Joyce Oates - The Gravedigger’s Daughter

She tried to speak calmly. It was not Hazel Jones’s style to become emotional in response to others’ emotions.

“Honey, it’s none of your business. What passes between Mr. Gallagher and me is none of your business, you’re just a child.”

Now Zack was truly furious. Shouted outrageously he was not a child, he was not a damn stupid child he was not .

He pushed out of her arms and ran from her, trembling. He did not strike her with his fists but pushed from her as if he hated her, slammed into his room and shut the door against her as she stared after him dazed and shaken.

The tantrum passed. Zack emerged from his room and went at once to the piano. Already that day he’d practiced for two hours. Now he would play and replay his lesson for Mr. Zimmerman, then reward himself (Hazel supposed this was the logic, a bargain) with random playing, more advanced compositions in his John Thomson’s Modern Course for the Piano book or jazz/boogie-woogie Chet Gallagher style.

Hazel teased him: “Play ”Savin‘ All My Love For You.“”

Maybe. Maybe he would.

Hazel took comfort, hearing her son at the piano. Preparing dinner for the two of them. Even when Zack played loudly or carelessly or repeated sequences of notes compulsively as if to punish both himself and her she thought We are in the right place in all the world, Hazel Jones has brought us here .

“When you sell music, you are selling beauty.”

Never had Hazel Jones been so proud of any work of hers. Never so smiling, exalted. Light flashed from her young face like a shard of sunlight reflected in a mirror. Her eyes blinked rapidly overcome by the moisture of gratitude, disbelief.

Zimmerman Brothers Piano & Music Supply was an old Watertown establishment, housed in a shabbily elegant brownstone on South Main Street in a part-residential, part-commercial neighborhood of distinguished old apartment buildings and small shops. The first thing you saw, approaching Zimmerman’s, was the graceful bay window in which a Steinway grand piano was on permanent display. At dusk, and on dreary winter days, the bay window was lighted. The piano shone.

Hazel stopped to stare. The piano was so beautiful, she was left feeling weak, shaken. The thought came to her Not a one of them can follow you here .

From Milburn, she meant. That life. Soon she would be twenty-seven years old, the gravedigger’s daughter who had been meant to die at thirteen.

What a joke, her life! That good, decent, kindly man Gallagher believed he loved her, who had not the slightest knowledge of her.

She felt a pang of guilt, for deceiving him. But how much more powerfully, a strange giddy pleasure.

In the early morning especially, when she walked to the music store hearing her high heels strike the sidewalk in brisk Hazel Jones staccato, she found herself thinking of the stone house in the cemetery. Her brothers Herschel, August. How old would they be now, if they were living: Herschel in his mid-thirties, August nearly as old. She wondered if she would know them. If they would now recognize her in Hazel Jones.

They would be proud of her, she believed. Both her brothers had liked her. They would wish her well-wouldn’t they? Herschel would shake his head, disbelieving. But he would be happy for Hazel Jones, she knew.

And there were the adult Schwarts.

Jacob Schwart would be damned impressed with Zimmerman’s. The very look of the brownstone, the store. And it was a large store, with parquet floors in the piano display room, and piped-in classical music. Though Jacob Schwart despised Germans. As he despised the well-to-do. Never could Jacob Schwart resist mocking, belittling any accomplishment of his daughter.

You are ignorant now . You know nothing of this hellhole the world .

Hazel Jones did know. But no one in Watertown would guess Hazel Jones’s knowledge.

Anna Schwart would be proud of her! Working in a store that sold pianos!

Though Hazel Jones, like the other female salesclerks, was not entrusted with piano sales: that was the province of Edgar Zimmerman.

Hazel sold music instruction books, sheet music, classical records. Such musical instruments as guitars, ukeleles. Zimmerman Brothers was a major outlet for ticket sales for local concerts, recitals, musical performances of all kinds and these tickets Hazel proudly sold as well. Sometimes, she was given two free tickets to these events, and she and Zack went together.

“A new life, Zack. We have begun our new life.”

In honor of this new life Hazel often wore white gloves arriving at Zimmerman’s. In emulation of President Kennedy’s glamorous socialite wife she sometimes wore a black pillbox hat with a gossamer veil. Gloves and hat she removed when she arrived at the store. Of course she wore high-heeled shoes and nylon stockings without a run and always she was perfectly groomed as a young woman in an advertisement. Her hair was now a deep chestnut color, so clean and fiercely brushed it crackled with static electricity, worn shoulder-length with bangs across her forehead.

There were fine white scars at her hairline, hidden beneath the bangs. No one but her son had ever seen. And very likely, her son had forgotten.

At Zimmerman’s, there were two other female employees: middle-aged, busty Madge and Evelyn. Madge was a receptionist for Edgar Zimmerman who ran the store, and something of an accountant. Evelyn was a salesclerk specializing in lesson books and sheet music, known to every public school music teacher in the county. Both Madge and Evelyn wore shapeless dark dresses, often with cardigan sweaters draped over their shoulders. They were rather short women, hardly more than five feet tall. By contrast, Hazel Jones was a tall, striking young woman who wore only clothes that fitted her figure to advantage. She had not many clothes but understood shrewdly how to vary her “outfits”: a long pleated black wool skirt with a matching bolero top, embroidered in red rosebuds; a long gray flannel skirt with a kick pleat in back, waist cinched in by a black elastic belt; fussily feminine “translucent” blouses; crocheted sweaters with tiny jewels or pearls; tight-fitting dresses made of shiny fabrics. Behind her glass-topped counter Hazel sometimes resembled a Christmas ornament, all glittering innocence. Her employer Edgar Zimmerman was bemused to note how when a customer entered the store, if that customer was male, he would glance quickly at Evelyn, at Madge if she was out on the floor, and at Hazel, and make his way without hesitation to Hazel who stood pert and smiling in expectation.

“Hello, sir! May I be of assistance?”

Sometimes, Hazel was observed behind her counter in a posture of sudden unease. As if she’d heard someone calling her name at a distance or had glimpsed, through the store window, a passing figure that alarmed her. “Hazel? Is something wrong?” Edgar Zimmerman might ask, if he didn’t feel he was being intrusive at that moment; but Hazel Jones would immediately wake from her trance to assure him, smilingly, “Oh no! Nothing at all, Mr. Zimmerman. ”A goose walked over my grave‘-I guess.“

The remark was so silly, so senseless, Edgar Zimmerman exploded into laughter.

So funny! Hazel Jones had that rare gift, to make an aging melancholy-at-heart gentleman laugh like an adolescent boy.

Only Edgar Zimmerman sold pianos. Edgar Zimmerman’s life was pianos. (His more distinguished brother Hans was not involved in sales. Hans disdained “finances.” He appeared in the store only to give piano instructions to selected students.) Yet Hazel Jones was often in the piano showroom, eager to dust, polish, buff the beautiful gleaming pianos. She came to love the distinctive smell of the special brand of lemon polish favored by the Zimmermans, an expensive German import sold in the store. She came to love the smell of real ivory. Zimmerman Brothers had even acquired an antique harpsichord, a small exquisite instrument made of cherrywood inlaid with gilt and mother-of-pearl, which Hazel particularly admired. It may have been that Edgar Zimmerman, widower, a short dapper man with gray bushy hair in sporadic clumps and a spiky goatee which his fingers compulsively stroked, was flattered by his youngest employee’s enthusiasm for her work for often he was seen talking animatedly with her in the showroom; often, he would seek out Hazel Jones, and neither Madge nor Evelyn, to assist him in making a sale.