Some Can Whistle (2 page)

I picked up the phone a little gingerly under Godwin’s newly watchful eye.

“This husband of mine’s got his creepy side,” Nema said. “On the other hand he’s already ready. That’s something, agreed?”

“Agreed,” I intoned cautiously. Over the years I had learned to resist too-hasty agreement with Nema in her musing about her various husbands and even more various lovers. I was the scale she weighed them on, but often the scale took a lot of balancing. A given guy might tip up or down for an hour or more as Nema—a tiny, hyperenergetic redhead—moved small pros and cons onto the trays of the scale.

“Even if we got divorced we could still fuck a good bit, I just wouldn’t have to let him use the kitchen,” Nema reasoned. “One of his creepiest habits is that he never cleans the blender.”

“A bad sign,” I ventured. I was already wishing Nema would hang up and that my angry daughter—if it
was
my daughter—would call back.

“What’s the matter with you?” Nema asked, annoyed. “You’re not paying a bit of attention.”

People who think TV stars are insensitive bimbos should have the experience of a few years of phone calls from Nema Remington. Talking to her took concentration, even if she was just idly musing over whether to sign her guy-of-the-year for a second season before dispatching him to the minors, as it were.

I had only uttered four words, but the fact that they had not exactly twanged with attentiveness registered in Nema’s brain as evidence of an alarming
froideur
.

“Have you fallen in love or what, Danny?” she asked.

“Of course not, calm down,” I said, “I think my daughter just called.”

“Your daughter?” she said, surprised—and with reason; I had
never seen my daughter and neither had any of my old friends.

“Well, is she all right?” Nema asked. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She got mad and hung up. Maybe I better get off this phone, in case she changes her mind and calls again.”

“I hope she does, what a great thing for you,” Nema said. “Call me back later, I wanta know about this.”

“I’ll call you back,” I promised.

“Bye,” Nema said.

“As I was saying,” Godwin said.

“You weren’t saying,” I countered. “You hadn’t uttered a syllable.”

“Quite incorrect,” he insisted, concentrating his gaze on the Cheerios, which were still floating, though heavily milk-logged. “I was merely picking up the conversation where we left off yesterday. We were discussing the first sentences of novels, were we not?”

“Godwin, my daughter just called!” I said. “Who cares about first sentences of novels? That was my daughter. Her voice sounded a lot like Sally’s.”

Just saying the word “daughter” filled me with a kind of excitement I had not felt in years—perhaps had never felt. I tried to call up for comparison Sally’s voice, which I hadn’t heard for more than twenty years; I tried to recall some throb or timbre that might connect it with the blistering young tones I had just heard.

The effort didn’t really succeed, but it was considerably more compelling than the petulant debate Godwin and I had been having for several weeks about what constituted a good first sentence for a novel.

The debate had begun because—for the first time in many years—I had been trying to write a novel, and I was still hung up on the first sentence.

“The point I have been patiently trying to make,” Godwin
said impatiently, “is that you expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.”

“I hope the phone rings again soon,” I said. “I hope she calls back. I’m almost positive that was my daughter.”

The phone did ring and I grabbed it, but once again it was a movie star, and not my daughter. Jeanie Vertus’s hopeful voice hit my ear.

“Hi, this is Jeanie,” she said, as if I wouldn’t know. Two Oscars had not brought Jeanie much self-assurance.

“Hey, aren’t you the girl with the funny last name?” I said. “What’s that last name again?”

“You gave it to me, Danny—you know it,” Jeanie said, half reproachful, half abashed. I had found the name Des Vertus in a book on the history of the corset and persuaded Jeanie to use the Vertus part in a film I had produced. Up to then she had just been plain Jeanie Clark, a nice girl from Altadena, working mainly in commercials, touring companies, summer stock. The film was a modest hit, Jeanie got an Oscar nomination, and from then on she was Jeanie Vertus, though she never became comfortable with the implications of the name, virtue being the last thing Jeanie would have laid claim to.

Though I often teased her about it, I thought the name was a stroke of genius—Jeanie’s own ambivalence toward it created an inner
frisson
that made her all the more appealing. It was in part her effort to grow into her own stage name that made Jeanie the great star she later became.

“Is the sun shining there?” she asked. “It’s not peeping through in New York.”

One of the many things we shared was a need for frequent sunlight.

“Guess what—my daughter just called,” I said.

“Is that why you sound happy?” Jeanie asked.

“Do I sound happy?”

“I’ve never heard such a sound in your voice, Danny,” she said. “It’s as good as the sun peeping through. What’s her name?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “She didn’t give me a chance to ask. But I’m hoping she’ll call back.”

“I’m getting off this phone, just in case,” Jeanie said, hanging up.

At that point Gladys walked up to collect the breakfast dishes. Godwin had just opened his mouth to say something—no doubt he meant to expound on his theory of first sentences—but he noticed Gladys just in time and quickly shut up.

Gladys and Godwin were the same size—small—and they both had white hair, but there the resemblance ended. Godwin was English, Gladys was Texan, and a lot of twain lay in between.

“That phone’s been ringing off the hook. Are all your girlfriends pregnant or what?”

She stood beside Godwin’s chair and counted the Cheerios floating in his milk.

“Six again,” she said. “What’s so special about six? Are you into numerology or what?”

Neither Godwin nor I uttered a sound. We both knew all too well that the ever voluble Gladys was a veritable symphony of volubility at this hour of the day. The most casual word from either of us would unleash an uncheckable stream of speculation and commentary.

“Have you wrote down the first sentence of your book yet?” Gladys asked, fixing me with a pale blue eye.

“Yes, would you like to hear it?” I asked.

Godwin groaned and buried his head in his hands.

“Oh, shut up, Godwin!” I said. “My tongue gets tired of being held captive every morning.”

Gladys pulled up a chair, made herself comfortable, and poured a half-inch layer of sugar on a grapefruit I’d neglected.
She looked cheerful. Gladys knew perfectly well why Godwin and I clammed up when she came around. She knew we thought she talked too much.

“Yes, and my ears will get tired of hearing what she says now,” Godwin remarked, with some bitterness.

“I thought your hearing was shot anyway,” Gladys retorted. “You’re supposed to be deaf, so what’s it to you if a lonely old woman chatters at you in the morning? You ought to be grateful for the company. Reach me that spoon.”

Godwin handed her a spoon, which was soon plowing through the sugary grapefruit.

The phone rang again and I snatched it.

“Will you accept a collect call from T.R.?” an operator asked.

“From whom?” I asked, surprised.

“From his daughter!” the hot young voice said at once.

“Yes, yes,” I said, suddenly frantic. “Of course I accept. I accept.”

“Go ahead, miss,” the operator said.

“I ain’t talkin’ if you’re listenin’,” my daughter said to the operator. “This is private between me and my daddy.”

Then she began to cry. Loud jerky sobs came through the phone, shocking me so that I promptly dropped the receiver, which bounced off the table and hit Gladys on the foot. Though I had spent years of my life listening to women cry into telephones, none of the weepers had been my daughter. I was completely undone—nor was the steely-nerved Gladys exactly a model of calm. She kicked the receiver two or three times before finally catching it and handing it back to me.

Godwin watched us grope for the receiver with amused detachment. He might have been a critic enduring the rehearsal of a not particularly adept comedy act. He didn’t say a word, but at least he’d stopped watching his Cheerios.

“I’m sorry, honey,” I said. “I accidentally dropped the phone.”

“A weird-looking Mexican came up and tried to sell me dope right here at this pay phone while your line was busy,” my daughter said, calming a little. “He had one of them pit bulls and I was afraid it was gonna get my babies, plus I was afraid you
wasn’t ever going to believe it was me, anyway. I gave the dope dealer all my money just so he’d go away, that’s why I had to call collect.”

She sighed. I waited.

“The dream of my life is to have an inside phone someday,” she said quietly. “I’d have a couch, and I could sit on my couch and talk as long as I wanted and not have to mess with no change or worry about dogs getting my babies.”

She paused again. Godwin and Gladys were watching me closely.

“That’s something that’d be nice,” she said in a resigned tone—the very tone Jeanie Vertus sounded when she mentioned that the sun was not peeping through in New York City. What I heard in my daughter’s voice was the brief, deep resignation of those who feel that their simplest, most normal hopes cannot possibly come true—not the hope of a ray of sunlight, nor of a couch and an inside phone.

“Honey, you can have an inside phone,” I said.

“You’re saying it but you ain’t here,” she said. “Bo, stop throwing dirt on your little sister.”

“I like dirt,” a faint voice said, the voice, presumably, of my grandson. I decided to try a two-handed grip on the receiver, lest I drop it again in some reflex of emotion.

This got the full attention of Godwin and Gladys. On the whole this was the most exciting breakfast any of us had experienced for ages.

“Tell me where you are and I’ll be there,” I said. “I’ll charter a plane. I’ll be there in an hour or two. I’ll make it all up to you.”

“Maybe you could,” my daughter said thoughtfully. “But first I gotta decide if you deserve the chance.”

Then she hung up again.

“You mean to say that child has called twice and you haven’t yet managed to get her name?” Godwin said, once the situation had been explained to him.

“Or even what town she’s in?” Gladys chimed in.

“Listen, I’ve only been an active parent for about ten minutes,” I reminded them. “Plus I’m very nervous. Don’t be so critical.”

“She’s probably in Miami,” Gladys said. “There’s nothing but Mexicans in Miami now, they say.”

“She didn’t sound that far away,” I said, wishing the phone would ring again.

“I once received a call from Nepal,” Godwin remarked. “The connection was remarkable. My friend might have been in the next room.”

Silence fell. I needed to piss, but didn’t feel like leaving the phone, even for a second.

“In retrospect it’s nice we had such a good connection that day,” Godwin remarked. “A day or two later my friend fell into a crevasse and that was the end of him.”

“Should have watched his step,” Gladys observed.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “The operator asked if I would accept a call from T.R. Her name must be T.R.”

“Nonsense, T.R. stands for Teddy Roosevelt,” Godwin said. “Who would name a girl Teddy Roosevelt?”

“She was raised by savages, remember,” I reminded him. I had only met my wife’s parents once—the night they blocked me from the hospital where my infant daughter had been born—but my memories were vivid.

“Savages? You mean you got a half-breed daughter?” Gladys asked. “I thought you told me your wife’s folks were Church of Christ.”

“I think that’s it,” I said. “Some savage poor white fundamentalist sect. I didn’t mean to insult native Americans.”

“Well, I’m a native American and you’ve insulted me a million times whether you meant to or not,” Gladys said. “Even so, I don’t want no pit bulls getting your grandbabies. Why don’t you trace the call?”

“No, that might upset her,” I said. “She called twice, she’ll call again.”

“I wonder if she’s as beautiful as her mother,” Godwin said.
“Imagine a young Sally in our midst, here in this pastoral Eden. I could teach her to swim if she doesn’t happen to know how.”

“Go write your book, Godwin,” I said. “I’m sure my daughter knows how to swim.”

The drift of his thoughts was obvious. Godwin was remembering Sally, my former wife, whose lover he had once been in the days when he was a respected sociology professor at the University of Texas. In middle age he had adroitly crossed the disciplines to classics, and for a time had held a chair in Greek. Now he was retired and living in my guest house, writing a book on Euripidean elements in the music of the Rolling Stones. Godwin was nothing if not mod.

“You can’t be sure until you ask her,” he said. “I have few peers when it comes to teaching the crawl. She might need to improve her crawl.”

“They say that people who keep on having fantasies live the longest,” Gladys observed.

“
Don’t
tell him that!” I protested. “I don’t want him having fantasies about my daughter.”

“How about
your
fantasies, my dear?” Godwin asked. He was not above trying a little Oxbridge charm on Gladys from time to time. “Perhaps you’d like to regale us with a few of them when you finish your grapefruit,” he said.

“Mine involve things that go on while you’re having a bubble bath,” Gladys informed him. “You can’t see much because of the bubbles.”

I was beginning to worry about the pit bulls. Perhaps my daughter really was in Miami. She’d said she’d given all her money to the dope dealer. For all I knew the situation could be deteriorating fast. I had suddenly been brought to grips with the fact that I had three descendants—a daughter and two grandchildren—and I didn’t know their names or locations. Godwin and Gladys’s idle banter, which normally I enjoyed, began to irritate me.