News Where You Are

35

He was watching what he assumed was Evergreen’s Sing Something Simple group. He’d seen notices for them pinned about the place and when he’d heard the music in the corridor he’d followed it to the glass door where he now stood.

They sat on a circle of plastic chairs — their walking sticks, newspapers and cardigans scattered about them. Someone he didn’t know played the guitar and the group sang along. Frank recognized ‘Over the Rainbow’. He had heard it a hundred times and it had always been a song that floated past and never stuck to him. Hearing it now, though, Frank felt a soaring sensation in his chest. It was the same reaction he experienced sometimes on catching a glimpse of Mo, or Andrea’s silhouette separating from a crowd, or on seeing a sudden hurtling of vivid yellow leaves along a black road. For a moment he was overwhelmed, the very rhythm of his heart affected by the impact of what he saw and heard. He found the sight now of these few people each holding on to their stapled sheets of song words, combined with the melody and the lyrics, pierced him deeply. Each time the chorus came round the members of the group raised their heads, freed from the need to follow the words, and looked across at each other as they sang the well-known lines. Frank believed that what he was experiencing was not the power of one song, but the power of music itself, the transcendental, transformational magic, and he’d never felt it so purely before.

After the song finished there was a brief moment of stillness, a savouring of the suspension of the world, before time and place asserted themselves once more. Song sheets were passed back to the man with the guitar, assorted belongings reached for, cups of tea considered, the difficult business of standing up negotiated. As the circle broke apart, and chairs moved backwards, Frank was able to see figures previously obscured by others. He noticed for the first time that Walter had been sitting on the left-hand side of the group and as he leaned backwards to reclaim his newspaper Frank saw someone else he recognized by his side. It took a split second for him to realize it was his mother. He quickly pulled his head back, and turned and walked away from the room.

He returned to his car without really knowing why and sat with the heater on, looking at the exterior of Evergreen. Damp bark chippings covered the ground and wire cages encircled the skinny trunks of bare sapling trees. A garden intent on suppressing life.

A few nights previously he had spent hours looking through old family photographs that Mo had pulled out when looking for photos of her grandfather. The piles of battered Kodak photo wallets tumbled over the table, a chaos of negative strips spilling out and mingling promiscuously across the packs. Andrea was impressed by the photos of his parents before they were married. The images seemed poised and graceful — of a far higher quality technically and formally than any photos Frank and Andrea took now with a more sophisticated camera. The wallets were in no order and so they zigzagged through time from tiny, white-bordered, black and white rectangles, to gaudier, full-gloss jumbo shots and back again. Frank changing from scowling baby to smiling father to squinting young boy shielding his eyes from the sun.

Andrea had seen them all before but enjoyed seeing them again. Her enjoyment turned to outright hilarity around the time of Frank’s thirteenth birthday as she howled at the photos of teenage Frank with his sensible haircut and jumpers. As the evening wore on, Frank found himself focusing most on the face of his mother. He compared the very old photos of her with later ones and tried to work out what it was that had changed beyond the simple process of ageing. It was something to do with her smile. At some point it had lost its softness, and took on a brittle, artificial quality. Her face showed effort, her eyes squinted. It was as if one day she had forgotten how to smile naturally and was forced to follow instructions from a manual.

He hadn’t expected to see his mother at the singing group, had never expected to see her joining in, but most of all he had not expected to see a brief flash on her face of an open smile. He felt as if he had glimpsed something he shouldn’t. He thought enough time had passed now for her to be back in her room. He gathered his things together once more and headed back towards the front door. He knew already that neither of them would mention it.