1.
I met Charlie Fish in Chicago in the fall of 1943. First I dismissed him, then I liked him, then I ruined him, then I saved him. In return he taught me what love was, lust, too, and above all what it is like to have a powerful conscience.
On first impression, Charlie was weak-chinned. To my girlfriends I might have called him a milquetoast, soft as an old banana. Which only goes to show how smart a nineteen-year-old girl is about anything. Now I know better. It turns out the greatest kinds of strength are hidden, and move slowly, and cannot be stopped by anything until they have changed the world.
Which he did twice.
I am not exaggerating, I was there on both occasions. One time I helped him, and the other time I hurt him. I hadn’t intended any harm, but there’s no denying that I used my influence to make him do terrible things. Irreversible things. He forgave me, that was in his nature, but I haven’t forgiven myself—even now, all these many years later. Some deeds are like tattoos, and the ink of regret is permanent.
How did it start? As innocently as the chiming of a bell when a shop door opens.
I was in the back office when I heard it ring, letting me know a customer had come in. At that moment I was frustrated, opening a shipment of sheet music for the high school chorus Christmas show. It was goose bumps chilly in the store, because we rarely had customers till afternoon and my mother wanted to scrimp on heat. But it wasn’t the cold that bothered me. It was the company that we used for sheet music supply. Their prices were the best, and their delivery the quickest. For some reason, though, they triple-sealed their packages, using that thick brown packing tape with the bad glue smell, so that it was all but impossible to get them open. Like breaking into Fort Knox, just to get the four-part harmony pages for “Jingle Bells.” Mr. Kulak, the high school principal and choir director, would be in to pick up the sheet music during his short lunch break. It was eleven thirty and I was nowhere near getting that package open.
“Anyone here?” the customer called.
“Be right out,” I hollered, which my mother would have said was not satisfactory customer service, but then again, she was never the one who had to deal with that tape.
It was amazing that life during the war continued with that much normality. To me, Chicago seemed starstruck. Movie matinees every Saturday after we closed early, they swept me away. The follies coming through town. Boys home on leave who would squire me around, their best pal toting a friend of mine too. We’d go to a show with them in uniform and us in patched-up nylons, feeling grown up. In spite of whatever hijinks they might have been dreaming of, all those boys really hoped for was a decent good-night kiss. Which I gave, easy as a penny. What did it cost us, anyhow, to allow them that? With what they were going to be facing? Some of my friends wouldn’t smooch a soldier on the first date, in case he got the wrong idea, or they got a reputation for being fast. But I would have kissed a hundred boys in uniform, just to give them something about home to dream on while they went and did the world’s worst job.
Still, there were plenty of days that the world felt upside down. So many boys were gone in the service. My brother, Frank, the born natural at fixing cars? He’d enlisted at nineteen. Now he was stationed in England, working in a motor pool. Who knew when we’d see him again?
Far worse, we all knew families who had received the horrible telegram. Some mothers would never be the same, like Mrs. Winchester, the best soprano in our church’s choir until her Michael came home in a coffin and she didn’t sing anymore. Some fathers became bitter and silent, like Mr. Winchester, who perched on his front stoop and glared at people like he was daring them to start something.
Sorrow was in the air. Sometimes it seemed like half the people in that city were walking around with broken hearts of one kind or another.
So maybe a package I couldn’t unwrap was a small complaint, maybe I was self-absorbed and unaware. But what did I know? My life was so small then. I had no idea.
I’d tried peeling that tape off with my hands, only tore off an inch or so, and it made my fingers hurt. I found the big scissors, but they barely managed to snip off the extra strip on one corner. Still, I was determined.
“Anyone here?” the customer called.
“Be right ooouut,” I sang back, not much concealing my annoyance. Then the big scissors slipped, and though I pulled back quickly, the point of one arm jabbed me in the forefinger.
“Damn,” I grunted, though louder than I should have.
“Is everything all right?” the customer asked. “Is there some kind of trouble?”
“No trouble,” I sang out, before jamming my finger in my mouth, sucking the metallic taste of blood. “Be right there, I completely promise.”
Cursing in front of a customer? My mother would have wrung my neck. But she was off at her Monday war wives’ luncheon, not due back till one. I straightened my skirt and stopped before the little mirror to make sure I was presentable. A lock of my hair had come out from its comb, dangling in front of my face. I was in the middle of arranging it back into place when I heard the chord.
In the olden days, they used to have trumpets come out and play a fanfare before the king spoke, to shut everyone up I suppose. And plenty of paintings of angels have cherubs making music in the background whenever something big is happening.
This chord? It was a hallelujah. A call from the heavens. Or at least from a guy who knew what an organ could do. Because I scurried out of the office and there he sat at the Hammond spinet model, our entry-level instrument. He didn’t choose the church model, with its classy cabinet and thirty-two-note bass pedals, and Dubie’s Music did not carry the concert model because it was too glamorous and expensive to sell in Hyde Park.
What I saw? A fellow, skinny as a bread stick, wearing oversized pants and perched on the spinet’s throne with his eyes closed. He had his left hand on the low manual, right hand on the high manual, left foot on the bass note, right foot on the volume pedal, announcing for all the world every bit of the meaning and grandeur of a G-major chord, fully voiced, with all the trumpet stops open.
I know which key it was because I have perfect pitch. It’s not a talent, I was born that way. Maybe this is an advantage when sizing a customer up by what chord he plays first, but I promise, it is an affliction at the Christmas show when they sing “may your days be merry . . . and bright,” and on that high note all the sopranos go flat.
“Well, well,” the skinny guy said, opening his eyes as he switched off the organ. He turned to me with a grin like a ten-year-old who’d just unwrapped his Christmas present. “Not bad.”
“Sorry I made you wait—”
But he was already off the bench and holding his hands toward the organ. “Would you play for me, miss? Please?”
I hung back by the door. Most customers would have said miss, or please, but not both. Also guys didn’t usually buy organs. They mostly brought a gal, let her choose, then dickered over the price. “Sounds like you can play it just fine yourself, mister.”
“Not a lick,” he said. “Only G major.” He gestured again, like an usher showing me to my seat. “Please?”
“Sure,” I cooed, sashaying across the sales floor. “This is the Hammond spinet, built right here in Chicago. Two manuals of forty-four keys, plus a full octave of bass pedals, the largest-selling organ in the world.”