Paul Theroux - Mr. Bones - Twenty Stories

She was talking about January, when he’d bought the house. This was mid-March.

The stove was unreliable. The fuel oil in the heater gurgled and leaked from the pump, and that had to be replaced by a plumber, Dad’s fellow choir member Mel Hankey. He worked for nothing, or for very little, groaning in wordless irritation as he toiled, like giving off a smell.

My father’s new job was a problem: long hours, low pay, my mother home with the small children, and pregnant — due in June. She was heavy and walked with a tippy, leaning-back gait, supporting her belly with one hand, seeming to balance herself as she moved.

“I lost a child two years ago.”

As though she was threatening to lose this one.

Dad said, “It’s going to be fine.”

“How would you know?”

He smiled, he had no reply. As a sort of penance he washed the dishes, calling out, “Who’s going to dry for me?” And because of the tension, each of us said, “I’ll do it!” and pushed around trying to be helpful, like terrified children in a drunken household. But there was no drunkard here, only a disappointed woman and her smiling husband.

I said he had no recreations. He had one, the choir, legitimate because it was church-related. He had a strong, confident, rather tuneless voice, with a gravelly character, and even if thirty other people were singing, I could always discern my father’s voice in the “ Pange Lingua ” or “ O Salutaris. ”

“You’re not going out again?”

“Say, I’ve got choir practice.”

He prays twice who sings to the Lord was printed on the hymnal. He believed that. Choir practice was more than a form of devotion, an expression of piety; it was a spiritual duty. But Dad always went alone, never taking any of us as initiates to the choir, and he always came back happy — not in anything he said, but his mood was improved, you could tell by the tilt of his head, his movements, his breathing, the way he listened, with a different sort of smile, a relaxed posture, his walk. He weighed less. He was always happier after he sang.

April came.

“The house is full of flies.”

“I’ll take care of that.”

He patched the screens with little glued-on squares of screen.

“And the paint’s peeling.”

Instead of priming it or waiting until the summer, he’d painted over the grime and the paint hadn’t stuck.

“The faucet drips.”

“Say, I’ll pick up some washers on the way home from choir.”

“This is the second time I’ve mentioned it.”

Dad was putting on his hat, snapping the brim, looking jaunty.

“You never listen.”

All he did was listen, but there’s a certain sort of nagging repetition that can deafen you. We didn’t know we’d come to the end of a chapter, that we were starting a new chapter. And after it was over we knew Dad much better, or rather knew a different side of him.

The wickedest episodes of revelation can have the most innocent beginnings. This one began with a song. It seized my attention at the time, but looking back on it, it seems even weirder, scarier, almost unbelievable, except that I witnessed it all and even now remember it with reluctance because of my crush of embarrassment. I came to understand that my father’s smiles made him an enigma; but for a brief period I knew him, and though it was a kind of comedy, I was frightened and ashamed and shocked. The revelation unfolded obliquely, growing worse.

He came home carrying a large envelope with a tucked-in flap. Trying to look casual, he got his fingers inside and with a self-conscious flourish took out some pages of sheet music. The illustration on the cover showed a black man in a gleaming top hat, white gloves, mouth smilingly open in the act of singing. I could see from his features that he was a white man wearing makeup.

“Say”—Dad was rattling the pages—“can you play this, Mother?”

Asking a favor always made him shy. Being asked a favor made Mother ponderous and powerful. Oh, so now you want something, do you? she seemed to reply in the upward tilt of her head and triumphant smile.

She looked with a kind of distaste at the sheet music, plucking at it with unwilling fingers, as though it was unclean. And it was rather grubby, rubbed at the edges, torn at the crease where it was folded on the left side. It showed all the signs of having been propped on many music stands. Old, much-used sheet music had a limp cloth-like look.

After a while, Mother brought herself and her big belly to the piano. She spun the stool’s seat to the right height and, balancing herself on it, reached over her pregnancy as if across a counter. Frowning at the music, she banged out some notes — I knew from her playing that she was angry. Dad leaned into his bifocals.

Mandy

There’s a minister handy

And it sure would be dandy…

He gagged a little, cleared his throat, and began again, in the wrong key.

He could not read music, though he could carry a tune if he’d heard it enough times. In this first effort he struggled to find the melody.

“You’re not listening,” Mother said.

“Just trying to…,” he said, and clawed at the song sheet instead of finishing the sentence.

He started to sing again, reading the words, but too fast, and Mother was pounding the keys and tramping on the pedals as though she was at the wheel of some sort of vehicle, like a big wooden bus she was driving down a steep hill with her feet and hands.

Mandy

There’s a minister handy…

Hearing the blundering repetition of someone being taught something from scratch was unbearable to me, because, probably from exasperation, I learned it before they did. I was usually way ahead while they were still faltering. I was always in a fury for it to be over.

I left the room, but even two rooms away I heard,

So don’t you linger

Here’s the ring for your finger

Isn’t it a humdinger?

Against my will I listened to the whole thing until the song was in my head, not as it was meant to be sung, but in Dad’s tuneless and halting rendition.

Later, over dinner, in reply to a question I didn’t hear, Dad said, “Fella gave it to me — loaned it. I’ll have to give it back afterwards.”

“Who loaned it?”

“John Flaherty.”

“Why?”

“Mel Hankey loaned it to him.”

“What’s it for?”

“Minstrel show.”

Mother made a face. He was eating. As though to avoid further questions, Dad filled his mouth with food and went on eating, with the faraway look he assumed when he didn’t want to be questioned. I’m busy thinking, his expression said. You don’t want to interrupt.

Then, out of the side of his mouth, he said, “Pass the mouse turd, sonny.”

We stared at him. He was chewing.

“Tell you a great meal,” he said. “Lettuce. Turnip. And pea.”

He winked. We had no idea.

“Minstrel show,” he seemed to feel, explained everything — and perhaps it did, but not to me. Words I had never heard before had a significance for him, and a private satisfaction. But “mouse turd”?

After that, he practiced the song “Mandy” every night, singing with more confidence and tunefulness, Mother playing more loudly, thumping her pedaling feet. His voice was strong, assertive rather than melodious. Within a week, he grew hoarse, lost his voice, and from the next room it was as though another man was singing, not Dad but a growly stranger.

Around this time, having mastered the song, he revealed his new name. This was at the dinner table, Mother at one end, Dad at the other, Fred, Floyd, Rose, and me between them.