Brilliance and Mediocrity
by Martha Jean Johnson
The icy wind eats into his flesh as Jack searches for his keys. He glances at his hands, wondering where he left his gloves. If his fingers are raw tomorrow, he’ll feel it at the piano. It must be close to 3:00 a.m.
If he could just find his keys and sneak inside, Carlotta might not hear. He wouldn’t have to go upstairs and listen to her whine about his drinking. He could stretch out on the sofa, close his eyes, and pretend he got home hours ago. He just happened to doze off there.
But she sees right through his creeping and slinking around. Now she’s wise to his ploys. To everyone else, Jack Purcell is a brilliant conductor and aspiring composer, international prizes to his name. He has a fellowship at a famous university, enough to live on and time to work on his music. Other musicians envy him.
But to his wife, he is a loser. They barely make ends meet. He’s dragged her down to this grubby, humdrum life. This is not what she expected.
Their fights are worse now. Hostility is their daily bread. They snarl and snap and then swear and scream. The disgust in her eyes startles him.
“Do you take this woman?” A country judge read the vows, and even then, Jack felt trapped. Summer at Tanglewood, a pretty music student flirting, seduction simple in the mellow evening air. But he had no thoughts of marriage then. Shostakovich and Brahms filled his head.
After a brief enchantment, she got pregnant and berated him to marry her. Was it an accident like she said, or did she lie about being on the pill? He listened while she called her girlfriends, chirping: “He’s a conductor and composer. We met at Tanglewood. How romantic is that?”
Sometimes, he summons up his first impression of her—radiant, dewy, so willing and eager for sex. But his love (if that’s what it was) shriveled before it took root. Hers for him evaporated not long after.
Now they live on a lonely road off campus where the rent is cheap and neighbors park used cars and pick-ups on their lawns. She cares for the baby, and he flees to the university, coming home as late as feasible, the smell of Jameson’s on his breath.
This morning was the same old same-old.
‘So when will you be home?”
“Um . . . I’m not sure.”
“It’s common courtesy to let me know . . . or maybe you think you don’t have to . . .”
He quickly assembled a plan to be out for the day.
“Sorry . . . You don’t need to cook. I’ll grab something on campus. I’ll probably have rehearsals pretty late.”
As her fury filled the room, he reached for his coat and patted his pockets to be sure he had his keys and phone.
“You’re not even a good liar,” she had sneered while he put on his hat and gloves. “And you’re pathetic as a father.”
Encased like a mummy against the snow and wind, he was elated when he closed the door. Today’s dreary domestic spat was in the past. He could spend the rest of the day with his music.
But now his breath mists the subzero darkness, and he can’t find his keys. He checks his pants pockets, back and front. He unzips various compartments in his parka, over and over again. Did he lose them in the Uber or leave them at the bar?
He grabs at the door jamb. He’s a little dizzy, it’s true. Sometimes his brain seems to float upward, threatening to escape through the top of his skull. He should cut back on the booze . . . and look into the cost of divorcing her.
But for now, he has no choice. He rings the doorbell and waits. He rings again—probably a half-a-dozen times. He leans into the buzzer, so it sounds for nearly a minute. As tears of anger collect in the corners of his eyes, he pounds the door with his fists. Why doesn’t she hear?
He’ll call her, he thinks, reaching into his pocket. She keeps her phone on the bedside table. But where is his? Did he leave it wherever he left his keys? When did he see it last?
The cold invades his muscles and organs. His strength oozes out of his arms and legs. He’ll rest and then try to get in through a window. Take a minute and sit on the steps. Let the blood flow into your head.
Isn’t it strange how seductive sleep can be? As if his eyelids had a will of their own. He shakes his head back and forth and lifts and drops his shoulders: Keep your eyes open. Inhale and exhale. Try rubbing your hands together.
He slips to the ground—the snow refreshing, not painful—and rests his head on his outstretched arm. Gazing up, he sees Carlotta watching from the second floor. She doesn’t seem angry, he’s relieved to find, but why doesn’t she come down and unlock the door?
In his last moments, he grasps the truth, the entire span of it, opening up inside his mind. He is the brilliant musician, and she is a mediocrity. But his life will end while she waits at the window, and she will rejoice in his demise.