CHOPIN IN KENTUCKY

By Elizabeth Heichelbech

Roanville, Kentucky 1977. Marie Higginbotham's life is transformed when the 'Paris' ballet, comes to town. Guided by 'Chopin' the 19th century pianist, full of artistic and dietary advice & Misty, the world's first female Elvis impersonator, she rises above the religious mania of her father, to dance her way out of her small town existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bluemoose Books
• Release date: Jan 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915693020

Book preview

Dedication

To everyone who has ever had a dubious dream.

Imprint

Copyright © Elizabeth Heichelbech 2023

First published in 2023 by

Bluemoose Books Ltd

25 Sackville Street

Hebden Bridge

West Yorkshire

HX7 7DJ

www.bluemoosebooks.com

All rights reserved

Unauthorised duplication contravenes existing laws

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Paperback 978-1-915693-01-3

Hardback 978-1-915693-00-6

Printed and bound in the UK by Short Run Press

Prelude

Frederic Chopin taught me that life is lived in preludes : beginnings, fragments, moods-in-miniature, some less than a minute long. Introductions to larger works that don’t even exist . Lullabies overtaken by laments. Why can’t you be more like Mozart? I asked him, when I really wanted to crank his keys. More… predictable, more full of pleasing pattern ?

Why can’t you, Marie? he shot back, in his whispery French-Polish accent. Ghosts can be peevish. But Chopin didn’t like to be called a ghost. Or an imaginary friend. I am real, he insisted. Though as you well know, I suffered a horrible death in Paris over a hundred years ago.

That my best friend was a long-ago composer of tragic piano music was an arrangement convenient for no one. His infernal rhapsodizing of his 19th-century la vie artistique was bad enough, but his running commentary on my 1970’s so-called life was an everlasting knot in my knickers. Perhaps it was the tiny slice of diamond in the record-player needle working its magic; maybe Chopin was a time-traveling phantom; or maybe my brother was right and I really was crazier than a dog in a hubcap factory.

This I know: when his music spilled out of our record player, he came to life for me right there in our living room. He might have been dead and hypersensitive and invisible to everyone but me, but sometimes you don’t choose your best friends. Sometimes, they choose you.

"Mon Dieu. Do you ever stop talking? he asked. If you would just listen to my preludes more closely, you would understand that paradox is a condition of joy, even in Kentucky. He sighed. Especially in Kentucky." He was always saying baffling things like that, but his music could save a person from suicide. Or drive them to it, depending.

Howdy Do Variations

Chopin ’s favorite Loony Toon, What’s Opera, Doc? featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, caused him a massive laugh attack . When he had recovered, he smoothed his wavy pageboy hairdo and straightened his black silk cravat.

"Let’s be flâneurs," he said.

Indeed, I replied, slicking my own rat’s nest hair-don’t with a little dab of spit. Let’s be… what you just said.

He sighed, ever annoyed by my idiocy. It is when the disinterested, artistically inclined wander about, engaging in city watching, he said, as if it were as plain as a pig on a sofa. He sniffed, considering. Or, in this case, town watching. Friday after school was a good time for a ten-year-old to sneak out, as we kids were generally left to our own devices down in our moldy basement TV room, and with six of us, one more or less was rarely noted.

I took Chopin’s hand – carefully – and we made our way to Shopper’s Plaza of Roanville, Kentucky. Self-centered Freddy thought that Frederick Street was named after him, but I told him it was just a coincidence. We ambled past Maxi-Wax Records and the skating rink and Old Smoky Barbecue. The mid-March thaw had coaxed a few daffodils up through the mud, and little red buds had just appeared on the trees. The Peasantry of Groanville, as Chopin referred to them, were out and about, smiling and waving to one another. I had no idea that life could become instantly fascinating the second one decided to watch the world as if sitting in an audience. This discovery might prove useful in other ways, I realized, such as when Dad lost it on one or more of us. I made a mental note to try this out as needed, hopefully at a much later date.

As usual, we didn’t have any money, but we went to Kmart anyway, where we gazed with fascination at a most intriguing character in Domestics: a large lady in a motorized wheelchair. I had never met anyone in a wheelchair, and had never seen one that moved by itself, as if pushed by a ghost. I had been taught not to stare at someone just because they were different, but I had also been taught not to ignore them, as if they were invisible. Not knowing how to be kind in this situation, I stood there looking and not looking. Her longish ears stuck out of her stringy gray hair, and her tongue pushed a terrible rhythm against a furry lower lip. A faded American flag drooped from a pole on the back of her chair. Chopin absently hummed the Prelude No. 2, which overlapped with the song blaring on her transistor radio: Dancing Queen, by Abba. The two songs merged to become the soundtrack to this scene and nearly broke my heart.

The bubble of our artistic reverie was abruptly ruptured when she croaked out, Have you ever seen the likes of this? Why they got to put things up so high where people cain’t reach ’em? I jumped; flânerie had turned the world into a performance, and I had forgotten that we were visible to those on the stage. She grinned at me to reveal teeth like the keys of a derelict piano. What’s yer name, little girl?

Marie Higginbottom, I squeaked, remembering too late Dad’s admonishment never to give my name to strangers. He would have whupped me had he known.

Dolores, she said, waving a puffy hand. Howdy do.

Do you need some help? I braved.

Thankee a bushel and a peck, sweetie. Can you grab me a bottle o’ that lemon-scented Mr. Clean? For mah down south. Makes the best douche, don’t care what nobody says. It’s like, super-atomic strength. I wasn’t sure what a douche was, but I was fairly certain Mr. Clean should never be applied down south. Nevertheless, I stood on my tippy toes and was just tall enough to knock the bottle onto the floor.

I picked it up and handed it to her, asking, Do you need anything else?

Well, ain’t you a polite little thang. Well, I’ll tell ya honey, I sure could use some help in the ladies’ facilities. Things had just taken a decidedly less artistic turn.

I’ll come with you, just in case, said Chopin, finally stepping forward. I wasn’t sure that he would be able to help me if something creepy happened in the ladies’ room, but after all she was in a wheelchair and I could run pretty fast.

Oh. Um. OK, I said. There was no turning back now. We accompanied Dolores into the bathroom, Chopin hitching a ride on her wheelchair. Once in the stall, she leaned heavily on me as she hoisted herself up. She needed help to lower her pants, like my little brother, and I suddenly felt honored that someone trusted me enough to help with this most intimate of tasks. I stood in front of her stall door while she did her business; Chopin made himself busy primping in the mirror. This wasn’t so bad, after all, I thought. But then I realized that what goes down must come up. This was not going to be easy.

Just grab hold and pull as hard as you can. Lean back. Precariously cantilevered, my arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets, and I thought for sure we were both going to land on the dirty linoleum floor. We hovered in that dangerous pas de deux for a moment, before somehow I managed to get her to a standing position, and she turned and flopped back into her chair. Chopin’s amusement at this choreography was both evident and maddening. Tell you what, good thangs are gonna come to a strong little gal like you, what ain’t afraid to help a handicap lady in the toilet, she said, washing her hands. And then I felt about as worthless as gum on a boot heel, because I was, in fact, still a teensy bit terrified. Dolores dried her hands, then pressed a quarter into my palm.

Oh no, I can’t accept this, I said. I’m happy to help.

She puffed up her chest. Don’t be a ridicurous dumb-ass, she sniffed. My handicap money spends as good as ever’body else’s. Now you take this here quarter and shut yer pie hole.

I’m sorry. OK. Thank you. Sorry, I stammered, the very illustration of a ridicurous dumb-ass. She wheeled around, I held the door for her, and she proceeded, head held high, to the checkout.

I was feeling a kind of bittersweet melancholy that Chopin called zal, as I watched Aquanetta, a cashier named after the hairspray, work the intricacies of the Icee machine. Proudly brandishing my quarter, I asked for half red flavor and half blue to make purple – Chopin’s favorite color – even though I had supposedly given up sweets for Lent. You done a real nice thang for yer friend Dolores, Chopin mocked, then slurped noisily on the straw.

That’s mean, I said, grabbing the Icee back. She can’t help the way she is. You, on the other hand, can. Also, your lips are purple. Which they wouldn’t be if Dolores hadn’t given me the dang quarter.

I tossed the cup into the trash bin, and we crossed the parking lot toward home. I tried to see the power lines from Chopin’s point of view, as if I were from the past. It was a hard thing to do, seeing something so familiar with new eyes, and when I succeeded, I realized how stringy and saggy the cables were. The telephone poles were oily, chipped, gum-stuck. That kind of eyesore certainly couldn’t have been good for an artistic temperament like poor Chopin’s. I felt bad for him. Or maybe for myself. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Real Life Arpeggio

Back in the yard, I kicked off my pinchy, faded-blue sneakers. My bare feet read the fresh textures of spring as if they were interpreting Braille: the prickly new grass, the soft crush of clover, the lovely ache of the rungs against my arches as I climbed up the neighbor’s forbidden TV antenna tower. C’mon up, I called down to Chopin.

"Climbing is for urchins, Mademoiselle Fou," he sniffed. Whether he was afraid for his hands or for his pale lavender kid gloves, I couldn’t tell.

Either way, who could blame him? His hands were magic. They raced up and down the keyboard like crazy dancing spiders, making hills of sound that rose and fell in what he told me were arpeggios. The word itself tasted of pure elegance; I wanted to swirl it around on my tongue and swallow it and let it take me over, like an ice cream shiver. Perhaps that’s why I was powerless to withstand the lure of the tower – I imagined myself as a real-life arpeggio as I climbed my way toward the top, ascending like Chopin’s fingers up the keyboard toward a tense and lovely trill. I could fall to my death! I sang out excitedly, causing him to roll his eyes and sigh.

A city of violets spread purple below. Chopin and I both loved violets best, little happy accidents; miniature, like his most famous piano pieces; the scent, like the end of a note, disappearing before I could quite grasp onto it.

Marie? Dad intoned from below. A cold dread sluiced through me as I realized he was home from work early. What did I tell you? he said, removing his belt. He had told me many things. Not to be a part of the selfish, sinful world, for example. Also, not to sneak off down Frederick Street, or climb up the neighbor’s TV antenna tower. He stood there in his blue polyester suit, slapping his belt against his palm. Chopin had disappeared; the audience we had been a part of dissolved.

Somehow, thinking about the fierce and indomitable Dolores gave me the courage to face him. But it still took a slow motion forever to climb back down, into his waiting arms.

Rag Rug Elegy

Chopin hunched pale and slight on the piano bench, his gray frock-coat contrasting the Mason jar full of electric -blue Kool-Aid and the crumb-covered red-checked table cloth. Caught up in his music, he did not notice the broken crayons lying forgotten near the foot pedals. He remained oblivious to the stacks of overdue library books atop the upright piano.

A melancholy melody filled the house. The notes hooked into my chest, sparkly and sharp, like slivers of stars, and I was suddenly struck lonesome for winter. In my whiteish tutu, formerly a frilly petticoat from Salvation Army, I danced and danced under the sorrowful gaze of the black velvet Jesus with the spots of moon in his eyes. I became the ballerina from the Swan Lake record album, perfect and blameless. Never mind my stinging legs, fresh from a thrashing, my feet snagging on the brownish polyester rag-rug.

Chopin was just reaching the most heart-wrenching part when my delicate arch was savagely impaled by a toy army man. Like most romantic ballet performances, mine tended to end tragically, and of all the things upon which it is possible to dance – dogs’ tails, or one’s own foot, for example – the most excruciating was a plastic soldier’s upraised rifle. I shrieked and fell writhing on the floor, lame and undone. Chopin stopped playing, his hands still poised on the keyboard, a haunted look in his eyes. Just then, an empty beer can toppled from the top of the piano into his lap. Budweiser. I cannot work under these conditions! he said, and I suddenly understood in a moment of unlovely clarity what these conditions were: sausages sizzled on the stove, while President Ford’s incessant drone murmured up through the floorboards from the TV in the basement. Matthew was apparently losing to his own self at Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots, while Mark brandished a section of sun-faded Hot-Wheel track as a sword. Luke crawled after Daisy, who ran barking in figure eights around the dining room table. Ann sawed away at her violin in the bathroom again, practicing where she said the acoustics were good.

Meanwhile, Ruthie banged on the bathroom door, hollering, I gotta go!

Then the cuckoo clock delivered the final insult, chiming the hour in the off-the-wall way that cuckoo clocks do, and Dad’s tenor erupted: Jesus said peace and we will have peace in this house, Goddammit! Chopin stomped off in a huff, and I didn’t blame him. He and my father were both chronically outraged, and life in our house was pretty much like the Prelude no. 22: molto agitato.

Dinner Divertimento

Mom rang the delicate little bell that meant, Get in here now and set the table or I’ll cheerfully throttle you within an inch of your life for a nickel. So I ran in, tripped and fell over Dad ’s briefcase – he had left it exactly in the way , again – lost my glasses, and narrowly missed stomping on them .

Marie! You’re a bull in a china closet! Mom exclaimed, pushing up her glasses. Splotches of yesterday’s tomato sauce stained her apron, rendering the playful kitten pattern into a hand-embroidered murder scene.

Composing myself, I cradled an armful of plates to our dining room table, which used to be a door, and tried to make an interesting design with the layout of the various styles. I put my favorite at my own place: the chipped rosebud