A Solitary Blue (8 page)

Jeff thought maybe his letter had gotten lost. “Do letters get lost?” he asked his father.

“Sometimes,” the Professor said. “Not usually.”

So Jeff wrote again. He spent a long time planning what he would say, several days, to gather the most interesting topics. That way he could always be thinking about Melody. He sang to himself, sang the songs she had sung to him, and that also kept her close. “I wrote you before,” he wrote, “did you get the letter?”

While he waited for her answers, he started reading about the south. He found books in the library abut the Civil War, first, about Lee and Beauregard, Manassas, the burning of Atlanta. He read
Gone with the Wind.
Then he found books about Colonial days and the South during the Revolutionary War, Marion the Swamp Fox, the Oglebys of Georgia. He hurried through his homework so that he could read. During the school day, he thought about the South and himself as a Boudrault, because that also was thinking about Melody. His grades went down further, and the teachers said he was daydreaming during class. The other boys formed themselves into friendships and ignored Jeff. He played soccer, if they needed someone, but always ate lunch alone.

But his mind was on Melody, remembering, holding her close. He knew that if he didn't hold the memories close they would drift away, and she would drift away. The Professor gave him five dollars a week for allowance, and Brother Thomas gave him ten dollars for his twelfth birthday present, so after a few weeks Jeff had enough money to go to a pawnshop and buy himself a guitar. It was a heavy old steel string guitar, a Stella. At first, when he played it for too long a time, his fingertips would throb with pain and sometimes the tips would bleed. Then he learned how to use a flat pick and developed callouses on the tips of his left hand. After a while he could play for as long as he wanted.

And still Melody did not write him a letter. Jeff didn't think about that. He thought instead about love, and if you loved someone — well you just loved them, you didn't love them just if they did what you wanted, like write you letters. You either loved them or you didn't. He wrote her another letter at the beginning of November, this time with news of his guitar. He told her that when he played it he thought about her and that was why he liked it so much: that was
the truth. One rainy November day, during Civics, he had an idea. “What if you write letters and the person has moved or gone away?” he asked the Professor that evening.

“Then the letters are returned to you,” the Professor said.

“So if they don't come back they've been delivered.”

The Professor nodded. “Why are you asking? Are you considering a career in the postal service?”

Jeff didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. Melody had gotten his letters and she didn't want to answer, or she was too busy. Probably she was too busy, she did have a busy life, he'd been there and seen that. He felt his father's eyes on him and wondered if his father knew why he was asking; but he didn't say anything because he wouldn't criticize her. He would be Melody's knight, here in their scruffy little house, like old-fashioned knights who loved their ladies — sometimes without seeing them for years. But the knights were always faithful, no matter what. Jeff liked that idea, and he felt a little smile form itself on his face. Knights wore tokens, scarves usually, that their ladies had given them; and he had a guitar. He would, he decided, write to Melody every month, at the beginning, so she would know about him, about how he was faithful. If he made his letters interesting enough, she might answer. If she didn't answer, that didn't mean she had forgotten him. If she forgot him that was just because he was easy to forget. So he didn't have any right to have hurt feelings.

“Jeff?” the Professor asked, breaking in on his thoughts. “What are you thinking about?”

“Melody,” Jeff answered, looking him straight in the eye, like throwing his metal gauntlet down on the table in challenge.

But the Professor just nodded his head, as if he understood, and went back to his hamburger. He changed the subject: “That guitar of yours — it isn't as pretty as some I've seen around campus. Does that mean anything about its quality?”

“It's not a very good one. But I'm not very good at playing it.”

“Are there good ones?”

Jeff had spent a couple of Saturday afternoons hanging around instrument shops. But he didn't know his father was interested, so he hadn't said anything. “There are Gibsons, some of the old Gibsons are pretty good.” His father still paid attention. “And the Martins, they're terrific, if you know how to play. I've never
played on one, but I heard some people in a store. The wood on those is beautiful.”

The Professor's eyes grew vague, and Jeff dropped the subject. Then the Professor said, surprising Jeff, “There's a man named Bream. Brother Thomas has tickets to a concert he's giving over the Christmas holidays. He thought we'd like to go.”

“OK,” Jeff said. It didn't interest him very much, he'd never heard of the guy. His guitar was his link to Melody, his token; that was its value for him. “Is he a guitarist?” he asked, to be polite, because it was something his father seemed to want him to be interested in.

“He plays the guitar and the lute, I think. This is a lute concert. We thought you might like to hear him.”

“OK,” Jeff said again.

“We wondered if maybe you'd like to take lessons.”

“I don't think so,” Jeff answered quickly. He knew how the guitar worked for him, just like looking into his own eyes in the mirror worked, to bring her close. He didn't want to risk any change. “Thanks anyway,” he added.

The concert surprised Jeff, caught him unaware. It was given at the Peabody Institute, in a narrow auditorium room that was crowded with people. Julian Bream came onto the stage carrying his own chair to sit on, and the audience clapped for just a little bit, then stopped, rustling into an eager silence. Jeff couldn't see the musician clearly, just a figure on a chair on the stage, holding what looked like a misshapen guitar. But when he started to play and the music filled the air of the room, winding and weaving until it lay over Jeff like a net, Jeff almost forgot to breathe. It was like guitar music, the plucking on strings, the tones reverberated out from the belly of the instrument, the one hand on the neck, the other on the strings; but it rang like church bells, quiet church bells. Melodic lines, chords, harmonies — how the almost motionless figure could make such complicated music Jeff did not know. He felt the music enter his body and flow along with his blood.

Some of the pieces were slow, some in quicker rhythm, some were one simple clear line and others were dense progressions of chords. For a long time, Jeff gave himself over to the music.

Until he realized what he was doing and then he tried to stop.
He resisted the notes as they called out to him, because he could hear how weak and thin Melody's songs were in comparison to this man's mastery. The concert was wonderful, but he wouldn't let it capture him. When he found himself sitting forward in his seat, he made himself lean back. He forced his eyes to wander over the rest of the audience rather than staying riveted to the figure on the stage. If he was Melody's knight, he could admit no imperfection in his service to her, no disloyalty.

“How'd you like it?” Brother Thomas asked him as they made their slow way out of the auditorium. “Isn't he something?”

Jeff nodded agreement and added, in honesty, “I've never heard anything like it. Thank you.” Music with song was one of his links to Melody, and nothing would come before that; but he couldn't deny the truth, so he said, “It was wonderful.”

 

J
EFF HAD SENT MELODY a scarf for Christmas, a green silk scarf painted over with pinks and golds and oranges, like a garden. She would have to write him a thank-you note for that, he thought, but that wasn't why he'd sent it. He sent it so that he would be perfect in his love.

They didn't celebrate Christmas at their house, not with a tree or stockings or lots of presents. They never had, Jeff guessed, since he couldn't remember any Christmases, even from when he was young. Usually, the Professor got him a present, a book — he'd gotten a fire engine one year, he remembered, with a ladder that went up and down. Since they'd been alone together, Jeff always got a present for his father, too, a book about wines, or a new and fancy corkscrew, or a keycase. This year, he'd gotten his father a belt, because the Professor's old one was cracked and worn where the leather had been too often rubbed. Jeff couldn't remember what he'd given his father last year, or what he'd been given. But the present for Melody
felt to him like no other present he'd ever given, or gotten. He knew it was perfect, and perfectly beautiful. He thought about how much she would like it. When he thought like that, happiness swelled up warm within him.

On Christmas morning, Jeff brought down the box for his father when he came to make breakfast. Usually on vacation days they ate breakfast and lunch whenever they felt like it, because the Professor often worked late and slept late; but on Christmas Day they ate all three meals together. Jeff put his box, gift-wrapped by the store, at his father's place. When he heard the Professor stir upstairs, going into the bathroom for his morning shower, Jeff started to cook sausage links and broke eggs into a bowl. When everything was ready, he called up.

The Professor, dressed, his white hair damp on his head, came to the table empty-handed. He unwrapped his present silently and thanked Jeff, then ate his breakfast slowly. Jeff didn't mind not getting a present, but he was worried that his father might mind having forgotten. He wondered if he should say something to the Professor, to reassure him; he wondered if he could remember next year that they weren't exchanging presents any more. He ate as slowly as the Professor and wondered if Melody had opened her scarf yet.

The Professor cleared their plates from the table and poured himself a second cup of coffee. “Well,” he said. “Merry Christmas.” He sounded uncomfortable, and he stood uncomfortably beside the stove, holding his coffee mug awkwardly. Jeff tried to think of how to say to the Professor that he didn't care about getting a present, when his father abruptly left the room. Before Jeff had time to figure out — listening to the footsteps in the hall going down to the study — if his father was angry, or what, the Professor returned, carrying a large, flat box across his arms. He had wrapped the box around with red tissue paper.

“Merry Christmas,” he said again, still uncomfortable. He put the box on Jeff's lap. He took his mug and sat down to watch Jeff.

Jeff looked at the flat box and then at his father. His father's discomfort was catching. “Thank you,” he said. “It's not a book,” he observed.

The Professor leaned his elbows on the table. As uneasy smile
moved at his mouth, just a little. “Open it.”

Puzzled by his father's strange mood, Jeff did. He took the paper off carefully, then pried up one end of the cardboard box. As soon as he saw the smooth curved strip of wood, he knew it was a guitar. He pulled it gently out of the box.

A Martin.

And one of the old ones.

He put it across his lap and laid his hands on it, touching it. The six steel strings stretched taut up over the belly and along the fretted neck. The frets and tuners glowed, their metal worn to a deep shine by age and by use.

Jeff ran his fingers all around its outlines, its deep curves, its straight lines. He plucked at low E and heard the mellow, clear reverberation of a perfect note. He looked up at his father, across the table. “It's an old one,” he said. Then his voice choked and he swallowed. “May I be excused?” he asked quickly. He didn't wait for an answer because he could feel tears swelling up behind his eyes. He left the kitchen hastily. Halfway up the stairs, he remembered and turned back. He put his face just through the doorway. His father had been staring into the mug of coffee, his face expressionless. “Thank you,” Jeff said. “Thank you,” he said again. His voice sounded steady, but emotions pushed up behind his eyes as he repeated his thanks, and he rushed down the hall. The Professor didn't like tears and emotions — and it would be a rotten way to show how much he liked the guitar to throw all that emotion at the Professor, to show how he was feeling.

And he was feeling — Jeff sat on his bed just hugging himself — he didn't know what he was feeling; it wasn't just happiness because it hurt him. It didn't hurt anywhere particular, but as if he wasn't large enough to hold the feeling and still he had to hold it. It was as if something he wanted so badly he didn't even dare to notice how he wanted it, because he couldn't ever have it, had come to him — just fallen out of the sky. He didn't deserve it. He couldn't understand how it happened now to be his. He couldn't even think, he could just feel.

Jeff got a pick and sat down again, holding the Martin. He put his fingers on the strings and started to play. He played a simple progression, A-D-E, and the perfect sound brought tears to his eyes again. He waited, then played again, the song that reminded him
most of Melody. “On a wagon, bound for market, sits a calf with a mournful eye.” After a few minutes he found his voice to sing it.

He played and sang the few songs he knew over and over. At last he realized how hungry he was and went downstairs, where he discovered it was well past lunchtime. The Professor emerged from his study to stand in the kitchen doorway while Jeff hurriedly ate a peanut butter sandwich and gulped a glass of milk, impatient to get back to the Martin. The Professor looked like he wanted to say something, so Jeff waited. Music rang inside his head.

“If you'd rather have a new one,” the Professor said, “There's no trouble. I'd rather you have what you want.”

Jeff felt laughter rising in him, and he let it ride through him. The last thing he wanted was a new Martin, not with this solid gold old one, made in better days by better craftsmen. His father's ignorance in suggesting that made him laugh; a clear bubble of happiness made him laugh.

The Professor's eyes flickered once, and his face didn't change. He nodded, once, briefly, and walked away. Jeff heard the study door close behind him. Shaking his head, smiling to himself, he swallowed down the rest of the milk. He rinsed out the glass, then washed it and set it upside down on the rack to dry. He capped the peanut butter jar and put it away. He washed the knife he had used. But the flicker in his father's eyes had looked like hurt feelings.

Jeff stopped smiling. But that was ridiculous, the Professor didn't fool around with feelings, they weren't a part of his life. But what if — ?

What if Jeff had gotten the greatest present anyone could have given him and the Professor thought he didn't like it. But he'd said thank you. Melody would have understood, he thought impatiently. But what if the Professor didn't.

Jeff moved thoughtfully down the hallway and stood before the closed door. He shouldn't, he knew, interrupt his father at work. But he
really
didn't want the man to misunderstand; because, after all, the Professor knew nothing about guitars. Jeff knocked on the door.

“Yes?”

So Jeff opened it and went in.

The Professor sat at his desk, in the middle of the room facing the door, working on a pile of papers.

“I'm sorry,” Jeff said. He stepped into the room, one step, then stopped.

“Don't worry about it, it doesn't make any difference. We can go back tomorrow so you can pick out the right one,” the Professor said.

“You really don't understand. Because it's the best present anyone could give me.” Jeff hurried the words out because his throat was choking up again. “The old Martins are — they're wonderful, the way they sound. Much better than the new ones. I didn't expect — anything like that.” To his horror, tears were in his eyes.

“I'm sorry,” he apologized again. “I don't mean to be — emotional at you — I just — I just like it so much.”

His father looked at him. “Thank you for taking the trouble to make that clear.”

Jeff heard the humor in that and a little laugh came up through his choked throat. “Yes sir,” he said, smiling back, leaving the room, returning to his Martin.

By the end of the afternoon, calloused as they were, his fingertips throbbed. He had learned, among other things, that he was much more limited than his instrument. He wanted to learn more chords, more songs, more strums — he wished the stores were open so he could rush out and buy a couple of instructional books.

For Christmas dinner, Jeff roasted a chicken, made stuffing from a mix, cooked a package of frozen peas. He poured out a glass of white wine from the carafe in the refrigerator and called his father to dinner. They sat down in silence, and Jeff carved. The Professor couldn't carve a chicken without hacking it into unrecognizable, unappetizing slabs; when the Professor carved, the chicken looked as if it had been torn apart by some inner explosion.

“Not much of a Christmas dinner, is it,” the Professor said.

Jeff was surprised. It had been years since he had thought about that. “We never do much for Christmas,” he reminded his father. “We never did.”

“That's true. But I wonder if we should have.”

“I don't see why,” Jeff told him. “It doesn't make any difference.”

“You know,” the Professor said, lifting a bit of breast meat to his mouth, “I don't think I ever realized that there's a lot of your mother in you.”

Jeff didn't know what to say. “I'm sorry,” he said, apologizing for the tears yet again.

“When she first loved me,” the Professor said, thoughtfully, without expression, “when she loved me, I felt as if — I had swallowed sunlight. Like the sun was rising inside me.”

Jeff just stared at his father.

“I've never felt so helpless, before or since. Happy, too.”

“Then why did you get divorced?” Jeff asked.

“We're not divorced,” the Professor told him. “But what I mean to communicate to you — however clumsily — is that you should not be sorry to be like her. She had a way of knowing how I was feeling; I don't know how she did that.” He returned his attention to his plate. Jeff watched him for a minute before lifting his own fork again.

“You know, I never call you anything.” He didn't look up.

The calm voice answered: “Thomas noticed that, years ago. I'm not the Daddy type, or Pop — I can understand your difficulty.”

Jeff looked up.

“When you think of me, do you call me anything? More than just
he.
”

“Yeah. Professor,” Jeff answered, with a grin.

His father chewed. “Yes. That would do.”

Jeff thought it might. “Yes, sir,” he said, then tried it out, “Yes, Professor.” Yes, that would do fine. “And Professor,” he said; his father lifted his eyes again, chewed without speaking, “The Martin is perfect. I can't ever thank you enough.”

“Good,” the Professor said. “That's what I hoped. That it would be perfect, that is. Not that you would feel bound by everlasting gratitude.”

Brother Thomas never came to see them on Christmas Day, because it was a holy day; instead, they had a special dinner on the day after Christmas. This year, he made them veal marengo, “A ragout,
not
a stew,” he told Jeff as he cut a veal roast up into chunks. “With mushrooms and tomatoes, a little wine and the peel of an orange. Why don't you bring down that famous guitar of yours and give me a little musical background while I labor here?”

Jeff hesitated. He'd never played for anybody. “I'm not very good,” he said.

“I don't mind, do you?”

“Well,” Jeff said.

“Do you want to be better? Do you plan to be?”

“Sure.”

“Then what's the harm?”

So Jeff brought the Martin down and played on it. Brother Thomas seemed to be listening at most with only half his attention, so Jeff forgot he had an audience. When it was time to set the table, Brother Thomas made his assessment: “You're not very good now, but I'll be surprised if you don't turn out to be quite good. Do you want to call the Professor?”

Jeff was pleasantly surprised. It turned out to be an evening of surprises, because Brother Thomas told them, as they sat full over empty plates, that he was going to England for a year to study at Oxford. He beamed at them, “Can you imagine it? The dreaming spires and me. Me and the dreaming spires.”

“I'm very happy for you,” the Professor said. “You must be pleased to have won the grant.”

“Pleased — that's an understatement. This is Tommy Richardson from Peoria, whose father worked in an assembly line — the unsuccessful son, not the black sheep among the children, but certainly the maverick — you've been there, Horace, but I never thought I ever would.”