Authors: Toby Devens
Happy Any Day Now (29 page)
“Ah, Jude.” His voice was tender. “I love you so much. I am one lucky bastard.” Then the big Aussie grinned and changed key. “Okay, got that settled. Now, what’s next?”
“Tahiti for hang gliding. Do they hang glide in Tahiti?” I was high on the moment, half talking, half laughing.
“If they don’t, we’ll teach them.” He slowed the tempo. “But first, winter in Sydney. You’ll love it there and I can introduce you to my mum, my family, and the best of my mates. They’ll fall head over heels for you, the lot of them. Then the week in Tahiti and home.” His glance turned merry, mischievous. “Crikey, maybe we ought to figure where home
is
exactly. You have space for my didgeridoo collection at your place? I’m thinking long term. Curator accompanying, of course.”
Geoff moving in with me? Those didgeridoos, huge aboriginal horns, required a room of their own. “We’ll manage,” I whispered.
He reached over, drew my hand toward him, and pressed his lips against my palm.
Marti, standing nearby in a chat circle with my mother and Lulu Cho, caught the move. She issued a loud, exaggerated “Ahem” and sent me a cartoon wink.
I nodded to her, then turned to the shuffle of my father inching toward us with three flutes of champagne.
Arriving with a smile, he handed me a glass. “Hey, Geoff, here you go. And one for me.” I had a feeling it wasn’t his first. “Happy you made it, young man. I see you didn’t get a tan in London. Lousy weather those limeys have. Judith, beautiful party, beautiful birthday girl. I gotta tell you, when you blew out those candles with the spotlight on you, it struck me how much of your mother you got in you. The Korean genes combining with the Jewish genes make you a real knockout. Ain’t she a looker, Geoff?”
“She is that, Irwin. An absolute stunner.”
I stared at another birthday surprise, the freshly grown gray smudge under Irwin’s classic Raphael nose. “And
I like your mustache,” I remarked. It was the nicest thing I’d said to Irwin Raphael since he’d turned up a month earlier. My version of “We’re okay.”
“Something new,” my
ap-ba
responded. “When you’re old, it’s good to try something new. Just for the heck of it.” He flashed his caps at Geoff. “But not too new, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, my voice taking on a melody I recognized as joy.
It was on that note that the party ended for me and the rest of my life began. Then again, the rest of my life had the promise of turning into one long party.
Geoff and my father lifted their glasses.
The old man said, “Here’s to you, Judith. Happy fiftieth, kiddo.”
Geoff chimed in, “Cheers, luv.”
My mother, who’d strolled over from the women’s circle, slipped in next to me. “Don’t forget best Korean toast.” She lifted her glass in the traditional fashion, supporting her right arm with her left hand.
“Gun-bae.”
“Gun-bae,”
we all repeated.
But I had the final word over the Piper-Heidsieck,
“L’chayim.”
To life. Whatever it brings.
I
t brought me the greatest gift in all my nearly fifty-one years the following April.
Seated on the flower-banked stage of the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, I peered into the audience. The theater seated twenty-five hundred. That night they were mostly North Korean men in somber business suits and women in gorgeous pastel
hanboks
. Also a contingent of U.S. State Department representatives.
We played the “Star-Spangled Banner” and “Patriotic Song,” the national anthem of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Then an all-American program: Aaron Copland’s
Appalachian Spring
, a medley from
Porgy and Bess
in which Geoff got to show off on trumpet, and the New World Symphony
.
As Dvorák’s final notes of tribute faded and the hall exploded with applause, I moved with my cello to the podium that had been placed for me up front, center stage. I took my chair, Angela raised her baton, and the orchestra behind me flooded the theater with the first stirring chorus of the national folk song,
Arirang.
My nerves were the right kind of strung for that night’s concert. Calm enough so I didn’t have to call up the tranquil image of the beach where on winter break Geoff and I had blissfully stretched out after windsurfing the waters around Maui. Taut enough so I would give the performance of a lifetime and remember every shining detail.
I could see clearly to the fifth row. The first row lined up the country’s highest party officials. Backs straight, hands folded in their laps, they sat with expressionless faces. The second row showed sparks of emotion. As the lushest violin passages of the folk song soared, an older man dabbed tears and a few women mouthed the words they had known from childhood. In the middle of the third row, my mother and father never shifted their stare from me. The principal flutist played a melancholy interlude, Deena shone on the harp, my parents’ stare remained unwavering.
Amazing. The old guy had shelled out a hundred thousand dollars of the chippie’s money to the Maryland Philharmonic’s Richard Arthur Tarkoff Foundation to earn the title of patron and secure the trip and the seats for him and my mother.
Grace was dressed in her own mother’s now antique
hanbok
, a gift from her sister, my aunt Min Sun. The two women separated by war when barely out of their teens held hands. Next to my aunt were her husband and six of my cousins, who’d been discovered at a cooperative farm in Hwanghae by who-knows-what means by who-knows-what American agency under pressure from Secretary of State Eleanor Aldridge as a favor to her cousin Charles Evans Pruitt. Charlie had connections and he had class. It had taken a single phone call from me for him to set the wheels in motion. His final gift to his lost love was my lost family. Better than rubies.
Angela led the violins to a soaring transition as the first chorus ended and a spotlight bloomed over me. I took a deep, steadying breath—
Remember this, Judith; remember this until your dying day
—and gave an infinitesimal nod to my parents. My father sent me a wink and nudged my mother, who blew me a kiss. The signal from Angela and I lifted my bow, drew it across the historic strings of the Goffriller, and made it weep the music of
Arirang.
As I played, I sang the song’s familiar lyrics in my head. Their absolute meaning is lost in the mists of time, but most Koreans agree they have to do with love and abandonment. And, some say, hope.
Photo by Fern Eisner
Toby Devens
has been an editor, public information specialist, and author of short fiction and articles for national magazines. She has lectured worldwide about writing and women’s issues and has led writing workshops. Her first published book was a humorous and poignant collection of poetry that was excerpted in
McCall’s
and
Reader’s Digest
. In 2006, she published her first novel,
My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet).
She lives halfway between Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
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CONVERSATION GUIDE
A CONVERSATION
WITH TOBY DEVENS
Q. What inspired you to write Happy Any Day Now?
A. I’ve always been interested in the theme of return and how the past cycles into the present. When old friends and former classmates reconnected with me through social media, I recovered some who had been lost to me for decades. In several cases, there were reunions. The idea that people who had played a role in my life were suddenly back to make magic or mischief (or both) was fascinating. I wanted to explore that.
Also, the roots of family have become more important to me as I’ve grown older. Not long ago, I did a bit of genealogical research and turned up the ship’s manifest for my maternal grandmother, who left Austria for America, all alone, to start a new life. She died before I was born, so I bombarded her generation of the family with questions about how she’d adjusted to the new world. That led to my fascination with the immigrant experience in general and the ways people adapt to transplantation, how they wilt or bloom in new soil. With America welcoming unprecedented numbers of newcomers from Asia, I decided to make my main character Korean-American, but Grace’s story has much that’s universal about it.
Judith’s relationship with Grace is another narrative thread. Mother-and-daughter dynamics are tricky to manage under the best of circumstances and Judith and Grace perform the special, precarious balancing act of a single mother and only daughter. Judith has always walked a tightrope between love for and independence from Grace. I thought it would be interesting to follow up with the two adults to see if that relationship landed on its feet.
Q. This is your second novel. Can you tell us a little about your first one and how it compares to
Happy Any Day Now
?
A
. My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet)
is a novel about women who reinvent themselves after their tidy worlds are shaken up. The narrator, Gwyneth Burke, MD, walks in on her husband of twenty-six years in the arms of their male interior decorator and—
bam!
—life as she’s known it is over. From then on, she’s on her own. But not alone. She’s got friends: never-married businesswoman Fleur Talbot and widowed fiber artist Kat Greenfield. We follow this witty and resilient trio as they take on career issues, aging parents, truculent children, difficult men of course, the occasional hot flash, and a delicious plan for revenge.
Each writer has a personal voice and mine pervades
My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet)
and
Happy Any Day Now
. Both stories are set in Baltimore and spotlight protagonists who are dedicated to serious work. Gwyn is a surgeon who deals with cancers specific to women; Judith is a classical cellist. Gwyn and her pals are in their mid-fifties; Judith is rapidly approaching the big five-oh. One lead is a physician, the other an artist, so their personalities are quite different, but at the core is a similar latent strength just waiting to be tested.
The stories share my preference for plots with twists and surprises, a focus on character, and lots of dialogue because I enjoy writing it and think it reveals even more than description does. Both have a healthy dose of humor, sizzling sex scenes, and love. Blissful, painful, complicated love.
Still, the books are very different from each other—the way siblings from the same mother can be—and my labor with both novels was considerably longer and significantly harder than with my daughter.
Q. Judith’s Korean/Jewish background gives so much richness to the novel. How do you happen to know so much about both cultures?
A. I have Asian cousins and a second generation that blends the Asian and Jewish strains. A family Christmas letter a few years ago with photographs of their beautiful babies sparked my thinking that this combination offered interesting story possibilities.
Happy Any Day Now
took off from there.
The Jewish experience is something I grew up with and continue to be surrounded by. The Asian component required more extensive research. I live in a community between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., that hosts a rich cultural mix, a very diverse population that includes a large number of immigrants from Korea. I started by chatting with my neighbors. I visited Koreatowns in various cities. I also read books by Korean authors and did research online. Korean-American blogs were my go-to source for all kinds of information—the women traded recipes and childhood reminiscences, exchanged advice about how to deal with their parents, wrote about preserving the meaningful traditions of their ancestors for their own kids. The more I came to know, the more I was impressed by how many qualities and values the Jewish and Korean cultures have in common.
Q. Through your depiction of Judith’s and Geoff’s roles in the orchestra, you bring classical music down to earth and make me want to listen to many of the pieces you mention. How did you choose the selections you made? What would be on your ideal playlist for listening while reading
Happy Any Day Now
?
A. I come from a musical family. My mother and her brother both played piano, her twin sister played violin, and a first cousin was an Academy Award–winning composer/conductor. Saturday afternoons, our apartment was flooded with music from the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast.
Later, for a New York magazine, I reviewed concerts at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall and became hooked on the serious stuff. I’ve listened to the local classical music stations for years, so I felt reasonably comfortable matching the selection to the situation in
Happy Any Day Now
. When in doubt, I consulted musician friends in California and London, who made suggestions.
A playlist . . . what a great idea!
- We first meet Judith at cherry blossom time in Baltimore, so the perfect accompaniment to the beginning of the story is “Spring” from Vivaldi’s
The Four Seasons
. - From the Manhattan rooftop scene: France’s iconic Édith Piaf singing her haunting rendition of “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” is available on numerous CDs and as an MP3 (as are many of the selections I note). Also from that scene, a reference to the theme from the PBS drama
Brideshead Revisited
. The score from Charlie’s favorite show when he and Judith were together in Cambridge is available on CD. And there’s a wonderful sequence on YouTube with music and still photos. - The work that freaks out Judith onstage, Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2, is at times meltingly beautiful, at others stunning in its intensity. Many consider the version recorded by Maurizio Pollini with the Berlin Philharmonic (Claudio Abbado conducting) a masterpiece.
- Dvorák’s Cello Concerto, mentioned a number of times in the book, may bring tears to your eyes as it does to mine. Some think it’s the greatest concerto for the instrument ever written and it’s been recorded by almost every major cellist. CD versions are available by Mstislav Rostropovich, Yo-Yo Ma, and Jacqueline du Pré, among others.
- The two
Don
s by Strauss—
Don Quixote
and
Don Juan
—which figure prominently in the story, can frequently be found paired on CDs. Also, look on YouTube for the complete performance of
Don Quixote
by the Chicago Symphony with Daniel Barenboim conducting. - Richard mentions one of Paganini’s
Twenty-Four Caprices
as being a lifelong challenge. Hear all twenty-four in their original incarnation for violin played by Itzhak Perlman in EMI Classics Great Recordings of the Century series. Also, don’t miss a masterful playing of that dastardly difficult cello adaptation in the CD
Portrait of Yo-Yo Ma
. - A touching moment is Judith playing Massenet’s “Meditation” from
Thaïs
. My second favorite performance of this piece (after Judith’s, of course) is by Yo-Yo Ma. Check it out on YouTube. Or listen to it tucked in among Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze,” Piazzolla’s “Libertango,” and other compositions for cello on the highlights CD
The Essential Yo-Yo Ma
. - And finally, Mozart’s Horn Concertos—just because they never fail to lighten my heart.
Korea’s keening shamanistic music, which sometimes serves as background to
mudang
readings, is strange to Western ears at first, but may grow on you. If you want to experience it, there are at least two CDs out there featuring th
e double-reed
piri
as well as the two-stringed fiddle called the
haegeum
. Search online for “
sinawi
music of Korea” and you’ll come up with samples.
Of the popular songs mentioned, two stand out: “My One and Only Love,” which Geoff plays at the Bard in Fells Point—the Sinatra version is the gold standard—and “Stars Fell on Alabama.” In a CD simply named
Ella and Louis
, Ella Fitzgerald sings the latter like she’s unwrapping velvet, and when Louis Armstrong joins her, his rasp is uncharacteristically mellow.
Now you have the best in the book. So, as Richard Tarkoff would say, “Play on!”
Q. Grace is one of my favorite characters in the book. She’s funny and courageous and has great common sense. Can you tell us more about how you came up with her?
A. Oh, I loved writing Grace. Inspiration? There used to be a Korean woman living on my street who took her grandson—about four, I’d say—out for a walk on weekday afternoons. Occasionally, she’d stop at my front garden to point out tulips or the cherry tree in bloom. She was gentle and funny with the little boy. Later, she walked for exercise with her husband. She scolded the old fellow with many fierce hand gestures, then broke out a gold-toothed smile. I modeled Grace’s physical appearance on this woman and perhaps picked up the little bit of her personality I observed. The rest was drawn from my own mother’s sometimes unaware sense of humor and her fund of hilarious superstitions, an aunt’s perseverance in the face of difficult circumstances, a friend’s . . . Gosh, I don’t know. It’s always a jumble. I may lift a gesture here, a pattern of speech there, a snippet of circumstance from way back, but the composite bears no resemblance to, as the legal disclaimer goes, anyone, anything, or any event living or dead. I haven’t a clue about the creative process and, truth is, I don’t want to know. I’m afraid if the mystery is revealed, it will vanish. Even if I tried to replicate a real person, I’m sure what would emerge wouldn’t resemble the original in the slightest. I don’t try. I just let it come together on the page. Memorable characters—and I hope Grace is one—really do take on a life of their own.
Q. What are your favorite parts of the novel? What parts were the most fun to write? Which were the most difficult?
A. I always have a great time writing about relationships—but that’s also the most difficult material to get down. Dissecting how and why human beings behave as they do is challenging because it’s frequently unpredictable and inexplicable. But that is the way people act in real life—sometimes against their better judgment, better interests, better nature, and, God knows, logic. As the writer I’m charged with making those you’ve-got-to-be-kidding decisions and actions of the characters believable. And when love enters the picture, especially romantic love, all bets are off.
I got a kick out of writing Kiki, also Irwin and Marti—the more outrageous characters. After a while, they became like family. I knew them too well to like them unreservedly, but there was no doubt I loved them.
On the other hand, Judith’s performance anxiety episodes were difficult because as a child I acted professionally and experienced stage fright. It was painful to recall that stomach-churning fear, but also cathartic for me as an adult to write about it.
Getting the music part right was challenging. The big find for me with regard to that segment of my research—and I did lots of the standard probing and poking around—were the online musicians’ forums, open to all. Here I picked up facts about the audition process, debates over the use of antianxiety drugs, wonderful small details that enrich a story. It’s amazing how generous people are with information, how much they share online. Thank you, anonymous musicians. You know who you are. Really, only you know who you are.
Q. Are you a big reader? Can you imagine a life without books?
A. Life without books would be, for me, life without air. I come from a reading family. My mother made sure I had a library card as soon as I qualified. Asking a factual question of my dad usually prompted the answer, “Look it up, sweetie.” On languid summer days, you could find me socked in our apartment, reading about ancient Egypt in a tattered Book of Knowledge encyclopedia or gobbling up all the Sherlock Holmes stories. Eventually, my mother would extract the book from my hands and chase me with, “Enough reading, Toby. You’re getting a bedroom tan. You need fresh air. Go outside and play.”
Early on, I learned that books expand your universe like nothing else can. I still believe that and I still—no matter how busy I am—read for pleasure daily.
Q. Would you share some of your own life story and what led you to writing?
A. Brooklyn born and bred, as a child I performed as an actress onstage and in television. But even then, I had a craving to write. I kept a notebook with me in rehearsal halls and behind the scenes in TV studios. I turned out poetry and fairy tales, then the adventures of a detective, à la Nancy Drew. By thirteen, having “retired” from acting, I resumed a conventional childhood. In high school, my English teacher commended my writing and urged me to keep at it. In college I was editor of the literary magazine, and after my return to New York, I earned a master’s degree in English literature while working my glamour job as a writer/reviewer and then editor for
Where
magazine. From there I went on to an editorial position with Harcourt Brace publishers and my future husband, whom I met when I interviewed him for an article.
After we married and our daughter was born, I used chinks of time to write articles and short fiction, which, to my surprise and delight, were published in national magazines. As Stewart’s struggle with a chronic illness grew more intense and my daughter turned toddler, there was hardly time to think, let alone write. I prayed a lot, however. Prayers that, late into the night when the needs around me settled, I wrote down. Some were funny, some poignant, and they turned into my first book,
Mercy, Lord! My Husband’s in the Kitchen
. It came out the week my young husband died.
