Freely Released

A stab at the arts + anecdotes.

Misty

    Will I wander through this wonderland alone? 

      Oh Sarah.  Sarah Vaughan.

      I enjoyed the Ella Fitzgerald, her soft swing, dead to our age of computerized pulses.  Today the sky & sidewalk were clear enough for a lovely walk with Ella.  Brushes on the snare drum, skipping beyond my clumsy steps.

    But there's only one Sarah Vaughan, and this I learned from a blind man.  Sort of.  I might've learned it from a blind man if he'd ever shown up to class.

    You know how it is.  You're a student, you need money, so you go straight to the blind for cash.  Or maybe that's just me?  

     Okay, it wasn't quite like that.  Two weeks into a seminar and a blind student in my study group lost his aide to long-term sickness.  He asked if I wanted the job.  Yes sir!  That class ended and I enrolled as a permanent employee at the McGill Office for Students with Disabilities.  The blind man started to give me attitude.

   "You have childbearing hips," he laughed, poking me in the hip as I lead him into a large lecture hall.  During the class, he evaluated my intelligence.  The professor explained the Stanford-Binet Scale, the standard IQ test, telling us that 100 is average, 150 is genius, and 170 is profound genius.  "My IQ is roughly 180," he whispered evenly.  "I'd put yours at about 90."

   Years later, I still don't know if he's a profound genius.  But I suspect he's a psychic.  How else could he have reached into the recesses of my brain and hit on two inviolable insecurities?  One: every time I go to a store to buy pants, I must discuss the experimental shape of my hips with a helpful, hopefully non-bodily-judgmental sales clerk.  Otherwise, they just aren't going to fit.  Two: I do score below average on IQ tests.  When we were in fourth grade, my best friend Michael and I were tested for admission to the School for the Gifted.  Michael was chosen; I did so poorly that they knew I wasn't going long before the testing ended.  Michael and I grew permanently apart, the way children do when they lose each other to separate worlds.  They retested me for a few years, but the result was the same.

  The blind man seemed to sense what unnerved me most, and aimed for it daily, adding that you can't hit blind men.  Once, we passed by a fellow student, and the blind man called her fat.  She winked at me, flung her hand in the air, and hollered, "No pennies for you, blind man!" 

   Phone calls from the blind man began to come often.  Sometimes at seven in the morning on Sunday.  Several times he had to be accompanied to the Emergency Room, and there was no one besides me to go with him.  His wife had recently been diagnosed with cancer, and was reserving her strength.  On the days I met his cab at Emergency, he looked the same as he did on others: pale, nearly grey skin.  Grey, unfocused pupils.  Grey sweat pants, too short for his bowl legs.  Light grey shirt stretched over his round stomach.  Brown hair unbrushed, splayed across his forehead. 

    Once, he invited me into his doctor's office with him.  His surgeon, a thin man with graceful grooves of age in his face, shone bright eyes through his glasses.  "Your friend is a miracle," he said in a strong French accent.  "A man like no other.  He should be dead seven times!"

  It turned out that the blind man had had multiple organ transplants.  He was in constant pain.  And when one part of him healed, another seemed to rupture in return.  On one occasion, his feet swelled up as if he'd been bitten by a snake.  His toes were round, purple and hard.  He had to go to the hospital immediately.  More than once he was kept there for weeks.  He'd ask me to pick up Chinese or Thai food, pay for it, and spread things out on his bed, like a picnic.  He'd apologize for things he'd said.  I'd say it was nothing. 

   Once released, things would fall into their familiar pattern.  He also needed more done for him.  Often I stayed late.  He was too sick to refuse and too demanding to freely help.  After a while, guilt and frustration were habitual.  My mother, and others, told me to quit.  I didn't.  I didn't know how.  Plus I still needed the money.

   After a year, in June, we were both ready to leave McGill.  I was finished coursework and had just been hired to teach high school in the fall.  He had to complete the summer semester to pick up an elective.  His choice?  The History of Jazz.

  "Yeah, hey, I won't be at class this afternoon.  I told the professor I had to go to the hospital.  Come by the store after class."

    Such phone messages were frequent.  "The store" was a speciality gaming boutique near the university, where the kindly owner hosted role-playing tournaments.  The blind man loved them.  Opting for dragon slaying, he rarely went to class.
 
    But I loved his jazz lectures.  I nursed hero-worship for the professor.  A self-effacing drummer in his mid-thirties, he had a shock of dark brown hair and untamed black eyebrows.  There was a live nerve under his gait.  

   And the professor's drawl didn't cloud his reverence.  "Now if you miss everything else,"  he warbled on a muggy July afternoon, "okay, but don't miss this.  Sarah Vaughan.  I can't tell you.  You just have to hear her sing Misty.  Sometime later, you know, they didn't like her operatic stylistics.   She got a little carried away, is what everyone thought."  Then he set the song spinning.

   On my own
   Would I wander through this wonderland alone?
   Never knowing my right foot from my left
   My hat from my glove
 
   She pulled notes from the air!  Low, or floating!   That wonderland I knew, like everyone does: a secret place that's actually everywhere, inhabited by everyone, the life of the street and the grass passing through you.

   "Hi," called the professor.  I was packing up the keyboard lent by the Disabilities Office while the room idled towards the door.  I still felt happily hazy from the Sarah Vaughan song.  "Hello?  With the red hair?  The aide?"  When I pointed to myself, the professor nodded and motioned.  "You've been to every class," he said.  "I was wondering if you wanted to write the final exam."

   "Oh, gosh," I said, internally cursing.  Jazz people are cool.  They don't fucking say gosh.  "That's a really decent offer.  I'd like to take the exam, but you don't have to mark it." 

    The professor smiled.  "It'd be a pleasure.  By the way, how is he doing?"

    "Oh," I said, walking towards the door.  "It's hard to be in and out of the hospital all the time."  The professor nodded with concern.

    That afternoon I strolled over to the store.  The blind man was furiously shaking the dice and laughing, spilling them over a green grid large enough to cover two tables.  Two boys, maybe twelve or fourteen, were surrounded by adults of varying ages.  A tall, thin girl in glasses was helping the blind man.  "Your exam is on Thursday," I said.  "Do you want to prepare?"  This was part of my duties.

   "Sure, sure," said the blind man.  "We'll do it Wednesday."

   I was going to argue, knowing it wouldn't be enough time.  But it was pointless.  And I was seized by a delightful idea: I could beat him on the exam.  And rub it in.  On the walk home I felt ill.  The sunshine, beautifully revealing on the way out of class, was burning.  No, no!  I swore to myself that if I did better, I wouldn't say anything. 

   On Wednesday night, we sat in front of his computer.  "Here," I said, playing one of the player piano pieces.  "You can tell that this one is the first rag because of odd rhythm. "

   "Forget it," he said.  "I don't need to do that."

   "There's over fifty pieces to identify," I protested, "and the prof isn't going even pick choruses to play."
 
   "Just play them in alphabetical order.  I'll remember what they sound like."

   "It won't work!"  He was going to sit there in his stupid grey sweatpants and ruin his exam!   Or he was going to ace it!  All I could do was play them in alphabetical order as he hummed parts back, pupils at the ceiling.

   On the morning of the exam I slid into a seat, alone.  The blind man would write at the Disability Office in the afternoon.  The professor himself manned the musical cues.  Some of them were easy.  Some were obscure.  Some were a guess.  On the way out, the prof asked for my email address, to send on the results.  I told him again that he didn't have to worry about it, but he said again that it was a pleasure, and I got a fresh understanding of straight girls. 

     I was to meet the blind man after his exam and headed across campus. 

   "It was easy," he said.  "I got at least an eighty for sure.  Pretty good for a guy who never goes, eh?  Want to celebrate the end with a drink?  I'll buy."

   It was the end - almost.  The blind man had a few assignments to finish, and I assisted.  A few days later, the exam results came in.  "I got a 68!" he crowed.  "It was a pretty hard exam.  What'd you get?"

    "Does it matter?" I pushed out.

    "Come on," he grinned.  "Did you pass?"

     The email had come that morning: I hereby congratulate you on a 90%, and bestow 3 honorary credits.  I told him exactly what the note said, and what a good guy the professor was, and how much I liked the class.  How lucky I felt.

     "Really?"

     "Yeah," I said.

     "Well," he said, "you did go to all the classes."

     "Yeah."

      That night I had a fourth or fifth date with a woman I'd known about that long.  I put the jazz class CD with Sarah Vaughan's Misty in my jacket.  It seemed like the thing to do.  The kind of thing I always want to do.  I put the song on that night, but it wouldn't take.  Sarah was far away, the sounds pouring from the speakers, like noises do.   
    
  I tried to hear it, privately, again.  But nothing.  I hadn't touched it since that summer, not until today.  The notes are floating.  Maybe enough time has passed by now. 

 
   'til next weekend.

posted by: FreelyReleased at 09:39 | link | comments (6) |