Monroe’s Mandolin

THE BAR IS JAMMED, PATIENT PEOPLE waiting for the first set. I’m drinking coffee at the counter, my face turned to the stage. Conversation flows around me. Mostly, I don’t notice. Tonight, a word dropped into a discussion somewhere behind me hooks my attention.

“It’s a Gibson. Want it? Seven hundred.”

“Hell, it’s a sweet mandolin. Not a mark on her. But I’m not — ”

I turn my head in time to see a scrawny redhead four tables back shake his head at a pockmarked man in frayed leather. A small black case lies open on the table in front of them.

“ — left-handed, and I don’t want the hassle of restringing it. Sorry, man.”

In half a heartbeat, I am at the table. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself, dollface.” Rusty nudges him in the ribs and whispers. Pockface doesn’t miss a beat. “Ah. You’re Lise, right? You own this joint?” He raises an eyebrow but doesn’t protest when I pick up the mandolin.

I nod. “And I’d know this mandolin anywhere. Where’d you get it?”

Pockface’s lips purse. He looks at me speculatively. “Sharky’s. Pawn shop over on the north side.”

“When?”

“Last week. What’s it to you?”

“You want to sell it tonight or not?”

Pockface scuffs his boots. “Sure thing. How ‘bout seven fifty?”

“Six. Wait here.”

Pockface’s grimace reveals teeth as ruined as his skin. Rusty shrugs and slips past me, his face averted. Jon, at my elbow within seconds of my signal toward the midlands of the counter, bends close to hear me. “Pay this guy, will you, Jon? Six hundred, and make him sign a receipt. Then tell him to get the hell out. Damn vulture.” I lay the mandolin to rest in its case, stare down Pockface, barely raise my voice. “My manager will pay you.” The case bumps against my jeans as I head for my office to stash it.

Invoices from the past week are heaped on my desk, awaiting cheques, but I can’t settle into a working groove. The mandolin’s appearance has short-circuited my routine. I haven’t seen Cory for six months. I just bought back his mandolin. Maybe he’s alive out there somewhere, I have no way of knowing. That last view of him as we left the walk-in clinic, he wasn’t at his best. Not like he is in the photo buried under these damn papers, the man with the golden Gibson, playing at The Foundry’s opening. The man he should be. He should be here, I say to myself every morning when I walk into this bar, but saying it doesn’t change anything.

Pockface is nowhere in sight when I close my office door on the Gibson. From the hallway that leads to the bar, I hear the band tuning, guitars and piano, the blur of harmonica. The ache in my chest sharpens when I spot Rusty’s reflection in the long mirror that lines the hall. He’s got an unopened bottle of Johnnie Walker jammed under his arm and looks surreptitiously around him before he stashes it behind his amp. I just watch. He’s got nowhere to run. His eyes, when they meet mine in the mirror, are blue sparks like icebergs colliding. A flush travels up his throat and across his cheeks, and he ducks his head, plugs in his guitar. Halfway into the first verse, the lead singer stops mid-breath.

“Hey, Nathan. You on?”

Rusty kicks his amp. His cheeks are still red. “Dammit. Sorry, Bart.”

“Try it again, man.”

Jon’s bulky shoulders fill the doorway. He’s been a bouncer, knows how to occupy space. “I turfed the punk.”

“Good. Don’t let him back in. You know this guy?” Onstage, Rusty is on his knees, unsnarling wires. “A friend of yours? He boosted a bottle.”

“Christ. Not again. That’s my little brother Nathan. He just joined the band.”

“Ah.” Brothers. Tangled.

“I’ll make it right.”

“Listen, he steals anything else, he’s gone.” I’ve run out of charity.

“No drugs, Lise. I swear, he’s clean.” He smoothes his hand from forehead to nape, his brush cut bristling. “Don’t worry about it, I got it covered.”

The band spins into the bleak opening bars of Cory’s favourite tune, “Barroom Girls.” I grab an unused guitar stand and retreat down the hall to my office, but the melody leaks under the door. I collapse in the chair, my throat closing. Jesus. A quick puff on the inhaler. Just a single hit so I can breathe without sounding like a racehorse.

The mandolin’s strings quiver under my hands as I take it from its coffin-like case, remembering the day our mother brought it home from a tour through Tennessee. It set her back plenty. The shopkeeper said it had belonged to Bill Monroe, had a faded photo to prove it — the great man in his prime, smiling into the camera, his hands cradling an amber-coloured Gibson. Mom had the thing restrung for her southpaw hands and she played it for years. It sounds undamaged by its travels, and when I run my fingers down the strings, their vibration amplifies the tunes trapped in my throat like asthma. I can’t make music and I have more employees than friends. My voice rattles off the walls and windows of my condo, and the odd time I sing here, after hours. But it all comes out flat. I used to say that my business takes all my creative energy, and I blame my asthma for not singing or playing, but that’s a lie, even thinner than an E-string. A martyr, Crista calls me. A blocked conduit, I say.

The mandolin is silent as I set it on the stand, run my fingers across its tawny surface. Catch my reflection as I concentrate on locking the door. It could be Crista staring back at me, the same rigid jaw, eyes hemmed by wrinkles. Crista’s face is a grid of roads and county lines, her voice a rasp that makes me think of the barbed wire surrounding her ranch. She had entrusted the ranch to the hired man when Mom was diagnosed, sat with us at the hospital for six horrific months, slept with us at the condo every night, cried with us when Mom stopped breathing, took us to the ranch to live. She still calls me every week.

Onstage, the band’s first set is wrapping up. Jon catches my eye from his customary spot at the corner of the bar. I work my way around the perimeter. The room is full, tables elbow-tight, crowded with glasses, silent faces turned toward the stage where Rusty is swaying. The spotlights glimmer on his hair, and not for the first time, I wonder, how does it feel to be under those lights, falling into the melody? To be filled by it so completely that it spills out and fills the room too?

Rusty, rapt, is a pale stand-in for my brother. His gnawed fingers build competent chords and runs of melody compared to Cory’s dazzle. Bart, at the piano, nods once, Ali slides her voice down the scale, the piano fades. Applause scatter-shots across the room. I bite my tongue when Jon leans in close to make himself heard, his breath on my ear.

“I caught up with Nathan backstage before they started the set. Says it won’t happen again … You see Cory lately?” When I shake my head, he clucks like a broody hen and marches to the rear of the room. Rusty hops off the stage behind him.

“Hey. Rusty.” Rusty swivels and comes back, stops in front of me. “You want to keep playing in my bar? You get no more chances. Hear me?” He shunts out the back door without meeting my eyes.

That was gratuitous, Jon has it handled. But Rusty’s here and Cory’s not.

When I see Cory next, he’ll have a new tune. He always does. I’m glad to hear him play, but I cut him off whenever he tries to tell me anything about that other world that owns him. The eyes of the musicians I hire reflect me as signer of cheques and booker of gigs. No more and no less. My inheritance — our mother’s music catalogue — I parlayed into a down payment on The Foundry five years ago. I told myself it would give Cory a refuge if he ever reclaims himself. That it had nothing to do with me, or with what I want. But my life is locked into these bricks and boards. Cory’s has gone to waste. I don’t know anymore if I am looking for hope in my twin’s life or in my own.

I track down Sharky’s in the morning.

“We put that mandolin out last winter, took forever to move it,” says the bored clerk in her metal cage.

“How much did you give the guy who brought it in?”

“Ya really need to know?”

“It was my mother’s mandolin. I’m trying to track down my brother. Please.” She studies my face for a minute. It occurs to me that she’s seen variations of this scene played out countless times. “Was this the guy?” I ask, hold out the snapshot from my desk.

“Maybe. We get lots of guys hocking heirlooms. Your brother, eh? Let me see that picture again. Nice-looking. But skinny, ain’t he? I think I remember him — he had a nice voice.” She sighs and flips open a ledger on the counter in front of her. Rifles through pages. “Gave him three hundred.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Neither Cory nor Pockface profited much on their ends of the deal.

I leave the clerk in her cage and wander through the store, picking up and setting down detritus from other broken families. No one plans on pawn shops. The display window is filled with guitars, mostly Yamahas, bashed-up road warriors that my brother would disdain on his good days. One, cherrywood under a layer of peeling red paint, sounds resonant when I strum it. I am taken by its jaunty strap, pink leather edged with silky tassels. The clerk is watching me, her lips pursed. “It’s a workhorse,” she says, her eyebrows climbing.

“How much?”

“It’s been here six months. Fifty bucks, and I’ll throw in a music stand.”

I laugh and leave, my hands empty.

Two weeks after I bought back the mandolin, the waitresses are jangling the clean cutlery and Jon is checking inventory with the bartender. Billy Cowsill’s raucous cover of “I’m Movin’ On” blares through the sound system, and I don’t hear Rusty’s knock at my office door. “Got a minute, Lise?” He’s almost shouting. I tilt my head toward the chair. He closes the door. “Can I … ?” I nod as he picks up the mandolin from its stand. He moves his fingers, and frills flow from the strings, lace and satin notes. He smiles, holds it across his chest, one hand stroking the wood. “Bart says it used to belong to Bill Monroe. That true?” I nod again, watching him closely. He’s trimmed his hair into a sleek helmet. When he takes a seat, his hands smooth an orbit on the sleeves of his black jacket, the nails tidy half-moons. He takes a deep breath. “Listen, Lise, about that bottle of Scotch. I was way out of line.”

“Yeah. You were. Bygones. But no repeats, Rusty.”

“Right. Just so’s you know, I’m grateful. And it’s Nathan. Anything I can do — ”

I wave him out, notice the set of his angular shoulders as he replaces the mandolin on the stand. He’s more like Jon than I gave him credit for.

An hour later, the house is full. Rusty and Bart are onstage and I am leaning on the counter, my coffee cooling as I listen to their harmonies. Something’s changed. Rusty’s voice sounds assured and his hands are steady on the strings. I look away from the band, surveying the audience, when a familiar pony-tail tracks a zigzag path through the crowded room. Jon reaches Cory at the same time I do, and says what I no longer dare to think.

“Cory, you look good, man. Clean. Come to make some music?”

“I’m good, man,” Cory lightly punches Jon’s shoulder, then laughs as I fling my arms around him.

“I’ll just check the kitchen,” Jon murmurs. I don’t hear him leave.

“Let me get a look at you, Lise.” Cory disentangles me, ruffles my short hair. “You’re lookin’ skinny. What did you do to your hair?”

“Cory, I wish you’d — ”

“I’m okay, Lise. Brunette suits you.”

I walk around him, scan his clothes, skin, face. Resist the urge to pat. My brother stands patiently under my scrutiny. He’s looked worse. A new scar runs in a taut red crescent from one blond eyebrow to his hairline, but his jeans are clean and his cowboy boots are polished. Part of me wants to know where he’s been sleeping and who’s washing his clothes, but I don’t ask. And I don’t want to ask the other question, the invisible elephant. But it is pulled from my mouth like a rotting tooth. “Cory — ”

“Lise. Just … don’t.”

I fumble for my puffer, but I left it on my desk. I wheeze into my sleeve and try to breathe gently. Ask anyway. “Where have you been?”

“Vancouver,” he says flatly. Nothing else, just a few words and a tight smile for Sonya when she comes to take his order. When the cook’s bell rings, I brush her away and bring his Reuben myself. He eats rapidly, methodically, head bent to the job, not looking up, forearms protecting his plate. When did he last eat three squares in a day? He feels my eyes on him, halflooks sideways at me, drops his gaze to his fries. When I stretch out my hand for his empty plate, he shakes his ponytail sharply and carries it into the kitchen himself before we edge down the crowded hall to my office.

“Why didn’t you let me know where you were?”

“You’re my sister, Lise. Not my mother. It’s my own mess.”

My face stings as if he has slapped me. I imagine I can hear the quivering strings of the Gibson and wonder what Mom would say to him. What she said to our father, the long-dead junkie and sax player we never met. The answer — for Cory, at least — is obvious, the same answer our aunt Crista has given him for years: get clean. The rest, I’ll never know.

“Cory, about the mandolin.” I stop. For half a minute, I waver. Maybe I shouldn’t tell Cory. Re-string it. Learn to play it myself. My chest constricts. I’m not the musician. Cory is.

“Yeah. Broke my heart to sell it. But I’ve got three weeks clean. I’m going to meetings every day.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I told you, I’m clean. But I owe a guy two grand — ”

“Again?” I can’t keep the sarcasm from my voice. But Cory ignores the interruption.

“ — and I wonder if — ”

“What? Another loan? You know I don’t like … ”

“I know. But Lise, this guy really scares me.” His face is white.

“All right. I’ve got cash in the safe at home. But Cory, look.” I hesitate, then haul the Gibson from its cave between the filing cabinets. Cory’s face softens. He hugs me, then picks up his mandolin, his face bent to its strings. It hums in his arms. “You could have all the work you want as a session player, Cory. I’ve got bands in here two mornings a week, laying down CD tracks. They’d all jump to have you.”

“Sure thing. Sure.” His eyes are on the mandolin in his hands as he tunes it. He doesn’t ask me how I found it.

I’ve given up examining the ways and means my brother’s life could have been. But when I hear the rippling opening notes of “Cotton Eyed Joe” pour from that beautiful instrument, my breath stops. I hide behind a cough.

We were seven when Mom heard a hint of what Cory could become. I went to lessons too, and tried not to flinch when every teacher ignored me after hearing my brother play. My asthma started at ten, and Mom, sighing, offered me painting classes. But no, I wanted to be with Cory, and bit back my wheezing while he practised chords and arpeggios. At thirteen, he graduated to Monroe’s mandolin and I stopped pretending. I read his superhero comic books, one hand on my inhaler, while he played. Cory was obsessed, but he always asked me to play with him. I think about that generosity. It still feels bigger than my own greed for what he’s thrown away.

Mom loved to sing with Cory. He wound harmonies around her contralto like ivy on a rosebush. When they sang, I dropped whatever I was doing and stood behind him, hugging him, my forehead against his back, my hands open on his chest to feel the vibrations in his body. Thought of ways to force the music to make the leap through the air into me. Ray guns. X-ray eyes. Nothing worked.

He wanted to tour with her, to all the places she’d sang in before we were born — Austin, Nashville, New Orleans, where she met my father playing in a jazz club on Decatur Street — and that little place in Tennessee where she found Monroe’s mandolin. But he never got the chance. And I was glad, in some tautly closed part of me — not that Mom died, especially of the big C — but that Cory had been denied a small piece of what I couldn’t have, and what Mom lost. When she lost both breasts, she quit singing. Said her breasts covered where her soul lived.

Aunt Crista hugged us as we stood beside the casket. Mom’s white skin gleamed like her Meissen porcelain. I reached out and touched a cheek. Cold and smooth. The stillness of her deflated chest was visceral after the hospital, where we had been buried among harried nurses and blinking lights, forbidden to touch dials or adjust more than blanket and pillow.

Cory sang “Satan’s Jewel Crown” during the service. Just him and that mandolin. When the final notes faded from the strings, he laid his head on the lectern. No one in the congregation drew a breath until I got up, took his arm and led him back in the silence to our pew.

It’s been ten years since the first time I went looking for him. Cory’s cleaned himself up a dozen times. He comes and goes. I never know which man may show up — the stranger, lost in a chemical haze, or my brother the musician, eager to play.

The phone wakes me. Crista’s weekly call. “Yes, he was here. No sign of him,” I tell her, peering into the guest room. The bed is rumpled but empty. I sigh. “I gave him some money last night.”

I hold the receiver away from my ear as Crista’s voice twangs into the room. “ — in god’s name did you do that, Lise? You know he’ll — ” I listen with half an ear as my aunt berates me, then cut her off.

“I don’t regret it. Damn it, Crista, we’ve been through this before.” Her voice winds down after a few minutes.

His voice and mandolin were the last sounds I had heard last night as I drifted off, wound together in a lullaby that soothed me straight back to childhood. But this morning, as I make coffee, I try not to think about debts or threats, but I feel a widening within my chest, as if an umbilical cord has loosened. Jon asked me once why I never send a private investigator to find my brother when he disappears. Too steep a price, I told him curtly. Ransoming the mandolin, and its disappearance so soon after, is another pair of waves sent toward a distant coast. We live on separate continents, my twin and me. I can bail him out forever, send wave after wave towards that invisible shore, or I can stop. Direct the current into my own life.

On my way to work, I wheel the Jeep west through the crowded traffic along 16^th Avenue, and pull into the parking lot at Sharky’s. Sitting there, winter sunlight ice-pale around me, I can imagine Jon’s derisive voice when he learns what I am contemplating. I look down at my hands. In my inner ear, I hear the sea’s melody coursing, and as I walk into the pawn shop, I am suddenly, soberly, sure.

I’ll ask Rusty to teach me to play, finally begin my own apprenticeship. Jon would appreciate that. Maybe Cory will too, and maybe he’ll never notice.

I leave Sharky’s with the red guitar’s battered case and a music stand bumping and kissing around the backs of my knees like shy teenagers on the beach.