John Irving - Until I Find You

The ceiling was a mosaic of flags; on the walls, there were ribbons from sailors’ hats and life preservers from ships. There was a KEEP LEITH sign on the mirror. The barmaid explained to Jack that this was a political issue—in response to an unpopular plan to rename Leith “North Edinburgh.”

Jack declined the offered bar snacks—something called “pork scratchings” among them—and sipped a Scottish oatmeal stout.

Farther down Constitution Street was a cavernous Victorian pub called Nobles Bar; it was as empty as The Port o’ Leith had been crowded, but even with the mob from The Port o’ Leith, Nobles would have seemed empty by comparison. There were no women in the bar, and fewer than half a dozen unfortunate-looking men—squinty eyes, pasty complexions, noses of all sorts. Jack deliberated between ordering a Newcastle Brown Ale and something called Black Douglas; it didn’t really matter, since he knew he would finish neither. Jack Burns couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a bar and no one had recognized him; now, on the same night, he’d been in two.

Back at the Balmoral, Jack had a mineral water at the bar, where they were playing Bob Dylan’s “Lay, Lady, Lay.” The old song, which he’d once liked, took Jack by surprise. He’d been saying good-bye to his mother, never suspecting that nothing in Edinburgh, the city of her birth, would resurrect her—not the way Bob Dylan could bring her back to him every time.

“Are you here for the Festival, Mr. Burns?” the bartender asked.

“Actually, my mother was born here,” he told the man. “I just spent a little time in her old neighborhood, in Leith. And my sister lives here. I’m meeting her tomorrow.” Jack didn’t say, “For the first time!”

He had arranged to meet Heather the next morning in a coffee shop called Elephants and Bagels on Nicolson Square. This was less than a ten-minute walk from his hotel, and very near her office at the university. The music department offices and practice rooms were in Alison House on Nicolson Square.

Jack walked along North Bridge, over the train yards for British Rail. He passed the big glass building on Nicolson Street, the Festival Theatre, and turned right into Nicolson Square. He was early, as usual. In Elephants and Bagels, Jack sat at a table near the door and ordered a mug of coffee. An advertisement for the coffee shop said: THE BEST HANGOVER CURE IN EDINBURGH.

The walls were painted a bright yellow. There were plants in the windows, and a glass case filled with elephant figurines—carved stone, painted wood, ceramic, and porcelain elephants. A large, round support column was covered with children’s drawings—birds, trees, more elephants. The coffee shop had the educational yet whimsical atmosphere of a kindergarten classroom.

When Heather came in the shop, Jack didn’t at first see how she resembled him. She had short blond hair, like her German mother, but her brown eyes and sharp facial features were Jack’s, or William’s, and she was both lean and compact—as small and fit as a jockey. Her tortoiseshell eyeglasses were almond-shaped; she was as nearsighted as her mother had been, she explained, but she refused to wear contacts. She hated the feeling of something in her eyes. She was waiting to be a little older before trying the new laser surgery. (She told Jack all this before she sat down.)

They had shaken hands, not kissed. She ordered tea, not coffee. “You look just like him,” she said. “I mean you look less like Jack Burns than I thought you would, and more like our dad.”

“I can’t wait to see him,” he told her.

“You have to wait,” she said.

“It’s just an expression,” Jack explained. They were both nervous.

She talked about her five roommates. She was moving out soon, with one other girl. Two of her flatmates directed a nonsmoking clinic; they were vegans who believed that everything with a spiky shape attracted bad energy. Heather had started a small cactus garden in the kitchen area, but this had to go—“too many spikes.” The vegans had also beseeched the landlord to remove the weather vane from the top of the apartment building. My sister is living with lunatics! Jack was thinking.

Jack explained that he was selling his house in Santa Monica, but that he had no idea where he wanted to live.

Heather knew he was registered at the Balmoral as Harry Mocco; she wondered why. Jack wanted to know what she taught at the university. (She taught five courses—historical and theoretical music classes, mostly to beginners, and keyboard skills.)

“Our department is all old men!” Heather said good-naturedly.

Jack thought that his sister was a pretty girl with glasses; she had an air of academic aloofness or detachment about her. She wore little or no makeup, but an attractive linen skirt with a fitted T-shirt and sensible-looking walking shoes.

Jack asked to see where she worked and where she lived. Heather moved her fingers all the while they were walking, as if she were unconsciously playing a piano or an organ.

The music practice rooms in the basement of Alison House were like prison cells. They were small cubicles, poorly ventilated; the walls were a dirty, pea-soup green, and the floors were a hideous orange linoleum. The lighting, which was adequate, was of a fluorescent variety that Heather said was bad for your sanity.

Jack thought that the word sanity might lead them into a conversation about their dad, but Jack and Heather were experiencing the equivalent of a first date. (They needed to get through an unbearable amount of trivia before the more serious subjects could emerge.)

The lecture room in Alison House was more pleasant than the practice rooms. The large windows let in lots of natural light, although the view was a limited one—of an old stone building. There were two pianos and a small organ in the room, but when Jack asked Heather to play something for him, she just shook her head and directed him to a narrow, twisting staircase, which led to her office. Jack got the feeling that she wanted him to go ahead of her, up the stairs.

“Can we talk about him?” he asked her. “Maybe we could begin with the arthritis, if that’s an easy part to talk about.”

She stared at the blue carpet on her office floor, her fingers seemingly searching for the right keys on a keyboard only she could see; she plucked at her skirt. The cream-colored walls had a spackled, unsmooth finish. There were two desks—the larger one with a computer on it, the smaller with a German dictionary. The stereo equipment was probably worth more than everything else in the office, including the small piano; there were more CDs than books on the bookshelves, and a bulletin board with a sepia photograph of Brahms tacked to it. There was also a postcard pinned to the bulletin board—a color photo of a very old-looking pianoforte, the kind of thing you’d find in a museum of musical history. A friend might have sent her the postcard—her Irish boyfriend, perhaps—or maybe William had sent it to her, if William was capable of sending a postcard.

“I want to get to know you a little at a time,” Heather said, still staring at the rug. She had Jack’s thin lips; her upper lip was a small, straight line.

“It’s a tight space, but nice,” Jack said, meaning her office.

“I don’t need more space—I need more time,” she told him. “The summer is good—no teaching, and I can get a lot of research done. In the school year, Easter is about the only time I have to do my writing.”

Jack nodded, glancing at the photo of Brahms—as if Brahms had understood what Heather meant. (Jack hadn’t a clue.)

Heather turned out the lights in her office. “You go first,” she said, before they started down the stairs. Maybe she found it easier to talk when he couldn’t look at her. “Daddy hides his hands, or he wears gloves, because of the deformities. The disfiguration of osteoarthritic joints is quite noticeable—not just a gnarling of the knuckles but actual bumps. They’re called Heberden’s nodes.”