Thank You for the Music (15 page)

“I can't believe I'm here!”

The mother, up close, is childlike. The green eyes so real, so full of what passes for love. The daughter can't bear it.

“Come on, Ma,” she says, and feels she'll cry. “I'll show you the apartment.”

“Very clean!” the mother says. It's her highest compliment. She says it no matter where they go—even in Paris, at the Louvre: what a
clean
museum!

“Ma, did you think Europe was filthy or something?”

“I sure did!”

She does not remove her sunglasses.

In Aunt Zilsy's flat, they meet a Cambodian refugee who says his name is Bob. Aunt Zilsy (the family eccentric) has taken Bob in. Bob sort of cleans the place, and takes care of the cats, Gandhi and King. The cats slink up against the mother's legs and Julie remembers suddenly the night her mother kicked the cat
so long ago
but look how the memory collapses inside of her—and now it's all too vividly present, not just the kicked cat but childhood itself, that sickening conglomeration of that which can't be named—and what she wants is to be alone with her confusion. But her mother and Zilsy and Bob are all saying what they should do is go to Vienna. “In saucy dress,” Bob says, pointing to Julie's mother. Nobody looks at Bob and says “Saucy?” A mother-daughter trip to Vienna! Bob agrees, shaking his head, even though it's likely he has no clear idea what they're talking about. He smiles, he likes the redhead lady in the saucy dress, he likes her big laughter, he nods and laughs with her since let's face it, life, at the moment, is good. Life, Bob knows, could get a whole lot worse. Looking at him, Julie decides to get over it. Just have fun!

Not so easy. In Vienna they have a barren room—beautifully barren—Julie would see the beauty under other circumstances. Now it's a prison. After a day of walking the streets of Vienna—fresh bread, good black coffee, little miniature houses displayed in a park for the coming Christmas season, a tiny bookstore where her mother had nearly shouted, “Excuse me! Sir? Sir? Excuse me! Do you have
Frommer's
guide to Vienna?” even after Julie had pleaded with her not to. Not only did they have no
Frommer's
guide, they did not speak English, and the man looked disdainfully at Julie's mother, and Julie could read his mind, how he dismissed her mother, silly American tourist, and this called up the fierce fire of her loyalty. She sneered at the man.
My mother's suffered in ways you can't fathom, miester,
says the sneer.
Get off your Viennese high horse, ya big snob!
A blatant, long, childish sneer. “Let's get out of this dump,” she said loudly. (She was going a little crazy.) Maybe she'd end up like Zilsy, who never threw anything away, who sent Buddhist birthday cards to prime ministers, kings, queens, presidents, popes.

And once out of the bookstore, Julie had said to her mother, “I can't believe you just asked for
Frommer's
guide to Vienna.”

Her mother laughed a little. They walked on. Silence. And then, “Julie, You're so furious with me! It's like—it's like you can't stand me!”

“It's nothing like that. I'm just tired or something.”

The mother said nothing to this.

They continued their walk around the dark city.

Even without this rising tidal wave of childhood confronting Julie in the guise of her mother, it should be said that her tendency toward depression was keen, and always present. A wrestling match with depression, that's what her life had been—nothing out of the ordinary for our time. She was the sort who smelled the Holocaust in the air all through Europe, especially on the trains. And now even more so in Vienna. She'd read all of Primo Levi. Elie Wiesel's
Night.
Etty Hillesum's
An Interrupted Life.
Seen so many documentaries!
Shoah,
the whole thing, huddled alone with her boyfriend in that old college-town theater run by vets and poets. These knowledges choked her because after all she was only twenty-five, and who don't they choke, really? Her mother, she knew, could not get near that history. Her mother had no desire to wrestle with horror, no ability. Or even to admit its existence. No choking for her. It would be years before Julie would understand her mother's wisdom.

They try to sleep in the double bed in the barren room.

“I want to go home,” the mother says, finally.

“I'm sorry this isn't working.”
I'm suffocating, I don't know why, and I can't explain a thing. You deserve better.

“I'll go back to Zilsy's, and fly out of Paris. Your stepfather can send me more money if I need it.”

“Okay.”

“What the hell is going on? Do you mind letting me in a little?”

“I don't know. I'm—I don't know.”

“You don't know.”

“I just want to go to Venice.”

The mother sits up. Peers at the wall. “Venice,” she says. “Jesus. You always wanted to go to Venice, and now you're going. You do manage to get what you want, don't you?”

“What?”

“You could be such a spoiled brat! Let's face facts.”

“Whatever you say.” Heart racing now.

“I didn't mean that! You weren't a spoiled brat! I'm just scared! I don't know you!”

Julie is frozen in the bed, turned on her side, looking at the opposite wall.

“It's okay,” she says. “Don't worry.”

Out of bed, her mother calls her stepfather. “I'm homesick,” she tells him. “I'm coming home tomorrow. This was a disaster.”

On the train to Venice Julie is telling strangers her name is Vanessa. Vanessa deGroot is the name she's chosen for herself. She's borrowed it from her old kindergarten teacher, whom Julie had loved fiercely at age five. Now, Julie as Vanessa deGroot on a train is no whim; it's not the fanciful play that so often takes place between strangers traveling. It's a need, a requirement born of desperation. She cannot bear to be who she is. She feels she would gag if she had to say her real name aloud. She is at the end of her rope of self.

Have you ever been there? It's like you have a very high fever. You're in a room, alone, and nobody knows it. You can hear children below you playing in the street. Nobody will come to take your temperature. The fever will go on rising. Underneath the fever is panic buried by sorrow. Is there an end to the rising? You don't know. A part of you hopes to burn, burn. The bigger part wants to be saved. Wants someone, anyone, to come to the window and offer you the water of life again, in a small cup.

It's Venice now. Her dream city.

Beautiful Venice, with its squares and its alleys, its tiny streets and all those waterways, and languages clashing in the air. But the loneliness in her is so threatening everyone she passes averts their eyes, shielding themselves from her awful contagion. Can't somebody see past it? She thinks of Bob the Cambodian, steers herself away from self-pity.

It's dinner alone in a tiny restaurant. Families, babies, lovers. Outside an African man sits on a yellow blanket selling hand-carved wooden giraffes. She buys the tiniest giraffe of all, holds it in her open hand, then clenches it tightly. “A famous poet once said this is small enough to take with you when you die,” says the man, and smiles up at her. His beauty catches in her throat. She puts the giraffe in the pocket of her overalls and walks on.

The gondoliers wave the tourists over to the canals. Julie goes and sits on the steps of the train station.

Night falls. She puts her head down into her arms. Her mother's face sweeps through her mind, and back again.
I'm sorry.

And then, a dog is suddenly beside her.

It's a dignified mutt. Some black lab in there. God knows what else. It sits beside Julie, staring straight ahead. Julie looks over at the dog, then stares straight ahead as if to fathom his vision. The dog looks over at Julie. From the corner of her eye she sees this. She turns her head to see the dog's eyes, not quite looking at Julie's eyes, avoiding them the way dogs do, as if they're afraid of what they might find. The evening is lowering down, early October air like silk, cooling.

Julie moves her hand to pet the dog's back. Just a few strokes. The dog's mouth opens, a little smile. She doesn't want the dog to feel her loneliness. She doesn't want this creature to bolt. The dog's ear rises as if her touch makes an interesting sound.

“Hey, buddy,” she finally says.

The dog lowers his head. She pets it. She can feel the dog's lovely bones. It wears no tags.

Soon the dog stands up and places his head in Julie's lap. This simple offering fills her with hope.

“Hey, buddy.”

She'd never had a dog, but visited the neighborhood dogs when she was small, and this Venetian dog reminds her of one of those—Cookie was his name, and he was owned by the Dunnigan family, who'd lost their oldest son in Vietnam. The mother stayed indoors after that, neighbors early on would go to her window and say, “Mary, we miss you.” The father would let Julie into the fence to play with Cookie. This dog here in Venice has the same gentleness, and a similar coat.

They sit together for a long time. A child approaches, asks a question in what might be Portuguese, and Julie knows the question is “Can I pet him?” and she nods. The child sits and pets the dog. Another child does the same, this one a little English girl who's been dressed to look like a sexy young woman. “Get away from that dog!” a woman calls to her. “That dog could be rabid!” And when the girl pretends not to hear, the woman nudges a man, and the man comes and scoops the girl in her tiny high heels up into his arms, and carries her away.

After an hour of petting the dog, who seems sleepy, Julie decides to test the relationship. She gets up. Will the dog get up? Yes, it will. She walks down the steps, and the dog follows. She goes back to the restaurant, and orders some beef to go, telling the dog, “Wait.” She doesn't care that buying the meat means she won't be renting a room tonight. She's slept in train stations before.

When she comes out, the dog is trotting away.

“Hey!”

He stops. (It is a he, she sees now.)

“Come here, boy!”

He comes.

She feeds him a little meat, and likes how his tongue licks his chops. She's crouched down against the side wall of a tiny café now. An old man peeks his head around the corner,
“Ciao! Che c'e?!”
he says.
“Come va?”
He looks at the dog, waves them in.

She and the dog go into the tiny café, where all the old men speak Italian and drink from tiny glasses. They speak Italian to the dog, too, and buy Julie wine.

The dog gets a bone.
Bravissimo.
As if they'd been waiting for him. He chews on that, then Julie gives him the rest of the beef. They ask the dog questions in Italian. They pet the dog. They love the dog, who lays down by Julie's feet. She leans on the bar.

The only other woman in there is from Germany, older, a tall, big-boned artist named Ingeborg, and Ingeborg invites Julie and the dog to sleep in her room that night. “Two beds,” she tells Julie. “And I am not there later on. I am probably in bed with one of these men.” She draws Julie a map of the pensione, and shows her a large, brassy key. “I'm turning fifty tomorrow,” she whispers in Julie's ear. “I am not sleeping alone tonight! Better to get some love, right?”

“Right!” Julie says, and a man gives her another glass of the most excellent wine.
“Grazie.”

He winks, makes a kissing sound.

Ingeborg and an older, smiling man with Einstein's sadly soulful eyes and a birthmark like grapejuice spilled down his neck accompany Julie and the dog across a moonlit square, through a red door, up a narrow stairway, into a dark hall. They are speaking French to one another. Ingeborg opens the door, tells Julie to leave the key on the table in the morning. Then both the old man and Ingeborg kiss Julie's cheeks, and the dog's head, and then they are gone, giggling down the steps together.

Julie smiles down at the dog. “Hey, boy,” she whispers.

She is so tired. Someone outside is playing a flute. The dog is old, she realizes suddenly. His coat is still lovely enough, but the way his bones poke through, you can tell he's no spring chicken. She takes off her brown boots, her overalls, her embroidered blouse. Stands in her underwear in the dimly lit room, tiny flowers raining down the ancient wallpaper. So very quiet. The dog sits looking past Julie, out the window. It's as if the dog wishes he too could take off his clothes. A long hesitation fills the room. Julie kneels down beside him, pets him, and for the first time he makes a sound. It's almost a whimper. She stands up. Takes off her bra. Gets into the little bed under the window, props herself up on her elbows so she can see the dog, who continues to look toward the window. The moonlit dog.

“Come here, boy,” she whispers, and pats the bed beside her.

The dog ignores her.