Childgrave Page 5

  For the moment, however, the development had its advantages. Sara had regained some interest in us; or in Joanne, at least. I stood looking down at them and listening to their strange little conversation, afraid to interrupt and hoping they were in the process of forming a lifelong friendship.

  Sara’s voice was high-pitched, but it was agile and not nasal. It didn’t sound like a voice that got used too often, but Sara was using it eagerly now. “Does Colnee talk to you, Joanne?”

  “No. Colnee’s a baby. But I can hear what she thinks.”

  “What does she think?”

  “She thinks about the angel.”

  “Which angel is that?”

  Joanne hesitated. She was looking down into her lap, where I assumed her new friend was still sitting. Then she looked up at Sara. “Would you like to be Colnee’s friend, too?”

  Sara glanced at me before answering. “Maybe it would be better for your mother to be Colnee’s friend.”

  I bestowed an enormous imaginary embrace on Joanne and Colnee. The Most Important Fact could now be tactfully revealed to Sara. And after a suspenseful pause, Joanne spoke the magic words: “I don’t have a mommy.”

  As long as imaginary events seemed to be in order, I conjured up a sumptuous fanfare. Joanne looked up at me as though she had heard the trumpets, and then she continued to say the right thing: “Colnee is hungry, Daddy.”

  “Well, let’s get her something to eat.” I thought it was time I took over the script. I looked at Sara and added in what I hoped was a casually appealing tone, “Since you’re Colnee’s friend, too, Miss Coleridge, maybe you’d like to join us.” I followed the speech with a quick, silent entreaty to whatever powers watched over recording studios: Please let her say yes.

  Joanne came to my rescue again and said, “Please come, Miss Coleridge.”

  And Sara said yes. Or, more exactly, she said, “All right, Mr. . . .”

  “Brewster. Jonathan Brewster.” It was just like being in a movie. I called for another fanfare: French horns this time, instead of trumpets. And I began the exciting, mysterious, and difficult process of finding out what kind of person Sara Coleridge was.

  The first thing I found out was not encouraging. When I asked her where she would like to have lunch, she said it didn’t matter much, but that she didn’t eat meat except on special occasions. Our lunch obviously didn’t fit into her category of special occasions, although it headed the list on mine. Sara reassured me somewhat by announcing that she found most health-food and vegetarian restaurants depressing. She wasn’t a vegetarian, she said; she just didn’t like to eat meat. When I pressed her, she admitted that she didn’t much like to eat anything. My delight increased.

  We headed off toward a delicatessen on Sixth Avenue, where Sara could order one of their dairy specialties, and Joanne could make one of her usual exotic choices. As we walked to the restaurant I began to lose some of the gratitude I felt toward Joanne’s new invisible friend for making the lunch possible. Joanne insisted on cradling Colnee in her arms, which drew some puzzled glances and condescending smiles from passersby. At least the old capybara had gone about unobtrusively at the heel. My daughter and I would have to have a conference later.

  The restaurant was crowded and decidedly unromantic; an advantage, I thought, since I didn’t want to seem to be in search of romance. But I felt better than I had in years. Just the fact that there were three of us instead of two would have been gratifying; that Sara was the third person made my pleasure almost unbearable. I was not only in love, but I was part of a loving family. I suddenly realized that that was something I had never before been part of.

  It wasn’t exactly a relaxing occasion, though. I directed a lot of my energy toward keeping my hands from trembling and trying to prevent my consonants from bunching up. There wasn’t much energy left for being charming. I sat facing a mirrored wall, and I found myself sneaking glances at my reflection, regretting my poorly matched features and wondering for the first time since my teens which was my good side.

  Sara ordered noodles and cheese, I asked for corned beef on rye, and we waited to see what would capture Joanne’s fancy. After a consultation with the waiter, she placed two orders: for herself, a cherry blintz, a dill pickle, and plain soda water; and for Colnee, a glass of tomato juice and a slice of rare roast beef.

  Sara was calmly attentive, but she volunteered no information about herself. I asked her a few questions about her background, but she tended to answer with questions of her own. Soon she knew a fair amount about me, but I got the idea she wasn’t especially pleased by what she had learned.

  My daughter, who seemed to have found a complete rapport with Sara, had no need for conversation. While we were waiting for coffee to arrive, Joanne leaned across the table and put her hand on Sara’s, and the child and the woman smiled at each other. Tears filled my eyes, and I pushed my chair back and stood up, impelled by several strong emotions. Two of the emotions were jealousy and resentment over the rapport that I wasn’t being invited to share. But I also had the feeling that there was something unwholesome in that rapport—something that shouldn’t be encouraged.

  Sara looked up at me in surprise, and she moved her hand from Joanne’s to mine. I sat down, and all feelings of unease vanished. Sara’s touch seemed to work as a kind of transfusion, filling me with a consciousness of something I had never felt before. I couldn’t define what was flowing between us, but it was certainly nothing unwholesome. It had to do with virtue and pleasure.

  My jack-in-the-box performance had drawn some attention from people at surrounding tables. Sara didn’t seem to mind the puzzled glances, but I thought I owed her an apology. “I don’t know why I did that,” I said.

  “It’s not important,” Sara answered.

  “I think it is important. I think you’re making me—and my daughter—have feelings we’ve never had before.”

  Sara took her hand away from mine. “I’m not making anyone do anything,” she said. “You’re overrating me. I’m an ordinary person who isn’t courageous enough to refuse random invitations to lunch.”

  “You’re not enjoying yourself?”

  “That’s not the point . . .” Sara made a little sound that might have been the beginning of “Jonathan.” Whatever she had been about to say, she decided it was better left unsaid. “The point is,” she continued, “you’re making it sound as though I’m trying to have some kind of malicious influence on you.”

  “No. I don’t believe that. It’s just that I haven’t figured out what you are.”

  “I’m a musician who has to get back to a recording studio now.”

  Sara stood up. Joanne followed suit, after putting her uneaten pickle into her purse. Before we left the table, I glanced at Sara and saw for the first time the expression of peculiar animation that I would see on her face many times in the future—an expression of fleeting, private passion. She was staring at the untouched meal that Joanne had ordered for Colnee: the glass of thick red liquid and the thin slice of almost raw meat that partially concealed a faint smear of blood on the white plate. As she looked at the plate Sara’s lips were moving slightly, as if in prayer. I turned away from her briefly, feeling that I was intruding on some sort of private act, and when I looked back again, her usual expression of calm, cheerful detachment had returned. I wondered whether I had imagined the strange moment and whether the concept of sorcery was as much out of the question as it had seemed a few moments earlier.

  Joanne and I parted with Sara in the corridor outside the recording studio. My emotions were not simple. In a way, I felt more relaxed than I had since meeting Sara; the strain of wondering how to behave had subsided. But the panic was growing in me quickly as I realized I might never again have the opportunity of behaving in any way with her.

  As we parted, Sara ran her fingers through her hai
r, tilting her head, and seeming a bit tense. I was pleased for an instant, thinking she might be displeased at having to leave me and Joanne. But then she said, “I have to start tuning up. I’m in the next take.” Her tension was stage fright. “Harpists spend a good part of their lives tuning up,” she said. She smiled at me.

  I felt encouraged for the first time. The part about tuning up was the only thing she had said that had been not quite necessary; the only time she had told me something I had not asked. Lovers feed on crumbs. I was about to ask whether we might see her again, when disaster struck. The elevator doors opened, and Arianella Stradellini emerged, scattering energy and vowels. She detached herself from her companions and engulfed me in a more than casual embrace.

  “My magician,” she said.

  When I disentangled myself, Sara was gone. The signorina escorted me into the control room, explaining that she was not involved in the scene they were recording next. Since I was her guest, I couldn’t ignore her, and I sat trying to smile as she alternately enthused and railed over the complexities of her life. Whenever possible I looked through the glass into the studio, where Sara was applying a tuning wrench of some sort to the pins at the top of her harp, plucking strings, and listening with absolute concentration. The speakers in the control room were turned off, and Sara’s actions were a pantomime to me. The lack of sound emphasized the intensity of her movements. She had as much vitality as the soprano who sat next to me chattering, gesturing, and reaching out often to touch me. But Sara was more careful about what she touched.

  The director returned to the control room and asked for silence. The musicians and singers—including a chorus—now went through some trial takes while microphones and sound balances were adjusted. And eventually they began to record the scene in which I had first noticed Sara at the concert: Orfeo entering the Underworld. Everyone in the studio was tense with the peculiar mass concentration that takes place when music is being well performed. The harp part in the scene didn’t seem especially complicated to me, but it was the foundation on which the other parts were based. The restraint and detachment that Sara had shown earlier had vanished. Her eyes were focused on her music, glancing occasionally at the conductor or the strings of her harp, but she seemed to be seeing something else. Her lips parted occasionally and just perceptibly, as though she were whispering in a language she didn’t know well. The sound in the control room became almost painfully loud as the contralto and the full chorus and orchestra joined in a crescendo. The sound of the harp could no longer be distinguished from the sound of the other instruments. Again, Sara seemed engaged in a pantomime. Her face had taken on the unsettling expression I had seen briefly in the restaurant as she looked at the blood-smeared plate.

  Gradually I turned my attention away from the activities in the recording studio and began to think about the importance that Sara had suddenly assumed in my life. Now that I had spoken to her and had been close to her, I was more certain than ever that she had something I needed to complete my life. Yet there was also something forbidding about her, and I suspected that if I were ever to share her life, it would turn out to be a life made up of something more than simple pleasures. But I told myself that maybe that’s what I needed.

  Then I remembered that it wasn’t only my own feelings and needs that I had to consider. I turned to look at Joanne. She was cradling her invisible friend Colnee in her arms, and I can’t say I welcomed that development. There was something distasteful about the intensity that Joanne was showing in playing her new game. She had been taken away from me, into another world.

  But as I watched her she turned to me and smiled; it was a smile that was more mature than any I had seen her use before. She was learning things in her new world, and apparently one of the things she was learning about was pleasure.

  Joanne hadn’t learned a lot about endurance, though, because in another five minutes she was asleep. I stayed in the studio until the end of the next take. I gathered that the performance had begun to deteriorate. None of the performers looked pleased. Sara had begun to chew her lower lip, and she seemed to be unhappy not with herself but with someone else in the orchestra.

  As I carried Joanne from the studio I took a farewell look at Sara—who had obviously forgotten us entirely. The recording director had begun talking to the performers about overtime. The studio had definitely turned into some sort of battleground. Sara Coleridge seemed to be enjoying the battle now, and I sensed for the first time the unusual strength of her will. I wasn’t sure that my will was as strong as hers, but I knew I had a good supply of patience and stubbornness. I didn’t know whether my attraction to Sara would lead me to something good, but I suspected it would at least be stimulating.

  Chapter 4

  I had no appointments the next day, so I spent a lot of my time thinking about Sara. “Thinking” might not be the right term, because it wasn’t exactly a rational process I was indulging in. I wasn’t analyzing her personality or cataloging her virtues; in fact, much of the time I was simply being vaguely but pleasantly aware of her existence.

  I suppose one of the ways you know you’re in love—maybe the only way—is that the person you love commands all unused parts of your consciousness at all times. In any case, during the next few days, if I wasn’t asking my mind to devote itself to reading a light meter or making conversation, it automatically asked me to remember Sara. The things I remembered were powerful but unclear. Did she have a slight squint, or was I recalling something about the light in the recording studio or the restaurant? Was there an unevenness about her lower front teeth? Or did she even show her lower teeth when she smiled? She had become a collection of obsessive, pleasant mysteries, and what had become important to me was that I should get to see her again—not so much to solve the mysteries as to assure myself that I hadn’t imagined them. One mystery I did have to solve, though, was how I was going to get to spend some more time with Sara. While I was considering the matter, Harry Bordeaux paid me a surprise visit. He said he had just dropped by to leave a present for Joanne. That was improbable for two reasons: first, Harry was always working during business hours; and second, although he was reasonably fond of my daughter, she was still a member of a part of human society he couldn’t take very seriously—the very young. I don’t know whether he tended to ignore children because they seldom needed agents or because they reminded him of some traits he unfortunately still shared with them.

  Joanne joined us, and we watched as she unwrapped a large box that turned out to be filled with tiny objects: furnishings for the dollhouse I had given her the previous Christmas. She embraced Uncle Harry elaborately and then ran off to inspect and install the furniture. I noticed that Uncle Harry didn’t display his usual nervous smile during the embrace. He even came up with a reasonably convincing representation of pleasure and gratitude.

  “The past is cute,” Harry said.

  I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to explain.

  “Those little things. They’re all colonial style. Bed warmers, candlesticks, wooden buckets, cradles. Cute. Little modern things aren’t so cute. There’s something depressing about tiny vacuum cleaners . . . TV sets with quarter-inch screens. It’s the distance of time, I guess. When you look back three hundred years, you don’t want things to look big and real. You know why no one likes reconstructed colonial villages? They’re too big. Gross. You expect some smelly, hard-eyed Puritan to appear and lead you away to the stocks.”

  “Or the gallows.”

  “Right,” Harry said. “A two-inch gibbet is no threat. Come to think of it, a two-inch anything is no threat.” He was smiling foolishly, and I wondered if his entendre had been double. If so, he was truly having an out-of-character day. Harry’s rules of sexual neutrality usually dictated that he was never the one to bring sex into a conversation, and certainly not facetiously. I let it pass, though. His smile faded quickly, and he asked, “How’s
the romance proceeding?” The question seemed more than casual. In fact, it seemed earnest enough to have been the purpose of his visit. I filled him in quickly on the events at the recording session. But he didn’t seem as interested in events as he was in emotions. “That’s how it looked,” he said. “But how did it feel, Jonathan? How does it feel?”

  I wondered for a moment whether I should really try to explain to Harry how I had been feeling since my discovery of Sara. But that would have meant getting more serious than Harry liked anyone to get. And besides, I wasn’t sure I could have explained my feelings anyway. I settled for the almost-serious: “You know, Harry. The classic inexplicable: I freeze, I burn . . . you’re the cream in my coffee . . . let me count the ways . . . sempre tua.”

  “Oh.” Harry sounded disappointed.

  “It’s like someone said about jazz. If you have to ask what it is, no one can explain it to you. But why do you ask?”

  “Curiosity, Jonathan. Just curiosity.”

  I began to wonder about Harry. Love was a subject that he was usually even less curious about than he was about sex. As I considered Harry’s behavior, a strange possibility occurred to me: Could someone have moved—even a fraction of an inch—the rock under which Harry’s tender passions had been hibernating for forty years? It would have been madness to ask him such a thing, but I kept the possibility in mind.