Chapter 17b

Later, Jake, his mother, and Nerdly's mother took their places at the front of the room to perform the wedding song Jake had written for his friend. Jake picked up the battered acoustic guitar he used when composing. His mother removed the $18,000 Nicolas Lupot violin she played onstage with the Heritage Philharmonic from its case and put some rosin on her bow. Nerdly's mom sat down at a baby grand piano she'd arranged to have trucked here from her house.

As he had done with Celia's wedding song, Jake had written and composed the song himself, instilling in the lyrics what he thought the meaning of marriage and commitment was all about. The song was called All It Should Be and over the past eight weeks he had flown to Heritage on the weekends to rehearse it with the two women. It had been a strange yet rewarding experience putting together a song with two women who had regularly changed his diapers when he was a baby and who had always represented parental authority to him. He had been kind and competent but unquestionable in his direction to them. It had been awkward at first, but both of the mothers had spent their entire careers being told how and what to play and, once they accepted that he knew what he was doing (and that he wasn't going to make them jam out some sort of heavy metal atrocity) they fell neatly in line and treated him with the respect they would have given any competent composer. The end result, Jake thought, was something they should all be proud of.

Jake started out the song, strumming a complex, fingerpicked melody on the acoustic to set the tone. Mary then came in with a gentle background rhythm with the violin and then Cynthia set up a nicely mixed counter-rhythm with the piano. Jake began to sing, his voice un-amplified but strong enough to carry across the small room and find every ear. There were two verses, each followed by a brief chorus in which the two women joined him in three part harmony (this had been the toughest part of the rehearsal process, both of the mothers had decent singing voices but neither of them had ever had to use them in front of an audience before). Following the second chorus, Jake maintained the rhythm on the guitar while his mother performed a sweet, lively violin solo of her own composition. As Matt was the master of the electric guitar, Mary Kingsley was the master of the violin. She blended it perfectly, starting out with slow tempo, increasing it to a knee-tapping frenzy in the middle, and then slowing it back down to mix with the third verse and the final chorus. After the last word was sung, Jake and Mary both quietly let their instruments go mute while Cynthia performed a slowly decreasing piano solo of her own. When the song was over, the applause washed over the room and a standing ovation was given to the three musicians.

That was awesome, Jake thought in wonder as he linked arms with his mom on one side and Cynthia on the other. I just wowed an audience with a couple of fifty-five year old married women as my back-up. They took a bow.

"More! More!" the guests demanded.

"Let's do something else," Cynthia suggested, intoxicated with the applause (and with more than a few lechaim drinks).

"We don't have anything else," Jake reminded her.

"There must be something we can do," Cynthia said. "Some song we all know."

"Yes," Mary said, excited. She looked at her best friend deviously. "Let's get really wild."

"You mean... ?" Cynthia asked.

"That's right," Mary said. "Let's do some Neil Diamond."

"Oooh, yes," Cynthia said, clapping her hands together. "You really know how to rock, Mary!"

"Jake," Mary asked, "do you remember how to do Sweet Caroline?"

"Jesus Christ, Mom," Jake hissed. "Don't ever tell anyone I know how to play Sweet Caroline. I'd never sell another album as long as I live."

"But you used to love that song," she said.

"I was eleven years old, Mom. Besides, I can't perform any copyrighted material here. Not even my own stuff. I can do original, unsubmitted material or folk songs that are so old that no one holds a copyright on them anymore."

"Oh poop!" Cynthia pouted.

"Let's do Molly Malone then," Mary said. "You did that one at Celia Valdez's wedding, didn't you?"

"The rehearsal actually," Jake said.

"Let's do it. You sing and we'll harmonize."

"All right," Jake said. "But don't go making me look bad up here."

They played Molly Malone, much to the delight of the audience, many of whom sang along. The blending of the three instruments was a little on the rough side since they hadn't rehearsed the tune, but no one seemed to mind.

There were more cries for more when it was over, demands even.

"What do we do now?" Mary asked.

"How about What Is This Thing Called Love?" Cynthia suggested.

"Come again?" Jake said.

"What Is This Thing Called Love?" she responded. "It's a very famous love ballad from the World War II era. My mother used to sing it for me when I was a little girl."

"I've never heard of it," Jake said.

"Me either," Mary admitted.

"It's a beautiful song," Cynthia said. "It's about a..."

"Cynthia," Jake said gently, "I can't sing the song if I've never heard it before."

"Oh... yes, I suppose you're right."

"How about Silent Night?" Mary suggested. "I know it's only Halloween and all, but it's still a beautiful..."

"Mom," Jake said. "This is a Jewish wedding, remember? I think that singing about Mother Mary and the baby Jesus at such an event might be considered poor taste."

"Oh... yeah," Mary said, blushing a little.

Meanwhile, the crowd was starting to get a little antsy.

"I have an idea," Jake said. "Let's just jam."

"Jam?" the women said in unison.

"Yeah," Jake said. "Just play for the sheer joy of making music. I'll set the tempo and you two just follow my lead with whatever you think blends in."

"Jake, I've never done anything like that before," Mary said.

"Me either," Cynthia said.

"It's time you learned then," Jake said. "I'll start slow."

"Jake!" his mom hissed at him, but it was too late. Jake had already started to play.

It took the two women a few moments to get into the swing of things. Mary started by just playing single swipes across her strings, Cynthia by one or two keys. Soon, however, as the crowd started to clap to the rhythm Jake was setting, they became more prolific with their playing. As they discovered the absurd ease of mixing their instruments into a predictable rhythm, they lost their hesitancy and began to truly jam in every sense of the word.

Jake slowly brought the tempo up until they were moving at damn near heavy metal speed. Mary's arm pumped frantically on her bow while Cynthia pounded the keyboard like Jerry Lee Lewis on amphetamines.

"All right!" Jake encouraged. "That's the way to do it. Dueling solos now. You go first, Mom!"

"What?" Mary said, alarmed. "Dueling solos? What do you..."

"Hit it!" Jake said and suddenly stopped playing. Cynthia, figuring out what he was talking about, did the same. Mary, once the back rhythm stopped, instinctively launched into a blistering, up-tempo violin solo that would have brought Eddie Van Halen or Jimmy Page to tears had they heard it.

"Yeah, Mom!" Jake yelled. "That's smokin' hot!"

"Play it, baby!" Jake's dad yelled from out in the audience. "Show us what you got!"

Other such comments came drifting up from other members of the crowd.

Mary finished off her solo, ending it with a particularly flaring display of showmanship, and Cynthia immediately picked up the thread, her nimble fingers flying across the keys, her shoulders dipping and swaying. In truth, she wasn't quite as good on the ivories as her son, but only by the thinnest of margins. She swept up and down the keyboard like a woman on fire, bringing the tempo up, back down, and then up again, finally bringing it nicely back around to the original rhythm that Jake had been setting. Recognizing his cue when he heard it, Jake started to play again. Mary chimed right in. The first twenty seconds or so was swallowed in the sound of enthusiastic applause from their audience.

Under Jake's lead they gradually brought the tempo back down to a slow, lazy, gentle melody and brought it to an end, Jake playing out the last ten or fifteen seconds with a finger-picked solo of his own. The applause washed over them once more and they stood together for another bow. This time they did not heed the cries for more and decided to adhere to the cardinal rule of entertaining.

They left the stage area, all of them sweaty and hot from the autumn heat, but it wasn't more than a minute before someone else took the stage. The rabbi and his wife asked for permission to use Jake's guitar and Cynthia's piano to perform a little number of their own. The permission was granted and they took the stage to do a few traditional Jewish folk songs.

Jake, Cynthia, and Mary walked arm and arm back to their table and took a seat, all three of them grabbing glasses of water and drinking them down.

"You guys were great up there," Helen told them. "I've never seen anything like that."

"I can't believe you made us do that, Jake," his mother scolded. Then she smiled. "I'm glad you did though. I don't remember when I had so much fun as a musician."

"You guys rocked," Jake told them. "I knew you had it in you."

"You should do a record with your mother playing violin sometime," Helen suggested.

"Me, play on a rock and roll record?" Mary scoffed. "That'll be the day."

Jake didn't say anything though. He had already had the same idea himself.

The festivities went on for several more hours. There was music and dancing and lots of drinking. By the time things started to wind down there was hardly a sober person in the house.

Finally, it came time for the bride and groom to leave. They climbed into a stretch limousine that had been painted with "Just Married" slogans and had cans tied to the back bumper. The limo pulled away, rattling its way down the street and disappearing. It wasn't going far. The honeymoon suite had been booked for the two of them at the Stovington Suites Hotel on the riverfront — just nine blocks away. A one-night stay there was to be the extent of their honeymoon for now. The wedding had taken place on a Tuesday and the band needed to be back in the recording studio on Thursday morning.

Coop and Charlie both went directly from the wedding to the airport. They had chipped in for a private flight back to Los Angeles. Days off from the rigorous recording schedule were rare and neither wanted to waste their second of two such days hanging around in Heritage.

Pauline, the Levensteins, and Sharon's parents shared a limo back to the Royal Gardens Hotel, where they were all staying for one more day (along with many of the Cohen family and their guests — all at Nerdly's expense). Except for Pauline, who was flying back in Jake's plane with Jake and Helen, they were all booked on the same flight back to Los Angeles the following afternoon.

Jake and Helen rode with Jake's parents back to their house. Since they'd stayed the first night there they figured they might as well stay the second as well. They arrived home shortly before six o'clock that evening, all of them tired, hot, and more than a little drunk. All four of them went directly to bed. Jake wasn't sure what his parents did behind their closed door — and, in truth, he didn't really want to know — but he and Helen engaged in a lengthy session of sultry sexual activity before drifting off to a contented sleep. None of the four emerged from their rooms until the next morning.

The hangovers were light when they did get up to face the day, so everyone was in the mood for the monstrous breakfast that Mary constructed. There was bacon, sausage, pancakes, fried potatoes, and an enormous platter of scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. They sat around the kitchen table, munching contentedly while they sipped coffee and drank glass after glass of Mary's fresh-squeezed orange juice. It was after, when the plates had been pushed away but before the dishes were cleared, that Jake's father dropped somewhat of a bombshell.

"So," he said casually, "your mother and I are going to retire at the end of the year."

Jake looked up, unsure he'd heard correctly. "Retire?" he asked. "Both of you?"

He nodded. "I've been with the ACLU for a long time now. I've fought the good fight and I like to think I've contributed to some significant changes over the course of my tenure, but it's time to call it a career and enjoy the fruits of my labors."

"And I've been with the philharmonic for thirty-three years now," Mary said. "I think I'm ready to put my fiddle down."

"Wow," Jake said. "Well... it sounds like you've thought this through."

"We have," his father said. "There's something else we wanted to talk to you about though."

"What's that?" Jake said carefully, part of him fearing that he was about to say they were going to divorce as well.

His mother read the expression on his face. "Nothing like that, Jake," she said with a chuckle. "We intend to do the whole 'until death do us part' thing. At our age it's kind of hard to find someone else you can tolerate sleeping in the same bed with."

Jake and Helen both laughed. "Okay," Jake said. "You had me worried there for a minute. So what is it?"

"Well," Tom said, "right about now, Bill is probably getting the same talk from Stan and Cindy. They're planning to retire at the same time. We're both planning to sell our houses and move somewhere else."

Jake grinned. "Fuckin' A!" he said, happy. For years he had been trying to get them to sell this small house and move into something bigger. He and Pauline had both offered to buy them whatever they wanted, but they'd always refused. "It's about time. Do you have something in mind? Will you let Pauline and I help you?"

Tom and Mary shared a look with each other, a look that was part happiness, part subtle shame. "As a matter of fact..." Tom said, "... yes, we may need a little help. You know we hate asking, but we've had our eye on a little piece of land up in Cypress County, just up in the foothills."

"Dad, Jesus Christ," Jake said. "You know we'd both love to help you out. How much do you need? I'll write you a check right now."

"We're not sure yet," Tom said. "We may not even need your help at all. This house is completely paid off and, since it is the house that Jake Kingsley grew up in, it's worth an obscene amount of money. The other houses on this street are selling for around a hundred and ten thousand dollars. I've been told that we could auction this one off and get at least three hundred thousand for it, possibly as much as half a million."

"Sweet," Jake said, nodding appreciatively. Helen seemed quite astounded.

"Stan and Cindy's house isn't worth quite as much," Tom said, "but it's still worth about a hundred thousand more than the other houses on their block because of Bill. They can probably get two-fifty to three hundred for it."

"That's nice," Jake said, wondering what that had to do with them. His father told him.

"Stan and Cindy are looking at going in on this property with us," he said. "Equal partners all the way, and they would live on it with us."

Jake raised his eyebrows up a little bit. "You're going to move in with Stan and Cynthia?" he asked slowly. Was there something about this friendship he hadn't been told or hadn't guessed at over the course of his lifetime?

Once again, his mother seemed to read his mind. She blushed furiously for a second, and then got angry. "You get your mind out of the gutter right this instance, Jacob Kingsley!" she barked at him, using a voice he hadn't heard since perhaps eighth grade.

"What?" Tom said, puzzled. "What are you..." Realization dawned on him. "Oh my God," he said, shaking his head strenuously. "That is not what we're saying at all, Jake. Jesus. How could you think something like that?"

"Something like what?" Helen asked carefully. "I think I missed something."

"He was thinking that me and Tom and Stan and Cindy are some kind of... of... swingers or something," Mary said with disgust. "I can't believe that would even cross your mind, Jake."

"You were thinking that?" Helen asked, astonished. "About your parents? Jake, that's kind of... well... twisted."

"Sorry," Jake said, embarrassed now. "It didn't seem plausible or anything. It's just that I live in Hollywood and there's all kinds of weird things going on there and... well... you know... you just said you're going to be living with Stan and Cynthia. You have to admit that is a little strange."

"We're not going to be living together, Jake," Tom said, a little exasperated now. "If you would've let me finish explaining..." He shook his head again. "Wow. This conversation is not going exactly like I expected."

"I'm sorry," Jake said again. "Let's just forget that ever happened. Tell me about this property."

Tom nodded. "Okay," he said. "It's two hundred and fifty acres about two miles off Highway 38. It sits on a hilltop overlooking the Heritage River Canyon, about twelve miles from Cypress. Our plan is to build two houses on the property, one for your mother and I, one for Stan and Cindy. The houses would be at either end of the property, almost a quarter mile apart, and each completely self-contained."

"That way," Mary said, "we would be living very close to our best friends, but we would still be far enough away to maintain a separate identity."

"Ohhh," Jake said, feeling even more embarrassed now. "I see."

"The land itself is not that expensive... well, in a relative sort of way. We can get it for $1.1 million. Between the money we'll get for our houses and the money we each have in our savings and investments, we will be able to buy the land outright and hold it free and clear."

"Are you sure that's the best way to go about it, Dad?" Jake asked. "Why don't you let me talk to Jill about this? I seem to remember her saying that it's actually a better idea to take out a loan on the acquisition of property. That way, the interest that you pay is..."