“And when I married Casey?
“I tried to support the marriage because you wanted to be married. But I knew then and I should have told you that Casey was nowhere near your level intellectually or socially, and he medicated his wounded ego with pot, or weed, whatever they call it now. And booze. Plenty of that. I didn’t know about the other women, but I’m sorry to say it didn’t surprise me. At the time, I didn’t want to drive you away by criticizing Casey. You were fragile, too.”
“I’d use the word ‘scared.’” I took a job that kept me in a cubicle for a decade, instead of pursuing what I loved: travel, history, and art. I still live in the house you grew up in, alone with the ghosts. And when my lousy husband humiliated me, I went deeper into my cubicle and turned out a few educational videos on obscure museum practices instead of acting out. When I told my mother so many years ago that I was marrying Casey, she remarked that it was like my life was on hold and accelerated at the same time. “I’m not scared now.”
“I’m glad. If I could go back to September 12, 2001, I’d do it all differently. I’d be the person your father married, instead of the widow I became. I was so unprepared to be alone.”
I had never heard my mother explain her behavior so succinctly.
“Mom, the other day, you were furious at Peter Beckman on the phone, and you had a right to be. He lied to us for ten years about Dad’s notebooks. Who knows how that could have made a difference? Now you’re chatting him up in his kitchen like it’s a happy reunion.”
“Joanie, please know that I hold resentment. About the notebooks. About his lack of communication. And there’s no reasonable explanation for his interference in your life. No matter what tale he’s going to tell us—and I’m sure he will come up with some dramatic retelling of his part in this weekend.”
“Marianne said something about Beckman working with the notebooks in his studio. Any idea what that’s all about?”
“Who knows? Maybe the notebooks act as some sort of sobriety reminder, like a daily practice.” She shrugged. It was a plausible notion. Presumably this afternoon, we’d get our answers.
My mother continued. “I have a lot to work out with Peter. My plan is to stay here and talk all of that out with him. It’s not something I can wrap my head around in an hour’s conversation and then get back on a plane. There’s a lot here to unravel.” My mother straightened up the desk rearranging the notebooks, her attempt at stage business, trying to avoid eye contact. She moved a pile of books from one side of the desk to the other and said, “The truth is, we’ll never know if having these notebooks would have made a difference in the last ten years. You saw the letter from your father, right?”
I nodded. “I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Neither do I. Why would your father want the notebooks hidden away? Away from me.”
Exactly what I had predicted: she was hurt.
“But that appears to be what your father wanted. And, Joanie, if he hadn’t given these notebooks to Peter Beckman, if he had checked them onto that plane, they would be gone forever. Not just ten years, but forever.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Not once. I was focused on what we didn’t have, not what we did. “I guess that’s true.”
“Maybe we weren’t ready for your father’s notebooks in 2001. Maybe we needed time to grieve and rage and make a lot of bad decisions before we were handed this gift of his genius. Peter gave us that.”
Fuck it. She was right. We could have squandered the currency of the notebooks by immediately handing them off to the WAM in the fervor of national grieving, letting them out of our hands to gather dust in some archive before we could appreciate what was really in them and what they meant to us personally. Still, I was cautious. “I like to think that we earned the return of these notebooks the hard way. Let’s not give Peter Beckman too much credit here. He seems to fancy himself some kind of benevolent bystander. That’s not how life works.”
“That’s not how your life works, but for him, everything works out somehow. But look at this life he leads with nobody to share it with. His bandmates are gone. Your father. No wife or kids. It’s a lonely life here.” I had my suspicions about his loneliness, especially the Carla Bruni decade, but I didn’t want to rub that in. “I want to try to give him some benefit of the doubt, now that I’ve yelled at him. That felt good.”
“It looked dramatic. But I think he thought he’d won.”
“Enormous ego. Always and still.” She looked drained, like the travel had caught up with her. My mother picked up the photo from Paris Match again. “It’s been thirty years since Peter and I last saw each other. That’s unfathomable to me when I look at that photo. That was yesterday. In my mind, it was yesterday. We’ve both changed a lot, maybe even completely.”
My mother continued, “Remember that night in Ojai when you came to tell me about Casey, and we laughed and laughed?”
I nodded.
“That fixed something in me, reset my purpose. You know?”
I did know. I felt it, too. I looked at the notebooks again and thought how truly remarkable it was that they were all here intact. “How did Dad stay friends with Beckman? And why did Beckman stay friends with Dad after all that went down?”
“You know men. They don’t fuss, emotionally anyway. Like I said, they had a lot in common to begin with, and eventually that included sobriety. Honestly, Peter must have known I would move on someday. I was too good for him,” she half joked. “But I did really, really hurt him. I only saw Peter once or twice after Paris. It was too awkward for your father and too painful for Peter. But your father did. He gave me updates like ‘He’s doing great’ or ‘Making money and happy.’ I never asked for follow-up.”
A memory exploded in my brain. “That time you came to Paris during my junior year . . .”
“And you went to Germany?”
“Yes. I should apologize for that. I’ve thought about that nonstop since this whole incident began. There was so much I never asked Dad about Bright & Dark, and maybe I would have learned more if I had stayed. But, on that trip, didn’t Dad say he was going to go out to Normandy to meet a friend? Was the friend Beckman?”
“Yes. It was. And he did. You left. He came here. I stayed in Paris. Your dad took the train out for the day. Think about that! You might have met Beckman, because undoubtedly you would have chosen his offer over mine.”
She was right. I would have picked the train adventure with my father over Paris shops with my mother. “This whole mess could have been avoided.” The second the words were out of my mouth I realized I’d never really been involved in anything messy. Sure, the split from Casey was awkward and embarrassing, but it wasn’t messy. He cheated and left. I changed the locks within forty-eight hours. Very neat, very clean. I never understood until now. I missed the messy bits and went right for the clean choice. “So now what? Are you here to see me, get the notebooks, or check out Peter Beckman?”
“Can I say all three?” Her voice became playful. “He looks good, doesn’t he? Like Sting good.”
“What did he say when you showed up this morning?”
“He said, ‘I was hoping you would come.’” And just like that, Suzi Clements was back. Like steel & glass from within.