C H A P T E R 7
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At age ten, I began to perform in front of ordinary people. In appreciation of the nuns who allowed me use of the school piano, I agreed to play as prelude to the annual Christmas show. My music would usher the par-ents to their seats while their children shed coats and scarves for their elf and wise-man es. My teacher, Mr. Martin, and I put together a program of Bach, Strauss, ahoven, ending with part of "Six Little Piano Pieces" in honor of Arnold Sberg, who had <q></q>passed away the year before. We felt this last "modern" piece, while not overly familiar to our audience, displayed my rahout being overly ostentatious. The day before the Christmas show, I went through the thirty-minute program for the nuns after school, and the choices brought nothing but frowns and scowls from beh their wimples."Thats wonderful, Henry, truly extraordinary," the principal said. She was the Mother Superior of the gang of crows that ran the joint. "But that last song."
"Sbergs?"
"Yes, very iing." She stood up in front of the sisters and paced to and fro, searg the air for tact. "Do you know anything else?"
"Else, Mother?"
"Something more seasonal perhaps?"
"Seasonal, Mother?"
"Something people might know?"
"Im not sure I uand."
She turned and addressed me directly. "Do you know any Christmas songs? A hymn? Silent Night perhaps? Or Hark! The Herald Angels—I think thats Mendelssohn. If you play Beethoven, you play Mendels-sohn."
"You want carols?"
"Not only hymns." She walked on, hitg down her habit. "You could do Jingle Bells or White Christmas. "
"Thats from Holiday Inn," one of the other nuns volunteered. "Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds. Oh, but youre too young."
"Did you see Bells of St. Marys?" the third-grade teacher asked her fel-low sisters. "Wasnt he good in that?"
"I really liked that Boys Town—you know, the oh Mickey Rooney."
Rattling the beads on her rosary, Mother Superior cut them off. "Surely you know a few Christmas songs?"
Crestfallen, I went home that night and learhe fluff, practig on a paper-cutout keyboard fashioned by my father. At the show the eve-ning, I trimmed half my inal program and added a few carols at the end. I kept the Sberg, whieedless to say, bombed. I played the Christmas stuff brilliantly and to a thunderous ovation. "Cretins," I said under my breath as I accepted their adulation. During my repeated bows, loathing swelled over their loud clapping and whistling. But then, looking out at the sea of faces, I began tnize my parents and neighbors, all happy and cheerful, sendiheir sincere appreciation for the holiday warmth geed by the vaguely predictable strains of their old favorites. No gift as wele as the expected gift. And I grew light-headed and dizzy the lohe applause went on. My father rose to his feet, a real smile plastered on his mug. I nearly fainted. I wanted more.
The glory of the experience rested in the simple fact that my musical talent<big>..</big> was a humahere were no pianos in the woods. And as my magic slowly diminished, my artistry increased. I felt more and more removed from those who had taken me for a hundred years, and my sole hope and prayer was that they would leave me alone. From the night of the first perfor-ma was as if I were split in two: half of me tinuing on with Mr. Martin and his emphasis on the of classics, pounding out the old -posers until I could hammer like Thor or make the keys whisper uhe ge pressure. The other half expanded my repertoire, thinking about what audiences might like to hear, like the ballads ed on the radio adored by my mother. I loved both the fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier and "Heart and Soul," and they flowed seamlessly, but being adept at popular song allowed me to accept odd jobs when offered, playing at school dances and birthday parties. Mr. Martin objected at first to the bastardization of my talent, but I gave him a sob story about needing money for lessons. He cut his fee by a quarter on the spot. With the money we saved, the cash I earned, and my mothers increasingly lucrative egg and chi business, we were able to buy a used upright piano for the house in time for my twelfth birthday.
"Whats this?" my father asked when he came home the day the piano arrived, its beautiful maery housed in a rosewood case.
"Its a piano," my mother replied.
"I see that. How did it get here?"
"Piano movers."
He slid a cigarette from the packet and lit it in one swift move. "Ruthie, I know someone brought it here. How e it is here?"
"For Henry. So he practice."
"We t afford a piano."
"We bought it. Me and Henry."
"With the money from my playing," I added.
"And the chis and eggs."
"You bought it?"
"On Mr. Martins advice. For Henrys birthday."
"Well, then. Happy birthday," he said on his way out of the room.
I played every ce I could get. Over the few years, I spent hours each day at the keys, enthralled by the mathematics of the he music seized me like a river current pushing my scious self deeper into my core, as if there were no other sound in the world but one. I grew my legs an inch lohan necessary that first summer in order to better reach the pedals on the upright. Around the house, school, and town, I practiced spreading my fingers as far apart as they would go. The pads of my fiips became smooth aher-sensitive. My shoulders bowed down and forward. I dreamt in wave after wave of scales. The more adept my skill and uanding grew, the more I realized the power of musical phrasing in everyday life. The trivolves getting people to listen to the weak beats and seemingly insignifit silences between he absence of tones between tones. By phrasing the matter with a ruthlessly precise logie play—or say—anything. Music taught me great self-trol.
My father could not stand to hear me practice, perhaps because he real-ized the mastery I had attained. He would leave the room, retreat into the farthest ers of the house, or find any excuse to go outside. A few weeks after Mom and I bought the piano, he came home with our first televisio, and a week later a man came out and installed an antenna on the roof. In the evenings, my father would watch You Bet Your Life or The Jackie Gleason Show, me to keep it down. More and more, however, he simply left alto-gether.
"Im going for a drive." He already had his hat on.
"Youre not going drinking, I hope."
"I may stop in for oh the boys."
"Dooo late."
Well after midnight, hed stagger in, singing or muttering to himself, swearing wheepped on one of the girls toys or barked his shin on the piano bench as he passed. Weather permitting, he worked outdoors every weekend, replag shutters, painting the house, rewiring the chi coop. He was absent from the hearth, unwilling to listen. With Mary and Elizabeth, he played the doting father, still dandling them on his knees, fussing over their curls and dresses, fawning at the latest primitive drawing or Popsicle-stick hut, sitting down at the table for tea parties and the like. But he regarded me coldly, and while I ot read min..ds, I suspect he felt at odds with my passion for music. Maybe he felt art corrupted me, made me less a boy. When we spoke, he would chastise me for a ed chore or chide me for a less than perfect grade on a test or essay.
As he drove me home from the trolley statiourday, he made an effort to engage and uand. On the radio, a football game between the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame and Navy unfolded. One of the teams scored a touchdown in a spectacular fashion.
"How about that? Did you hear that?"
I looked out the windoing out with my right hand a melody on the armrest.
"Do you even like football?" he asked.
"I dunno. Its okay."
"Do you like any sport at all? Baseball? Basketball? Would you like to go hunting someday?"
I said nothing. The very thought of being aloh Billy Day and a shotgun frightened me. There are devils out in the woods. We let a few silent miles pass beh us.
"Hows e its nothing but the piano night and day?"
"I like musid Im good."
"You are that, but holy, did you ever stop to think you could try something else for a ge? Dont you know theres more to life than music?"
If he had been my true father, I would have beeernally disappointed in him. The man had no vision, no passion for life, and I was grateful that we were not actually related. The car passed through the shadows of trees, and the glass in the window darkened. I saw in my own refle the mirrored image of Henrys father, but I only appeared to be his offspring. Once upon a time, I had a real father. I could hear his voice: "Ich erkenne dich! Du willst nur meinen Sohn!" His eyes danced wildly behind his owlish spectacles, and then the phantom memory disappeared. I sensed Billy Day was watg me from the er of his eye, w what oh happened? How did I get this for a son?
"Im thinking that Im starting to like girls," I volunteered. He smiled and tousled my hair. He lit another Camel, a sure sign he was tent with my ahe subjey masity never came up again.
A basic truth had escaped by act. Girls hovered on the surface of every situation. I noticed them in school, ogled them in church, played to them at every cert performance. As if they jumped from the shadows, girls arrived, and nothing was ever the same. I fell in love ten times a day: an older erhaps in her mid-twenties in a gray coat on a gray street er; the raven-haired librarian who came every Tuesday m to buy a dozen eggs. Ponytailed girls jumping rope. Girls with charming ats. Girls in bobby socks and poodle skirts. In the sixth grade, Tess Wodehouse trying to hide her braces behind her smiles. Blondie in the funny pages; Cyd Charisse; Paulette Goddard; Marilyn Monroe. Anyone curved. Allure goes beyond appearao the way they grace the world. Some women propel themselves by means of an internal gyroscope. lide through life as if on ice skates. Some women vey their tortured lives through their eyes; others encircle you in the music of their laughter. The way they bee their clothes. Redheads, blondes, brues. I loved them all. Women who flirt with you: whered you get such long eyelashes? From the milkman. Girls too shy to say a word.
The best girls, however, were those who liked music. At virtually every performance, I could pick out from the crowd those who were listening, as opposed to the terminally bored or merely disied. The girls who stared banerved me, but at least they were listening, as were the ones with their eyes closed, s cocked, i on my playing. Others in the audience would be ing their teeth with their nails, digging in their ears with their pinkies, crag their knuckles, yawning without c their mouths, cheg out the irls (or boys), or cheg their watches. After the perfor-mances, many in the audienvariably came up to have a few words, shake my hand, or stand near me. These post-performanters were most rewarding and I was delighted to receive pliments and answer questions for as long as I could while unmasking the enthusiasms of the women and girls.
Unfortunately, the certs aals were few and far between, and the public demand for my performances of classical music at parties and shows diminished as I neared puberty. Many afiados had been ied in a ten-year-old prodigy, but the y died when I was all elbows and ae as a teenager. And to be ho, I was sick of the Hanon and y exercises and the same insipid Chopiude that my teacher fussed over year after year. gi again, I found my old powers ebbed as my hormones raged. As if ht, I had gone from wanting to be just a boy to wanting to be a grown man. Midway through my freshman year in high school, following months of soul-searg and sullen fighting with my mother, it hit me that there was a way to bine my passion for musid my i in girls: I would form my own band.
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