Heart and Soul

by Sally Mandel

  “Is he in there?” I asked.

  “No. This was on the piano.”

  “You’ll have to open it for me,” I said.

  Mr. Balaboo slit it carefully along one side and handed me a piece of paper from a pad David always kept by the piano. He’d used it to jot ideas about the music when we were working.

  The writing was so faint I could hardly read it. The press never knew about this letter. But there was one, and here is what it said:

  Dearest Bess,

  You made me completely happy. I’m just too tired. Forgive.

  D.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, please. Oh, no. Oh, please.”

  Mr. Balaboo sent Phillip inside to get me a double shot of something. Whatever it was, I guess it kept me sane. Only just.

  They started dragging the lake, but they didn’t find him. In the afternoon they located the SUV farther north, at the boat landing on Black Bear Lake. It didn’t take them long after that. I imagined him on the surface like the candles he had sent drifting into the dark for my birthday. I imagined his face luminous in the night, floating, then dipping under and the light going out.

  I don’t remember a whole lot about the next few days. Phillip and Mr. Balaboo drove me back to the city and put me in the hospital. Phillip became my bodyguard. He was fierce about keeping the media and almost everybody else away from me. Angie and Jake came. Pauline and Mumma with—believe it or not—Dutch, in one of those handicapped vans. My father didn’t say much, just hung out in the corner of the room, reading the cards on my flowers and looking uncomfortable. Professor Stein brought me chocolates and sat by my bed and let me cry. He also showed me an article that said Mr. Balaboo told some nosy reporter who was looking for dirt on David to “fuck off.” I didn’t believe it but Professor Stein swore it was true.

  When I got out, I went straight to my old apartment on the West Side. I just couldn’t face those two pianos at David’s. I was so grateful that I’d kept my little hole all those months, and even more grateful that I’d never had the phone service switched off. There were three messages: (1) a solicitation for the Friends of Carnegie Hall; (2) Angie saying Oops, she’d dialed the old number by mistake; and (3) David playing the Bach Prelude in C major that he knew I loved more than anything. He didn’t say a word. I knew he had sat at the piano in the woods and told me everything he felt in his heart the best way he knew how. I saved that tape, of course, but no one else will ever hear it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  My baby was gone, David was gone, and now the music, too. They had taken it with them, leaving silence inside my head for the first time in my life. I was nothing, a blank, a zero with eyes. I sat inside my apartment with the lights out and the shades drawn and stared at the television with the volume off. But only cooking shows—everything else freaked me out.

  The dead zombie part was the easiest to bear. But then the pain would hit like a car crash. I held a pillow to my chest to keep from splitting open. I was losing pieces of myself, like a spider who was having its legs plucked off one by one.

  I did some pretty crazy shit during those first weeks. For instance: My hands were slowly healing. You would think I’d have been relieved, but I couldn’t stand that the bruises were disappearing. They were where David had touched me last, and sick as it sounds, I never wanted them to go away. So one day when I didn’t think I could take the misery one more second, I grabbed the Manhattan yellow pages and slammed them down on my left hand. It felt like fire was shooting up my arm. I sat there crying with relief that some other agony was giving grief a contest.

  I was lucky that Jake showed up just then. I didn’t answer the door, but Angie had given him a key and he let himself in.

  “What the fuck, Stallone?” he said, taking in the book and my ugly hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Jesus, Bess, your fingers. Couldn’t you think of something else to trash?”

  He went to the freezer for ice but there wasn’t any. So then Jake just picked me up and carried me out. On the way to the emergency room, he called Mr. Balaboo on his cell phone. I wasn’t even curious how Jake had his number, but I found out later that there was a kind of network in operation. Mr. Balaboo showed up with the doctor who’d been treating my hands. The upshot was that they wanted to put me in the hospital, i.e., mental ward. I knew I’d better come up with some instant stability or I was doomed.

  “I lost it, I admit it,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

  “How do we know that?” Mr. Balaboo asked.

  “Because I’m promising.”

  “You’re promising you won’t pull this exact trick and I believe you,” Jake said, “but what else have you got up your sleeve?” He knew me so well.

  “What do I have to do to stay out of here?” I asked.

  The doctor was one of those glamorous orthopedic types who treats the New York teams. He gave me his stern look, which I guess was supposed to intimidate me but it only made me want to pop him in the nose. Since I didn’t wither properly, he addressed the rest of his comments to Mr. Balaboo as if I wasn’t in the room.

  “Does she have anyone who can stay with her?”

  “We can hire someone,” he said.

  I shook my head at Jake. No way. So he jumped in and saved my ass. “Sure,” Jake said. “Her sister can. And I can. And her mother. We’ll rotate. It’ll work out.”

  I started crying again, but nobody seemed to think that that called for an immediate injection of Thorazine. Not that I would have minded.

  They sent me home. Jake stayed overnight on the tiny couch with his feet hanging off the end. Pauline was a peach for loaning him out and volunteered to take a turn. I just didn’t think I could cope with the tragic attitude.

  So for the next three weeks, Angie and Jake and Mumma hung out with me in that dark hole. Mumma was the hardest, but I do remember something she said that stuck with me, in the dark when we were falling asleep, which was maybe when it was easier to confide things.

  “I think I know the way you felt about David,” she said. “The love of your life, that kind of thing.”

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering where this was going.

  “Your father took my breath away.”

  I didn’t know what to say. The way she said it was like it was in the past, but I didn’t really want to know. I guess we both fell asleep. Mumma wanted so desperately to make it all better that she kept making suggestions. But I didn’t want to go to a concert or a movie or back to Rocky Beach to see Dutch or the guys at the firehouse. I didn’t want anyone coming to visit. She even offered to take me to mass at St. Patrick’s. It tired me to have her around even though she meant well, but it just wasn’t fair to ask for more time from Angie and Jake.

  They were perfect. Angie was a gentle, loving shadow, holding my hand, slipping me a plate of food without fuss, and climbing into bed with me when she heard me wake up crying in the night. She never initiated a conversation, never turned on the TV, just waited for signals from me. She washed my hair, she rubbed my back, she taped my hands, she lived up to her name and then some.

  Jake was more difficult, but looking back I realize he was nudging me out of my miserable rut. He didn’t ever ask if I wanted to do something. He just announced.

  “Put on your jacket, Stallone. We’re going to see the sky.” Having no choice made it easy. I obeyed. We would go to the park and watch the jet trails. I remember once the sun was going down and there were pink streaks in the sky. Pink against blue. Jake saw the way I was staring.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Blue for boy, pink for girl,” I said.

  “You had a double whammy, Stallone. Everything’s going to remind you.”

  “Forever?”

  “No,” he said. “For a while.”

  I remembered how devastated he was when he lost his mother. “Your mom was one cool dude, Jake,�
�� I said.

  “You got that right.”

  “You still miss her?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Does it still feel like you’re going totally crazy?”

  “No,” he said. “That passes.”

  “What am I supposed to do to help it along?”

  “You’re doing it. One foot in front of the other.”

  The pink had deepened into soft purple. “Thanks,” I said, and leaned my head against his shoulder.

  “No sweat. Come on. We’re going for pizza.”

  “In a restaurant?” I asked, panicked.

  “You can do it.”

  So I did it.

  My baby-sitters had stayed with me for a month when it was decided that I wasn’t going to do any more finger crushing. Although I hadn’t gained any of the twenty-five pounds back, at least I’d stopped losing weight. I was slowly weaned, with members of the trio gradually leaving me alone for longer stretches. The big event was getting through a night on my own. The phone rang a lot. Once I had Angie on the line when Mumma called. Then the second I hung up from them, Jake called. It made me laugh, which I think was the first time since David died.

  “Is that a laugh?” Jake asked.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  After we hung up, I figured he’d phone the other two right away to tell them.

  Mr. Balaboo and Professor Stein came to me after four months to ask if I would like to start playing again. The great Dr. Glamour-puss said it was okay, they explained. In fact, that it would be good therapy.

  “No,” I said.

  “Your fingers need the exercise,” Professor Stein said. I let him smoke his cigars in the apartment and the place was filled with a blue fog.

  “There have been many inquiries,” Mr. Balaboo said. “People want to hear you.”

  “You guys been rehearsing this or what?”

  Mr. Balaboo looked a little sheepish but not Professor Stein. “Just exactly where do you see music fitting into your life, Bess?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Well, that’s a tragic waste,” he said.

  “The world will get along just fine without Bess Stallone’s stirring rendition of the Waldstein Sonata,” I said.

  “Get along, yes,” Mr. Balaboo said. “The world can get along without a lot of things—starlight, Picasso, perhaps even chocolate…”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Forget it,” Professor Stein said to Mr. Balaboo.

  “For now,” Mr. Balaboo said.

  I broke out a bottle of wine and that cheered them up. Mr. Balaboo smoked another cigar and I even took a puff. Lung cancer didn’t scare me. Living did.

  My first day out on my own, I walked down to Tower Records to pick up a CD I’d ordered. It was David’s first and had only been released in Europe, so it took a while to locate it. Otherwise, I had them all. I’d somehow lost track of the fact that Christmas was two weeks away. There were so many people on the streets and so much noise. Inside the store, they were playing holiday selections by somebody singing half a tone flat. It was like she was dragging her fingernails across my skull. When I got out of there, I was totally wiped out. A cab pulled up to the corner; so I slid in.

  The second I sat down, we got rear-ended. Not a huge jolt, but enough to send me banging into the seat partition. The driver spewed some choice words in Spanish and got out to check the damage. I got out, too, and stood on the corner trying to get my knees to stop quaking. There was an African-American man waiting for the light, holding the hand of a little girl who was maybe his granddaughter.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “A little shook up, but okay,” I said. I’m Cinder-fuckingella, I wanted to tell him, and my prince wasn’t supposed to die.

  He gave me a sympathetic smile and then winked to tell me he didn’t quite believe me. It was the wink that did it. Kindness—it was a killer. I turned away to hide my crumbling face and started up Broadway. I couldn’t wait to get back inside my cocoon.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My fingers got better way ahead of the rest of me, maybe because a suicide shoves the grieving process into a whole other dimension. It’s bad enough to lose somebody to an early death, but when they murder themselves … man, the questions never end. I kept imagining David in those last hours, on the drive upstate, in the house in the woods, as he sat by the piano playing to my answering machine. What was he thinking? Was he crying? What exactly was he feeling that he could wade into that lake, sink under the surface, and welcome the water into his lungs? I wondered if he choked, if he changed his mind when it was too late. The whole thing was unbelievable, and yet it had happened. I listened to his telephone tape, the Bach, over and over, hoping for clues. I read his letter, held it up to the light even, as if there were answers hiding between the lines. I got so pissed at him, and then felt guilty for my anger. He had the right. Anybody has the right. But that was in general, in theory. Not my David. How could he leave me that way? He knew I couldn’t possibly function without him.

  Then there was the “if only” syndrome. I was totally convinced that I could have saved him if only I had been quicker to follow him. If only I hadn’t provoked him. If only I’d held him and never let him out of my arms, out of my sight. If only I’d been worthy enough, lovable enough so that his feelings for me were stronger than his need to escape the pain. This line of thought got really grim at night. I kept dreaming I was drowning, and I’d wake up all tangled in my sheets from trying to kick my way to the surface.

  Stir into all this the fact that I was still sad about the baby. I kept thinking if I hadn’t lost her there would be something of David left in the world. Our child would have carried his light like a little lantern into the next generation, and now that light was snuffed out forever.

  Six months had gone by since David’s death. My hands looked almost normal, although two knuckles were swollen and I couldn’t wear the ring David had bought me in a little funky shop in Baltimore. The trouble was, I was still fighting to get out of bed every morning. It seemed so pointless. But I’d made a deal with Jake and Angie that we’d E-mail each other first thing in the morning and before bed at night. And let me tell you, if I forgot, one of them was on my doorstep in a heartbeat.

  On a depressingly springlike May morning when the sky was the palest blue and the birds wouldn’t shut up, I sat down at David’s laptop to do my check-in. I’d inherited his computer along with a ton of money and the mountain house. There wasn’t a will, exactly. Mr. Balaboo said that a month before David died, he set up a trust. Although the media couldn’t get at the terms, I was told that as a beneficiary, I could read it. I really didn’t give a rat’s ass. All I knew was that he’d left me more than I could ever spend and that he’d even provided for Angie. Looking back, I wonder if it was such a hot idea for me to have all that money. It only made it easier for me to sit on my butt and feel sorry for myself instead of lacing on my Rollerblades, memorizing the daily specials, and hustling tips for the rent. Anyway, that particular morning, I noticed that Jake had left me a bombshell along with his daily greeting. Here’s what it said:

  “Wake up, Stallone. The sun’s shining and you could use a walk in the park. Here’s a new item for your address book:

  “Terese Dumont, Via Dandolo 72, Isola Como, Italy (Tel: 011-394-588-1413). I think you should go see her. Get yourself a ticket.”

  My fingers were shaking so much it took me a couple of tries to get Jake’s telephone number right.

  “Is this for real?” I asked.

  “Morning. Sure, it’s for real.”

  “Nobody’s ever been able to find her.”

  “It didn’t take that long.”

  “How’d you do it?”

  “Ever hear of detectives?”

  “It must have cost a fortune.”

  “You can pay me back. Call your travel agent.”

  “Why should I?” />
  “You’re stuck, Stallone. Maybe it’ll help and maybe it won’t, but you’re a useless lump the way things are.”

  “Why, thank you,” I said.

  “Anytime. Let me know.”

  It took me two days to get up the courage to phone Terese. It wasn’t a great connection, and I don’t know if the long silence after I gave her my name was because of that or because she was shocked or angry or something else. But she said to come if I wanted to. I started packing as soon as I hung up.

  To get to Terese, I had to fly to Milan. That wasn’t easy because it resurrected so many memories, good and bad, of the trip with David. I picked up a rental car and drove north to the lakes. You’d think I would have been nervous about doing this on my own, but by then I was obsessed about meeting with Terese, and I would have gone by skateboard if that was the only way to get there. It was the first time I’d really cared about anything since David died, and I felt almost as if I was expecting to see him waiting for me at the other end of the road. And let me tell you, some road. First you drive north up into the mountains into almost bloody Switzerland, and then you go most of the way around the far side of an extremely long lake so you can get to a ferry that takes you to a tiny little island. You leave your car at the dock. They don’t let you drive on that island. And I have to say, it’s one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever seen and if you were planning to be a fairy princess as your vocation, this is exactly where you’d set up shop.

  I was the only ferryboat passenger who wasn’t a local. Everybody was inspecting me, but especially the captain, who looked too old to be breathing regularly, much less operating a rickety, slippery raft. When we were secured to the dock, I asked how to find the Via Dandolo.

  “Signorina Stallone?” he asked.

  So I was expected. At my nod, he waved at the highest point of the village. “Up, up,” he said, showing me the two teeth that were still left in his mouth. I had the feeling that if I hadn’t passed inspection, those pegs would have sunk into my ankle.