Nearing the parking lot Aaron said, dangerously, “You let Mommy do it—you didn’t stop her.”
Delray was walking ahead, unhearing.
“Why’d you let her, Daddy? Why didn’t you stop her?”
Now Delray heard. Delray was unlocking the car. Delray said, as if this were a subject he’d given thought to, and not a subject that made his mouth sneer, “‘Stop her’—what? It’s something for your mother to do that makes her happy. She’s got a good voice. She always wanted to sing with some band. She won’t always have this chance.” Delray laughed, and now you could detect the sneer. In the car leaving the park—Delray was one of the first to leave—it seemed he’d forgotten to switch on his headlights until other motorists signaled him. Aaron said, “Why didn’t we stay with Mommy? How will Mommy get home?” and Delray said, laughing, “Don’t worry. Mommy will always get a ride anywhere she wants to go.”
In his bed without Mommy to tuck him in he’d been miserable not able to sleep feeling restless, itchy—he’d been bitten by mosquitoes at the damn park. He was excited, yet—shut his eyes and saw Zoe on stage—heard Zoe singing—and the deep-bass bullfrog-sound from the man with the oversized violin. You had to resent how Zoe drew the light and warmth from him in his bed—from any room she left—you could feel the temperature dropping, the chill of her absence. The emptiness.
30
MAY 1978
“MOM? HEY MOM—”
Wandering through the house calling for her. Knowing she wasn’t there. Everything so quiet: no radio, no humming/singing in the kitchen. Early mornings Zoe would rap on the door to Aaron’s room, come inside to poke, prod, tickle and urge him out of bed if he wasn’t up yet. Calling him sleepyhead, lazybones. Yanking the covers off him as he woke with effort his skin clammy and heartbeat slowed like the heartbeat of a creature drowsing in the mud of the deepest sea.
But not this morning. This morning was quiet. Nobody gave a damn if Aaron woke in time for the school bus. If he got out of bed at all.
In a quiet choked voice Delray said There’s no way to stop her what she wants to do. What she thinks she wants to do, that we can’t give her.
He was nine years old. He was a big-boned child with somber staring eyes and lusterless dark hair standing up in tufts around his carved-looking face. Rubbing his fists into his eyes in hurt and in fury at his departed mother. He knew that Zoe had done a very wrong thing and that Pa was disgusted with her and Aaron must side with Pa so that Pa wouldn’t be disgusted with Aaron.
He’d seen Pa take after Zoe, a few times. No one had known he’d seen. Pa would not like it if he’d known. How Pa slammed out of a room in pursuit of Zoe grabbing her shoulders and shake-shake-shaking her and his yellow teeth bared in a wide mean Hallowe’en pumpkin grin but he’d never hit Mommy he would claim, he would claim to Aaron never with closed fists.
And Mommy would dare to slap at him, her hair in her flushed face. And Mommy would dare to claw at him, breaking her fingernails. Bastard you son of a bitch hitting a woman. Weigh twice as much as me you big brave man you sorry son of a bitch.
If Aaron rushed out of his hiding place, Pa would turn on him cuffing him, balling up both fists to punch him in the head, in the gut, in the buttocks if Aaron dared to get in Pa’s way.
Mommy was gone but Aunt Viola came by to cook for them. Viola was Delray’s younger sister who’d defend Zoe to him saying Delray had got to learn to ease up some, you know how much it means to Zoe this singing career of hers, what a sweet voice Zoe has, everybody says so. And Delray said meanly what my wife has is a nice sweet ass. Nobody’s listening to her damn voice.
Viola said laughing, Well. Delray would know.
One night when Delray was out and it was just Aunt Viola and Aaron in the house eating macaroni-and-cheese out of Aunt Viola’s casserole dish and watching TV she told him a secret: that Zoe and her music-friends Black River Breakdown had driven to New York City for an “audition” with a recording company and if this “audition” went well Aaron would be seeing Zoe on TV one day before long and hearing her on the radio. Maybe they’d be invited to Nashville and appear on Grand Ole Opry. Maybe they’d be friends with Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, June Carter. People would buy their records and they’d all be rich and could move out of Sparta to some city like Nashville or New York or to a better part of Sparta like Ridge View where people had their docks and boats on the river.
Aaron was astonished to hear this. Delray had never told him any of this. Viola drank Delray’s ale from the can eating and talking and her eyes dreamy saying how she’d gone to see Zoe off and wished her good luck. No she didn’t approve of all that Zoe did but she understood why Zoe needed to do it. Traveling with her musician-friends in a cream-colored Chevy van with Black River Breakdown in purple letters on its sides and in this van they carried their instruments (guitars, drums) and sound equipment to what they called “gigs”—weddings, family gatherings, summer concerts, bandstands. Black River Breakdown was three musicians and a female singer and they all had full-time jobs and families and no one knew of them yet beyond Herkimer County though they’d been doing these “gigs” for almost five years now and as Zoe said Not getting any younger!
In the house on Quarry Road there was an antiquated upright piano Zoe had bought as a girl for forty dollars from an elderly neighbor. Zoe kept wanting to take piano lessons but in the meantime had learned to pick out melodies on the keyboard with two fingers replicating songs she heard on the radio or in records. In this way Zoe learned many songs, she was very patient, and very hopeful. Hearing Zoe pick out tunes on the piano Aaron listened closely as if the notes of the piano—sometimes halting, sometimes fluid—were a special code, for him to decipher.
When Aaron struck the keyboard with his clumsy fingers, or with his fists, the strings inside vibrated with alarm, pain. In frustration Aaron set his thumb against the keyboard as far to the right as he could get and run his thumb hard and fast down to the left making a terrible noise and skinning his thumb so it bled.
Zoe had another hope: to write songs!
Wanting to write “love ballads” most of all for Black River Breakdown to record but each time she wrote a song, no matter the song sounded original at first, soon it shifted into something by the Supremes.
“Like their music has burrowed into my brain. Damn!”
Each day Zoe was away in New York City she called home at 6 P.M. speaking first with Delray and then with Aaron. Delray was brusque and sullen with Zoe saying little before handing the phone over to Aaron, who felt strange hearing his mother’s voice on the phone, a novelty for him, and yet so warm and intimate as if she was leaning over him in bed, blowing in his ear and tickling him awake.
The first three calls, Zoe chattered excitedly telling Aaron what a wonderful time they were having—what a “fantastic” city New York was—next time she came, she would bring her family with her. But the fourth, final evening Zoe burst into tears saying she couldn’t wait to get back home, she was missing them so.
Hearing his mother cry over the phone, Aaron was astonished. Almost Aaron began to cry too, except his father took back the receiver from him.
“Zoe? Get the hell home. Or I’m coming down there after you.”
After Zoe returned home crestfallen and discouraged it would be revealed, maybe Black River Breakdown had made a mistake hurrying off to New York City as they had. Arranging for “audition recordings” to be made at Empire Music Productions, Inc., for a fee of $1,650.
“This terrible ‘studio’! On the twelfth floor of the rattiest old building on Forty-third Street just a few blocks from Times Square, you would think it was legitimate at such an address, wouldn’t you?—we sure did. After we paid our fee it turned out there were all sorts of ‘surplus fees’—‘hidden expenses’—and this contract we had to sign so confusing to read, we just gave up and signed it. Should’ve known it was a bad sign this building where junkies and vagrants—‘homeless people’ they are called in New Y
ork City—were camped out on the sidewalk out front, you practically had to step over them to get inside. And this ‘Mr. Goetsche’ who introduced himself as ‘CEO of the company’ takes our money, a cashier’s check, and there’s a ‘sound engineer’ and this room supposed to be a ‘recording studio’ and we spent at least six hours making these short records you can actually play, I mean they are real records, but small, and they give them to you and I’m feeling shy asking, Is this it? So much money and all we are getting in return is these little plastic records of Black River Breakdown singing, that we already have tapes and cassettes of, at home? Mr. Goetsche says we will be hearing from him in another day or two about our ‘audition’—whether we will be moving to the ‘next stage’—and in the meantime we’re staying in a Howard Johnson Motel on Forty-seventh Street, and there’s roaches in the bathrooms, terrible noise all night long—sirens, ambulances, fire trucks—firecrackers?—maybe gunshots?—like the worst stories you’d hear of New York City, you’d have thought were exaggerated. Oh God, I had to check my bed for bedbugs. Seems like I could feel those nasty things crawling over my skin! Days we went sightseeing for instance to the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center which we did not think was so very impressive, nights we saw shows like the Rockettes, so that was all right but very expensive, worse even than what people here might think and all the money I’d been saving from my work at Honeystone’s is mostly gone, I am so sad about that. I am just sick about that…. So a day goes by, and another day, and a morning, and we don’t hear from Mr. Goetsche who said he was going to send our ‘audition records’ out to agents, music companies, radio DJs and some TV people for feedback but he doesn’t call us and when we try to call him, some switchboard operator puts us on hold. So I think—I’m feeling desperate like there is nothing to lose at this point—so by myself I go back to see Mr. Goetsche, and sure enough in the ‘recording studio’ there is another group being auditioned, looks like high-school-age kids trying to imitate Mick Jagger, and Mr. Goetsche stares at me like he’s pretending not to recognize me, says he doesn’t have time for me right now, but I tell him he had better make time for me, or I am going to the police. Mr. Goetsche all but laughs in my face, I must appear so foolish to him.
“He’s older than he’d seemed the first day. Kind of oily-skinned and puffy-faced and the whiskey fumes coming off him and it isn’t even noon. He takes me into his office—takes my hand, and squeezes it—like there is some special feeling between us—his office is so cramped and depressing and looking out onto a blank wall and I’m saying, Mr. Goetsche I know that there are all kinds of amateurs in music hoping to be discovered, just tell me is there any chance for Black River Breakdown, or for me?—and Mr. Goetsche starts in saying, Yes of course there is, dear Zoe, this is America there is always a chance for success, but then he stops as if he has run out of steam, he gives me this sad crooked smile and paws around in a drawer, pulls out this large glossy road map of the United States, opens it on his desk top like a school teacher might do, he’s put on his glasses, bifocals, he’s breathing heavy through his nostrils that are thick with hairs, with a pencil he’s tapping this road map north and south, east and west, saying in this somber voice, Zoe you look like a sweet decent young woman and I know you have tremendous ‘heart’ and could be a legendary performer but I am going to level with you, dear, like you deserve: see all these towns? cities? everywhere, in every state?—in each of these there is at least one very pretty girl with a good voice, a ‘promising’ voice, hoping to make a career for herself in ‘entertainment,’ hoping to be famous and rich and make her family proud of her and her high school classmates green with envy, and it’s her hope that one day strangers will come up to her on the street and ask for her autograph and to have their pictures taken with her. All the far-flung states of the United States, all the cities, towns, desolate little crossroads settlements shortly to become ghost towns, covered in dust in the next few decades, and no one remaining to remember, or give a damn—just dots on the map, see? And the tragedy is, Zoe, there are just too many of you. Too many ‘Zoe Krullers’—and not enough places for you. Like sea creatures in the ocean, all so hungry, and never enough food. And so the sea creatures themselves must become food. If there were not all the other ‘Zoes’—plus ‘stars’ desperate to hang onto what they have with their fingertips, whose names would be known to you—you might have a chance. But there isn’t, see, Zoe?—and so you don’t.”
Telling this story Zoe lowered her voice to imitate Goetsche’s deep-bass voice. You could see that Zoe meant to entertain her listeners yet tears came into Zoe’s eyes always by the end of the story, she wiped at lightly with her fingertips.
Aaron wondered was he meant to laugh? Did Mommy want him to laugh? Each time Mommy told this story, to different people, it was becoming a funnier story, the voices more exaggerated, and Mommy’s expression more comical, yet there were those tears, Aaron saw.
How he hated the man in New York City who’d told Zoe such things!
Hated to think of anyone making his beautiful mother cry and hated to think of people like starving-hungry fish, and so many of them. And so many to be eaten.
“Oh hell—I have to concede he was right. He is right. There in Times Square, in the vortex—is that what I mean?—‘center’—of all that hunger, and all that hope. And he knows. Maybe his name was even ‘Goetsche’—we were thinking later, driving back to Sparta in the van, maybe the name meant ‘Got-cha’—like ‘I gotcha, sucker!’—maybe it was a joke-name. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he wasn’t joking then. With just me, I mean. Other people, that was different. With me, he spoke sincerely. I’m sure he spoke sincerely. He’d been drinking some but he wasn’t drunk. He called me Zoe in such a tender way, he asked would I like a drink, just the two of us could toast Break River Blackout—that was what he called it, but he wasn’t joking—and I said no thanks and he said O.K. Zoe, he kissed me on the cheek. O.K. and bonheur toujours. And I took the elevator back down out of that place, and walked out onto Forty-third Street, and was crying, and laughing too, and I thought Too many Zoe Krullers, and all so hungry.”
Aaron said protectively: “Mom, I like how you sing!”
“Well! That’s all that matters, then.”
Zoe smiled and leaned over to kiss Aaron, lost her balance and her pursed lips missed his nose, and there was a sweet-sour smell to Mommy’s breath too, Aaron wondered if she had brought back from New York City.
31
APRIL 1980
HE WAS ELEVEN. He’d been kept back in fifth grade. Among his ten-year-old classmates at Harpwell Elementary he was everything wrong, he could see in their eyes. He could see in his teacher’s eyes. Wrong-sized thoughts began to push into his head.
Krull began to push into his head.
At the landfill on Garrison Road he’d seen them. Straddling his bike he’d seen them. This wet-smelling April day he was alone. Spending much of his time alone. He knew, that kick in the heart, the woman in the pickup was his mother. Even if his eyes misted over and his vision was blotched and his heart kick-kick-kicked like a frantic animal yet he knew, the woman was Zoe. Had to be Zoe with her bushy blond-streaked hair tied back in a red silk scarf. He knew that scarf. He knew that laughter like a bird’s sharp beak pecking. The man’s voice was lower, murmurous.
This was a man Aaron had seen at Honeystone’s more than once. Aaron didn’t know his name but he’d seen him with his kids, a boy who was Aaron’s age, a girl who was younger. He’d seen the man wait until Zoe was free to take their orders, he’d seen the way the man tried to be unobtrusive holding back, watching Zoe out of the corner of his eye. And how Zoe laughed in delight seeing this. Like a big cat shivering with pleasure in her skin, licking her lips as she leaned over the high counter on her elbows murmuring Hey there what can I do you for today?
Aaron shut his eyes remembering Eddy.
What can I do you for today, Ed-dy?
Zoe’s special voice. Soft throaty teasi
ng voice. The way Zoe leaned over Aaron’s bed when he was sleeping and slow to wake up blowing in his ear.
This man, Eddy. Sure he was a Caucasian. Not a drop of any kind of dark blood, Aaron could see.
Good-looking guy in T-shirt, khakis. Baseball cap with the rim pulled low over his forehead. Muscled arms covered in fair hairs and an air of expectation about him, he wasn’t one to wait patiently in line for anything yet would wait for Zoe Kruller.
Ed-dy thought it was you out there you are looking good
Zoe and so are you
The landfill was a place Aaron came to. Usually by himself but sometimes with friends. At the garbage dump there were large ungainly birds that kept up a raucus din, you could hear out on the road. Like something being killed. Crows, gulls, turkey vultures. Turkey vultures were something to behold! Scavengers these were called. Older boys bicycled to the landfill to pop these birds with air rifles and twenty-twos. Pop was a way of speaking Aaron admired. Pop meant that the terror, the hurt, the terrible thrashing death inflicted upon a living creature was only just a popping noise like something in a cartoon. Pop was what Krull might do, some day he had a gun.
Delray had a gun. Delray had what he called a deer rifle. Delray hadn’t kept the rifle clean and oiled and last time he’d taken it out, to examine, there’d been rust on the barrel. Damn thing might blow up in my hands Delray had said in disgust.
Aaron was crouched behind a packing case. Aaron was trying not to breathe too deeply, the smell of rotting garbage was strong. He had not noticed the dark-green pickup as he’d approached the landfill on his bike but then he’d noticed it, parked just outside the fence, in an area overgrown with trees and tall thistles and rushes, where there was a service road through the underbrush. He’d heard voices but could not decipher words. Through a stand of scrub trees he could see the occupants of the pickup—a man wearing a baseball cap, a woman with hair tied back in a red scarf. He wasn’t sure if he liked the way his heart was pounding. Maybe he liked it. He heard laughter. The woman’s high-pitched laughter, that was familiar to him, he thought. He thought it was familiar. A sensation like stinging red ants ran over his skin.