“I got back early.”
“You must have done. Last time I talked to Mikel, he said you’d be on the road until June. I thought if I saw you at the holidays, I’d be lucky.” She closed the door and put a hand on my shoulder, already leading to the kitchen. “I’ve got some coffee, from Peet’s. The kind you like, but it’s decaf, if you want some.”
“No trouble?”
“It’s already made, honey. If it was trouble, I wouldn’t offer.”
That was a lie. If it was trouble, she’d have done it anyway.
Joan poured us two mugs, then put sugar and milk in mine before handing it over. I took a sip as she watched.
“Good?”
“Just perfect,” I said.
“Good,” Joan said again, but softly. She moved her mug from the counter to the kitchen table and took a seat, watching me.
The kitchen felt the same, looked the same, but for some cosmetic changes. There were still fliers stuck to the corkboard with thumbtacks, the poster for her Chicago recital in 1972. There was the framed picture of her and Steven and Chet Atkins still hanging by the door, and another, only a couple years old, of the two of them standing with Benny Green. There was a new one, too, not really a picture, but a framed one-page article on Steven and me from
Joan saw me looking at it, didn’t say anything. Her hair was a little more silver than the last time I’d seen her, eclipsing the brown, and it was shorter, only to her shoulders, when she’d used to wear it halfway down her back, in a braid. She was wearing casual clothes, baggy corduroys and a wool sweater, but the sleeves had been rolled back, to keep out of the way of her playing. She was wearing her glasses, not her contacts.
“You cut your hair,” I said, as I moved to join her at the table.
“After the funeral. Why didn’t you come home, Miriam?”
I didn’t know how to give her the honest answer, so I gave her the one I’d used before, over the phone, when I told her I wouldn’t be back for the memorial. I said, “We were shooting a video. I couldn’t get out of it.”
If Joan’s look had been disapproving, the look she’d given me when I was sixteen and had stayed out past curfew, it would have been easier. But now, it was like she couldn’t be bothered, and she nodded her head, maybe not believing me, but maybe not caring. She withdrew her hands, sighing.
Then she reached back and turned my palm up. “What happened?”
“Nothing, I cut it on the tour. Broken glass backstage, I picked it up and there you go. Cut myself. It got reopened somehow, I haven’t had time to change the bandage.”
“It’s not too deep, is it?” Concern made her look even older, even more tired. “That’s not why you’re back, because of your hand?”
“I’m . . . I needed some time off. Van and Click are still touring, they’re going to finish out the schedule.”
“I’m getting the first-aid kit.”
“It’s not a deal, Joan.”
She retrieved the metal box with its scratched white enamel paint and brought it back to the table, flipping it open and telling me to keep my hand still, then began unwrapping the old bandage. When my palm was revealed she used some cotton and antiseptic to clean the dried blood away. Her fingers were long and very strong, pianist’s fingers, with neatly trimmed nails. The second knuckle on almost every finger was slightly swollen, going arthritic. Steven used to massage her hands after she’d been playing for a while.
“Thanks,” I said.
She murmured that it was all right while she tore the wrapping on a fresh square of gauze. “Looks nasty.”
“It’s just a cut.”
“You should have someone look at it, honey. You don’t want it to turn into something that threatens your playing.”
“I’ll do it tomorrow,” I lied.
She used some strips of cloth tape to hold the gauze down. “You’re as bad as Steven was.”
I moved my look from her hands tending mine to her face, saw the bitterness. Steven had suffered from the sore throat for months before he’d been willing to see anyone about it, and even then, only because he’d started bringing up blood in the morning. By the time the cancer had been found, the only possible treatments for it had been devastating and, ultimately, futile ones. No one ever said so, at least not to me, but the feeling was that he’d just waited too long.
“I’ll go to a doctor tomorrow,” I said. “I promise.”
Joan closed the kit and said, “You’re a grown woman, you’ll do what you like. You’re home until June?”
I grinned. “That’s the plan.”
She didn’t buy it. “Who’s filling in for you?”
“Oliver Clay. You don’t know him, out of L.A. He’s good. He’s not me, of course, but he’s good.”
The joke didn’t even get a smirk. “Did you and Vanessa have another fight?”
I shook my head. “I just wanted to come home.”
She started to frown, then stopped it before it could take hold, deciding to let this matter drop, too, which wasn’t really like her. My coffee was getting cold, and it felt like it was cold in the house, too, as if the furnace wasn’t working.
“I heard ‘Queen of Swords,’ ” Joan said, after a moment. “You’re doing things with the instrument that Steven would have been thrilled to hear. It’s very accomplished playing.”
“He wouldn’t have thought it was too glib? I kept thinking he’d have told me I was being glib.”
“No, he would have been very proud of you. Steven was always very proud of you.”
Pressure came thundering hard behind my eyes, and my head began to ache, like I had a migraine. I wanted to say that I hadn’t come back for the funeral because I’d been angry and scared. I wanted to say that if I could do it again I would do it right, I would be there for her. That I would know how to say good-bye to the man who, as far as I was concerned, was my father, more than the man who’d given me my genes.
But I hadn’t, I’d chickened out and hidden in the Beverly Hilton behind all the bottles I could find.
Joan was looking at the clock on the stove, and getting to her feet, saying, “I’ve got to get to bed, sweetie. I’ve got to teach tomorrow, and I have to get up early.”
I started to nod, then blurted, “Can I stay? Just in the guest room or maybe up in my old room, please?”
She stopped, looking surprised. “Of course you can, hon, if that’s what you want.”
I nodded again, more vigorously, feeling shamefully young.
Joan came around to my side of the table, dropping down on her haunches and putting her hands on my arms. It created strange nostalgia, as if the moment now could have been a moment ten years ago, with me in pubescent misery and Joan offering all the maternal guidance she knew how to give. She put a hand on my cheek.
“Sweetie, what’s wrong?”
I tried to open my mouth and say something coherent, but there was just too much to say, all of a sudden, and none of it could come out. All I could do was shake my head and try to explain that I didn’t want to sleep in my house alone, and she told me that she understood, and that I was always welcome, and that I should always know that.
“You’re our little girl,” Joan told me.
The sting of guilt stayed with me to morning.
CHAPTER 12
When I came down in the morning, Joan was already up and preparing to head to work. She looked very proper for school—navy slacks and a cream blouse, the uniform of a woman ready to fill fresh young minds with the infinite possibilities of music. She pressed a mug of coffee into my hands, then went back to loading sheet music
