24
So quickly it happened, he would replay it many times in his memory. Always he was invisible, helpless to intervene. If something had happened to his mother, helpless.
Thinking I didn’t warn her. It was like I wasn’t there, no one saw me.
Out of nowhere the man appeared.
Out of nowhere staring at Hazel Jones as if he knew her.
Though in fact Zack had been seeing the man for perhaps ten, twenty seconds. Zack who never took notice of anyone had been seeing this man watching his mother from a distance of about thirty feet, as Hazel walked on the graveled path through the park, oblivious.
There was a repair truck parked in the roadway nearby. The man must have been a repairman of some sort, in soiled work clothes, work shoes. In cities (they lived always in cities now, and traveled only to cities) you learn not to see such individuals who are not likely to be individuals whom you know, or who know you.
Except this man was watching Hazel Jones, very intently.
This day! “Free time” for Zack. The day following a piano recital. For perhaps seventy-two hours his senses would be alert, aroused. He continued to hear music in his head yet the intensity of the music abated, and the need of his fingers to create it. His eyes felt new to him at such times, raw, exposed to hurt. They filled with moisture easily. His ears craved to hear, with a strange hunger: not music but ordinary sounds. Voices! Noises!
He felt like a creature that has pushed its way out of a smothering cocoon, unaware of the cocoon until now.
The man in work clothes was no age Zack could judge, maybe Gallagher’s age, or younger. He looked like one whom life has chewed up. He was perhaps six feet tall, yet there was a broken, caved-in look to his chest. His lower jaw jutted, his skin was coarse and mottled and flamey as if with burst boils. His head appeared subtly deformed like partly melted wax and strands of colorless hair lay like seaweed across his scalp. A ravaged-angry face like something scraped along pavement yet out of this face eyes shone strangely with yearning, wonderment.
It’s him.
Is it-him?
An afternoon in September 1968. They were spending the weekend in Buffalo, New York. They were guests of the Delaware Conservatory of Music. A party of six or seven persons, all adults with the exception of Zack, were walking in the direction of the Park Lane Hotel where the Joneses and Gallagher were staying. They had had lunch together at the Conservatory where, the previous evening, the young pianist had performed; he would not be twelve until November, but had been accepted as a scholarship student at the prestigious music school, and would play with the Conservatory Chamber Orchestra the following spring.
Hazel and Zack were walking more slowly than the others. By instinct wanting to be alone together. Ahead, Gallagher was talking animatedly with his new acquaintances. He had established himself as Zacharias Jones’s protector, manager. Vaguely it was implied that Gallagher was the boy’s stepfather and when Hazel Jones was called “Mrs. Gallagher” the misassumption was accepted in silence.
The remarkable young pianist Zacharias Jones was the subject of the adults’ conversation as he had been the subject of the luncheon but the young pianist himself was not much engaged. He, him, the boy he overheard, at a distance. Long he’d been adept at detaching himself from the attentions of others. In the roadside cafés where his hands had first discovered the piano keyboard he had begun knowing that it made little difference what others said, what others thought, there was only the music, finally. From Hazel Jones he’d learned to be both here and not-here simultaneously; how to smile even as your mind has retreated elsewhere. Zack behaved rudely and impatiently, at times. He would be forgiven, for he was a gifted young pianist: you had to assume he was playing music in his head. Hazel too played a continuous music in her head, but no one could guess what that music was.
During the lunch in the Conservatory dining room Zack had glanced up at Hazel Jones, to see her watching him. She’d smiled, and winked so that no one else could see, and Zack had blushed, looking quickly away.
They had no need to speak. What was between them could not be uttered in words.
Make his debut. Zacharias Jones would make his debut in February 1969 with the Delaware Chamber Orchestra among whom there were few musicians younger than eighteen.
February 1969! At the luncheon, Hazel had laughed uneasily saying it seemed so far off, what if something happened to…
Others looked at Hazel so quizzically, Zack knew that his mother had misspoken.
Gallagher intervened. Showing his devil’s-point teeth in a smile remarking that February 1969 would be here quickly enough.
Zack would play a concerto, yet to be chosen. The orchestra conductor would be working closely with him of course.
Feeling at that moment a sensation of alarm, the cold taste of panic. If he failed…
Afterward, Hazel Jones had touched his arm, lightly. They would allow the others to walk ahead through the park. It was a wan warm sepia-tinted autumn afternoon. Hazel paused to admire swans, both dazzling white and black, with red bills, paddling in the lagoon in surges of languid energy.
How the company of those others oppressed them! Almost, they could not breathe.
After the previous evening’s recital, Gallagher had hugged Zack and kissed the top of his head playfully saying he should be damned proud of himself. Zack had been pleased, but embarrassed. He was deeply in love with Gallagher yet shy and self-conscious in the man’s presence.
Pride puzzled Zack Jones! He had never understood what pride was.
Nor did Hazel seem to know. When she’d been a Christian girl she’d been taught that pride is a sin, pride goeth before a fall. Pride is dangerous, isn’t it?
“Pride is for other people, Zack. Not us.”
Zack was thinking of this when he saw the man in work clothes, at the edge of the roadway. The park was not very populated, traffic moved on the road slowly, intermittently. No one in view was dressed in work clothes except this individual who was staring at Hazel as if trying to decide if he knew her.
It was not unusual for strangers to stare at Hazel Jones in public but there was something different about this individual, Zack felt the danger.
Yet he said nothing to his mother.
Now the man had decided to approach Hazel, and was walking toward her with surprising swiftness. Suddenly you could see that he was a man who acts with his body. Though he looked unhealthy with his caved-in chest and boiled face yet he was not weak, and he was not indecisive. Like a wolf coming up swiftly and noiselessly behind a deer, that has not yet sensed its presence. The man made his way slantwise across a patch of grass in which please! do not walk on the grass was prominently displayed, and along the graveled path. Massive plane trees bordered the path and sun fell in coin-sized splotches on pedestrians as they passed beneath.
There was something of the deer to Hazel Jones in her high-heeled shoes and stylish straw hat, and there was something of the wolf, coarse-haired, ungainly, to the man in work clothes. Fascinating to Zack to see his mother through this stranger’s eyes: the scintillant chestnut-red hair, lacquered flash of red nails and red mouth. The perfect posture, high-held head. For luncheon in the elegant Conservatory dining room Hazel had worn a very pale beige linen suit with several strands of pearls and a wide-brimmed straw hat with a green velvet ribbon. Zack had noticed people looking at her, in admiration; but no one had stared rudely. After the Rochester Young Pianists’ Competition when Zack, the youngest performer, had received a special citation from the judges, photographs of the honored pianists and their parents were taken and one of the photographers had told Hazel, “You’re so beautiful with your hair and skin tone, you should certainly wear black.” And Hazel had laughed, disdainfully, “Black! Black is for mourning, and I’m not in mourning.”