A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

by David Gates

  I’ve already told you I studied with Morton Feldman, yes? Don’t bother to check—you won’t find me on Wikipedia’s list of his “notable” students, though I see they’ve got Kyle Gann, as well they should, and even Elliott Sharp. Back in the eighties, I wrote the music for a Canadian horror movie you wouldn’t have heard of—not that you’ve heard of Morton Feldman—which gave us the down payment for this house. I used to call it my big score; was that not witty? And ten years ago, or I guess more like fifteen, the Kronos was supposedly going to record a piece of mine, but of course by then they had Tan Dun—there’s a son of a bitch who knows how to work it—as well as the Africans and whoever else.

  Oh well. Even back when I was studying with Mort, I knew that whatever sang to him was never going to sing to me. He knew it, too. But once, when I was broke, he bought me dinner and when he died, a couple of years before we moved up here, I helped put together a tribute in Boston; wasn’t I the shit back then? We recruited players from the BSO to do For Samuel Beckett, the last thing he ever wrote, and for a curtain raiser I’d worked up Palais de mari, his final piano piece. The chamber orchestra for the Beckett outnumbered the audience. You play Feldman with the sustain pedal mostly down, to make the notes after the notes, the echoes and harmonics, ring and shimmer and beat against one another inside the piano. A couple of minutes into it, I got lost in listening, fucked up a note, fucked up another—I doubt now that anybody noticed—and just got up and walked off. They must have thought I was too devastated to continue. So of course you’re asking yourself, Did he secretly have it in for this man?

  Mort once assigned us to write a piece for soprano and string quartet based on an item out of The Buffalo News, and ever since I’ve mostly stuck to setting other people’s words—a sufficiently dinky arena for my dinky gift. This is going to sound like I’m bullshitting, but back in Buffalo I started writing a Watergate opera—this was long before Nixon in China. Then, around the time the Kronos deal was happening, or not happening, I thought I’d better take notice of hip-hop, as old hacks like Milhaud had felt they’d better take notice of jazz. Ah, that was the answer: sample a smidgen of Boulez or Golden P. Harris, whatever struck your fancy—this was where intuition came in—and sequence them to a dance beat, so people might actually listen to it, then put your text on top. In Sprechstimme: no more screwing around waiting for some melody to sing itself to you. I even bought a Roland 808, which I’ve still got up in the attic. And after I got over that, the answer was what? One’s oh-so-personal vision?

  At any rate, I’m now working toward working on a piece—a little Gesamtkunstwerk, you might say, since it’ll involve some visuals in performance—that I’m calling Alcorian A-1949. This is how they’ve registered Ted Williams’s frozen corpse at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. Did I tell you I saw Ted Williams once? My father took me to Fenway when I was six, just so I could say I saw him. And now I’ve said it. How I got the idea, there’s a man at the nursing home, Jimmy Condon, who used to be a great friend of the Gartners. Jimmy doesn’t let them wheel him out much—he says it gets him down to see old people—but I bring him what he calls “reading matter.” He likes fat paperbacks, mostly histories, and since he follows the Sox, I naturally thought of him when that biography of Ted Williams came out. The next time I went in, he handed it back. “Maybe you want to pass this along to somebody else,” he said. “You know his son put him in the deep freeze? Ted Williams. Yes sir. And then they cut off his head and froze that.” He drew a finger across his throat. “But I’ll tell you who was a hell of an athalete—Gene Conley. He’d pitch for the Sox and then turn right around and play for the Celtics. Two sports. Nobody can do that anymore.”

  That made me curious enough to read the book myself—if I’d known how depressing it got toward the end, I would never have inflicted it on Jimmy. Not just the head business, but fat old Ted Williams, stroked out, hooked to machines, disinheriting his daughter and still signing autographs on his deathbed for his son to sell. But how the man could blaspheme!

  Virgin Mary All-Clapped-Up Mother of God!

  Cocksucking fucken syphilitic Jesus!

  I could hear him singing to me—and how often did that happen anymore? So my idea was, you have the singer up there—a soprano, since you don’t want maleness to be an issue—and you see only this head, with white makeup like the Commendatore, and it’s singing from this place beyond this life but not in the next life either. I’d prefer that the singer shave her head, but I suppose that would have to be negotiable. As I say, I’ve been working toward working on it.

  I don’t imagine you know the name Roberto Loomis, but they gave him an NEA a couple of years ago. He’s got CDs out on Lovely Music, which he always has them send me, and I’ll say this for him—his stuff is less unlistenable than mine. The reason I mention him, he was one of my students, back when he was Bob Loomis from somewhere in Idaho. At the time he came into my composition class, he was a death-metalhead who’d belatedly begun studying classical guitar; I got him listening to Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham. He emailed me the other day, to say he was organizing a festival in February, in Cozumel, and did I have anything he might consider. Well now: to have one’s work considered, and by Roberto Loomis no less. Was he looking to enhance his credibility by passing me off as a neglected master? Anything, please, but an act of kindness. At any rate, it’s given me some incentive to get on with this Ted Williams piece. For which one is obliged to feel grateful. Which in turn must account for the nasty tone one hears oneself taking.

  —

  I had washed the dishes and mowed the lawn, and the sun hung low over the hill, an hour from touching the treetops, which would be sweet Nature’s signal that the first drink might now be poured. I was sitting on the porch, going through Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero with a yellow highlighter, when a Mini Cooper with Rhode Island plates pulled into the dooryard. I got up to greet Jessamyn, and as she walked toward me I saw that she’d changed from her black dress into tight jeans, the tops of her thighs just touching, and a loose denim shirt. She turned around, as if to show me those womanly charms, and looked back at the graveyard. “Gran always used to say how she’d like to be buried up there,” she said. “So now she gets to be shipped out to fucking Harrisburg.”

  “Is that where her family was from? Come on up and sit.”

  “His family. She hated those people. That was Gramp’s sister—with the walker? I always thought she was a witch. Can I look in the barn first? We used to make hay forts in there.”

  “My daughter did the same thing,” I said. “Great place to grow up. I always thought.”

  “If you can deal with a little weirdness,” she said. “I mean, you know about our ghost.”

  “Your grandmother did say something about it.”

  “Oh, old what’s-his-face? That was bullshit. No, there was this little girl who used to play with me. Gran wanted to think she was like my imaginary friend.”

  “I never heard of a little girl.”

  “Seriously? Well, maybe she—I don’t know, what does anybody know about this stuff? You don’t mind if I look in the house after? And then I’ll get right out of your hair.”

  I went back to work, but Ted Williams wasn’t singing to me today—hadn’t been for weeks, really—and until he did there was no point in going inside to the piano. A breeze had come up, and every now and again I’d hear an apple hit the ground.

  I heard her call hello and looked up—I’d forgotten anybody was here. This was a good sign, no? “I’m going to look around inside, okay?”

  “Liberty Hall,” I said. “I should warn you, it’s going to look a little different.”

  “No worries. After seeing Gran in her box?”

  I listened to her footsteps going from room to room, then up the stairs. She seemed to stay a long time in what used to be Sophia’s bedroom. Then I heard her go back down to the living room and plink a single note on the piano.


  She came out to the porch, sat down in an Adirondack chair, wiped her forehead with her bandanna, then let her head fall back. “This is all kind of an overload.”

  “What can I get you?” I said. “Coffee? Drink?”

  “I think I have to go.” She brought her head back up. “My partner’s had the kids all day.”

  “Ah,” I said. So there went that, not that there’d been any prospect of a that. “How old are your kids?”

  “Four and six. We started late. Well, Tonya started late. I’m too old to start late.”

  “You don’t look it. I mean, from my distant perspective.”

  “Yeah, Gran looked okay too. Check her in a couple of months.” She took a phone out of her shirt pocket and fingered through pictures: two generic little blond girls on a beach somewhere.

  “They’re lovely,” I said. “You know, if you ever wanted to bring them up and show them around. And your partner might like to see the place.”

  “She’s heard enough at this point. I don’t know, maybe when the kids are older. Right now they’re all about Disney World.”

  “I remember that phase,” I said. In fact, when Sophia was six we were bringing her to the Bang on a Can Festival.

  “Right?” she said. I had to think for a second to realize this was the new term of agreement. “I’m trying to remember—weren’t you a songwriter or something? I saw your piano. I wish I would’ve learned to play. Can I change my mind about the drink?”

  “I was just about to get one for myself,” I said. “Gin and tonic? We’ve got a little summer still to go, yes?”

  In the refrigerator, I found a nearly full bottle of tonic—I generally don’t bother with it—and a hard, shrunken lime. I got the Tanqueray out of the freezer, still two-thirds full, took a good pull at it, then quartered the lime and began pouring.

  “Easy on the gin, okay?” she called. “No, actually, easy on the tonic.”

  When I came out she was going at her phone again. I set her glass on the arm of her chair and took the chair next to her. “If you can master that,” I said, “we can have you playing Scarlatti in six months.”

  She pocketed the phone and picked up the glass. “That’s classical, right?”

  “See? You’re catching on already.” I raised my glass. “Here’s how.”

  “Thanks. Cheers and whatnot.” She took a sip. “God, I used to live out here in the summer. Gran even let me bring my sleeping bag. This is where I saw Sally the first time.”

  “That was the—?”

  “It was like, she wasn’t there, and then she was.”

  “That must’ve scared you.”

  “Not really.” She took a long drink. “She was my first crush—how weird is that? She was right, exactly, there.” Jessamyn pointed over to a spot underneath the swallows’ mud nest, now empty till spring. “She had on this little blue dress with yellow—like violets or something. I remember I was playing tic-tac-toe against myself.”

  “Did other people see her?”

  “Yeah, Tonya doesn’t believe me either.” She took another drink. “Jesus.”

  “I can get you more tonic.” I could feel mine taking hold, too—and no wonder. I saw that I only had about that much left.

  “No, it’s good,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve relaxed since they called about Gran.”

  “Make yourself at home,” I said. “Be right back.” I got up and went into the kitchen, ran water to cover the sound of the freezer opening and took another good pull to hold me until I could decently refill my glass.

  When I sat down next to her again, she was looking up at the graveyard. “Poor Gran,” she said. “I guess poor everybody.” She turned to me. “She used to say you were good to her. You and your wife.”

  “You were good to her,” I said.

  “We had our issues.” She picked up her glass and drank until the lip touched her nose. “Okay, I probably shouldn’t tell you, but she wasn’t just my first crush, okay?” She raised the empty glass as if to toast. “Go, Jess.” She set it down. “So now you’re thinking, how do I get rid of this person.”

  “No, it’s good to have you here.”

  “Yeah? Then you must be in Shit City,” she said.

  “What I was thinking, if a succubus appeared I wouldn’t turn her down. If I’m understanding you correctly.”

  “I don’t really know what that is,” she said. “So how come your wife left?”

  “Well, you know, different theories,” I said. “I think the ghosts drove her out.”

  “I always push too much,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I always drink too much and make moves on women.” I got to my feet. “Present company excepted. I’m going to go re-up.”

  I took one more good pull from the bottle, put ice cubes into the peacock-feather bowl—Deborah had collected pressed glass—and brought it out to the porch, along with the gin and what was left of the tonic. “You mind keeping your lime?” I said. “Had to make a house rule: No using knives after the first cocktail.”

  I held the bottle up and she put her hand over her glass. “I think I’m good. I didn’t freak you out, right? With the ghost stories? Actually I get the feeling there’s nobody here anymore.”

  I poured gin, sending my ice cubes into a merry dance. “You and me both, my friend.” I drank, then topped off. “That is the truest thing you’ve said all day.”

  “I used to drive by here sometimes when I was up visiting Gran,” she said. “One time I saw this little girl on the porch, and she was like, swinging in that hammock you used to have up. Was that your daughter?”

  “Jesus, I hope to Christ so. Listen, tell me something. Why didn’t you ever stop in?”

  “I didn’t think your wife wanted me to. She didn’t like me very much. When we had lunch that time?”

  I heard myself say, “I’d always sort of hoped I’d see you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not a big fan of situations.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Now this seems to be leading us into a very interesting place.”

  She took her phone out, looked at the screen, got her thumbs going again and put it back in her pocket.

  “Here’s the thing about situations, okay?” I said. “Having been in situations myself. What was once a situation can turn into—you see what I’m saying. It’s good you and I can finally talk about this.”

  “I don’t know what you think we’re talking about,” she said.

  “Ah, deniability,” I said. “I used to be the king of that. But I think we owe each other a little more, no? Or am I being too blunt?”

  “Okay, well thanks for the drink and everything.” She set her glass on the arm of the chair and got to her feet.

  “You can’t possibly go now,” I said. I leaned forward and saw my hand around her wrist.

  “What the fuck?” She yanked her arm away. “What kind of an asshole are you?”

  “Oh,” I said, “just a harmless old drunk, really. You don’t need to leave.”

  “Do you have any idea the shit I had to go through? Just to have a life? And you put your hand on me?” She grabbed the bottle by its neck, the handle over her knuckles like the—hell, what’s it called?—on, you know, a buccaneer’s sword.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Easy. What say we just wind this back?” I stood up and reached to take the bottle away from her.

  She stepped back and swung it against a porch post. It rang off the wood, but she swung it again, smashed it, splashing gin on her jeans and shirt, and held up the jagged, dripping glass that was left. “You don’t even know what the shit you’re dealing with,” she said. She looked at it, then flung it onto the lawn and ran to her car.

  I watched her out of sight around the corner and went inside to look in the freezer, though I knew damn well that had been the last of the gin. The whole night still ahead, with the state store closing in an hour.

  I took back roads as far as I could, then went through the speed-trap town
s with the cruise control locked in at twenty-five. I bought three handles of Tanqueray, as if I were a party giver, opened one in the parking lot and poured a used Styrofoam coffee cup full. I kept it between my thighs the whole way back. But I had the secret of invisibility that night: I could have steered head-on into a van full of children and no one would have seen there was a problem to be addressed.

  I pulled in the dooryard, banged into something, walked zigzag to the house and stood swaying in the living room, calling out to Mort till the strings of the piano rang. You see now how funny that is, right, yelling, “Mort! Mort!” to a dead man? I cried out for the little dead girl to come be my little dead girl, I went to my knees and asked Jesus Christ into my heart, I went out onto the porch and hollered across the road at Royall Brown, the Great Disapprover. In the silence—watch out for the false ending now—I heard an apple fall.

  —

  Have I been showing you a good enough time? Why don’t you come on out, bring your drink, and we’ll get old what’s-his-face down here to do his little buck-and-wing to the tune of “Dear Christian Friend”—would that amuse?—and favor us with his views on how flesh is dust and so on. Or how about a private performance, first time anywhere, of my latest. Oh, I finished it—you didn’t take all that poor-me shit too seriously, I hope—and sent it off to young what’s-his-face. It’s scored for string quartet, but I can approximate it on the piano, if you don’t mind how half-assed it sounds, and at this point in the festivities, what’s the difference? Ted Williams never did sing to me anymore, so I had to patch it together out of this and that—plagiarize it really. You’ll hear a smidgen of Eight Songs for a Mad King in there, a smidgen of Stockhausen’s Momente, a smidgen of “Time in a Bottle” (who says I lack the common touch?). And Feldman, of course—can’t get away from him. That pair of four-note phrases, the second seeming to question the first, at the beginning of Palais de mari: didn’t I work the variations on that sucker. Well, I say you’ll hear this stuff, but it’s all been through the grinder, so you’d have to know what you were listening for.