A Gay and Melancholy Sound (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) Read online

  Mother’s pregnancy must have been—well, hectic. I once heard her lecture on how she’d managed to give birth to a prodigy. Only one sentence remains in my mind. She said, “During the entire pregnancy I forced myself to think only the largest and most noble thoughts, and I ate a great deal of cottage cheese.”

  I would question the size and the quality of her thoughts.

  Cottage cheese? Very probably. Mother was a food faddist. She went through the vitamins from A to Z and back again; she studied protein charts and I remember at one time she was convinced that a steak sandwich for breakfast would prevent cancer.

  Wheat germ, black-strap molasses, yoghurt, we had them all long before people started making fortunes out of such nonsense.

  Mother always felt she was ahead of her time, and maybe she was.

  Once she went through a raw-fish period, and so did I, and so did Petrarch Pavan, to whom she was then married. My mother shared her enthusiasms.

  “Raw fish are the original brain food,” she announced. “This fact is well known throughout the Far East. How else can you explain Mahatma Gandhi?”

  She had you there. How else could you?

  During her pregnancy mother listened to classical records almost constantly. She played the piano, and she sang; Main Street was constantly at her side, and she may even have looked into a few other books. Mother was not much of a reader; she pecked at books, misunderstanding, mislabeling, and misremembering what little she did read; the rest she let lay. Nevertheless when literature was being discussed—which wasn’t often where I was born and raised—mother always more than held up her end of the conversation.

  Mother was not only an active Artsy-Craftsy girl; she was also the biggest thing that ever came along in the New Athens Eastern Star. Naturally, she called both groups in to assist with the delivery of Jessica.

  I don’t know exactly what the girls in the Star had in mind for when Jessica was delivered, but I believe (Aunt Mettabel again) the sisters intended to march into Mummy’s bedroom as soon as was practicable thereafter, waving their arms. The Star sisters are always marching around, and they wave their arms about like so many semaphorists.

  The frumps in the Artsy-Craftsy Club were planning to serenade Jessica’s arrival. The songs they had in mind were “Joy to the World” and “Jingle Bells.” You see, Jessica was scheduled for December 24. Mother had overlooked nothing.

  Millicent Fairchild, who was New Athens’ Own World Renowned and Chatauqua-Celebrated Elocutionist, was going to recite “The Night Before Christmas.” If pushed, and the slightest shove would do, Millicent would probably also have run through “Over the Hills to the Poorhouse,” which she had declaimed from the Chatauqua platform one thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven times.

  Finally, the Star drill team was going to spell out Jessica’s name.

  Poor Jessica. She never knew what she missed.

  You see, what happened was this. Jessica didn’t show. I did, and I further complicated matters by not arriving on December 24 but on October 19, with no warning.

  A line in a play in the Thirties went something like, “Oh, ye bright, ironic gods, laugh on. Laugh on.” I never thought I’d be able to work that thought into a sentence, but it seems to fit perfectly here.

  Laugh on, damn you; laugh on.

  I was a seven months’ baby, small, incomplete, and on arrival surrounded by hostility, a condition I have managed to keep going ever since.

  There were no baby clothes, only a pink blanket in which to wrap me, an early gift from a sister Rebekah. Yes, mother was a Rebekah, too.

  There was no time to summon the marchers, the singers, or Millicent, so the entertainment to greet Jessica’s arrival had to be hurriedly improvised. On mother’s orders, a Victrola in the next room was playing Schubert’s Serenade. Mother had said, “No matter what, I want the sound of great music to be the first to reach her ears, and Schubert’s Serenade is a song that will live forever.”

  I am positive that the first sounds to reach my ears were those of my own displeasure and resentment at being yanked, unready and unwilling, into a world I not only had never made but wanted no part of.

  I can picture the scene. You’ll have to take my word for it that I can.

  Old Doctor Llewellyn must have said, “It’s a boy, Mrs. Bland.”

  If I am any judge of my mother, and I most certainly am, she said, “A boy! Impossible!”

  Old Doctor Llewellyn must then have said, “No, indeedy. A bouncing baby boy.” All of his babies bounced.

  “But I insist on a girl,” mother said. “I’ve planned on a girl. I don’t want a boy. I don’t like boys.”

  “Goochy-goochy-goo,” said Llewellyn, wagging a finger under my nose. “Handsome baby. Four pounds, thirteen ounces.”

  “But I’ve already told everybody it’s going to be a girl,” said mother.

  She may even have asked Dr. Lewellyn to send me back. She was always sending something back. “It’s inferior merchandise,” she would say. “Don’t try to palm your inferior merchandise off on me.”

  In my case, she must finally have recognized that the merchandise, inferior or not, was her own, and she may have wrinkled her nose at me. She often wrinkled her nose at what displeased her, and she often sighed and said, “Well, I guess I’ll just have to make do.”

  She never did make do, though. She didn’t know how.

  After inspecting me critically, mother announced to my father, who was standing nearby, “It takes after you, Kendall. Go turn up the Victrola.”

  She may have hummed. She often hummed when she was upset.

  Finally, using another of her favorite sentences, she may have said, “Well, nothing has ever non-pulsed me, and Joshua isn’t going to either.”

  I spent several days after that in something that predated the incubator; it was called a “warming box.” Of that I, of course, remember nothing, but I do know this. If I’d had any sense, I’d never have left it.

  (7) An interruption

  Louella came in while I was dictating what I’m pretty sure happened when I was served forth.

  This being a Saturday, she didn’t get here until one. She is now fixing my lunch.

  When I finished dictating the above, I stood for a while by the glass wall, looking into the cool green pines, looking left to avoid the sight of that neat pile of needles.

  Here and there were slivers of bright August sunlight. The air was cool and clear, and for a short time I had a feeling of well-being; for a moment I wished I could hold back time. “Keep it always now,” Charley used to say.

  Then I heard Louella’s voice, warning me that she was on her way here.

  “Jesus loves me; this I know. For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him will come…”

  Those people all have a wonderful sense of rhythm, haven’t they?

  I ate the eggs, the ham, and the toast, and I glanced through the newspapers Louella had brought me from the village.

  Not a word about Charley in Las Vegas, not even in The News.

  Louella returned and asked if I wanted more coffee, and I said I didn’t. She looked at me suspiciously, disapprovingly. Then she lowered her small, turtle-like head.

  “Mr. Bland,” she said. “The missus’ picture has been stole.”

  “No, it hasn’t,” I said. “I took it down.”

  After digesting this, Louella said, “You want me to put it away some place?”

  “No, thank you, Louella. I’ve taken care of it.”

  “You sure it’s some place it won’t get all moldy? You remember what happened with all those books that was downstairs last summer?”

  I said that I was sure and that I remembered. I have put the frame of Charley’s portrait in the closet over there.

  Louella gave me a baleful glance, picked up the lunch tray, and left. I assume she has already started looking for the portrait, but that will take her some time. In addition to the glass and the brick, this house consists almost entirely of built-in cabinets and cupboards and drawers. It will take hours for Louella to go through them all. And, finally, she will have to conclude that the portrait is in one of the locked closets in this room.

  Louella has many times hopefully asked if I don’t want her to clean those closets, and I have an equal number of times told her thank you, no.

  “Must be at least two feet a dust in there,” Louella has said. “Easy two feet.”

  “Easy,” I have said.

  Lloyd Barlow, who is paid by us taxpayers to deliver the mail to those of us who live on Old South Friendly Road, has just roared up my driveway, scattering gravel on at least six of the Dexter hybrids.

  Lloyd looks to see if anyone is watching. I am, but I am behind the Japanese screen.

  Lloyd holds each of my letters up to the sun. He is now reading a postcard. He is a lip reader.

  Having finished his labored look at my mail, Lloyd opened the door of the station wagon with an acned hand. He brought a special delivery letter to the house, and Louella signed for it.

  Lloyd has now gone back to the station wagon, and he is relaxing for a moment, picking his nose.

  Lloyd is a June graduate of our local high school, an institution which is without any frills whatsoever and also without much education. However, we were able to afford new uniforms for the football team last fall. All we had to do was cut the library appropriation ever so slightly.

  Lloyd is hard of hearing, and he wears one of those very visible invisible hearing aids. Frank Lovelace, a boy who mows my lawn and pulls a few weeds when he can think of nothing less tiring to do, says that Lloyd was known in Sloane’s Station High School as The Ear. Lloyd informed on the pupils to the teachers, on the teachers to the principal, and on the principal to his father, who is chairman of the Grand Old Party in this county as well as president of our budget-minded school board. Richard Barlow and his entire slate of candidates were elected because of their sensible, thought-provoking campaign slogan, “Balance the Budget and Education in Sloane’s Station Will Balance Itself.”

  Lloyd has stopped picking his nose. Lloyd is now scratching himself furtively.

  Nature’s endowments to Lloyd Barlow are meager, but I see no reason to doubt that he has all the important qualifications to succeed his father in our local political and educational life, and possibly Lloyd may go above and beyond the old man. Richard Barlow suffers the grave political disadvantage of having gone to college, to Harvard in fact, though to hear him talk you’d never think he even could spell H-a-r-v-a-r-d. Lloyd, who couldn’t spell the word r-e-g-e-n-t-s, let alone pass them, is not going any place to c-o-l-l-e-g-e. That’s one great political advantage right there. No education. What’s more, if you ask me, Lloyd’s hearing aid is even more votes in the bank. Lately in this country we have taken to electing people to high office who have some malfunction or other, particularly in and around the head.

  Oh, Lloyd may go far indeed. The school psychologist tells me he has an I.Q. of 74.

  Now Lloyd is noisily turning the station wagon. It screams back down my road, scattering more gravel on more Dexter hybrids.

  Lloyd’s next stop will be at Ernestine Kraftall’s, three quarters of a mile down Old South Friendly.

  Lloyd will linger there for a while.

  Ab is back; I believe he’s been at Pism C.’s. Sacha, one of the Jackson poodles, is in heat. Ab is tired, but he looks happy.

  My God, it is after three.

  There was nothing much in the mail; the special-delivery letter was from an individual I shall identify only as America’s Foremost Lady Novelist. Most of what she had to say is of no interest and of no importance. It never is. Why the special delivery then? Very simple. First-class mail is for common people. AFLN is all for common people so long as you understand she isn’t one of them.

  The last words in AFLN’s letter were these:

  “I never mentioned this to you before, darling, but I never cared much for Charley anyway. Too sweet for my taste. Too sweet to be real.”

  I put the letter in the garbage disposal. It disintegrated noisily, and I wish I could say as much for its author.

  After I’d looked through the mail, Ab and I went for a walk, and we passed Filmore Grayson, who lives alone in a cabin in the woods over there. I spoke to Filmore, but he didn’t speak back, and I’m sorry. Filmore is the only one of my neighbors I care a fig about knowing, but Filmore—a student of Thoreau—seldom speaks to anyone. He walks the seven miles to the village four times a year, buys the supplies he needs, and walks back; he will not accept a ride. Filmore is a little over seventy, and around here they say he is strange.

  He seems to me to be most sensible. A couple summers ago Davy Bronson and Filmore met on Main Street in the village. Davy was wearing red trousers, an orange shirt, and blue shoes.

  That’s a fairly standard outfit Out There but unusual in Our Town.

  According to Davy, Filmore stopped, looked Davy up and down, and said, “Young man, I don’t know what line of work you’re in, but, apparently, you have not learned the wise words of Henry David Thoreau, ‘Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.’”

  Filmore Grayson must be one of the few people now living who does not know what line of work Davy is in.

  Oh, damn. The phone.

  (8) Conversation piece

  Back again.

  Just after Ab and I got back from our walk, Louella went to the village to shop. I thought I had told her to leave the phone off the hook, but I guess I hadn’t. Anyway, she didn’t. So when the phone rang, I answered it. I shouldn’t have, but then my life has consisted largely of telephone calls I answered when I shouldn’t have, of sentences I spoke when I ought to have kept my mouth shut, of opinions expressed when nobody asked me, when nobody even wanted to know.

  My first wife, Letty, herself a noteworthy expert on volubility, once said (need I add in my presence?), “Joshua has the same feeling about silence that nature has about a vacuum.”

  Letty will miss me.

  Anyway, speaking of volubility, one of this country’s leading practitioners of that by no means lost art was on the phone when I answered, George Banning’s wife, Shirley.

  Shirley said she knew she wasn’t supposed to call me; she said George had told her, but she couldn’t resist asking me to come for dinner next Friday.

  “I’m having several people up from Washington,” Shirley said, “and government people just love to talk to someone of the opposite persuasion.”

  I told Shirley that it sounded like a simply wonderful evening, but, unhappily, I would not be available next Friday. Next Friday I shall be sitting in this room counting my pills and my final memories.

  I couldn’t help adding that for some time now I have not been of any persuasion at all politically.

  “Oh, come now, Josh,” said Shirley. “We all know you’re a member of the Democrat Party, and that’s what I mean.”

  I carefully explained to Shirley that I am not a member of the Democrat Party, that in fact if there is one thing I care less about than the Democrat Party, it is the Republic Party.

  “But you’re an American, after all,” said Shirley. “You have to vote.”

  I did not tell Shirley that I am not at all sure I am an American, but I did say that I do not have to vote and further that there is no possibility of my being able to pass the ache test.

  “What in the world is the ache test?” Shirley asked. “That sounds like a fun test.”

  I started to explain to Shirley about the ache meter which under the Bland Plan for Shaping Up the World would be installed in every voting booth, but then I stopped. I realized that if I went on I would probably burst into tears.

  I passed on my regards to George and to Nina and Jonathan, their children, and then I hung up.

  I want to say a few words about the Banning family, Shirley in particular. I have known them all very well and for a long time, and George has had a great influence on my life.

  Shirley has come a long way from Washington Square, where she once asked George to sign a petition having to do with the Scottsboro boys. She has come even further from the cold-water flat where she was born and raised and from the cluttered apartment at Park Avenue and Eighty-ninth where she and George lived when I first knew them.

  Not that Shirley has ever given any thought to herself. Shirley has devoted her life to Nina and Jonathan.

  Admittedly, they are George’s children, too, but in creating a family, it is the mother who produces a masterpiece, if it is a masterpiece, and in Shirley’s case no other word will do.

  What George did was provide the money, and bringing up Nina and Jonathan cost a good deal. It is costing still.

  Just now, for example, George has to put up the money to support Nina through her final, expensive year at Smith, after which there will be Nina’s costly wedding and the costly festivities to follow, probably at the Waldorf.

  Next June Nina is going to marry a pleasant and handsome but, according to George, not very bright West Point cadet. I wish Nina wouldn’t, but it’s none of my business. Strictly speaking, it’s none of George’s business either, but, although he’d never tell her not to, George also wishes Nina wouldn’t.

  George went up to the Trade School on the Hudson last spring and, as George has said, “I asked this charming idiot Nina’s going to marry what he thought of Proust.”

  George winked at me.

  “I was just checking, you understand, because if there is anything I cannot stand, it’s a lack of culture. That’s why I get along so well Out There. They are up to their ass in culture Out There. Anyway, I was questioning this blond Adonis about Proust. You know what he said? He said, ‘What war was General Proust in, sir?’ Oh, my God. Nina will surely get tired of just looking at him.”

  I grinned ribaldly at George, and he said, “Well, even that gets dull after a while. What will they ever find to talk about?”

  “General Marcel Proust,” I said.

  George smiled. Then he said, “Do you know what my father used to do? He used to spit on the ground every time a soldier passed. To him all soldiers of all countries were Cossacks. And you know something? I think he was right. And my grandfather. Oi.”