Short fiction

A Passing Note

Between ten and twelve the sun penetrates directly through the double windows into the room. It gives it an empty feeling, as if the rays are looking disagreeably at the unoccupied spaces. The room is a large size. The four walls and ceiling are an ocean blue colour. The floorboards are covered by a cream carpet. Its soft hairs soothe tired feet. In the middle of the room, hanging from the ceiling, is a lightbulb protected by a thin, white shade in the shape of an orb. When the light was switched on, the translucent white was washed in a deep yellow. It was a sun. 

The lightbulb is old and needs to be replaced. The wardrobes and chest of drawers are all empty; the clothes have been either given away or moved elsewhere. Dust has settled on whatever surface it can. The bed sheets have been undisturbed for some time. There are no wrinkles or creases disturbing meticulously pressed fabric. The room is quiet, still.

Mr. Hartley stands by the door looking in. His tired face looks troubled. He has just woken. It’s Sunday morning. In bed, the birds outside his window had pestered him with their song, so too did his wife’s unconscious movements, though today she did look particularly beautiful. He had rolled the sheet off his stomach, careful not to disturb her, and tip-toed to the bathroom. On his return, he saw that his wife had flopped herself in the centre of the bed. The once inviting scene now brought forth an anxiety that he might wake her. The evening before, in a tearful embrace, she had fixed him with tired, pathetic eyes and wished for sleep, as if he were able to at least grant her that right.

She must have had got what she wanted and slept soundly all night. He knew this because most nights she would get out of bed and wander around the house until she felt ready to sleep again, or she might switch the light on and read. Her actions were selfish and woke him on every occasion, though he did not mention it and instead pretended to sleep through everything she did, even if she whispered out his name.

To avoid waking her, he chose not to climb back into bed. He saw her face and, for the first time in a long time, he noticed she looked well, radiant even. The skin around her cheeks seemed tighter and pinker. Her lips may well have been brighter. There were only dull remains of mauve shadows, nestled below her eyes, to which he had grown indifferent. Her unconscious manner was a sign of a good dream. He envied her.

Cautiously he had moved to the room across the landing and stood in the doorway, staring into the space beyond.

He is quiet for a time, then lets out a sigh and turns his gaze down to the soft carpet that pokes out between his toes. Another night that Nathan didn’t sleep in his bed, he reflects. He closes the door. The words Dan and Nat are written across it in giraffe-shaped letters (their necks and legs bent in all manner of uncomfortable positions). The boys had loved their contortionist giraffes as small children, but he’d never understood why they had not taken them down when their habits and hobbies matured.

He descends the stairs, his thoughts disorganised; for a while now he has been unable to structure anything in his mind; there is too much to order. Focus is difficult as words and their meanings jostle for position. The many tangents of each thought; a loud, dysfunctioning paradigmatic valve set loose, a ceaseless siren, noisy hum and drum, cluster in his brain, and obstruct what is important. He does not know to what extent his broken paradigmatic valve is voluntary (in truth he has not given this much thought; he is comfortable with things as they are); he just knows it is worst when he thinks of his son and wife.

He is fearful of entering the sitting room; he knows what will confront him there, so at the bottom of the stairs he turns off into the kitchen.  

There anxiety subsides as habit takes over. He butters toast. Makes some tea, and sits down at the table with the morning paper. The world doesn’t seem as grim as usual.

He hears his wife come down the stairs. The trudge of footsteps is followed by quiet murmuring in the sitting room. A minute later and she appears in the kitchen. She has slept well. Her hair is wonderfully disheveled. He notices her eyes now that their whiteness has been restored; blue, a wild blue. Altogether she appears like a cloud with that warm, fluffy glow signaling a rested body. She does not grip her dressing gown tightly, instead she hugs herself. An unfamiliar feeling envelops him, it must be arousal.

‘You sleep well?’

She smiles ashamedly and stretches her arms above her head.

‘Very.’

‘Good.’

‘Nathan seems to have slept well too.’

He acts distracted by the paper.

‘I’ve moved the last of his stuff downstairs… He wanted his games down there. What do you think?’

‘Sounds fine,’ he says absent-mindedly.

She says nothing for some time.

‘He seems better, you know.’

Mr. Hartley nods, his attention still focused on the paper in front of him. He is glad she cannot see his face.

‘Have you thought more about the counselling?’

He does not reply but bites into his toast. He wants to escape to the den already. But it is only twelve; he couldn’t spend the entire day in the den could he? The thought of it excites him and triggers a smile that flickers across his lips between mouthfuls of toast.

He leaves his chair quietly when his wife’s back is turned; she is staring intensely out the window into the garden, her arms rigid, leaning on either side of the sink. He is careful not to make much noise as he opens then gently closes the door behind him. He hurries off to a door across the hall that leads down into the basement. Before reaching it, he spies the open door of the sitting room. A terrible flickering glow is being emitted from the television within. He shakes his head to shoo away an image of when he would sit on his spongy sofa-chair and call it the family room.

The nostalgia he feels passes through him and is gone within an instant of stepping on the first concrete stair leading to the basement. The ground is cold on his bare feet. The air is stale. He switches on a light and turns the radiator on by the wall. The light, dangling naked from the ceiling, does not extend to the far areas of the basement, so much of the room is dark. There is a clutter of empty boxes, unwanted ornaments, broken electrics and outdated appliances shovelled into the far corner. The unruly sculpture leaves its own shadow that falls on a taped-up, solitary box, lying on the floor. The words ‘More things to denote’ written in unsteady hand, black ink absorbed in blackness.

Occupying what is left of the space is a beaten-up sofa in front of a small television, and a keyboard mounted on a stand.

Mr. Hartley switches on the television, adjusting the aerial until the signal is good. Once he is content with the picture quality, he turns the volume right down, perches on the side of the sofa, and drags the keyboard until it is comfortably positioned for practice. For the past few weeks of his existence down in the den, he has been learning the blues piano. He bought several teaching guides and even a book of Ray Charles songs, though he was far from competent to play them.

For Mr. Hartley, the blues offers a sense of structured freedom he yearns for; he wants one hand to play along with the other.  So far he has become competent with the chords and rhythm of the left hand. It is the improvisation he is failing to grasp. His phrasing is both scratchy and mechanical. It lacks the fluidity and grace needed to sound harmonious with the left hand.

A repeated mistake in his improvisation was the way he introduced a passing note. Each time he played a passing note in a phrase he seemed to stutter and dwell on it, which left the cadence incomplete and awkward. 

It should have been easy to overcome. Yet he repeated his mistakes time and time again. He slapped at the keys with his fingers. Numbing the tips. Removing them before they could leave a print. When he slapped a passing note, it struck him. In the instant of its sounding; the note was so off and out of place that he had to pause to listen to it. Understand it.

He wondered how one note could be so destructive.

In his desire to fix his mistakes, he often forgot the time and the world above him. He was so determined to learn.

‘Learn it, Jim, learn it,’ he mutters to himself.

Another failed phrase. Followed by another. Each time, the music comes to a halt. Is restarted. The solitary note rings out. Discordant amongst its peers, it dies in the silence of his frustration. He decides to commit to the rhythm and promises to play on through the mistakes of his right hand. This produces no improvements either. He becomes disheartened by his continual mistakes. His throat tightens. His teeth bite hard together. He finds release in a tumultuous and violent fit, slapping hard the notes on the keyboard. Collapsing backwards onto the sofa.

‘Jim?’ His wife’s voice flutters out from behind him. The tone is concerned, yet weary.

How long has she been standing there, he wonders.

‘I’ve brought you down your coffee… You left it upstairs’ she says hesitantly.

The television is on, but the picture quality is awful. The basement is ice-cold and appears damp on the floor. There is a smell, though what it is she does not recognise.

She studies the legs she can see dangling over the armrest of the sofa. Two bare feet, both grotesquely blue in colour. Muddy brown, cotton joggers hang unpleasantly off his shins. Lying flat on the sofa, his body remains hidden from her.

 ‘You know, Nathan is watching that show in the living room?’

After a pause, he lifts his body up so that his wife can see his face and neck from behind the sofa.

‘Ok, I’ll be up soon’ he says, forcing a smile.

He watches her ascend the stairs and is amazed how calmly she does so. He then flops back into his lazy state. The improvisation has eluded him again today so he won’t touch the keyboard for a while. He spends the next three hours gripping himself tightly while the basement warms, and staring at the crackling images on the television with eyes quite distant and altogether unresponsive. He doesn’t leave the sofa until his wife calls him for dinner.

‘Jim, would you like to eat something now?’ she calls down from the hall.

He stirs, led by his belly that sees no objection.

* * *

Around the little kitchen table, where not five hours ago Mr. Hartley sat to read his paper and eat his afternoon breakfast, three chairs are laid out, in front of which, three plates of sausages and potato are whirling fresh steam into the air. He sits down to a plate next to his wife, whom he thanks and kisses before his first bite. He is briefly distracted by a small bird that is perched outside on the window ledge and seems too tentative to fly off. The door opens once he is sat. An underfed-looking boy, with pale complexion and a sickness in his washed-out eyes, enters solemnly. He carries himself like a fifteen-year-old in his odd, disruptively ambivalent state. Yet, despite his adolescent symptoms, he turned twelve three weeks ago, a birthday marred by silence, tears and an unresponsive father.

Nathan sits opposite Mr. Hartley. His mother warmly strokes his shoulders before she sits down between them. Gingerly, he moves his food about his plate. He does not look at his mother; he dislikes the sympathy, nevertheless, he smiles politely at her feet. He avoids looking directly at his father. He remembers the time, not long ago, when he caught his eye accidently as he was going to the basement; he did not like what the black dots seemed to say about him. With this in mind, he concentrates on a desolate, downward gaze. 

After a time, with only the sound of chewing and cutlery scraping plates, Mrs. Hartley asks; ‘Have you got much work, Nathan?’ careful not to speak to him in tones as harsh as he had been receiving at school.

‘Yeah, I’ve got a little bit.’

 His mother smiles at him and plays with the back of his hair.

‘History?’ She asks.

‘No, French.’

‘Oh French? Is it still the alphabet?’

The boy smiles, almost laughs at his mother’s teasing. It is an impromptu display of happiness and causes Mrs. Hartley to smile also, a smile so wide her eyes close up. She would like to laugh, because she has managed to make her son laugh. But it does not feel right with her husband in the room. 

‘We are practising introductions.’

‘That sounds tricky…’ and fearful of turning her head, ‘Maybe Dad can help you.’ 

There is a splutter, as potato briefly lodges in Mr. Hartley’s larynx. He coughs into a raised fist, rocking violently in his chair. Then he reaches over the table for a tissue, but Nathan is there to offer him one. Eyes down, a thin arm outstretched, the white tissue trembling slightly between fingers.

 There is a pause. Mr Hartley stares at the tissue, then at the pink, little fingers which seem also to be in offering. He studies each nail, each wrinkle, every pore and tiny blonde hair. He notices the trembling and his eyes begin to soften, the icy glaze begins to melt. So human, he thinks. So delicately alive. He dare not look beyond the fingers. His mind starts as if on cue, the paradigmatic valve released. Words fly from all corners of his brain, become louder, louder, until nothing is clear.

He seizes the tissue from Nathan and quickly wipes his mouth while his gaze returns to the bird still perched outside on the window ledge. Its movements are frantic as it hops from one end of the ledge to the other, chirruping desperately as if waiting for some inspiration to help it fly off. The bird reminds him of a Woody Allen character though he does not find the comparison funny.

Nathan finishes his food without a word. Not once more does he look up from his plate. Mr. Hartley behaves in a similar way, though his actions seem somehow less important. His face is older, wiser and looks foolish when sad. Nathan’s is young, boyish. It is difficult for Mrs. Hartley to see her boy’s face so sad. Mr. Hartley knows this. His jealousy manifests in further sorrow and solitude.

He leaves the table before finishing his meal. He picks up the plate, discards what he has not eaten, and places it in the sink. He pauses behind his wife momentarily as if considering some action. His hands shake slightly in anticipation. But he does not yield and leaves the room. Nathan remains, patiently waiting to be excused.

After a brief and muted conversation with his mother, Nathan returns to the living room. The sun cannot directly penetrate through the windows on this side of the house, so most of the room’s light comes from the many lamps placed about the room. In front of the television is a two-seater sofa, a stack of pillows at one end, a duvet draped over it. On the floor around the sofa are empty crisp packets, empty glasses, cartoon books, games and a stack of football magazines. In the corner of the room, resting in a pile on top of the stereo cabinet, are his clothes; shirts and trousers mostly. His pants and socks have been put away into a cupboard once filled with CDs; his mother’s idea to make it feel more like a bedroom.  Nathan finds his bed and slowly drifts off to sleep.

Night has fully arrived. The house sleeps, or pretends to. All the beds are full except through the door with the giraffe-shaped letters, where there is a cold, stale bed undisturbed and another above it.

Samuel Oates