People don't change. But they do.
Walking into the living room, Toby announced with equal drafts of pride and humility, "I've written a new poem."
Gladys put her magazine aside, sat up on the sofa. A trifle pained, she feigned attention. On the Magnavox an old movie flickered, a bluish image of Glenn Ford and Dorothy Malone.
Toby cleared his throat. Then:
Pollocks and Cadillacs,
'Twas an era.
Sit and relax
With Stanley Fafara.
Icy Coke, mentholated smoke,
Grace under emerald tiara.
'Twas a dagger, a cloak.
'Twas Mr. Yogi Berra.
Buicks and Pontiacs,
Vistas enormously wide,
A spiderweb of cracks,
Lost in abyss so oft plied, soft implied, dyed.
"Huh. I... like it..." she fibbed, went back to her mag.
Glenn Ford said, "I don't know."
The following afternoon, sun descending, Toby flung a flat stone, skipping it across the placid top of Paradise Cove. The rock hopped once, twice, thrice, a fourth time before it sunk like the stone it is, descending, joining fellow stones on the bottom.
It’s of grief he feels, grief he exhales. A grief he holds in his palm, a grief that holds him in its palm. A grief all-encompassing.
"Good grief," he sighs, and feels like Charlie Brown.
It wasn't always so. People change. He was tired of Gladys. And she of him.
The bell, a brass ship's bell, rang. Toby Mailman padded across the floor to answer it, a hop in his step. He knew who was here.
As a young man, a Hoosier fresh from high school graduation, Toby enlisted in the army, rose to lieutenant before finding himself stationed in Rome. It was there, proffering platters and patter for Radio Free Europe, he developed his passion for jazz. He told people, while shaking his bowed head, rubbing the back of his crewcut, "I had to travel across the globe to find jazz, our only uniquely American art form!"
Manning the graveyard shift, he was given discretion for what he played. Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Jonah Jones, Gerry Mulligan were in heavy rotation, punctuated with pop hits to keep from being overly outré. With his free time, Toby devoured the jazz mags and history books, studied liner notes, learned the players’ names and backgrounds. He relished the views of Martin Williams, Nat Hentoff, Dave Pell, Leonard Feather. Toby graduated from novice to expert, able to answer call-in questions without missing a syncopated encyclopedic beat. His voice, on-air and off, was gentle yet authoritative.
It was in Rome, at a bar catering to GI's, that Toby met Gladys, his wife-to-be, a slim young brunette twisting in Capris. Poetry in motion! She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. He had to get to know her. Tonight. Now. At the bar, he stubbed out his cig and twisted his husky frame over, elbowing an Austrian lad out of the picture. Within a month Toby and Gladys were playing house at her apartment, and a month later a justice of the peace did the honors in a remote hamlet, GI and art student were one. To celebrate, they bought a used Karmann Ghia and motored back to Rome, savoring sights along the way: mountains giving way to villages giving way to factories giving way to the ancient city.
A skill he learned in the army, radio electronics, led him to GI Bill college, Indiana State, before they moved to Paradise Cove, led here by a job offer, teaching radio electronics at Paradise Cove Junior College.
Gladys yelled from the houseboat's kitchen, "The door, honey! Can you get it?"
"Halfway there!"
Toby opened the door and welcomed Bob Bradshaw. "Hey, Bob! Where's your date, this Kathy you've been yammering about?"
"She'll be here in a few, got hung up, told me to go ahead."
Toby broke out a bottle of his best Scotch, he really liked Bob, and poured them each a generous tumbler, straight up, no chaser. A couple of manly men enjoying manly drinks on the deck, water gently lapping at the side of Toby's castle.
Toby thought of Bob as a younger version of himself. Bob was something of a hippie, shaggy of hair, bell-bottomed, teaching Latin American history at the community college. What commenced their friendship was a mutual love of jazz. They met at the local record store, Soul Shack.
The September sun was still hot, the evening air humid.
"How's it going with Jacobs?"
Toby scratched under his chin and replied, "I think he's going to go for it!"
Toby had pitched the idea of teaching a jazz history course. As he'd told Dean Jacobs, "It'd be fairly comprehensive, going from Jelly Roll and Bix to big band to bebop right up to today's sounds, bossa nova and third-stream. There'd be a syllabus, some required listening, as well, of course."
Toby's ears perked to the thrum of a Karmann Ghia. He'd know that sound anywhere. He and Gladys parted with theirs before returning Stateside. But that sound was a part of him; it struck a chord, reminded him of a youthful past.
The sporty VW, top down, screeched to a halt and Kathy hopped out. Literally hopped out, didn't bother opening the door. She practically bounced; Toby half-expected her to do somersaults and wave pom-poms.
Bob waved and hollered, "Hiya, baby!" Toby noticed that she was, indeed, kind of a baby. How can she possibly be in college? A frosh, skipped a grade or two? Is she even legal? Is she even five foot?
Toby took a deep breath. Young! Kathy was the most innocent thing he'd ever seen, a fawn. Gorgeous! All through dinner, Toby fought to keep from staring at her dazzling beauty. A honey blonde, Kathy wore a tight cotton sweater, nothing left to the imagination but a will-o'-the-wisp. "Does she have any idea what she does to a red-blooded man!" When she got up to use the head, Toby indulged himself a quick glance at her behind, but caught Gladys staring daggers at him, so he pretended to be staring into space, collecting his thoughts. Then he said to Bob, to make a tacit case for the pretended thought collecting, "Yeah, so I told Jacobs, look, jazz has come of age, it's as legitimate as classical these days." (Meanwhile, he was thinking, "I'd love to grab that tiny tart and show her a thing or two! Ravish her senseless!")
Bob shot back, "Truth is spoken here! What began as barnyard noises to entertain revelers in New Orleans bordellos and saloons, traveled up river, became big band dance music and before you know it: bebop! Genuine art music! All in only a few decades. It's a 20th-century art form, its evolution sped up by kinetic times. like cinema." Bob shook his head in disbelief, as if he'd seen his life flash before his eyes, and went on and on, as was his wont. Eventually he reached into a pocket, produced a pipe and a lid. He lit up with a casual air, took a deep toke and offered it to Gladys who didn’t partake. Toby took a toke passed the pipe of peace to Kathy who was now standing just behind him. As she inhaled, she rested her left hand on his left shoulder sending a thrill through him. He was tantalized thinking the pipe had gone from his lips to hers, a kiss of sorts.
Stoned, Bob launched into one of his boilerplate speeches. He pontificated, gesticulating, as it was all occurring to him at the moment, but Toby and Gladys had suffered this tripe many times. "By the year 1980, I predict we'll be living in a world almost unimaginable. Just look around. Sure, it seems grim. Vietnam and all of that booshwah. But there is encouragement! Mao and Fidel are working utopian miracles. Soon weed will be legal. The UN will outlaw war, they'll force all the nations to disarm, to cast off nuclear weapons, all guns will be melted down. Today's youth will be in charge of everything. The changes will be sweeping and profound and eternal. A new world, winds of change..."
Toby drifted into a psychedelic daydream but was snapped to with, "By the way, Toby! It's time, overdue, my man, for you to get with it!"
"What? What'd I do..."
"Cecil! Shepp! Weather Report! Today's jazz! Today's sounds! You are in a rut, man! Zoot Sims and Al Cohn! Don't make me laugh!"
Inwardly, Toby groaned. It'd taken him a while to warm to Coltrane in the early days, and he grew to truly admire the man's way with a ballad, but an angry segment of current jazz had gotten too far-out. Untethered, he felt. He said, "What the hell is wrong with Zoot and Al!"
"Ha ha! That West Coast crap ain't jazz, man! It's mayonnaise! Pasteurized cream cheese! What's next? Al Hirt?" Bob laughed a smug laugh.
"Well, as a matter of fact, Hirt's cut some great sides! Listen to his..."
"Stuff it! Bring it up at your next meeting of the Daughters of the American Revolution!" Toby felt the rush of blood to his face. He hoped, in the dim light, his pique didn't show. He tried to be cool, but his fingers were trembling. He batted back a trace of tears.
Gladys rose, started clearing plates. Kathy leapt up to help. Toby overheard Gladys say to the girl, "I don't even like jazz."
"Me neither! I like Sly. And the Rascals! I love to dance! Gimme some Motown! The Temps. I need to dance!" She shook her bottom and Gladys chuckled and said, "Me too! But it's been a coon's age. I met Toby at a twist club. Chubby Checker and Joey Dee are my speed. Them was th' days! Fun!"
Watching them walk, Toby couldn't help but notice that Gladys was, well, getting dumpy, at least compared to Kathy.
After Bob and Kathy left, Gladys went to bed, but Toby stayed up brooding, listening to Bob Cooper, smarting from his alleged friend's lambasting. "What exactly is wrong with melody? A beautiful melody? Dammit!" He felt, for the first time, like a fossil.
Also for the first time, he hated Bob. Hated him. Would like to strangle him. Would love to, actually.
When Toby and Gladys first moved to St. Charles, in the summer before Dallas, the summer before everything changed, the world was bursting with life and they were at the vanguard, the youthful tip of the spear. In St. Charles, they were the young moderns, he in his chinos and crew cut and handlebar mustache, she in a madras shift and sandals. They were breezy, almost beatniks compared to the faculty let alone the locals. Their old MG compounded an image of ineffable cool.
Toby's position at the junior college was a good fit, preferable, he felt, to the brand new St. Charles Community College. The junior college lent itself largely to young women learning secretarial skills, but also had a decent liberal arts program. And the school was established in 1932. Although not exactly venerable, its buildings were in a Gothic style, the campus was small, the quad had an Ivy League dignity that was absent in the community college's sprawling one-story flat-roof buildings resembling a factory complex.
Toby swam out to where he'd tossed the stone and floated on his back. Eyes closed, all he saw were red and orange abstractions, phosphenes, he believed these patterns were called. He felt as random as a phosphene right now. He knew, in the pit of his stomach, that he and Gladys were headed for a separation, if not a divorce. "Man, how do things get so bad? We used to have so much fun..." Salty tears blend so easily, unnoticed, with the ocean's immense wealth.
Toby swam to shore, trudged back to the houseboat, newly determined to right the ship. "If we were happy once, we can be happy again, dammit! Maybe get Gladys to agree to a diet and an exercise program..." Along the beach, the march to home, he muttered, "Dammit all!"
He entered the houseboat, dark in the late afternoon. "Honey, I'm home!" No answer. Then he noticed the note on the dining table.