Chapter 5 Kumquat #3
She considered this in the car and at the hairdresser, and when she sat with Charles at the symphony.
She thought about those sour orange kumquats in Great Jewish Ideas where her class learned Maimonides’s Eight Degrees of Charity.
The lowest level was to give when asked; the higher levels involved giving to others when they did not ask or even know their benefactor.
“So, the less said the better,” she murmured.
“Yes,” Rabbi Lieber said. “Exactly.”
—
Weeks later, in February, Helen got the call from Brookline Strings. “I have the instrument,” said Leonid, like a kidnapper.
“Were you able to repair it?”
“Yes, yes! I will show you.”
“It’s not mine,” she reminded him.
“Yes, tell granddaughter.”
At that moment, Helen decided to pay over the phone. She would settle the bill and let Phoebe pick up the instrument alone when she returned to visit Wyatt. Helen would take herself out of the equation. Phoebe wouldn’t even see her. “I’ll pay now,” she said.
“No credit card,” Leonid told her. “Come in for pickup. Cash or check only.”
This ruined everything. Helen felt demoted to Maimonides’s lower levels.
At the same time, secretly, irrationally, she was glad.
Like a spurned lover, she wanted to see Phoebe again, although she knew nothing would come of it.
She called Phoebe and left a message. Then she called again, and her great-niece said she could meet Helen anytime.
So, you did leave school, Helen thought, but didn’t say it.
“I’m actually in Boston now,” said Phoebe.
You’re living with Wyatt, Helen thought. You went ahead and moved in! What are you thinking? Your poor parents. Poor Melanie and Dan. But she didn’t say any of it. She was silent.
Why then was Phoebe so nervous when they met at the store? Had she heard Helen’s disapproval even without words?
As soon as she entered the shop, Helen saw that Phoebe had brought Wyatt for protection.
The two of them were talking to Leonid and when they saw her they startled like a pair of woodland creatures, drawing back unconsciously.
They flee from me, thought Helen, but that was overstatement.
Of course, they didn’t flee. They chattered nervously about strings and fingerboards and snowstorms, as Leonid unwrapped Jeanne’s violin, restored and gleaming.
“Oh wow,” Phoebe said.
“Holy shit,” said Wyatt. “Sorry!”
“Try,” Leonid told Phoebe, and she began tuning, hesitantly. She seemed almost afraid to touch the instrument, and when a peg slipped, she looked up. “Tune, tune,” Leonid ordered, impatiently. She finished and played a few notes, then a snatch of scratchy Bach. “Play!” Leonid encouraged her.
Phoebe started a fragment of something else.
“No wait.” She began the Bach again slowly, softly, readjusting.
Helen could hear her dipping under the surface where the current of the music drew her.
And now Phoebe seemed to find herself in a familiar place.
Her tone deepened. Her bowing flowed. She closed her eyes, and a partita filled the cluttered shop.
A glow, a warmth, a sense of order, as though the world were fair.
Oh, you are lovely, Helen thought. You really are sweet. You can do anything you want. You’re right. Music is your life and that’s enough. Go ahead. Be like the lilies of the field, as happy as you can stand to be. Shack up with your cellist. Drive west. What’s a salary?
“Very nice. Very good,” said Leonid, after the last note died away.
Wyatt lifted his hand for Phoebe to high-five, but Helen was still standing in a dream.
Fortunately, she recovered quickly. She unsnapped her purse and extracted her black pen to write a check. This was her contribution, large but unpoetic, as Phoebe stowed Jeanne’s ivory-tipped bow and wrapped Jeanne’s violin in velvet.
Phoebe set her instrument in its case like a newborn in a cradle, and Helen thought, Kid gloves for the next few days. Then you’ll start playing on the street and in motels and truck stops, greasy spoons. And when will you get tired of it? When will you be sick of traveling?
Did Phoebe and Wyatt know what she was thinking? When Helen offered them a ride they said they were good, although it had started sleeting.
“Thank you thank you,” Phoebe repeated on the street.
“That’s enough of that,” said Helen, because it was too much and wasn’t what she wanted, anyway.
She longed for music. To share in Phoebe’s life—not from a distance, but close enough to touch.
She wanted to impart her wisdom. Keep your job, and practice hard, and marry well.
Helen yearned to say all this, but what she knew pushed everyone away.
Phoebe and Wyatt were waving goodbye, walking off together, and Helen sat alone in her big car, driving slowly alongside them.
The kids bent their heads into the wet wind, and it was absurd. They’d catch their deaths. She opened her passenger-side window and called, “Take this.”
Alarmed, they watched a bayonet emerge, the tip of Charles’s golf umbrella. “No, that’s okay,” Phoebe said. They only had to walk a little bit. They had their hoods.
“Take it anyway.” Surely Helen had hit rock bottom, not just giving, but forcing aid on those in need. “Please,” she said. “Do me a favor. Take this from me.”