Melody Read online

  Aunt Sara gave me a look of warning and stepped gingerly out of the room.

  "I miss you and I miss Sewell," I added as soon as she was gone. "More than I ever expected."

  "Oh? Well, I don't have good news. Papa George is in the hospital and when I asked Mama Arlene about your mother and your things, she told me she hasn't heard a word from your mother since you all left."

  "Mommy never called her?"

  "Not yet. I thought I had better tell you."

  "How is Papa George doing?"

  "He's in intensive care. He's very sick, Melody. I'm sorry."

  "I should be there," I moaned. "I don't know what to do."

  "What can you do?" Alice asked in her habitual blunt manner.

  "Nothing until Mommy calls me."

  "You really hate it there?"

  "There's a lot happening, Alice."

  "Tell me," she pleaded.

  "I can't. Not on the phone. I'll write you a letter."

  "Don't wait. Write it tonight."

  "Melody, dear, not too long," I heard Aunt Sara say through the wall. She was probably just on the other side of the door all the while, I thought.

  "I've got to hang up, Alice. Thanks for calling."

  "Write me and I'll call you the moment I hear that your mother called Mama Arlene," she said quickly. "Thanks. Bye."

  I cradled the receiver just as Uncle Jacob came through the front door. He saw Aunt Sara standing in the hallway and me by the phone.

  "Was that your mother?" he asked me.

  "No. A friend from Sewell."

  He glared at Aunt Sara.

  "She wasn't on the phone long, Jacob."

  He grunted. Then he noticed my bare feet.

  "We don't walk through the house half dressed here," he said. For a moment I didn't understand. "Your feet," he said nodding at them.

  "Oh. I just came down quickly. It was a longdistance phone call and--"

  "A decent girl always thinks about those things first," he chastised.

  "I am a decent girl," I fired back.

  "We'll see," he said, undaunted, and started up the stairs. "Getting dressed for dinner," he muttered toward Aunt Sara.

  "Okay, Jacob. We'll have a good Sunday dinner," she promised. "Don't worry," she whispered to me. "He'll soon see that you're as sweet as Laura was, and then everything. . . everything will be wonderful again," she added. Her eyes glittered with hope. "Hurry and get cleaned up and dressed so you can set the table, dear."

  I watched her walk away with that fragile smile on her face. Aunt Sara had wrapped herself snugly in her illusions, but illusions, I thought, were just dressed up lies. Someday the weight of the truth would come down on her glass house and shatter her dreams even more.

  I didn't want to be here when all that happened. I wanted to be far away. I wanted to be in a place where people didn't have to lie to each other to live with each other.

  Was there such a place? And even if there were such a place, could I, a daughter born in a world of deceit, ever hope to find it?

  With Daddy dead and gone and Mommy off searching for her own private dreams, I felt like an orphan, a hobo begging for a handout of love. No wonder my eyes saw Adam Jackson's eyes and my ears were so receptive to his words.

  I'll meet him tomorrow night, I thought defiantly. Not even one of Cape Cod's treacherous nor'easters could keep me away.

  An English Lesson

  .

  At dinner everyone appeared to be in a subdued

  mood, even May. After Uncle Jacob read his selection from the Bible, we ate in near silence. I thought the heavy atmosphere in the house might be a result of the weather. Although it wasn't raining, a thick fog had rolled in on great billowing waves. It shrouded the landscape, turning everything cold and dreary. Once again, the weather on the Cape surprised me with its fickleness and its ability to change so abruptly. I wondered if there was any way to tell right now what it would be like tomorrow night. Would it rain and thus put off my rendezvous with Adam Jackson?

  "Does it often get foggy like this at night?" I asked as innocently as I could. Uncle Jacob raised his eyebrows. Aunt Sara smiled as if I had asked the silliest little question, and Cary looked amused. "This time of year it often does."

  "Weathermen might as well toss the dice, as good as they predict these days," Uncle Jacob muttered. "Better off just listening to the creak in your bones."

  "Aye," Aunt Sara said. "More potatoes, dear?" MELODY

  "No thank you, Aunt Sara," I answered. "I won't be having coffee tonight," Uncle Jacob

  announced as if the whole country were awaiting his decision. "Got a big day tomorrow. Getting up early to bring the boat to Stormfield's in North Truro for an engine tuneup."

  "I could skip school tomorrow," Cary offered immediately. He glanced quickly at me because he knew I understood why he would like to cut classes. He hoped I wouldn't say anything. There was no reason to worry. It was none of my business and I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for getting him in trouble with Uncle Jacob. I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy.

  "No need," Uncle Jacob said, rising. Cary's face folded in disappointment. "Roy and I can handle it. Well," he said stretching, "I'll just have a pipeful in the den and go up to bed. I'd like a peaceful night," he added glaring at me as if I were a noisy teenager who played rock music late into the evening.

  I rose to help Aunt Sara with the dishes. May wanted me to go to her room and help with her homework, but I explained I was helping Cary study for a test tomorrow. She looked disappointed, so Aunt Sara offered to help her. She still looked disappointed, but I could see she was too considerate to hurt her mother's feelings.

  After we had put away the dishes, I went up to my room and waited for Cary. I had just a little of my own schoolwork left and finished it quickly.

  He knocked on my door and peeked in timidly. "Got time now?" he asked.

  "Yes." I pulled a chair up alongside my own at the desk. "Sit here."

  "I hate this stuff," he complained as he entered. He tried to narrow his vision just to me and the desk, but his eyes flitted from one side of the room to the other, the look on his face sad and as painful as a raw wound that refused to heal. He caught me scrutinizing him. "I don't come in here often," he confessed. "Anymore."

  "I understand," I said.

  Skepticism clouded his face and gave birth to a small frown. Did he think that because I had no brother or sister, I couldn't appreciate what it was like to lose someone I loved?

  "It was really hard for me to look at things in our trailer that reminded me of my father after his terrible accident," I explained. Cary's skepticism faded as I went on. "I was closer to him that I am to my mother. And when he died, I thought the world had come to an end. It still doesn't seem the same. Nothing does."

  He nodded, his eyes softening. "I wish I could have gotten to know him."

  "I wish you had too. I wish this family wasn't so vindictive."

  He tilted his head.

  "Vin-what?"

  "Cruel," I continued. "When you love someone, you don't hate them to death for mistakes they make. You try to understand them, help them, and if that doesn't work, you feel sorry for them. But you don't disown them forever and pretend they never lived."

  He stared at me a moment and then he smiled and shook his head gently. "That's something Laura would say. She always looked for the good in everyone. The girls at school mocked her, ostracized her, were jealous of her, but she was always nice to them. We had lots of arguments about it," he said. "It was practically the only thing we argued about. We agreed about most everything else."

  "Even Robert Royce?" I asked quickly. When he looked at me this time, there were shadows in the emerald depths of his eyes.

  "That was something entirely different. She was blinded by--"

  "By what?" I asked, intrigued.

  "Blinded by his lies, his phony charm, his handsome face," he replied bitterly.

  "How did you know he
was a phony?" I asked. His letter to Laura seemed sincere.

  "I just knew," he insisted. "She always listened to me. We were close and not just because we were twins. We really did like the same things and feel the same things. We didn't have to speak to each other lots of times either. We just looked at each other and understood. She would smile at me or I would smile at her and that was enough.

  "But after Robert . . ." His gaze drifted, his eyes growing smaller--darker--when he looked at Laura's picture on the dresser.

  "What happened after Robert came into her life?" He turned to me, his watery eyes hard. "She changed. I tried to help her see, but she wouldn't listen."

  "Maybe what she saw she liked," I offered softly.

  He grimaced. "Why is it that girls who are normally smarter than boys are so dumb when it comes to boys?" he asked me.

  I stared at him. He blinked his eyelids rapidly. He had long, perfect eyelashes, which most girls I knew would die to have.

  "That's a matter of--"

  "What?" he interrupted.

  "I was going to say opinion, but it's really more a matter of the heart."

  He blew air through the side of his mouth. "Matters of the heart," he said disdainfully. "An excuse for stupidity."

  "Cary Logan, are you going to sit there and tell me you don't believe in love? You don't believe two people can fall in love?"

  "I didn't say that exactly," he retreated. "But it's silly to think you can fall in and out of love the way you. . you catch a cold."

  "From what I understand, that doesn't sound like a good description of Laura. She didn't have lots of boyfriends, did she?"

  "That's not the point. She thought she was in love and that he loved her, but. . . Let's just say I know it was a mistake, okay, and leave it at that." He glared down at his textbook. "I hate this stuff. What does it have to do with what's important?"

  "It's important to understand our language so we can express ourselves," I said, my voice hard and firm. Like a splinter, Cary had a way of getting under my skin.

  He grimaced again and raised his eyebrows.

  I wasn't intimidated by him.

  "You're not just going to spend all your life talking to lobsters, Cary Logan. You're going to have to talk to your customers, too, and if you sound as if you don't know what you're doing, they won't believe in you, no matter how good a fisherman you are."

  He broke into a smile. "Don't get so mad."

  "I'm not mad. I'm--"

  "What?" he teased.

  "Mad," I said. "Why should you have to be talked into educating yourself? We don't live in the Dark Ages. Even up here in Cape Cod heaven where everyone is supposedly so perfect, people still need to be educated," I snapped.

  He laughed. "Okay, help me talk to my customers." I gazed at the page.

  "Clauses are easy to recognize. Just test them. If they don't have a subject and a verb, throw them back in like a lobster that's too small."

  His smile widened. "I like that. That, I can understand."

  I went over what a subject does in the clause and then what the verb does.

  He listened, tried some examples, and then widened his eyes. "I understand what you're saying. I just don't understand how you know whether it's an adverb or an adjective."

  "Test it again," I told him. "Here's one way: if you can move it around in the sentence, it's an adverb. Look at this one: Because I got sick, I had to go home. I had to go home because I got sick. See?"

  His eyes lit up.

  "Yeah."

  "Your teacher never showed you that?" I asked.

  "I don't remember. I guess I wasn't paying as much attention to her as I paid to you. Maybe you should be a teacher."

  "Maybe I will. Do those exercises at the end of the chapter. I'll correct them when you're finished."

  "Yes ma'am."

  I went to the closet to sift through the clothing. Tomorrow, I would wear one of my own things, I thought, not that I had much from which to choose. How could Mommy not have called Mama Arlene yet? She knew I needed my clothes.

  "Laura always looked really good in that," Cary said. I hadn't known he was watching me. I held a light yellow cotton dress in my hands. "You thinking of wearing that to school?"

  "I might just wear a pair of jeans and a blouse I brought with me," I said.

  "Laura never wore jeans to school. My father didn't think it was proper."

  "Well he's not my father," I replied. "And I'm not Laura."

  He shrugged. "I'm just telling you."

  "Are you finished with the exercises?"

  "No, I--"

  "Then finish," I commanded.

  "Right," he said turning back.

  I smiled to myself and considered the yellow dress again. It had a square collar with frilled sleeves and a gently billowing skirt. I imagined it might look nice on me. I did want to look nice for Adam, I thought.

  "Finished," Cary declared.

  I put the dress back and went to the desk. He had one mistake, but even I might have made it, I thought. "Not too bad," I said.

  "I hope I can do it tomorrow."

  "You will. Just remember the tricks," I told him.

  "Thanks," he said standing. "I owe you one." He thought a moment. "Maybe I'll do what Grandpa suggested this weekend."

  "What's that?"

  "Take you sailing. Would you like that?"

  I thought about Adam. What if he invited me to go motorboating again?

  My hesitation jarred him. "Don't if you have better things to do." He turned for the door.

  "No, it's just that I've never really gone sailing."

  He looked back at me. "Whatever. If you want to, we'll do it."

  "We'll go over the material again on the way to school," I told him.

  He rolled his eyes. "Can't wait," he said and left.

  A little while later I heard him go up to his attic hideaway. I didn't know for certain, of course, but I was willing to bet that he spent more time up there alone since Laura's death than he had when she was alive.

  We all retreat to different attics when we're unhappy, I thought. I was still looking for mine.

  Uncle Jacob had eaten his breakfast and left by the time May, Cary, and I went downstairs the next morning. I decided to wear Laura's yellow dress, and when Cary saw me in the hallway, he said I looked very nice.

  "It's not going to rain, is it?" I asked him.

  "No. It's going to be a nice day and a pretty nice night," he told me. I breathed relief and felt a tingle of the excitement of anticipation.

  Downstairs, Aunt Sara was frenzied. Grandma Olivia had called last night and told her the dinner would be tomorrow night. Apparently, from the way she spoke, I understood that dinner at my

  grandparents' house wasn't merely dinner, it was an elaborate affair. There would be someone else there, some highly respected member of the community. We would all have to be on our very best behavior, be well dressed, and be more polite than the Queen of England.

  "Don't forget Grandpa wants to hear Melody play her fiddle," Cary teased. Aunt Sara gasped and gazed at me with abject terror in her eyes.

  "Oh, I don't think he meant this particular dinner," she said in a voice just above a whisper.

  "Sure he did," Cary continued, deliberately raising his own voice. "We all heard him, Ma."

  Aunt Sara shook her head. "But Olivia didn't . ."

  "It's all right. I don't want to bring my fiddle anyway," I said.

  "Grandpa's going to be disappointed," Cary warned. "He might just send you back for it. Why don't you bring it along and leave it in the car, just in case," he pursued.

  Aunt Sara shook her head again, this time more emphatically. "Jacob might be upset. I don't know if-"

  "I'm not bringing it along, Aunt Sara. Stop worrying," I declared firmly. I gazed at Cary, whose green eyes sparkled with mischief.

  May wanted to know what we were all talking about so intensely. Cary signed and explained, mimicking my playing the fiddle. H
er eyes lit up with encouragement.

  "See, Ma, even May wants her to bring it along, and she can't even hear."

  "Oh dear," Aunt Sara said, wringing her hands.

  "Stop it," I told him sharply. "You're going to get me into trouble."

  With a tiny smile on his face, he finished eating his breakfast quietly. On the way to school, I chastised him. "You shouldn't tease your mother that way, Cary Logan."

  "I wasn't teasing. I'd like you to play your fiddle, too. It will spice up the dinner party. I've been to enough of them at Grandma's to know what to expect. They could use some excitement."

  "Well under the circumstances, I'm not feeling much like fiddling. It only reminds me of my daddy and Grandma Olivia's house is no place to be thinking about him," I said bitterly.

  Cary's impish grin faded. "Maybe if they heard you play and learned more about your father after he and Haille left here, they'd be more inclined to feel sorry about things, too," he offered.

  "They should feel sorry! My daddy's gone and the damage that was done is done forever and ever."

  Cary was silent. The subject sank deeply in the pool of our thoughts. We dropped May at her school and continued to our own, reviewing the material Cary would have on his English test. As soon as Cary and I arrived at school, we split up. Fortunately, he didn't hear the girls heckle me when I went to my locker. I'm sure he would have become very angry.

  "We missed you Saturday night," Janet said. "Too busy darning socks or something?"

  "Or did you have to make cranberry muffins?" Lorraine asked.

  "I tried to come," I told her. Betty closed in beside her and Janet to listen to my explanation. "But my uncle wouldn't let me go."

  "We told you he wouldn't. We told you to lie," Betty said. "But you're just like Laura, aren't you? You're too goody-goody to have any real fun. It must run in the family or something--Grandpa, Laura and now you. I bet the mute is the same."

  "She's not a mute," I snapped, my face filling with blood so fast I thought I would blow the top of my head off. "She's deaf, but she can talk."

  "I've heard her talk. Who could understand that?" Betty said. The others agreed.

  "If you take the time, you can understand her. She's a bright, sweet little girl."

  "Right. Anyway, we all had a good time. A certain boy was heartbroken that you weren't there," Lorraine said, a twisted smile on her lips.