Melody (44 page)

Moments later Grandma Olivia came to the front door. Aunt Sara shouted for me to let Grandma Olivia in and I rose, trembling a bit myself. When I opened the door, she stormed past me and walked into the living room.

“Hello Olivia,” Aunt Sara said. “It's so nice to see you.”

“I want to talk with Melody alone,” she snapped.

“Oh, of course.” Aunt Sara smiled at me and retreated. Grandma Olivia peeled off her black velvet gloves and sat in Uncle Jacob's chair. She gazed at me with her eyes dark and small. “Sit,” she ordered, and I went to the settee. “What did you think you would accomplish with this dramatic gesture—running off like that?”

“It wasn't a dramatic gesture. I wanted to go home.”

“Home.” She spit the word out as if it filled her mouth with an ugly, bitter taste. She looked away. “Home is here,” she said, pointing to her temple, “and here,” she added, pointing to her heart.

“I was going to go live with people who don't lie,” I said.

“Everyone lies. It's a matter of survival,” she declared.

“Then why hate my mother for lying?” I retorted. She widened her eyes.

“I'm not here to talk about your mother. I'm here to talk about you,” she said. “As I told you, you are my sister's granddaughter and I made promises to my father.”

“I know,” I said. “Thank you for being so honest.” I wanted to add: and for using the truth like darts.

“I didn't tell you everything,” she confessed.

I sat back as she paused.

“My father left both my sister and me a considerable fortune. Most of what you see, what we have, does not come from my husband's brilliant business acumen. Samuel was never a good businessman. To this day I don't think he understands what a profit-and-loss statement is,” she said disdainfully. “But that's a different matter. As I told you, Belinda is under a doctor's care. That is eating away at her inheritance, but even if she lives to be a hundred, it won't eat but a small portion of it. The money was well invested and earns good interest. To come directly to the point, your mother would have inherited what was left of Belinda's fortune if I hadn't helped Belinda to see more clearly. Instead, a trust has been formed and you are the heir.”

“I?”

“That's correct. It's specifically set up to provide you with your educational needs, your basic needs, until you are twenty-one. After that, you can waste it as you see fit. I'm the administrator of the trust.”

“Why didn't you tell me before?” I asked.

“Why? I didn't feel you needed to know all this until you were sufficiently retrained.”

“Retrained?”

“Until you had lived with a family in a moral setting and lost whatever bad habits Haille might have instilled in you.”

“She didn't instill any bad habits in me,” I replied firmly.

“I wish that were true, but frankly, I don't see how it's possible for you to have grown up as her daughter and not be somehow affected. Anyway, I'm glad Cary got you to come to your senses and return.”

“Why?” I challenged. “You obviously hate my mother and hate the sight of me.”

“I don't hate the sight of you. I told you why I have the feelings I have toward your mother, but I'm. . . sufficiently impressed with you to believe you have the capability to overcome your unfortunate upbringing. If you will behave and listen to wiser minds, you have a lot to gain, as you now know. It will be a considerable fortune, more than most people make in two lifetimes of hard work. There, now I've given you your incentive and I've welcomed you back,” she said, as if that were the prescription to treat her bout of conscience.

“Welcomed me back?” I shook my head and snorted.

“I came here, didn't I?” she protested.

I stared at her a moment. This was the closest she would come to an apology, I thought. Whether it was because of the promise she had made to her father or came from genuine and sincere remorse for telling me things bluntly and causing me to run off, I didn't know.

“I would just ask you for one thing,” she continued.

“What's that?” I asked.

“Let the past be the past. Concern yourself with your future. Nothing can be gained by digging up the ugly days and ugly memories,” she said.

“I don't know if I can do that,” I said. “There are still things I need to know.”

Her eyes grew small again and her face firm. She leaned toward me. “I would not like to hear that you were going around Provincetown asking questions and stirring up gossip about the Logan family.”

“I wouldn't do that.”

“Make sure,” she warned. Then she rose. “Stop by the house from time to time to tell me how you are getting along,” she said. “Have Cary bring you,” she added before leaving the room.

Aunt Sara was in the hallway. “Would you like to stay for dinner, Olivia?”

“Certainly not,” Grandma said. She looked at me for a moment and then turned and walked out of the house. It was as if a wind had blown through and shut the door.

“Wasn't that nice?” Aunt Sara said, as if some member of royalty had lowered herself to visit. “Dear, come help me set the table.”

I stood there for a moment in a daze. I was to inherit a fortune? Had Mommy or Daddy ever known? If they had, they couldn't tell me about it without telling me everything else. The more I learned, the more I was amazed by what they had sacrificed to run off together the way they had.

May and Cary arrived only minutes before Uncle Jacob. Cary looked tired but did his best to hide it. May was very excited to see me and was filled with so many things to tell me, her hands never stopped moving. Aunt Sara went on and on about Grandma Olivia. Cary looked at me with surprise and expectation and I whispered that I would tell him everything later. In the meantime, I helped serve dinner. Since I had just eaten, I ate only dessert: a piece of Aunt Sara's blueberry pie.

After I helped clean up, I went upstairs and joined Cary in his attic room. I told him everything Grandma Olivia had told me. He had not known about any fortune.

“I'm not even sure my father knows about that,” he said. “That's wonderful, Melody.”

“Money isn't very important to me right now, Cary. The truth is, I think Grandma Olivia was hoping I would willingly forget all the lies just so I could get my inheritance. It was as if she were trying to buy me off with the promise of it.”

He nodded, thinking.

“Can we talk to your father now? Would he talk to us?” I asked. I was afraid to approach him myself.

“Let's try,” Cary said.

We descended the stairs together and found Uncle
Jacob reading his paper and listening to the news on the radio. He looked up, surprised.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Melody has some questions to ask you, Dad,” he said. “Because of the things Grandma told her and me about her mother.”

“You know how I feel about talking about that.” He started to raise his paper.

“Grandma feels we're old enough to know things, why can't you?” Cary challenged. I think he was braver with me standing beside him, only now I felt responsible for any bad feeling between him and his father.

Uncle Jacob thought a moment and then lowered the paper to his lap. He turned off the radio. “You want to hear about your mother? You want to hear the ugly truth?” he said with a note of threat.

“I want to know the truth,” I replied undaunted, “ugly or otherwise.”

“All right. Sit,” he said, nodding at the settee. We both went to it. Uncle Jacob lit his pipe and puffed for a few moments.

“Haille was always getting in trouble with boys. Either Chester or I had to come to her aid all the time, trying to save her from herself. On more than one occasion, I found her down on the beach with someone doing things I'd rather not describe. I got into fights and so did Chester. We were teased a lot. The family was disgraced a lot, but nothing seemed to change her. She was fascinated with herself.

“Your mother was always a source of misery for my parents,” he said, pointing with his pipe. “She was caught smoking, drinking, and doing all sorts of immoral stuff in school dozens of times. If my mother hadn't had influence in this town, they would have thrown Haille out of the public school. She was actually arrested twice for lewd behavior on the beach when she was in high school.” He paused. “You still want to hear this?”

I swallowed back a throat lump and nodded.

“About when she was fifteen, sixteen, she got caught
with a truck driver out on the dunes. They were going to throw the book at the guy. He was about twenty-eight or so and she was obviously under age. Only, my mother was worried about the scandal, so it was kept quiet and the truck driver was let go. Mother tried to get a doctor to help Haille, the same doctor who was treating Belinda at the time, I recall, but nothing seemed to help. She was a wild creature. She'd do whatever she wanted, whatever she fancied. Chester and I did our best to cover up for her, to protect her.”

He paused and sat back, thinking. The lines in his face grew deeper, his eyes colder. Then he took a breath and continued. “The year she was supposed to graduate from high school, Kenneth Childs began coming up and spending time with us more and more. We liked Kenneth and our families were close. In those days Chester and I thought of him as another brother. Kenneth was going to college in Boston. He would come up weekends. Sometimes Chester and I didn't know he was in town, but Haille always did. She was over at the Childs' lots of times, and sometimes, there was no one else there but Kenneth.

“That was the year she got pregnant. She made up that story about my father. Chester always favored her more than I did, overlooked her sins. He made excuses for her all the time. He refused to believe Kenneth would make her pregnant and not own up to it. Haille filled him with lies about Dad and he swallowed them, because he was so hypnotized with her himself.

“I told him she was a liar and a whore. I told him she once tried to seduce me, and he got into a fight with me. He took her side and they ran off together. That's the story,” he concluded, like a slap of thunder at the end of a rain storm.

There was a heavy silence in the room. Cary looked at me.

“Have you ever spoken with Kenneth Childs since?” I asked.

“We've had some words, mainly because of the judge.
I went to his mother's funeral, of course, but it's hard for me to look him in the face and not think about what happened.”

“Did you ever ask him outright about it?”

“No,” he said, “and I don't intend ever to talk about it. You're my mother's sister's grandchild. Your Aunt Sara is fond of you, and from what I hear, you're doing well in school. You're welcome to stay here as long as you need to or until your mother decides to be a mother instead of a tramp. That might never happen, of course, and soon you'll be on your own anyway. But I won't have any more talk about those days in my house,” he said firmly. “And I don't want any scandals.” He looked at Cary. “Satisfied?”

Cary turned to me. “You want to ask him anything else, Melody.”

“No,” I said. I was crying inside, the tears falling behind my eyes and over my heart.

Uncle Jacob went back to his paper and put the radio on again. I left the room, pounding up the stairs. I threw myself on the bed and lay there embracing my stuffed cat.

There was a soft knock on my door.

“Yes?”

Cary poked his head in.

“Are you okay?”

“No, but it's all right,” I said. “I guess in my heart I knew everything your father said. It's just hard hearing it like that.”

Cary nodded. “It'll be all right. Things will be just fine,” he promised.

I smiled at him. “Sure.”

“I'd better go up and start studying,” he said. “I gotta pass those finals.”

“Yes, you better. Cary,” I said, as he started to close the door. He raised his eyebrows. “One day this week, will you take me to see Kenneth Childs?”

“Sure,” he said. “I don't know what he'll do. He
doesn't like people coming around much, I know. I hear that when he works, he won't even come to the door.”

“Still, I'd like to try to meet him,” I said.

“Okay. Nose to the grindstone,” he said and left.

I lay there for a long time, just thinking, remembering silly things Mommy had done, recalling her whining and crying and Daddy's soothing her all the time. Then I thought about her with Archie Marlin.

Children inherit so much from their parents, I thought. Would I become like her one day? It frightened and intrigued me. I had to know who my real father was. Then I could learn what part of him I had inherited and whether that part was strong enough to overcome the bad I had inherited from Mommy. To be without a past is almost like being without a future, I thought.

I would know my past. No temptation of a fortune, no threat, nothing would keep me from pursuing the truth.

No one at school knew anything about my trip back to West Virginia. They didn't question why I had been absent. Some of the girls thought it was in sympathy with Cary and his unfair suspension. I didn't say it was, but I didn't deny it. There was a lot of excitement because of the school year's approaching end.

The week before finals was a week mainly for review. At the end of the week of finals, the school would have its variety show, the proceeds of which went toward college scholarships. The principal, Mr. Webster, hadn't forgotten that I played the fiddle. He had Mrs. Topper, the school music teacher who was in charge of the show, ask me to perform.

I tried to get out of it, claiming the truth: I hadn't been playing much these past months.

But Mrs. Topper was desperate. “I barely have enough performers to fill a half hour, much less an hour. I need you. You have to do two numbers,” she pleaded. “It's all in good fun and for a good cause. Won't you help us?”