Song of the Shank

The facts trip her up. (What she does not say is clearest.) Forced to admit, the city is ideal for her, but not for Tom. Would she dare live here in the country? A city girl her entire life, she’s not sure she’s cut out for the countryside. All that harmony and light. Greenness pulling through the leaves. And flowers blooming out in the heavy humidity of the air, growing things too colorful to look at but nevertheless created beautiful for the delight of man. Scents and nectars and fruits that act as attractive guides for insects. She cannot get her mind around the idea of Nature, Barmecidal feast. Too much to take in. The promised primal power and purity of the elements — fresh air to clear the head, space for the body, rest and reclamation — rarefied to a degree that eludes her senses. There is nothing she desires to map, mount, or measure. So who she is in the country is unclear. Tom’s safety is not reason enough to stay. End of story.

Or is it? The morality is ever changing. (At cross-purposes with herself.) She gets caught in all the choices. What’s bound to happen? What might happen? What should happen? The questions cast long shadows that do not disappear.

She watches as if from a watery distance, a red-tinted vista, dusk besetting the edges of body and piano, profile opening, redefining the boundaries between ivory and skin, muscle and wood. Tom is signaling her, white and black flags moving under his brown fingers, as if he can sense her rigid unresponsiveness — is she holding her breath? — and is determined to break her out of it. This bounteous act, premature calls floating around her. She casts out — what precedes what — to meet them, drawing to herself many points of sound, many others lost, breath held to slow down the reeling in, that which is brought back heard singly (as should be?). What a pleasant feeling to find (sense) her person in an upright position, rebodied, flesh again in a distinct sort of way, no longer just a sleeping form, but a working one, thinking, planning, and organizing, fields clearing in her mind. The sound growing there says too much. She feels it — pinching the keys — in her mouth, teeth, tongue, and gums. She wants to curtail it. Can’t. Her mood rising with each minute. Uplifted. All this music he gives only to her. She’s no expert, but he seems to play better than ever, no part of the force lost, his three-year hiatus from the stage hurting him none. He could step back under the spotlight tomorrow and simply pick up where he left off and then some, his past performance mere dress rehearsal for his prime. All that music still, “Blind Tom” preserved. Words prepared, she wants to tell him right then that they will be leaving tomorrow, but the music chases the idea of departure from her head for the moment. (After dinner, tell him after dinner.)

The splintered edges of a voice. Is Tom singing? No. Speaking her name — Miss Eliza — clearly and cleanly in a way pleasant to hear, the play of a smile around his mouth.

Yes, Tom?

Lait, please.

She gets up from the settee to honor his request, walks down the long tunnel of hall to the kitchen filled with the odor of meat — blood congealed in the cracks and the lined spaces where the floor joins — music following her. Pulls the pantry open (hinges creaking) and enters the cool sound-muffled dark. Bends at the waist and lets her hands search through black air for the bottle of milk kept curdle-free in a bucket of water.

In the light, she fills a slender cylindrical glass to the high rim and makes her return — music drawing her back — steady hand, careful of tilts and spills. But Tom, planted on his bench, fingers skipping like grasshoppers across the keys, doesn’t seem to notice her standing there right next to him. She nudges his shoulder with the glass, and his right hand springs up to seize it while the left continues to pattern chords, arpeggios, bass lines. He throws his head back and takes a deep draft, throat working, until the glass is empty. Pivots his face ninety degrees in her direction and holds the glass — face, neck, Adam’s apple — out toward her at the end of his fully extended arm. Miss Eliza, he says. Lait, please. She knows where this is headed, her feet fated to flux between kitchen and tongue. (Been there.) Might as well bring the whole bottle and preempt any need for orbiting.

So why doesn’t she? He takes more time with the second glass, drinking and blowing melodies into the liquid at the same time. Drains the third — see, you should have brought the bottle, or made a fuss — then bites the rim in place between his teeth, the glass attached to his face like a transparent beak, both hands free to roam over the keyboard. Tom drinking milk, making an event of it.