“When do you have time to make all that pizza?” I tried a joke.

Max laughed back at my comment. Thank God. The 30-minute long discussion had gone sour for me twenty minutes ago. The subject as usual focused on a bad state of affairs — my health. Today had started off with dizzy spells and pains; no big deal for a vintage-aged gentleman such as myself — I’m an old fine wine with a few good years left before I turn to vinegar — or so I’d like to think.

“Okay, Rudy. Call if you need anything. You still have Dr. Vanick’s home phone number handy?” Max said.

“And his daughter’s cell phone number too,” I said, lining up my brown prescription bottles across the counter, phone wedged to my shoulder.

Max, my oldest son of two, owned the best pizza place in town. He planned to hand it down to his son.

“I’ll be fine, Max. Promise.”

More than eighty years ago I sat next to my own father and watched him die. He had been scared. I saw it, and I had heard him say it – through his last breaths.

“Alright then, have a good time tonight, Dad,” Max said before hanging up the phone.

That’s how these morning check-up calls always go. The first few minutes I report (I don’t know why, but I feel obliged to report) the pains, aches, dizziness, stomach problems, sweaty palms, missed heartbeats, etc. Take your pick. Then, I spend the next twenty-nine minutes trying to convince him not to worry: I promise to call him if I need anything; I promise to call my doctor; promise to answer my phone, and I always promise to take my medicine. To finish us up on a lighter note, I tell a joke, and just before hanging the phone back in its cradle, I say I’m alright.

Fear. Getting old is about living with it. Old folks wait for, even expect, the day when that sudden clinch inside the chest means more than indigestion or a fall leaves us flailing around like an upside down turtle, alone. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” as the grand old lady said in that horrifying b-rated commercial. What an awful heartstring for homecare advertisers to pull; that ad ran during the local news every night for almost six months. Eventually, all the late night shows lampooned the old lady’s fall.

The fifth pill went down easy with a glass of water. Good children take care of their parents during our so called golden years. My two sons, Max and Ted, are the best. When they were boys, I knew too well the difference between being their parent and being their friend. Their friends never told them “it’s bedtime” or “take your medicine.” Eventually, they grew into men with families and livelihoods, and we became equals — real friendship — and that’s when parenthood really paid off. But that all changed March 4th of this year. I had my first stroke, that’s when “How are you doing today, Dad?” changed from really meaning, “Are you busy, can you please help me paint the deck, Dad?” into, “Dad, how long you think before you’ll be back in the emergency room?” Nowadays, my daily routine, my walk of life, consists of a back and forth between my living room and the kitchen. A constant soundtrack of well meaning noise: friends and family ringing the doorbell, email alerts (I need to call Max about that, I can’t figure out why my email keeps bouncing back), and the beep of that damned life care bracelet strapped around my wrist, all those sounds accompanied my every step; the iCare monitors might as well tag old people: “This one has almost come to the end of his march.” Makes one religious and a tad more conservative, but I’m okay with that.

The door to the basement squeaked a bit. My new digital piano downstairs would be the last thing I grabbed before leaving. The boys had craftily included the keyboard and the home assistance service (the people responsible for the iCare bracelet) into the same birthday bundle. “We care, because YOU care,” boasted the company’s slogan. No matter.

All of my old radios, vacuum tubes, toys (including a mouse riding a motorcycle), and clothes stayed down here. Francis’s cat-eye glasses sat on the shelf next to an old dusty tuba. I laughed out loud. Ted, Max’s younger brother, had come home in a huff after quitting the High School band late one football Friday. “You can take that tuba and shove it up your ass!” I found out were his parting words to the band director. Although Francis pretended anger, I knew deep down she had been amused. Ted spent one day home on suspension for that stunt, but went on his first date the following week. After High School, Ted left home and carved out his own life, he became a real-life small-town everyman turned into the self-made-millionaire complete with jet plane and a lasting full head of hair. As for Max, he went bald his senior year, stayed too skinny, married his second girlfriend, opened the Purple Owl pizza restaurant (named for the High School mascot), and bought the house next door to mine. To this day, when the two brothers are in the same room, tension rises between the I-stayed-at-home-with-Dad Max vs. the made-his-own-way Ted, but those episodes always end in laughter and a pat on the back.

The eighty-eight key digital piano rest against a bookshelf full of tools over in the far corner of the basement. Nice instrument. I had to convince the salesman that my fingers would fly off the end of the sixty-one key version before he would special order the larger version. Not to mention those extra twenty-seven keys are the twinkle notes. Still, compared to my old pianos, this one is extremely portable.

I asked my granddaughter — she’s in her mid-twenties now and plays music professionally in Nashville – during one of her visits if she would help me adjust the keyboard’s tones and digital presets. To my secret and great satisfaction, she did not have a clue how the thing worked. My ruse worked. Immediately I conjured up an entire orchestra from the keyboard’s data banks. My musical and technological tour d’ force surprised, and, more importantly, impressed her. She became so much happier and genuine around me after that. Best part of it, she quit asking me how “I felt” and instead began asking me who I played music with and where we performed. She almost became a friend. I zipped the keyboard into the tote bag and climbed up the stairs back to the kitchen. For a moment, I sat down to take a break. Pain. There had been a slight flutter in my chest but, thankfully, the green light of the iCare continued to glow. Must be nerves and stress about my big night tonight I told myself. A glass of cold milk fixed me right up and back to work I went.

All the music instrument cords and stuff fit nicely into my old leather bag. Been using it for gigs since my twenties. Dixieland, jazz, swing, Tommy Dorsey, all that music came natural to me. I play all the old standards by memory: “It Had to Be You”, “Anytime,” Have you Ever Been Lonely,” I play all of them except for “Star Dust”– the best piece of music ever written. Some say the melody is too bittersweet for lovers. They are wrong. They’ve listened too much to the lyric and not enough to the song. That melody is for the moment right before falling in love, that moment when you decide it’s okay to take the plunge again, that amazing second when a man looks at a woman and decides, “Okay, I’m going to do this. I am going to allow myself to fall in love again. To fall in love with you.” That’s “Star Dust.” During my granddaughter’s last visit, she borrowed my “Twenty-two Different Recordings of Star Dust.” Been almost a year. I hope she never brings that record back.

The garage door rolled open. Every Monday night meant live music courtesy of the Rudy White Trio in the Marion Retirement Home cafeteria. Our music stands lay folded in my car’s trunk. Made them for the trio years ago, screwed in the hinges, cut the wood and glued the glitter. My grandchildren painted a mouse in brass buttons on each member’s stand. Each mouse played the appropriate instrument for the band member: a trombone, piano, and drum set. “Oh, Rudy’s grandchildren are darlings! His boys have turned out so well too!” The blue haired ladies would say giggling at the painted bandstands. The one hairless and brown spotted scalp, probably Harold, among them would answer, “That’s because Rudy is a damn fine gentlemen.” Funny how we old people are defined now by our kids and grandkids. The Rudy White Trio has been together for years. I am thankful. Even though the most of the world has forgotten about us long ago, we can still find a few like-minded folks for an audiences. We are survivors. We have fun.

After the Buick’s warning chimes reminded me to fasten the seatbelt, I turned the key and whirled the car to life. I circled the cove, frost covered the curb, before turning toward Bernadine’s Eats. Tonight would be different; I would be meeting a girl. So many years had passed. My hands trembled on the steering wheel. What would my children and grandchildren think if they saw me with someone else.

Bernadine’s Eats became a staple of Mt. Gilead town life generations ago. During the Depression years, live combos swung the place until closing time, during the ‘40s young men always bought beers for one another before shipping off, and in turn bought beers for the girls whose boys had already left. During the ’50s, a jukebox rock-n-rolled teenagers and their parents refused to believe what had become of the charming old hangout. Now in the 20th century, the fresh desserts and cornbread tasted good as ever. My Doctor, the family, and all those pill bottles could go to hell. No better medicine exists than cherry pie.

I pulled right up to the building’s brown bricks and shut off the motor, tightened my big coat, and wiped the cold sweat from my forehead and palms. The cherry trees had grown so thick around the building that the windows were completely covered, but no worry, the chipped orange and brown sign stood unapologetically. I locked the car’s door and walked around to the entrance. The “Welcome to Bernadine’s” written in the baseball type hadn’t changed for years. I liked that.

This is where I had first talked to her.

* * *

“Hi ya Rudy!” greeted Bernadine. She had the biggest buffoon black hair-do. “Take your booth over in the corner?”

“Sure,” I said, but before I reached my seat, I heard Jack Owen yell,

“Rudy, get over here, man.”

He and Francis sat together in the side booth. The two came attached, albeit a friendly connection, and both were between maybe twenty to twenty-two years old, a couple of years younger than me, but I knew Francis walked light-years ahead of both of us guys. I looked hard at her for a short second. She always wore the best cat-eyeglasses with those tiny green faux-rubies buried in each corner. Someday Francis would be around, alone, and I would ask her about those cat-eyeglasses. I wasn’t scared of her like Jack.

“Hey Rudy, when are you playing again? Man, your show last weekend really blew my cool. I really almost jumped up there with y’all!” Jack said. Pomade tightly greased back his blond hair.

Francis snuck a look at me. Her discrete grin told me she knew why her friend Jack “blew his top” and liked to “get far out” and all the other latest clichés he tossed around — Jack could never be one of the “cats” or one of “beats” that he loved so much, but we all felt, despite the hot air, that Jack was a good guy. He ate his lunch like 99 percent of the Mt Gilead High School’s graduates everyday in the National Standard Plastic Molds cafeteria, and also like everyone else, he only wanted someone to care enough to save him a seat.

Across the diner a kid put a nickel into the jukebox. The record flipped over and the needle dropped- the new song by Chuck Merry or Nut or Berry, or something, anyway he’s a new negro musician. Francis tapped her foot.

“I don’t know when we’ll be playing here again.” I said to Jack, but meant it for Francis, “Harder these days.” I pointed over to the jukebox. “I don’t get why everyone likes this new stuff really. All that racket. Those drums sound like someone building a house, but it’s taken over everywhere, we have to search for our audience now; I’m not worried though: Jazz and Swing will stay. You know why? The rhythm is already there in the notes; we don’t need a drummer banging around like he’s making a house, or a greasy haircut, to make our beats and melodies. ” I started humming, snapping my fingers, swaying my shoulders, while all the time watching Francis.

She laughed loud enough to make me look at her funny.

“Yeah, but what about your car, that’s a smidge extravagant for such a straight shooter as yourself, isn’t it?” she said trying hard to keep from cracking-up again. She stared out the window into the parking lot. “Look at those fins and all that chrome. Do you really need all of that to get to where you’re going, Rudy?” She looked straight at me, hard.

“Listen, cat-eyes, that out there is an automobile not a car,” I said to keep it going, “An ‘automobile’ is a sculpture. A ‘car’ is like a mule.”

Francis cocked an eyebrow up.

“I’ll show you tonight. My band is playing over in Marion. Not too far down the road. Maybe I’ll take you for a ride in that piece of art you’re so interested in.” I stole another not so secret glance at the brunette.

“Sounds great, Rudy!” Jack butted in. “I’ll bring my horn. You guys will let one of your Mt. Gilead boys get up ‘n strut won’t ya?”

“Sure, Jack.” I said. My shoulders sagged.

Francis sat knowing everything. Eyebrow still cocked.

“Let’s split a cherry pie you two,” she said.

* * *

One last bite of gravy soaked roast beef lay alone on my plate. “That’s enough about my best days,” I promised to my fork. My waitress sat across the room talking to her boyfriend. I put the teenager’s tip on the table. I think she’s Frank Merriweather’s granddaughter; Bernadine had left a long, long time ago. I walked outside into the October nip. Although I could see my breath in the cold, the sweat beaded up again beneath my red knit hat and gloves. The car door unlocked. “When did Detroit start to hammer them into eggs?” I thought to myself.

And Francis stayed inside the diner. She wouldn’t be at the show tonight. The MS had crumpled her body into a ball of old newspaper. During the last days, she lay in the fetal position staring at the antiseptic walls of County hospital. If she blinked, the grandchildren would grab my arm and say, “She knows we’re here!” Maybe.

I had spent more nights at the hospital back then than most staffs would have normally allowed. That staff bent a lot of rules for me. After a few weeks, they began to let me play after dinner on the out-of-tune piano in the chapel room right down the hall from Francis. Eventually, our local paper wrote a story, everyone really appreciated my visits, I guess, even, and most importantly, Francis. The article said she blinked during “Star Dust.”

Francis died so slow — months — the way old men and women don’t want to talk about, and no husband wants to see, but everyone else insists on.

Those cat-eyeglasses have been in my basement for a very long, a painfully long time.

I stared in the car’s sun visor mirror at the strands of silver hair poking out of the tip of my big red German nose. The other two guys, the drummer and trombone player, were going to beat me to the show. I hoped they would be able to smooth things over with Carol Ann and Denise. Benny and Lewis were never the fast talking kind of musicians. My long lunch had put me behind schedule. I started for a line of blue pay phones outside of a filling station, but only husks of blue posts and empty plastic phone book covers remained. All week I’ve been waiting for this evening’s show, but again, against my better judgment, I stopped the car and decided to gamble away a few more minutes. The few strands of hair left on the sides of my scalp needed a comb.

Oh good Lord, not now, please. God help me. The iCare’s’s bracelet alarm had went off, the green light turning amber. Where’s pill number six — that blood thinner pill? Fifteen minutes to get to my show or twenty minutes to get back home — I had forgotten my pills again. Losing patience with the whole damn world, life’s whole enchilada, I balled my hand into a fist and punched the dash. An old man hitting a dashboard felt more ridiculous than angry. I put the car in gear. “Oh, at my age, what does it matter anyway?” I said to the dashboard.

Making up time fast over the two-lane, I arrived only a few minutes late. The corn around the parking lot felt familiar, warm. I spotted her straight white hair thirty yards before turning in, and this time, finally, she waited alone.

“Hi, Mary.” I opened the backdoor of my car to get the piano out. She came closer and offered a hand. I gave her that old leather bag full of instrument cords.

“Hello, Rudy,” she said holding the bag in front of her like a schoolgirl.

“Where are Carol Ann and Denise?” I asked.

“They had to go on inside. Serving food.” A smile played around at the corners of her lips. “You’re late, but I talked to them for you.”

I noticed the new bracelet around her wrist; the same accusing small green light flickered from her like mine. Something bad must have happened.

“I didn’t know you had kids.”

“Yes I do, Rudy. Three boys.”

“Well, let’s not talk about them.”

“Good.” The laugh swept the lingering day from the stars and Ol’ Blue Eyes sang:

Sometimes I wonder why I spend

The lonely night dreaming of a song

The melody haunts my reverie

And I am once again with you

When our love was new

And each kiss an inspiration

But that was long ago

Now my consolation

Is in the stardust of a song.