1. Avant la Séparation – Sonate Radiodiffusée Pour Guitare Électrique, Douloureuse et Ironique

– Anthem for Divorced Children is the surprise hit album of the year. Congratulations on your two Grammies and thanks so much for agreeing to be with us this afternoon.

– You’re most welcome. The awards were a great surprise, a high honor.

– Your work’s obviously struck a chord and it sounds autobiographical. Is that so?

– Isn’t every true song extracted from somebody’s life? Which doesn’t strike chords?

– Ha. Well, that’s true enough—touché—but really, how about your own childhood? Could you tell us a little about it?

– My parents did divorce, if that’s what you mean.

– Ah. Well, unfortunately it’s a common experience.

– In some respects.

– And how old were you when they divorced?

– Families don’t break cleanly. I guess I was around eight when it began. Families don’t dissolve all at once. It’s more like pulling taffy apart—if the taffy’s full of nerves.

– I’m sorry. What do you mean?

– Your parents change; they turn into animals. Like in Ovid.

– Animals?

– My mother became a red– tailed hawk, then a jaguar, and finally a huge brown spider—which was the worst.  My father turned into a water buffalo, then, I think, a puffin, and, in the end, some sort of stick bug or mantis. My mother’s mouth kept getting bigger, louder, and my father just kind of curled up. It’s all about predation.

– I think I see. Tell me, did you blame yourself? I mean for their break– up?

– What didn’t I blame? I blamed the sky. The president. My grandmother. My guardian angel. So, of course, myself, yes.

–So there was a custody issue, I suppose. Which parent did you live with growing up?

– Oh, neither. I ran away. Successfully, which is rare. They assumed I’d been abducted. It was funny. There were posters and policemen and volunteers poking through the woods with sticks. They dragged the river and put my picture on milk cartons.

– What? You mean you weren’t found?

– Not to this very day.

– That’s astonishing.

– But not unique. I found a new place to live, a secret place. I’m not going to tell you where it is or who runs it or anything so don’t ask. It’s a home for divorced children and, believe me, it’s well hidden. That’s where I grew up—home schooled, you might say.

– Wait. You’re telling me there’s this secret place for kids that everybody thinks are abducted, lost, killed?

– For divorced kids. Why is it so hard to believe? I mean they have refuges for battered wives. Those of us lucky enough to wind up there weren’t about to go back to the beaks and claws.

– But, who runs it?

– Good people, but not rich ones. They didn’t have much but one Christmas they gave me a harmonica—you know, one of those cheap little mouth organs. That toy changed my life. I just loved that I could generate these organized sounds. Not just whines or noise or a monotone. The next year I got some of the older boys to steal a piano for me.

– A piano?

– Well, not a big wooden one, of course. Not a Steinway. An electric keyboard. I practiced and got better. At music.

– And your name?

– Made it up myself.

– Yet your album is dedicated to your parents.

– Who else?

– But they don’t know it’s their daughter’s, do they? They don’t even know you’re alive.

– It seems doubtful.

– Don’t you think you should… No, okay. Uh, okay then. What do you say we listen to a bit of the title track?

– Fine.

We are the guilty innocents,
Castaway custody– meat
Who sit in Christmas airports
By ourselves on plastic seats.
We’re step– sisters and half– brothers
Shuttling between semi– homes,
hemi– fathers, demi– mothers,
who call up on our cell phones.
We cling to our helpless pets,
Fox terriers and turtles;
Run up huge MasterCard debts,
Smoke illicit cigarettes;
We know the way love curdles.

– Powerful. That churning, driving but still charming, tune, then the devastating lyrics.

– Glad you like it.

– So tell me, tell your fans: will you be touring with your husband again next year?

– I thought… No.

– Really? No tour.

– I don’t know.

– I see. May I ask how your baby’s doing?

– He’s fine.

– He must be—what?—over a year old by now. Thor, right? Unusual name. Your husband’s idea? I mean, he is a head– banger.

– Yes.

– Forgive my getting personal, but are the rumors true?

– Rumors?

– About, you know, the two of you splitting?

– Bastard. You promised you wouldn’t. . .

– Did you make porn when you were underage?

– What?

– Your parents, your poor parents. . .

2. Après les Funérailles – Duo Pour Flûte et Hautbois, Andante Inquiet et Mythologique

– Okay, so I slept with my husband– to– be right after the funeral of my daddy– that– was. I’d say I thought he was a Philoctetes or a Telemachos but I hadn’t taken the mythology course yet. Aren’t you going to say something?

– What do you want me to say? Something about you wanting a replacement daddy? Or worse, about affirming life? You want from me maybe a banality?

– Okay. That’s one for fastidious you. Anyway, he worked for Daddy. I liked that.

– Several thousand people worked for your Daddy. What else did you like about this one?

– Such as?

– You tell me. His humor? His personality? His hair color? His digestion?

– I liked that he was Jewish.

– Jewish?

– Daddy was an anti– Semite and tried to keep it secret. He was ashamed of it the way alcoholics are ashamed of boozing and he hid it about as well as they do the gin.

– So it was revenge, this oddly timed coupling?

– Coupling? My, you are fastidious. No, it wasn’t revenge, Doc. You’re always wrong, but that’s just the thing I like about you most. No, not revenge—allure. I loved Jews because Daddy hated them, not because I hated Daddy, which, as a matter of historical fact, I didn’t. Daddy just made them attractive. You know: Eve, hands off that apple. Besides, Jews have a well developed reputation for guilt, the men in particular. My roommate’s mother, Mrs. Schwartz, used to say: Jewish husbands make the best slaves. Jeez, I thought, that’s for me.

– You wanted a slave?

– When we were starting to get divorced and didn’t yet know it he told me some rabbi said that to have married the right woman is already to have fulfilled the Law. Then he said he wondered what it meant to choose the wrong one. I don’t know, maybe I wanted redemption. Or a good screw, followed by remorse, which is to say a good coupling. Jew rhymes with screw. Also rue. Et tu?

– And now?

– After the split? Rehabilitation would nearly do. It’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Daddies and hubbies—men. You know, Electra’s the only character every one of the Greek tragedians took a shot at, one after the other.

– You find that significant?

– You don’t? Too many diagnoses are as bad as none at all. You know that much, right?

– It’s not always so. Some disorders are like symbolist poems; they can sustain any number of interpretations.

– Fine! I’ve got a case of symbolist poetry.

– I only meant—

– Well, what I think, Doc, what I think is that life is just what goes on after funerals. Doesn’t everybody always say—sooner or later—doesn’t absolutely everybody always say—even if, like you they normally choke on banalities—don’t they always wind up saying, just as if there could be no more profound or everlasting wisdom, life goes on?

– It does.

– Sure. For a while.

– Well, yes, I suppose.

– Tragedy, Doctor, comedy—it’s chiefly a matter of when you turn off the camera.

3. Sur un Pont – Nocturne en Blanc et Noir Pour Deux Instruments à Cordes

He had not been to a movie alone in years and he didn’t enjoy this one. Afterwards, feeling dejected and confined, he wanted to walk through the city. He made for the river, for the bridge. He must have driven over this bridge hundreds of times and yet never once had he thought of walking across it.

He started out onto the narrow pedestrian way running his hand along the pitted concrete balustrade. The two cities shuddered like anxious encampments on either side of a lightless no– man’s– land. Cars ran smoothly below strings of yellow street lamps. Far down the river the foundry sparked, the power plant seethed. Low clouds glowed red over black water; he might almost be looking at Hell.

Once the bridge must have been a great civic enterprise. Architects and engineers with mustaches and eyeshades had pored over their plans. Quarried from the mountains in the north, loaded on to flat cars, granite blocks rolled slowly south and were lifted into wagons, teamsters shouting, horses straining at the loads. Battalions of immigrants had labored on the bridge, driving piles, hefting hods, descending into the terrifying caissons. The sculptors would have come last, unconventional but respected men in smocks and wild hair. Politicians on both sides of the river would have congratulated themselves for having set aside money for the great project. As it gradually took shape ordinary citizens of both cities would have come out to watch the work from their respective banks, wondering after whom the bridge would be named, picturing how it would ease their lives. Schoolchildren, holding hands, would have been taken on excursions to the river, their teachers making special mention of the arches so the children would understand how Rome had endured its eight centuries. On the day when the bridge was at last opened there must have been a grand ceremony, people from both sides of the river turning out in thousands. The bridge itself would have been gaily festooned, like a new battleship. He imagined picnics spread on what would then still have been banks of grass and reeds, brass bands playing as people lined up behind painted barriers keen to be among the first to cross the bridge. Something to tell your grandchildren, their grandparents would have assured them. The governor offered an edifying oration and then his lady cut the ribbon. The two mayors would have met in the middle, smiling, shaking hands. As the barriers were lifted, cheers would have risen to the sky like balloons.

He reached the middle of the bridge. Water flowed inkily beneath him, innocent, insidious. In its blackness, the river felt more substantial than the bridge which seemed diaphanous, nearly imaginary.

A man came toward him. He wore an open jacket that flapped around his torso as he plodded across the bridge. The orange tip of his cigarette brightened once then, trailing sparks, arced into the river. The stranger drew abreast of him, went a few steps further, then stopped and leaned over the balustrade.

– Good evening.

The stranger replied in a flat voice.

– Good enough, I guess. Least it stopped raining.

– Yes.

– Ask you something?

– Sure.

– Hard or easy?

– What?

– Being white.

– Oh, the white part’s easy but the being’s a mite tricky.

The man laughed, not bitterly but almost heartily.

– Spoken like a white guy. Kind that’s been to college.

– To college and then some. I used to teach in a college.

– I sucked the bottle and I worked the docks; I dug Aristotle and I busted rocks; I been to college and I been in jail; I lapped up knowledge but I jumped bail… So what you teach?

– Hard to say if I taught anything. My subject was history.

– History! Shit! The foul and shameful cavalcade of centuries. The procession of folly and a torrent full of tears. That about cover it?

– Yep. I’d say that’s about it. Just one damned thing after another.

– Herodotus, Thucydides, old Tacitus, Maimonides, fat Suetonius, mostly erroneous, long tall Gibbon tied up in ribbon, and Jules Michelet, that grand Français, and what they know’s as white as snow—quoth old Jim Crow.

– Are you making these up on the spot?

– I read my history, too. So yes, and no. What you care?

– Well, I wondered. Naturally.

– Look, man, white folks’ll listen to the music, and that’s it. Listen, not dig. You dig? Music’s abstract; you can pretty much ignore what it’s saying. Can sentimentalize, sympathize, idolize, and never realize. Now street rap’s different. Different even from walking blues. I mean it’s all words, man. Like crude. Ruthless stuff, like these kids kill you for a quarter, waste each other for a pair of Jordans. You say you want to know if I extemporize? Jingles everywhere, man.

– Words, words, words.

– Yeah, that’s it. When the old fool asks what you reading, my lord? Yeah, I remember that. Hamlet, he raps pretty good.

The man snorted once, turned away, cupped his hands, lit another cigarette.

– Wife and I had what you could call a disagreement; what’re you doing here?

– I went to a movie. It depressed me. I felt like I was choking, so I took a walk and found myself here.

– So what this movie about?

– Nothing. Not a damned thing. That’s what depressed me.

– Know what you mean. Wet goods for babies.

– It’s hard, then? Being black?

– Shit. Being black? Just the opposite of your little wisecrack. The being’s easier than the black. Shit, we’re famous for being, right? Being athletic. Being long– suffering. Being humane. Being angry. Being oversexed. One big pain in the ass being black. Still, you got to be proud, being history’s incubi. Solitude, soul food, acting rude, talking crude, real bad dude, Negritude.

He laughed, delighted by his own word– play.

– What was it you and your wife disagreed about?

– Gotta ask you ain’t been married.

– Used to be.

– Well then.

– Yes.

– So, we live with it. Never sure why. You got to be white, I got to be black. And it’s my black makes you white… But what’s with you, man? Going to movies by yourself, walking all over the city in the middle of the night. Used to be married, used to teach college. No offense, but it’s like you dead.

– No, not dead. Thirsty though. What do you say we get a beer?

– I say thanks but I’m off home.

– Now?

– Right now.

– Okay, then. Good night.

Already vanishing into the shadows, the man turned.

– Good enough, know what I mean?

Singing to himself, the stranger walked back the way he had come.

– Goin’ dig the spill of Sugar Hill. Now that’s fine precipitation, incantation, insemination with representation. . . .

The man watched him vanish over the curve of the bridge then he too began walking, but in the opposite direction.

Story by Robert Wexelblatt
Photography by Rachel Rebibo