The Music Teacher

by Barbara Hall

  I turned angry; I turned mean. I turned into your sour music teacher with the sour mothball breath.

  I said, “It’s a waste of my time to teach you if you’re not going to take music seriously. If you’re just farting around, I need to know so I can invest that energy somewhere else.”

  “I don’t care what you do with your energy,” she said without a hint of rancor.

  For once in my life, I thought about what to say. I thought about it for as long as I believe I’m capable of. Here’s what I came up with: Let’s practice the Bach piece again, from the top, and this time I’m not going to help at all. I’m just going to listen.”

  So I listened, but I was far too angry to hear anything. They were just notes on a scale, coming forth, retreating, hiding, reappearing. The music was running away from her, and from me, and the two of us just sat in our folding metal chairs and watched it go. As if it weren’t sacred. As if we could call it back, like a stubborn pet, and it would come back of its own volition.

  We were relying on the wobbly truth that nothing likes to be kept out in the cold.

  12

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE, I go down to Rae’s for dinner. Rae’s is a coffeeshop near McCoy’s where most of us go to lunch when we forget to pack something. It’s dirt cheap, but it still offends the money-conscious person to pay for a meal when you can bring a ham sandwich from home. On this particular night, I decide to go there as a treat to myself. It’s too depressing to be in my trailer. Ralph, the drunk next door, has already come by for his free beer, and after he leaves, I am alone with the sounds of families preparing to be happy or else, goddamn it. I’m fully aware that on Christmas Day, somewhere in the late afternoon, unhappiness sets in as the kids tire of their toys and the parents tire of their children and each other, and the yelling starts, in the key of B. I know that is in store for me, so this is the last chance to relax.

  I didn’t always hate Christmas Eve. I used to like it. Mark and I celebrated the holiday in big fashion. We spent money we didn’t have on presents for each other, creating an elaborate system of hiding things. Christmas morning was always a treasure hunt. We wrapped up boxes, but in the boxes were little slips of paper, giving clues as to where to search for the presents. It took half a day to go through the ritual, and by late afternoon, when all the presents had been found, we’d start drinking mimosas and I’d start cooking. By nightfall we were exhausted and we’d collapse on the couch, curled up next to each other, still drinking but now watching silly entertainment news shows on the television. We’d always reserve enough energy to make love before going to bed. To hear me tell it, it was perfect.

  Well, it was perfect in the early days, and I should have known better than to trust it. I should have worked at protecting it. I can safely say that our marriage began its decline the year we didn’t hide each other’s presents. We just bought stuff and wrapped it up and put it under the tree. It wasn’t my idea; it was Mark’s. He said, “It’s getting a little old, isn’t it, this treasure hunt?”

  “Yeah, it’s old,” I said, unsure of myself, scared that my childishness was starting to turn him away. Sometimes I blame myself in this regard. I tell myself that nothing would have gone wrong if I had had the guts to say, No, this is what we do. This is part of our marriage. We’re hiding our presents.

  Deep down, I know that he had left me in his head long before he stopped hiding the presents. His insistence on a “normal” Christmas was just a symptom of his desire to wander. He didn’t need to keep a magical Christmas with me, as he had found his own magic in the arms (or at least the adoring eyes) of a weepy coed.

  But think, think, I tell myself on this Christmas Eve. There must have been a point where he started to lose interest, just a little bit. A point where you could have turned it around. The other half of my brain says, No matter. You don’t want him anymore. No, not anymore, but the way he was then, the way we were then. I wanted that forever. If you really wanted it forever, you would have fought. Why didn’t you fight?

  Because, I say, after I have parked and started my walk to Rae’s, we were always working too hard at happiness. Why did we hide our presents? Because in the early days, we had nothing to give. We were too poor. We bought each other cheap presents. We hid them in order to provide a sense of occasion. He bought me violin strings, and CDs on sale, and secondhand jewelry. I bought him used books and computer paper and flimsy journals. Once, I gave him coupons to a car wash, and another time he gave me a box full of thread and needles. One year my big gift was a bottle of balsamic vinegar, because I liked it and it was too expensive. The same year, I gave him a silver pen, which he put in a drawer and never used.

  If you want to, if you’re interested, you can trace the demise of our marriage through the elevation of our Christmas gifts to each other. Once we stopped hiding the presents, once we started trying to make up for the lack of intrigue by paying more for the gifts, everything started going downhill.

  The last Christmas we were together, we bought very nice things for each other. I got him a first edition of Robert Graves’s Good-bye to All That. He got me a gold charm bracelet with musical instruments on it. Which was fine, but then we veered off into generic niceness. I bought him, that year, a cashmere scarf and leather gloves, and he bought me a sapphire ring. He never wore scarves or gloves, and I never wore fine jewelry. We had crossed over into that dangerous land of not knowing each other at all. We had crossed over into that dangerous land of letting the money speak. And once the money starts speaking, you tend to shut up.

  I sit down at the counter at Rae’s and am immediately waited on by Gloria, the waitress who is always there, always moderately cranky, always wearing too much makeup, her platinum hair piled up on her head. She has to be sixty, but she has devoted herself to denying the ravages of time. The only reason she hasn’t had any work done is that she can’t afford it. She talks to me about the recent advances in plastic surgery whenever I see her. She says, “Now they can make your lines go away with a laser. I’m thinking of doing that.” I say, “No, don’t do that. There has to be a downside.” She also talks to me about diets, though she never seems motivated to go on one. She says, “Now there is this diet where you eat nothing but meat for thirty days. My next-door neighbor lost fifteen pounds.”

  Gloria never tries these things, but she never loses interest in talking about them.

  When she sees me, she sidles up and says, “Merry Christmas. You want the fried egg sandwich?”

  “No, I’m going to try the meat loaf.”

  “It’s pretty good,” she admits, jotting it down. “What the hell are you doing all alone on a night like this?”

  “I’m always alone at Christmas,” I tell her.

  She rolls her dark eyes and says, “You’re lucky. I’ve got four kids. Two of my own, two of my husband’s. Tomorrow is going to be hell. Somebody is going to start screaming by ten o’clock. I can’t wait till they leave home.”

  “Don’t say that,” I offer mildly, not meaning it.

  She says, “Honey, if you only knew. Christmas is all about the children, and they never let you forget it. My feet hurt so bad, I’m thinking of asking my doctor to cut them off. How bad can a wheelchair be? People have to push you places. Sounds good to me.”

  “You don’t mean that,” I tell her. Gloria is a diabetic, and I realize that the eventuality of having her limbs cut off is in the proverbial cards.

  People who get sick do it for a reason, I figure. And if you want someone to push you around in a wheelchair, you must have a sound purpose. Gloria is tired, and I can see where the idea of being pushed around might appeal to her. But those of us who eat at Rae’s don’t want to reckon with that just yet.

  “I’ll get your meat loaf,” she says, sounding exhausted. “Anything else?”

  “Just some iced tea.”

  “No problem,” she says, moving away.

  I am reading the print on the back of a Tabasco bottle when I hear my name.
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br />   “Pearl,” the voice says.

  I look up. Patrick is sitting not far down the counter, eating a hamburger.

  I feel embarrassed and annoyed. I don’t want to see anyone from work here. Not on Christmas Eve, when I’m supposed to be on vacation.

  “What brings you here?” he asks.

  I shrug, embarrassed, wanting to invent a story, but at the same time wanting to tell the truth. I strike a compromise.

  I say, “I have some parties to go to. Thought it might be smart to eat first.”

  Patrick smiles. He says, “Yeah, I have some parties, too. It’s always smart to eat.”

  I stifle a yawn, then say, “Where are your parties?”

  He says, “Where are yours?”

  “Here in Santa Monica,” I answer quickly. It’s true that I’ve been invited. Clive asked me to a party down in Venice, and my next-door neighbor asked me over for drinks. I declined both invitations. No need for him to know about that.

  Gloria brings my meat loaf. She shoots a look at Patrick and says, “Now, don’t make trouble.”

  “You know I wouldn’t,” he tells her, and smiles at me.

  I start eating my meat loaf, hoping he’ll ignore me, but he doesn’t. He is staring at me. He eventually moves down a couple of seats till he is two seats away from me.

  He leans toward me and says, “I have to go to a party, and I don’t want to go alone. How would you feel about going with me?”

  “I’d feel cranky,” I say, biting into the meat loaf. It’s good, and I know I’d feel a lot less cranky if I could be left alone.

  Patrick says, “I live in Venice. In a loft near the beach. This party is close to my house. I could drive us. I could drive you home. I just don’t want to go by myself.”

  Keep in mind that all of these sentences are laced with his particular speech impediment, the s’s sounding like sh’s.

  The meat loaf is really good, so I feel happy and comfortable enough to say, “Patrick, I just want to eat, and then I want to go home and go to bed.”

  He smiles. His eyes are a brighter blue than I had imagined. I am remembering Cive’s eyes and thinking that if they were as piercing and sincere as Patrick’s, the subsequent morning would not have ended so badly.

  But this is a dangerous thing to think.

  Patrick says, “Just come with me to this party. I’ll drive you home. What do you say?”

  “I’d say you are relentless.”

  He grins. He says, “That might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.”

  I know I am going with him. I just don’t know what it means.

  THE PARTY IS AT someone’s house on one of the Venice canals. What most people know about Venice Beach is its history of crime, wackiness, and weirdos. They know about Muscle Beach, that bizarre stretch of sand where the denizens of the Sun Belt come to show off their peculiar talents. Weight lifters, fire-eaters, breakdancers, in-line skaters, human mannequins, chain-saw jugglers— the list goes on. It is the place you take visitors from out of town, ostensibly to show them the local color, but secretly (I believe) to discourage them from moving here. It usually works. People leave Venice shaking their heads, laughing and amazed but a little bit sick to their stomachs, the way you feel leaving any circus. A little taste of freakiness goes a long way.

  Not many people, even the ones who live in L.A., know about the Venice canals. The city itself was built in homage, as it were, to the real Venice, and in true Los Angeles fashion, the developer (a Mr. Abbot Kinney, I’m told) culled everything that was bad about the original city and omitted the good. The bad being an impractical array of houses on unstable land, surrounded by vaguely smelly and polluted waters. The good being excellent Italian cuisine, hundreds of years of architectural superiority, a profitable glass factory, and a link to the European continent.

  That is my jaded view of the Venice canals, but the truth is, they are reasonably quaint and romantic, particularly at night, when the murky waters are invisible and the Craftsman-style houses are softly lit. The sound of the water lapping against the sidewalks is soothing, and on this particular night, Christmas Eve, the atmosphere is almost magical, with a tasteful display of white Christmas lights linking the houses in a common theme. It is almost breathtaking.

  Patrick leads me to one of the nicer houses on the block, which is full of happy people holding festive drinks, talking in moderate tones, laughing, and clapping one another on the back. The house is lit mostly by candles, and an enormous Christmas tree takes up most of the living room. Classical Christmas carols are playing softly on the stereo, and as soon as I walk in, I never want to leave. I want to be friends with every person in this house, and they seem to want to be friends with me, too. Patrick introduces me as Pearl, giving no explanation as to how he knows me (leaving us open to speculation that we’re a couple, I’m thinking), and goes off to get me a drink. No one asks me what I do for a living; nor do they offer such information about themselves. Which might not seem so strange to an outsider, but in Los Angeles, what you do for a living is everything.

  I’ve engaged in half a dozen conversations before Patrick returns. I’ve talked to a pleasant man named Gerald, who seems to be Austrian or German, and his attractive girlfriend, Lucia, who seems to be not Austrian or German, and I’ve talked to a large, funny woman named Justine, who revealed to me that she’s recently divorced and this is her first Christmas alone, but it’s not so bad. I’ve talked to a large, bearded man named Toby, who offered a positive dissertation on the NFL, and I’ve talked to a quiet blond Englishwoman with a baby on her hip. The woman is named Rosemary; the baby is named Imogen. They both seem to live here, and Rosemary is worried that the eggnog is not up to snuff. Excusing herself and her baby, she goes off in search of a man named Simon. This is when Patrick returns, offering me a glass of white wine. I accept it gratefully.

  He clinks glasses with me (he’s drinking an amber-colored drink on ice) and says, “Merry Christmas.”

  “How do you know these people?” I ask.

  “From my former life,” he says enigmatically.

  “What former life?”

  “When I was a teacher. Simon and I were in the same department.”

  “Where did you teach?”

  “At UCLA,” he says without much fanfare.

  I feel a kind of jolt, the kind you feel when two entirely disparate worlds accidentally collide. When that happens, I feel that either God or the devil is at work, and I can’t relax until I know which one.

  “Do you know Mark Hooper?” I ask.

  “No. What department is he in?”

  “He’s a history professor.”

  He shakes his head, with just a hint of disdain. “We didn’t mix with those people.”

  “What department were you in?”

  “Physics,” he says.

  I struggle to hide my reaction. He looks at me, and as my reaction rises to the surface anyway, he looks away. Something in my expression bothers him. I think it must be disbelief.

  “You’re a physics teacher?”

  “I was,” he says.

  “Why did you stop?”

  He shrugs. “It made me crazy. Physics will do that to you.”

  “Well, how did you end up working in a music store?”

  “It was a logical progression,” he says.

  “How is that?”

  He shrugs, pausing to sip from his glass. “Music and physics are the same thing.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, really.” He laughs now, looking straight at me. “Pearl, no one knows that better than you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Frequencies. Vibrations. Sound waves.”

  “Physics and music are connected. They aren’t the same thing.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “One is a science.”

  He raises an eyebrow at me. “Which one?”

  “Music is not a science.”
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  “Prove it.”

  “I don’t have to. I play it.”

  “So do I,” he insists.

  I decide not to challenge him. After all, he is a physics teacher. He knows stuff.

  He’s also a person with a life. This is his life I’m standing in, and it’s bigger than mine, with more people in it. How did I let myself get so isolated? I wonder, but I know. I’ve always been isolated. It was a condition I was born with, like asthma or cerebral palsy. It was exacerbated by parents who were surprised and baffled by me. Some children, like Imogen, get to arrive on earth with this one simple assurance: You were invited, and you are welcome. Those of us who imposed our existence on a couple of angry and resistant participants spend most of our lives feeling sorry that we came. Wondering why we did come. And not knowing, we stand aside and try not to make a fuss.

  Some of that dissipated when I met Mark. My abject nothingness went away when we got married. I am here to be a certain man’s wife. That was enough of a thing to be, for many years. But when that went away, I had to find another purpose. When I started to work at McCoy’s, I came to a better conclusion. I am here to work. I am here to teach people. There really is a place for me, after all.

  Hallie became the strongest evidence of that. And there were weeks, maybe even months, when I thought she was my whole reason for existence.

  When she went away, I didn’t know what to do.

  I haven’t known what to do for a long time.

  Suddenly Patrick says, “Okay, here’s the truth. I taught physics for eight years, and then I got involved in research. I was doing quite well with it, but . . . I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that my brain overheated. It ran too hot, like a car engine. I had a little breakdown. I went away for a while. When I came back, I wanted to be around music. That’s how I ended up at McCoy’s.”

  “But what instrument do you play?” I ask, still stuck on that point. He just smiles at the ground, and I say, “You have to play something. Franklin doesn’t hire people unless they can play something.”

  “I told you before,” he says.