American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [10]
He adored his wife and when he passed an antique shop and glanced in the window he thought of Pearl and what she would like as a gift. He saw diamond rings and hanging earrings and wanted to shower her with tokens of his deep, heartfelt, steadfast appreciation. He remembered the feeling of coming off of the ship and into her arms and the way she had held him with her smile. She was his shelter. He wanted to share life with her, to take her to hear the music he loved, especially Count Basie, a new bandleader out of Kansas City, whom he’d heard only on the radio. He’d seen an advertisement in the newspaper saying that Basie and his orchestra would be making their New York debut on Christmas Eve at the Roseland Ballroom. He wanted to tell Pearl about it, but he was afraid that she would disapprove. She would say that they did not have the money. She would be right. She was sensible and her maturity extended to everything she did. He felt it in the way she held him tightly when he came home. He loved the strong familiar feeling of her touch. When he pictured Pearl and himself in his mind he saw them like two carved figures clasped in an embrace. He had known her for over thirteen years. They had met when they were very young. The feeling of his holding her and of her holding him was never far from his thoughts. He could not imagine his life without Pearl. But when he thought of the two of them holding each other close, he could not fail to notice that they weren’t dancing.
Honor
You have hands like the hands of a shaman.
What does that mean? Some kind of healer?
Something like that. I heard about it from a guy who was in Vietnam. He comes to talk to some of us. His plane went down in Laos. He lived with the Hmong. He met a shaman.
Honor was putting on her coat. He didn’t usually speak to her this much. He was still on the table. The nurse hadn’t come yet.
He told us that shamans go on journeys and speak to the dead. They meet the people, the spirits who haunt the sick. This guy said that to become shamans they usually had suffered an illness, or a traumatic injury.
She was winding her scarf around her neck.
Anything like that ever happen to you? he asked.
She kept winding her scarf.
No, she lied.
She stood there for a moment. She could still see the saxophone case. It was black leather and beat-up, with a metal lock that was slightly rusted from the ocean air. The handle was squarish with rounded corners and it fit snugly in a man’s hand. Honor lifted her messenger bag and swung it over her shoulder. She could practically feel the weight of the heavy horn in its leather case.
An autumn sunset, the boats on the river. Joe was standing next to Vivian looking out at the water. They seemed to be drawn together to the water. Her hair blew around in the wind and it looked like someone kept lifting it up and putting it back down. Her eyes squinted into the colors. She was not wearing her sunglasses. Boats rolled by. She told him about Italy and seeing the paintings there that she had always admired in books. He had been to Italy too, once, for a couple of days before his ship had sailed home, but he had not looked much at the paintings. He remembered the sound of the language. The music in the mornings of people talking in the quiet streets. The cups and plates and voices and silver clattering in the cafes.
Joe felt the thrill of talking to someone who had also traveled, who liked music, who felt deeply about places. He could tell that Vivian knew the excitement of waking up in an unknown room, of taking in the emptiness and freedom of a wind-ripped sky at sea. She also loved cities: the stink and beauty and business and nighttime of the city. And she loved music. He broached the subject of music gently, because he was afraid that they might disagree too much about it and he would be crestfallen, but he was wrong, or right to care, because they shared that too. They both loved the wild sound coming east from the Midwest, and the sultry energy