Walter Deutsch wore olive green corduroy trousers and played the accordion in a polka band. My mother met him at the Jefferson Orleans' mixer and called to tell me.

"My heart's in quicksand," she said.

I thought this meant she needed a vine.

"I've never felt excitement like this," she said. "Not even with your father."

My parents had been divorced for eleven years, and since then she'd dated like a college girl with three and four romances up in the air, like the juggler on Ed Sullivan who never got bonked on the head.

My father lived two blocks away. In the morning he read newspapers from three different cities, and in the afternoon he tended to his garden, pruning petunias and zinnias. I didn't understand cutting a flower and not putting it in water. He'd gather them in a basket just to throw them away.

My mother stopped by with Walter. He played music for me on my front porch.

"What's the name of that song?" I said.

"Music In My Heart Polka," he said.

My mother blushed. On Lawrence Welk these songs seemed goofy and sexless, but my mother listened to Walter like he was Barry White.

My father claimed he was tone deaf, but he could've learned to sing if he'd let the sound out of his chest.

After they left, I walked by his house to see if he was okay.

He stood over his flowerbeds with the hose nozzle dialed to "shower" so dirt wouldn't splash up on the leaves, considerate. I asked what he was humming and he said, "Nothing. It's the streetlights coming on that you hear."