The Music of A Deaf Genius

Paula Bomer

Their bedroom was dark but not as dark as his wife tried to make it. She’d bought blackout shades to put under the curtains, but they hadn’t been installed properly and light from the street shone brightly along the edges of the rectangular-shaped windows. She had wanted pitch blackness and instead, after they put their books and magazines down on the end tables, after the lights were turned off, the cluttered and dusty room remained discernable, although shadowed. He knew this bothered her; she turned her back to him tensely every night and it was as if he could hear her squeeze her eyes shut, pinchingly, uncomfortably, against the visible world. She wanted escape. She had always wanted escape. It was something he found attractive about her. But he did not share this fantasy, or at least he didn’t think about escape, plan for it, try to organize his world into little compartments of escape as she did. No, he loved the regularity of his job, of returning to the same home at night, the same house they bought nearly two decades ago, the sameness of the weekend phone-calls with their son, Ben, who’d just started college that fall in Providence. He liked the comfort of routine. He’d never been rebellious. What would be the point? Every man makes a life for himself. There is no escaping responsibility. This was how Ronald Baker thought.
…..He knew Virginia was sleeping with someone else. Once or twice a month, he’d roll her toward him in the not quite dark room and kiss her hot, moist mouth, pressing his gray-haired chest on her soft, aging body. She’d been a thin, angular woman in her youth, and while she was by no means heavy now, she’d softened with age. He knew that she hated this about her body, that this aging of her body was but one more thing she tried to escape. She went to a gym three times a week. She was in excellent shape. Underneath it all, she was all hard muscle. But the skin of a fifty-year old woman is a loose thing, no matter what. When he had his way with her, he felt that looseness, how when he moved his body on hers, her skin went with him. Not so long ago, or so it seemed to him, her skin fought back, snapped away from him. No longer.
…..Sometimes, before they made love on those nights, he’d put a finger inside of her, trying to feel for that other man. Occasionally, as his fingers explored the well known terrain of his wife’s vagina, he imagined that she felt slacker, and he fingered the dried clumps grasping her pubic hair. She hadn’t had time to shower after her rendezvous? Perhaps she didn’t want to shower; perhaps she wanted to save the dirty feeling. Perhaps she wanted to get caught by him. The Catholic in her, his wife of twenty-five years. Escape and capture. And then, punishment. And then, forgiveness. After twenty-five years of this, he still found it amazing. He was not bored with her tricks.
…..She on the other hand, was forever bored and forever trying to escape her boredom. As a child, Virginia had been so bored by her life in Baltimore that she managed to escape to a boarding school in Massachusetts, winning a full scholarship at the age of fourteen. After that, she escaped to Europe for a few years. And then she escaped London and some bad romances there for New York, where he met her, where they fell in love and married, although they eloped, of course. He had never met someone who took such charge of life. Who made no excuses. He loved this about her. Even if it meant that they hadn’t been the sort of couple who spent lazy evenings together, reading the paper. They’d been a very busy  couple. For a while. There came a point after their son was born when Ronald no longer tried to keep up with her. She would go out alone. He would stay in. It happened slowly, this new arrangement, and it suited them. She ignored him in public anyway. He was always stuck alone at the bar or the food table, despondently listening in on other people’s conversations.
…..And yet, he managed to keep her all these years. New York had kept her busy with its endless variety of things to do and people to meet. It was a good city for the easily bored. There had been talk of moving, of course, but there were always reasons not to. There was talk of moving back to Europe, but at the time he had a contract with the firm that employed him. A five year contract, he’d said to her, then we could go. Then, five years later, there’d been talk of  moving to Buenos Aires. Virginia had some friends from BA, went on a vacation there and proclaimed it the New York of South America. Ronald had argued that with Ben just starting middle school it made sense to wait. She agreed, she loved her boy, and he was sensitive. Moving would have been hard on him. Were there other times? Yes, but he’d forgotten how he managed to dissuade her. Truthfully, he had no interest in living anywhere else. New York was home. New York was the center of the world.
…..And now, with Ben away at college, he waited for her to talk of moving again. But instead, he found her doing things like buying new shades for the house. And sleeping with a writer who lived two blocks away. A man, like Virginia, who spent his days at home, in this neighborhood, alone. It was quite likely that she’d had other affairs. When he was younger, when their son was around, he had managed to stay distracted enough. But not now. Not this time. Now, he couldn’t help but notice. He tried to ignore it. But after a certain amount of time he stopped pretending.
…..It must have started before the summer even, before they went to Maine in July. He never saw her so ready to return. This was their last vacation with Ben before he started college and she was antsy, distracted—bored. Now he knew she wanted to get back to her lover.
…..Ronald knew he hadn’t been a perfect husband. They fought, like most married couples, especially in the first few years of their marriage. From the beginning, he did as little as he possibly could to make her happy and he knew it. This lack of generosity, this niggardly, cheap Yankee behavior, wore deep grooves into Virginia. Whereas once she screamed at him to communicate more, to  bring home wine or flowers, to plan a trip, to do or say something, for years now—for a decade at least—she’d stopped asking anything of him. What was the point? It made sense to give up. Ronald was not the changing sort. He was who he was—a solid, dependable, moral man. He didn’t dance, not even at weddings. He never drank too much or lost his temper. He never lied.
…..Something that still pinched at Ronald’s heart was how, when he realized that Virginia had given up on him, given up on making him a better, kinder, more open person, a giving person, that she had stopped being generous with him, too. She stopped cooking great meals; it became meatloaf on Tuesday, chicken on Wednesday, spaghetti on Thursday, and takeout the rest of the week. This, after red snapper with strawberry ginger chutney. After pork chops soaked in rum. And the house, while still lovely, lost her constant care, her love. It took him a while to notice, but then he did. And in bed, too, she gave less of herself. Virginia had never turned him down for sex, which would be against her nature completely. But she learned to hold back, like he did so naturally. It was something he taught her and something he regretted dearly.
…..Ronald tried to imagine what this writer did for his wife, besides fuck her. He himself fucked her with great regularity, but clearly fucking someone else had its charms. But what else? Was it the artist thing? The creative thing? The not-having-a-real-job aspect that attracted her? They would be nothing without his career and she knew it, too. But she had always fancied herself creative, although she never managed to create anything beyond a decent home and some brightly painted pottery that stood, unused, on high shelves in the kitchen. Maybe she hoped the writer would write about her. Yes, his wife was vain, without a doubt. Maybe she thought herself a muse. Maybe, maybe he was a generous man. Maybe Virginia found someone to whom she could be enthusiastic and giving toward. This thought pained Ronald horribly, the thought of his wife baking a pie for another man.
…..It was Monday. Ronald loved Mondays in general, loved starting the week after two days off. But, truthfully, they’d had a terrible weekend and something about it lingered this Monday. They went to a concert together and it wasn’t very good. They ordered takeout. The high point had been the talk with Ben—he loved Brown and they, husband and wife, father and mother, chatted together after taking turns talking to their son. Wasn’t it great, how well he was doing? He sounds like a man on the phone now! Virginia’s crepey, hooded eyes teared a bit and Ronald thought of putting a hand on her shoulder and then didn’t. But that had been it. They quickly returned to their distant, irritable selves. Really, it was Virginia who was distant and irritable, therefore making Ronald so. Because if she had been happy, he would have been. That was the thing. She was everything to him, outside of his work. He had nothing else. He was like a sponge around her and  whatever she was—happy, sad, hungry, horny–so was he. The night before, as she curled up away from him in their bed, it came to him as a sharp stab of epiphany; he had no inner life outside of this woman. He had no emotions that she didn’t serve to him with her frowns or her smiles, with her tense movements, or her warm, open gestures. In short, he lived through her, and everything outside of her, his entire public life, was to make a life for them, for all three of them, but to make a life for her above all. He didn’t care about much beyond her face and body, beyond her shimmering, restless soul. His friends  from business school, the lawyers with whom he worked–they meant nothing to him. He did what was necessary to be amiable, caring—courteous. But he had no friends. He had no one who meant anything to him outside of his family.
…..That Monday he walked to the train and then turned around and walked back. He walked by his house slowly and he saw her shadow walk across their living room. She had the phone in her hand already, even though he’d only been gone a few minutes. He stopped and gazed at the silhouette of his thin, muscular wife. She gesticulated with her hands, holding the phone tucked into her shoulder. She had a way of doing that, as if she were Italian or Jewish, instead of an Irish blend of a girl from Baltimore. Where did she get that? She took the phone out onto the back porch and then he couldn’t see her anymore.
…..The air was beautiful and cool. A row of orange and red trees lined the block in front of him. He knew where this man, this writer, lived because they’d met him together at a neighborhood gathering, a Boerum Hill Association meeting. Virginia and he listened together as he explained how he lived in the strange, converted garage on Bond Street, an architectural oddity in a neighborhood of turn-of-the-century brownstones. Ronald knew the architect who’d done the conversion and they all chatted nicely about these mutual things. That had been a year ago, but Ronald thought it must have taken them awhile to get together. Of course, he knew no details. But it all seemed so urgent to Virginia, her need to get to Monday, her previous need to get back from Maine. If felt like she’d only been fucking him for a few months. He felt an urgency in her. It couldn’t have been going on for long.
…..Ronald walked past their house, down the street of well tended stoops and trees. He walked to Bond Street and took a right and there it was, the writer’s house. From the sidewalk he couldn’t see into the converted garage, as the windows were too high. Garbage lay strewn in front of the building: it was not a tidy front area, unlike the fronts of most of the neighborhood’s buildings. This bothered Ronald. He didn’t like people who failed to present themselves, their homes, in the best shape possible. He found it thoughtless. Next to the writer’s home was a longish driveway that led to a small, white frame house set back from the street. Ronald walked the length of the neighbor’s drive and there, on the side of the garage, were some relatively low windows that had been punched out of the brick wall. He remembered the writer telling him about this detail; “We punched some windows out on the side.” He could see straight into the writer’s house. He could see a large, loft-like room, with a narrow, long couch. He saw walls and walls of bookcases. For a moment, Ronald’s pants felt tight against his stomach, as if he’d suddenly grown bloated. A bit of sweat sprung forth above his upper lip and then, after quickly looking all around and seeing nothing, he turned and marched toward the subway.
…..Arriving at work fifteen minutes late elicited raised eyebrows from his secretary. In the seven years she’d worked for him Ronald had never, ever been fifteen minutes late. He made some calls, ate a turkey sandwich delivered from his favorite deli at his desk (as he always did on Monday), and then took two meetings; one with the other partners, the other with a client. It was a wholesome, productive day, like all others. When he got home, there was a cold chicken platter from Virginia and a note that said simply, “at my book club”. He’d forgotten and she knew he’d forget, as he always did. She always left a note even though the first Monday of every month was always her book club night. She drank a little too much with other middle-aged women in the neighborhood and talked about some recently released paperback. It was not how he liked to think of Virginia. God, could it be true?–he preferred to think of her out balling the writer, really. His Virginia—she deserved better than this, better than sitting around with a bunch of bitter, plain women, talking about a stupid book.
…..After eating his supper Ronald normally read the sections of the Sunday paper he put aside for Monday night– Real Estate and Arts & Leisure. He took off his tie and unbuttoned his collar and hunkered down into his chair with a glass of wine and the sections of paper. But this Monday night, something felt wrong. His mouth was dry. He couldn’t read so well. Was it time to get reading glasses? Had he reached that age? To deal with his dry mouth he drank his glass of wine too quickly and then he stood to pour himself some more wine and this—this standing and fetching a bottle—so interrupted the flow of things, the flow of his normal Monday night—that he couldn’t at all settle into reading the paper.
…..He got up and walked out, toward Bond Street, toward the writer’s house. He passed a neighbor walking a dog. And then some young couple, holding hands and laughing. When he got to the converted garage, he noticed from the street that the lights were on. The writer’s neighbor’s driveway stood empty and the lights were not on in the small white house. Ronald walked up the drive again, to where he could see into the writers’ house. His house was lit up brightly, almost obscenely so, and Ronald could see everything now, more than before. No one could see Ronald. He was far from the street, and while someone could see someone standing in the driveway, no one could tell who it actually was. Oddly, Ronald found this exciting. His body felt hot and his breath quick. What he wanted was to see his wife. See his wife getting fucked. He imagined it, there on the narrow couch—no, no on the rug. On the shaggy white rug in front of the couch. That’s where his Virginia would get pummeled by the long-haired, slightly ripe smelling writer. His worn corduroys around his knees, boxers bunched up slightly above them. And his wife, his Virginia, her hair spread out on the rug, barely visible, the white blond of it mixing with the shag rug. Her breasts exposed, her back arched upward. Ronald felt that tightness again around his waist as he stared at the empty room. Shadows emerged from a hallway and then, walking into the living room loft area was the writer, alone, or nearly, with some sort of dog following him, a book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Ronald fled the driveway quickly, shame heating his face. His dick was as hard as a rock against his pants.
…..What could he do? He didn’t want to go straight home, but what else could he do? It had been years since he’d seen a movie; he wouldn’t know what to go see. He had no friends, no regular bars that he frequented. Virginia wouldn’t be home for another hour or so. After walking one block, he slowed down. He had been walking quickly for no reason really. He’d been afraid. But no one saw him, not the writer, not anyone. Not far ahead of him stood his stately brownstone. They took such good care of it. It was almost paid off now and Virginia and he had talked about how they’d never sell it so that Ben could live there when he finished school. Just now Ronald thought of how sure they were that Ben would want to return home, would want to come back to New York and live in the house where he grew up. But they’d never talked to him about it. He’d been a happy New York kid. Good grades, lots of friends. It dawned on Ronald that it was possible he’d change in college. That he wouldn’t want to move back home, back to New York. That it was possible Ben would turn into someone else, someone other than their good-natured, teenage son who liked home, but didn’t seem to miss it at all, either.
…..The night was so beautiful—truly dark now, the buildings lined the street like important things, meaningful, intimidating things. An awesome bush stood guard in front of Ronald’s next door neighbor’s house, a third floor window lit up at the top of it like a holy star. Fall was the best time of year in New York. Ronald sat on the stoop of his house, something surely he’d never done. Who sits on their stoop? Young people. Hispanic people.  A handsome couple in their thirties walked by, their arms around each other. He heard the woman say, “What if Karen hates it? What do we do then?” The man was frowning and quiet. Ronald sat back, placing his elbows on the rough cement steps. A baby cried. The cry grew louder, or so it seemed, and Ronald realized that for at least a month, maybe for months, Virginia and he had been hearing this baby cry. When they sat on their terrace in the back of their house at night, eating dinner and drinking wine, this same baby cried the exact same cry; a staggered, choked cry that turned into a long, heartbreaking howl. They’d eat their dinner and listen to the baby cry, saying nothing.
…..Ronald went inside then, and without turning on the lights, went out to his back terrace. There he could hear the baby even louder. Oh the sound of it! It hurt to really listen to it. It tore at a spot in his chest. Why had it only been background noise before? Why had it never bothered him, moved him, until this night? When Ben had been a baby he cried quite a lot, more than most of their friends’ babies. Ben’s cries changed their house permanently. After he arrived, screaming, their home had never been the same again, as if the wails themselves transformed the very essence of their marriage and the very structure of their house. It was never their home again, Ronald and Virginia’s, not in the same way.
…..He went into the kitchen and poured himself a scotch. Then he went out and lit the two candle lanterns on the table on the porch and he sat down to listen. The baby wailed sonorously. It was like the beginning of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata; so real, so awful, so exquisite. The end of all reason. Tolstoy had been wrong, thought Ronald. The Kreutzer Sonata didn’t invite sexual agitation. Maybe sexual agitation as a secondary effect. But really, Beethoven wrote of the ruination of life that the birth of a baby causes. He wrote a baby’s cries and the dance that a mother does to survive it. Yes, thought Ronald, Beethoven dramatized the death of a parent’s life that a baby’s cries solidified, not of the desperate fucking that ensues in its wake. There was nothing more majestic and holy, more horrible and defeating, than a baby’s cry, thought Ronald, as he listened to the infant’s caws pierce through the night air.
…..They had worried about Ben crying so much, thinking something was wrong with him. Together, they took him to the pediatrician. It was during the middle of the week, during Ronald’s lunch break. Virginia had been frantic. She was exhausted, weepy, frightened and angry. “What is wrong with my baby?” she’d asked. “He cries for two hours sometimes. On and off, but for hours. Why? What the fuck is wrong with him? It’s torturing me! Why does he cry so fucking much?” After the doctor took Ben’s temperature and checked everything else, he said, “Nothing is wrong with your son. Some babies cry more than others. Crying is the only thing they know how to do at this age. The only way they can communicate. I worry about the baby that doesn’t cry. Not the baby that cries.”
…..The baby that doesn’t cry. They’d had no more babies. Ronald wasn’t quite sure why. Most likely it had been Virginia’s busy life. Two children were more work than one; they saw that from their acquaintances and friends. Maybe it was the crying, the sheer pain of it. He’d thought that Virginia felt like a failure when Ben was a baby. And she hadn’t been terribly great at it. Later, when Ben grew into a boy, she blossomed as a mother. By then, she’d grown so far away from Ronald, defeated by his rigid ways. By then, they were cold with each other, and so he watched her with their son from a vast, emotional distance. He liked watching them though. They’d been a lovely sight. Ronald sucked on the ice in his drink. It was smokey and sweet with scotch. He wished they’d had more than one kid. He really did.
…..The lights in the house went on and there stood Virginia, in the doorway of the kitchen, where it led onto the terrace. She wore a long dark skirt and a loose blouse. She was barefoot and her hair was mussed and she looked slightly drunk. “Sweetheart,” he said, opening his arms, wishing for her to come into them, “listen to that baby cry. Listen to it! It’s the only thing he knows how to do. Remember that? Do you remember that?”  And as they both stared into the night, focusing their eyes on nothing so they could hear, the baby sputtered and choked and then finally, broke into a soaring, high, perfectly pitched wail.
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Paula Bomer’s fiction has appeared in over two dozen journals and anthologies, including Open City, Fiction, Nerve, The New York Tyrant, The Mississippi Review, juked, Storyglossia, Night Train, and elsewhere.

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