Calaveras Station 2004 - Hers Were a Harpist's Fingers

Hers Were a Harpist's Fingers

Ann Wehrman

In memoriam of my sister, who would know which parts are true.

Jane and I were close, but I didn't really know her in many ways. She and I played doctor when I was seven - that close. We didn't really ever talk about that, although at one point years ago I alluded to that and other childhood incidents and apologized, and she was quick to say "No problem." She was generous if she loved you, when she was in a good mood.

Since our parents died years ago, I stepped up (when I learned she was gone from her apartment manager - seems she'd written my name as whom to contact in an emergency) and said I'd take care of the arrangements. The guy had given Sam and me the keys and directions to clear out her stuff as soon as possible. He was totally freaked out that she had just up and died a few weeks after moving in. He also wanted to re-rent her apartment as soon as possible. The jerk.

Driving across town; finding her apartment; and walking around the side, through the gate, and to Jane's door, I had been filled with hesitation, wondering what we might find. I felt hyper-excited inside, and also a little of that sensation you had at first around Jane, one of magic, like when you start to get into a fairy tale you're reading. But the door to her apartment was a regular door, just a wooden door painted white with an old metal handle, into which I fit the key that the manager had provided and turned it, despite a little stickiness.

Jane had suffered a heart attack and died in her bed at forty-six, leaving her spoiled, ballsy Siamese, Handsome; her scared black cat that she'd taken in from the wild; and her lovebird in an old cage to wonder why their "mother" didn't wake up, didn't talk to them and feed them. Maybe they understood, being animals, that she was dead. But they must have been confused all the same. She was always really personal with them. She'd had Handsome over ten years, since he was a kitten. The manager just opened Jane's door and let all three pets run and fly away when he found her body. Now they were God knows where, probably starving or getting run over. It's not that I wanted to take care of them; I'm not a pet person, less so than Sam, who says he's always had pets around.

I had worried, knowing her state of affairs and state of mind, that there would be a bad smell, or vomit, or that the place would be dirty or worse. So, I hesitated with the key, took my time, and looked to Sam for reassurance. He kind of pushed me with his energy, the way he does, and before I could worry about it any more, I'd opened the door. It was dark, of course, and we let it stay that way at first, kind of afraid to disturb the place. I really expected her to be there. I know it wasn't rational. But to go through her things and take possession of Jane's domain seemed inconsistent with the respect she required of me.

Unfortunately, she didn't keep others at such an arm's length. Or maybe she had different ways of letting different people get close to her. Maybe that versatility is a Gemini trait--she was a Gemini. I suspect the guys who used her like a whore weren't allowed into her deep heart or innermost confidence. She had told me years ago that she didn't experience orgasm with guys until quite recently - probably all the more likely true if her heart was closed to them. There were quite a few of them in her life, too, from a young age. I don't imagine those men experienced the close psychic/sexual bond she could make, or the deep, sensitive, smart, passionately emotional woman that she was, inside. I doubt that she trusted or loved them enough to let most of them know her. For Jane, too often sex was a money and power game, or part of general destruction, self included. I really don't know all of the details, the specific breadth of her sex life; just let me say for the record that it's suspicious when a woman gets a rib broken while supposedly cleaning house for someone. That working in a massage parlor as a high school dropout probably doesnÍt involve just massage. That gonorrhea doesn't just crop up out of nowhere. Although sometimes she had been romantic, had hoped for love and made bonds, it usually ended up being with some guy with a bushel of problems or who was completely wrong for her.

Inside JaneÍs house it smelled like her Native Spirit cigarettes; her herb teas that were stored in plastic bags with twisty-ties, green bottles with Chinese characters, and Celestial Seasonings' fantastically decorated boxes; her Crabtree and Evelyn soaps and lotions; and beer. She had recently started drinking a bit, which was insane considering her meds. She probably did it under the influence of the guys; there were street guys in Ventura with whom she fraternized, rough, always drinking. She really knew better. Not only the doctors would have told her, but she knew and researched the details„was a walking encyclopedia„of any ailment she had or was even remotely interested in. She had a natural inclination.

It wasn't like she was a hypochondriac, more like trying to learn, to know all about her own body so she could take care of herself. We have a remote ancestor who was a famous doctor in the pioneer days; maybe his spirit influenced her somehow, too. She knew about both Western and Eastern medicines and herbs, exercise, acupressure, massage, yoga„you name it. She had even tried to study Chinese herbal healing formally around ten years ago, but dropped out of the small college, somewhere on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, I think it was, when the instructors started hitting on her. But she definitely knew better than to drink with her meds. She knew which herbs and how much to take of them in order to heal, or to kill.

Her one bedroom apartment was kind of a mess, but not trashed, just full of her stuff. She had, like I said before, just moved in, though she'd unpacked and all, and decorated already. It felt lived in. What a waste of effort. She'd been evicted from the last place, and I hadn't asked why - it'd been sudden. But that place was a second floor walk-up, and she'd had a lot of trouble getting around recently, even needing a walker occasionally, so this ground floor place with its private side entry was much better.

She didn't even get to enjoy it, though. Well, maybe a little. She'd hung curtains already and unpacked everything. There was food in the house, although it was just her vegetarian stuff, which I still love since back in the 1970's, even though I eat meat now. We'd have our hands full dealing with all this. I just wanted to look through everything and, in doing so, maybe connect with Jane one more time - not just pack her stuff away, cancel her. Sam sat in a chair, Jane's wooden rocker with its cotton pad, his quiet self. I made coffee. We would have to call the utilities companies, but not until we were finished. This could take a few days - thank God it was summer, and we were both out of school and not working either, until late August.

The manager had said Jane had paid till the end of June, and that we could stay there while we packed her up, which, to be fair, was decent of him. But all things considered, we probably would each go home alone tonight, and come back tomorrow together. I could wish, but it takes two. And maybe Sam and me taking things slow would work out better for everyone, at least if that's how he wanted it.

I took a few sips of the coffee, Taster's Choice instant, unfortunately black since her milk had gone bad, then rested Jane's homely cream china cup on the unfinished wood block kitchen table. She'd bought several large pieces of furniture over the years, strong pieces for a strong woman. A solid double bed in dark wood, the wonderful kitchen block, a roll-top writing desk, a wood bookcase. I still can't believe she owned all the books that she did. When we were growing up, she never read a book, was always running around outside with a gang of girls, or the neighborhood mix of boys and girls, up to no good for sure. She mastered the latest dance steps immediately (I could never follow them), put me to shame with jacks and fancy jump rope, was the first to get Hendrix and James Gang tapes, and wore high platforms even to school and didn't trip, unless she was hamming like that fool Jennie McCarthy.

Sam, who is an English major, was scrunched down into the chair next to the window, which let in some slant light. He seemed to be already deep into one of her books, and that was fine with me. I turned on the radio, twisted the dial to NPR, and tried to mitigate with classical music some of my feelings - sadness over Jane's death, anger about her life, and lust for Sam, who was willing to drive me here and help me with this, but I could tell, not yet ready for more. He didn't seem willing to talk about things between us, but I was pretty sure he fantasized about me as I did about him - I could feel the emotion, and caught the verbal cues, the reassurance on that wavelength. It had been hard to call him, to ask him to help me with this. I still couldn't believe he had so readily assented.

With a smile at Sam, which he acknowledged with one blue eye, then back to his book, I trailed into Jane's bedroom, where it was even darker than the front room, the window draped with a Far Eastern print. The quilt was white, though, and clean, despite cat hair. Still no sign of Handsome or the black cat. The bird cage flapped open outside the kitchen door. Jane would have been heartbroken at that, and I was glad she didn't have to see it. Unless she could see from heaven, or spirit world. The thought of her watching me from the next world somehow comforting rather than spooky, I stood before her dresser, and looked into the mirror at my forty-nine-year-old face, tired and spaced out, my body forty pounds overweight, my graying hair up in a sweaty bun. At my grungy sleeveless T-shirt, bra strap hanging loose, frumpy jeans. I was a mess. I couldn't believe Sam was still sitting out there. I couldn't stand that he still hadn't touched me. Her dresser was littered - a wide, intricately-crocheted, cream doily beneath glass vials of African Violets cologne, more Crabtree and Evelyn (moisturizer, toner) her old fashioned leather jewelry box, a heavy porcelain ashtray with squashed butts, dried crumpled purple statice dropped from a thick, green-glass vase that held mildly stinking water and spoiled flowers, garden roses and sweet pea, some kind of herbs and leaves. Wrinkling my nose at the rotten water, I opened Jane's jewelry box. Nothing but its worn felt innards.

They must have stolen her jewelry. Not that she had had much worth money; maybe some real, semi-precious stone stuff in sterling, but mostly vintage or amulets, decorative and sentimental stuff. Anger and impotence boiled inside me. There was no way I was messing around with her street associates, trying to reclaim her treasures. They had won at this stage of the game. I let down the lid, and fastened its delicate clasp. God, we'd have to take down and pack the heavy mirror with its polished wooden frame that stretched the length of her bureau--how had she hung it? She must have had the street guys help her. Maybe they justified stealing her stuff as payment. Probably it was to finance their drug habits, though. My inhibitions relaxing as I began to believe Jane would not be coming in and discovering me going through her things, I opened her top drawer. I discovered muslin floral sachet bags tucked throughout as I opened one drawer then another, rummaging through clean, neatly folded, and envy-inspiring lingerie; sweaters and jeans; white cotton nightgowns with lace; skinny T's; short shorts. She had maintained a strong slender body until this last year, when her health problems began to overpower even her vast knowledge and will to heal. With my stubborn fat, I couldn't wear any of this - we'd have to donate it. But someone would come out ahead. Her closet was packed: velvets, antique dresses, floral full-length sheers, a silk kimono, beautiful stuff even though it all faintly smelled like her cigarettes despite the sachets. A two-piece Jantzen hung in the bathroom just past the closet; she had been doing physical therapy at the YWCA pool. She used to surf, run on the beach. But some doctor had decided she had early onset Parkinson's around a year ago. She'd been having shaking and falling spells, and trouble thinking right, lots of weird symptoms that no one could diagnose until that guy--perhaps he was right. Anyway, she'd been taking the meds he prescribed for it, along with her methadone from Triad's rehab program. Recently she'd had to cut way back on physical activity, using the walker now and then, although she still drove. She'd said she liked swimming, that it wasnÍt too difficult, and made her feel stronger.

"I'm making sandwiches, will you eat one?" I heard Sam call from way back in the kitchen.

"Sure, thanks." I wondered what he had found to make. I loved the idea of him cooking for me. I vacillated a minute, but Jane's spell was still strong. I ventured into her too-small bathroom. The mirrored medicine chest opened to herbal peppermint toothpaste, natural make-up remover, a nail brush. The clean matching towels, the dried, used washrag on the rack by the sink. The curtained window over the tub. I opened it, and let in the warm grass scent. It was so wrong that she had died like this. The whole house was full of her passion and her purity, her being that tried so damn hard to transform herself, her body and, by proxy, her life, into a happy one, even though it hadn't yet really worked. I left the screened window open, reasoning the hot June afternoon might burn away some of the nervous jitters I felt. I didn't really know what I would find, that was part of the trouble. I trailed back into Jane's bedroom, and inspected her nightstand, which held a journal, a shell with a cigarette butt squashed out in it, a picture of Jane at Santa Monica beach sitting beautiful and alone on the sand, and an incense burner. I picked up the journal, sat down on her bed, opened it. I hoped it wouldn't be heartbreaking.

Jane's handwriting was squiggly and all creative, even more than Comic or Lucinda fonts, like a clown or contortionist, bending and curlicuing in every direction, full of flourishes and elongations, unabashed elaboration. She had a reservoir of artistic talent - design, music, theatre, dance - she could have done any of them and been wildly successful. Why didn't she even try? Somewhere she had found a beautiful blonde wooden harp, full sized yet delicate, a standing instrument. She had never had it strung or tuned, much less taken lessons. Her fingers were fully a half inch longer than mine, and thin - she was created by Nature to play that harp. Yet it became just part of the decor. I remember once by accident taking the elevator in some building on Wilshire Avenue in Los Angeles to the top floor and exiting into a round, high-ceilinged room filled with harps. No human beings. Just the harps, all silent, asleep, waiting. Like Jane, her beautiful musical artistic soul somehow unawakened all her life.

Her journal ended several days ago, when she'd first moved in. She had written about getting everything into the house and the utilities on, and dragging herself through a bath, feeding the animals. A brief entry; she had been tired. I flipped back through, recognizing some of the situations she was describing from our phone conversations. My eyes started to hurt, and I couldn't read her curlicues. I decided to take the journal back home with me, and brought it out to Sam. He reclined in the chair, and smiled softly at me, patient. I handed him the journal, and dug into the sandwich he'd made for me. Peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat.

"Yum; thanks."

As I chewed, crumbs fell on me and sprinkled the table over which I tried to lean, completing my appearance in my mind. Sam might not have cared, although he is kind of a dandy in ways, that is to say, his socks match his shirts (which is more than I usually manage, although I really appreciate seeing it). Perhaps, in his mind, we made a nice contrast; I sure hoped so. I threw out my cold coffee and washed down the sandwich with tap water. I wanted to ask Sam if he was finding anything interesting in Jane's journal, but he looked absorbed, and I thought better of interrupting him, and returned to her bedroom.

Standing next to her bed, the bed in which she'd died, and in which she'd made love over the years, I wondered for the millionth time who Jane had really loved. Jane's face at four, and I six, playing on a neighbor lady's steps, she asking me did I "have a friend in my mind?" I had no idea what she meant, but over forty years later, I wondered if maybe she already had found her soul mate by then, bonded with him in her little girl's romantic mind. If so, I never knew who he was. She had dragged or run from one bad relationship to the next, in the last years, with the street guys, her trysts often almost parodying love. She hadn't found a husband to hold her; to help her pay for the solid wood furniture, car, and house; to share her old age. She hadn't had the children she would have had so much fun playing with and teaching, would probably have cared for obsessively. Instead, she had her secrets and her self-destruction, her struggle. She also had fury, a need to stir up chaos, and a headstrong disregard for the rules.

I remembered sitting with her on a car trip when we were in junior high and singing Supremes songs together, my harmony to her melody, song after song over the long night drive. Even though I worried that she was envious of me to the point of vengefulness, and I didn't trust her seductive habits (or her quickness when I wasn't looking) around my boyfriends, I cherished memories such as the duets. I sat on her bed, picked up a stem of dried sage from a twist of the herb that rested on the night stand next to her shell ashtray. I could try a prayer ceremony, even though I didn't really practice formal healing rituals. I needed to let go of her, at least enough to pack up all this stuff. I didn't want to let go anymore than that.

I struck a paper match and lit the sage leaf, then quickly blew out the flame, to let it burn down. It emitted sage's warm, savory potency but too swiftly burned; singeing my fingertips before I dropped the end into the shell. I stood up and started to light another, then into my mind came the sight of Jane's garden back in Santa Monica, when she and I had lived in that town over a decade ago, myself renting a walk up a few miles away from her one-room cottage, with its plum and avocado trees and the magnificent garden that she'd created out of herbs and flowers, climbing rose bushes, lemon verbena, rosemary, more, more. She knew everything about her plants, and fussed over them with skill that surpassed artistry. Those long fingers put to use after all, perhaps. I remembered how I'd hoarded for years afterward dried lemon verbena that she'd given me from that garden, brewed the most delicate relaxing tea from it, lighter than chamomile, cleaner than pot or downers, just relax, just breathe.

My loss surged and then twisted in my heart. She was my sister, but she was dead, and she hadn't found happiness. If there is justice, I thought, lighting a new wisp of sage, let her find true love, faith, peace in the next world. I inhaled the choking smoke, grim, wanting it to count against my pain, exhaled slowly. Dropped the leaf; waited for it to burn out. I walked out to Sam. I wanted to go to him and let him hold me, but was grateful he had been able to do this much, considering.

"Let's get back for tonight, what do you say? We can pack this up tomorrow, and finish by the end of the weekend, I think."

"Angie, are you sure? I haven't even gone in yet, or packed up anything, and it's only around five."

"Don't you need to get home?" I smiled, in what I hoped was honesty.

Sam looked into my eyes, his blue irises relaxing and warming as I tried to pour my feelings into them. He grinned, and nodded. "Let's call it a day, then."

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