"You have to wait," she said.
"It's just an expression," Jack explained. They were both nervous.
She talked about her five roommates. She was moving out soon, with one other girl. Two of her flatmates directed a nonsmoking clinic; they were vegans who believed that everything with a spiky shape attracted bad energy. Heather had started a small cactus garden in the kitchen area, but this had to go--"too many spikes." The vegans had also beseeched the landlord to remove the weather vane from the top of the apartment building. My sister is living with lunatics! Jack was thinking.
Jack explained that he was selling his house in Santa Monica, but that he had no idea where he wanted to live.
Heather knew he was registered at the Balmoral as Harry Mocco; she wondered why. Jack wanted to know what she taught at the university. (She taught five courses--historical and theoretical music classes, mostly to beginners, and keyboard skills.)
"Our department is all old men!" Heather said good-naturedly.
Jack thought that his sister was a pretty girl with glasses; she had an air of academic aloofness or detachment about her. She wore little or no makeup, but an attractive linen skirt with a fitted T-shirt and sensible-looking walking shoes.
Jack asked to see where she worked and where she lived. Heather moved her fingers all the while they were walking, as if she were unconsciously playing a piano or an organ.
The music practice rooms in the basement of Alison House were like prison cells. They were small cubicles, poorly ventilated; the walls were a dirty, pea-soup green, and the floors were a hideous orange linoleum. The lighting, which was adequate, was of a fluorescent variety that Heather said was bad for your sanity.
Jack thought that the word sanity might lead them into a conversation about their dad, but Jack and Heather were experiencing the equivalent of a first date. (They needed to get through an unbearable amount of trivia before the more serious subjects could emerge.)
The lecture room in Alison House was more pleasant than the practice rooms. The large windows let in lots of natural light, although the view was a limited one--of an old stone building. There were two pianos and a small organ in the room, but when Jack asked Heather to play something for him, she just shook her head and directed him to a narrow, twisting staircase, which led to her office. Jack got the feeling that she wanted him to go ahead of her, up the stairs.
"Can we talk about him?" he asked her. "Maybe we could begin with the arthritis, if that's an easy part to talk about."
She stared at the blue carpet on her office floor, her fingers seemingly searching for the right keys on a keyboard only she could see; she plucked at her skirt. The cream-colored walls had a spackled, unsmooth finish. There were two desks--the larger one with a computer on it, the smaller with a German dictionary. The stereo equipment was probably worth more than everything else in the office, including the small piano; there were more CDs than books on the bookshelves, and a bulletin board with a sepia photograph of Brahms tacked to it. There was also a postcard pinned to the bulletin board--a color photo of a very old-looking pianoforte, the kind of thing you'd find in a museum of musical history. A friend might have sent her the postcard--her Irish boyfriend, perhaps--or maybe William had sent it to her, if William was capable of sending a postcard.
"I want to get to know you a little at a time," Heather said, still staring at the rug. She had Jack's thin lips; her upper lip was a small, straight line.
"It's a tight space, but nice," Jack said, meaning her office.
"I don't need more space--I need more time," she told him. "The summer is good--no teaching, and I can get a lot of research done. In the school year, Easter is about the only time I have to do my writing."
Jack nodded, glancing at the photo of Brahms--as if Brahms had understood what Heather meant. (Jack hadn't a clue.)
Heather turned out the lights in her office. "You go first," she said, before they started down the stairs. Maybe she found it easier to talk when he couldn't look at her. "Daddy hides his hands, or he wears gloves, because of the deformities. The disfiguration of osteoarthritic joints is quite noticeable--not just a gnarling of the knuckles but actual bumps. They're called Heberden's nodes."
"Where are the bumps?" Jack asked, descending the stairs ahead of her.
"At the far knuckles of his fingers--that junction between the middle bone of the finger and the little bone at the tip. But his hands don't look as deformed as he imagines they do; it's mainly how his hands hurt when he plays."
"Can't he stop playing?" Jack asked.
"He goes completely insane if he doesn't play," Heather said. "Of course he also wears gloves because he feels cold."
"Some people with full-body tattoos feel cold," Jack told her.
"No kidding," his sister said. (He assumed that she got the sarcasm from her German mother.)
They walked through a parking lot, past more univers
ity buildings, down Charles Street to George Square. Heather was a fast walker; even when they were side by side, she wouldn't look at Jack when she talked. "The arthritis has affected his playing for more than fifteen years," she said. "The disease involves degeneration of cartilage and what they call hypertrophy--overgrowth of the bones of the joint. For a pianist or an organist, there's a wear-and-tear factor. The pain of osteoarthritis is increased by activity, relieved by rest. The more he plays, the more it hurts. But the pain makes him feel warm." She smiled at this. "He likes that about it."
"There must be medication for it," Jack said.
"He's tried all the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs--they upset his stomach. He's like you--he doesn't eat. You don't eat, do you?"
"He's thin, you mean?"
"To put it mildly," Heather said. They had passed some tents for the Festival and were walking through the Meadows--a large park, the paths lined with cherry trees. A woman with a tennis racquet was hitting a ball for her dog to fetch.