Page Turner Pa (16 page)

"Oh, what I wouldn't give to worry about fame getting in the way!"

"Don't have any illusions about pain," Miss Novotna said. "You are still a child in this regard. A child believes that joy is infinite and suffering is short. And why shouldn't he believe that? He scrapes his knee, it heals. Another child is cruel, he cries. Yet his mother always loves him. And then he grows up, and his mother dies, and he learns that the opposite of everything he believed is true. Joy is short, but suffering ... suffering lasts."

"Miss Novotna—"

She raised her hand. "And now," she said, "I must see what is keeping Consuelo with that tea."

Lifting herself creakily out of her chair, she left. In the dark, dusty room, the swimming bars of light defined a border that Paul now crossed more easily than he could have imagined possible. He picked up the jacket of the record Miss Novotna had just played for him, and saw on the cover her own young face.

C
HRISTMAS WAS OVER
. It had passed, as usual, in a fever of generosities, and left an aftertaste of swindle in its wake. Nothing had gone as Paul's mother had hoped, by which she meant that the turkey was dry; she had bought Paul the wrong recording of the Rachmaninoff Third; the volume knob had broken off George's new Walkman. On top of which one of the P's had disappeared from the Scrabble set. "Anticippointment," Pamela said, feeding the wrapping paper to the flames, and there was in that invented word all the regret and resignation that forty-seven years of Christmases had built up in her. For despite what she had been promised since infancy, suffering and worry had not taken the day off. Pain had not taken the day off. A rent breached the universe, one that neither comfort nor joy could heal. Nor would the
Hammerklavier
have taught her anything she didn't already know. She understands the drill. When life can only be borne a minute at a time, you measure out your life in minutes. Then the hours make themselves. The days make themselves. And you sustain the ability to go on.

Why was she so sorrowful? She had not loved her husband. Still, his presence was something to which she had become habituated. And now he would have nothing to do with her, and when she woke on Christmas morning, it was to face the uncomfortable image of a woman ragged at the edges, fingernails dirty, the dye growing out of her hair. He did not love her: that was the painful part. And Kennington did not love her either; she had taken a misunderstanding for a miracle; she had let the chasm of hope yawn open, had leapt over it from sorrow into joy, a journey that is perhaps always better taken slowly, the long way round. Now, ensconced in sorrow's hinterlands, she looked out at the scarred patch of earth where hope had closed, and vowed never to be fooled again. She never was. Perhaps to be loved one must always run the risk of being fooled. In any case, what happiness she knew in later years, and it was ample, would be entirely of her own making.

Sorrow is perhaps the most selfish of emotions. Certainly it is the most voracious. It eats up the food of the spirit, and empathy starves. Therefore it will probably come as little surprise that Pamela failed to register her son's suffering that Christmas. Instead, when she looked at him, and at George and his wife, Christine (her daughter, Julie, was with her in-laws), she saw only youth, which insults age with its heedless insouciance. How could he not rejoice, she asked herself, having every chance for joy ahead of him? Yet he was glum. His brother and sister-in-law noticed it too. At breakfast with their father he spoke ill of their mother. Then at dinner with their mother he spoke ill of their father. He seemed without loyalties, when in fact his aggression was merely affixing itself to any stray target that came its way. For it seemed that no sooner would he start coming to grips with Miss Novotna's sad assessments, than someone would be thrusting a piano-key scarf in his face. Every present that year was music: in his stocking gold-plated cuff links shaped like tiny pianos, new CDs, books about romanticism, and blue Henle scores. And his brother wanted him to play. "Schumann!" George demanded, but Paul, remembering Thang, shook his head.

"Then how about Prokofiev? Play
Peter and the Wolf.
" George was sitting with Christine on the sofa, fashioning a new P for the Scrabble set from a piece of plywood.

"It's not written for the piano, although there is a transcription by Tatiana Nikolayeva."

Instead he played "Romeo Bids Juliet Farewell"—badly. His brother and sister-in-law got distracted and started talking about how much they'd loved
Peter and the Wolf
as children. "And wasn't the duck the clarinet?" (The cat was the clarinet.)

"When we have our five children—"

"Our three children—"

"When we have our five children—"

So the holy day proceeded, and in the end, perhaps the best that can be said for it, at least so far as the Porterfields were concerned, is that it was gotten through. When midnight struck at last, the tides of the future immersed that island of Christmas over which the world, for a few weeks, had fussed and doted. And in the resulting ocean, Paul saw Kennington. Was he drowning? He hoped not. In New York, in addition to Alden, with whom he had continued more or less to live, Paul
had started having an affair with Joseph Mansourian, whom he had once found so unattractive, and from whom he had learned, among other things, that Kennington was in town again. Also from Joseph—or more specifically, from Joseph's Rolodex—he had gotten Kennington's address and phone number. He'd called several times, never leaving messages; even spent an afternoon standing across the street from the building on White Street where Kennington lived. But when, around four-thirty, Kennington finally emerged, he'd had to hide. The sight of his erstwhile lover after so many months, handsome and windblown, stunned him into a peculiar reluctance, a hesitancy to approach. For if he loved this man (and he was sure he did), then why was he sleeping with Alden? Why was he sleeping with Joseph? Well, the answer was obvious: it was because this man did not love him, and in the meantime he had to get on in the world, didn't he? He had to forget. And yet how could he forget, when Kennington's face was everywhere in Joseph's apartment, so omnipresent that Paul couldn't seem to turn around without confronting it? With that face, in all the stages of its growth, he had regained, over the weeks, an intimacy, so much so that when the time came to fly home for Christmas he could hardly bear to part with it. Which was why, in Menlo Park, the photograph of his friend throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain lay buried amid the carefully folded T-shirts in Paul's suitcase. His last afternoon he'd swiped it from the bookcase, taken it back to his apartment, removed it carefully from its frame. On the back someone—Joseph or Kennington—had written, "You are all that I wish for"; yet even in fantasy, Paul could never quite convince himself that the message was meant for him.

 

The next morning he and his mother woke early and drove to Walgreen's to shop for Christmas cards and wrapping paper. Beginning on the twenty-sixth, Christmas cards and wrapping paper were half price, and Pamela liked to buy up a supply in advance, so that the following year she could congratulate herself on her economy.

Together, as was their ritual, they pushed the cart down the aisle. They did not speak. Too much family activity had diluted that intimacy that had evolved between them in the years after George and Julie went off to school. Only now, in this drugstore where they had spent so many hours, did a certain desultory humor return to them, a humor cultivated over years of being left alone together at the end of holidays. Wheels squeaked. Pamela threw bags of colored bows and bright cylinders of paper into the cart (their value slashed, they glimmered with pathos) while Paul kept an eye out for the video camera in the corner. As a boy he'd made a game of running to the cash register just as his mother passed so that he could see her face captured in the closed-circuit television. Now, of course, a more brooding eye peered down, watchful for darker thefts.

Pamela wanted to know how school was going. Because Paul's decision to commit himself to the piano had more or less coincided with Kelso's (unannounced) defection, not to mention the departure of his brother and sister for midwestern cities, only his mother had really shared in its evolution. Now she asked the questions he had hoped to be spared: Was Juilliard a success? Were his teachers a success? Did they recognize the jewel they held in their hands?

"I'm thinking of quitting" was Paul's answer.

"What?" Pamela stopped the cart.

"I'm just not so sure the performing life is really for me. Maybe I'd do better, I don't know, working for a music agent, or writing liner notes. Or going to law school."

"Now, Paul, wait a minute. I'm sorry, but I can't quite believe what I'm hearing. You want to quit the piano?"

"Why not?"

"But you love the piano!"

"So?"

"And anyway, you're so good! Everyone says so. Mr. Wang, Miss Novotna—"

"Not anymore. We talked about it the day before yesterday, and she agrees with me."

"Agrees with you! She must be senile!"

"She's not senile in the least."

Opening her purse, Pamela pulled out a tissue. "I'm sorry," she said again, rubbing her nose. "I'm just shocked. I can't imagine what's gotten into you."

"Maybe the truth ... that I'm not good enough."

"But I've heard you, and I think—"

"You only think I'm good because I'm your son. You know nothing about music. Now please, can we change the subject?"

They stumbled to the cash register. With supreme effort, Pamela pulled herself together enough to pay and make small talk with the cashier; only once they were safe in the car did she start to weep. And of course she was weeping not only for Paul's failures: she was weeping for her husband, whom she had failed to love, and for Kennington, who had failed to love her; and for a failed French exam; and a hundred private failures, with which this story is not concerned.

Meanwhile Paul sat in his place, bristly with impatience, until his mother blew her nose again and turned the key in the ignition.

"Okay, come out with it," he said. "You might as well tell me what's on your mind."

"There's nothing on my mind. I think it's too early, that's all." (They were pulling out of the parking lot.) "I mean, why not finish out the year at least, honey? You may feel differently then."

"I think I can fairly assume—"

"Assume makes an ass of you and me. And anyway, once you quit—"

"I'm not going to end up on skid row, if that's what you're worried about. I'll do fine. Get a job or something, like a normal person."

"But you're not—" She bit her lip.

"What? I'm not what?"

"Paul, I'm sorry, I have to say it. I can't help but wonder if that man—"

"What man?"

"If
he
had something to do with this."

"Who? Kennington?"

She nodded. "I know we haven't talked about it since he ran out on us. And I haven't mentioned it to your brother and sister, either. None of it."

"Neither have I."

"Still, you can't blame me for putting two and two together. I know he made quite an impression on you. And so when you start talking like this I can't help but think that he might have ... I don't know, made you lose your confidence, somehow, honey. Will you move? The goddamned light is green!"

"You're wrong."

"What did you talk about, all those afternoons?"

"Nothing. Music, art. Life."

"Have you seen him since you've been in New York?"

"No."

"I'm sure he must have said something to you in Rome. Something you're not telling me. Oh, if I could get my hands on that man, I'd wring his neck!"

"Mother, for the last time, he has nothing to do with it. Now will you please calm down? I didn't confide in you so that you could become completely hysterical, I confided in you because I needed some advice—a mistake, since obviously I could get more reasoned advice from a cat than from you."

"Paul, don't talk to me like that!"

"So from now on, when I need advice, I'll go elsewhere, all right? Oh, for God's sake, don't cry!"

"I can't help it."

"Mother, we are in the middle of traffic! We are in the middle of a fucking intersection!"

"It's just been such an awful Christmas—"

"Pull over. I'll drive."

She did. He drove.

By the time they got home she had steadied herself.

"Paul, honey," she said, as they carried the bags to the kitchen, "I want to say one thing—"

"No more. Otherwise I leave. Now."

She stopped talking. George and Christine announced that they were going to the shopping center, and Paul decided to accompany them: he wanted to exchange the wrong Rachmaninoff Third for the right one.

The car crunched gravel under its wheels, and Pamela was alone.

In the sudden silence, she vacuumed. Blue towel dust, bits of bread crumb and eggshell, disappeared obediently up the tube. Then a penny got stuck in the bag, making a racket like a pinball machine. She moved on to Paul's room, where she vacuumed patterns in the nap of the carpet, blue and navy blue. For it was her duty to save him, and when she could not fulfill her duty, her energy went into housework. She did housework all the time these days. The house glowed with the burnt cleanliness of an obsessively washed hand.

It was when she thrust the nozzle under the bed that it encountered the obstruction. A sock or some underwear, Pamela thought, and was surprised, when she reached under, to pull out a magazine. And how funny! Santa Claus was on the cover—but a young Santa Claus, his jacket unbuttoned, his chest bared. And inside the magazine, Santa Claus again, wearing only his fur-lined red pants! But why...

She flipped the page and screamed. The vacuum cleaner, abandoned, whined as if with hunger. Her hands shaking, she picked the magazine up from where it had fallen.

"Santa's got a special present for you," the text read. "He's not coming down the chimney this year!"