Years back Amy and I would stop in after school looking for the new Soup Dragons or Matthew Sweet CD. Although no one bought albums anymore, the store remained in business. Maybe the Catholics still had Toby on the payroll. On the counter the chessboard was populated with guitar picks instead of chess pieces, the picks arranged on opposite sides in strategic patterns, Father Toby engaged in a match against himself. There seemed to be a theme, the Fender picks again the Martins, but it was hard to tell. Adjusting his glasses, he looked up, his eyes squinting as he tried to place me. Then it hit.
“Good Lord, it’s the prince of the Jaybird,” he said, “Dan Marcino’s loyal squire has returned at last.”
He and Uncle Dan were good friends, two small businessmen with similar interests and a shared aversion to change. Father Toby moved from the counter and shook my hand, then turned to Kelly, touching her arm as a big grin broke over his face. “You, my dear, are a musician. About this I’m never wrong. What do you play?”
Kelly brightened. “Piano, flute, clarinet, violin…a little guitar,” she said. “I teach music…well, I did before my job became a budget cut.”
“Philistines!” Toby said.
“We were wondering about that guitar in the window,” I said.
“The Martin? It’s a beauty, isn’t it?’ He lifted it from the display and cradled it against his stomach. “The fingerboard is Indian rosewood; the strings …it’s like they’re made from the hair of baby angels.” Stepping back, he strummed a few chords, then played the opening of the Beatles song “Blackbird.” I tried to catch the price, but the tag wasn’t visible.
“You play wonderfully,” Kelly said.
“I dabble. I’m a lonely man, and these are my friends.” He gestured at the guitars hanging from the walls. “These days everyone just listens to their phone. Abysmal sound quality, but they don’t care, do they? I look out at the boardwalk sometimes and everyone’s taking pictures of themselves! There’s the stunning grace of God’s creation, the beautiful Atlantic, so close in view, but all they want is their own grinning faces. The United States of Narcissism.” He winked at Kelly. “Yes, I’m a bit of a crank, but my years of service leave me entitled. People see the collar and they rather expect it.”
“How much for the guitar?” I asked.
“This guy here,” Toby said, pointing to me. “A good customer. He and his friend would come in and actually buy something. They’d bring that darling little girl. What a shame!”
It always shook me when someone mentioned Sarah, as if what had happened belonged only to Amy and me. Toby played a few bars of a song I recognized but couldn’t quite place, the music filling the shop with its deep somber beauty.
“Your friend still comes in, you know. She bought the new Morrissey a few weeks back. It doesn’t sound the same if you download it. That’s true, you know, but they’ll never let anyone prove it.”
“Would you mind?” Kelly asked.
“It’s my pleasure. Every guitar yearns to be played by a beautiful woman.”
Kelly took the guitar, Toby handing it over like it was his first-born, Kelly balancing her grip as she checked the frets and started strumming the opening melody of “You’ve Got a Friend,” the James Taylor song, written by Carole King, I think, the sweet harmonic lines rising and falling. Amazingly, I’d never heard Kelly play guitar before, and suddenly I felt ashamed of how something so important to her could get lost in the rabbit hole of me. Even awake, I was so often sleeping.
I watched her fingers slide around the frets, her hands so deft and confident, her face at peace, lost inside the notes as her head nodded rhythmically with the changing chords, Father Toby’s foot keeping gentle time against the floor. Had I ever seen Kelly happier?
“How much?” I asked.
“Nine hundred,” he said.
Immediately she stopped playing and offered the guitar back to Toby, but I grabbed its neck and guided it back to her, my credit card reluctant but ready for the hit.
“We’ll take it,” I said.
-9-
“It’s a gradual process,” Uncle Dan said, “but eventually you get used to her.”
We stood in the kitchen watching Nancy devour her breakfast like some cheap carnival act, the Amazing One-Armed Fat Woman, brought to you by Cocoa Puffs. It was all set out in front of her: a bowl of cereal; ten slices of microwave bacon; an onion bagel smothered in cream cheese; and one-half of an Entenmann’s crumb cake, all chased down with a tall glass of chocolate milk. Watch closely enough and a pattern emerged: after three spoonfuls of cereal, she’d drop the spoon, gobble two slices of bacon, then chomp on the bagel, the crumb cake the final stop before the whole routine repeated with three more hits of Cocoa Puffs.
“Shouldn’t you be feeding her something healthier?”
“I don’t feed her…she’s not a cat.” Uncle Dan sipped his coffee and checked the clock. “She’s lost ten pounds since she’s been here. If you’d like to start planning her diet, she’s all yours, doctor.”
She reached the last slice of bacon, and instead of eating it, crumbled it in her fist and brought her hand over the cereal, bacon bits raining from her palm into the Cocoa Puffs. She must have known we were watching but didn’t seem to care, and I felt guilty for my smug self-righteousness.
‘Couldn’t you find any group housing or…someplace to put her?”
Uncle Dan glared. “I didn’t hear what you said, and I hope you’re smart enough not to repeat it.”
“Sorry,” I told him. “It’s just…hard.”
“Being in a firefight in Da Nang—that was hard. This is just something we deal with.”
Earlier Kelly had suggested how lucky I
