Melody Read online

  smiled, waiting with expectation for my reply. "No," I said.

  "Did you get him to smoke the joint?" "He didn't see it and tell your uncle, did he?"

  Lorraine asked quickly.

  "If my uncle even thought I had something like

  that--"

  "He'd turn you over to the police," she

  suggested.

  "He'd turn his own mother over to the police,"

  Betty added. "Do you still have it or did you smoke it

  yourself last night?" Betty asked.

  "No, I didn't smoke it." I didn't want to tell

  them I had simply thrown it out.

  "You can smoke it at the beach party," Janet

  said. "Let's go, girls," Betty said.

  "Be at Janet's house at eight. You won't be

  sorry. Adam Jackson will be at the beach party,"

  Lorraine sang back at me as they all walked off. I watched them go down the hallway and then I

  hurried out to meet Cary and walk home. I wanted to

  tell him about the party and ask his opinion, but I was

  afraid even to mention it. I knew how much he didn't

  like these girls, but I wanted to go. I had never been to

  a beach party and I had to admit, Adam Jackson's eyes

  had been in my dreams last night.

  I decided to wait until after dinner when I was

  helping Aunt Sara with the dishes. She had done all

  the windows herself, even the upstairs ones. "I would

  have helped you," I told her.

  "I know, dear, but don't fret about it. Work gets

  me through the day. Jacob always says idle hands

  make for mischief."

  I shook my head. What sort of mischief could

  she ever commit? And why did she permit her

  husband to treat her as if she were another one of his

  children and not his wife, his equal in this house? She

  did everything he asked her to do and as far as I could

  see, she never uttered a single complaint. He should

  worship the ground she trod upon and he should have

  been the one to have done the hard manual labor. My daddy would have done it for my mother, I thought. The more I learned about this family, the more it was

  a mystery to me.

  "Aunt Sara; I was invited to a party Saturday

  night."

  "Oh? A party? Already? What sort of party?

  Birthday? School party?"

  "No. Some of the girls in my class are having a

  hot dog roast on the beach," I said. "It starts about

  eight o'clock."

  "What girls?"

  I gave her the names. She thought a moment.

  "Those are girls from good families, but you'll have to

  ask your uncle," she said.

  "Why can't you give me permission?" "You'll have to ask your uncle for something

  like that," she replied. I could see that the very idea of

  her solely giving me permission terrified her. She

  busied herself with the dishware. If I wanted to go to

  the beach party, I would have to talk to Uncle Jacob

  about it. There was no avoiding it.

  He was in the living room reading his paper

  after dinner as usual. I approached him with my

  request. "Excuse me, Uncle Jacob," I said from the

  doorway.

  He slowly lowered the paper, his eyebrows

  tilting and the skin folding along his forehead. I

  couldn't recall speaking to Daddy without seeing a

  smile in his eyes or on his lips.

  "Yes?"

  "Some of the girls in my class at school are

  having a party on the beach tomorrow night and they

  have invited me. Aunt Sara said I should ask your

  permission. I would like to go. It's the fastest way to

  get to know people," I offered as a practical reason. He nodded.

  "It don't surprise me you'd like to go to a party

  where they'll be no adults supervising."

  "What do you mean?"

  He leaned forward with a wry smile. "Don't you

  think I know what goes on at those beach parties: how

  they drink and smoke dope and debauch themselves?" "De. . . what?"

  "Perversions," he declared, that irritating

  forefinger raised like a flag of righteousness again.

  "Young girls parade around with their revealing

  clothing and then roll around on blankets with young

  men to lose their innocence. It's pagan. While you are

  under my roof, you will live decent, look decent, and

  act decent, even if it flies in the face of your instincts." He snapped his paper like a whip. "Now, I

  don't want to hear another word on it."

  "What instincts?" I asked. He ignored me. "I am

  decent. I've never done anything to shame my

  parents."

  He peered over the paper at me.

  "It would take something to shame them, I

  suppose, but I know what's in the blood, what's

  raging. If you give it free rein, it will take you straight

  to hell and damnation."

  "I don't understand. What's raging in my

  blood?"

  "No more talk!" he screamed. I flinched and

  stepped back as if slapped. My heart began to pound.

  A white line had etched itself about his tightened lips

  as the rest of him flamed with bright red fury. I had

  never seen rage inflamed by so small a spark. All I

  had asked was to go to a party.

  I turned away and marched up the stairs. The

  girls were right, I fumed. I should have just lied and

  said I was going to Janet's to study. Lying to such a

  man wasn't wrong. He didn't deserve honesty. Cary was at the foot of the attic stairway,

  waiting for me to reach the landing.

  "What was all the yelling about?"

  I told him and he snorted.

  "You should have asked me. I would have

  spared you his reaction to such a request."

  "Why is he so mean?"

  "I told you. He's not mean, he's just . . afraid." "I don't understand. Why should he be so

  afraid?"

  Cary stared at me a moment and then blurted,

  "Because he believes it was his fault and that he was

  being punished." He turned away to go up his ladder. "What was his fault?" I drew closer as he

  moved up the rungs. "Laura's death? I don't

  understand. How could that have been his fault? Was

  it because he gave her permission to go sailing that

  day?"

  "No," Cary said, not turning, still climbing. "Then I don't understand. Explain it!" I

  demanded. My tone of voice turned him around. He

  gazed down at me with a mixture of anger and pain in

  his face.

  "My father doesn't believe in accidents. He

  believes we are punished on earth for the evil we do

  on earth, and we are rewarded here for the good we do

  as well. It's what he was brought up to believe and it's

  what he has taught us."

  "Do you believe that, too?"

  "Yes," he said, but not convincingly.

  "My daddy was a good man, a kind man. Why

  was he killed in an accident?"

  "You don't know what his sins were," he said

  and turned away to continue up the stairs.

  "He had no sins, nothing so great that he should

  have died for it! Did you hear me, Cary Logan?" I

  rushed to the ladder and seized it, shaking it. "Cary!" He paused at the top and gazed down at me

  before pulling up
his ladder.

  "None of us knows the darkness that lingers in

  another's heart." He sounded just like his father. "That's stupid. That's another stupid, religious

  idea," I retorted, but he ignored me and continued to

  lift the ladder. I seized the bottom rung and held it

  down. He looked down, surprised at my surge of

  strength.

  "Let go."

  "I'll let go, but don't think I don't know what

  you're doing up there every night," I said. His face

  turned so red I could see the crimson in his cheeks

  even in the dim hallway light. "You're running away

  from tragedy, only you can't run away from

  something that's part of you."

  He tugged with all his strength, nearly lifting

  me from the floor with the ladder. I had to let go and

  the ladder went up. He slammed the trapdoor shut. "Good riddance!" I screamed.

  May, locked in her world of silence, emerged

  from her room with a smile on her face. In my mind,

  she was the luckiest one in this damnable home. She signed to me, asking if I would let her

  come into my room. I told her yes. She followed me

  in and watched me angrily poke the needle and thread

  into the picture her sister Laura had drawn just before

  she died. As I worked I glared up at the ceiling and

  then down at the floor, below which my coldhearted

  uncle sat reading his paper. After a while the

  mechanical work was calming and meditating. I began

  to understand why Laura might have been entranced

  with doing so much of it. Everyone in this house was

  searching for a doorway.

  May remained with me until her bedtime,

  practicing communicative skills, asking me questions

  about myself, my family, and our lives back in West

  Virginia. She was full of curiosity and sweetness,

  somehow unscathed by the turmoil that raged in every

  family member's heart.

  Perhaps her world wasn't so silent after all. Perhaps she heard different music, different sounds, all of it from her free and innocent imagination. When her eyelids began drifting downward, I told her she should go to bed. I was tired myself. I felt as if I had been spun around in an emotional washing machine,

  then left in a dryer until my last tear evaporated. Cary lingered in his attic hideaway almost all

  night. I was woken just before morning to the sound

  of his footsteps on the ladder. He paused at my

  doorway for a moment before going to his own room. He was up with the sunlight a little over an hour

  later and had gone out with Uncle Jacob by the time I

  went down for breakfast. Aunt Sara said they were

  going to be out lobstering all day. I walked to town

  with May and we spent most of the afternoon looking

  at the quaint shops on Commercial Street, then we

  watched the fishermen down at the wharf. It wasn't

  quite tourist season yet, but the warm spring weather

  still brought a crowd up from Boston and the outlying

  areas. There was a lot of traffic.

  Aunt Sara had given us some spending money

  so we could buy hamburgers for lunch. She didn't

  mind my taking May along with me. She saw how

  much May wanted to be with me, and I was growing

  more confident with sign language.

  Aunt Sara remarked at how quickly and how

  well I had been learning it. "Laura was the best at it,"

  she told me. "Even better than Cary."

  "What about Uncle Jacob?" I asked her.

  "Doesn't he know it?"

  "A little. He's always too busy to practice," she

  said, but I thought it was a weak excuse. If my daddy

  had to learn sign language to communicate with me,

  nothing would be more important, I thought. About midday, I counted the change I had left

  and went to a pay phone. It wasn't enough for a call to

  Sewell, but I took a chance and made it collect to

  Alice. Luckily, she was home and accepted the

  charges.

  "I'm sorry," I told her. "I don't have enough

  money."

  "That's okay. Where are you?"

  "I'm in Provincetown, on Cape Cod, living with

  my uncle and my aunt."

  "Living with them? Why?"

  "Mommy's gone to New York to get an

  opportunity as a model or an actress," I said. "If she

  doesn't get a job there, she's going on to Chicago or

  Los Angeles, so I had to stay here and enroll in the

  school."

  "You did? What's it like?"

  I told her about the school and about my life at

  my uncle's house, Laura's disappearance and death,

  and May's handicap.

  "It sounds sad."

  "It's hard to live with them, especially with my

  cousin Cary. He's so bitter about everything, but I

  keep telling myself I won't be here long."

  "What are the girls like at school?"

  "They're different," I told her. "They seem to

  know more about things and do more things." "Like what?"

  I told her how they had given me a joint of

  marijuana in the school cafeteria.

  "What did you do? You haven't smoked it, have

  you?"

  "No. I was scared. Actually, I was terrified

  when a teacher came to our table. Afterward, when

  the girls weren't looking, I threw it in the garbage." "That's what I would have done," Alice said.

  "Maybe you should stay away from them." "They invited me to their beach party tonight,

  but my uncle won't let me go."

  "A beach party!" She hesitated and with some

  envy said, "Sounds like fun. Maybe you're going to

  like living there after all."

  "I don't think so," I said. "I wish I were back

  home."

  "I was passing the cemetery yesterday and I

  thought about you so I went in and said a little prayer

  at your father's grave for you."

  "Did you? Thank you, Alice. I miss you." "Maybe, if you're still there, I can come up to

  visit you this summer."

  "That would be great, but I expect to be gone

  from here by then. Mommy's coming to get me as

  soon as she gets settled. Which reminds me, have you

  seen Mama Arlene? Mommy was supposed to contact

  her to send me my things."

  "I saw her, but George is real sickly." "I know."

  "I think he may be in the hospital."

  "Oh no! Would you please tell Mama Arlene I

  called?" "I'll go right over to see her," Alice promised. I gave her my uncle's name and telephone

  number and she promised to call me the next

  weekend.

  "I really have no friends since you left," she

  admitted at our conversation's end. It brought tears to

  my eyes. After I hung up, May wanted to know why I was crying. I tried to explain, but I really didn't know enough sign language to reveal all the pain in my

  heart. It was easier just to go home.

  When we arrived, Aunt Sara explained that

  dinner was going to be different this night. Uncle

  Jacob had invited another lobster man and his wife,

  the Dimarcos. May, Cary, and I were to eat first and

  be gone by the time the adults sat at the table. I

  thought that was a blessing and was grateful for a

  meal without Uncle Jacob glaring at me as if I were

  one of th
e Jezebels he saw on every corner.

  However, late in the afternoon, Cary and Uncle

  Jacob returned home in a very happy mood.

  Apparently, they had one of their best days at sea, a

  catch of fifteen lobsters as well a dozen good-size

  striped bass.

  To celebrate, Cary declared that he, May, and I

  were going to enjoy a real New England feast: clam

  chowder, steamed muscles, grilled striped bass,

  potatoes, and vegetables. Cary said he would prepare

  the fish himself outside on the barbecue grill.

  "Mother's busy with her own dinner. We can have our

  own picnic,' he said.

  "Fine," I told him.

  "It won't be as exciting as the beach party, I'm

  afraid."

  "I said, fine."

  He nodded and told May, who was very pleased

  with the idea.

  "You two can set the picnic table, if you like." I nodded without smiling, even though I was

  happy with the idea.

  Cary went about preparing the meal

  meticulously. He was much better at it than I had

  expected. None of the boys I had known in West

  Virginia knew the first thing about preparing fish and

  vegetables. He thanked me when May and I finished

  setting the table. I decided to make civil conversation. "I still don't understand how you fish for

  lobster," I said standing nearby and watching him grill

  the fish. "You don't need a pole?"

  He laughed.

  "We don't fish for them exactly. We set traps at

  the bottom of the ocean floor and attach buoys that

  float above."

  "How do the other fishermen know which trap

  is theirs and which is yours?"

  "Each lobster fisherman has his own colors on

  his buoys. We're using the same colors my great

  grandfather used. They sort of belong to our family,

  like a coat of arms or something. Understand?" I nodded.

  "After we bring up a trap, if there is a lobster in

  it, we measure it with a gauge from its eye socket to

  the end of its back. An average lobster runs anywhere

  from two to five pounds. My father once brought up a

  trap with a lobster in it that weighed over thirty." "Thirty!"

  "Yeah, but someone else trapped one closer to

  forty last year. Lobsters with eggs on their tails have

  to be thrown back in immediately. We have to do all

  we can to keep up the supply. It takes about seven and

  a half years for a lobster to grow to decent size." "Seven and a half years?"

  "Uh huh," he said smiling. "Now you know

  why we grow and harvest cranberries, too."