by Barbara Hall
The Edwardses’ house greeted me with all that and a thousand smells. Carpet was everywhere, and it held the landscape of their existence. Pledge and smoke and air fresheners, food and pets and perfume. Dorothy yelled for her husband as she offered me a seat, and Earl appeared as if he’d been waiting offstage for his cue.
He was a tall man, well built, but with a cowering nature. He looked at me with watery blue eyes. He still had on his suit from work, even the jacket, and he was completely devoid of wrinkles. He sat on the edge of his La-Z-Boy recliner and interlaced his long fingers and waited.
“I am Pearl Swain, Hallie’s music teacher—”
He clipped my sentence. “Is the girl giving you trouble?”
“No, not at all,” I said.
“Can I get you some coffee?” Dorothy asked. “My boys are at sports practice. One plays basketball. The other one wrestles. It’s never-ending around here.”
“No, I don’t need coffee. Where is Hallie?”
“In her room,” Earl answered. “Doing her homework. I’m not usually home this early. Dorothy told me you were coming. What’s the problem?”
“Earl is in insurance,” Dorothy interjected.
Earl cast a glance at her.
“There’s no problem,” I said.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
I began to feel a queasiness building in my stomach, like the early stages of the flu or pregnancy, when it’s possible to tell yourself it’s not there. The tightness grew with my resistance to it. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from— the smells from the carpet or the familiar surroundings or the unnatural stillness of Earl.
He squinted at me, and I said, “Well, there’s a slight problem, in that Hallie is exceptionally talented but lately I see her losing heart.”
“Is she talking back?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Because I don’t tolerate back talk.”
“We have discussions. I’m interested in her opinion.”
“Because I tell her like I tell my boys. You can’t help how smart or good looking you are, but you can sure help how you behave.”
The queasiness leapt forward. My father might have said something just like that to me. I wondered if I looked as pale as I felt.
“So what is it, then?” he asked.
Dorothy seemed to check out, her loquacious nature disappearing in the presence of her husband. I saw how he ruled this house with his exactitude. His quiet dominion. His inscrutable expression. I had seen my father do that when company came. When the preacher dropped by. When my mother threw a fit. He was proving to us that he would not be moved even as everything moved around him.
I said, “It’s nothing I can put a finger on. It’s more like a feeling. Hallie showed some real aptitude in music, with the violin in particular. Which is a hard instrument to play. But now she just seems to be going through the motions.”
Earl smiled at me. He had a large head. His hair was thick and carefully combed back. “Going through the motions, is that what you said?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that what she’s supposed to do? Isn’t that what a teacher asks a student to do?”
“Technically speaking. What I mean is, she doesn’t care.”
“If she doesn’t care, she should stop.”
“She used to care, though.”
I couldn’t believe the way my brain was breaking down. Something in his manner was scrambling my thoughts. His expression was neutral, but I could feel the sneer building inside him. I knew I could not say the words. They were as scorned here as in my father’s house.
“She used to care and now she doesn’t,” he repeated.
“Going through the motions works in certain things, but not in music. You have to have a kind of . . . interest in it.”
He knew I meant “passion.” He knew all the words I was talking around.
He smiled. “Well, I don’t have my heart set on her being a musician. Do you, Dorothy?”
Dorothy’s eyes grazed mine. Then she said, “It would be nice if she had a marketable skill.”
“Typing. That’s a marketable skill.”
“Well, yes, but I don’t see why she couldn’t do both.”
“Miss . . . Swain, is it? I know you have to get all wrapped up in your students because they pay you and whatnot. But Hallie came to us carrying that violin and talking about playing it. Now, if she’s changed her mind, I’m going to have to let that be.”
“I happen to know, Mr. Edwards, that Hallie only came to me because someone in school recognized her talent and suggested she apply for a grant. At which point Mrs. Edwards brought her in. Hallie herself was reluctant to take the lessons. After a few lessons, she began to come into her own. She showed a kind of talent that I have never seen in my years of teaching. And soon her devotion to the music developed. I saw it happen right before my eyes. I saw her grow into it. I didn’t imagine it.”
“No one’s saying you did,” he said evenly.
“And then I saw it disappear. Now, as a teacher, I am supposed to pay attention to my student’s behavior. I have an obligation to let the parents know when I see some kind of abrupt change like that. Sometimes it’s indicative of something—”
I cut myself off. They were staring at me. Dorothy sucked in a breath and put a manicured hand to her mouth.
“Drugs?” she asked. Hopefully, I thought.
I stared hard at her. “No. Not drugs.”
“Something worse?” she asked.
I looked at Earl. His expression had not changed.
He said, “I don’t think you’re that kind of teacher. You’re not a public school teacher. Those are the people who are supposed to let us know when something’s wrong. Her math teacher. Her history teacher. Those folks. Not you. She pays to see you. Or should I say, we pay for her to see you.”
“Yes, it’s true. I’m not actually a mandated reporter. But I am concerned. And I can’t ignore that concern.”
“What’s a mandated reporter?” Dorothy asked.
Earl ignored her. “That she’s losing interest in music. That’s your concern.”
I leaned toward him. “That she’s experiencing some kind of extreme stress.”
A door opened abruptly, and Hallie came in, wearing a hoodie and pajama bottoms, her hair wet and combed back. She looked like an innocent girl. Not the dark, sullen creature who always stomped up the stairs.
“I can’t study,” she said. “It’s too loud.”
Dorothy cast her eyes to the far wall.
Hallie froze when she saw me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just checking in. I told you I might.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I wanted to update your parents . . . Mr. and Mrs. Edwards . . . on your progress.”
“Bullshit.”
“Hey, young lady,” Earl said.
“She’s lying. She’s telling you that I did something wrong.”
“Did you do something wrong?” he asked.
“No. But teachers don’t ever come around with good news.”
I said, “Hallie, this is really between the three of us, so if you could just go back to your room. We’ll keep our voices down. It’s nothing important.”
She gave me a hard look. “Whatever she’s telling you is something she’s made up in her own mind.”
She slammed the door, and we listened to her familiar stomp going away.
The Edwardses were looking at me.
“Well, look, I’m not objective. I just want Hallie to continue on this path,” I said.
“You let us worry about her path,” Earl said.
Dorothy was looking away from him.
“Thanks for stopping by,” he said.
He walked me to the door. Dorothy didn’t move.
When we got there, he put a hand on my shoulder, and the tightness moved through my stomach again.
“Do you have children, Mis
s Swain?”
“No. Just my students.”
“There aren’t many people like you left in the world.”
I laughed. “You mean crazy musicians? There are. Way too many.”
“I meant people who care,” he said. The sudden shift in his tone confused me until I realized that because I was leaving, he no longer saw me as a threat. His defenses were down, and his true nature was emerging. He had been scared. That was where the demeanor came from. The unwillingness to reveal anything of himself.
Sometimes I forgot how much men had to hide.
“I do appreciate your interest in my daughter.”
Dorothy spoke up then, moving in our direction. The attention had been off her for long enough.
“We get the point, Earl.”
Earl said to me, “What’s your first name, again?”
“Pearl.”
“Earl with a P.”
He laughed at his own joke.
This was the final straw for Dorothy. She was standing right next to her husband now, her dark eyes bearing down on me.
“Good night, Miss Swain.”
I didn’t know what was going on in this house. But whatever it was, a deal had been struck. There was a common agreement. Something so solid and oppressive that even Hallie was unwilling to betray it. There was no question of that. The only question left was how much of it was my business.
FRANKLIN DUCKS OUT early this Wednesday night, shortly after our best-lyricist discussion. He has a gig with his new friend Jenny. He tells me he’s not really in her band, he’s just sitting in tonight, playing for an adult birthday party in Bel Air, at the home of a movie director. He assures me that this is good for the Trailer Park Rogues, as he can make some connections. I say, “Yeah, I know all about the connections you’re trying to make.” The memory of Jenny is clear in my mind. She is young and still looks good in a tank top. Her vocal style is a trick. It’s vibrato taken to an unholy level. It’s a warble. It’s a step away from yodeling. But Franklin is falling for it. And maybe I’m the fool for not realizing that I was being set up.
Franklin just shakes his head at me and says, “Pearl, you know, a musical marriage is even harder than the real kind.”
I say, “What would you know about either one?”
But he only chuckles and goes out. Ernest follows him, with his own battered Gibson in a beat-up case, saying he’s going to try to hook up with this married woman he’s pursuing, whose husband is a shithead lawyer who works all the time, leaving her lonely and vulnerable. “Is she pretty?” I ask him. “For a woman her age, she’s a fox,” he says proudly, as if he’s figured something out. Older women have some hidden value, and he alone has discovered it, like a guy who has discovered a new planet. I don’t ask how old she is. I’m sure that she’s several years younger than I am and that it never occurred to Ernest that I might be offended. Because it never occurred to Ernest that I’m capable of having an affair.
I say to his back, “It’s his money that’s keeping her attractive. Pilates! Botox! It’s expensive to look young when you’re old!”
But the door slams halfway through my retort.
I wonder if I’m capable of having an affair.
And then I am left alone with Patrick, who is leaning against the far wall, without an instrument, smiling at me.
“What?” I say.
He shakes his head. His long hair is pulled back into a ponytail.
“Who is it you’re really talking to?” he asks.
“Oh, leave me alone,” I say, grabbing my violin. “Paul Simon is a fraud. He writes poems and then he hires other cultures to arrange the music, but he takes all the credit.”
Patrick shrugs. “But he writes the poems.”
“That’s not hard. It’s only half the equation.”
Patrick shrugs again.
“So write me one,” he says.
“What?”
“Write me a poem if they’re so easy.”
Actually, he says “sho easy.”
I glare at him.
I say, “You’re not walking me to my car.”
He shrugs again. “Why would I do that?”
“Because all the men in this place volunteer to do that when they want something.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” he says.
“Good,” I say.
I make it all the way to the door with my violin bumping against my rib cage. Then I hear him say, “I just want you to know who I am.”
I turn on him, already agitated. “Oh, really? Who are you?”
He shrugs again.
I say, “You want me to know who you are? Tell me what instrument you play.”
The smile dissolves from his face, even though no other muscle in his body moves.
“I told you before,” he says.
“Tell me again.”
He looks hard at me. His eyes are the color of rain, and the definition of piercing. His face is all angles. His chin juts out toward me. He is tall and thin and lean, but he is not young.
“I play all of them,” he says.
“You play all instruments?”
My hands are shaking and the rest of my body will soon follow. I can’t stand being this close to him, though there is an entire store and several musical instruments separating us.
I feel as though we are neck and neck.
Photo finish. But with no finish.
“Okay, fine,” I say, knowing that there are such people in the world who literally play all instruments. They are few and far between. They have perfect pitch. They can pick up anything devised to make music and elicit beautiful sounds. They don’t fight with their instruments or worry about them or stand in awe of them. They create partnerships first, and then they master them. For them, the mystery is more than half solved, and maybe it’s why they put the instrument down. Maybe it accounts for their lack of concern. Maybe it’s why Patrick has nothing to worry about.
“What was your first instrument?” I ask him. “What did you learn on?”
He barely moves. He says, “I didn’t learn on any of them.”
“What? You were born knowing?”
He nods.
“I was born knowing,” he says.
“You’re full of shit,” I tell him.
He laughs. “Well, sure. I’m full of shit. I’m human.”
“You can’t even remember the first time—”
“My first instrument was probably this,” he says. He puts the ends of his fingers into his ears. Takes them out. Puts them in again.
I stare at him.
“The roar,” he explains. “When you plug your ears. What is the roar? The sound of your blood? The engine of your brain? This is what led me to music. Instruments are everywhere. Why do you people worry yourselves with details?”
“That’s just noise.”
“I think it’s in the ear of the beholder—what is noise and what isn’t.”
“I think that’s a cop-out.”
Patrick smiles. “Now you’re talking like Franklin. You only like him because he doesn’t approve of you. And if he doesn’t approve, you can never get close.”
“That’s just not true.”
“Truth. Another subjective discussion.”
“Good night, Patrick.”
He says something, but it is lost in the sound of the door closing behind me, obscured by the ringing of some strange chime Franklin put there long ago to warn us that someone had arrived, in search of music.
10
YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING how a woman gets to be forty in a city as big as Los Angeles without having any female friends. Well, I did have them. Or I had one. Her name was Leah.
We used to meet at John O’Groats, an Irish breakfast joint on Pico, every other Saturday morning to catch up. Leah was a lawyer-turned-artist. She worked in family law. She dropped out and took up mixed media, which, as far as I could tell, was about putting unlikely stuff together until it looked good. She said that’
s what families were about, too. But with art, nobody gets hurt.
Leah made a name for herself by collecting bottle caps, flattening them with an iron, painting them, and then arranging them into abstract forms on a piece of plywood. There was a real rush for her work a few years back. Celebrities bought it. (That’s how you know you’ve made it in L.A.) Leah would call me at all hours, saying, “Oh, my God, Tom Cruise was just here!” Or George Clooney or Jennifer Lopez or Susan Sarandon. Like most art waves in Los Angeles, it didn’t last long.
We met at church, when I first moved here. A laid-back Episcopal church, which never bothered with follow-up. My faith started dwindling around the breakup of my marriage, and the church was so laid back they never sent anyone to check on me. This just didn’t seem right to me. Though at the time, Leah said, “Pearl, be honest. If they sent someone, you’d throw a bucket of piss in their face.”
I would never have done that, but it sounded appealing.
I said, “Well, I’d like the option.”
Leah laughed her raspy smoker’s laugh and said, “That’s why preachers stopped making house calls. Who wants to get pissed on without a soul to show for it?”
Leah still went to church, even though she had been flailing as an artist. Or maybe because of it. She liked her faith. Whenever we talked, she’d say, “Don’t you miss the wafer, Pearl? Don’t you want to take Communion?”
“What for?”
“For protection,” she said.
“Protection against what?”
“Well, I don’t know. Life.”
“I don’t think it works that way. That’s more like superstition.”
“It’s not a superstition. It’s an image. An archetype. Jesus is your lawyer. Communion is your retainer.”
“Please.” I kind of believed it. But at the same time, as a musician, I thought I was way more up in God’s grill than Leah. Although flattening out bottle caps might have had a spiritual component I hadn’t yet understood. I have always believed in art, have devoted myself to it from an early age, because I decided it was important to make the world a more beautiful place. But the bottle caps sometimes looked to me like a nervous preoccupation, an attempt to ward something off. It scared me when I thought that music might have become that for me, too.
