Thank You for the Music (20 page)

“I think so,” he said. “But I'd be just as scared to be alone for all eternity.”

His face had darkened. He looked down at the table. She was suddenly intensely ashamed. Speaking of death this way to a young man who'd have to face it much sooner than she would. She hardly knew now why it had seemed important to talk to him like this. To let him know that somehow at twelve years old she'd had a quirky wisdom, a certain feel for the suffering of others. To let him know she'd lost that wisdom along the way, but that knowing him, the sheer force of his kindness, had reminded her of who she might have been, had fear not ruled so much of her life.

He had to take a nap, he told her, after one more cup of tea and moments of silence that for Elizabeth were awkward.

“Well, it's been nice chatting, as usual,” she said.

“As usual, come again,” Bennet said, walking her down the hall to the door in his thick purple socks.

Upstairs Elizabeth paced around her own kitchen and dining room, smoking, unsettled inside, for she was not accustomed to confiding such old memory to anyone, not even herself. She walked to the mantel, where pictures of her parents stood framed before the mirror. Both shots were uncharacteristic: her father smiling with his head cocked to one side, a man of thirty in a summer breeze, plaid shirt wind-whipped around a vigorous body; her mother with the neighbor's puppy on the back stoop, wearing a sleeveless dress printed with apples and pears, long teeth sunlit as they bit down on her lower lip as if to keep from laughing. These were handsome lies, and they had never become more than that for Elizabeth, who must've imagined that choosing these shots to frame could have somehow diminished the real memory of their cruelty, which sat like a locked room and had been there forever; a cold fact, intransmutable, mostly left alone.

She sat on a chair by the window now, and closed her eyes, thinking of Bennet, of how he would pick his friends up off the ground when he saw them, wasting his strength, overflowing with energy whose source was strictly spiritual at this point. She thought of the day months ago when he'd come toward her out on the sidewalk with the same joy, and she had feared that intimacy and backed away, saying, “Hello there, Bennet,” sounding and feeling so much like her mother in that moment she had lost her breath.

And what would Bennet have said today had she continued her story, told him the end of it, how she'd been beaten with a belt until her legs and back bled, two days after her mother had shown her father the small red diary where she'd written about Mr. Beehan and God? Beaten until she felt she had frozen for good from the inside out.

Elizabeth did not visit Bennet again for a while; he had many other visitors, and he was growing weaker; she could see that from her window when he walked up the street from the N-Judah. She had seen him riding in the cable car twice, once with a man who held his hand, once when he sat alone, his eyes peering out at the landscape as if trying to drink it up.

Lately she left food on his steps, fresh bread from the Tasahara, and oranges and notes saying to call on her if he needed something.

One day as she was leaving the house of one of her employers, the woman stopped her at the door.

“Say, Jon, did I see you talking with Bennet McGee the other day in front of your house?”

“I don't know, did you?”

“Is it possible?”

“Sure. He's a good friend.”

“Really? Really? Oh my God! That's just wild! He is so wonderful! He and Barry and Jed were so much fun at those council meetings!”

“I'm sure,” Elizabeth said, noticing the woman looking at her differently, trying to figure out why a man like Bennet would have her as a friend.

“That guy—oh, man, it's always the really beautiful guys who get sick. It's like you feel someone like Bennet should escape it, but the nicer they are, the more doomed they seem, or something.”

“Seems to me the guys who aren't so pretty get sick too,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh sure, sure, you're right. God, I feel helpless, like I never know if I'm doing enough.”

“Well,” Elizabeth said, “none of us are ever doing enough. Ain't that the story of the human race?”

Her employer laughed as she stepped out the door into a brilliant day.

Three days before Christmas Elizabeth sat on the ledge by her bay window facing the street. Bennet approached the window in a huge black overcoat and a cowboy hat he wore for humor. But he was not funny. He was so thin, so white, that Elizabeth had to look away. But he came up to the window and smiled at her, an old man.

“Want to come in?” she said, and didn't wait for his answer. She hurried to the front door. “Come in,” she said. “Come talk.”

“I have to catch a flight home. For Christmas. I just wanted to wish you a happy holiday.”

“Oh, well, that's nice. I'm glad you're going home. Oregon, right?”

“Got any plans?” he asked her.

Bennet's sister pulled up in her small white car.

“Not this year. I'll take it easy this year.”

“Come to my house! Come with Jack the flower man! My parents' house, I mean. The Cascades and everything.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no, not me. I don't travel.”

“Call Jack. He's driving tomorrow. He needs company or he falls asleep. I love Jack, Jonny. I don't want him falling asleep at the wheel and you could keep him awake.”

“Or put him to sleep even quicker,” she said and laughed. But to her great surprise, she was imagining it.

“Look up Jack Verona. It's in the book.”

His sister was out of the car now, placing Bennet's suitcase in her backseat, along with a bag filled with wrapped presents. How did he manage it all?

“Come on, Ben,” she called. “We gotta go. Hi, Jonny!”

Elizabeth waved. She was glad he had this sister, whose face fought grief with a determination that verged on rage. It kept her efficient and dependable.

They drove off.

Elizabeth drank scotch that night and called Jack the flower man while listening to pop songs on the radio in the dark. She left a message on his machine, and the next morning he called her back.

“Can you be ready, like now?” he said.

“Sure can,” she said, surprised that she'd have no time to change her mind. She hadn't been out of the city in decades. She did not really want to go, and yet here she was, packing an overnight bag with great care, and looking around the disheveled apartment for prized possessions to take with her, as if she were going away forever. Her shelves were crowded with little trinkets and statues, her tables crowded with magazines and pieces of odd material, and she decided she had no prized possessions. It came as a mild shock, for she had a collector's nature.

The night sky was packed with stars that nearly touched the Cascades, the snow shining brilliantly in the blue light of a nearly full moon, the silence in the valley made deeper by the low-pitched whistle of wind. Elizabeth stepped down out of the van into the landscape, pulling her coat tightly around her, her bones stiff from the long ride with Jack, whose black lab had sat between them like a patient child, watching the road. Jack and Elizabeth petted the dog, told stories of dogs, talked to the dog, and it had been enough.

“We just walk down the path here and then the house will appear. Follow me,” Jack told her, his bearded face blue-white in the moonlight.

“I climbed that with Bennet once,” Jack said, pointing to the mountain. “He was so fucking
quick
.”

The house was a stone bungalow with a slanted roof, the windows brimming with light.

“Come on in,” said a man's voice, and suddenly in the front hall Bennet's father took their coats, and Bennet approached them using one crutch to walk. He still had the black coat on. He looked ancient, and happy.

“I can't believe you came!” he said to Elizabeth. He stared at her. She wagged her head. “First time I made a trip in forever,” she said, smiling at him, smiling around the room and trying to get a sense of where she was.

It was a big family; soon children flocked around Bennet as he sat on the couch. A small yellow-haired girl in red overalls kissed his face.

Elizabeth had found a seat near the Christmas tree; its bulky size dwarfed her as she sat back. The warm room was all hard wood and old furniture and framed photographs on the walls. Bennet kept calling across the room, introducing her to people.

“Excellent that you came!” his brother said, and crouched down by the chair to chat. “So how'd you get a name like Jonny?”

She told him the story, making it quick and funny. Then Bennet's aunt was handing her a scotch. “How 'bout something to eat?” she said.

“No, I'm just fine, I'm just fine.”

She was overwhelmed to be in a room where so many people were hugging each other, holding each other's hands, laughing and talking and tending to the fire. She felt the depth of the family's intimacy and history filling the house, and looked at them all from a great, warm distance, filled with admiration, but also with an intense awareness of Bennet. She could feel how he heightened the mood, and framed the night in sorrow so deep nobody got near it. It was the single dark current running through the living room's center; they tiptoed over it, and each one laughed louder, talked more, in order not to feel the current rising. Sorrow had a smell like metal that cut through the scent of pine and hot cherry pie.

“Here's your pie,” a lovely girl told her, handing her the plate.

“Thank you.”

Elizabeth was watching Bennet's mother, who much of the evening had played the piano, singing, grandchildren flanking her. Now she stole a look at her dying son as he spoke to his ten-year-old nephew on the steps that led to a loft. Elizabeth watched the mother watching Bennet and saw what looked not like sorrow but raw hunger in her eyes, a hunger for her son's whole life. She got up from the piano and called out, “Who needs what? A drink? Whip cream for the pie?” and Elizabeth looked away, feeling she had seen too far inside her.

The room where she tried to sleep was cold, but under several quilts she was warm. Her bed was aligned near the door, facing the window. The white mountains were more than a light in the room; they were a voice. A low, heavy voice that sang to her. In beds on the other side of the room three others slept— two adults and a child. Elizabeth had gone to bed earlier than they had, pretended to be sleeping, and had watched as they quietly slid themselves under the covers.

After the house settled into silence, hours seemed to pass, and Elizabeth waited for morning, when sunlight would blast through the rooms. Later, she could head back home.

But for now she was a woman in a house filled with the stunning voice of the mountains. And after another hour she was a woman in flannel pajamas leaving her bed, a barefoot woman quietly walking down the dark hall toward the living room, where she had heard some other sleepless soul moving about. She hoped it would be Bennet, then felt guilty for that hope; he should be sleeping, he should be drinking deep sleep like medicine.