Richard Powers - The Time of Our Singing

Da lights up again. “We go down on the twenty-eighth. You come stay here the night before, so we can catch the early bus they are sending down from Columbia.”

Jonah flicks me a look. Mine confirms his. “Can’t make it, Da.”

Our father, the solver of cosmic puzzles, looks more confused than I’ve ever seen him. “What do you mean?”

“They’re busy,” Ruth sneers.

“We’re booked,” Jonah says.

“You have a concert? There’s no concert for August twenty-eighth on the list you gave to me.”

“Not a concert, really. Just a musical obligation.”

Da scowls. He looks like the famous bust of Beethoven, only angrier. “What kind of an obligation?”

Jonah doesn’t say. I could break rank, say I have no obligation. I’ll march for jobs and freedom. The instant lasts so long, all my crossed loyalties turn murderous. Then it passes, and I lose my chance of saying anything.

“You should give up this musical obligation. You should go with us for this March on Washington.”

“Why?” Jonah asks. “I don’t get it.”

“What’s not to get?” Ruthie says. “Everybody’s going.”

“This is civil rights,” Da tells him. “This concerns you.”

“Me?” Jonah points at his chest. “How?” Trying to force Da to say what he has never, in our lives, come out and said.

“This march is the right thing to do. I am going. Your sister is going.” Ruth fiddles with her twenty-five-cent Freedom March button, incriminated.

“Da!” Jonah says. I stand and start stacking dirty plates. “Are you getting political on us in your old age?”

Da looks past us, a quarter of a century. “This is not political.”

“And your father isn’t old,” Mrs. Samuels says.

Ruth glares at the woman. “What’s wrong with politics?”

A week after the disastrous dinner, Jonah comes back late from Lisette Soer’s. Something has happened. He stands in our doorway, wavering. At first, I think he’s told her we aren’t going to her little gathering after all, that we have to go to Washington with our family for a march that concerns us. Perhaps they’ve fought over this, even broken. I want to support him, to tell him how good he has always been. As good as his voice. Maybe even better. But his stare stops me.

“Well.” His voice sounds shaky and untrained. “It’s happened. She’s having a kid.”

I think, She’s seduced someone even younger than he is. Then I figure it out. “She’s pregnant?” Jonah doesn’t even acknowledge. I’m just distraction while he scans the apartment for a surface that will hold his weight. “Are you sure that you’re…”

He stops me with his eyebrows. “You trying to save my good name, Mule?”

I make him lime juice in hot water and sit on the floor across from him. It’s not what I think.

“A baby, Mule. Can you imagine!” He sounds like the boy who once scribbled the “Ode to Joy” under a photo filled with stars. “I told her, ‘The perfect thing about marrying me is that I can pass for the father, whatever color the kid is.’” His eyes gleam as if he’s onstage. His nostrils flare with that crazed intensity she has taught him. “You can’t say that about everybody, Joey!” He snickers and drops the cup. It shatters, and he laughs even harder. I clean up the mess while Jonah keeps talking. “She’s gone insane. Off her nut. She just kept screaming, ‘Do you know what this will do to my voice?’”

He calls her repeatedly over the next few days but gets no answer. “She’s doing Così again. I’m going to go wait for her afterward.”

“Jonah. Don’t be crazy. A black guy waiting out on the street by the Met stage door? We don’t have the bail money.”

I talk him into waiting for her soiree, that intimate gathering of one hundred of her closest friends that keeps us from marching on Washington with Da and Ruth. By the time we arrive at the Verdian nightmare, things are in full swing. Lisette moves around the room in a violet strapless sheath that hangs to her by animal magic. She looks as if she’s never been touched by man. She flits from guest to guest, spreading license and joy — all but belting out the aria that will fatally break her weakened heart.

I know with one look into the room. We should never have come. We slink to the drinks table, keeping together. A black man in black-tie regalia stands behind the table. He takes our orders, all three of us avoiding eyes. Jonah’s glance keeps darting out to his walking secret, waiting for a chance to corner her. She hits a lull in her rounds, and, cutting through the room’s cocktail haze, he materializes at her side. Her hands go out to push on his chest, but I can’t read the gesture. The room is riddled with conversation on all sides: a dozen manic topics crawling over one another. But raised on counterpoint and drifting near, I pick his tenor line out of the chorus of noise.

“Are you okay?”

“Brilliant. Why do you ask?”

“Do you think you should be—”

“That’s Regina Resnik over there. Isn’t she lovely? I’m so glad she’s gone over to mezzo. It so suits her. Come with me, boy. I’ll introduce you.”

“Lisette. Stop it. I’ll kill you. I swear it.”

“Ooh. Where’d you learn all that fire?”

They lean against the wall, each aping casual. Both whisper, but even the whispers of a trained voice carry. He grips her wrist. On the wall behind Lisette hangs a photo of her as Dido, singing “When I Am Laid in Earth.” “Talk to me,” he orders.

“Relax. There’s nothing to worry about. Drink up. Enjoy yourself.”

“Lisette. You’re not going through this by yourself. I can take care of the child while you enter your prime. Then I’ll be hitting my own stride while you…”

“While I what? Say what you were going to say, little boy. While I go into my decline?”

“You’ve told me yourself: There’re no limits to the career I might have. I’m a good bet, Lisette. I can keep you comfortable.”

“You’ll protect me — is that what you’re saying? You’ll take care of me and watch out for my poor little offspring when I’m old?”

“I know you think I’m still a child. But someday, we’ll be the same age.”

“Someday you’ll be the age I am now. And you’ll hear how young you sound.”

“Marry me, Lisette. I can be a good husband. I can be a good father to this child.”

“Husband? Father?” She gags on his words.

A trio of riotous high voices approaches them, all talking at once. “What do we have here? Private lessons? Tête-à-tête? You two look like you’re about to go do something illegal.”

Lisette breezes off, turning the trio into a quartet. I cross to Jonah. “Let’s get out of here.”

His head wobbles. But he’s not ready to go yet. He stalks her through the crowded apartment, clumsy, upwind, spooking the prey every time before he can close in on her. I stand on the edge of the gathering, drowning in the general hilarity. There’s no saving him. He catches her at last, by accident, when she turns in the wrong direction. He takes her by the upper arm. “We can do this any way you want. But I told you, Lisette. I’m not leaving you to deal with this yourself.”

“And I told you, Mr. Strom. Everything’s fine. There’s no problem. Do you understand me? No problem! ”

I’m no longer the only one listening. Nearby conversations fall quiet. Lisette makes a comic show of patting Jonah’s head, to chuckles all around. Jonah does his best to grin. As soon as we can do so without disgrace, we run. He swears at her all the way home.

He wants to call her first thing the next day. I make him wait three hours, until 9:00A.M. She tells him again, over the phone: There is no problem. She has to say it a few times and ways for him to understand. No problem: no baby.