiddle, which failed. She left the two men playing and put her instrument away. Elen was still lounging in the doorway, looking at her quizzically.

  “Ya can lead ’em, but ya can’t drive ’em,” was Martha’s comment.

  Without making any sound to indicate conclusion George St. Ives let his pipes fall. He grunted and took off his rag sweater, under which he wore a bleach-stained black T-shirt. Martha did not understand the applause this action received from Ted Poznan.

  “Music from the heart chakra,” announced Ted, holding both of his arms out into the air.

  Elen, who had pulled a soda out of the refrigerator in the corner, lowered the can from her lips and whispered, “That’s the problem! I should have been listening with my chakras, not my ears.”

  Muffled as the words were, St. Ives seemed to catch them. He leaned back until his neck touched the high table and he laughed very heartily. “Gawd! You said it, Elen. What a parade of sick cats! Music from the heart whatsit. Gawd!”