Songs without Words (7 page)

Harper had never thought this was logical. Just because he had a brilliant mind didn’t mean his children would. For one thing, Harper knew that she took after her mother, who wasn’t an intellectual by anyone’s standards. This wasn’t an argument that her father would accept. “Half of your genes are mine,” he would say, “so, at the very least, you should be half as bright as I am.”

That was his joke. But she couldn’t find it amusing, because, when it came down to it, the B’s and occasional C’s she got in her math and science classes might as well have been F’s. They were like blows upon her father’s back, delivered by her own hand. At least that was her guilty impression. It didn’t help that Neil, going a few years before her, had followed in their father’s footsteps and was also accomplished at math and science.

Harper’s subjects were art, music and literature, lying well to the other end of the spectrum from her father’s expertise. He appreciated these, but he didn’t live them.

“Well, math is a kind of art too,” he said, when they had discussed these things, “at the higher levels. It has symmetry and grace and fluidity that you might not expect. It even has fiction, if you want, with its imaginary numbers. In fact, at the more complex levels, most sciences become akin to art. Even physics loses its certainty in the arena of the theoretical. There are molecules in two places at once and contradictions like wave-particle duality. What chaos! Well, not so much chaos as a sort of beautiful but enigmatic ballet in which we glimpse the hand of God.”

By “hand of God,” he really meant the mystery of the undiscovered truths, for Harper’s father was an unwavering atheist. He thought it amusing and ironic to use terms like that. Most of his students, though, didn’t get it. Harper got it, for she had lived it, sandwiched between the atheist father and the devout Catholic mother. Maybe that was why Danny had become a priest. Maybe it was his way of rebelling against their father. And maybe that was why Harper had been able to question her faith from an early age, to view it critically and then to reject it.

Her father seemed pleased with her accomplishments, but it was impossible for her to be reassured when their two disciplines of endeavor were so far removed from one another. He did sometimes say things that she thought were designed to bolster her confidence. “Art and science go hand in hand,” he had told her, “as the forerunners of human culture. Neither can flourish without the other. Both Einstein and Bach are equally relevant in the shaping of human evolution.” She had always felt that he was just being kind and keeping his deep disappointment hidden from her. Whatever else he said, the message she had gotten as a child was that if she couldn’t do calculus, she was mentally deficient.

She thought it was odd the way her father was spending his retirement. After a career filled with intense mental stimulation, he now did almost nothing other than go fishing. He went almost every day, and he spent long hours at it. He had given up science and all types of study completely. His only explanation, when someone tried to engage him in a math problem or a discussion of quantum mechanics, was, “I’ve put in my time. Leave me be.”

As was customary when her father was nearby during these phone conversations, he popped on the line briefly to say hello. He wasn’t much of a phone person, so he was on and off without ceremony. “Hey, Harper,” he said, dropping the first “r” in her name as usual. To his children, especially Neil, John Sheridan’s Boston version of her name had sounded like “Hopper” and had encouraged his kung-fu crazy son to nickname her “Grasshopper.” During the Seventies, Neil had often teased her with the condescending remark, “You still have much to learn, Grasshopper.” And, of course, when Danny was old enough, he picked up on the nickname too, even though he wasn’t familiar with the television series that had inspired it.

“Hi, Dad,” she said, “how are you?”

“Good, good,” he said. “How’s my little girl?”

In a moment, after a few words about how glad she was to be on summer vacation, he was gone and Harper’s mother was back on the line.

“Oh, I’ve been trying to remember to tell you something,” Alice said. “Peggy Drummond has moved back here.”

“Peggy?” Harper was alert at the mention of her childhood friend.

“Yes. Her mother has really gone downhill lately. Kate’s sort of senile, you know. She can’t live alone anymore.”

“So Peggy’s moved in with her mother?”

“Yes. Quite a surprise, isn’t it? I don’t think she’s even been here to visit once since her father died about, oh, four years ago now. And I don’t blame her, considering how Kate behaved at the funeral. You know, it was always Peggy’s mother who disapproved. It wasn’t her father at all. It was such a shame, I always thought, that Peggy and her father should be kept apart by Kate’s small-mindedness.”

“How long has she been back?”

“I believe they moved here in March.”

“They?” Harper asked. “You mean Peggy’s partner is there too?”

“Uh-huh. Do you think the sky is gonna fall? The three of them are living together, happy as clams. Peggy’s still looking for a job. Considering that she was a pricey engineer in California, that could take a while, unless she’s willing to take a significant pay cut. But her partner, I think her name is Christine or Kristin or something like that, she’s a registered nurse, so she’s already gotten on at the hospital. And that’s perfect, of course, for the situation. A live-in nurse when you’re old and sickly, well, what could be better?”

“So have you seen her? Have you talked to her?”

“Yes. I talked to her a couple of weeks ago. I told her you were coming this summer, as usual.”

“What did she say?”

“She seemed happy to hear it. She’d like to see you if you have time. I told her of course you’d have time for an old friend.”

“Mom,” Harper said, “you didn’t tell her anything about...” Harper hesitated, groping for the words.

“Your sex life?” her mother guessed. “Oh, sure, Harper, we discussed it at length. For hours and hours. And then she told me all about hers. We stayed up until three in the morning drinking Lemon Drops and talking about lesbian sex.”

“Mom, I just meant did you tell her I was gay.”

“No, I didn’t. You can tell her yourself when you see her this summer.”

Harper thought about how interesting and strange it would be to see Peggy after all of these years. It sounded like Peggy was looking forward to it, which was encouraging. Harper had never been sure, after how they ended their friendship. It didn’t have to be a big deal, of course. Everyone has unrequited longings from their youth, but Harper had harbored some substantial guilt over the years for how she turned away from Peggy so abruptly and completely.

Her trips back to the Cape each summer were rejuvenating. They weren’t just about visiting her family, although that was the primary reason, of course. They were also a chance to reconnect with her childhood, her simpler self. There was nothing more evocative of that for Harper than the sea.

She now lived within easy reach of the Pacific Ocean, which she treasured, but the East Coast and West Coast had entirely different personalities. You couldn’t experience Cape Cod by going to Santa Barbara, for instance. You could experience a little of it, though, by going to Mendocino, so she was drawn there regularly. Mendocino had a flavor of those old Atlantic fishing villages about it—cold mists, the plaintive groan of lighthouses. The farther north you traveled along the California coastline, the more it felt like the “real” sea, the sea that had been imprinted on her as a child.

When she had told Chelsea of her love for Mendocino, she mentioned that her brother had a vacation home there, rarely used. They had discussed going there together, a happy prospect that would never be realized. At the time, Harper couldn’t have imagined anything better than playing house with Chelsea by the sea. Or playing house anywhere with her, really.

There had been so much promise in those three months, so briefly savored. It had been like sitting down to a plentiful feast and tasting one heavenly morsel and then having the entire table snatched away, leaving nothing but the aroma. She had felt famished ever since.

After saying goodbye to her mother, Harper remembered the voice mail indicator. She dialed in and listened to the message. Her heart lost a beat as she recognized the hesitant voice. Emotion coursed through her body like a flash flood through a desert wash.

“Hi, Harper. This is Chelsea. Sorry I missed you. Could you call me...please? My cell phone number has changed. It’s 6094362. Anyway, I’d really like to talk to you. I hope you feel the same.” There was a momentary hesitation, during which Harper realized she was holding her breath. She let it out as Chelsea repeated herself in an earnest near-whisper. “Please call.”

Chapter 6

SUMMER, FOUR YEARS AGO

As usual, Harper was eating too much. Her mother seemed to have no idea how to entertain her adult children other than by feeding them. Their father commented frequently on the explosions of food that came out of the kitchen, so different from their usual bowl of Cheerios for breakfast or bologna sandwich for lunch. It was obvious to Harper that when her parents were alone, their lives were much more spartan. They were the sort of couple who enjoyed one another’s presence amid persistent stretches of silent accord. Even with a house full of visitors, her father might go for hours without uttering more than a “yup.”

Since Harper and Danny had timed their visits to coincide, the house dynamic for these two July weeks was much as it had been after Neil had left home. This morning Alice was cooking breakfast for her children even before they were out of bed, so they had no chance but to graciously accept. Her thick steel gray hair was clipped back from her face with one pink and one blue clip. The older she got, the more wiry and contrary her hair became.

“You remember Peggy Drummond, of course,” Alice said, putting a plate of two sunny-side up eggs in front of Harper at the dining room table.

Danny already had his and was sopping up egg yolk with his toast. He sat across the table, hunched over his plate, his wire-framed glasses riding the tip of his nose. A bright yellow drip of yolk clung to his new goatee.

“Peggy?” Harper said. “Yes, of course.”

“Her father died earlier this year.”Alice put a piece of buttered toast on Harper’s plate.

“Oh, no! I hadn’t heard that. Poor Peggy.”

“I didn’t think you’d heard. I know you haven’t kept in touch with her.”

“That’s so sad. I didn’t even know he was sick. I loved Mr. Drummond. He was so funny and kind.”

“Peggy was here for the funeral. It was the first time I’d seen her in such a long time. Unlike you, Harper, she doesn’t come back for visits. Understandable, I suppose. She brought her partner along. Her mother was not at all happy about that. She thought it was inconsiderate, an act of defiance or hostility. She thought it was disrespectful.”

Harper cut the whites off of her eggs mechanically, leaving the yolk intact, saving it. “Oh?” she asked, glancing across the table at Danny, who had cleaned his plate and was now opening a newspaper. “That seems unreasonable.”

“Yes,” Alice said, “absolutely unreasonable. The poor woman lost her father. Why wouldn’t she want to have her partner at her side at a time like that? Kate has never been able to reconcile herself to Peggy’s lifestyle. She basically just pretends it doesn’t exist. She’s in complete denial. It’s such a shame. I mean, she’s all alone now in that big house. She’s estranged from her only child, narrow-minded old biddy.”

Alice wiped her hands on a dishtowel, then smiled approvingly at her children. “I know I would be overjoyed to welcome my daughter’s lesbian lover into my family if I were in Kate’s shoes.”

Harper and Danny looked at each other across the table, their expressions communicating shared bewilderment. Alice sighed deeply and went into the kitchen. It wasn’t at all unusual for her to make that sort of bizarre comment. She seemed to be perpetually trying to prove that she was open-minded and progressive when it came to gays and lesbians, as if someone were accusing her of being otherwise. But no one was. Harper had known for a long time that her parents supported gay rights as if they had a personal stake in those issues, and she was proud of them for that, especially her mother, because of her religious affiliation.