joel

 *

“Where are you taking me?”

Joel opens his eyes slowly, blinks a couple of times, and looks up into my eyes from the bench in front of Laundry Club, where he’d been dozing in front of a couple of hampers full of neatly folded clothes.

“Joel? Joel? I’m Santiago, your Uber driver.” I explain that I’m not allowed to know where I’m taking him until we start the ride on the app. He looks at me blankly.

“It should be 33 Main St., Belchertown, Massachusetts. Is that where you’re taking me?”

“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, Joel. Why don’t we get your laundry into the car, and once we start driving, we can make sure that’s the address that’s in the app?”

“Okay. Thank you.” His voice is not so much quiet as impossibly soft like a stone worn smooth by the sea.

I load the laundry as he gets into the backseat and hear him exclaim, “Oh man! Classical music!” I can’t hear the rest of what he said as I closed the hatch. So, when I get back in front, I ask.

“I love classical music so much. I give every year to NEPM. Fifty-five dollars and sixty-three cents. But it’s worth it, man. I love classical music.”

“I’m glad. Me too.” I tap “Start UberX” and see we’re going to the right address. I let him know. He closes his eyes and nods.

“Once I saw the Springfield Symphony playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It made me cry. I love that piece so much.” I look in the rearview mirror. His eyes are closed. Muscles relaxed. 

“That sounds special. Sometimes Bach makes me cry.”

“Oh, man! Not too many people understand classical music.”

“Well, I don’t know if I understand it. But it moves me.”

“Oh, man! If you cry when you hear it, you get it, man.”

“If you like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, you might like this piece I discovered last year. It’s a contemporary composer named Max Richter who recomposed the Four Seasons. When I heard it for the first time, it was like Vivaldi’s piece was suddenly restored to me, made fresh, you know?” His eyes closed, he nods.

“Yes.”

“Here, let me play it for you.” I excitedly jab at my phone to pull up Richter’s piece, not taking my eyes off the road, and press play. Some drums rattle and then a high falsetto voice streams from the car speaker: “Biggggg girrrrrls donnnnn’t cryyyyy! Biggggg girrrrls…” 

“Shit,” I say, “I’m so sorry. Wrong Four Seasons.” 

Joel smiles, eyes still closed. 

“It’s all good, man. Don’t worry.” 

I try again. This time, the first rearranged chirps of violin dart around the inside of the car. Max Richter’s Four Seasons Recomposed.

“Oh god, man.” A tear begins to roll out of Joel’s closed eye. “It’s so beautiful.” 

I smile. He gets it.

“One time, I went to see the Springfield Symphony play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It was so beautiful. I cried.” 

I pause, uncertain about his repetition, then decide to just roll with it. 

“Wow! That sounds so special, Joel.”

“It was. It was. I wore a tuxedo. And they had champagne in a—what do you call it—like a sculpture. Not an ice sculpture. Where they stack all the glasses of champagne flowing like a fountain.” Now tears are flowing freely down his face. His hands folded in his lap, like a little boy in church. He could be sitting in a car seat. His eyes still closed.

“I went with my wife. She died. She left a little boy. He was only one year old. She was the most beautiful person in the world.” Soft sobs shake his chest.

I imagine young Joel, with his wife and new baby, gazing ahead at the road of a happy future extending to the horizon. 

“Oh my gosh, Joel. I am so sorry. So sorry. What a terrible loss.” He just nods, still crying but also smiling.

“Oh, man. I can’t believe this. This music is so beautiful.” I turn it up. “I’m so thankful I have not lost the memories,” he says.

“Is memory a problem for you, Joel?”

“Oh, no, I don’t have any problems with memory.” He pauses for a moment before continuing. 

“I saw my mother die. What are we supposed to do?” he asks, opening his eyes and looking in the mirror to catch my gaze.

“That’s so painful, Joel.” I don’t know what we are supposed to do either. It is a good question. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

“I didn’t see my mother die, Joel. But about a week before she died, the very last day that we spoke to each other, I went to hear a world-class violinist play Bach’s Partitas in an old chapel in Ohio. I could feel the music vibrating through the floorboards, pews, and into my bones. I could feel it singing, woven into the light streaming through the stained glass windows. I sobbed and sobbed, listening to that music; I could feel my mother in every note and phrase, my mother’s soul working its way free of this world, but first coming through the windows and old wood right into my body, my bones, my soul.”

Joel is nodding vigorously. He is crying. He is smiling.

“Yes,” he says, “yes.” And then he adds, “One time I saw the Springfield Symphony play Vivaldi’s Four Seasonslive. It was like that. I wore a tuxedo, and there was like a champagne—a champagne—”

“— Fountain?” I suggest.

“Yes, a champagne fountain. And it was so beautiful I cried and cried. And my beautiful wife was there. Oh, man. This is so great. Thank you so much, man. I can’t believe this. Thank you so much.” 

Through blurred eyes, I look at his tear-stained face in the mirror. 

“I wore a tuxedo, and nobody could see my tattoos. I mean, I’ve never been arrested or anything, never even gotten a traffic ticket. And I thought with my tattoos and earrings. But I wore my tuxedo, and my beautiful wife was there, and nobody said a word to me.”

“That’s good,” I say. “There’s no reason why they should. I have tattoos, too, Joel. My daughter-in-law is a tattoo artist.”

“No way, man! That’s so great!”

“Yes, she’s a very talented artist. She listens to people, then creates beautiful images, and puts their memories and experiences right into their skin. What a thing, right?”

“Oh, man. This is so great. Thank you so much—what’s your name?”

“Santiago.”

“Thank you so much, Santiago.” 

Now, we approach Joel’s address. A sprawling old house with ramshackle additions tacked onto the back. I pull into the driveway, following his directions to the back of the house.

“Let me help you get the laundry out of the back.”

“Thank you, Santiago.” His voice is now calm and soft as a breeze again. I put the laundry baskets on the top step as he unlocks the door. He opens the door and turns to me, fully meeting my gaze. “Thank you so much. This was great.” We shake hands.

Back in the car, I turn around and slowly pull toward the front of the driveway. I don’t have a ride queued, and I’m not sure where I want to go next. I stop the car and look at my phone. Suddenly, I see Joel running bowlegged toward the back of the car. I throw it into park and jump out.

“Are you okay, Joel? What is it?”

“I think I left my phone in your backseat. Oh my god! Thank god you hadn’t left already! What would I have done?” Sure enough, the phone is there. I retrieve it and hand it to him. Tears begin to stream down his face again.

“Thank you so much. Thank you so much.” He steps toward me, arms open. We embrace. I pat his back. 

“It’s all good, Joel. It’s all good.”

* *

Six months later, I accept a ride request. The name and address are unforgettable: it is Joel. I pick him up at his house and greet him with a big smile, explaining I’d driven him before. He smiles.

“Yes, you did,” I tell him we had a long conversation about classical music. “That’s right,” he said,” we did.” But the sound of his voice is at once sincere and empty, as though he believed he remembered, but in fact, he didn’t. 

He’s on disability, he explains. He’d been on medications. He doesn’t remember what for. 

“But they were damaging my kidneys. I went to the ER, in the hospital, you know. I was on dialysis.” He begins to cry, remembering. “They saved my life, man. All I could think about was my boy, home alone, a 17 year old. Now he’s 18. He’s a good boy. I tell him to be earnest and gracious.”

“That’s such perfectly phrased advice, Joel. Your son is lucky.”

“I love your music. It’s so relaxing. So few people really understand how important music is. Especially in today’s world. My god!” He explains that he was born in Puerto Rico but moved to Holyoke when he was five. There was a fire. 

“We lived on the 5th floor. Mother and I got out. There’s a picture in the newspaper of Mother holding me and a firefighter holding her. Holyoke wasn’t a shit show then. It was a nice city, a beautiful city. No drugs, no shooting.” He begins to cry. “I don’t understand why people do these things. They should give hugs, not drugs.”

“You’ve survived a lot, Joel. You are obviously supposed to be here.”

“I hope so.” His cries turn to sobs. “I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be sorry for having feelings. You’re a human being, Joel. I’m glad you’re a human being.”

“I am, too.”

“My son is going to UMass in the fall,” Joel continues. “He’s a good boy. He wants to study science. He doesn’t know what, though. He wants to play soccer. Maybe he will play for the UMass team. He’s 6’-5”. When he was young, I made him use only his left foot. He didn’t understand why then. But now he can play both sides of the field equally well, so coaches love him. He’s got a foot like I’ve never seen before. And the girls won’t leave him alone. But I tell him don’t worry about that.”

“You gave him the perfect playbook for life, Joel: be earnest, be gracious. If he is that way, he can’t go wrong.”

I pull to a stop in front of Target. The garish red bullseye feels inappropriate to me, like an insult to Joel’s dignity. 

“I know. That’s right,” he says as he opens the door. “You’re so true. You’re so so so true, you’re so right.” Then, without saying another word, he gets out of the car, closes the door, and ambles toward the entrance. There, reflected in the doors, I see his face beaming serenely. 

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