Innocents and Others Read online

“Jack. Jack Cusano.”

  “Jack Cusano? Not Jack Cusano, the record producer?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Jack Cusano who composes film scores. The gorgeous work you did on those Robert DeMarco films.”

  “That’s right.” He laughed. His laugh cleared out his throat a bit more. She lay back on her pillow, held the phone so it barely touched her cheek. She imagined her voice going into the transmitter, sound waves being turned into electrical pulses, up the wires to the phone lines to a switching station, turned into microwaves speeding across the country with the memory—the imprint—of her exact tone, her high and low frequencies, her elegant modulations, to the switching station in Santa Monica, sending electric current up the PCH to a Malibu beach house and into Jack’s receiver—undoubtedly a sleek black cordless phone. So fast too: instantly made back into a sound wave by the tiny amplifier near his ear. All that way, all those transformations, but no distortions. A miracle of technology. The sound was as clear as speech in a room. She could, she could—amazing—hear the ocean in the background. A gull, the sound of water pulling back from beach. She swore she could hear the sun shining through his west-facing windows.

  JELLY AND OZ

  Many years before Jelly called Jack, before she had begun phoning men for love (not work), and before she had recovered her sight, she had fallen in love with Oz. She met him in the summer of 1970 at the Center for the Blind.

  Oz was bald and a lurching, lumbering six four. But his hands were soft and she liked the push of sweat with the air-faded tinge of clove that she got when he put his arm across her shoulders. Jelly was more than a foot shorter than Oz, and his arm across her shoulders was a natural fit. Later she would discover that the faint clove she got under—or right up alongside of—the sweat was from an old sachet that she found when she pulled open his undershirt drawer to put away the laundry she had washed and folded for him. It shocked her to see this girlish thing, an ancient silk square with a ribbon. She only saw it as a bruise of pink, but she could feel the slight catch that comes in the weave of older silk fabric. The sachet must have been in the bureau when he got it from the Salvation Army. Because Oz wouldn’t buy a sachet of spices and put it in his drawer, would he? That seemed very unlikely. But surely he noticed the scent—his blindness made every scent noticeable. Distracting, even—one got so sensitive, and the overlay of scents could be deceptive, puzzling. Jelly had slowly stopped calling a smell “good” or “bad.” Instead she thought of them as “real” or “cover” smells. She just wanted everything to smell as it was. Actually. An armpit should smell of sweat and hair and skin. A mouth should be clean but not minty. Hair should smell slightly vegetal, plantish. And a room should smell like old wood. A candle like melted beeswax. The street like rain and leaves. The backyard of grass, earth, flowers. Walking into a store and getting the rank sting of ammonia under fake pine could make her feel ill in a matter of minutes. She would leave gasping for air, clutching a hand to her nostrils.

  Even the real smells overwhelmed her lately. She could barely walk past her neighbor’s house with its ridiculous lilac tree. What kind of tree is this, with its heavy sudden bursts of overripe flowers? It too made her bring her fingers to the base of her nose. Just thinking about the rotting blossoms brought back the dense thickness of the odor. She had taken to crossing the street and pointedly facing away when she couldn’t avoid walking in the direction of that house and that tree.

  Oz gradually taught her the phone stuff. He had a kid’s red plastic whistle that he got from a Cap’n Crunch box, and he showed her how to blow pitch tones into the phone. Oz had perfect pitch and on his own could whistle the unlocking combination: seventh-octave E at 2600 hertz. Short bursts achieved with tongue against lips and pushed over-and-out air, or by covering the second hole on the toy whistle. (“What’s a hertz?” she asked. “A vibration,” he said. “It is all waves and vibrations.”) He could connect to anyone anywhere without any charges to his line. Jelly did not have perfect pitch, but she learned how to use the whistle. Eventually she even had a blue box to make tones, given to her by one of Oz’s phone friends, the phone phreaks. The other phreaks were much younger than Oz and still in college. They had learned to make handheld boxes for what Oz could do by ear and mouth alone. Only Oz could do that. To hear him whistle a series of tones into the phone was impressive, but it was more than a trick. He could talk to her about the intricacies of the phone system like he was a line engineer: “single-frequency dialing system” and “hook dialing” and “Strowger switch.” Or the thing that Oz explained made it all possible: the #4 (then #5) crossbar switch, the innovation to a mechanical electronic switching system all done with tone codes. The world connected by phone lines and Oz could go through it all by whistling. Sometimes he would get to a person deep in the network, an inward operator, and ask her to connect him to any line he wanted. But his favorite thing was reaching an electronic switching station. Then he didn’t have to speak. He could use the sharp whistle tones to get wherever he wanted to go.

  Oz had sat her down and showed her: seven short whistled tones. There was a click, another click. A distant ring, a connection sound. Another tone. Connected to a switching station in New York. Another series of whistles, and patched through to a switching station in London. Then Chicago. You could hear the response on the line—the gap, the distance—in the lag before the clicks registered. Then the other phone, Oz’s second line rang.

  “Pick it up.” She picked it up. A distant click. “Hello, girl,” Oz said into his phone. Less than a moment and it crackled on through the speaker by Jelly’s ear. Thousands of miles, across a sea, contained in that slight lag.

  “Hello, Oz,” Jelly said.

  “Your voice just went to London and back to reach me.” There was no reason for it, just the fun of imagining sounds bouncing across the world in seconds. World whistling, he called it. Sometimes Oz was mischievous with his skills—he told her how he once walked past a man talking loudly on a pay phone. He did his sharp whistle and instantly disconnected the call. He could hear the man say, “Hello? Hello?” But mostly Oz played with phones because he liked losing himself in the vast network of connections and he liked how he felt as a sound from his lips vibrated across the globe.

  Oz sometimes patched into an open-sleeve conference circuit that allowed two or more people on a secret untracked and unbilled line. The phone phreaks—all those college boys—called this warbling. Chatting really, about phones mostly, with Ditto in Los Angeles and Mo in Seattle. David in England. They were united in the high of subverting Ma Bell. For its own sake, and also to find one another. Everyone used nicknames or fake names because this was illegal. Go-to-jail illegal, even though it felt like a harmless prank. So the warbling also concerned not getting caught, who got caught, who was being taped and recorded. Oz, whose real name was William, became the Great Oz because he was the first and the best, and Jelly, whose real name was Amy, was called Jelly Doughnut because Oz said she was soft and round and even sweeter on the inside. All the kids wanted to talk to Oz, but the funny thing was that Oz never had much interest in talking. He liked the tones and the mechanics and the distant clicks, whistling from one responsive line to another. But Jelly was different. Jelly liked to talk. Jelly could talk. She loved to patch into the open-sleeve circuit with the others. Their voices hanging in space; Jelly listening and laughing and recognizing. She was the only—the only—woman who phone phreaked. These were shy, awkward men. They gave her lots of attention, which she enjoyed, but they were never ever nasty.

  Oz did not like the time she spent talking to other phreaks. At first he was proud of her, but then he became jealous. He wouldn’t admit it, though. Eventually Oz started leaving the house when she got into a conversation and not returning until long after she had finished. He said that he didn’t mind, but hearing the talking gave him a headache.

  In the years after he had left her, Jelly would trac
e the way they unraveled in her mind. She thought if she could figure out the place they came apart, she could fix it and he would return to her. Being left was bottomless. Not only in the moment, but the way it gave the lie to all the moments that preceded it. Is that true? Is love real and true only if it continues? Was it revealed to be “not love” when it unraveled?

  JELLY AND JACK

  This was another crucial moment, and she knew that she could not initiate anything more. She had to wait for him to open it further. She could not get anxious. Jelly held the receiver with her left hand and leaned back on the pillows. She crossed her legs at the ankles, pulled her kimono robe over her knees. She was a little cold. She wanted to be in that room with the beach smell and the sun on the windows. She waited, closed her eyes. She listened to the quiet line. She heard him cough.

  “So how do you know Mark?” he said. He sounded friendly and a bit amused now.

  Jelly made an “em” sound in her throat, with a little push through her nose. It sounded thoughtful, vaguely affirmative. She knew that even if she had to say “no” at some point, she would say it low and round and long so it sounded as if it had a yes in it somehow. Or an up-pitched down-pitched mmm-mmm, like a hill. The hums take you for a ride, just under the nose with the mouth closed.

  “We talk a lot. Sunday-morning talks, late-Monday talks. Middle of the night talks. Sometimes we talk for hours.”

  “Yeah? What about? Are you a girlfriend?”

  Jelly laughed. These men all had “a” girlfriend, meaning several at any time. She never wanted to be one of a number. What Jelly wanted was to be singular. Not even “a friend.” She wanted a category of her own construction. Something they never knew existed.

  “No,” she said. “Actually he talks to me about his writing. He reads me what he has written that day. I listen and tell him what I think. He says it gives him motivation, knowing I will call and he has to have something good to read to me.”

  “Really?”

  “He never told you about me?” she said.

  “No, but I don’t listen to everything Mark says. He tends to fill the air with static. It is ambient noise at a certain point. You know, busy but easily ignored.”

  She laughed. He laughed. Jelly sat up, stretching her back straight, feeling her spine arrange itself in a line above her hips. She switched the phone to the other side and relaxed the tension in her neck. She took a breath. So much of this involved waiting, silence, timing.

  “So I have to go, Jack. I am so sorry I disturbed you.”

  “No. I mean, no problem. I had to get up. I usually don’t sleep this late. But I was working all night. On this piece.”

  “You probably want to make some coffee and get back to work.”

  “Yeah, but not really.”

  “Is it for a film score?”

  “You know, it isn’t. It is just a thing I had in my head and now I’m playing with it. Using the keyboard. It will end up in a film score at some point, I’m guessing.”

  “Really? You don’t watch the film and then compose to it?” she said.

  “Yeah, I do. But I also import melodies and musical ideas I have. On file, so to speak.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “So, would you like to hear some of it?”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  “Oh wow, I would really love that. Yes, please.”

  “Okay, good.” He laughed. “Hold on,” he said.

  Jelly closed her eyes again and leaned back. She called this body listening. It was when you surrendered to a piece of music or a story. By reclining and closing your eyes, you could respond without tracking your response. You listened. The opposite were the people who started to speak the second someone finished talking or playing or singing. They practically overlapped the person because they were so excited to render their thoughts into speech. They couldn’t wait to get their words into it and make it theirs. They couldn’t stand the idea of not having a part in it. They spent the whole experience formulating their response, because their response is the only thing they value. It was a way of consuming the experience or the work. Jelly had a different purpose in listening to anything or anyone. It had something to do with submission, and it had something to do with sympathy. She would lie back and cut off all distraction. The phone was built for this. It had no visual component, no tactile component, no person with hopeful or embarrassed face to read, no scent wafting, no acid collection in the mouth. Just vibrations, long and short waves, and to clutch at them with your own thoughts was just wrong. A distinct resistance to potential. A lack of love, really. Because what is love, if not listening, as uninflected—as uncontained—as possible.

  But while Jack played his music for her she did not think about listening. She took a deep breath, relaxed, and let the music find her body. Jelly thought about things only after she got off the phone. When she went over what was said so she could remember it. She took notes on details, but the best way to imprint something in memory was to listen in the first place.

  “So that’s it,” he said, and he let out a tight, nervous laugh.

  Jelly opened her eyes, expelled a small sigh into the receiver. “It’s wonderful,” she said.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “There were these little leaps with each reprise.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  Only after she was done listening did she form her response. And it worked like this: find the words—out of the millions of words—that would describe the experience. That part, the search for the right language, was fun and almost like a puzzle. You thought of the word but then you felt it in your mouth, pushed breath into it and said it out loud. The sound of it contained the real meaning—she had to hear the words to know if she had it right. Then as it hung there she revised it, re-attacked it, applied more words to it.

  “And it gave me a remarkable feeling of lifting. Not being picked up or climbing. Not even like rising in an elevator,” she said. “Or an escalator. Not quite. More float in it. Maybe like . . . levitating.”

  Jack laughed. “You levitated listening to my little piece. Right on.”

  It did feel like levitation. Levitating through listening. Waves of sound. Waves on the ocean. Floating on the water. And floating on sound waves: levitation. What Jack didn’t know was how easily this came to her.

  “I have to go, Jack. I’m afraid I’m late.”

  “Oh no, really?” he said. She heard the hard fizzle of a strike and then a sharp breath followed by a blowing out: lighting a cigarette. She knew the sounds people made on the phone: the bottle unscrewed or uncorked followed by the pour of liquid over ice and the cracking of the ice. The sip—so slow it was painful, the delicate and distant sound of a swallow. And this sound, lighting a cigarette. But with a match, not a lighter. He was a constant smoker who used matches instead of a lighter, which made him a certain kind of person. Because a match had drama, a match left you with a flame to shake or blow out. And a match left a pleasant phosphorus smell lingering in the air.

  “So nice to talk with you this morning, nice to meet you, Jack,” she said.

  “The pleasure, Nicole, is mine. So when can we talk again? Can I call you sometime?”

  Jelly sat up. Held the phone back for a minute. She moved slowly in these moments. The giveaway was not in his request. The giveaway was in that he used her name. She had him.

  “I do have to run. I promise I will call you soon,” she said.

  “I look forward to it. Anytime,” Jack said.

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  “Bye.”

  She would not call anytime. She would call on Sunday at the same time. Only Sunday, and it would only be her calling him. Parameters. Predictability. It was the way it worked
best for both of them, for this thing they were building between them. He wouldn’t understand, he would want to call her, have her number. He would want other times, more frequent talks. But she knew what was best, how to do this. Pace was important. She would make him her Sunday call, and as the weeks of talks would go by, he would accept her terms. He would begin to get great pleasure out of counting the days until Sunday.

  JELLY AND OZ

  Jelly first met Oz at a group session. He listened to her tell the group what she struggled with. Then she was quiet while various people made suggestions and said mildly supportive things. After it was finished, Oz came over to her. He had his dog with him, and he moved confidently through the space. She waited for him to tell her it would be okay, she would adjust to it all. Instead he told her his name was Oz, and then he said, “I dig your voice. I thought, I would love to hear that girl tell a story. A long sad story with children and animals in it. Like a dream you don’t want to wake up from.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and she blushed, a little unprepared for a come-on. In this place. Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it?

  After he left, another girl from group told her about Oz: he had an IQ of 160 and a special genius for electronics. The next time she came to session, he approached her again.

  “Hey, there,” Oz said.

  “Hi, Oz,” she said. His high soft voice belied his big physical presence. He sat next to her, a large blur.

  “Girl, what can I do to get with you?”

  Jelly laughed loud enough for him to hear her.

  “You like music?”

  “I love music,” she said.

  “I’d like to listen to some John Coltrane with you. You should come over. We can order some take-out food and listen to Coltrane. You know, like A Love Supreme?” She was right, he was into her. It made her nervous. How old was he? She couldn’t tell, not with her blurry view. Everyone looked like they had perfect wrinkle-free skin. It was funny not to know how old or how ugly someone was. She had to go on other things, like size and smell. But mostly the sound of a voice, and hey—even what the voice said.