Big Brother. Lionel Shriver
on Nick at Nite to provide you a lot of contacts. But he may still know people who know people, and that’s the way it’s done. Me, I got friends out there who went into the industry, including one guy at HBO. Be glad to put you in touch.”
If I could have gotten away with it, I’d have been pulling the ridge of a flattened hand across my throat. Tanner’s expectations were already unrealistic. I didn’t want him encouraged.
“Thanks,” Tanner grunted skeptically.
“Tanner’s met his step-grampa,” I said. “A cautionary tale.”
“What’s that mean?”
“An unpleasant story that should keep you from making the same mistake.”
“What’s so cautionary about my grampa being a TV star?” I noted that in this instance Tanner had dropped the “step.”
“Was a TV star,” I said. “He spends most of his time opening used-car lots and doing Rotary Club lunches—”
“Lecturing on environmentalism, believe it or not,” said Edison with a laugh. “Chump never recycled a Coke can in his life.”
“—or,” I went on, “printing truckloads of anniversary T-shirts, when Travis Appaloosa is the only man on God’s earth who knows or cares when the first episode of Joint Custody aired on NBC. TV Land used to occasionally have him on in the graveyard slot, but he burned that bridge by badgering the channel to run Joint Custody marathons the way they do with Twilight Zone and Andy Griffith. Last time I talked to him he’d gotten a fire under him about putting together a reunion show like The Brady Bunch did—only the child actors Travis worked with grew up to be wasters, bar one, and the mayor of San Diego has better things to do. Cautionary. I’ll say.”
I knew I’d been going on, but someone had to counter the deadly proffering of Edison’s helping hand. I was loath for our kids to feel exceptional for the wrong reasons, and so to fall prey to the same unjustified sense of importance from which I’d suffered as a kid. While superficially self-effacing, my keeping my parentage under wraps at school may have been even more corrupting than Edison’s bannering of his father’s identity at every opportunity. I’d still smugly carried around the fact that my father was Travis Appaloosa like a secret charm, an amulet to ward off evil, when really it was no better than a pet rock.
Even more averse than I to playing up my Burbank connection, Fletcher changed the subject—turning to the one topic sure to fill out the rest of the meal: all that jazz.
“Hey, I’ve played with some heavy cats, dig?” Having scraped out the remains of the polenta, Edison upended the bowl of Parmesan on top. Tanner and Cody locked eyes, which bulged in unison. “Stan Getz hired me for three years—paid better than Miles, believe it or not. But just my luck the really iconic recordings haven’t been the gigs I’ve been on. So nobody remembers that, yeah, Edison Appaloosa played with Joe Henderson—because I wasn’t on Lush Life. Paul Motian, too—and it’s hardly my fault the guy has pretty much stopped playing with pianists. And, man, I could shoot myself over the fact that nobody, nobody thought to record that jam session with Harry Connick, Jr., at the Village Gate in 1991. Harry Connick! Rare for him to sing in those days. Crack pianist himself, and said I had ‘the touch.’ Okay, he wasn’t big yet. But Jesus fucking Christ, I could have been everywhere.”
I didn’t enjoy the thought: He sounds like Travis. It bothered me that my brother was still trotting out the same list of musicians that I’d learned years before to impress aficionados. It was a list, apparently, that Edison recited to himself.
“Thing that really gets me in New York these days,” he went on, Parmesan pasted in the corners of his mouth, “is this obsession with ‘tradition.’ Some of the younger cats, they sound like fuddy-duddies. Studying all these chords and intervals like those mindless fucks in madrassas memorizing the Koran. Ornette, Trane, Bird—they were iconoclasts! They weren’t about following the rules, but tearing them up! Personally I blame jazz education. Sonny, Dizzy, Elvin—they didn’t get any degrees. But these good doobies coming out of Berklee and the New School—they’re so fucking respectful. And serious. It’s perverse, man. Like getting a Ph.D. in how to be a dropout.”
We didn’t usually have wine with dinner, but tonight was an occasion. Edison had opened the second bottle—which made Fletcher’s jaw clench—helping to explain why my brother was dropping consonants, slurring vowels, and adopting a drawling cadence like the honorary African-American he considered himself to be. Most of the founding fathers of jazz were black, and Edison claimed being a white guy was a disadvantage in the field, especially in Europe, where “real” jazz musicians had to look the part.
“… See, what Wynton’s done by bringing in Jazz at Lincoln Center is cast the genre as elitist. As high culture, high art. Elitist, can you believe it? A form that came straight outta whites-only water fountains? But that’s the drill now, man. Middle-aged boomers hit the Blue Note when they’re too out of it to keep up with hip-hop and figure they need to ditch pop for something more sophisticated. It’s a pose, man …”
As my mind wandered, I considered the script for an Edison doll:
I’d have been famous, man, if only I was black!
I’ve played with some heavy cats.
Jazz prodigy my ass! Sinclair Vanpelt couldn’t play “Chopsticks.”
Yeah, as a matter of fact, Travis Appaloosa is my dad.
I can’t believe no one recorded the Harry Connick jam.
Yo, pass the cheese.
Well, that last line would be a recent addition. I collected the plates, while Edison heaved from the maroon recliner—again—to head to the patio to smoke. So Tanner had once more to get up, push his chair in, and maneuver out of the way. It was chilly for the end of September, and each lumbering departure and reentry lowered the temperature by five degrees. The central heating couldn’t keep up, and Cody had to slip upstairs to get us both sweaters. I was reconciled that Tanner and Cody had to negotiate a world in which people smoked. Given that my brother was not only chronically short of breath but also himself a heavy cat, the kids probably wouldn’t view him as a role model. But Fletcher tensed every time we went through all this brouhaha for an unfiltered Camel. He didn’t want anyone smoking around the kids.
I unveiled my pecan pie. Fletcher wouldn’t have any, but it used to be my brother’s favorite dessert as a boy. If glutinous with corn syrup, the pie was already baked; besides, look at him: what difference did it make? Although I guessed that’s what he routinely told himself.
“Edison, you want ice cream with this?” I called plaintively. But I knew the answer.
I lay on my back in bed while Fletcher folded his clothes, which without the maroon recliner he had to stack on his dresser. Finally I said, “I had no idea.”
After slipping between the sheets, Fletcher, too, lay in a wide-eyed stupor. We seemed to be experiencing a domestic post-traumatic stress, as if recovering from an improvised explosive device planted at our dining table.
“I’m starving,” said Fletcher.
A bit later he said, “I rode fifty miles today.”
I let him get it out of his system. After another couple of minutes he said, “That polenta dish was huge. I thought we’d have scads left over.”
I sighed. “You should have had some pie. Before Edison finished it off.” I nestled my head on his chest. For once his build seemed not a reprimand, but a marvel.
“What happened to him?”
I let Fletcher’s question dangle. It would take me months to formulate any kind of an answer.
“I’m sorry,” said Fletcher, stroking my hair. “I’m so very, very sorry.”
I