John Irving - Until I Find You

There was nothing complaining about Heather’s mother’s expressions in any of the photographs, nor could you tell that she’d once had a wonderful singing voice. There was something overposed about her—especially in the photos when she was wearing a wig—and then she simply disappeared without a trace. Jack turned a page in the album and Barbara Steiner was gone. He knew exactly when he had passed the moment of her death; all the photographs from that point forward were of Heather and her dad, just the two of them, or one or the other alone.

There had been concert brochures attached to the earlier pages, but from the time Heather appeared to be twelve or thirteen, there had been no more concerts for William Burns.

Jack recognized the interior of the Central Bar, where—in addition to Heather playing her wooden flute—there were photos of William playing a piano-type instrument, both alone and with his daughter accompanying him on her flute. It was some kind of electric keyboard—a synthesizer, Jack thought it was called—and from the look on William’s and Heather’s faces, Jack doubted they were playing anything classical.

Jack knew why his father appeared to be overdressed in many of the photos—that is, too warmly dressed for the season. (William often felt cold, except when he was skiing.) But even in those summer-vacation snapshots, when William was on a beach in a bathing suit, his tattoos were not very clear or distinguishable from one another. Music, when it’s too small to see in detail, looks like handwriting—especially to someone like Jack, who couldn’t read music.

Jack was ashamed he’d told Claudia that he never wanted children—“not till the day I discover that my dad has been a loving father to a child, or children, he didn’t leave,” was how he’d put it to her.

Well, Jack held the evidence of that in his lap—Heather’s photo album was a record of her love for their dad and William’s love for her. Jack had finished the album, and had composed himself sufficiently to be making his way through the pictures a second time, when Heather came back to her room with the tea. She sat down beside him on the bed.

“There are some places where you removed photos, or they fell out of the album by themselves,” he said to her.

“Old boyfriends. I removed them,” she said.

Jack hadn’t seen anyone who could have been the Irish boyfriend; he got the impression that the boyfriend was clearly less than the love of her life, but he didn’t ask.

He turned to the photos of Heather and William Burns playing their instruments at the Central. “I went there yesterday, to have a look at where you play your flute,” he said.

“I know. A friend saw you. How come you didn’t ask me to go with you?”

“I was looking around Leith, mostly at places I remembered hearing about from my mother,” Jack explained.

He turned to the end pages of the album, where their father was wearing gloves. “What’s wrong with him?” Jack asked. “I mean the mental part, not the arthritis.”

Heather tilted her head; it rested on Jack’s shoulder. He held her hand in one hand, his teacup in the other. The album lay open on his lap, with the man who looked so much like Heather and Jack looking up at them. “I want you to hear the Father Willis in Old St. Paul’s,” Heather said. “I want to play something for you, just to prepare you.”

They went on sitting together; Jack sipped his tea. With her head on his shoulder, it would have been awkward for Heather to sip hers. “Don’t you want to drink your tea?” he asked.

“I want to do exactly what I’m doing,” Heather told him. “I want to never take my head off your shoulder. I want to hug you and kiss you—and beat you with both fists, in your face. I want to tell you every bad thing that ever happened to me—especially those things I wish I could have talked to you about, when they happened. I want to describe every boyfriend you might have saved me from.”

“You can do all of that,” Jack told her.

“I’ll just do this, for now,” she said. “You want everything to happen too fast.”

“What is he obsessive-compulsive about ?” Jack asked.

She squeezed his hand and shook her head against his shoulder. She’d had to sell the flat William had lived in—where she’d grown up, in Marchmont. “It’s a big student area, but some lecturers live there, too,” Heather said. It would have been perfect if she could have stayed there, but she’d had to sell the flat and find a less expensive place.

“To pay for the sanatorium?” he asked. Heather nodded her head against him. Most of her things, and all of William’s, were in storage. “Why don’t I buy you a flat of your own?” Jack said.

She took her head off his shoulder and looked at him. “You can’t buy me,” she said. “Well, actually, I suppose you can. But it wouldn’t be right. I don’t want you to do everything for me—just help me with him. ”

“I will, but you haven’t told me what to do,” he said.

She sipped her tea. She’d not let go of his hand, which she pulled into her lap and examined more closely. “You have his small hands, but his fingers are longer. You don’t have an organist’s hands,” she said. She held up her fingers to Jack’s, palm to palm; hers were longer. “Every inch of his body is tattooed,” she began, still looking at their hands pressed together. “Even the tops of his feet, even his toes.”

“Even his hands ?” Jack asked.

“No, not his hands, not his face or neck, and not his penis,” she said.

“You’ve seen his penis, or did he tell you it wasn’t tattooed?” Jack asked her.

“You’d be surprised how many people have seen Daddy’s penis,” Heather said, smiling. “I’m sure you’ll get to see it, too—it’s bound to happen.”

She had put together a smaller photo album for Jack; it was about the size of a paperback novel, with some of the same photos from the larger album or slightly different angles of those moments in time. The smaller album had no pictures of her mother—only of Heather and William. Jack and Heather sat looking at the pictures, drinking their tea.

“I could learn to ski,” Jack said. “Then we could all ski together.”

“Then you could ski with me, Jack. Daddy’s skiing days are over.”

“He can’t ski anymore?”

“The first thing you’ll think when you see him is that there’s nothing wrong with him—that he’s just a little eccentric, or something,” his sister said. She took off her glasses and put her face so close to Jack’s that their noses touched. “Without my glasses, I have to be this close to you to see you clearly,” Heather said. She pulled slowly back from him, but only about six or eight inches. “I lose you about here,” she said, putting her glasses back on. “Well, when you meet him, he’ll make you believe that you could take him to Los Angeles—where you would have a great time together. You’ll think I’m cruel or stupid for sending him away, but he needs to be taken care of and they know how to do it. Don’t think you can take care of him. If I can’t take care of him—and I can’t— you can’t take care of him, either. You may not think so at first, but he’s where he belongs.”

“Okay,” Jack said. He took her glasses off and put his face close to hers, their noses touching. “Keep looking at me,” he told her. “I believe you.”

“I’ve seen close-ups of you half my life,” she said, smiling.

“I can’t look at you enough, Heather.”

She ran her hand through her hair, wiping her lips with the back of her other hand. Jack recognized the gesture. It was the way he’d removed his wig and wiped the mauve lip gloss off his lips with the back of his ski glove in My Last Hitchhiker. In a near-perfect imitation of Jack’s voice, Heather said: “You probably thought I was a girl, right?”