It is a difficult enough thing to do, to go through one’s beloved’s belongings after they die. Clothes that still smell faintly of their cologne (patchouli, in Timothy’s case). Diaries with memos about dates you shared, appointments you didn’t, gifts given to you for anniversaries or birthdays. Items you know they handled every day — a paperweight like a crab (he was a Cancer), the leather coin purse that once held pounds and pence but contained only quarters for parking meters. And stuff from ages ago that made you wonder why it was kept (a box stuffed with lottery slips anyone?).
Perhaps even harder is to disassemble the tools of their craft or trade or best-loved hobby. Is he still a carpenter if you give away his huge toolbox? Is she still the winner of countless state fair prizes if you donate all her yarn and knitting needles and sell the sewing machine?
In Timothy’s case, I have shelves of music books, boxes of D’Addario guitar strings, portfolios of handwritten arrangements, and a precious stock of “fake books,” those meticulously assembled (if illegally transcribed) books of jazz standards. At least a couple of those fake books are as old as our relationship itself.
On our very first date, Timothy picked me up in his beat-up Chevrolet and began the evening’s adventure by asking if I minded a little detour on our way into Manhattan for dinner. Of course I didn’t: I enjoyed his company so much, I would have gone along on a ride to the Petaluma dump (as Anne Lamott once famously said) if that was what was on offer.
I almost regretted this decision 30 minutes later, as we drove into a remote corner of Brighton Beach, then a backwater of Brooklyn notable for newly established Russian blini joints and fading neighborhood shops under the El. I swear the alley we turned into was unpaved, the little row of one-time beach cottages guarded by mangy dogs and a few errant chickens. We rolled up to the one furthest from the street; Tim invited me to join him, and after considering being left alone with the dogs, I agreed.
The little house was dark after the July sun, and furnished with lumpen sofas and battered tables that were veterans when they moved in immediately after VE Day. The lanky, bearded man at the piano greeted Tim pleasantly and asked “How many today?”
Mind you, I had only recently stopped dating a chap who thought nothing of selling nickle bags of pot to my boss in the middle of Sixth Avenue. You can probably read my mind from a hundred miles away…
And Timothy, seeing my face, smothered a laugh and replied, “Have you got two in C, one in B-flat and one in E-flat?”
Yes, dear reader, he was trading in fake books, importing them to Newark, New Jersey, from a transcriptionist with perfect pitch hiding out undetected in deepest, darkest Brooklyn.
So when I turn my attention this weekend to the fake books on the shelf, you can bet I will be scanning them for his handwritten notes, maybe on the pages for “Moonlight Serenade,” “Take the A Train,” or “Laura.” I may not be able to play a note in it, but I’ll be listening for his voice whispering “Keep that one, it came from Brighton Beach.”