Force of Will

Chapter 2

Gil and Marta Oldfield were spending their July 4th in much needed and deserved tranquility, by themselves, at their home in Sparta, New Jersey. The last of their four children to move out had got married just a month ago, paving the opportunity for Gil and Marta to either enjoy their marriage of some three decades in new ways, or fall apart altogether. The last five years had obviated the fact that the latter choice was the only clear path at the moment.

Theirs had never been a loveless marriage. To the contrary, Gil would often surprise Marta with a bouquet of flowers, or leave love notes in the mailbox or on her dresser, whether there was an occasion to do so, or he just thought it was time to say ‘I love you’ in some special way. Marta would sometimes surprise Gil with some recorded music she bought for him, recognizing his passion for music. Both had always lived for each other, Gil often making whatever sacrifices would benefit Marta, and Marta likewise putting Gil ahead of herself.

But the five years leading up to this beautifully temperate summer day had seen the romance cease.

Gil is a tall, handsome man, the sort of handsome that invites stares and compliments from a variety of women, yet not all women would claim him as their ‘type.’ He is of mixed Anglo-Saxon heritage, a heritage that produced a man more comfortable spinning records than dancing to them and whose appearance and demeanor are concomitant to that characteristic. He never did figure out how to use the power of persuasion that so often comes with good looks, nor did it ever occur to him to try – Gil is the no-bullshit, what you see is what you get-type, who just speaks and acts his mind with no clue as to how to alter reality in order to obtain something desirable. His propensity for logic often takes him down a philosophical pathway, but whenever that pathway leads to a fork, logic wins.

Marta, whose Mexican descent appears to have created a lighter skinned version of Amerindian with virtually no discernible Spanish characteristics, is about a half foot shorter than Gil, but all five and a half feet of her has always been filled with love, kindness, generosity and caring. Nearly everyone falls in love with Marta within seconds, and as Gil would often say, “If anybody doesn’t like my wife, the problem is their own.” What Marta has never understood is how those qualities make her more physically attractive than she imagines, especially to Gil. Instead she exists in a constant, almost crippling state of insecurity about her appearance and value to others. Perhaps her positive qualities were inventions to make up for those insecurities, since those qualities often disappear behind closed doors and in other rare situations that involve the few individuals that have the misfortune of living on her short blacklist, a list that is impossible to be removed from.

In recent years Gil spent his nights on the living room couch, perched in front of the television set, and words of affection between him and Marta had become scarce. This sleeping arrangement seemed to suit both of them in odd ways – Marta could sleep better without the alleged snoring that motivated her to exile Gil to the couch by poking and waking him up so often during the night that the only way he could get some sleep and maintain his sanity was to sleep anywhere but in their bedroom; Gil could fall asleep by the distraction of the TV that helped him tame his thoughts of worthlessness brought on by years of emotional and mental abuse at the hands of the religious authorities he had always respected. There was another purpose, though, that only Marta could understand, because it was her own concoction. Gil would figure that out over time, once he put many pieces of a very complex and sordid puzzle together.

The morning of July 4th, 2012 at the Oldfield house began with a light breakfast, some reading, and eventually a game of Parcheesi, a favorite game of both of them, accompanied by a collection of Chopin polonaises – Gil and Marta didn’t always agree on musical choices, so there was seldom any playing in the house, but Chopin was suitable for both Gil’s taste and Marta’s desire for non-intrusive background music.

Marta disappeared shortly after midday ostensibly for a couple of hours of shopping, leaving Gil to watch his beloved Yankees beat the Tampa Rays. He always recorded Yankee games whether watching them live or not, in order to watch them later that night or the next day at his chosen, quicker pace, and today’s 3:00 game was no exception. But by the time Marta returned home, this particular game looked like it would be over soon after Gil had to leave for the 45 minute drive to Randolph, where he hosted a weekly FM radio show at Crenleigh College. So he deleted the recorded game and listened to the final inning in the car.

Soon after Gil’s departure, Marta cleaned up the dinner table and began to prepare for a meeting at the Kingdom Hall, as Jehovah’s Witnesses’ places of worship are called. Normally, Gil would have been accompanying her, but a last minute meeting schedule change combined with the fact that he could not get a substitute radio host on a holiday meant that Marta was going without him tonight.

Gil arrived at Crenleigh about 7:30 PM, affording himself his thirty minute comfort zone for preparation for his 8:00 PM one hour show. Being relatively new to the business of radio, he gave a lot of attention to many nuances and details of his show, including having a Question of the Week so that listeners could call in and be in line to win a prize – usually a gift certificate provided by a local restaurant. Over many years he had unintentionally crafted himself into a sort of expert on The Beatles, the group that provided his show’s theme, although he would never admit that to himself, let alone others. He would often say to people who wondered about his apparent vast knowledge of the subject, “I just wonder about something, anything that clicks in my head, and if I don’t already know the answer, I start to research it. That’s how I come up with most of my Beatles questions and answers. So I don’t really know anything that anybody else doesn’t or can’t know. ”

He entered the Crenleigh atrium, an unusually imposing structure for a small college, replete with card access at every door and security cameras virtually everywhere, and then covered the short distance to the studio door. Upon entering the studio, it became obvious that all other DJ’s had taken advantage of the holiday and had recorded versions of their shows – the shelves containing the stacks of Heavy and Light rotation CDs were still arranged as if the day had not yet begun, and the boxes of large index cards with additional suggestions for CDs of other well-known artists to intersperse using a similar Heavy and Light system of rotation was likewise not up to date. Since it was the middle of summer, there were no students or faculty to be found anywhere. It was a veritable ghost town. The only person that would be seen roaming the building periodically during the evening was a security guard, who would almost never enter the studio but simply look through the soundproof window on the wall separating the broadcast studio from the wide hallway. The hallway had windows from ceiling to floor on the outside wall along most of its length, affording a nice view of the northeast campus that included the library, a few academic buildings, and a sprawling lawn. Gil would always know when a prospective student was taking a tour with their parents, or when the matriculating student had some visitors, as there would always be gawking at either set of windows. And a diligent security guard could easily see clear through to the back of the studio, with its series of soundproof glass windows in all of the production room walls.

8:00 Post Meridiem Eastern Daylight Time. Almost showtime. There would be three or four minutes of NPR news, a couple of underwriter announcements (code for ads in the non-commercial radio world), a station identifier, and then The Cavern goes live.

Gil was still not used to the pre-show feeling that roughly corresponded to his performances as a singer ever since junior high school. It was a feeling of inexplicable nervousness for the first few minutes or so, but then if everything went well, he would settle in and relax, and the rest went smoothly. Unfortunately, due to Gil’s near perfectionist tendencies, some error would always occur, which added a certain amount of peril to the rest of the evening, compounding and making things worse – but mostly, if not completely, in his mind.

“90.3, WNJI, let the music fly,” announces the raspy, recorded voice of Gil’s good friend and fellow DJ, Paul Traynor. Then, with channel three fader on the mixing board at the midway point and the press of the CD player trigger button, the opening strains of “Magical Mystery Tour” begin flowing into untold tens of thousands of household stereos, car radios, and anywhere else from northwest New Jersey to the Poconos of Pennsylvania where a radio might be tuned to 90.3 FM.

Exactly nine seconds into the song, just after Paul McCartney invites us to “Step right this way,” the fader goes down halfway and Gil starts his introduction. “It’s the 4th of July, and we are LIVE in the studio tonight with The Cavern, an hour of everything Beatles. I’m your host...