The Smoke Jumper (38 page)

Before he left the following day, without telling him, she had slipped a photograph into his packed bag. It was the one that Ed had taken of the two of them that last day they climbed together, when they had asked him to father their child.

She kept track of him as best she could. One way or another - mostly through the eagle-eyed Linda - she would hear about some magazine that had used his latest photographs. She noticed that he now often wrote the accompanying stories, whereas at first the words had always been someone else’s. His style was simple and unflowery and she could hear his voice behind the words. The pieces that moved her most were about a little-reported war which had been going on for years in northern Uganda. Connor seemed to return there often. His most recent piece was about a rehabilitation center for children who’d been abducted from their homes and forced to serve as soldiers in the rebel army. The pictures had made Julia weep.

Only once had she and Ed drawn near to speaking the truth about why Connor had since stayed away. A brown paper package, mailed from Kampala, had arrived with perfect timing on Amy’s fourth birthday. It contained a little dress - just the right size - and a shawl, both in a vivid African fabric, splashes of bright green and yellow and red and purple. Enclosed in the accompanying birthday card was a photograph of a magnificent Ugandan woman wearing the same outfit and he had written instructions, complete with diagrams, on how to twist the shawl into a headdress. Amy was thrilled. She wore the outfit for a week.

Ed was furious. Once Amy was safely out of earshot, he exploded.

‘Goddamn presents!’ he said. ‘What does he say on the card? “Say hi to your mom and dad”? Terrific. Maybe one day he’ll come say it himself. Or even pick up the phone sometime and say it. She’s never heard his goddamn voice! But I guess he’s just too famous and busy now for that kind of thing.’

‘Come on, Ed,’ Julia said. ‘Don’t be like that.’

‘Like what? I mean, are we lepers or something? He was my best friend, for christsake! “Say hi to your mom and dad.” Well, fuck him.’

‘Maybe he thinks it’s fairer to stay away.’

‘Fairer? How the hell do you work that one out?’

‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

‘No, come on, tell me.’

‘Well, I don’t know. Maybe he thinks you might find it hard.’

‘What, find it hard having my best friend come visit?’

‘No, I’m wrong. Forget it.’

‘What, like, I’d be jealous of him and Amy or something?’

‘No, not exactly. Please Ed, let’s just drop it, okay?’

‘No, I’m interested. That’s obviously what you think. That he’s staying away because he thinks I’m threatened by him being Amy’s biological father. Is that right?’

‘Well. Maybe a little. The way you were at the christening—’

‘What do you mean? Like I was hostile to him or something? ’

‘A little, yes.’

He stood there in silence for a moment, still and inscrutable behind his dark glasses. It was as though he were staring into her head with something more powerful than vision and it unsettled her.

‘You tell me this now? After four years? That I’m the reason he doesn’t come see us anymore?’

‘Ed, how should I know?’

‘Wow,’ he said quietly. He shook his head sadly. ‘Oh boy.’

And Julia at once regretted saying it and tried to soften it by saying that it probably wasn’t that after all and that maybe Connor had found it hard seeing Amy and felt it better to keep his contact with her at a distance in case he grew too attached. She babbled on for a while but could tell Ed wasn’t really listening. He was quiet and thoughtful for days and since that day had never criticized Connor again.

When Julia reflected on why Connor stayed away, which she could now, though preferred not to, for it still stirred feelings that ruffled the smooth surface of her life, she suspected that both of the things she had said were true. Probably he had sensed Ed’s jealousy and concluded that the best he could do for his friend was to keep clear. And probably he did find the prospect too painful of seeing his daughter growing up as someone else’s. If he couldn’t have all of Amy, then perhaps it was better to have none. This, Julia had little doubt, was what he also felt about her. And although he was part of her and always would be and walked daily in her thoughts, if she were honest with herself, this was how she preferred it to be. If not all of him, then none.

Julia and Amy always finished
The Butter Battle Book
in unison, putting on spooky voices as the Yooks and the Zooks menacingly fingered their new bombs, the ones that could obliterate mankind. Who was going to drop it first?
We’ll see, we will see
. . . Julia shut the book.

‘Zooks are dumb,’ Amy said.

‘How come?’

‘They must be. Who’d eat their bread butter side down?’

‘I do.’

‘You do not.’

‘I do too. You’ve just never seen me.’

‘Okay, I’m going to watch tomorrow and if you really are a Zook, you’re in big trouble.’

‘I’d better go make my bomb.’

Julia got up and turned off the lamp and leaned over Amy to kiss her.

‘Gimme a big hug,’ she said. ‘Bigger, bigger! That’s more like it.’

‘Thanks for the costume and sorry I was mean to you.’

‘Hey, what are moms for?’

‘I love you, Mommy.’

‘I love you too, baby.’

 

Kay Neumark told the chipmunks and the elves for the third time to cut it out. If they didn’t quit fooling around and trying to trip the angels like that, she said, she would have to find others who would take the job more seriously. It was utter bluff, of course. Both she and Ed knew only too well that every child who was remotely interested had already been enlisted, along with quite a few who weren’t. Still, a first full rehearsal was always a test of nerves and so far it was going all right.

Kay was going to be credited as the director and co-writer with Ed, but she did a dozen other jobs besides. And when she wasn’t helping Julia paint the set or making costumes or wiping noses or generally threatening, cajoling or encouraging the cast, she taught history and English by all accounts with the same gusto and good humor that she had brought to the show. Ed had met her a few times at school social events and she and her girlfriend had once come for a barbecue with some of the other younger staff when Julia was working part-time before Amy was born. But he hadn’t really gotten to know her until they started rehearsals a few weeks ago.

She was a plain-speaking dynamo of a woman from Chicago. From Julia’s description of her, Ed knew that she was in her midthirties, had laugh lines, cropped silvery hair and a penchant for dungarees and baggy striped sweaters. Ed knew her more for her booming voice and her smell, which reminded him of those New Age stores where they burned incense all day and where you went to buy cheap Indonesian gifts for people you hoped didn’t go there too.

‘All right,’ she was calling out now. ‘Let’s do that one more time. And this time, Mr Gloop, more menace. Know what I mean? Show that Orca what you’re made of. Yeah! Just like that. Here we go now. Positions, please. Julia, are you ready back there?’

Julia was assistant stage manager and somewhere behind the partially painted scenery was marshaling the troops. She shouted that she was as ready as she ever would be. Ed could detect a note of suppressed desperation.

‘Okay, maestro,’ Kay called.

Ed was sitting ready at the piano which, apart from a few taped sound effects, was all the accompaniment there was. Originally he’d had ambitions of putting together a small orchestra, but he and Kay had soon realized there was enough to drive them crazy without that. As things now stood, with just two weeks until opening night, there seemed at least a chance of avoiding disaster. That was, provided he could stay awake.

The show had turned out to involve a lot more work than Ed had expected, and nowadays, since he’d been on dialysis, he didn’t seem to have the stamina he’d once had. In fact lately he felt tired more than he didn’t. Maybe he was just getting old. He took a deep breath.

‘Okay, one more time,’ he called. ‘Gloop and Loggers, from the top.’ And off they went again.

Ed had been on dialysis for a little over two years now. His annual diabetes checkup had revealed that he had abnormally high levels of potassium and protein waste products in his blood. His kidneys weren’t doing a good enough job cleaning it. So now, three mornings a week, he had to go into Missoula and get hooked up to a damn machine to do it instead. He’d been there this morning, four long hours which he could have usefully filled a thousand better ways.

The dialysis unit was in a ground floor room at St. Patrick Hospital. There were thirteen chairs in a circle, each with its own dialysis machine and a TV set with headphones. Daytime soaps had never been Ed’s favorite entertainment, even when he’d been able to see the pictures, so he always took along some work or a tape to listen to while the machine sucked his blood. The nurses who ran the place were great and he knew them all well enough by now to tease them. He called them The Brides of Dracula. This morning he had even had them singing one of the songs from the show. Despite the fun, Ed hated the whole process with a vengeance.

He had never been one of those diabetics who spent their lives worrying and monitoring themselves. Indeed, his attitude had occasionally bordered on the reckless, especially since he’d been living with Julia. She did enough worrying about it for both of them, always checking up to see that he’d had his insulin shots, always ready with a candy bar at the first sign of a hypo. And as she grew older, Amy was getting to be the same, so now he had the two of them nagging at him. Of course, it was great that they did. But sometimes it bugged him and he could get a little snappy about it. Lately, because of the pressures of the show, it had been happening quite a lot. Julia had warned that it might be too much for him and though he tried to hide the toll it was taking, she was probably right.

All in all, the rehearsal went well. Urged on by Kay Neumark, Mr Gloop revealed hitherto concealed star potential and everyone went away in high spirits. Well, almost everyone. On the way home, Amy told him about a backstage drama involving one of the elves who had apparently peed his pants. The chief chipmunk had said something cruel and the two of them had ended up kicking and biting each other.

Ed listened in a distracted way, tuning in and out. Ever alert to his moods, Julia asked him if he was feeling okay and he told her not to fuss, he was just a little tired, that was all. He closed his eyes and propped his head back against the headrest, thinking about the show, the music still drifting in his mind.

How ironic it was, he thought, that this was where all his grand ambitions had led. Ten years ago it had all been so clear. Without the slightest doubt about his talent, he’d had his entire career mapped out. He remembered outlining it to Connor one summer’s night when they were resting out on a fire somewhere. First there would be the little off-Broadway gem that got rave reviews, then Broadway itself, then Hollywood - not just movie scores but something much more ambitious: he was going to reinvent the Hollywood musical for a whole new generation. And now here he was, nearly thirty-six years old, a blind piano teacher in a little western town, busting his ass over his daughter’s elementary school show.

Surprisingly, he didn’t feel one little bit cheated or bitter about it. The worst he ever got was an occasional twinge of regret. When he scanned himself for self-pity, as he regularly made a point of doing, he honestly found none. Everyone - well, maybe not everyone, but plenty of people anyhow - had these grand ideas of fame or fortune when they were young. And then as they got older they got real and settled for less. Or maybe they simply discovered that there were other things that were more important in life. And from what Ed gathered, those who did make it to the top - in the music and entertainment business anyway - generally didn’t end up happier. Richer for sure, but not happier.

What was particularly ironic was that of the two of them, it should be Connor who’d ended up famous. Only the other day Julia read that he had just been awarded some major photojournalism prize. He even had an exhibition coming up at a fancy New York gallery. Yet he had never once struck Ed as even slightly ambitious. It was always Ed who banged on about all the great goals he was going to achieve while Connor just sat there and smiled and supported him. Perhaps, under that sly cowboy reticence, he had been ambitious all along and had simply had the sense to hide it. In any case, Ed didn’t feel envious. Just a little, well, embarrassed.

He still missed Connor badly. He’d never had a friend so close, nor probably ever would again. And if he chose, he could easily make himself feel wretched thinking about it. But what with Julia and Amy and so much else to be grateful for, to do that seemed self-indulgent, so he rarely did.

At first he had felt angry, until three years ago, when Julia told him what she believed to be the reason for Connor’s estrangement. Ed had written him a long letter via the photo agency, apologizing for his behavior at the christening.

Connor never replied. For a while Ed worried that the letter had gone astray and wondered if he should write again.

But he never did. And as time went by he began to think that maybe it was all for the best anyway. Ed hadn’t exactly admitted his jealousy in the letter, but the more he thought about it the more certain he became that Connor knew about it. Ed hated himself for feeling jealous. It was unreasonable and ungrateful and, above all - assuming Connor did know - so goddamn demeaning. But he couldn’t help it. Once the green weed took root, rational thought just withered and died. The harsh truth was that Ed feared that Connor was more of a father to Amy than he was or ever would be and that maybe - God, this was the really sick stuff - maybe Julia felt that way too. If Connor had been constantly around these past years, the paranoia would no doubt have festered, making Ed ever more twisted and resentful. It was sad to admit it, but estrangement had probably been the only course.