The Music of Your Life

by John Rowell

  The questions Dr. Lundy asks today are: 1) “And how did you feel after the last conversation you had with Kent—different or the same?” 2) “Did you continue to feel the same rage about conducting the Messiah at this week’s choir practice that you felt last week?” 3) “Do you feel you’re getting closer to telling the church people, specifically the ladies, the truth about your preferences?” 4) “How does the possibility that Mrs. Sloop may be trying to fix you up with a woman make you feel?”

  The answers Burton gives are: 1) “The same.” 2) “I decided I don’t hate the Messiah, just the ‘Alleluia Chorus.’ And I do hate them for insisting on singing it every year.” 3) “Maybe a little. But I still feel it would jeopardize my job security.” 4) “Like I’d like to just about kill her, maybe beat her to death with the back of one of her Pappagallos, or choke her to death with her web belt.”

  Then silence.

  And after a few moments, Dr. Lundy gently offers Burton the Kleenex box, which Burton thinks is odd since he hasn’t done any crying today. He takes one anyway, and blows, just to be polite, while Dr. Lundy looks down at his notes.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Clock ticking.

  Burton wadding up the dry Kleenex and clenching it in his fist. Waiting.

  Cars passing out on the highway.

  Silence.

  Finally Dr. Lundy saying in a voice of practiced calm, “Our time’s up for today.”

  Burton thanks him, then walks out of the office, nodding a discreet hello to the teenage girl sitting alone in the tiny waiting area. In the parking lot, he gets in his car and sits there for a very long minute and a half without starting the ignition. He keeps hearing the Messiah phrase “Lord God Omnipotent” repeating in his head. He thinks back to one late November afternoon in choir college when he and Kent sat side by side at Messiah rehearsal, and Kent kept singing the phrase “Lord God is Impotent” instead. He remembers how they giggled under their breath, like schoolboys half their age, and how Kent kept knocking his knee against Burton’s for emphasis, to keep Burton in the giggling game. He can still see the stern, prune-faced looks of the dreaded old choirmaster, Dr. Otis, the one they imitated and made such mocking fun of, back in the safety of their dorm rooms late at night.

  “Lord God is Impotent,” Burton half sings, half whispers in his car.

  And then he begins to cry.

  Jean Sloop is proud that she has a home where people are allowed to smoke, which accounts for many afternoons spent with other middle- and late-aged church choir altos. She smokes now, aware nonetheless that any minute she will be hosting Burton and Bitsy, two nonsmokers, in her home. She wonders if perhaps she should not smoke for their sakes, but then she thinks: No, it’s my home. And I’m a smoker. Besides, Jean has gone to all this trouble today for the two of them, so they shouldn’t mind a little nicotine in the air. In Jean’s air. Oh, but there will be nothing negative here today, she thinks, because bringing Bitsy and Burton together like this is going to be wonderful for everybody; Jean even feels a palpable glimmer of pride when she thinks of how there may soon come a day when she’ll be taking a little trip to New York to buy a smart new outfit to wear at a party for Burton and Bitsy. Images of the ladies’ departments and the couture collections of Saks and Bergdorf Goodman swirl in Jean’s head for a few dazzling minutes …“So nice to see you again, Mrs. Sloop …” “Yes, and you too, Patrice … Ooh! I love these shoes, and … oh Lord, that’s a fabulous blouse!” “It looks divine on you, Mrs. Sloop.” “These shoes … Oh my Lord, do I dare buy these shoes?” “Right this way. May I show you a new Christian Lacroix in your size?” “Have you seen the fall Versace line?” “Will you be putting this on your store charge?”

  … But then she returns to her living room, her wonderfully appointed room where it all begins today for Burton and Bitsy, and Jean knows that is the most important thing. Today marks the realization of a plan in which Jean, clearly, has utmost faith. Faith—that is what it’s all about. That is what it is always all about.

  Jean has laid out tumblers, ice, bourbon, soda, on her heirloom Confederate silver serving trays. Jean’s housekeeper (Jean is constantly reminding herself not to say “maid”), Darcy, fixed finger sandwiches this afternoon: fresh chicken salad, cucumber, watercress, the kinds Jean favors at the country club after golfing. They have been arranged in dainty circles on medium-sized blue and white Limoges china plates, on which pretty milkmaids in pigtails and even prettier Dutch boys in wooden shoes flirt innocently with each other all around the edges.

  Jean’s eighteenth-century cuckoo clock ticks away minutes in the otherwise silent room, on an otherwise sleepy spring afternoon, and Jean sits in her favorite fancy brocade occasional chair, languidly smoking a cigarette, and waiting.

  Burton pulls up to Jean Sloop’s house and sees the stranger’s car parked in the driveway, behind Jean’s Camry. It is a nondescript vehicle, really, just tannish and dusty, but at least there aren’t any bumper stickers that say “Proud Parent of an Honor Student” or “Have You Hugged Your Child Today?” He waits in his own Jetta for a minute, wondering if he should just leave and call by cell phone with an excuse.

  Bitsy wishes she were anywhere but here, sitting on her Aunt Jean’s immaculately upholstered Colonial Williamsburg—inspired love seat. (“Sit on the love seat, Bits,” Aunt Jean had said, rather too emphatically, Bitsy thought.) Why, Bitsy wonders, is there such a thing as a love seat, but no such thing as a hate seat? Or an indifference seat? Or an I’m bored, fuck this seat? When her divorce is final, she will buy a new home, she decides. That is, when Riley comes through with the Big Bucks her lawyer has said she will get. She will also purchase all new furniture. And she will name it, every stick of it, after a recognizable human emotion. “Love seat” will sound mighty quaint after guests get a load of an “irritation ottoman” and a “pissed-off chest of drawers.”

  Bitsy loathes the torturous ticking of a cuckoo clock. She will never have one. Aunt Jean keeps smiling and making small talk, but Bitsy can’t concentrate on what she is saying. Outwardly, she remains calm, but inside, she feels like a substitute teacher about to face a particularly mean fifth grade. She would love to locate a fourteenth-century chalkboard somewhere in Jean’s house and scrawl upon it this message: “Mrs. Evans. Recently separated. Facing divorce. Not young. Please be nice to me.”

  Then she would run out the back door.

  Burton stands on the porch. He is a gentleman, after all. He rings the bell.

  Jean Nimocks Sloop, alto, is prepared with something when she opens the door:

  “Alleluia!” she sings. “Alleluia! Alleluia! A-lay-ay-ay-loo-ya!”

  She grins proudly and takes a big puff from her Merit Light.

  And Burton, for lack of anything else he can come up with, standing on a rough, horsehair mat that spells out, in Olde English script, ALL YE WOLCUM HERE, gives Jean a polite round of applause, whereupon she invites him in, as though he’s just whispered the secret password to the castle gate.

  Burton enters Jean’s living room and instantly feels smothered by the antiqueness of it, the overwhelming Old Confederacy-ness occupying every viewable inch. He considers the myriad of available objects with which he could bludgeon Jean: a silver salver, bronzed baby shoes, a heavy family Bible, opened, as always, to First Corinthians 13. Would he be relieved of his duties at First Church, he wonders, if he commenced to beating Jean Sloop over the head with her oversized King James version?

  “Burton, this is my niece, Bitsy Nimocks,” Jean says, full of hostess bravura and deliberately leaving off the “Evans” part of Bitsy’s name. “Bitsy, Burton Warren.”

  Burton and Bitsy shake hands, exchange perfunctory pleasantries, and sit together on the love seat.

  Minutes pass. Sandwiches are politely eaten, corners of mouths are gingerly daubed with crinkly linen cocktail napkins. At five o’clock, the cuckoo finally makes an appearance, startling Bitsy and Burton, but not Jean. Jean regales
them with memories of past church choir days, such as when she and Burton were at a choir convention in Nashville and ended up locked out of their rooms at three o’clock in the morning, drunk as lords (meant to show Bitsy how much fun Burton can be). She then shares funny stories about Bitsy as a child, such as when, in the seventh grade, Bitsy wanted to go to the school Halloween carnival dressed as Cher, but switched to Mother Goose at the last minute after her mother burst into tears upon the sight of twelve-year-old Bitsy in long black wig, a bikini top, and gold hoop earrings (meant to show Burton what a good, sensitive girl Bitsy has always been). Jean is having a grand time in her own home and believes her guests are as well.

  Bitsy watches and listens to Jean, and nods, and laughs dutifully, but soon Bitsy begins to check out, and in her vision Jean becomes a talking head from a TV screen on which someone has pressed the mute button. Bitsy steals glances at Burton, who steals them back at her. They smile at each other, and when Jean’s head is turned, to readjust a grouping of marble Easter eggs on a side table, they trade a very long, knowing look, eyeball to eyeball, and they nearly begin to giggle simultaneously, but as soon as Jean turns back, they suppress it—in sync, like acting partners.

  Smiling graciously at Jean, Bitsy drinks bourbon. She knows now, she gets it. Bitsy has been around a block or two in North Raleigh. She can clearly see that Burton is a lovely man—anyone could see that. But he will never, ever want her. At least not in the way she believes her aunt intends. And this, she can’t help but feel, is a gigantic relief. Bitsy relaxes considerably.

  Burton also listens attentively to the stories, but he too is accustomed to tuning Jean out, and does. He also drinks bourbon, and after a while, he is pretty sure Bitsy knows. Her eyes radiate intelligence and perception. He is almost certain they have shared the same unspoken thoughts in this antique-infested room. Bitsy is not at all like her aunt. She is modern, after all. She is going through a divorce. She’ll grasp certain situations, things having to do with relationships. She’ll get him. He wants, needs someone around here to get him—a man, a woman, anyone—someone he can talk to in person about anything, at any time, with no restrictions, someone who wouldn’t expect to be paid to listen to him, someone who wouldn’t say “time’s up for today.” Burton finds himself hoping that he and Bitsy will become friends. He relaxes considerably. And he will not bludgeon Jean in her home this afternoon after all, if only because that would leave a serious gap in his alto section this coming Sunday.

  “And that is why the good Lord saw fit to give tails to monkeys and not to snakes!” Jean says with a flourish, finishing a long story-joke that neither Burton nor Bitsy has heard one word of. Jean laughs heartily at her own retelling of this tale, a favorite of her first husband’s. Suddenly getting the prompt, Burton and Bitsy laugh, too, which pleases Jean, because she knows she is a born raconteur.

  And a born matchmaker. Jean Sloop relaxes in her favorite chair, and drinks bourbon, and smokes. She is always relaxed. She takes in the sight of Burton and Bitsy, two lonely about-to-be-middle-aged people sitting side by side on a love seat in the comfort of her beautiful living room, two people whose lives she has changed in the course of a small spring afternoon. She’ll have to give Norma Davenport a call later and fill her in. Jean knows Norma will concur and agree that Jean was right about this all along. If Norma were here to see the way Burton and Bitsy are laughing, talking, enjoying each other’s company, the way Jean can see it now, she’d know it for herself, without Jean having to tell her. But: Jean will tell her.

  More bourbon, all around, and Jean, bowing out of conversation for the moment to allow Bitsy and Burton to converse more intimately on the love seat, lifts her tumbler silently to herself as a doer of good deeds, an exemplary Presbyterian, a modern woman. She has brought two people together who need each other. If it works out, and she believes it will, they will not be lonely, they will not be alone. And they will have her to thank.

  Thanks be to Her.

  She has saved them.

  Alleluia.

  SPECTATORS IN LOVE

  I.

  The little boy stands under the dogwood tree in the front yard, holding the Mary Poppins record album close against his side. He keeps it with him most of the time, even though he has been told it doesn’t do much good to carry around a record, since a record needs a record player in order to be a useful thing. But he loves the illustrations on the front and back of the album and the record jacket’s sleeve. He does have a record player, of course, a small one, but when he is not playing the record, he is content to stare at the album cover, with its photos of the stars and the colorful artwork.

  The Mary Poppins album is the first big record he has ever owned; up until now, his records have mostly been the little red and yellow 78s that play songs like “Turkey in the Straw” and “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain,” sung by childish, high-pitched voices he doesn’t much care for, though he sings along anyway. Mary Poppins is a big black record, like grown-ups have, and his father has explained that it is called an LP, for “long playing.” He likes that; he seeks out activities that occupy his mind for long periods of time, activities that require his constant and careful attention. The boy plays Mary Poppins for its duration, both sides, and when it is over, he lifts the needle and cautiously repositions it at the beginning of the record, as he has learned how to do. Again and again.

  The boy has just turned five, and the Mary Poppins LP is a birthday present from his mother and father. He thinks of it as perhaps the best gift he has ever received, and he has, in a matter of weeks, learned every song by heart. He sings the words over and over, sometimes loudly for Mama and Daddy, like a performance, and sometimes just softly to himself, as he is walking along the sidewalk in front of his house or climbing the dogwood tree that has turned so green and white-flowery since the spring came.

  His name is Hunter. It is 1964. He is dressed in a sailor suit and new Buster Browns, and his short honey-brown hair has been combed wet and parted on the side, the way it is usually groomed for Sunday school, only this is Saturday night, and he is going to the movies with his mother to see Mary Poppins—it has finally opened in their town. How long it has taken for this evening to come! He has hardly thought of anything else for weeks, ever since he saw a preview for the movie during a telecast of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, which isn’t in color on their black-and-white TV, but is still something he watches faithfully every Sunday night. He has seen other movies before, and enjoyed them, but this one promises to be different. It looks bigger and more lavish than any of the other movies he has seen, containing, as its ads promise, both cartoons and live action.

  “Mama, look, it’s cartoons and people!” he had said, when he first saw the two adult characters dancing on dark rooftops and alongside bright, animated penguins.

  “Yes, I see that,” she said. “We’ll have to make a special trip to see it when it comes.”

  “Is Mary Poppins gonna come here? To our town?” Hunter asked, aware of his own heart starting to beat faster with anticipation.

  His parents assured him it would, and they promised to take him when it did.

  At kindergarten, he made a detailed canvasing of the other children, to see if they had seen the Mary Poppins movie preview during the Disney program on the peacock channel. Some of them had, but they didn’t seem to share his enormous sense of enthusiasm about it. That didn’t surprise him; he was already used to the indifference of other schoolchildren. He fared better with adults; they listened when he talked nonstop about a television show, or a book he had checked out of the library, or the new song he had learned in Sunday school. He liked the way adults paid him attention, the way they included him more readily in their conversations than other children did.

  A few days after seeing the movie preview, he was shopping with his mother at Sears and discovered that there was a record version of the Mary Poppins movie. Hunter then wanted to own the record as badly as he wanted to see t
he movie, and he thought if he could just achieve these two goals, he would never ask his mother or father or God for anything ever again. He would promise always to be kind to animals and other children, even the ones who shunned him at kindergarten, and to smile and hand out nickels to the poor people he occasionally spotted on the main street of his town, the ones who slept on the park benches outside the library, near the movie theaters. He vowed never to argue or be disagreeable, to never call anybody “stupid” again, and he would never again step on the red and black anthills in his yard, destroying their homes when they had never done anything to him. He would even stop asking God to send him a baby brother, which, before the appearance of Mary Poppins, was something he had hoped for more than anything else.

  “I don’t think you have to sacrifice all that much just to get a record and see a movie,” his mother said, when he told her of his Mary Poppins wish and recited the list of things he would no longer do. He didn’t know what a “sacrifice” was, but he thought it might have something to do with stepping on the anthills, and he had already promised to stop doing that.