The Song Reader

by Lisa Tucker

  She nodded nonchalantly, but he was as nervous as if she’d agreed to go out on a date. And he didn’t mind that she kept talking for another twenty minutes or more, long enough for them to finish their first cup. She was so passionate about her work; he liked that in a woman. Of course he cared deeply about his own, too, and he hoped at some point she would ask him what he was working on. Not because he needed to talk about it—in truth, he could barely think, he was so worried about screwing this up—but because if she didn’t, it probably meant this coffee was just a chance to finish her point. She had no interest in him.

  He couldn’t believe his luck. She not only asked, she listened and came up with intelligent questions. They spent two hours at the café, made plans for lunch the next day, and even then, she seemed reluctant to leave. It was tempting to think that she was lonely, too, but she’d already told him she never got lonely. “Like Billy said a long time ago, there’s no loneliness as long as you have stories. My books are my friends.” She smiled. “Too bad I have so many friends at this point that they’re threatening to take over my apartment.”

  So maybe she just liked him? Though Patrick had a hard time believing it, it turned out to be true. Much later, she told him what she’d been thinking at that café, the first time they were together. She numbered her thoughts with her fingers, a habit of hers that never failed to charm him. One, he was an excellent listener. Two, he seemed really fascinated by what she thought about books. Three, he was “adorable” in his white sweater and old jeans. Four, he made her understand a math conversation, which she’d thought was impossible. Five, he never once asked her that ridiculous question everyone asks about what it’s like to be a twin.

  Five wasn’t a sign of his intuitive powers. He’d almost asked that “ridiculous question,” but something she said made him forget to. He’d gotten lucky again.

  Patrick didn’t meet Lila’s twin for almost eight months. He was nervous about the encounter, knowing that Lila had no living parents and Billy was her entire family. He’d also heard things that made him worry that no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn’t like Lila’s brother. At least once a week, she mentioned that Billy was “brilliant,” which wouldn’t have bothered him except she often added that her brother had always been the smarter twin. Lila had won prestigious scholarships, finished her PhD in four years, and already received three tenure-track job offers at excellent schools. In fact, the one she’d just accepted, in Philadelphia—where she was determined to live because Billy and his family had settled there—was at a name-brand college where Patrick would have killed to work since the teaching load was so light, allowing plenty of time for research. Patrick had one offer in Philadelphia, at a small college in the suburbs, where he would have to teach two sessions of introductory algebra for every two real courses he got to teach. But he was planning to take the job if Lila would agree to marry him, and the visit to Billy’s house was his prelude to asking her. Patrick knew if he didn’t get along with her fabulous brother, she’d never consider accepting his proposal.

  Billy lived in a row house in a blue-collar neighborhood west of the city. Patrick knew Lila’s brother had gotten married because he’d gotten a woman pregnant, but he’d never understood why they hadn’t considered abortion or adoption, rather than the old-fashioned solution of marriage. Lila had said they weren’t against abortion; she’d also explained that her brother was not in love with this woman, though Patrick wondered if she was wrong about this. He knew Lila had never gotten close to her brother’s wife and once or twice it occurred to him that Lila might be somehow jealous of Ashley, but he put that idea out of his mind as unfounded and probably ridiculous.

  On this particular Sunday, Billy, Ashley, and their almost five-year-old daughter, Pearl, were all at home. The inside of the row house was dark and a little shabby, but it looked like it had been recently cleaned. Pearl’s dolls were neatly arranged in a plastic tub, wedged behind the door. The wood floors had been swept, and the whole place smelled of lemon dusting spray. Ashley was dressed up like she’d just come from church, though her skirt was a little too short for any church Patrick had ever been in. She was pretty in an earthy kind of way: big breasts, round face, flat nose, nice green eyes. Pearl, their daughter, looked a little like what Lila must have looked like as a kid: hair so blond it was almost white, tiny as an elf, a sweet smile. Patrick smiled back at her, and Lila knelt down and gave Pearl a hug. Next, Lila hugged Ashley and spoke to her for a few minutes; only then did she finally throw her arms around her twin.

  It was true: they didn’t look alike. Billy was shorter, for one thing, which was odd, Patrick thought. He had long, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and a muscular frame more like Patrick’s own. The only signs that they were related were their sparkling blue eyes and their similar gestures and expressions. No doubt they’d both picked up the latter from their parents, but for Patrick, it was disconcerting, like watching a strange man who’d memorized his girlfriend’s behaviors. When Billy pulled away and stuck his hand out to him, Lila apologized for failing to introduce everyone. But she was giggling like a girl, rather than laughing the soft, sophisticated laugh Patrick was used to.

  He might have felt out of place if Billy hadn’t turned out to be everything Lila said he was. He told Patrick he had a few questions for him, and Patrick followed Lila’s brother into the tiny dining room, fearing some kind of old-fashioned, what-are-yourintentions talk. But all over the oak table were books, mathematics books, and though they weren’t at the level of Patrick’s own work, they were upper-level undergraduate texts: difficult to read for all but the best majors and impossible to read for someone with no formal training like Billy. Lila’s brother admitted he’d had difficulty with many of the concepts, and he’d littered each book with yellow stickies, each with a question he hoped Patrick wouldn’t mind answering for him. “Lila told me your field is wavelets,” he said with a humble smile. “I thought I should try to understand what you do, to the extent I can.”

  Patrick was impressed that he’d taken the time, especially as he knew Billy was working long hours doing carpentry to support his family, but more than that, he enjoyed talking about math with Billy. Lila’s brother had a keen mind that focused in on the most interesting aspects of a topic. Of course, he couldn’t work the problems, but he seemed to grasp the concepts in a way few students did. Occasionally, when Patrick would look up from the table and see Ashley and Lila getting dinner ready, he would tell Lila that he’d be glad to help, but she said they were handling it and then smiled, presumably because she was pleased he and her brother were getting along so well.

  It wasn’t until hours later, after they’d finished Ashley’s roast and potatoes, played three games of cards with Pearl, said their goodbyes and gotten in Patrick’s Volkswagen to head back to Princeton, that Patrick realized no one had asked Lila about her work: not Ashley, who didn’t seem to care about any of it but good-naturedly put up with what she called Billy’s “hobbies,” but not Billy, either.

  He didn’t broach the topic until they were almost home. He was worried she’d be upset with him, but she laughed. “Billy doesn’t need to ask me about that. He taught me everything I know.”

  “Now there’s a ringing endorsement of grad school.”

  “Okay, I don’t mean literally everything. But he’s the reason I decided to study literature. It all goes back to when we were kids, when he…“ She glanced out the window. “It’s hard to explain. Let’s just say that without him, I wouldn’t have the stories anymore.”

  Patrick didn’t understand, but he didn’t push her. It was part of the unspoken agreement he’d had with Lila from the moment their relationship became serious: he would never really question her about her past. It didn’t occur to him that there was anything wrong with this—honestly, quite the opposite: he considered it another stroke of luck that he’d managed to fall in love with a woman who didn’t want to share everything in her life. With other women he’d date
d, what started out as a moment of sharing had usually turned into an accusation when he didn’t get whatever he was supposed to out of it. Then, too, his father had been spilling his feelings all over Patrick for as long as Patrick could remember. He was frankly relieved to be with Lila, who made so few emotional demands. Their life together could be based on reason and thought, which sounded like happiness to him.

  After they were married, they saw Billy’s family at all the usual occasions: birthday parties for Billy and Ashley’s kids, Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas Eve to swap presents, picnics on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. When he and Lila finally had some money—and tenure—they rented a house at the Jersey Shore for a month one summer and invited Billy’s family to join them. Billy couldn’t get off work that long, but he agreed to come with Ashley and the kids for the first two weeks.

  Patrick was desperate for this vacation. The last year had been a constant struggle to deal with the demands of teaching and the demands of his research, not to mention the never-ending drama of the political squabbles in his department. How Lila was able to keep her distance from everything unsavory about academia was something he never really understood, though he admired her for it. She kept up with the paperwork, taught her students, and went to the necessary committee meetings—all while remaining passionately engaged in her own work in American literature. One time she told him that she could read these books a thousand times and still see new meanings in them.

  Did it ever bother him that Lila was so into her books? Both of them had always worked constantly, but over the last year or so he’d been struck by the fact that they weren’t even having sex much anymore. To be fair, whenever he made his interest clear, she’d put aside her books and papers, take his hand, and lead him into their bedroom, but he felt vaguely uneasy that she never seemed to initiate sex or particularly miss it. But he put this out of his mind by reminding himself that his wife was good to him in so many other ways: from offering a sympathetic ear for his problems with his department to keeping in touch with his father whenever he was too busy or stressed to do it himself. After all the years they’d lived together, she still woke him up nearly every morning with a smile and a kiss and the coffee made. He continued to consider himself lucky.

  And her devotion to literature was one of the things he’d never stopped loving about her. It was also one of the reasons she was so popular with her students and colleagues. Her enthusiasm was infectious. Even Patrick’s coworkers in the math department knew they could never come to Lila and Patrick’s apartment without leaving with an armful of books they just had to read. Strangely enough, these mathematicians did read a lot of Lila’s suggestions. She seemed to have that effect on everyone.

  Everyone, that is, except her brother and his wife. With Ashley, Lila didn’t really make an effort, but with Billy, she tried as hard as she did with anyone, and yet her brother never seemed to get around to reading any of the novels and plays she left for him. Why she read absolutely everything Billy suggested to her was a mystery, but then most of Lila and Billy’s relationship had remained mysterious. They had lunch together alone about once a month; Lila said they spent most of their time discussing “things that happened when we were younger.” He didn’t ask for specifics; he assumed it had something to do with their parents dying. Lila had told him they’d died in a car accident right before she’d started college.

  At the shore house they rented that summer, Lila was determined to make progress on Billy’s latest obsession, a novel called Gravity’s Rainbow. Every free moment, Lila had her nose stuck in that enormous book, including one morning when they were out on the beach, under the three umbrellas it took to shade the group: one for Lila and Patrick, one for Billy and the kids—twelve-year-old Pearl, William, who was five, and ten-month-old Maisie—and one for Ashley, who was taking a nap. The girls’ names had been picked by Billy, literary names, which Ashley had agreed to because they were pretty, but she put her foot down for their son, insisting on naming him for his father rather than some imaginary person. Billy acquiesced, but insisted they call their son William, not Billy.

  It would have been impossible for Billy to read at the beach while watching out for William and little Maisie. He was a good father, or at least he always seemed like a good father from Patrick’s point of view. He didn’t drink; he never hit his kids or even raised his voice to them. Of course, he must have grown tired of running around after them, especially at the shore, where there was always the danger of drowning or getting stung by a jellyfish or at the very least falling down and getting a mouthful of sand. So Lila’s suggestion that Billy let her take care of the kids for a while should have been welcome. She was trying to help. What was wrong with that?

  Over the years, Ashley had alluded to Billy having a temper, saying, “He’ll get mad if we don’t” about minor things like what time they would eat Thanksgiving dinner or whether they would have sparklers on the Fourth of July. Lila rolled her eyes at these claims, insisting her brother had never gotten mad about something so trivial in his life. But here he was, that day on the beach, not only angry with Lila but shouting at her.

  “If you don’t want to read Gravity’s Rainbow, just say so.”

  “But I do want to read it. I told you it was—”

  “ ‘Oh, I like this novel, Billy.’ “ His tone was sarcastic. “ ‘It’s really good.’ “ He picked up William, who was small for his age; Pearl had already escaped to her mother’s umbrella, lugging Maisie with her. “Why can’t you keep track of what’s important?” He came close to his sister and hissed, “Was it really just entertainment, Lila? Is that all it was?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I don’t know why you’re saying this to me.”

  Patrick had seen his wife flinch when Billy made fun of her voice, and now he noticed that Lila was about to cry. So he stepped in, even though he was nervous, not so much about Billy turning on him—though in truth, over the years, he’d grown a little tired of Lila’s brother’s caustic “wit”—but about how his wife would react to him interfering in her relationship with her brother. He’d never done it before, but then he’d never felt like the situation so clearly demanded something of him.

  “She was only trying to be nice,” Patrick said.

  “And ‘nice’ is so important, isn’t it?” Billy flashed him a mean smile. He knelt down in the sand, placing William beside him, still clutching the silent boy by the wrist. “All hail the new God of Nice, the most important quality in the modern world—more important than goodness, more important than depth, and much, much more important than truth.”

  Lila was standing motionless, still watching her brother. Patrick took a breath and hoped he wasn’t blushing. Had he really said anything close to what Billy was accusing him of? “I don’t think being nice is more important than goodness and truth. I think it’s unfair to categorize my position that way.”

  “Of course, because that wouldn’t be nice, would it?”

  Billy was staring up at him. Finally Patrick shook his head and blurted out what he was thinking. “This is beyond ridiculous.”

  “Aha,” Billy sputtered. “So you do disappoint your god on occasion. Good to know.” He waited a moment, then stood up and gave Patrick a smile that looked oddly genuine. His voice sounded normal now, too, and entirely sincere. “I knew I loved you for a reason, O brother-in-law of mine.”

  Patrick was thoroughly confused, but his primary reaction was relief that this hadn’t escalated further. He knew if Billy ever pushed him too far, he’d have to act, but what could he do, punch Lila’s brother? He’d never punched anyone in his life.

  “Well, now that that’s settled,” Ashley said, yawning, sounding annoyed, “I’m going to take the kids back to the house for a while. Maisie is hungry and William must be, too. Pearl can help me get them some lunch.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Billy said. “I’m starving.” He glanced at Lila, but his eyes settled on Patrick. “How about you guys? Are
you coming along?”

  “In a few minutes,” Patrick said.

  “Why wait?” Lila said cheerfully. “Let’s all head back together.” She put her right hand in Patrick’s and her left hand in Billy’s. As if she were trying to glue the three of them together after her brother’s outburst. As if she were trying to show she didn’t take sides, even if one of the “sides” was her own. Patrick was even more confused, and he tried to talk to Lila about it when they were in their room, changing out of their sandy bathing suits. She’d just gotten naked and she was shivering from the sudden blast of cold from the air-conditioner vent over by the dresser. He took her in his arms and told her it wasn’t right that Billy had yelled at her.

  “He wasn’t yelling at me,” she said, stepping back. “I know it sounded like that, but Billy has always been exuberant. It’s just that he’s so passionate about everything he cares about. It matters to him in a way that it doesn’t to most people.”

  It wasn’t the first time she’d explained away her brother’s bad behavior by some claim that Billy was different from most people—but it was the first time that Patrick didn’t buy it. This wasn’t Billy’s caustic wit or even just teasing. Her brother had gone off on her for no reason. It was a completely irrational way to behave.

  But when he told her so, Lila insisted Billy did have a reason to be upset. That book was very important; some of her colleagues had been teaching it for years. Thomas Pynchon was one of the world’s greatest authors, and Gravity’s Rainbow was his masterpiece. Naturally, Billy cared that Lila read it as soon as possible. He wanted to discuss it with her before they went back to Philly on Saturday.

  Patrick stood back and looked at his wife. “Okay, but why couldn’t he have been civil about it? Why didn’t he just say, ‘No thanks, keep reading’?”