The Conductor (by Bonnie Auslander)

The Conductor
By Bonnie Auslander

The hot water in the little sink in the bathroom in Dad’s study trickles out. 

Yet somehow it’s enough to divide into two even smaller streams. 

There are stain marks on the porcelain where the streams have etched themselves. 

But why would water stain? Two streams, two stains, two nostrils. It makes no sense

yet it does.

Dad is in front of the sink, humming along with a Mozart symphony as he sways and shaves. 

Da-dum, he hums. 

His face is covered in white shaving cream, right hand on the shaving brush, 

left hand on the razor, 

but somehow he is still able to conduct. Da-dum!

The desk in the study is massive dark wood but every bit of the surface is still piled high with books, 

math journals, papers, and paper napkins. 

Somewhere in the middle of the mess, Dad has created a small space for his scratchings. 

He always writes in pencil, and the mathematical notations are light and tentative. 

They trail off. Like bird tracks.

I am fascinated by the small blackboard that hangs opposite the desk,

 the powdery sticks of white chalk that snap so easily, the chalk eraser that has always fallen down. 

Bird tracks on the blackboard as well.

“Can I erase this? I want to draw.”

Sometimes he says yes right away. 

Sometimes he asks me to wait while he copies something down. The answer is never no.

*

Dad has a crew cut. I draw it by stabbing quick stubbly marks, but it never looks quite right.

 Sometimes the pencil point makes a hole in the paper.

I’m relieved when he starts letting his hair grow.

He used to be fat. I drew him that way. 

Then, in Berkeley he takes up jogging, a hanky tucked in the waistband of his shorts. 

Sweat everywhere. Now he’s shrunk to normal size. Easier to draw.

*

“Tell me a joke.”

A pause. “It doesn’t work that way.”

*

Dad is slumped on the sofa at the far end of his study watching baseball. 

The TV sound is off so he can listen to Beethoven, 

which streams out from the old beige-colored radio.

 I wander in. I can barely follow the game even with the sound on.

Dad is conducting.

*

Back from Berkeley at 5807 Chevy Chase Parkway, Dad has started referring 

to orange juice as “Jewish juice.” My brother and I giggle. It sounds awkward. 

Then we adopt it ourselves. We don’t even think about it. “Are we out of Jewish juice?”

Later, we are appalled. The phrase is absurd at best, vaguely anti-Semitic at worst. 

We appeal to Cousin David, whom we are visiting.

But David remarks in his resonant voice, 

“I’m more partial to it as a noun, as in ‘Let us Jews go for a walk.’ 

But Joe likes it as an adjective.”

*

Dad’s latest neologism is “puss.” A person is a puss. “I met a nice puss in line at Safeway.” 

The plural? Pusses, as in “You should really tell those pusses to hire you.” 

My brother and I point out that puss sounds too much like pussy and could easily be misunderstood.

 

“It doesn’t matter that you don’t mean it to be offensive,” we say. “You could still upset someone.”

We pusses have no luck.

*

Our parents split. Our mother gets the kids, Dad gets Dory the dachshund.

 Her full name: Dorabella, from Cosi Fan Tutte. 

It seems he never paid her much attention when our parents were still married, but now he dotes on her. 

Takes her to his office at the University of Maryland where she has her own dog bed to nap in. 

Walks her around the neighborhood dutifully scooping the poop decades

 before proactive scooping was a thing. 

“Your dog can go on my lawn any time!” calls an old lady out the window. Joe straightens up, waves.

As Dory ages her long spine starts to curve with arthritis.

 White speckles her muzzle. 

She doesn’t really walk any more; the motion is more like the lurchings of a land-bound toboggan. 

To me she looks miserable.

But Joe says she still has lots of life in her.

*

In my 20s I date. Jerry the Irish Catholic. John, who hikes all the time so he won’t relapse. 

Chris who lives in a house without a bathroom he built himself in the North Carolina woods. 

A bearded man just back from Peace Corps in Niger. 

My mother dislikes them all. But Dad’s assessments are just like that of my dog, Sukie: 

all the boyfriends are wonderful. 

And they are.

*

I marry Jon. Nina is a year old. 

“Want to ride on Sukie’s back?” says Dad, who, along with Barbara, is visiting us in Ithaca.

Nina isn’t interested. The dog is old and not interested either. 

But Dad holds Nina under the armpits and they go for a brief, faux ride anyway. Dad laughs and laughs. 

Later we have friends over. Rich is funny, Lynne is clever and loves to laugh. 

Joe opines on Jewish humor.

“Of course, in some Jewish jokes the set-up is even better than the punchline. 

For example, Yeshiva playing football against Notre Dame.”

His eyes water and he wipes at them with a hanky. How is it I’ve never heard this joke before? 

We all start laughing and practically drown out the end.

“Gornisht helfn!” Nothing can help you. The Notre Dame QB knows Yiddish.

We collapse on the floor, roaring with laughter. The dog just looks at us. Nina laughs too.

*
During the patter between kids at the violin recital Mitch the Irish fiddler teacher

 tells terrible, awful music jokes. A string of awful puns. 

Joe laughs more loudly than anyone else. I love Mitch, and I’m proud of Joe’s booming guffaws.

I’m relieved when it’s over. “I guess they didn’t do too badly?”

 I’m thinking of the one passage that Milo should have practiced more and had fumbled. 

And Nina had forgotten the retard.

Dad has found the dessert table. His mouth bulges with cookies. 

“I thought they were both terrific,” he says.

And they were.