The Gravedigger's Daughter Part 49

This was at the Grand Island Yacht Club to which Gallagher took his little family to celebrate, when Zack was informed he'd been selected as one of thirteen finalists in the San Francisco compet.i.tion.

Gallagher's philosophy was: "Celebrate when you can, you might never have another chance."

Weaving in the direction of their riverside table was the affably drunken man with stained white hair in a crew cut, lumpy potato face and merry eyes reddened as if he'd been rubbing them with his knuckles.

He'd come to shake Gallagher's hand, meet the missus but mostly to address the young Zacharias.

"Coincidence, eh? I like to think coincidences mean something even when likely they don't. But you're the real thing, son: a musician. Read about you in the paper. Me, I'm a broke-down ol' d.j. Twenty-six friggin' yeas on WBEN Radio Wonderful broadcasting the best in jazz through the wee night hours"his voice pitched low into a beautifully modulated if slightly mocking Negro radio voice"and the lousy sonsab.i.t.c.hes are dropping me from the station. No offense, Chet: I know you ain't to blame, you ain't your old man friggin' Thaddeus. My actual name, son"stooping over the table now to shake the hand of the cringing boy"is Alvin Block, Jr. Ain't got that swing, eh?"

Shaking his hips, wheezing with laughter as the white-jacketed maitre d' hurried in his direction to lead him away.

(The Grand Island Yacht Club! Gallagher was apologetic, also a bit defensive, on the subject.

As a local celebrity Chet Gallagher had been given an honorary membership to the Grand Island Yacht Club. The d.a.m.ned club had a historyinvariably, Gallagher called it a "spotty history"of discrimination against Jews, Negroes, "ethnic minorities," and of course women, an all-male all-Caucasian Protestant private club on the Niagara River. Certainly Gallagher scorned such organizations as undemocratic and un-American yet in this case there were good friends of his who belonged, the Yacht Club was an "old venerable tradition" in the Buffalo area dating back to the 1870s, why not accept their hospitality that was so graciously offered, so long as Chet Gallagher wasn't a dues-paying member.

"And the view of the Niagara River is terrific, especially at sunset. You'll love it, Hazel."

Hazel asked if she would be allowed into the Yacht Club dining room.

Gallagher said, "Hazel, of course! You and Zack both, as my guests."

"Even if I'm a woman? Wouldn't the members object?"

"Certainly women are welcome at the Yacht Club. Wives, relatives, guests of members. It's the same as at the Buffalo Athletic Club, you've been there."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why'd women be 'welcome,' if they aren't? And Jews, and Ne-groes?" Hazel gave Ne-groes a special inflection.

Gallagher saw she was teasing now, and looked uncomfortable.

"Look, I'm not a dues-paying member. I've been there only a few times. I thought it might be a nice place to go for dinner on Sunday, to celebrate Zack's good news." Gallagher paused, rubbing his nose vigorously. "We can go somewhere else, Hazel. If you prefer."

Hazel laughed, Gallagher was looking so abashed.

"Chet, no. I'm not one to 'prefer' anything.") Sometimes I'm so lonely. Oh Christ so lonely for the life you saved me from but he would have stared at her astonished and disbelieving.

Not you, Hazel! Never.

In Buffalo they lived at 83 Roscommon Circle, within a mile's radius of the Delaware Conservatory of Music, the Buffalo Historic Society, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. They were invited out often, their names were on privileged mailing lists. Gallagher scorned the bourgeois life yet was bemused by it, he acknowledged. Overnight Hazel Jones had become Mrs. Chet Gallagher, Hazel Gallagher.

As, young, she'd been an able and uncomplaining chambermaid in an "historic" hotel, now in youthful middle age she was the caretaker of a partly restored Victorian house of five bedrooms, three storeys, steeply pitched slate roofs. Originally built in 1887, the house was made of shingle-board, eggsh.e.l.l with deep purple trim. Maintaining the house became crucial to Hazel, a kind of fetish. As her son would be a concert pianist, so Hazel would be the most exacting of housewives. Gallagher, away much of the day, seemed not to notice how Hazel was becoming overly scrupulous about the house for anything Hazel did was a delight to him; and of course Gallagher was hopeless about anything perceived as practical, domestic. By degrees, Hazel also took over the maintenance of their financial records for it was much easier than waiting for Gallagher to a.s.sume responsibility. He was yet more hopeless with money, indifferent as only the son of a wealthy man might be indifferent to money.

With the instinct of a pack rat, Hazel kept receipts for the smallest purchases and services. Hazel kept flawless records. Hazel sent by registered mail photocopied materials to Gallagher's Buffalo accountant on a quarterly basis, for tax purposes. Gallagher whistled in admiration of his wife. "Hazel, you're terrific. How'd you get so smart?"

"Runs in the family."

"How so?"

"My father was a high school math teacher."

Gallagher stared at her, quizzically. "Your father was a high school math teacher?"

Hazel laughed. "No. Just joking."

"Do you know who your father was, Hazel? You've always said you didn't."

"I didn't, and I don't." Hazel wiped at her eyes, couldn't seem to stop laughing. For there was Gallagher, well into his fifties, staring at her gravely in that way of a man so beguiled by love he will believe anything told him by the beloved. Hazel felt she could reach into Gallagher's rib cage and touch his living heart. "Just teasing, Chet."

On tiptoes to kiss him. Oh, Gallagher was a tall man even with shoulders slouched. She saw that his new bifocals were smudged, removed them from his face and deftly polished them on her skirt.

Mrs. Chester Gallagher.

Each time she signed her new name it seemed to her that her handwriting was subtly altered.

They traveled a good deal. They saw many people. Some were a.s.sociated with music, and some were a.s.sociated with the media. Hazel was introduced to very friendly strangers as Hazel Gallagher: a name faintly comical to her, preposterous.

Yet no one laughed! Not within her hearing.

Gallagher, the most sentimental of men as he was the most scornful of men, would have liked a more formal wedding but saw the logic of a brief civil ceremony in one of the smaller courtrooms of the Erie County Courthouse. "Last thing we want is cameras, right? Attention. If my father found out..." The ten-minute ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace on a rainy Sat.u.r.day morning in November 1972: the exact tenth anniversary of Gallagher and Hazel meeting in the Piano Bar of the Malin Head Inn. Zack was the sole witness, the bride's teenaged son in a suit, necktie. Zack looking both embarra.s.sed and pleased.

Gallagher would believe he'd been the one to talk Hazel Jones into marrying him, at last. Joking that Hazel had made an honest man of him.

Ten years!

"Someday, darling, you'll have to tell me why."

"Why what?"

"Why you refused to marry me for ten long years."

"Ten very short years, they were."

"Long for me! Every morning I expected you to have disappeared. Cleared out. Taken Zack, and left me heartbroken."

Hazel was startled, at such a remark. Gallagher was only joking of course.

"Maybe I didn't marry you because I didn't believe that I was a good enough person to marry you. Maybe that was it."

Her light enigmatic Hazel Jones laugh. She'd tuned to perfection, like one of Zack's effortlessly executed cadenzas.

"Good enough to marry me! Hazel, really."

As Gallagher had arranged to marry Hazel in the Erie County Courthouse, so Gallagher arranged to adopt Zack in the Erie County Courthouse. So proud! So happy! It was the consummation of Gallagher's adult life.

The adoption was speedily arranged. A meeting with Gallagher's attorney, and an appointment with a county judge. Legal doc.u.ments to be drawn up and signed and Zack's creased and waterstained birth certificate issued as a facsimile in Chemung County, New York, to be photocopied and filed in the Erie County Hall of Records.

Legally, Zack was now Zack Gallagher. But he would retain Zacharias Jones as his professional name.

Zack joked he was the oldest kid adopted in the history of Erie County: fifteen. But, at the signing, he'd turned abruptly away from Gallagher and Hazel not wanting them to see his face.

"Hey, kid. Jesus."

Gallagher hugged Zack, hard. Kissed the boy wetly on the edge of his mouth. Gallagher, most sentimental of men, didn't mind anyone seeing him cry.

Like guilty conspirators, mother and son. When they were alone together they burst into laughter, a wild nervous flaming-up laughter that would have shocked Gallagher.

So funny! Whatever it was, that sparked such laughter between them.

Zack had been fascinated by his birth certificate. He didn't seem to recall ever having seen it before. Hidden away with Hazel Jones's secret things, a small compact bundle she'd carried with her since the Poor Farm Road.

Zack asked if the birth certificate was legitimate, and Hazel said sharply Yes! It was.

"My name is 'Zacharias August Jones' and my father's name is 'William Jones'? Who the h.e.l.l's 'William Jones'?"

"'Was.'"

"'Was' what?"

"'Was,' not 'is.' Mr. Jones is dead now."

Secrets! In the tight little bundle inside her rib cage in the place where her heart had been. So many secrets, sometimes she couldn't get her breath.

Thaddeus Gallagher, for instance. His gifts and impa.s.sioned love letters to Dearest Hazel Jones!

In fall 1970, soon after Hazel received the first of these, an individual wishing to be designated as an anonymous benefactor gave a sizable sum of money to the Delaware Conservatory of Music earmarked as a scholarship and travel fund for the young pianist Zacharias Jones. Money was required for the numerous international piano compet.i.tions in which young pianists performed in hope of winning prizes, public attention, concert bookings and recording deals, and the donation from the anonymous benefactor would allow Zacharias to travel anywhere he wished. Gallagher who intended to manage Zack's career was keenly aware of these possibilities: "Andre Watts was seventeen when Leonard Bernstein conducted him in the Liszt E-flat concerto, on national television. A bombsh.e.l.l." And of course there was the legendary 1958 Tchaikovsky Compet.i.tion in which twenty-four-year-old Van Cliburn took away the first prize and returned from Soviet Russia an international celebrity. Gallagher knew! But he was d.a.m.ned suspicious of the anonymous benefactor. When administrators at the Conservatory refused to tell him the benefactor's ident.i.ty, Gallagher became suspicious and resentful. To Hazel he complained, "What if it's him. G.o.d d.a.m.n!"

Naively Hazel asked, "Who is him?"

"My G.o.d-d.a.m.ned father, who else! It's three hundred thousand dollars the 'anonymous benefactor' has given the Conservatory, it has to be him. He must have heard Zack play in Vermont." Gallagher was looking fierce yet helpless, a man cut off at the knees. His voice pitched to a sudden pleading softness. "Hazel, I can't tolerate Thaddeus interfering in my life any more than he has."

Hazel listened sympathetically. She did not point out to Gallagher It isn't your life, it's Zack's life.

It was a mother's predatory instinct. Seeing how her son's skin glowed with s.e.xual heat. His eyes that guiltily eluded her gaze, hot and yearning.

Restless! Too many hours at the piano. Trapped inside a cage of shimmering notes.

He went away from the house, and returned late. Midnight, and later. One night he didn't return until 4 A.M. (Hazel lay awake, and waiting. Very still not wanting to disturb Gallagher.) Yet another night in September, with only three weeks before the San Francisco Compet.i.tion, he stayed away until dawn returning at that time stumbling and disheveled, defiant, smelling of beer.

"Zack! Good morning."

Hazel would not rebuke the boy. She would speak only lightly, without reproach. She knew, if she even touched him he would recoil from her. In sudden fury he might slap at her, strike her with his fists as he'd done as a little boy. Hate you Momma! G.o.d d.a.m.n I hate hate hate you. She must not stare too hungrily at his young unshaven face. Must not accuse him of wishing to ruin their lives any more than she would plead with him or beg or weep for that was never Hazel Jones's way smiling as she opened the back door for him to enter, allowing him to brush roughly past her beneath the still-burning light breathing harshly through his mouth as if he'd been running and his eyes that were beautiful to her now bloodshot and heavy-lidded and opaque to her gaze and that smell of sweat, a s.e.x-smell, pungent beneath the acrid smell of beer, yet she allowed him to know I love you and my love is stronger than your hatred.

He would sleep through much of the day. Hazel would not disturb him. By late afternoon he would return to the piano renewed, and practice until late evening. And Gallagher, listening in the hallway would shake his head in wonder.

She knew!

(He had to wonder what she'd meant in her playful teasing way Mr. Jones is dead now. If she meant that his father was dead? His long-ago father who had shouted into his face and shaken him like a rag doll and beat him and threw him against the wall yet who had hugged him too, and kissed him wetly on the edge of his mouth leaving a spittle-taste of tobacco behind. Hey: love ya! As his fingers executed the rapidly and vividly descending treble notes in the final ecstatic bars of the Beethoven sonata he had to wonder.) Strange: that Chet Gallagher was losing interest in his career. Had lost interest in his career. Following the abrupt and shameful ending of the Vietnam War the most protracted and shameful war in American history strange, ironic how bored he'd become almost overnight with public life, politics. Even as his career as Chet Gallagher soared. (The newspaper column, 350 words Gallagher boasted he could type out in his sleep with his left hand, was nationally reprinted and admired. The TV interview program he'd been asked to host in 1973 was steadily gaining an audience. Also in 1973 a collection of prose pieces he'd cobbled together whimsically t.i.tled Some Pieces of (My) Mind became an unexpected bestseller in paperback.) Losing interest in Chet Gallagher in proportion as he was becoming obsessed with Zacharias Jones. For here was a gifted young pianist, a truly gifted young pianist Gallagher had personally discovered up in Malin Head Bay one memorable winter night...

"It happens, he's my adopted son. My son."

Gallagher had to concede this was a phenomenon his own father had been denied. For he'd let his father down. He had failed as a cla.s.sical pianist. Maybe to spite his father he'd failed but in any case he had failed, all that was finished. He played jazz piano only occasionally now, local gigs, fund-raisers and benefits and sometimes on TV, but not serious jazz any longer, Gallagher had become so Caucasian bourgeois, d.a.m.ned boring middle-aged husband and father, and happy. There's no edge to happy. There's no jazz-cool to happy. So devoted to his little family he'd even given up smoking.

How strange life was! He would manage the boy's career for the responsibility lay with Chet Gallagher.

Not to push the boy of course. From the first he'd cautioned the boy's mother.

"We'll take it slow. One thing at a time. Must be realistic. Even Andre Watts, after his early fantastic success, burned out. And so did Van Cliburn. Temporarily." Gallagher was not seriously expecting Zack to win a top prize at the San Francisco Compet.i.tion: for one so young and relatively inexperienced, it was a remarkable honor simply to have qualified. The judges were of various ethnic backgrounds and would not favor a young Caucasian-American male. (Or would they? Zack was playing the "Appa.s.sionata.") Zack would be competing with prize-winning pianists from Russia, China, j.a.pan, Germany who had trained with pianists more distinguished than his teacher at the Delaware Conservatory. To be realistic, Gallagher was planning, plotting: the Tokyo International Piano Compet.i.tion in May 1975.

Her name was Frieda Bruegger.

She was a student at the Conservatory, a cellist. Beautiful blunt-featured girl with almond-shaped eyes, thick dark bristling hair exploding about her head, a young animated very shapely body. Her voice was a penetrating soprano: "Mrs. Gallagher! h.e.l.lo."

Hazel was smiling and fully in control but staring rather vacantly at the girl Zack had brought home, whom he had introduced to her as a friend he was preparing a sonata with, for an upcoming recital at the Conservatory. Hazel was admiring the beautiful gleaming cello in the girl's hands, she would ask questions about the instrument, but something was wrong, why were the young people looking at her so oddly? She realized she hadn't replied. Numbly her lips moved, "h.e.l.lo, Frieda."

Frieda! The name was so strangely resonant to her, she felt almost faint.

Realizing that she'd seen this girl before, at the music school. She had even seen the girl with Zack though the two had not been alone together. Following a recital, among a group of young musicians.

It's her. She's the one. He is sleeping with her. Is he?

So without warning Zack had brought the girl home with him, Hazel wasn't prepared. She'd expected him to be secretive, circ.u.mspect. Yet here the girl stood before Hazel calling her "Mrs. Gallagher." Really she was a young woman, twenty years old. Beside her Zack was still a boy, though taller than she was by several inches. And awkward in his body, uncertain. In personal relations Zack had not the zestful agility and grace he had at the piano. He was swiping at his nose now, nervously. He would not look at Hazel, not fully. He was excited, defiant. Gallagher had told Hazel it was the most natural thing in the world for a boy Zack's age to have a girlfriend, in fact girlfriends, you had to a.s.sume that kids were s.e.xually active today as they generally had not been in Hazel's generation, h.e.l.l it was fine as long as they took precautions and he'd had a talk (how awkward, Hazel could only imagine) with Zack so there was nothing to worry about.

And so Zack had brought home this bluntly beautiful girl with almond-shaped eyes and rather heavy dark unplucked eyebrows and the most astonishing explosive hair: Frieda Bruegger.

Informing Hazel that they would be performing a Faure sonata for cello and piano at a Conservatory recital in mid-December. This was the first Hazel had heard of it and did not know how to respond. ( What about the "Appa.s.sionata"? What about San Francisco, in eight days?) But Hazel's opinion was not being sought. The matter had been decided.

"It will be my first recital in that series, Mrs. Gallagher. I'm very nervous!"

Wanting Hazel to share in her excitement, the drama of her young life. And Hazel held back from her, resisting.

Yet Hazel remained in the music room longer than she might have expected. Busying herself with small housewifely tasks: straightening the small pillows on the window seat, opening the venetian blinds wide. The young people talked together earnestly about the sonata, looking through their photocopied sheets of music. Hazel saw that the girl stood rather close to Zack. She smiled frequently, her teeth were large and perfectly white, a small charming gap between the two front teeth. Her skin was beautifully smooth, with a faint burnished cast beneath. Her upper lip was covered in the faintest down. She was so animated! Zack held back from her, just perceptibly. Yet he was amused by her. Zack had several times brought other young musicians home to practice with him, he was a favored piano accompanist at the Conservatory. Possibly the girl was only a friend of his, a cla.s.smate. Except less experienced musically than Zack and so she would depend upon his judgment, she would defer to him musically. She brandished her beautiful cello as if it were a simulacrum of herself: her beautiful female body.

Hazel was forgetting the girl's name. She felt a vague fluttery panic, this was happening too quickly.

For a student at the Conservatory, the girl was provocatively dressed: lime green sweater that fitted her ample b.r.e.a.s.t.s tightly, metal-studded jeans that fitted her ample b.u.t.tocks tightly. She had a nervous mannerism of wetting her lips, breathing through her mouth. Yet she did not seem truly ill-at-ease, rather more self-dramatizing, self-displaying. A rich girl, was she? Something in her manner suggested such a background. She was a.s.sured of being cherished. a.s.sured of being admired. On her right wrist she wore an expensive-looking watch. Her hands were not extraordinary for a cellist, rather small, stubby. Not so slender as Zack's hands. Her nails were plain, filed short. Hazel glanced at her own impeccably polished nails, that matched her coral lipstick...Yet the girl was so young, and suffused with life! Hazel stared and stared lost in wonder.

She heard herself ask if the young people would like something to drink? Cola, coffee...

Politely they declined, no.

The terrible thought came to Hazel They are waiting for me to leave them alone.

Yet she heard herself ask, "This sonata, what is it like? Is itfamiliar? Something I've heard?"

Frieda was the one to answer, bright and enthusiastic as a schoolgirl: "It's a beautiful sonata, Mrs. Gallagher. But you probably haven't heard it, Faure's sonatas aren't very well known. He was old and sick when he wrote it, in 1921, it's one of his last compositions but you would never guess! Faure was a true poet, a pure musician. In this sonata there's a surprise, the way the mood shifts, the 'funeral theme' becomes something you wouldn't expect, almost ethereal, joyous. Like, if you were an old man, and sick, and soon to die, still you could lift yourself out of your body that is failing you..." The girl spoke with such sudden intensity, Hazel felt uneasy.