With Any Luck, the Music Never Ends

For a miserable, rainy Tuesday night, there was an unusually good crowd, Michael thought. He handed Steve, the waiter, a tray with three Killian’s Red and one Bud on it, poured two Chardonnays for the two teachers at the end of the bar, and mopped up a spill. Hanratty’s was Michael’s pride and joy, inherited from his father. He had gotten it dusty, dilapidated, empty except for a few neighborhood drunks who tried to cadge free drinks; he had reinvented it into a classic Irish pub that would have been at home anywhere in Ireland.

Keith, the keyboard player, finished a Santana medley to polite applause from the few who were listening. They had karaoke nights for a much younger, rowdier crowd on Fridays. Once in a while, a local band would play on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Tuesday and Thursday, Keith entertained a loyal audience of regulars. There were a few people eating dinner, and about twelve either just having drinks or playing darts.

The door opened, letting in a gust of windy rain, and a woman walked in, shedding her dripping raincoat, shaking water drops out of her curly hair. She sat down at the end of the bar near the postage-stamp stage and ordered tea.

“Miserable night,” Michael said, placing a teapot (real tea, no bags) and a large mug in front of her, setting down sugar and milk.

“Yes, I’m a little drenched,” the woman answered. “I was lucky to find this place.” She poured a cup of tea and put some milk into it, and then sat, sipping it.

“Would you like some dinner? The kitchen’s still open,” Michael offered.

“No, thanks, this will be fine. What a beautiful bar,” she commented.

Michael thanked her, and told her a little about it the magnificent mahogany bar, with its mirror and shelves on the wall, as he washed glasses and poured drinks. The woman looked around, saw the karaoke machine and asked Michael who ran it. He motioned Keith over from the pool table.

Keith introduced himself. “Do you like to sing?” he asked.

She smiled. “Yes, I do. My name’s Edith. What types of music do you have?” She walked over to the karaoke machine with Keith, and he handed her a playlist. Within a few minutes, they had agreed on a selection, Keith turned the machine on, and Edith sang.

By the fourth measure, there was dead quiet and complete attention. You could have heard a pin drop. Michael turned off the faucet and leaned on the bar, listening. Time went away. Police Lieutenant Marty Boyle and his partner, Anna Mitchell, stopped in at 2 AM for a coffee while Michael closed down, and Edith was still singing. Then she waved goodnight to Michael and walked out.

Vira Walsh, who never went to bars but was devoted to the great woman jazz singers, heard about Edith from Michael, who was her downstairs neighbor. “Maybe she’ll come in tomorrow night,” he said. “I’ll give you a call.”

On Thursday evening, when Vira was just about ready to head for a bath and bed at ten-thirty, the phone rang. It was Michael.

“She just came in a few minutes ago,” he said. “Come on in.”

Vira walked the half block to the pub, just as Edith was finishing, “Here’s That Rainy Day.” She stayed until closing. Then she approached Edith: “Can I talk to you?” Vira asked. “I live just a half block away. Would you like to come in for a bite to eat?”

Edith smiled. “Yes, I’d like that.” She had a faint accent, unplaceable. They sat at the antique round oak table in the small dining room of Vira’s railroad apartment, eating homemade vegetable soup and sesame bread, then tea and cookies, talking about jazz and singers and the river, until Edith thanked Vira and took herself home.

Vira banged on Celeste’s door at 8:00 AM on Saturday morning, the women’s marketing day. “Come in, it’s open,” shouted Celeste, and Vira let herself in. A bowl of oatmeal sat on Celeste’s kitchen table, along with yesterday’s mail.
”You won’t believe this,” Vira said, helping herself to coffee. “A woman’s been singing at Hanratty’s, the karaoke, you know? She’s incredible. She sounds like a combination of Cleo Laine and Diane Schuur.”

“You’re kidding,” Celeste said, sitting down and starting to eat her cereal. “That would be some combination, I doubt it’d work.”

“I’m not kidding,” Vera stated. “She’s better than either one of them, the phrasing, the tone, the humor, everything. I asked her if she came from New York, if she’d played the clubs there.”

“Did she?” Celeste poured grapefruit juice into two glasses.

“She says she didn’t. She says she’s never been paid a dime to sing. But she’s fabulous! “

“So what does she look like? Want some oatmeal?”

Vira put sweetener into her coffee and stirred it. “No thanks, I had mine already. You won’t believe this,” she muttered.

“Damn! You keep saying that! What is it about her?

“She’s got to be around fifty years old, or maybe more. The neck doesn’t lie. She’s attractive, though. She has a great head of thick curls, which are ash brown going gold and silver, a nice figure, pretty features. Her face has some lines, but she’s so expressive – a beautiful mouth, with no wrinkles around it – you don’t think about it. I didn’t until we were in my apartment having a snack. When she sings, she’s no age.” Vira considered. “Oh, and she has a faint accent. I think she must be Canadian.”

“Okay,” Celeste said. “So here’s a woman with a terrific voice, and she’s got a great audience at Michael’s. Good for her. What’s so extraordinary?”

“It isn’t ordinary; how many fifty year olds can tear up a bar for five hours nonstop? Everything from scat to Bossa Nova (in Portuguese, yet), Alberta Hunter’s raunchy blues, Lena Horne’s smoky torch, Cole Porter, Michel LeGrande…”

“Gee, I loved Alberta Hunter, may she rest in peace.” Celeste put her bowl in the sink and turned off the coffee maker. “ Let’s get going, Vira. I’ll go with you to Hanratty’s tomorrow night; I have to hear this phenomenon. Does she live in town?”

Vira considered. “I didn’t ask her. She left my place last night at 3, and said she would be home in a few minutes, so I assumed she does.

****

Edith Piaf. She had cried buckets and buckets of tears listening to Piaf sing, “Je Non Regrette Rien,” and “La Vie En Rose.” She had remained in Paris until the loneliness beat her to a pulp; all those lovers strolling along the Seine, everything love, love, love. And Piaf’s recorded voice everywhere, cracking her open like a walnut.

She moved out of the house on Rue des Anges; she moved into a small flat. She brought along almost nothing: she did not need to be reminded of that house and the years she’d lived there. She’d lived a few lives or so since then, in different places and times, with different people, and at the bottom of it she was still the same. And so it was time for a new life, a new place, before she ran out of lives, like a daredevil cat. One more.

She came to America with a new name. Edith. To never forget.

Kitty and Hal pushed Uncle Sam’s wheelchair together, enjoying the soft summer evening.. The riverfront walkway was crowded with people, kids rollerblading, teens running together, couples with baby buggies, seniors in groups of three or four, thirtysomethings taking their daily jog, students from the Technological Institute sunning themselves on the lawns.

They stopped to watch small sailboats on the river. The old man leaned forward in his chair, and Kitty put her arm around him, easing him back. He tilted his head back, his eyes closed. He smiled. He always smiled, these days. Kitty shook her head; he was as sentient as a yam. He was no trouble; he allowed himself to be bathed, dressed, fed, and carted around like an old baby. He smiled at the caregivers who took care of him in the nursing home. And especially he smiled at his great-nephew and his young wife.

Uncle Sam came into their lives when Hal’s parents found him lying on the floor of his cottage at Saugerties, four years ago. He had just come to the United States after living in Australia for the past twenty or so years. Everyone was supposed to go up for a visit, when the call came from a neighbor that something was wrong at the cottage.

Uncle Sam was Hal’s father’s uncle. His name was Samuel Stone, but Hal’s father said the old man had dozens of passports, all with different names, and had had some adventures a step ahead of the law. Hal had written letters to him, gotten letters from him since he was very small. Someday, he had promised, I will come to America, and oh! The wonderful times we will have! But the years passed, and still he did not come. Postcards arrived from Fiji, from Japan, from Australia, as Uncle Sam traveled the world, until he was very old, and finally wrote that he was, at last, coming to the U.S. to stay.

His health was good; it was the scourge of old age, Alzheimers’ Disease, which would finally finish him. The robust man who in his fifties, sixties and seventies had tramped the jungles of the Amazon, the high fastnesses of Tibet, the fabulous streets of Rio de Janeiro, Budapest, Venice, Stockholm and God only knew where else was a frail old child in a wheelchair, with his grandniece and nephew pushing him around on sunny days.

Uncle Sam now lived in a nursing home. They took devoted, gentle care of him. Hal’s parents were in Moscow on a long project. They left as soon as he was settled, and Hal noticed his father wiping away tears as he hugged the old man goodbye. Uncle Sam only smiled.

Edith was singing, with the accompaniment of The City Boys, a local jazz band, to a large and appreciative crowd. Hal and Kitty walked closer to the shallow amphitheatre, pushing Uncle Sam in his wheelchair, getting as close as possible to this wonderful performer their neighbors, Vira and Celeste, had insisted they hear. The floor of the amphitheatre had the most beautiful backdrop: the Tappan Zee bridge arcing over the Hudson River, its water the color of blue eyes.

A spotlight shone on Edith’s hair, curls of copper/gold/silver. She was singing a Michel LeGrand song, “How do you keep the music playing?” People were rapt, listening to her rich voice, following the lyrics. “How do you make it last? How do you keep the song from fading too fast?”

Edith looked out over the crowd. She always looked at the people, into their faces, seeing their stories, sensing their lives. If they only knew, she thought. “How do you lose yourself in someone, and never lose your way? How do you not run out of new things to say?”

Vira and Celeste sat on one of the benches bordering the stone steps, listening. Kitty and Hal came over to them; Celeste put her arm around Kitty. Edith was singing about wondering how you know your heart will fall apart each time you hear his name. Uncle Sam sat straight up in his chair. He looked bewildered, as if he had suddenly awakened from a long sleep.

“I know the way I feel for you is now or never; the more I love the more that I’m afraid that in your eyes I may not see forever…” Edith saw the young man and woman, the pleasant woman Vira who had befriended her. And she saw the old man in the chair. No…

He stood straight up, holding the arms of his chair. He was no longer so tall, but he rose to his full height, and looked at her, and he knew whom he saw. His mouth opened to call her name, but he had forgotten it long ago. Hal put his arm around him, looking at him with concern.

“…find a way to make it better as it grows, with any luck, then I suppose, the music never ends.” She had never done anything harder in her life than finish this song. No, that was not true: she had done something much harder, more than forty years ago, and he had been there then. She bowed her thanks to the waves of applause and left the pergola, where the Renaissance chorus was assembling.

She walked toward Kitty and Hal and Uncle Sam. He was thin, so pitifully thin, his hair a few short white strands, neatly cut. But the innocence on his face, the puzzlement as he looked earnestly at her, tore her heart open. She looked at the two young people. “I knew him once, when he was young,” she said. She took his hand, the skin frail; thin as paper over the long finger bones. He clasped her hand between both of his and bent to kiss it with his dry lips. Tears dropped on her hand, his tears and hers. She put her arms around him and buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder; he leaned into the mass of her hair and said something to her that sounded, to the sharp-eared Vira, like “My own:”. He let her go, and his head fell back. Hal eased him back into the wheelchair. He was asleep, his mouth open, his eyes closed. They wheeled him away.

Edith watched them go. Celeste and Vira surrounded her, held onto her. “You don’t have to say anything,” Vira whispered. “We saw it all. We know enough.”

Edith walked with them to the railing and looked at the flowing river, lit by a crescent moon. “At least I found him,” she said softly. “And he found me. I can go on with that.”

She put her arms around them. “Thank you for everything,“ she said. “I’m done here. I can go home.”

In a nursing home in Nyack, with a spectacular view of the Hudson River, an old man fought his way through the Alzheimers’ static short-circuiting his mind, that steel-trap mind that still held everything, everyone he had ever known. From some dusty neuron he clutched a string of words and used them like a machete, hacking away the tough tangles and plaques blocking his way through a gray jungle, until he stood clear, clear enough to reach into that huge, somnolent hard disk that was his memory and take out as much as he could carry.

Carefully, he stood up from his wheelchair, and with will as a crutch, walked slowly to the window. A beautiful sickle moon hung in the sky, a star at its tip, like an earring. “See how she hangs upon the cheek of night…” he whispered. He reached for an old treasure they had let him keep, not understanding why he would want it. He swung one of his reacquired weapons, slowly and deliberately, feeling the strength return. It was enough. He did not look back. Apparate…

Edith stood at the railing of the riverfront walkway, looking at the river, watching the moon. It had something to tell her, that moon, and she mouthed the words, not used in forty years, saying goodbye to the river, to the delicate bridge flung, like a cobweb, to the other side. A wind swirled around her, and she turned around, wrapped her arms around him, hung on for dear life, for her own dear life and his. “Ever, and ever, forever,” she whispered, as they launched eastward into the night sky.