The Gravedigger's Daughter: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Because I’m not a whore. I am not.”

  It was a small upright, the piano Gallagher bought for Zack. Insisting it was “secondhand”�“a bargain.” Not a new piano, Gallagher had bought it at Zimmerman’s at a discount. A gift for the boy, Gallagher said Hazel need feel no indebtedness.

  “It isn’t a Steinway, it’s a Baldwin. Really, Hazel. It didn’t cost much.”

  The keys were not ivory but plastic, glaring white. The wood was veneer, though very smooth, teak-colored. The piano was the size of the battered piano in the Bay Street Junior High School but had a far clearer tone. Zack was stunned by the gift. Zack had seemed almost to recoil from it, at first, overcome. Hazel had seen in the child’s face the stricken look of an adult woman. Like no normal child in such a circumstance, Zack had begun to cry.

  Hazel thought uneasily He feels the burden of the gift. He won’t be equal to it.

  The deliverymen had brought the piano to ZACHARIAS JONES. On a card prominently attached to the piano was Gallagher’s scrawl�

  Gallagher spoke, in his teasing way, of the house he was buying in Watertown: “The feature that will attract you most, Hazel, is its two separate entrances: we can come and go without seeing each other for weeks.”

  She hated it, the child was eavesdropping on her. No business of a child’s, Mommy’s private life. Nudging her with his elbow hard enough to hurt. “But why, Mommy? Don’t you like Mr. Gallagher?” and Hazel said evasively, “Yes. I like Mr. Gallagher.” And the child said, in that pleading-bullying way of a willful child, “He’s real nice, isn’t he? Mommy?” and Hazel said, “A man can seem nice, Zack. Before you come to live with him.”

  Between mother and child there passed the shadow of that man. In their shared speech that man was never given a name and Hazel had to wonder if Zack remembered his father’s name.

  It was not a name to be uttered aloud. Yet, still it haunted her in weak moments.

  Niles Tignor.

  Wondering if Zack recalled his own, early name. So many times uttered in Mommy’s voice, in love.

  Niley.

  As if somehow Niley had been her firstborn. And this older, more difficult and willful Zacharias was another child whom she could not love quite so much.

  Zacharias was growing from her, she knew. His allegiance was shifting from Mommy to the adult man in their lives, Gallagher. She supposed it was inevitable, it was altogether normal. Yet she must protect her son, as she must protect herself.

  Saying, as she stroked his warm forehead, “I don’t think that we are ready to live with a man, Zack. I don’t think that we can trust a man. Not yet.” Speaking so frankly was not Hazel’s favored mode of speech with her child, she worried she would regret it.

  “But when, Mommy?”

  “Someday, maybe. I can’t promise.”

  “Next month? Next week?”

  “Certainly not next week. I said�”

  “Mr. Gallagher told me�”

  “Never mind what Mr. Gallagher told you, he has no right to talk to you behind my back.”

  “Wasn’t behind your back! He told me!”

  Suddenly Zack was angry. It was like snapping your fingers, how quickly the child became angry. Demanding to know why couldn’t they live with Mr. Gallagher if he wanted them! Nobody else wanted them did they! Nobody else wanted to marry them! If Mr. Gallagher was buying a house for them! Hazel was stunned to see the rage in her son’s hot little face, a contorted little fist of a face, and the threat of violence in his flailing fists. He wants a father. He thinks I am keeping his father from him.

  She tried to speak calmly. It was not Hazel Jones’s style to become emotional in response to others’ emotions.

  “Honey, it’s none of your business. What passes between Mr. Gallagher and me is none of your business, you’re just a child.”

  Now Zack was truly furious. Shouted outrageously he was not a child, he was not a damn stupid child he was not.

  He pushed out of her arms and ran from her, trembling. He did not strike her with his fists but pushed from her as if he hated her, slammed into his room and shut the door against her as she stared after him dazed and shaken.

  The tantrum passed. Zack emerged from his room and went at once to the piano. Already that day he’d practiced for two hours. Now he would play and replay his lesson for Mr. Zimmerman, then reward himself (Hazel supposed this was the logic, a bargain) with random playing, more advanced compositions in his John Thomson’s Modern Course for the Piano book or jazz/boogie-woogie Chet Gallagher style.

  Hazel teased him: “Play ‘Savin’ All My Love For You.’”

  Maybe. Maybe he would.

  Hazel took comfort, hearing her son at the piano. Preparing dinner for the two of them. Even when Zack played loudly or carelessly or repeated sequences of notes compulsively as if to punish both himself and her she thought We are in the right place in all the world, Hazel Jones has brought us here.

  14

  “When you sell music, you are selling beauty.”

  Never had Hazel Jones been so proud of any work of hers. Never so smiling, exalted. Light flashed from her young face like a shard of sunlight reflected in a mirror. Her eyes blinked rapidly overcome by the moisture of gratitude, disbelief.

  Zimmerman Brothers Piano & Music Supply was an old Watertown establishment, housed in a shabbily elegant brownstone on South Main Street in a part-residential, part-commercial neighborhood of distinguished old apartment buildings and small shops. The first thing you saw, approaching Zimmerman’s, was the graceful bay window in which a Steinway grand piano was on permanent display. At dusk, and on dreary winter days, the bay window was lighted. The piano shone.

  Hazel stopped to stare. The piano was so beautiful, she was left feeling weak, shaken. The thought came to her Not a one of them can follow you here.

  From Milburn, she meant. That life. Soon she would be twenty-seven years old, the gravedigger’s daughter who had been meant to die at thirteen.

  What a joke, her life! That good, decent, kindly man Gallagher believed he loved her, who had not the slightest knowledge of her.

  She felt a pang of guilt, for deceiving him. But how much more powerfully, a strange giddy pleasure.

  In the early morning especially, when she walked to the music store hearing her high heels strike the sidewalk in brisk Hazel Jones staccato, she found herself thinking of the stone house in the cemetery. Her brothers Herschel, August. How old would they be now, if they were living: Herschel in his mid-thirties, August nearly as old. She wondered if she would know them. If they would now recognize her in Hazel Jones.

  They would be proud of her, she believed. Both her brothers had liked her. They would wish her well�wouldn’t they? Herschel would shake his head, disbelieving. But he would be happy for Hazel Jones, she knew.

  And there were the adult Schwarts.

  Jacob Schwart would be damned impressed with Zimmerman’s. The very look of the brownstone, the store. And it was a large store, with parquet floors in the piano display room, and piped-in classical music. Though Jacob Schwart despised Germans. As he despised the well-to-do. Never could Jacob Schwart resist mocking, belittling any accomplishment of his daughter.

  You are ignorant now. You know nothing of this hellhole the world.

  Hazel Jones did know. But no one in Watertown would guess Hazel Jones’s knowledge.

  Anna Schwart would be proud of her! Working in a store that sold pianos!

  Though Hazel Jones, like the other female salesclerks, was not entrusted with piano sales: that was the province of Edgar Zimmerman.

  Hazel sold music instruction books, sheet music, classical records. Such musical instruments as guitars, ukeleles. Zimmerman Brothers was a major outlet for ticket sales for local concerts, recitals, musical performances of all kinds and these tickets Hazel proudly sold as well. Sometimes, she was given two free tickets to these events, and she and Zack went together.

  “A new life, Zack. We have begun our ne
w life.”

  In honor of this new life Hazel often wore white gloves arriving at Zimmerman’s. In emulation of President Kennedy’s glamorous socialite wife she sometimes wore a black pillbox hat with a gossamer veil. Gloves and hat she removed when she arrived at the store. Of course she wore high-heeled shoes and nylon stockings without a run and always she was perfectly groomed as a young woman in an advertisement. Her hair was now a deep chestnut color, so clean and fiercely brushed it crackled with static electricity, worn shoulder-length with bangs across her forehead.

  There were fine white scars at her hairline, hidden beneath the bangs. No one but her son had ever seen. And very likely, her son had forgotten.

  At Zimmerman’s, there were two other female employees: middle-aged, busty Madge and Evelyn. Madge was a receptionist for Edgar Zimmerman who ran the store, and something of an accountant. Evelyn was a salesclerk specializing in lesson books and sheet music, known to every public school music teacher in the county. Both Madge and Evelyn wore shapeless dark dresses, often with cardigan sweaters draped over their shoulders. They were rather short women, hardly more than five feet tall. By contrast, Hazel Jones was a tall, striking young woman who wore only clothes that fitted her figure to advantage. She had not many clothes but understood shrewdly how to vary her “outfits”: a long pleated black wool skirt with a matching bolero top, embroidered in red rosebuds; a long gray flannel skirt with a kick pleat in back, waist cinched in by a black elastic belt; fussily feminine “translucent” blouses; crocheted sweaters with tiny jewels or pearls; tight-fitting dresses made of shiny fabrics. Behind her glass-topped counter Hazel sometimes resembled a Christmas ornament, all glittering innocence. Her employer Edgar Zimmerman was bemused to note how when a customer entered the store, if that customer was male, he would glance quickly at Evelyn, at Madge if she was out on the floor, and at Hazel, and make his way without hesitation to Hazel who stood pert and smiling in expectation.

  “Hello, sir! May I be of assistance?”

  Sometimes, Hazel was observed behind her counter in a posture of sudden unease. As if she’d heard someone calling her name at a distance or had glimpsed, through the store window, a passing figure that alarmed her. “Hazel? Is something wrong?” Edgar Zimmerman might ask, if he didn’t feel he was being intrusive at that moment; but Hazel Jones would immediately wake from her trance to assure him, smilingly, “Oh no! Nothing at all, Mr. Zimmerman. ‘A goose walked over my grave’�I guess.”

  The remark was so silly, so senseless, Edgar Zimmerman exploded into laughter.

  So funny! Hazel Jones had that rare gift, to make an aging melancholy-at-heart gentleman laugh like an adolescent boy.

  Only Edgar Zimmerman sold pianos. Edgar Zimmerman’s life was pianos. (His more distinguished brother Hans was not involved in sales. Hans disdained “finances.” He appeared in the store only to give piano instructions to selected students.) Yet Hazel Jones was often in the piano showroom, eager to dust, polish, buff the beautiful gleaming pianos. She came to love the distinctive smell of the special brand of lemon polish favored by the Zimmermans, an expensive German import sold in the store. She came to love the smell of real ivory. Zimmerman Brothers had even acquired an antique harpsichord, a small exquisite instrument made of cherrywood inlaid with gilt and mother-of-pearl, which Hazel particularly admired. It may have been that Edgar Zimmerman, widower, a short dapper man with gray bushy hair in sporadic clumps and a spiky goatee which his fingers compulsively stroked, was flattered by his youngest employee’s enthusiasm for her work for often he was seen talking animatedly with her in the showroom; often, he would seek out Hazel Jones, and neither Madge nor Evelyn, to assist him in making a sale.

  “Your smile, Hazel Jones! That cinches the deal.”

  It was a little joke between them, rather daring on Edgar Zimmerman’s part. His fingers caressed the spiky goatee, with unconscious ardor.

  Edgar Zimmerman, too, was a pianist: not so gifted as his brother Hans but very capable, demonstrating pianos for customers by playing favorite passages from Schubert, Chopin, the thunderous opening of Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude in C-sharp Minor” and the romantic-liquidy opening of Beethoven’s so-called “Moonlight Sonata.” Edgar spoke of having heard Rachmaninoff play the Prelude, long ago at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. An unforgettable evening!

  Hazel said, smiling her ingenuous smile, “You didn’t ever hear Beethoven, I guess?�in Germany? That was too long ago, I guess?”

  Edgar laughed. “Hazel, of course! Beethoven died in 1827.”

  “And when did your family come to this country, Mr. Zimmerman? A long time ago, I guess?”

  “Yes. A long time ago.”

  “Before the war?”

  “Before both wars.”

  “You must have had relatives. Back in Germany. It is Germany the Zimmermans came from, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Stuttgart. A beautiful city, or was.”

  “‘Was’?”

  “Stuttgart was destroyed in the war.”

  “Which war?”

  Edgar Zimmerman saw Hazel smiling at him, though less certainly. She was an awkward schoolgirl, twining a strand of hair around her forefinger. Her red-lacquered nails flashed.

  He said, “Someday, Hazel, maybe you will see Germany. There are some landmarks that remain.”

  “Oh, I would like that very much, Mr. Zimmerman! On my honeymoon, maybe.”

  They laughed together. Edgar Zimmerman was feeling giddy, as if the floor had begun to tilt beneath him.

  “Hazel, much said about Germany�about Germans�has been luridly exaggerated. The Americans make a fetish of exaggeration, like in Hollywood, you see?�for a profit. Always for a profit, to sell tickets! We Germans have all been tarred with the same brush.”

  “What brush is that, Mr. Zimmerman?”

  Edgar edged closer to Hazel, stroking his chin nervously. They were alone together in the lavish piano showroom.

  “The Juden brush. What else!”

  Edgar spoke with a bitter laugh. He was feeling reckless suddenly, this naive attractive girl staring at him with widened eyes.

  “‘Juden’?”

  “Jewish.”

  Hazel was looking so perplexed, Edgar regretted he’d brought the damned subject up. It was never a subject that quite justified the expenditure of emotion it seemed to require.

  He said, in his lowered voice, “What they have claimed. How they�Jews�have wished to poison the world against us. Their propaganda about ‘death camps.’”

  Still Hazel was looking perplexed. “Who is ‘us,’ Mr. Zimmerman? Do you mean Nazis?”

  “Not Nazis, Hazel! Really. Germans.”

  He was very excited now. His heart beat in his chest like a deranged metronome. But there was Madge in the doorway, summoning Edgar to the telephone.

  The subject would never again be brought up between them.

  “Hazel Jones, you keep us all young. Thank God for people like you!”

  It was Hazel’s idea to bring flowers in vases, to display on the most beautiful of the pianos in the showroom. It was Hazel Jones’s idea to organize a raffle for tickets to Hans Zimmerman’s annual student recital, held each May; and to offer “complimentary” tickets to customers who spent a certain sum of money at the store each month. Why not television advertisements, instead of just radio? And why not sponsor a competition for young pianists, it would be such wonderful publicity for Zimmerman Brothers…

  Hazel grew breathless, expressing such ideas. Her older companions in the store smiled in dismay.

  It was then Madge Dorsey made the remark about Hazel Jones keeping them all young. And thank God for people like her.

  “‘People like me’? Who?”

  Hazel seemed to be teasing, you never knew quite what she was getting at. Her girlish laughter was infectious.

  Madge Dorsey made up her mind then not to hate Hazel any longer. These several weeks since the new salesclerk�lacking not only experience in sales, but totally ign
orant of music�had been hired by Edgar Zimmerman, Madge had felt hatred blossoming inside her, in the region of her bosom, like a fast-growing cancer. But, to hate Hazel Jones was to hate the much-awaited spring thaw of upstate New York! To hate Hazel Jones was to hate the warm blinding flood of sunshine itself! And there was the futility, Madge conceded: Edgar Zimmerman had hired the girl, and Edgar Zimmerman was clearly taken with her.

  Evelyn Steadman, salesclerk at Zimmerman Brothers for twenty-two years, was slower to be won over by Hazel Jones’s “personality.” At fifty-four, Evelyn was yet unmarried, with a waning and ever-waxing hope that Edgar Zimmerman, widower now for twelve years, in his early sixties, might take a sudden romantic interest in her.

  Still, Hazel Jones prevailed. Thinking I will make you love me! So you will never wish to hurt me.

  “How’s my girl Hazel doin’ here, Edgar? Any complaints?”

  A few weeks after Hazel began working at Zimmerman Brothers, Chet Gallagher began dropping by in the late afternoon, in the wintry dusk when the store was about to close. Out of nowhere Gallagher appeared. He was known to the Zimmermans, and he appeared to be known to Madge and Evelyn, who brightened at his appearance. Hazel was always taken by surprise. Hazel had no idea that Gallagher was in town, and planning to surprise her with a dinner invitation that evening; often, Gallagher had failed to call her for several days, in the aftermath of a temper tantrum.