“Why do you like those blue tunes, anyhow?” I teased him one Monday.
“Maybe it’s what playing them does to the organist.”
“Go on.” I waved him off. “What’s the real reason?”
“How the organ sounds,” he said. “How notes continue, and how they fade.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“It’s physics—what the wind does to make a note. That’s no accident.” He smiled. “Science makes the air sound beautiful.”
I thought maybe Charlie was showing off. But there I was, playing for him as fancy as you please. That morning I’d styled my hair to look nice in back too. Which he would see while I was on the bench. Maybe we were playing the same game.
I remember one spring when I was still in my sixties, I saw a movie about the courtship rituals of birds. The grebes did a kind of ballet, it was that elegant, with one bird mirroring the long-necked moves of the other, until they both went running away across the surface of the water. The birds of paradise swept their wings out, puffed their chests, and danced around on tree branches. And the whooping cranes? They leaped and spread their wings and went crazy wild for each other. Oh, that movie made me ache to be young again. It also reminded me that my courtship with Charlie was painfully reserved. More than a month after that first handshake, we had not touched again.
The other thing I noticed was that each Monday Charlie showed up a little later. It made me nervous, for one simple reason. My mother.
The war wives’ group had the use of the function room only till one o’clock, when the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce board met. Then it was a two-block walk back to the store. You could set your watch by when my mother would come striding in—1:05 and never a second later, taking charge and wanting a full update on every littlest thing that happened in the sixty-five minutes she’d been gone.
Each week Charlie arrived later past noon. I began to feel squeezed, and would have to hurry him out the door. He was always nice as peaches, and let me shoo him off without a complaint. He’d stand on the sidewalk and gawk through the big window, wave or do jazz hands, something to make me smile before shuffling back to his math office—wherever it was. If I asked what street, he’d go cute and change the subject.
One week he didn’t arrive till almost quarter to one. I was triple disappointed. First, there’d be no time for helping with chores. Second, I’d only have time to play about two songs, and I’d spent the week learning five that together sent a little flirty message. Third, we’d barely have any time to visit before I’d have to send him along.
But Charlie seemed in the opposite mood. He was gabby and casual, humming to himself while he wandered around the store. The clock above the register read twelve minutes till one. He opened the covers of several pianos, playing that old standby G-major chord in various octaves. When he lifted the hood of the Chickering baby grand, trilling tunelessly up and down the black keys, I couldn’t take another second.
“Did you come to buy a piano today?” I said. “Or to kill time?”
Charlie stopped fiddling and smiled at me. “You look especially good today, Brenda. That knot there, up so high, I have never seen that before.”
“It’s called a chignon.” I slid onto the bench. “It took me three tries.”
“Well, it was worth it.”
“Thanks,” I said offhandedly, but was secretly pleased down to my toes. That chignon had cost me an hour, and Charlie’s compliment repaid every second. I switched on the spinet model, playing test chords so I could start the new tunes as soon as it warmed up.
“Please don’t hurry,” Charlie said. “We’ve barely had a chance to talk.”
“Oh, I just have the music all through my veins this afternoon,” I insisted, pulling out sheets for the songs I’d practiced.
“Did you do up your nails too?” He pointed, and I stared at my fingers like they belonged to someone else. “What’s the occasion?”
“Just a Monday.” I shrugged. “Plain old Monday.”
I noticed the clock by the register read eight to one, and immediately started in on “Moonlight Becomes You,” which I figured he would love because it is full of diminished chords that sound sad but also like they’re leaning toward something. I had barely finished the intro when Charlie came over and switched off the organ.
“Hey,” I said, sharper than I’d intended. “What’s gotten into you, anyhow?”
“That’s the question I have for you, Brenda. Do you only want an audience? Do you not want to talk to me anymore?”
“Oh, Charlie, it’s the flat opposite of that,” I confessed. “I’m always glad when you’re here. I wait all week for the next Monday to come along.”
Just like that, I started spilling the whole pot of beans. While half of my brain was bossing me to shut my yap, the other half was telling and declaring, as if this boy were headed off to the front the next morning. How smart he was, how nice and polite. I was giving away my entire reserve. “Also I have to get back to work by one, and on the days when you get here later than usual—”
At that I glanced out the big front window, and the jig was up. Here was my mother, low-heeled shoes and gigantic brown purse, coming up the sidewalk like a plow truck clearing snow. The clock read four minutes to one. Lunch had ended early.
Charlie didn’t seem to mind that I had trailed off in midsentence. He followed my eyes and retreated from the organ, clasping his hands behind his back.
“—though you would hardly think a bowl of pudding would cause such a fuss,” my mother complained, unpinning her hat as she barreled through the door. She had a habit of starting conversations right in the middle, whether you were there for the beginning or not, and would bristle like a porcupine if you asked what she was talking about. I learned it was best just to play along.
“Did someone spill?” I prompted.
She was tucking her huge purse behind the register. “What? Of course no one spilled. But Elise insisted on having seconds, which is its own house on fire, with all the weight she’s carrying these days, hips like a whale—although come to think of it, whales don’t actually have hips, do they?—and meanwhile Nancy Burgoyne had not had firsts, and merely said no thank you to be polite.”
Only then did Charlie come into her sight, over by the baby grand. “Brenda,” she purred, not taking her eyes off him. “Why didn’t you tell me we have a customer?”
“You hadn’t taken half a breath so that I could.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “I forgive you.”
It has long been my belief that after a child is of a certain age, the parents’ primary role is to cause embarrassment. To prove that point, my mother clapped her hands together and, with an expression as authentic as a bouquet of plastic flowers, minced over to Charlie. He wore a grin the size of the front grille on an Oldsmobile.
“How do you do, Mrs. Dubie?” He held out that strong hand. “I’m Charlie Fish.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Charlie,” my mother chirped, shaking hands while eyeing him all over. “Are you in the market for a piano today?”