William Gass - Middle C

Hazel sat inside her blouse. Her leaves were of the stillness one sees before storms.

Smullion was from science. He merely smiled.

And Skizzen made every elation wait till, out on the quad, he let his relief expire the way a champagne fizzes some delighted skips ahead of its wine.

Joey’s joy swept him up, bore him home, returned him to the nursery … the nursery he might have longed to have if he’d ever had one … A line that lived in the nursery—“Here we go round the mulberry bush”—took up an orbit about his thoughts as tunes do, penning them in the way he wanted his students to corral names for memory purposes. Mussorgsky! Ravel! Koussevitzky! But Joey had had his struggle with an obsessive sentence, and he didn’t want another tussle. He determined to play a few good old stompers, and that way drive the nonsensical strain out of hearing. He rushed about the house hunting for the place he had put Songs That Never Grow Old so he could claim the area as his territory, the way space was staked when he and Miriam, awed by the vast emptiness of the house, began playing the territorial game. He found the book resting tableside a single bed in what must have been a servant’s quarter. Then he thought: would a farmer, retiring from the fields to a tiny town, have servants? Weren’t they an urban vice? In any case, why had he wanted to mark this spot? What did former occupants store up here? If this was to be a gold claim, it looked a washout. When he gave its back a negligent push, an awkward rocker, which had come with the house, squeaked like a frightened mouse. Ah-ha. Miriam was contesting him. He saw, on a windowsill, utterly out of place, an empty clay pot sitting in sundust. “The further into the self I go, the less and less of the self I know.” What was that from?

“Never grow too old to dream …” Joey seldom sang, but his voice sounded loud and harsh in this unpleasant room. There were no panels of animal-covered paper on the walls — leaping eagles or soaring deer — no sheep, chalets, no interlacing ivy, to entice anyone to hum an old favorite or prance to a frolicsome “here-we-go” romparound. He would remove his book and cede the territory. The dining room with its many wide windows was the real nursery in the house, and there Miriam tolerated ogling only if it was directed at the plants. Large cookie-deep trays of moist peat covered in Cling-Along crowded up against the windowpanes and soon made their own atmosphere, droplets clinging to the inside of the wrap the way water is drawn to plastic. At first the soil refused to stir. He could never catch a thrusting spear. One morning, the seedlings would suddenly appear, thin-stemmed, tiny, pale green against the dark dirt, a nub of leaf beginning, imperceptibly, to unfold. His fingers were too fat to work the rows. Miriam would warn him every time that these seeds had been scattered, not planted in lines; which left each barren patch still a possibility or an empty chamber. Chance was Lord. Why was that spot unwelcoming, Joey would ask. Wait and see … delicately … it may come … wait and see. Maybe a blade will be drawn. Who knows about those fickle primula …? A few more pushes, as the nurses always say, and perhaps we can persuade a nasturtium stem to show. But don’t play lullabies for these babies. They get no sleep. They have to come up for air. They have to leave their sheath. For them this dirt is deep.

As he raised the book toward eyes that now needed a little help, it came open upon a piano score for “Good-Night, Ladies.” From that opening a scrap of paper slid its yellowing self onto the tight coverlet. Upon this single leaf was carefully inked what appeared to be a poem. Joey felt an immediate pang of recognition. He immediately denied it. He had not written these verses, nor, out of embarrassment or shyness, stuffed them away in this harmless old compendium … had he? He had never rested his eyes upon such a neat and centered sheet. Of course, in the past, he had picked about in this ancient volume like a hungry bird, without care or method, only curiosity and need. Then he wanted to know where Miss Gwynne Withers’s recital choices were. The book classified its contents for easier use under headings like HOME SONGS, LOVE SONGS, HYMNS AND SACRED SONGS. “Good-Night, Ladies” was called a College Song. Which meant it went with beer. On the folded paper, already turning color at the crease, there was a college song indeed, to be sung to the tune of “This is the way we wash our clothes …” It was titled “The Faculty Meeting.”

Admittedly, something about the paper was familiar. But the lines were too orderly for Skizzen unless he was copying a final draft onto a clean sheet. The paper was a bit brittle. Cheap. He did borrow the school’s stock. But only occasionally. The Major had warned him how readers left all sorts of things between the pages of their books. She said: Shake them. Hold them upside down and shake. A toothpick may fall out. This book, though, had an already shaken spine. Had someone hid a message or simply marked a place with whatever was handy?

How totally appropriate to this blissful moment its title was, Joey thought, still breathing heavily from his search, and from his hurry home. My God, he still had his position, his house, his good name and station. At least, Professor Joseph Skizzen did. Just as it had seemed about to be taken from him, and Miriam’s garden wrenched from her while she held it to her breast like a grandchild. How cruel that would have been on top of everything else: a loss of face, of future, of income, then of one’s beautiful creation. O but he had pulled it off. Old fat Hursthorse may have been caught and possibly hung out to dry, who knew what Palfrey had in mind; but he, Professor Joey Joseph Skizzen, the pianist, composer, scholar, teacher, had prevailed. O now he would stride the length of his classroom like the head of a marching band, and he would teach these kids a musical thing or two. He might let on about his true thoughts, as well, if he could get clear what they were, he’d been so long in his roles, his postures in the world.

He’d have to keep his guard up, maintain the caution appropriate to an animal in the wild, no doubt about that, but every moment he lived now he cemented his presence to this agreeable place: he fastened his figure to an airmail stamp. What did these lines say?

“This is the way …”

He didn’t want collegiate rowdy, he wanted home sweet home; he wanted drink to me only with thine eyes; he wanted red sails in the sunset, which wasn’t in the book. He wanted no hymns either though the book was full of them. God was always getting the applause. A show of hands for Joey the music professor! Then something odd occurred to him: the makeup of that committee was strange. Where, in an ethics investigation, was the parson, the Sunday sawyer who hung on Palfrey’s every non sequitur, a yea verily man if ever there was one? He’d appoint no lawyer, Palfrey wouldn’t want to take a chance on someone in town. Those people blabbed as regularly as the chapel’s bells. Joey began to dance, something he called “twist that torso.” Or: the President Palfrey waltz.

This is the way … this is the way we way we … flop our mops … blow our tops … learn the ropes … tell old jokes …

Miss Moss warned him not to read what he had found. The Major urged him on. Go ahead. I dare you. But it must be out loud. Miss Spiky laughed at him but her bear turned his head away in shame. Why in the world … all that love for a tubby little bear … why? He had not needed to give up his seat on the bus. There were plenty of seats. She — Hazel — had chosen to sit beside him … all of her — heavy arms and heavy hips. The road was slowly filling with snow.