“Full scholarship, the university in September. She could have been anything. Which is another reason I won’t cry. Hell if I will. She had it all. She was pretty and brilliant and funny and graceful and kind. She was so kind to everyone. She understood more about life, about the world, than I ever, ever, ever will. She lived so intensely, man, just so intensely. She lived more in seventeen years than most people would in a hundred, and that’s nothing to cry about. That’s nothing to cry about, is it?”
I said, “No.”
At last he met my eyes.
I said, “I loved her, too.”
Fortunately, earlier I had been taken off the IV drip as well as off the catheter. After Malcolm put down the safety railing, he climbed into bed with me, no less clumsy than ever. He put his head upon my chest, as if he were smaller than me, younger than me.
One of the many wonders of this world is that, if we allow it to happen, anyone newly met can all but overnight become a central figure in our lives, hardly less essential to us than air and water. Although we’ve made it a world of hatred and envy and violence, the preponderance of evidence proves to me that it is a world created to inspire friendship and love and kindness.
He said, “Don’t hate yourself, Jonah. You’re not your father and you never could be. You’ve got to be yourself, you and me still the way we’ve always been with each other. You’re all I have now, Jonah. Just you. Just you.”
His pledge never to cry lasted only until then.
86
So many people came to visit me at the hospital, but the one I most expected—Miss Pearl—never appeared. She had said that she’d given me more help than she ever should, what happened next would be up to all the people who lived along her streets, and my part of what happened next was up to me. I still hoped to see her again.
Until we were on our way home in Grandpa’s twenty-one-year-old Cadillac, I hadn’t given a thought to the cost of the medical care. I knew we had an inexpensive form of insurance, and suddenly I realized that the care I’d been given must have been the best.
Riding beside me in the backseat, Mom said, “The hospital refuses to bill us, sweetie. And all the doctors, too. We don’t want charity. We made our case to be allowed to pay over time, but none of them will take a dime. I don’t know, it is a Catholic hospital, and maybe all those years your grandma worked for the monsignor is why.”
I said, “There sure are good people in the world, aren’t there?”
“There sure are,” she agreed.
From behind the wheel, Grandpa Teddy said, “And I’m proud to be a chauffeur today for two of the best of the good. What say we stop at Baskin-Robbins and relieve them of three hand-packed quarts of ice cream for dessert, each of us with the right to pick one flavor?”
Mom said, “You don’t have to ask me twice.”
“You didn’t have to ask me the first time,” I declared.
“Just so you know, there are still rules in this family, and we’re not cool with gluttony. We’re not eating it all tonight.”
When we arrived home, I discovered that the front porch steps had been replaced with a long, sturdy ramp. The first-floor doorways, exterior and interior, had been cut wider and reframed to accommodate a wheelchair, and new doors had been hung throughout. The wheelchair stood in the living room, and Grandpa put me down in it, warning that speed limits indoors would be strictly enforced. All the area carpets in the lower four rooms had been rolled up and put away, completely baring the hardwood floors—linoleum in the kitchen—and furniture had been rearranged, so that I could move about freely. The dining-room furniture had been put in storage, and my bedroom furniture had been brought downstairs in its place.
The most impressive change proved to be a ground-floor bathroom where my grandfather’s little study had once been. A low pedestal sink allowed me to roll right up to it. Sturdy railings framed the toilet, so that I could maneuver myself out of the wheelchair onto the throne and back again, with little danger of falling. The bathtub also had safety grips.
Amazed, I said, “How could you do all this in only eleven days? And holy-moley, what did it cost?”
“Same answer to both,” Grandpa said. “A lot of good tradesmen go to our church or they live in the neighborhood. This was all volunteer labor. We didn’t even ask, they came to us. Plus I’m a wizard with a paintbrush, even if I do say so myself. We paid only for materials, and we could handle that easy enough.”
I could see that the kindness of our neighbors moved him.
What I didn’t know then, didn’t know for years, because they kept it from me, was that initially one of the city’s newspapers had tried to make something of the fact that I happened to be in the bank at the same time my father put down the briefcase. And how could I know, they asked, that it contained a bomb. This was back in a time before the media worked in concert and chewed people up and spit them out largely for the fun of it; therefore, the assault wasn’t unanimous.
When journalists at the other two major newspapers sought more details from police, they learned that my father had abandoned us and divorced my mother, that for a long while, our family and a friend of the family had been suspicious of his activities and of the people with whom he consorted. Among police officials participating in a press conference, Detective Nakama Otani declared that without the help of the Bledsoe family—my mother had reverted to her maiden name—they would at this point have not a clue to the identity of those who had perpetrated the First National horror. He also said that if I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t glimpsed my father, those in the bank would have had no chance to flee or to take shelter, resulting in a much higher death count. “The boy could have run and saved himself, but he tried to save others,” Detective Otani said. “And for his bravery, he will never walk again.” After that, even the offending newspaper joined with the others to declare me a hero.
My mother and grandfather had impressed upon everyone from the nurses to all of our friends that were I to learn I’d been declared a villain and then a hero, the knowledge would do me no good and might cause emotional and psychological harm. We were but a family of musicians, entertainers, and we wanted applause not for doing the right thing in a moment of stress, which anyone might have done, but for hitting the right notes in the right order and with a dash of style.
Mom and Grandpa Teddy were so wise. Considering my guilt and sorrow, I might have taken refuge in the label HERO, and worse than refuge—satisfaction. I know myself well enough to realize that such a choice was within my character to make. Such high self-regard at an early age would have warped my life perhaps no less than did paraplegia.
That Thursday when I came home, the piano remained in the front room, though a new bench had been constructed. The seat of it matched the dimensions of the previous bench; however, a padded back had been added. As I eventually discovered, I would need years to be a hundred percent confident of my balance when sitting forward on an armless chair, let alone on a bench without either a back or arms. Happily, having grown in the past two years, I didn’t need to resort to my butt-slide technique to increase my keyboard reach, because that would no longer be a trick I could perform.
My grandfather had modified his beloved Steinway to an extent that uglified it a little, which made my heart sink. With admirable cleverness, he had devised a way for me to use the damper, una corda, and sostenuto pedals even now that my feet were useless to me. He had taken off the fallboard, leaving the keys permanently exposed, and he had drilled into the casing behind it to install three controls similar to the draw knobs—or stops—on an organ. Each one controlled a wire strung tautly through two pulleys behind the lyre and down to the pedal, which he had extended through the back of the lyre base. Pulling on a knob engaged the pedal function; pushing it released the pedal. Not elegant, not ideal, but workable, he assured me. Even if I wanted to play something as formal as Mozart, I would have to do so with some degree of improvisation, to allow a free hand to quickly push or pu
ll the draw knob when needed.
Or otherwise, perhaps I could use the extensions to the knobs, which he had put to one side until then. With some nervousness, his voice as solemn as his face, he showed them to me. The extensions brought the grab knobs over the keyboard and about ten inches above it. They were sheathed in rubber, so that by craning my neck just a little as I played, I could pull a knob with my teeth, push it in with my chin.
“It works, it really does,” Grandpa said with sober conviction. “Oh, sure, you’ll need to get the hang of it, you’ll be frustrated for a while. But I’ve practiced with them, developed a technique. I think I can teach it to you pretty quickly. It’s not elegant, it’s not ideal—”
When I chimed in, “—but it’s workable,” he looked uncertain for a moment, saw that I was not despairing, and smiled broadly.
How it must have grieved him to devise for his prodigy grandson such a contraption as the pedal control. He played, as I have said, with good taste and distinction, with the best left hand you’ll ever hear, with superior style. In two years, I had progressed so far that I could match him, and he took pride in my talent, looked forward eagerly to the moment when I would surpass him, which he had not long before insisted was mere days away. He had to know that now I would never surpass him and that it would be a miracle if, with the grab knobs, I ever again played as well as he did. Yet he believed that I might, and he wanted me to believe. I had always loved him so very much, but at that moment I loved him as never before.
My mother and grandfather didn’t suggest that I play, although I knew they expected that I might try. I’d been away from a keyboard for eleven days. Ordinarily I would have been eager to get at it. But I didn’t ask them to help me shift from the wheelchair to the bench. I pled extreme weariness, a plausible excuse in the circumstances.
The physicians had declared that I possessed full upper-body function and strength. After the first waking moment in the recovery room following surgery, when for a disturbing moment I couldn’t feel my mother’s hands pressing around one of mine, I’d had no reason to suspect that I suffered from even the slightest loss of sensitivity or coordination in my hands. But on that first day home, with the additional challenge of the grab knobs, I was afraid to test the doctors’ declaration.
In the morning, I found my courage. Man, would I need it.
87
The first night in my new bedroom, I had lain in the dark, repeating softly in sets of ten a motivating mantra that I devised myself: “I am not like Tilton Kirk, I am not like Tilton Kirk.…”
In the second set, I emphasized the first word: “I am not like Tilton Kirk, I am not like Tilton Kirk.…”
Then I stressed the third word: “I am not like Tilton Kirk.…”
For the fourth set, I emphasized the name in a tone of contempt: “I am not like Tilton Kirk.…”
I don’t know how many hundreds of repetitions I whispered, but I fell asleep with those words on my tongue.
No doubt my mother would have been dismayed at me. Or maybe not. In the morning, I was the first out of bed. By the time Mom came downstairs, I had drawn a tub of hot water, bathed, and dressed, with a lot of fumbling. She found me at the grand piano, trying to play and work the grab knobs with my hands.
“Would you put on the extensions for me?” I asked.
She didn’t remark on my application to the challenge before me, though later I heard her singing in the kitchen as she prepared breakfast.
When Grandpa Teddy came downstairs, we three ate at the dinette table, and then he sat with me to show me some of his grab-knob-extension technique.
He was still on leave from his department-store gig that Friday, and I suspect he would have sat with me all morning if he hadn’t needed to collect Mrs. Lorenzo and her belongings. She had agreed to accept a position as my caregiver, manipulating my legs through the exercises that the therapist prescribed and otherwise looking after me. The position came with my former bedroom upstairs, a salary that might not have been much to start, and board.
After Grandpa left, I continued to practice with considerable frustration until by chance I looked up and, through a front window, saw Malcolm crossing the street. I swung off the piano bench, into the wheelchair, and opened the door when he rang the bell.
“Where’s your axe?” I asked.
Shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, looking down at me, he said, “I’d rather call it my saxophone.”
“Like hell you would.”
“Well, I would.”
Maybe he was aware of what Grandpa had done to the Steinway, but if he didn’t know, I wanted to prevent him from seeing the changes for a while. “Let’s sit on the porch.”
That July day was so hot and humid that birds wouldn’t fly and bees wouldn’t buzz. You could almost hear the street sizzling.
“How’re you doing?” I asked.
“I’ve been better.”
“What about your folks?”
“My folks? Makes me sound like Beaver Cleaver.”
“I’m just asking.”
“The old man is talking all the time about getting a promotion. Where do you go from lathe-shop foreman? Is there a lathe-shop king?”
“What about her?”
“She’s taken to smoking in bed. I expect to be immolated in my sleep. Which wouldn’t bother me.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Well, it wouldn’t.”
“If you’re gonna talk like that, I don’t want you here.”
“Throw me off the property, why don’t you?”
“Maybe I will.”
After a silence, he said, “You see that van parked down there by the Jaruzelski place? You know what it is?”
“A Ford.”
“Didn’t your mom and grandpa tell you what it is?”
“I don’t need them to tell me it’s a Ford.”
“It’s a police stakeout.”
“What’re they staking out?”
“Your place. In case your old man shows up or any of those crazy people he threw in with.”
“Where’d you get this?”
“That day I came to the hospital, before your mom saw me in the hallway there, she was talking to this cop, and I overheard what he was saying. The van’s been here ever since.”
The windshield was tinted. I couldn’t tell if anyone was in the van.
“Why didn’t they tell me?” I wondered.
“Probably they didn’t want to scare you. I don’t care about scaring you.”
“I don’t scare that easy anymore.”
“That’s why I don’t care about scaring you.”
Maybe Mom intuited that I didn’t want Malcolm to see the piano just yet. She brought us a small cooler with four Cokes on ice and a plate of cookies.
We sat for a while, watching, and no one got in or out of the van.
Eventually Malcolm said, “They can’t have a toilet in there.”
“Maybe they’re catheterized like I was in the hospital.”
“Cops aren’t that dedicated.”
“They might be if they came from Manzanar.”
“What’s Manzanar?”
I told him everything I knew about it from what I’d read in the library.
He said, “Sometimes I think it’s good to be white.”
“Sometimes?”
“Most of the time, I’d rather be Samoan. You know, from Samoa.”
“Why?”
“Those guys are like six-four, weigh like three hundred pounds, but they have such smooth moves, you’d think they were dancers in another life. I’d like to be huge and strong, but graceful.”
“Maybe you’ll be a Clydesdale in your next life. Anyway, Samoans look white to me.”
“Everybody looks white to you. What do you think those cops in the van are saying about us?”
“ ‘What a couple of geeks.’ ”
“I do believe you’re psychic.”
We remained on the porch for quite a
while, and when Malcolm got up to go home, I said, “Don’t come back till Monday, and then bring your axe.”
“Why not till Monday?”
“I’m spending all weekend at the keyboard getting back into shape.”
“Bring my saxophone, huh?”
“Bring your axe.”
“You say potato, I say po-tah-to.”
“Get out of here.”
He descended the ramp, stopped on the sidewalk, and turned to me. “Man, I’m glad you’re back.”
“I’m not back yet,” I said, “but I will be.”
I sat on the porch by myself for a while. On the hour, a paneled van turned the corner at the west end of the block and parked behind the tan Ford in front of the Jaruzelski place. The two vehicles were identical. After a minute or two, the first van left. Shift change.
88
Maybe there’s a law of nature that your life can only go down so far before there’s a rebound. I could make a case that when I didn’t die in the bomb blast, when I only lost the use of my legs, that was my personal-best down, and that things started turning around for me—and for my family—when I learned that I would still be able to pee in the same fashion that I had peed all my life, except always from a sitting position henceforth. That Friday, we began to catch some good breaks.
Mom got a call from a booking agent who hadn’t wanted to handle her but now offered her an audition at a place called Diamond Dust, at 4:30 the next afternoon. It was the swankiest nightclub in the city, and she assumed they might want her for two low-traffic nights, maybe Mondays and Tuesdays. The agent said, no, this was for lead singer, five nights a week, working with a fourteen-piece band. The club had changed hands, and they were looking for an even classier image than what they already had.
The agent said, “The way they want to run it is kind of unusual, but I’m sure you can cope. They want to hear ‘Embraceable You,’ ‘A Tisket, A Tasket,’ and ‘Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy.’ ”
That evening at the dinner table, a grim possibility occurred to Mom. She put down her fork and said, “Oh, no. What if this is because of Tilton?”