William Gass - Middle C

Next he worked on deepening the thrum as Beethoven darkened it — there was pedal — damn — there was pedal — but he couldn’t get the treble to go where he wanted it to go. That first dum was in a sense never the first dum again. Rather it was an end, so the music repeated, not its departure, but its return, again and again —doh dee dum —as if a series of numbers that began 1 23 became 1 231 231 231 … eventually 312 312 312 … then 1 23 once more. It was all so simply managed yet not with the same sort of simplicity that governed “Indian Love Call” or “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” And while working, Joey lost the music’s mood, felt it leave him, because his perch in such a beautiful space was so precarious. The line of consciousness that the treble drew … he couldn’t continue to make it his.

Joey realized that he was sitting at his fourth piano. His first was the now dimly remembered wreck sitting in a London street; plaster dust had silted between both blacks and whites and was so completely and so tightly packed there that each key was highlighted and none of them moved. The second was Mr. Hirk’s beloved relic with its bench filled with tattered scores; the third the dime-store castoff in the grade school gym; and the fourth the decently tuned instrument he had just fingered, betraying Beethoven in a manufactured moonlight.

Joey struck the three notes and let them resonate in the room. The street through the window was fading from view because High Street in the early fall began twilight early. Just three notes and all the dimensions, most of the elements, some of the dynamics, the shadings, of the musical world were there. Of course he knew where these three notes belonged in the rest of the piece, yet, after all, they were an announcement. At the opening of the sonata, these tones were what there was, and nothing else was … nothing else was; though soon, Joey heard, they were gone … instead of being there, they were gone … immediately … in an instant they were gone; and nothing else could have been in the place they made but them … those three … just them; they were the entire past; and if they came again, they came at a different time, took up a different part of musical space; and if they appeared at another time and space, they were like an actor in another role, a cherry melting in a pie and not atop a sundae, a person in another country.

When the light flew in, the wire racks were the first to glint. Some shiny covers that had been left exposed, or the glass in a case, would vaguely shimmer. Tomorrow, there’d be a replay. The same cellophane packet, counter corner, polished knob would ping as it had pinged night after night before. Nothing could be more fragile or unlikely than the arrangement they composed. A spot upon the floor, the bell above the antique phone, a pin sticking from an announcement board, would have unexpected presence. Somehow it stood for, and sounded, his sadness — this constellation of stars.

It is I, Joey thought, who should become a castle. It is I who should be careful. It is Caz who should be called Skizz.

Joey tossed the few things he kept at work in a handled paper sack: umbrella, comb, fistful of small change for the pay phone, handkerchief (on this occasion found to have been already soiled and consequently wadded in a drawer), lip balm his mother had insisted on, nail clippers, the stained cracked coffee mug he had rescued from the store trash and scrubbed into continued use because it had a bold black clef on it, several plastic packets of catsup but only one of mustard — he was careful to erase every mark he’d made; he’d have collected his breathing, too, if that had been possible — and a whalebone toothpick for when he’d eaten enough meat to leave some in his teeth, plus a matchbook from the Rodeo Roadhouse, a bar out of town he hadn’t been to (as if he’d been to any), but treasured for daydream reasons; and by these meticulous attentions removed and disposed of all traces of himself before he locked the door and left, listening to his footsteps in the alley and feeling that everything he had on his person was stolen; though he did wish, while regretting the loss of “Moonlight,” he had the Lipatti beneath his shirt.

Miriam was distraught, weeping on Joey’s account and furious with him, because the police had come to the house — were there in fact waiting when she got home from work — stern and full of questions about her son. With a list that appeared to be long if not complete they went poking about the house, peering in Joey’s closet with a flash, and even rummaging in his room, although with considerable caution. Miriam was in ignorance of her rights and fairly terrified by authority, so she fell back from the door as if pushed when they showed her who they were, told her why they were there, and explained to her what they desired.

How many? Joey finally had to shout. How many …? how many? Well, two, it turned out, in what looked like a pickup truck. Uniformed? Uniformed? Well, one had a star on his coat lapel.

The pair were particularly surprised that the family had no TV and no record player, but took no notice of the little radio. They did inquire about instruments, however. Autoharp? Guitar? Miriam was confused beyond redemption. As the men prowled the house without flushing any game, she quit keening and began to pay attention to what was going on, resolving to come to Joey’s defense; and when they left without results, she was positively triumphant. The police went away without apology, and this reinfuriated her. By the time Joey had walked home, having stayed late yet another evening in his manufactured moonlight, her anger had become formal, more hurtful, righteous. Belatedly, Miriam realized that this official visitation meant Joey’s job. Now she knew whom to blame, and she did so, nearly spitting, reverting to Austrian. Joey heard his damnation in her words the way he had heard it in Mr. Kazan’s, though he understood nothing in that case, as he did little of his present accusation — at least at first, for Nita went on and on, knotting her skirt and bringing it to her nose, repeating — though she would have been revolted at the word — her kvetch.

Nita had been borne away from her birthplace — her sweet green hillside farm — exposed to bombing, fire, the charity of strangers, and left like an orphan amid enemy ruins. Her name and nature had been taken from her, too, and after that she was further betrayed, left with children to feed and house and scold, with nowhere to go but America, cut off forever from her homeland by the sea, and subsequently by miles of dinky forests and wimpy mountains. Then just as it seemed they might be at peace in this no-account nowhere town, with Deborah happy and married and fitting in like you wouldn’t believe, and just when a few friends had been made, and a little money was coming in, he, her son, Joseph Skizzen, had brought the police to their little home — he — Joseph Skizzen, so soon like his father, a petty thief, a stealer, a gambler, a liar, an ungrateful no-account moony wretch — had heaped their house high and hidden it beneath disgrace, so, she, Miriam, would have no more friends, could count the trials of her life as having accomplished less than nothing, and now would be compelled to subtract this cruel boy’s wage from what little they had to live on, and face winter without hope or happiness or funds, hence to live on ingratitude as well as she could, since that was all there seemed to be an abundance of. She spoke as an outraged victim to a judge, not facing her son, rather addressing the world or some god who had been brought in to preside at the catastrophe. Joey could only stand there: mute, helpless, enraged on his own behalf, ashamed, a destitute.

In the months that followed, Joey was able to convince his mother that he was not a rascal; moreover, the family’s disgrace was nowhere rumored, let alone known. Caz disappeared like a case of hives. Life went on, in its quiet way, as before. Better yet, Joseph had been accepted as a student by a small Christian college nearby with the proviso that he serve as organist, which, while it did not add any income, gave him a mouse hole to live in and a redemptive occupation. It was better than bagging groceries, Nita agreed, or repairing roller skates or selling noise to adolescents. Joseph pretended to be reforming and toning the instrument while he was learning to play it, and now had a piano at his disposal as well. The choir claimed him as an alto, so he sang from his seat, in the middle of the music. Miriam could not believe their good fortune, though unknown to her, on his application, Joseph had rather upgraded his scholarly performance and his musical skills. The Augsburg Community College liked the name Skizzen and somehow understood it to be Lutheran. He’d catch a ride home now and then with a student who commuted from town, so Miriam didn’t feel as lonely as she expected to be; although she had hoped for his good riddance often enough to be surprised that she dreaded it.