Jonah Kirk. But I guess because I was half Bledsoe, anyone who ever admired my grandpa—which was everyone who knew him—would have looked at me with some doubt that I could ever shape myself into a man like him.
The day I was born, Grandpa Teddy and Grandma Anita came to the hospital to see me first through a window in the nursery and then in my mother’s arms when I was brought to her room. My father was there, as well, and eager to tell Grandpa my full name. Although I was the center of attention, I have no memory of the moment, maybe because I was already impatient to start piano lessons.
According to my mom, the revelation of my many names didn’t go quite like my father intended. Grandpa Teddy stood bedside, nodding in recognition each time Tilton—who was cautious enough to keep the bed between them—revealed a name. But when the final name had been spoken, Grandpa traded glances with Grandma, and then he frowned and stared at the floor as if he noticed something offensive down there that didn’t belong in a hospital.
Now, you should know Grandpa had a smile that could melt an ice block and leave the water steaming. And even when he wasn’t smiling, his face was so pleasant that the shyest of children often grinned on first sight of him and walked right up to him, a stranger, to say hello to this friendly giant. But when he frowned and when you knew that you might be the reason he frowned, his face made you think of judgment day and of whatever pathetic good deeds you might be able to cite to balance the offenses you had committed. He didn’t look furious, didn’t even scowl, merely frowned, and at once an uneasy silence fell upon the room. No one feared Grandpa Teddy’s anger, because few people if any had ever seen it. If you evoked that frown, what you feared was his disapproval, and when you learned that you had disappointed him, you realized that you needed his approval no less than you needed air, water, and food.
Although Grandpa never put it in words for me, one thing I learned from him was that being admired gives you more power than being feared.
Anyway, there in the hospital room, Grandpa Teddy frowned at the floor so long, my father reached out for my mother’s hand, and she let him hold it while she cradled me in one arm.
Finally Grandpa looked up, considered his son-in-law, and said quietly, “There were so many big bands, swing bands, scores of them, maybe hundreds, no two alike. So much energy, so much great music. Some people might say it was swing music as much as anything that kept this country in a winning mood during the war. You know, back then I played with a couple of the biggest and best, also with a couple not as big but good. So many memories, so many people, quite a time. I did admire all those names between Jonah and Kirk, I did very much admire them. I loved them. But Benny Goodman, he was as good as any and a stand-up guy. Charlie Barnet, Woody Herman, Harry James, Glenn Miller. Artie Shaw, for Heaven’s sake. The Artie Shaw. ‘Begin the Beguine,’ ‘Indian Love Call,’ ‘Back Bay Shuffle.’ There are so many names to reckon with from those days, this poor child would need the entire sheet of stationery just for his letterhead.”
My mom got the point, but my father didn’t. “But, Teddy, sir, all those names—they aren’t our kind.”
“Well, yes,” Grandpa said, “they’re not directly in the bar and restaurant business, like you are, but their work has put so many people in the mood to celebrate that they’ve had an impact on your trade. And they most surely are my kind and Sylvia’s kind, aren’t they, Anita?”
Grandma said, “Oh, yes. They’re my kind, too. I love musicians. I married one. I gave birth to one. And, dear, you forgot the Dorsey brothers.”
“I didn’t forget them,” Grandpa said. “My mouth just went dry from naming all those names. Freddy Martin, too.”
“That tenor sax of his, the sweetest tone ever,” Grandma said.
“Claude Thornhill.”
“The best of the best bands,” she declared. “And he was one funny man, Claude was.”
By then, my father got the message, but he didn’t want to hear it. He had a big chip on his shoulder about race, and he probably had good reason, probably a list of good reasons. Nevertheless, for the sake of family harmony, maybe he should at least have added Thornhill and Goodman to my name, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that.
He said, “Hey, look at the time. Gotta get to the restaurant.” After he kissed my mom and kissed me, he hugged Anita, nodded at Grandpa Teddy, said, “Sir,” and skedaddled.
So that was my first family gathering on my first day in the world. A little tense.
The second time that my mother’s life fell apart was eight months later, when my father walked out on us. He said that he needed to focus on his career. He couldn’t sleep with a crying baby in the next room. He claimed to have a potential backer for a restaurant, so he might be able to go from cook to chef in his own place, and even if it would be a hole in the wall, he would be moving up faster than originally planned. He really needed to stay focused, do his work at the restaurant and pursue this new opportunity. He promised he’d be back. He didn’t say when. He told her he loved us. It was always surprisingly easy for him to say that. He promised to send money every week. He kept that promise for four weeks. By then, my mom had gotten the job at Woolworth’s lunch counter and her first singing gig at a dump called the Jazz Cave, so it was a difficult time, but only difficult, nothing serious yet.
I’m not going to be able to talk my life month by month, year by year. Instead, I’ll have to use this recorder as if it were a time machine, hop around, back and forth, so maybe you’ll see the uncanny way that things connected, which wasn’t apparent to me as I came to my future one day at a time.
Here is where I should tell you a little about the woman who kept showing up in my life at key moments. I never once saw her coming. She was just always there like sudden sunshine breaking through clouds. The first time was a day in April 1966, when I tried to hate the piano because I thought I’d never get to be a piano man.
I was nearly nine, and Grandma Anita still had a year to live. The previous December, my father had come back to stay with us again in the walk-up. Mom never divorced him. She considered it, even though she knew—and believed—that marriage was a sacrament. But she claimed that when she sang in places like the Jazz Cave and Brass Tacks and Slinky’s, she could more successfully discourage come-ons from customers and employees if she could honestly say, “I’ve got a husband, a baby boy, and Jesus. So as handsome as you are, I’m sure you can see I have no need of another man in my life.” According to Mom, just husband or child or Jesus alone wouldn’t have kept the most determined suitors at bay; with them, she needed the three-punch.
In the nearly eight years he’d been gone, Tilton Kirk hadn’t found a backer, hadn’t opened his own place, but he had left the restaurant where he worked as a cook to take the chef position in a somewhat higher-class joint. He was earning less because every year the owner compensated him also with five percent of the stock in the business, so that once he had accumulated thirty-five percent, he could buy the other sixty-five at an already agreed-upon price, using his stock to swing the bank loan.
With him at home again, my mom was more happy than not, but I was all kinds of miserable. The man really didn’t know how to be a dad. Sometimes he was a hard-nosed disciplinarian dealing out a lot more punishment than I deserved. At other times he’d want to be my best pal ever, hang out together, except that he didn’t know what kind of hanging out kids think is cool. Strolling the aisles of a restaurant-supply
