Janet Goddard

Beare's Widow

The sound of Mr. Pennigroth's unpolished dress shoes clacked upon the sidewalk like a metronome while Mr. Hoffstetter's tennis shoes made no sound at all. Pennigroth glanced over his shoulder and slowed his step, allowing Hoffstetter to catch up. Pennigroth stopped, holding his arm out as if to still the world of all movement and sound. He nodded toward the small brick house two doors down from where they stood.

"Here it is," he said.

He adjusted his tie and shook the front of his rumpled suit coat, then adjusted his dark brown, thick-rimmed glasses. He reached his hand toward Hoffstetter, swaying his arm gracefully as if he were presenting Hoffstetter to someone important. He rested his hand, for an instant, on Hoffstetter's chest.

"Listen, Mike. We've got to be very diplomatic about this," he said.

"I agree," Hoffstetter said. He nodded his head and looked at the ground, closing his lips tightly and humming, "Uh-hum."

Pennigroth measured Hoffstetter's too casual appearance with a quick glance: the wisps of too long brown hair that hung from beneath his baseball cap; his too casual khaki slacks; his perfectly fitted blue sweat shirt with just a hint of a snow white t-shirt showing around the collar; his worn white canvas tennis shoes. His face was kind, with blue eyes and a mischievous smile; his olive skin smooth and clean shaven. A meticulously casual gentleman, Pennigroth decided.

He looked down at his own clothes, his brown dress suit, wrinkled and fading with the hint of a spot over the lower right pocket. Perhaps, he thought, it was time to think about getting a new one. He stroked his thin but neatly trimmed red beard, blinked his plain brown eyes, and tightened his thin, crooked lips.

"All right then." he said. "Let's go."

The two gentlemen continued up the sidewalk and went up the concrete steps of the front porch. Pennigroth reached out and pushed the bell.

"If we're lucky," he said over his shoulder, "we'll walk out of here with it today."

Hoffstetter said nothing as usual.

The front door opened a crack.

"Yes?" a woman's voice said.

Pennigroth peered into the screen door, but saw nothing more than a shadow-covered, one-eyed slice of a woman's face.

"Mrs. Beare," he said enthusiastically, "I'm Robert Pennigroth. We spoke on the phone the other day."

The door remained where it was.

"We're from the University," Pennigroth reminded her. He stepped aside and motioned toward Hoffstetter. "And this is my associate, Michael Hoffstetter. I told you about him when we spoke . . . "

Hoffstetter took the baseball cap from his head and bowed forward slightly.

"Yes," the woman said.

The door opened a little further revealing the cautious gaze of Beare's widow.

"I'm wondering if we could trouble you for just a moment."

"You can't have it. Like I told you on the phone."

"I understand, Mrs. Beare. Really." Pennigroth nodded. "I'm not here to convince you otherwise."

"Then why are you here?"

Pennigroth glanced at Hoffstetter, glanced at his feet, and then looked back into the darkness of the screen.

"Mrs. Beare. Let me be honest here." He smiled and leaned forward. "You have, in your possession, a very delicate and unique instrument. Now, as the Director of Music at the University, I feel a certain amount of . . . social responsibility regarding this."

"Social responsibility."

"Yes, yes." He nodded earnestly. "I want nothing more than to assure myself that the instrument will be cared for properly."

"And I assure you, Mr. Pennigroth, that I am completely capable of caring for it properly."

"To be sure, Mrs. Beare. I'm not suggesting . . . " He held his hand out. "Your husband . . . he was a remarkable craftsman. We just want to be sure that his work is preserved. That's all. We're certainly not meaning to impose ourselves on you."

Beare's widow did not respond.

"We're simply wondering if you'd allow us to have a look at it," Hoffstetter said.

Pennigroth leaned toward the door and Hoffstetter leaned toward Pennigroth.

"Mrs. Beare . . . " Pennigroth said.

The door swung full open and Beare's widow stepped close to the screen. Pennigroth took a small step back, knocking lightly into Hoffstetter's shoulder. She was younger than he had expected. In fact, she didn't appear-at least through the screen door-to be much older than his own 52 years. She had sounded so proper when he spoke to her on the phone, her voice measured in soft and perfect pitches. She shook the straight bangs from her eyes with a slight swing of her head. Pennigroth glanced at Hoffstetter with a thin smile and raised his eyebrows. She was quite beautiful, he thought. Beare had certainly kept her a secret, but then Beare had always been a frustratingly unapproachable man. Hoffstetter was looking cautiously and respectfully at Beare's widow and nodded for Pennigroth to do the same.

Pennigroth looked back to the screen. The dark eyes of Beare's widow had become stern. Pennigroth met her gaze but straightened his back.

"I suppose you won't give me any peace until I let you see the guitar. And I also suppose," she reached toward the door of the screen, "that you will be satisfied once you see the guitar and will find no more reason to worry yourself about it."

Pennigroth smiled and nodded reaching for the door handle on his side. He pulled the door from her as she offered it open. Pennigroth rushed by her quickly as if he were worried she'd change her mind. Hoffstetter, however, stopped directly in front of her as he passed through the doorway, offering the widow a sympathetic smile and a nod of condolence. Beare's widow looked at the floor.

Pennigroth walked to the center of the living room and turned in a slow circle, absently measuring his surroundings. The room was small and rather simple-a couch in the corner, an over-stuffed chair in front of the window, a couple of end tables, and large aquarium on the inside wall. Pennigroth walked to the aquarium and bent down, taking an obligatory look at the fish. He had never understood the attraction of keeping fish. He turned and faced Beare's widow who was still standing by the front door. She was wringing a red bandanna absently with both hands. He hadn't noticed it before.

Pennigroth smiled at her.

"I was working in the garden," she said.

"Oh. A lovely day for it," Pennigroth said. "We won't keep you."

"Yes. Well. I'll go get it." Her voice was sullen.

"Flowers or vegetables?" Hoffstetter said as she stepped past.

The widow stopped and turned back. Hoffstetter held his baseball cap in his hands, much the same was she had been holding her bandanna.

"What?" she asked.

"Flowers or vegetables?"

She looked at him with suspicion.

"Flowers," she said and walked out of the room.

Hoffstetter nodded.

"Look at this," Pennigroth said when Beare's widow was gone. He was standing at one of the end tables and picked up what appeared to be a rough looking, oddly shaped bowl. Pennigroth held the bowl with both hands and lifted it high so that he could see the bottom. To Hoffstetter, it appeared to be some type of uneven, weathered, dull looking wood. As he stepped closer, however, he realized that it wasn't a bowl, but half of a very large abalone shell. He went to Pennigroth and together they looked at the shell. The outside was wavy and bumpy with thousands of holes and more than a few small star-shaped barnacles. The color was like wood with veins of reds, browns, whites, and tans all mixed and swirled together upon its rough and uneven surface.

Pennigroth lowered his arms slowly as if he were holding something holy, something sacred. He shot a glance at Hoffstetter as if he knew a secret. They looked inside the shell. Its insides swirled with iridescent layers of blue and teal and pink and white like a shimmering ocean top or the blended sky of a summer sunset. Five natural holes sat in a row toward the edge of the shell, making Hoffstetter think of an ocarina. He saw all of this, but saw at the same time what had really caught Pennigroth's attention. In the bowl of the shell there sat a capo and a small tuning fork.

"Do you think these were his?"

Pennigroth looked at Hoffstetter.

"Well, who else's could they be?" Pennigroth replied.

"Maybe she plays."

Pennigroth raised his eyebrows and peered over the top of his thick-rimmed glasses.

"Hmmm. I'd never even considered that. That would certainly work against us, wouldn't it."

Pennigroth held up the tuning fork. Hoffstetter looked, not at the fork, but at Pennigroth's fingernails. They were long and strong looking-perfect for playing. Hoffstetter glanced at the fingernails on his own right hand. He had broken his middle nail reaching for a door knob the other day which meant he had to shorten and reshape all of his other nails to restore some sort of balance to his fingers on the strings. He was still getting used to the new feel of his shorter nails and his playing felt all askew. He gave the doorknob a mental damning and rubbed the back of his nails across his forehead, conditioning them with a bit of his own facial oil.

Beare's widow returned. She stood in the doorway and held a rather plain and beat-up looking guitar by the top of the neck. Pennigroth returned the tuning fork and handed the shell to Hoffstetter hurriedly. He took a step toward Beare's widow as if she were a child holding a baby that needed rescuing.

"May I?" Pennigroth asked. He reached out his hand.

Beare's widow looked at Pennigroth and then looked at Hoffstetter who was still holding the shell. Hoffstetter put the shell back on the table. His head lowered a bit as if he'd been caught in a crime. He hoped Beare's widow had seen Pennigroth hand him the shell, that she didn't think he had picked it up himself.

Pennigroth took the guitar and looked at the top. He looked at Beare's widow.

"Do you mind if I sit down and have a good look?"

"Do whatever you're here to do," she said.

She leaned against the doorway, folding her arms across her chest and crossing one ankle over the other. Pennigroth took the guitar and sat on the sofa. Hoffstetter remained standing until she nodded at him to sit. He sat on the edge of the chair by the window, the chair by the table with the shell upon it. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands folded in front of him, watching as Pennigroth studied the guitar.

"Spruce top," Pennigroth said. "Very thin." He turned the guitar over. "Very thin," he said again. There's a slight bow here," he said. He pointed out to Hoffstetter the area under the strings just beneath the sound hole. "That would worry me." He looked into the sound hole at the label of the guitar. The label was parchment with intentionally rough edges. The word "Beare" was scrolled in the middle in green ink. Handwritten in blue pen, in the corner of the label, was the year, 1986.

"It's old, though," he said to Hoffstetter. "I suppose it's settled into itself by now."

He turned the guitar over. "And the back . . . " He looked at Hoffstetter and smiled. "Here," he said.

Hoffstetter leaned forward further to see what Pennigroth was seeing.

"Nail holes," Pennigroth said.

Hoffstetter could not see well enough from where he was. He walked across the room and sat on the sofa next to Pennigroth. He looked at the guitar back, at the nail holes. They had heard stories about the guitar, that Beare had somehow gotten his hands on a Brazilian rosewood church door from somewhere in Spain and used it to make the back and sides of the instrument. Hoffstetter reached in front of Pennigroth and rubbed a finger over one of the varnished nail marks. He looked up at Beare's widow and smiled. She said nothing. Her arms remained crossed tightly over her chest. She looked down on them with an expression of resentful ambivalence.

"If I may ask," Pennigroth said, "How did he get that church door, Mrs. Beare?"

The widow took a deep breath.

"We went to Spain on a door hunt," she said evenly, "and he just walked up to a church with a hammer and some grips and ripped it off its hinges."

Pennigroth's smile faltered. He looked at Hoffstetter who returned his uncertain expression. "What do you mean?" he asked the widow.

"I mean just what I said," the widow answered, silencing the gentlemen with a glare that discouraged a challenge.

They had heard intriguing stories about the temperamental luthier over the years-that he had destroyed some of his own instruments in response to criticism, that he smashed one of his guitars to bits after months of work simply because it didn't quite satisfy a prospective

owner . . . .

Pennigroth turned his attention to the guitar. He turned the top side up and laid the body across his lap. He reached his fingers into the sound hole.

"It's got an unusual bracing," he said to Hoffstetter.

He passed the guitar to Hoffstetter who likewise reached his fingers in and then looked into the sound hole. Pennigroth sat up and looked at Beare's widow. "It's modeled after the French-style guitar," he said as Hoffstetter examined it. He spoke as if he were educating the widow, as if she had asked him for his opinion. She stared at him, her eyes brooding.

"See how plain the rosette is?" he continued. He pointed to the decorative work around the sound hole. "This simple style is very characteristic in the French style guitar . . . and the smallness of the instrument itself . . . " Pennigroth looked at the guitar admiringly, "is very interesting. Very unusual."

Hoffstetter nodded. He raised the guitar to eye level and looked down the neck to check its straightness.

"The surface has been worked over quite a bit, hasn't it?" Pennigroth said to Hoffstetter.

Hoffstetter lowered the guitar and looked at the top.

"Um-huh. There's a crack here," he said. He ran his finger along a black line that came up two or so inches from the bottom of the body. "It's been repaired, though."

Pennigroth reached over and ran his fingers along the scratch marks under the sound hole. "It looks as if someone played it with a pick or something, doesn't it?" He looked at Beare's widow for some type of explanation.

"A lawyer owned it for awhile," Beare's widow said. "I don't know what he did to it. I only know my husband was furious when he saw it."

Pennigroth and Hoffstetter exchanged confiding glances of satisfaction. Perhaps there was some truth to the intriguing stories they had heard about Beare.

"Well, I certainly don't blame him for being upset," Pennigroth said comfortingly. "Not that how it looks really matters. Just surface dings is all they amount to, really. It's the sound that matters."

"Uh-huh," Hoffstetter agreed. He looked at the widow. "How did he get it back?"

Her stare shifted from Pennigroth to Hoffstetter.

"He stole it," she answered bluntly.

Hoffstetter and Pennigroth stopped all motion and stared back at the widow waiting for her to laugh, or smile, or give some indication of truth. Instead, the corners of her lips remained curled in a smirk.

The gentlemen looked back to each other. Was she kidding? Neither seemed to know the answer and neither seemed to have the nerve to respond to her statement.

"Mrs. Beare," Pennigroth said after a moment. "May I ask? How much did your husband sell it to the lawyer for?" From his sitting position on the sofa, Beare's widow seemed taller to Pennigroth than he knew she really was.

"I don't remember," she said. She brushed her hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. "A few thousand, I suppose. All of his guitars have gone well over three thousand."

"I see," Pennigroth said looking toward the floor like a chastised child. He tightened his lips and scratched his forehead before looking up at the widow and smiling. Was she lying now as well? He smiled to himself. She certainly was something.

"Do you mind if I try it?" Pennigroth asked.

The lips of Beare's widow were clamped into a straight line. She shrugged her shoulders and offered Pennigroth a begrudged nod of permission.

Pennigroth took the guitar from Hoffstetter and strummed his fingers over the strings. It was horribly out of tune. Hoffstetter grimaced at the discordant sound, but Pennigroth smiled. He had been thinking about what Hoffstetter said, about whether the widow played or not. This pretty much proved that she didn't. He stood up and walked to the abalone shell and picked up the tuning fork without even asking permission.

Hoffstetter looked back to the woman. Her hand rested at the base of her throat and her eyes remained stoic. Hoffstetter wished that Pennigroth had asked her permission to use the fork. Their eyes met for an instant. He wanted to see into them, into her, but she turned and walked out of the room. He remained looking at the empty doorway where she had stood.

Her husband had been gone only a matter of months, really. Four months. Hoffstetter had been unsure of talking to her so soon. Pennigroth had assured him that enough time had passed, but four months wasn't that long, was it? Hoffstetter thought about how the widow was acting. Was she always this way? Would it ever matter when they came-whether it was four months or four years? Pennigroth sat down and held the guitar in the playing position.

"Hey," Hoffstetter whispered. "Is she lying to us?"

"Well, she's certainly not telling us the whole truth," Pennigroth whispered back. He leaned over the guitar and struck the fork against the hard, side edge of his worn dress shoe, then brought the ball-end of the fork to rest against the bridge of the guitar. The A note sounded clear into the air, vibrating loud from the body of the guitar.

Pennigroth raised his eyebrows at the richness of the sound coming from the guitar-and this just from the tuning fork. He tuned the A string to the fork.

"Marvelous sound," Pennigroth said.

"So you think she's lying?" Hoffstetter said.

"I think she's not telling the truth."

"How can you be sure?"

"Come on," Pennigroth said. "Ripping a door off a church? Stealing guitars?" He set down the fork and tuned the E strings to the A string.

"Well, it is a door," Hoffstetter said.

He tuned the B string to the A string.

"True, but I very much doubt that he went up and just ripped it off like she said."

Hoffstetter watched Pennigroth tune the D string. His finger tapped the A string at the fifth fret, then the open D string. He did this a couple more times, adjusting the sound of the D string as he listened.

"So you don't think he really stole it back," Hoffstetter said.

"Do you really think a lawyer is going to let a criminal action drop?" Pennigroth stopped what he was doing and looked at Hoffstetter. "She's selling a guitar."

He tuned the G string while Hoffstetter pondered.

"She's not going to let us have this guitar, Bob," Hoffstetter said.

"Maybe," Pennigroth said. "Maybe not today, but we have to get our foot in the door. Sooner or later, everyone is going to be looking for this guitar. This would be an excellent acquisition. Just look at it." Pennigroth, with the guitar in his hands, lifted his arms a few inches shook the instrument gently for emphasis.

"I know," Hoffstetter said looking down at his tennis shoes. He reached down and tightened one of his laces. "It just seems . . . . too soon to be talking to her like this."

"Listen to me," Pennigroth said. "We can't let our emotions get in the way here and we can't let her rattle us. She knows we want it. We've been honest. She's playing us, Michael."

Hoffstetter sat back.

"She just lost her husband, Bob."

Pennigroth held up a hand.

"I know," he said. "I know she did, but we're here. There's no way to change that now."

He focused again on the guitar and strummed though the now tuned strings. He walked his left fingers along the frets, playing out some scale patterns before checking the sound of each string on each fret, playing a note and letting it ring and listening with his finely trained ear.

"It's very true to the fret," he said to Hoffstetter and continued walking his fingers up the fret board.

Hoffstetter nodded. "It's got a woody sound to it," he said.

"Woody," Pennigroth said. "Yes. That's a good word for it. Listen to it ring . . . " Pennigroth began playing part of an arpeggio exercise from the Pujol book he had his students work from.

Beare's widow came back into the room and the gentlemen both looked up at her. She held a glass of water in her hand. She didn't acknowledge them, but walked across the room and sat in the chair next to the aquarium. Pennigroth decided to ignore her and focused again on the guitar. Perhaps that will work, he thought. He played bits and pieces of various arrangements, testing the ability of the guitar. He played a few chords using the flamenco rasguado, then switched to the tremolo pattern and began to play Albeniz's, Asturias. The action, he noted-was low and easy, yet not so low as to make the guitar sound slurry and sloppy.

He looked over to Hoffstetter as he played, but Hoffstetter was looking at Beare's widow. Pennigroth looked to her as well. She appeared to be day dreaming. Her legs crossed and her body leaned toward the tank with one elbow resting on the arm of the chair and the other resting on her blue-jeaned thigh, her hand wrapped lazily around the glass of water she balanced just above her knee. Her face was turned toward the aquarium. The curve of her forehead, her nose, her mouth, her neck glowed with a soft line of light that came from the tank.

A strong and sudden yearning pulled low at Pennigroth, making his face feel hot and his throat feel tight. She looked both wistful and wise sitting there like that, making him suddenly want the guitar-not for the University nor for the accolades he anticipated from aquiring it-but making him want it-with all of its secrets and stories and myths and mystery-for himself.

He stopped playing, unnerved by this new and unexpected feeling. He placed his hand flat on the strings above the sound hole to dampen the ringing, and cleared his throat. Beare's widow looked to the gentlemen when the music stopped, her dreamy eyes coming back into focus. She took a sip of water. Pennigroth thought he noticed a slight shake in her hand.

"You're husband," he said softly, "was a gifted man."

"I know," she said.

Hoffstetter looked at Pennigroth curiously, wondering what in the world he was up to. He had better not be giving up, Hoffstetter thought. He had better be taking his own advice.

Hoffstetter cleared his throat to gain Pennigroth's attention. Pennigroth looked at the floor and spoke with a voice that was a bit louder than necessary.

"I know that you said you won't part with it, Mrs. Beare, but we are prepared to make a quite generous offer."

"You may keep your offer to yourself," the widow said.

She stared hard at Pennigroth.

Hoffstetter looked from one to the other, suddenly feeling outside of the scene. Had he missed something? He wondered.

"Well, perhaps we should go," Pennigroth said quietly.

The widow nodded.

"If you'd just . . . " Pennigroth began, but did not continue.

He had never seen anyone so good at the business. Beare had been a lucky man to have her on his side. Pennigroth stood up, sighing in defeat, and rested the guitar upright against the sofa. The widow set down her water and stood up as well. She walked to the door and then turned to the gentlemen.

Hoffstetter began walking out, but stopped in front of her as he had in the beginning. He reached for her hand with both of his.

"It's been an honor," he said. "Thank you so much."

The widow bowed her head slightly, making Hoffstetter think of a dignified countess.

"If you change your mind, Mrs. Beare," Pennigroth said. He was reaching into his pocket for a slip of paper and a pen. He scratched his name and number hurriedly and handed it to her as he passed through the doorway.

"Please call," he said.

Pennigroth looked into her eyes and thought he saw, for an instant, a hint of animation. He smiled at her, but the widow only sighed and looked past him. He stepped onto the porch. The screen door shut, casting her again into the darkness of shadow. The men turned away. When Hoffstetter was on the bottom step of the porch, the widow spoke.

"I can't see ever parting with any of his guitars."

The gentlemen stopped, mid-step, and turned. Guitars? Hoffstetter's eyes widened and his mouth dropped open in surprise, but Pennigroth smiled shrewdly. They turned toward Beare's widow, toward the well-timed news only to hear the single, quiet clack of the shutting front door.

The End