Thank You for the Music (5 page)

“But of all these friends and lovers . . .” (Rachel was singing along for a moment.)

The audience murmured and laughed at the slides, sometimes breaking into applause. They watched their pastor captured in Divinity School, his idealism shining in his young face; they watched him get engaged and grow sideburns in the seventies to go with his plaid seventies clothes (this got a good laugh), and they watched him marry Claire, who supported her husband with a love so deep you could feel it running between the two of them like a river, said one of the young women church members, and then Simon and Garfunkel were singing “Time it was and what a time it was. . . .” Tim loved that old song; he'd been almost young when he got the record, when he and his friend Saul had lived that year on Chiming Avenue in the blue dilapidated house with the huge tomatoes out front. Saul the poet. Saul who was impossibly dead. Had been dead since he was fifty-eight and jogging his heart out by the Atlantic Ocean two days after he'd married for a second time.

Tim came back to the slides, where John was a young father with a son on his shoulders. He became aware that Rachel was teary-eyed. She held his hand, and now they were showing a video where members of the congregation spoke about John. (The man who introduced the video was flagrantly, joyfully, stereotypically gay, and explained that they'd had to edit the video so as not to embarrass the pastor; apparently certain members had gone overboard in their assessment of him. Especially the women, he added, and everyone laughed easily; the pastor could flirt the way only the truly well-behaved can flirt, the depths of his basic decency putting everyone at ease.)

Tim watched Rachel carefully now; he saw the smile of recognition.
Especially the women.

He missed Maria fiercely, suddenly. He wanted to get up from his seat and find a pay phone.
Anything, anything you need. I'm here for you.
Then remembered her hollow laughter.
I'm tripping my ass off.

On the video they'd interviewed John's three children. Tim especially loved his younger nephew, Peter, who'd spent half the summer with him the year he'd turned fourteen. An awkward kid who had never held a hammer, he'd allowed Tim to teach him fundamentals of the shop, and after a month or so confided in Tim that he was in love with a girl and it was just
killing
him. The two had gone hiking that evening for three hours, Tim determined to show the boy how waterfalls and ancient birch trees and bats under a farflung moon could offer the heart a little reprieve.

This nephew, nineteen now on the video, looking confident and adult in his black leather jacket, said he'd asked his father if there was anything big he felt he still had to accomplish. The answer was no.

No.
The answer spoke of a peace that was beyond the realm of Tim's imagination. To experience that degree of satisfaction. His brother had set out to live a certain kind of life, and he'd done just that. He'd thrown himself into it, worked
tirelessly
for forty years, and while he'd had his hard times, and bouts of depression, a net of faith had kept him on his path. A life that wasn't wayward. How many in this world would ever get to sit back and feel the stubborn coherence of their own story this way?

“A beautiful life,” Rachel whispered. “That's what this is.”

A flame rose in Tim. “And you're wishing you were Claire.”

She only laughed. “God no. I couldn't handle it.”

What did that mean?

And why had she taken what he'd said in stride?

Why hadn't she turned in her seat and said, “What the hell is that all about, Tim? What do you mean I'm wishing I was Claire?”

And now the motley church choir did a few gospel tunes—maybe these were John's favorites. And then they were calling John and Claire up onto the stage, and people stood and clapped and clapped, and both John and Claire were able to thank everyone with extraordinary graciousness. John said he imagined after they'd all seen his seventies wardrobe they might be reconsidering their opinions of him. Everyone laughed.

“I'd like to introduce you all to some special people,” John said now, and called up his children, his old friends Michael and Anita Nells (who looked like Sophia Loren), and the Burnhams, and Claire's sister Louise the dog trainer, cousin Richard from Alabama, and finally, Tim and Rachel. They rose and walked to the stage, and John ushered them over right next to him, and Tim found himself slinging his arm around his brother, his palms wet and his eyes suddenly stinging with tears under the stage lights as everyone clapped. This should not be such a complicated moment, he thought, shamed, proud, wanting to embrace his brother, wanting the two of them to be alone together, boys in a field after a whole day of running wild in the dry land of sticks and stones and old Nebraska sky, wanting to look into his brother's face and say “I love you can you help me.” And wanting to invite Rachel to go visit another galaxy. But here she was, kissing John right on the lips.

“I love you, John!” she said.

“And I love you, Rachel.”

And Tim felt like his own camera, capturing this moment that he'd turn over in his mind later, developing it until it was sharp, punishing. And he embraced Claire and shook hands with their friends and joked with his nephews and now it was time to cross the street in the rain of early evening and eat a meal in the basement of the Cathedral of Hope and he felt crazy and loose and responsible for Maria three thousand miles away and probably coming down from her trip in a filthy end-time apartment.

Shrimp, steak, fresh vegetables, big salad. This church, which under John had tripled its sizable endowment, had gone all out to say its good-bye in style. Nothing like John's other church, where it had always been churchified meat loaf and string beans. Beside the table where John and Claire and their kids sat, Rachel and Tim sat at a table with some young people, married couples whose children were upstairs being baby-sat, and a gay man and his partner who had recently adopted a five-year-old foster child, a boy whose picture they passed around. They all had guessed that Tim was John's brother. They were grateful for his presence at the table and only wanted to tell him how much they adored their pastor. How he had changed their feelings about religion. How he was the most compassionate and open-minded person they'd ever encountered other than Mr. Rogers. How the pastor had married the gay couple. One black-eyed woman with a Boston accent spoke to Tim with a strange, confidential urgency. “Your brother knows how to
receive
love. It's not just that he can give it. What impresses me is the way he can
receive
it. My own father, he couldn't take it. Nobody in my family could take it. You'd give them a hug and they'd die from embarrassment! If you ever said I love you to any of them they'd have to be rushed to the emergency room! But your brother, I swear, when I hug him, he can
take
it.” She began to tear up, and Tim reached to pat her hand. She kept her eyes downcast. She said she didn't know why he had to move away. Then she stood up, excused herself, and took off for the ladies' room, up the steps. Tim watched her exit, lingering over her words. He thought of following her. He thought of his daughter. He wondered if he'd known how to receive love. The taller of the gay men was saying how his foster son had first been abandoned in a Kings Family restaurant when he was two.

Tim asked to see the picture of the boy again, and the child's face drilled a hole in his heart that filled for a moment with stabbing light.

“He looks like a great kid.”

“We're very lucky.”

He wanted to be home. He wanted to work with some old oak. Wanted to walk the dog, to see a friend, to find the relative peace of the quotidian, who cares if it was partly a lie. He wanted to be home.

He feared these days of terrorism; it was true. They would not get to hear John's last sermon, but he'd make sure they got a copy of it. They'd hit the road tomorrow afternoon, or the next. Everyone would understand. Everyone was afraid, deep down.

On the way back to the house he told Rachel he wanted to leave the next day. He told her he was exhausted, he might be getting sick, and he feared the world.

“You fear the world?” she said, a smile in her tone.

“Anthrax. Bombs. Chemicals.”

“They say you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than coming into contact with anthrax.”

“I know three people who got struck by lightning,” he said.

“Who?”

“Two kids—those young lovers kissing on the beach in Wildwood, New Jersey, back the year Maria was born. And Bernard Lynch's mother.”

“You didn't know those kids, Tim.”

“What difference does it make? We were in Wildwood then. We might have been swimming in the ocean with them the day before they fried together.”

“What exactly are we talking about?”

“Dying.”

“So you want to leave tomorrow?”

“Or the next day. Maybe that would be more decent. I remember Bernard Lynch's mother played a
mean
ukulele.”

She reached out and touched the hand that was not on the wheel. “You're getting really strange in your old age, Tim.”

“You know I'll take that as a compliment, so why say it?”

She was quiet.

He parked in front of the house John and Claire stayed in; it was owned by the church, it was stone, and big with character, a garden of roses in the summertime out back, and a huge sycamore in front that now stood bare and groping into the dark.

“What are you thinking, Rachel?” he said now, turning off the motor.

“I don't know.”

He looked at her. “Are you angry with me?”

“No. I don't know.”

“What?”

“Maybe you should tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

She sighed. “Let's just go in.”

“No.”

“No?”

He nearly broke. He nearly confessed a lifetime of his deepest pain. He was so close to doing it his heart pounded in his chest.
Tell me how it burdens you, in those secret chambers of your heart, tell me how you wish you were spending your life with my brother. It will be such a relief! You'd have a different child then, too, and a great violinist grandson, your heart might even be whole.

But he only looked at her in the car, and seeing her beautiful dark eyes wounded by confusion, he felt the weight of their long years together, took a breath and said, “I mean yes, I'm sorry, let's go in now. Let's just go in.”

Maybe he was tired of the tight leash he'd held around his own neck for so many years of visits.

Maybe he was tired of the tightrope he danced upon and only wanted to watch himself fall and fall, straight into a whole different kind of life where he could see his decency in shreds. Where he could see his pain in shards. Where he could join his daughter in a chaos that defied description.

Maybe it was the three big glasses of Merlot.

Really it didn't matter what the reason was.

Rachel threw her head back because the pastor was telling a funny story. She grabbed onto the pastor's forearms. The room began to spin. Tim called over from the couch where he sat next to his nineteen-year-old nephew, “John, Rachel, why not go on upstairs for a good fuck and get it over with?”

A heavy silence fell, thick with everyone's disbelief. Nobody moved.

Then the nephew beside Tim bent in half, spit out his ice, and burst into nervous laughter punctuated by “Holy shit!” Everyone seemed to be looking at the white ice on the red carpet for a moment. Then the nephew got up off the couch and walked into the kitchen, dragging his sister, who'd stood shocked in the doorway, along with him. On the other side of the room Claire put down her drink, closed her eyes, and turned toward her sister. “Did that just happen?”

As for Rachel, she was a statue, standing beside the statue pastor. Tim felt he had torn the roof off the house. Had torn the skin off his body. And yet for a second he felt violently happy. The pastor was so white-faced, he looked ill.

“Uh, Tim, can we go outside for a moment?”

Rachel bent down beside Tim now. “What the hell was that?” she whispered. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Yes.”

The pastor came and took him by the hand.

Tim thought they were strange old boys moving quickly out of the house and into the March darkness.

They went and stood by the tree.

“I can explain,” Tim said.

“No, no. You don't have to.”

“I don't?”

“No, you don't. Unless you want to.”

“No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“Okay. I think I know that.”

Silence.

“We could climb this tree if we weren't such geezers,” the pastor said.

And Tim pulled himself up on the lower branch, swung his body over so that he was riding the branch like a horse, his long legs dangling down on either side. “When Maria was small she wanted to
be
a tree. That's what she answered when they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.”

“I remember you telling me that. Come on down, Tim. You're nuts.”

“I am. I really am. I got you beat on that one, Johnny. I'm truly out of my mind, aren't I?”

“I don't see it that way, Tim. I just want you to come down.”

Now Tim was climbing up to the next highest branch.

“That's enough, Tim, no higher,” said the pastor.

But there was no stopping him. He was going all the way up. It wasn't even that difficult. In spite of his trembling, his body filled with a desperate agility. When he finally reached the near top, up there in the black sky, in certain danger of falling to his death, a great, shocking compassion for himself swept through him, the sort he'd only felt for other people before this moment.

He looked down at John and thought, weeping, I know who I am now! I'm an old man up in a tree, getting ready to tell my lovely loveliest of loving brothers the story of my life.