We have a DVD player at the monastery and we play liturgical music (chant, etc.) in our chapel and sometimes at meals, although our tradition is to listen to readings during meals, with each brother volunteering to read in succession. And of course, the first thing two brothers fight over when sent out in the SUV is whether to listen to a news station or a music station. Cat is a country music fan and Raiser prefers the classics. Harpo likes to listen to Dr. Laura.
And I play the piano… sort of. In the very front room of the Chapter House is an old piano from the Resort days. When I have a moment I play my old favorites, but at a super slow speed so no one can tell I’m playing “La Vie en Rose” or my absolute favorite sax song, “Harlem Nocturne.” Harpo enjoys my dirge-like version of "Let's Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer." He's never admitted he knows what I'm really playing. Agnes came into the room a few months ago and said he recognized the piece I was playing from his seminary music training. I was very slowly tinkling the ivory through Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over, Beethoven.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t know Jesse got a Father’s Day card!” Kicksktart told Cat on a lovely June evening after supper. I was sorry I had told Kick the story, but I laughed good naturedly as I was prompted to explain the reasons why anyone would send me such a greeting.
“So who’s it from?” asked Raiser.
“Remember Fred, the piano man?” I asked. To the nodding heads around the tables I said, “He’s my boy!” drawing general laughter. Fred can’t be more than ten years younger than me.
Fred used to come up to Our Lady’s every 6 months or so to tune the piano, which as I mentioned is in the very front room, so Fred’s playing and tuning never bothered anyone. And it was a chance for me talk with someone from off planet. No one ever plays the piano but me, and not very often. So the instrument didn’t need his frequent attention, but he insisted on it and charged us nothing. He simply wanted to contribute. I enjoyed sitting and talking with him while he went about his work. Fred was a comfortable guest, and I was thankful for his company. We talked fishing, he tuned and I played badly.
Fred didn’t make much money at his trade, but I know he loved making a piano sing as much as a plastic surgeon enjoyed making a woman beautiful. He was in the prime of life, a big guy in his forties, and when he arrived and set up his little tuning forks and tiny rubber mutes and tuning hammer it always appeared odd to me that such a giant of a man enjoyed using such small tools. You’d expect a fellow his size to come through the front door with a fence post over his shoulder and a sledge hammer swinging on his hip.
Although Fred often stayed for 2 or 3 hours, he would only tweak a string or two. Then he’d take the piano for a ride through a little Chopin and afterward slide into some old stuff by Gil Evans. After that, we’d just sit and talk and drink coffee. He always brought a five pound bag of a great blend.
He seemed troubled one day. I could hear it in his voice. I knew his Dad had recently died and I wondered if that was bothering him, as such a loss will continue to do. He started to play a few notes of Gershwin and gave up because of an injured thumb. I knew he would tell me about it, and I wondered if the adhesive patch and gauze on his forehead were part of the story.
“When I got out of bed this morning, I had a firm resolve to get the damned motor home out of the driveway, “ he began. “I called a friend who lives up on the state highway and he said I could put it on his lawn and it would sell in a week.
“I could hear Pop griping, ‘What took you so long? I’ve been dead 3 months! Why pay the insurance on it? I sure can’t drive it now.’ His logic was always sound. Mine always questionable. Fathers are always in charge, right? No matter what. Even when they’re wrong. Even when they’re dead.”
“Even when he did something stupid, like sell his car and buy a motor home from his dead brother’s daughter, telling me, ‘Of course it doesn’t get good gas mileage, but I don’t go anywhere but camping anyway.’ He sold his Buick so could he could pay the money to Nancy, who I’m sure used it to put more coke up her nose. And Pop had never gone camping in my memory, although it was something he might have planned to do. After he bought “The Monster” as I called it, he took it out once, dragging me along on the worst weekend of my life. I couldn’t get away from him in a thirteen foot camper. Not like at home where I hid out in the basement while the old man watched old TV shows like Gunsmoke and Happy Days.
“Dad was a sad case, waiting out his days until the Grim Reaper appeared on the scene. ‘Hopefully with quick slice to the neck,’ he often said. Mom was dead, his brothers were dead, his friends were dead. Dad was dead, really, or at least walking with the dead.
“The motor home was out of commission most of the time. He couldn’t get it to start. So he often borrowed my car to go to the liquor store and to the Office for the Aging where he flirted with the lady workers.
“So this morning I was thinking, if I could somehow get those rusted license plates off the damned bumpers, I could bring them in to the snarly folks at the Motor Vehicle bureau. Then you have to take that slip of paper to those thieving bastards at the insurance company to try to retrieve some of the payment he should have made only a few months ago. There should be almost half of the annual premium coming back. That’s if Pop didn’t pull one of his asinine tricks and sign the check, “The Lone Ranger” and then throw out the overdue notices.
“Pop didn’t just get strange in his old age, I think he was always strange. He didn’t want an answering machine in the house, said it was too impersonal. But since no one ever called him, not even his brother, I don’t know why he cared about being personable. When I insisted I needed the machine for my business, because I couldn’t be home all the time. he grudgingly said OK.
“Wouldn’t use a microwave either. I bought one anyway, and some days when I came home I could see he had used it to cook his vegetables. I think he just wanted to be difficult.
“The problem with these license plates is I couldn’t find the correct tools to remove them. Pop never put anything back after he used it. I can’t imagine that anyone but myself putting up with him. Certainly not any other woman than my sainted Mom. Not any woman I would admire.
“But I never took a chance and asked a girl to come home and live with me, to marry me. I’d date one here and there for a while, but then I realized it was useless. I couldn’t afford to live elsewhere on my earnings, and a woman would never live with us for very long with my father in the house.”
Fred was quiet for a moment, as he moved his mutes and hammer around aimlessly on the little table he’d set up next to the piano.
“Did you get the plates off the camper?” I finally said to break the silence, a bad habit of mine.
“Do you know what it’s like to be chained to a house, a life and father who hates you?” said Fred.
“Fred, he was an old man …”
“Not when I was a kid and he took my bike to the dump because I forgot to put it away in the garage one night. Not when he called up the girl I asked to my senior prom … my only date in high school … and called her a whore so she’d break the date because he said we didn’t have $40 for me to take her.”
This time I remained silent.
“Yeah,” said Fred, “I got the plates off” … and here he switched to a deep voice of lecturing authority … ‘with the right tool for the right job.’ But not with the wrenches. I looked all over the workshop for them. Then I noticed the crow bar next to the driveway door. I took the damned thing, went outside and jammed it in behind the plates and ripped them right off the bumper.”
“I guess that works,” I said.
“Then I took that effing crowbar and I broke every goddamned window in the camper!”
“Really?”
“Yes, Really! And I pried the doors off and I punctured the tires, and then I went inside the camper and broke everything I could with that crowbar.
“When I swung down on the steering wheel, the crowbar bounced back at me and almost tore a hole in my forehead. You know head wounds … blood all over the place.
“But I kept going and I broke the toilet and the little kitchen table and then I was ripping the curtains off with my bare hands, because the blood had made the crowbar so slippery that when I swung it at the stove it went flying into the TV set and glass exploded all over the place.
“Geez, Fred,” I said
“I killed him, Brother Jess,” he said. “That’s when I realized what I was doing. I killed my father. The blood was everywhere.”
“Fred,” I said,” you may have felt like it, but …”
“No,” he interrupted, “I have to tell someone the truth. I almost did kill the bastard a month before he had the heart attack and died. He was abusive to a customer who called a little late one night and we got into a big argument. He said some things he shouldn’t have said to me. I ran out of the house and into the garage. And I stared at that crowbar, and I can stand here and tell you I was this close to taking it back in the house and murdering the man, my father.
Fred began to gather up his tools and fold up the little table. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything for a some time.
“Fred,” I said after a while, “sometimes we never know what we’re capable of, but we never know for sure that we would actually commit such an act.”
He was quiet, just shook his head as if in agreement while he buttoned up the little kit of tools. Then he said, “How can a man make his son so angry that he wants to kill him?”
I had no answer for that, nor does anyone.
Fred doesn’t tune pianos anymore. He gave up the business, sold the house and moved to Florida, where he works for a small insurance agency. I miss him sometimes when I walk through the front room or sit at the piano.
Fred sent me the Father’s Day card 2 years ago. He wrote on it, “I saw this card and wanted to buy it. A man should have someone to send a Father’s Day card to. I knew you would understand.”
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