The Game of Love and Death

by Martha Brockenbrough

  He thought there had been something between them. The way they’d met as children. The way their paths crossed again at the airstrip and the park, as though fate were guiding them toward each other. How they both understood the language of music. The way she felt in his arms as they waltzed on the rooftop under a sky that had no moon and no stars but still felt full of light.

  The difference between that and how he felt at the Thorne family dinner table with Helen was enormous. Helen was the right choice in many ways, but wrong in all the ones that mattered. And then a space had opened up for him onstage with Flora — in a terrible way, yes. But he was ready to step into it. He’d offered himself up. And she’d said no. How could he have been so stupid?

  If that was the way she wanted it, he’d respect it. He’d let her go. Give Helen another chance. Maybe he’d been mistaken about love. Maybe Helen could teach him another way.

  He set his bass next to Ethan’s car. He popped open the back door and was just about to slide in the bass when a sparrow sang a lick exactly like the one Henry had been working to master. Coincidence, maybe. Or maybe just a trick of his reeling mind. Either way, a twitch started in his fingertips. It rose through his arms and across his chest, and there was only one way he could still it.

  He closed the car door, removed his bass from its case, tightened the hair on his bow, and found a divot in the sidewalk that would hold the endpin steady. He would walk away from her, but not without giving her something to remember him by. He faced the fence surrounding Flora’s backyard, tilted the bass against his heart, and checked to see that the strings were in tune.

  He began the first movement of a Bach suite that had been written for the cello, but could be played on the bass by someone with enough skill. It was a good warm-up piece, sweet and smooth. He eased into his own rendition of “Summertime,” constructing a bridge of notes that joined the two songs. He took his time traveling over it, like he was a man unweighted. And then, nearly there, he dropped his bow and bent himself entirely toward the pizzicato jazz style.

  His playing took on urgency. His impulse had been to make Flora hear him and realize her mistake. But the music swallowed him. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just wanted to play.

  Time slowed down enough that he could turn what he was feeling into notes. A lock of hair slipped onto his forehead and his skin grew hot, but his hands stayed light and fast. He played as if he could not go wrong, as if he were meant to be right there, doing the thing he’d been born to do. The ground and his body and the sky were no longer separate, but as related as three notes could be in an infinite variety of chords.

  Henry didn’t notice when faces appeared over the fence. Flora’s band. As they listened, the men removed their hats. Eventually, they ventured glances at one another. No one spoke.

  Henry played until he’d said his piece. His shirt stuck to his back and a drop of sweat from his forehead fell to the sidewalk. He looked up and acknowledged his audience. Flora stood atop the porch steps. She held one hand on her chest, clutching her dress.

  “Henry, wait,” she said, her voice roughed up.

  She started down the steps. Henry wouldn’t wait. He put his bass and bow back in its case, snapping it shut. Then he turned, opened the back door of the Cadillac, eased his instrument inside, and closed the door. He did not look back as he stepped into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and headed home.

  HENRY’s bass sat untouched in the carport for three weeks. Having called a temporary cease-fire with calculus, he was lying on his mattress with his hands beneath his head, studying a hairline crack in the ceiling, when Ethan knocked. Henry didn’t bother replying; Ethan would walk in anyway.

  “What do you think?” Henry asked. “Old man or bear’s ass?”

  Ethan looked puzzled, so Henry pointed up.

  “Bear’s ass, definitely.” Ethan closed Henry’s textbook and moved it aside so he could sit on the desk. “You’re going to have to get up someday.”

  Henry grunted. Someday. That word had grown tainted. There was no such thing.

  In the weeks since Flora had refused him, Helen had been kind. She’d taken to making him plates of food and keeping him company while he ate, and he found her interest in him and his life and his thoughts on important topics to be flattering. He had no complaints about her sandwiches. He didn’t feel like kissing her yet, but maybe that would come eventually.

  He’d forced himself to go through the motions at school and baseball. He’d be lucky to pass his upcoming finals, and he’d already been moved off the starting lineup and onto the bench with the underclassmen. When he walked down the halls, rumpled and unfocused, students steered clear, as though heartbreak were catching.

  The headmaster had pulled him aside the day before, just as he was leaving the chapel. “I’m hearing troubling things,” Dr. Sloane said, scratching at a few stray hairs on his chin with nicotine-tinged fingertips. “We’ve come to expect more out of you than we’re seeing in the classroom and on the field.”

  Henry’s stomach twisted. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll do better.”

  “ ‘How high a pitch his resolution soars.’ ” Dr. Sloane had a Shakespeare quotation for every situation. He coughed into his hand and clapped Henry on the arm. “You’ll let me know if something is amiss? If you need any assistance? A new razor, perhaps?”

  “Of course.” Henry resolved to mow down his meager crop of whiskers.

  “Not too much time left in this institution, Mr. Bishop. I know uncertainty can be hard to face, but let’s not lose focus before crossing the finish line.” D r. Sloane squared his shoulders and offered his hand.

  Henry shook it. “I won’t, sir. Thank you, sir.” He couldn’t imagine asking Dr. Sloane for help with heartache. Well, you see … there’s this girl who sings in a jazz band and I wanted to be her bass player, but we are the wrong color for each other, and she said no, and it gave me a burned-out hole in the center of my chest that the rest of me is slowly being sucked into.

  Dr. Sloane’s expertise was literature, not life. In any case, it was impossible to imagine an old person with a broken heart.

  “Good to hear, Henry. Good to hear. Because the last thing we want is for you to lose your scholarship this close to graduation.”

  The warning made Henry feel bad all over again. He was behind in school, perhaps hopelessly so. He’d managed to help Ethan with his written work, but his own was unfinished, doodled on, scattered in stacks and tucked into books.

  Ethan crumpled an expensive sheet of onionskin paper and pitched it to Henry.

  “See?” Ethan said when Henry grabbed it. “You’re fine. You might as well get up now. Besides … I heard of a new club. Jazz, even.”

  Henry pulled his pillow over his face.

  “Don’t tell me you’re giving up on music,” Ethan said. “Just because the raggedy old Domino is closed doesn’t mean you can’t hear jazz. James says this one’s just as good.” There was always a pause in Ethan’s voice when he mentioned his source in Hooverville.

  Henry moved the pillow away from his face and pushed himself up on his elbow.

  “So James says it?”

  Ethan’s features shifted. Henry couldn’t make out what emotion his friend was hiding.

  “The article has turned out to be more complicated than I thought. Father doesn’t want to give me any more extensions, but I want to get this one right. So I’ve interviewed him a few times, and we’ve gotten to know each other a bit. As people.” Ethan walked to the window and looked out. Henry could swear the edges of his friend’s ears were red.

  Henry hadn’t much considered Ethan’s absences at night these past few weeks. He figured he’d gone to Guthrie’s, or some late-night diner like the Golden Coin. Ethan was clearly slaving away, and Henry felt even guiltier for the labor he’d shirked.

  “I can’t go,” he said. “I’m so far
behind.”

  “Look.” Ethan faced Henry. “You haven’t told me what’s eating you, so I can’t help with that. But you haven’t played music or listened to it in weeks, and that’s like a plant going without water.”

  “Fine,” Henry said. “I miss it. But what makes you interested in music now? I’ve had to drag you out to listen.”

  Ethan looked at his feet and scratched the back of his head, as if he wanted to buy time before answering. “You know I’ve always enjoyed music. Maybe I don’t play it like you, but I listen to the wireless constantly.” He smoothed his hair. “And I have been talking about it with James a bit, you know, as part of working on that article. He said he’d like to hear some, so I invited him along. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course I don’t.” Henry paused. He couldn’t fathom why Ethan seemed to be so embarrassed about bringing a friend. Maybe because James Booth lived in Hooverville. A thought struck. “Do we have a suit to lend?”

  “Oh, that.” Ethan looked out the window again. “James said he had proper clothes. But let’s don’t tell Helen, all right?”

  The floorboards outside Henry’s room creaked.

  “Let’s don’t tell me what?” Helen leaned against the doorframe, working an emery board around her index fingernail. “I thought I heard you two plotting something. You’ve both been as dull as a cemetery for weeks. If I have to polish another candlestick with your mother, Ethan, I’m going to kill someone.” She held out her finger as if to appraise her work.

  Ethan shot Henry a look. “We want to make sure it’s the kind of place you’d enjoy before dragging you along.”

  If Henry didn’t know better, he’d have believed Ethan. There was something happening, something that exposed a vulnerability. Henry picked up the ball of paper. He opened it and started to smooth the wrinkles. It would have been gallant for him to extend an invitation, but he chose friendship and the illusion of chivalry over the thing itself. He continued to work on the paper, even as he knew it was a lost cause.

  Helen rolled her eyes. “I’m not afraid of anything. You should know that about me by now.” She turned her attention to another nail, and for a moment, there was no sound other than the slow rasp of the file.

  Ethan brushed his hands together, as if to wipe them clean. “Then it’s settled. We’ll go together. Sound about right, Henry?”

  Henry nodded. It surprised him that Ethan had flinched, but Ethan always was a gentleman.

  “Oh, goody.” Helen turned to leave, looking at the boys over her shoulder. “This will be fun.”

  When he was alone, Henry laid the wrinkled paper back on his desk, understanding it was beyond saving, but unable to throw it away. He placed it between the pages of his book, knowing it wouldn’t help. But at least he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

  LATER that evening, after he had wrestled down his last calculus proof and finished a paper comparing Athens and Sparta to the North and South during the Civil War, Henry shaved for the first time in three days. He took his time mixing the soap, brushing it along his jaw, and scraping it with the straight razor. His jugular throbbed in the mirror. So little flesh between that and the blade. The right cut would be lethal. And yet there wasn’t a chance he’d do it. It was one thing to be sad enough to want to die, but an entirely other thing to be mad enough to kill one’s self. The thought, dark as it was, made him feel better — and the prospect of hearing music again was proof that he very much wanted to be among the living, that in this regard, he was not his father’s son.

  He finished shaving, rinsed bits of soap from his earlobes and neck, and splashed aftershave against his cheeks. Then he dressed, straightened the books and papers on his desk, and glanced out the window. It had been a cloudy afternoon, and as a result, sunset was a slow fade to black. The quarter moon was little more than a pale dimple behind a curtain of clouds. Rain was on the way, but that was common in Seattle. The sky could hang heavy with moisture for days.

  Ethan paced at the base of the stairs, fussing with his cuff links.

  “Need a hand?” Henry said.

  “What? No.” Ethan looked up. “Just burning off energy.”

  “Don’t burn it all off.” Helen appeared in a white dress that hit her in the best of places. She wore a pair of black satin elbow gloves and a mink stole around her shoulders, the sort where they left the animal’s head on. A hidden clasp fed its tail into its mouth, and its eyes sparkled cruelly. Henry was glad he’d cleaned himself. He offered his arm. As they walked down the stairs together, he caught a whiff of her perfume, and he remembered why he despised that scent. Lilies made up the sole arrangement of flowers at his father’s sparsely attended funeral. Henry never knew whether it was the sudden poverty or the suicide that had driven away all of his fami­ly’s former friends. Ever since, lilies had reminded him of despair.

  It would simplify so much if he wanted Helen. But while her skin was pale and creamy, and her elegant collarbones were visible over the neckline of her dress, the sight only reminded him that she had a skeleton beneath her flesh. He wanted love, and when he looked at her, he could only think of death.

  “The Majestic isn’t far,” Ethan said. “We could walk, even. But there’s someone we have to pick up first.”

  “A girl?” Helen said. “Does Ethan have a steady?”

  Ethan shook his head and smirked. “Don’t you wish I could give you something to gossip about with my mother? But no. This is business. Something related to the newspaper. You couldn’t possibly understand. It’s an assignment from my father. You can ask him about it, if you’d like.”

  “It’s not that I wouldn’t be able to understand. It’s that I couldn’t possibly be interested.” Helen unclasped her pocketbook and removed a cigarette from a silver case.

  “Not in here,” Ethan said. “You know what Mother would say.”

  “And Ethan would never do something that would cost him the approval of one of his parents.” Helen removed the unlit cigarette from her lips. “Ethan is a perfect puppet. Sit up, Ethan. Walk this way, Ethan. Bow to us, Ethan.”

  “Not in the car either,” Ethan said, pointedly ignoring her remark. “You’ll burn holes in the seats.”

  Helen rolled her eyes and put the cigarette back in its case. Its tip had been stained red by her lips, and Henry found the sight of it both repellent and fascinating.

  The night air was cool and damp, and made Henry feel somewhat more himself. In the cloud-filtered moonlight Helen looked like a figure in a painting. He could not tell if the sensation it gave him was pleasant or troubling.

  “Anything else I’m not allowed to do tonight?” she said.

  “An entire list,” Ethan said. “Use your imagination.”

  “Oh, I am.” She waited for Henry and reached for his arm, but Ethan swooped between them and guided her to the backseat.

  “Henry, you don’t mind riding up front, do you?”

  “Not at all.” Henry appreciated that Ethan was trying to spare him, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to be spared anymore. In the backseat, Helen played with her lighter, making flames appear and disappear. Henry expected her to light a cigarette, but she didn’t.

  She wouldn’t leave Ethan alone. “Who are we picking up? Is it anyone I know?”

  “No.” Ethan turned on the radio, which was broadcasting news about Neville Chamberlain’s election as prime minister of the United Kingdom.

  Helen objected. “Ugh, how impossibly dull.”

  “It’s international news, Helen. It’s good to care about events that shape the future of humanity.”

  “Please,” Helen said. “I’ve had enough for a thousand lifetimes.”

  Henry looked out the window, eager to avoid the cross fire. Ethan switched off the radio. Hooverville was just ahead, lit with smudgy campfire light that gave the air a thick, sad smell. Ethan pulled over. From the darkness
, James Booth appeared in a clean gray suit, looking as if he might be one of their classmates. Perhaps his fortunes had improved; Henry could certainly imagine where he’d made some money. Ethan got out, and the pair shook hands. He opened the back door, and James slid in beside Helen, grinning more broadly than seemed possible.

  “Is this some sort of joke?” Helen looked at James as though he were a smelly dog.

  “Don’t be a snob, Helen,” Ethan said. “This is the mayor of Hooverville. Had he been born into money, he might even be the mayor of the city itself in a few years. He’s a terrific political talent. Full of smart ideas.”

  Henry watched in the rearview mirror as she lit a cigarette and exhaled in James’s face.

  “Helen.” James extended his hand. “Ethan’s said so much about you.”

  “Funny. He hasn’t said a thing about you.” Helen barely squeezed his fingertips. Her lit cigarette threatened to drop ash on the back of his hand.

  “History has a famous Helen,” James said. “Her face launched a thousand ships. You have a face that might launch a solid dozen, which I mean as a compliment on the grandest scale. The warships today are much bigger.” He plucked the cigarette from her fingers and stubbed it in the ashtray. “There, now. We wouldn’t want to set anything on fire.”

  Helen laughed. “We’ll see about that.”

  Henry glanced at Ethan, wondering if Helen and James could possibly have met before. Their antipathy had such familiarity.

  “Helen,” Ethan said. “Mind your manners. James might not come from money, but he’s got ideas and a gift for persuasion. You might even call that the wealth of the modern era.”

  “Oh, there’s a lot I’d call the likes of him,” she said.

  “Go on.” James leaned against the seat, cradling his head in his hands, as if he enjoyed being abused. “I’m all ears.”

  She raked her eyes over him. “The Helen in your story was a home wrecker, for starters.”