Thank You for the Music (8 page)

He was also very kind; I remember he knew I was tired from a day at work, where I sat behind a counter in a crowded hospital trying to help exasperated, sometimes furious people figure out their health care insurance. When I was mopping the floor to prepare the house for our son and his girlfriend, Jude climbed out of the cave of his work and told me to go take a nap. He'd clean, he said, his eyes still glazed with his art. And I knew he'd apply the same fierce, concentrated energy to housework as he did to his painting. The place would shine.

My son rang the doorbell that evening at dusk; I was struck by that since usually he burst through the door with no warning. I was used to him raiding the refrigerator as if he were still in high school. This night was different, though. This was the night we were to meet his girlfriend.

I was the one to answer. There they stood in the dusk, my handsome son in his maroon sweater and ponytail, a twenty-five-year-old young man who liked his dog, reading, Buddhist meditation, and hiking, and beside him, holding his hand, stood his girlfriend, as he'd been calling her, despite the fact that she was, at least compared to him, old. Sixty, I'd soon learn. Sixty. Nine years my senior. She wore a beige raincoat, and moccasins. She was very tall, with high cheekbones and lank, dark hair parted on the side, and my first thought was that she looked like my pediatrician from childhood, a woman who'd visited my home when I'd had German measles. The resemblance was so uncanny that for a moment I thought it was her, Dr. Vera Martin! I was almost ready to embrace her, for she had impressed me deeply as a child, with a sense of authority that seemed rooted both in her eloquent silences and the sudden warmth that transformed her serious face when she'd finally smile. My son's friend smiled and the resemblance only deepened.

“Hi!” I said, and stared at this woman who I knew could not be my childhood doctor, who was in fact long dead. So who was she? Not his girlfriend. Not really.

“Invite us in, Ma,” said my son, and I could see he was enjoying my shock.

“This is Berna, Ma. Berna, this is Patricia, my ma.”

Berna reached out to shake my hand. Her eyes were dark and warm. As she opened her coat I saw her sweatshirt was covered with decals of cats.

“I wasn't able to dress appropriately,” she said. “I'm coming from work, you'll pardon me, I hope?”

“Work?”

“She's a vet,” my son jumped in, beaming at her. He was more animated than I'd seen him in years. “She makes housecalls. A traveling vet. I went with her today. She's excellent. Harry—that was his dog—loves her. That's how we met. She's the only traveling vet in town.” He took a deep breath; he seemed filled with a kind of desperate, nervous excitement—so different from his usual taut calm.

“A traveling vet,” I said. “Well well. That's something. Please, come in, sit down.”

The two of them followed me into the living room. I felt I was dreaming. Berna sat down. She made no noise as she sat. No little groan of pleasure. No sigh. She sat with her long back as straight as the poised tails of the cats on her sweatshirt, her eyes and the eyes of the cats too alert, so that I felt like a small crowd was quietly assessing me. Griffin sat beside her, and held her hand, and suddenly I asked him if I could speak to him in the kitchen. I felt toyed with, and wanted him to know.

“Why didn't you mention she was old enough to be your grandmother?” I hadn't meant to hiss at him. In the kitchen light his brown eyes widened.

“What's your problem?” he said. “Did you turn into Dad or something?”

“Griffin, this is ridiculous! Don't act like you're not enjoying the shock value of this! She looks like my childhood pediatrician, who was old then, and dead now!”

He scrunched up his face in a sort of disgusted confusion. All the composure I'd seen for the past two years, composure that had struck me as false, had left him. I knew his palms were sweating. I felt for him, but it struck me as comical, his expecting me to take this in stride.

“I want to marry this woman,” he said. “I want to marry her. This has nothing to do with your childhood doctor, or shock value.” I saw he was deadly serious. So, I thought, this is how his strangeness has found itself a home. Let's hope it's temporary, a pit stop.

Berna appeared in the doorway, a tall, long-limbed sixty in a cheap, baggy cat sweatshirt that somehow was dignified enough on her.

“Look,” she said. “Let's be up front here, shall we? Let's get it all out on the table. Go ahead and tell me what's pressing in on you: I'm old enough to be his mother.”

“Grandmother,” I said.

“Grandmother then,” Berna said, with a kind of pride that lifted her chin. “Though I'd have to have given birth at an awfully young age to make that a true statement.” Her voice was soft and steady with confidence.

“I've finally brought Berna here because she's the first woman I've really loved. That needs to be known and digested.”

“That's what you're telling her?” I said to him, remembering a string of girls named Cindy, and the three Jens, two of whom I'd become quite friendly with.

“I told her because it's true, Ma. Okay? Now it's all out in the open. You want a beer, Bern?”

“Sure,” said Bern.

And I heard my husband coming down the steps. Here we go, I thought.

My husband and son never got along. I used to blame Jude— he'd been so absent during Griffin's childhood, so self-absorbed, and my son had been born, it seemed, awestruck by his father. Terrible combination. In those early years we lived out in the country and Jude painted in a large shed; Griffin was like a dog, waiting too patiently for the master to finally notice him and play. The more absorbed his father was, the keener Griffin's need became; Jude claimed there was something manipulative in this, but my heart broke for my child, and I think I rightly feared his very soul was being shaped by the intensity of his longing. Maybe that can be said of all children.

I'd beg Jude to give the boy a little attention, and he did, but it was the wrong kind. He'd take Griffin to the art museum. He'd try to make him memorize paintings, learn perspective, listen to facts about the artists. Griffin tried his best, and told Jude he wanted to walk into Pierre Bonnard's paintings and live there, but you shouldn't do this with a seven-year-old unless the kid is oddly brilliant, a prodigy, which Griffin never was, and I know this disappointed his father, and I know, also, that his father blamed my genes. I come from a long line of Midwestern farmers. If I said any big words in my mother's presence, she cocked her eyebrow, which meant for me to get down off my damn high horse. Intelligence was a force to be tamed into utility.

After years of rejection, Griffin finally gave up. He was twelve, then. He got a dog for his birthday that year. It seemed to me that all his love for his father got transferred onto the dog, a mutt from the shelter Griff named Roberto, for the great ballplayer Roberto Clemente. Roberto was a bit mangy and looked heartsick, but loved Griffin the way dogs love boys. A simple solution, I thought. Roberto went everywhere with Griffin—they even let that dog into the grocery store. Things were easier for Griffin after that. He became a teenager who said very little to either of us. In high school he found an enormous friend named Jack J. Pree, who wore thick glasses and who managed to attract certain girls despite his obesity. Jack lived with his aunt and uncle, drove a monstrous, ancient gold Buick, called himself the Fatso Existentialist and called Griff Brother Soul. It was the sort of mythology Griff needed. Brother Soul and the Fatso Existentialist spent days just driving around with aging Roberto hanging out the window, the three of them listening to old blues and new punk. Nights they read philosophy books aloud, or had water-balloon fights in Jack J. Pree's tiny hedged backyard, which was five doors down from us. Through a hole in the bushes, I spied on them. I loved my son, and I'd become a spy in his life.

Jude walked into the kitchen that evening, and I saw, for a moment, how handsome he was, which still happened when I was aware that someone else would be looking at him for the first time. Griffin, Berna and I had taken seats at the oak table by the glass wall that looked out onto a little patio. Berna had first stood at the window and admired that space. “Lovely,” she'd said.

“Hey, Griffin,” Jude said, and looked at Berna. “Where's your girlfriend?” he said.

Berna got up from the table.

“Hello,” she said. “I'm Berna Kateson.” She walked over and shook his hand. She was nearly as tall as Jude.

Griffin watched them with utmost seriousness, waiting for his father to do something wrong.

“Griffin and I have been together for quite a while now, so we thought it was time to meet you,” Berna said, again with her distinct, almost imperceptible chin-raising pride.

“Uh-huh,” said my husband. “I see.” He shot a look at Griffin, then his eyes settled on my own, and I looked down, away from him, so that he was stranded in his shock. Berna sat back down.

“I realize this isn't a typical scenario,” she said. “I realize one might feel a little baffled when faced with the possibility of their son marrying an older woman, even a very successful one.”

Jude opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine, poured himself a glass, and sat down with us at the table.

“So,” he said to Berna, and looked at her with coldly urgent eyes. “Why don't you tell us about yourself. About your success.”

“That seems a kind of power-play question,” Berna said. “So maybe I should ask it of you. Why don't you tell me about yourself? Your success?” She smiled back at him, without malice.

I could feel Griffin loving this. Her simple composure must have seemed like real bravery to him.

“Well,” said my husband, “I'm sure Griffin here has told you all about me. I'm sure it's been a stellar father-son relationship report. It was all Little League and fishing trips with Griff and me.”

Berna laughed, generously, I thought. Jude squinted his eyes at her, then looked at me as if to say, are we dreaming?

“We're both wiped out, actually,” said Griffin. “We had a day that was hard on the heart, didn't we, Bern? I mean, we should tell the story of our day and put things in perspective, right? Rather than spend more time on this petty American bullshit?”

Whenever Griffin didn't like something he called it American. This had been his habit for years.

“We had to put two cats down, and tell a dog owner that his dog had one week of life left,” Berna said. “Nobody took this well. We became on-the-spot grief counselors, which isn't unusual.” She massaged her temples. She stuck her limp dark hair behind her ears.

“We?” said my husband. “Did my son go to veterinary school since I last saw him? Or is he simply Granny's sidekick now?”

“He's studying to be an assistant,” Berna said. “I'm sorry you're obsessed with age, but I'd have been foolish not to expect it.”

Berna sipped her beer. Then a great burst of laughter escaped from her mouth. Very, very odd. A shocking contrast to her whole bearing, which was elegant reserve.

“Excuse me,” she said, as if she'd burped. Her eyes flashed, widening, her lips suppressed a smile.

“Can we go into the other room where it's more comfortable?” I said, as if we would all turn into different people if our chairs were softer.

“So anyhow,” Berna said, almost as soon as we sat down, “Griffin is gifted, utterly gifted with animals. By that I mean he's not only got the brains to be a vet, he's got the heart. He's already on his way to being a certified assistant, but I think that's just the beginning.”

Jude sat with his arms crossed in a high-backed green chair, his eyes peering over his glasses. I sat on the couch on one side of Berna, and Griffin sat very close to her on the other side. I was really hoping they didn't do anything like kiss. Griffin had been known to kiss his other girlfriends quite blatantly, with a kind of hostile showmanship in our presence.

“It's easy to find a brain,” Berna continued. “And it's easy to find a heart. I've had a whole string of assistants that were all heart. Near disasters, I have to say. The last gal, Peggy, who I thought might be good since she looked exactly like a horse—so often the ones who most resemble animals are good—I know, that's odd—but anyhow, every time we had to go to someone's house and put their pet down, she'd gallop out of the room and sob. The person losing the animal they'd loved for twenty years would be quietly welling up with tears, and then they'd stop, too concerned with Peggy's sobbing to even feel their own sorrow.”

“So what happened to Peggy?” I said. I imagined her grazing in a field, chewing on hay. “Did she find another profession?”

“Peggy's all right,” Berna said. “Peggy has a job in a bank now. She needs numbers. Numbers don't die.”