Heart Song (28 page)

other grandmother?"
"Interesting," I said in a neutral voice. She
raised her eyebrows.
"Oh? Aren't you the cool one? Trying to teach
the teacher a thing or two?" she added and I had to
laugh.
"There are some things I have to work out yet.
Myself," I added.
"Okay. Remember though, I'm here for you if
you need me," she said.
"Thanks."
"I hope someone needs me soon," she declared.
"I'm beginning to feel like a piece of furniture around
Kenneth's house."
I laughed, but we arrived at Kenneth's I saw
what she meant. He was so involved in his work, he
barely acknowledged my arrival. I wanted to tell him
about my visit with his father and all I had learned,
but I was afraid of breaking his concentration. I didn't
need someone else mad at me, especially Kenneth. "I need to check something," he said. "Would
you pose for me for just a few minutes?" I did so
while he studied me, thought, studied and then
nodded.
"Okay, I'm fine," he said and returned to the
block. "You can return to work on the base," he said
when I didn't move. I gathered my tools and began.
We worked quietly for a while, only the sound of the
chipping and the tapping of the hammer echoing in
the studio.
Finally after what seemed like hours, he
stepped back, wiped his face with a towel, nodded at
the block and then turned to me. I was on my knees,
staring up at him. He blinked and refocused his eyes
as if he were returning to this world.
"So," he said, "Holly told me you had an
unpleasant visit when you went to see Belinda
yesterday. What was she, sick or something?" "No, not exactly," I said. He stared at me. I'd never make a good Logan, I thought. I couldn't keep the truth from pressing its face right up against the
window pane.
"You have something to tell me?"
"Yes."
He nodded and looked away. Then he wiped his
hands and walked to the window that faced the ocean.
He stood there for a while staring out. I wiped my
hands and brushed down my clothes. He took a deep
breath and then turned back to me.
"Grandma Belinda told me things," I said.
"They were keeping her shut up and giving her some
medicine that made her dopey, but she told me
things."
"What sort of things?" he asked.
"Things about my mother, about how she was
born."
"Uh-huh," he said staring at me so oddly, his
face so still, it looked chiseled from marble itself. "As Holly told you, I then went to see Grandma
Olivia. She denied everything," I said with disgust.
"She continued the lies, but I knew they were lies. I
just knew it," I said.
"And so?"
"I went to see your father."
"I see." He looked out the window again. Might get some rain later today," he said.
"Looks like some boomers coming out of the
northeast." He looked down and then crossed to the
sink to get himself a glass of water. "Want some?" "No thanks." I didn't move. He went to the sofa
and sat down. After a moment he turned back to me. "I didn't lie to you, Melody," he said., "I just
didn't tell you everything I knew. It was more painful
for me, believe me," he said.
"I think I understand," I said. His raised his
eyebrows.
"Really? I don't," he muttered bitterly and
sipped some more water.
"It was terrible for them to keep the secret so
long and permit you to grow up thinking my mother
was someone else, someone you could love," I said. He nodded, a small, tight smile on his lips. "Yes," he said. "Terrible is a good word, but
I'm afraid I can think of many others not suitable for a
young girl's ears."
"Your father's a very sad man, Kenneth. I think
he's very sorry," I said. Kenneth widened his smile. "You? You want to forgive him? He let you
grow up without ever knowing he was your grandfather. He never sent you a dollar or inquired about your wellbeing. He let Haille and Chester run off without a penny to their names to live in the hills of West Virginia, and when you arrived here, he made no attempt to tell you who you were and who he was to you. If Belinda hadn't babbled to you in the rest home, you still wouldn't know the truth," Kenneth
pointed out. "Forgive him?"
He shook his head.
"I don't want to hate him," I admitted. "Just like him to win you over even after all
that. The master charmer strikes again," he said
bitterly.
"I just want everyone to tell me the truth. I just
want to know who my father is," I said, my throat
tightening as my tears built a reservoir beneath my
eyelids.
"He didn't say?"
"He told me he didn't know. He said my mother
wouldn't confide in him and that all he knows is that
she got into trouble after she found out the truth." "That's right. It was his fault," Kenneth spit out.
"Especially the way he told her. What did he expect
would happen?"
"How did he tell her?" I asked, breathless. Kenneth turned away. I saw by the way he was
working the muscles in his jaw that it was not just
difficult but painful for him to resurrect these memories. This was just why everyone was warning me
about raking up the painful past, but unspoken suffer-.
ing just festers like sores in your heart and eventually
bursts and eats you alive inside.
"One afternoon while I was away, my father
invited your mother to go sailing with him. Haille and
I had gone with him before, and on one other
occasion, she and my mother joined him on the
sailboat. I thought there was nothing unusual about
this particular time, and she certainly didn't.
"Imagine her," he said, turning to me, his eyes
bloodshot with tears, "young and beautiful and still
very innocent, dressed in one of her newest sailing
outfits, her face fresh and tender with the morning
dew. She liked my father, actually loved him for his
charm and sense of humor. None of us ever put any
special importance on the attention he rained on
Haille. He flirted and beguiled every female who was
in reach of his smile."
Kenneth smiled to himself for a moment, lost in
some memory.
"She used to say being with my father was
second best to being with me."
His smile faded.
"We were all so happy-go-lucky, the rich kids
enjoying our sailboats and our cars, our clothes and
jewelry, able to go almost anywhere we wanted to go,
almost any time we wanted. We could have parties on
the beach and pay for everything without the slightest
concern. Everyone else envied us. College was nothing more than an expected promise. If we worked, we
worked only to fill time and amuse ourselves. We
didn't work out of necessity.
"What could go wrong for us?" he asked,
shaking his head. He wasn't looking at me so much as
he was at his memories now. "If we got sick, we
received the best medical attention; if we broke
something, it was replaced, no matter the cost. Our
entire futures seemed to be laid out on a primrose
path. All of us knew how lucky we were and we had
only a vague interest in those who weren't. Maybe that
was because, deep inside, the smartest of us knew life
can be a bubble that bursts at any moment and
everything you thought was so important can vanish
in an instant."
He sighed deeply, his shoulders rising and then falling as he lowered his head.
"She arrived early that afternoon. Surprise! My
mother wasn't going along this time. It was to be just
her and dad."
He raised his head.
"She described every little detail about that day
to me afterward, alternating between crying and
laughing, her laughter thin and on the verge of
insanity. "Dad looked dapper, handsome, younger
than ever.
She noticed he was more talkative than usual
when she arrived, but his talk was about new things
my mother had bought at auctions, plans he had to
redo this and redo that around the house, small talk.
Until they got out to sea, that is.
He sailed into a cove and started to talk about
his own youth. Pretty soon he was talking about
Belinda. Haille began to feel a little uncomfortable as
he described his own romantic interest in Olivia's
sister.
And then, he just lowered the boom on her and
told her he was her father. He said it the way you
might say: I have to confess, I broke that piece of
china yesterday.
"Haille was stunned of course. This man sitting
across from her in the sailboat, this man she had known all her life as my father, this charming friend of Olivia and Samuel Logan, one afternoon chose to tell her he was her father. He took her out to sea so she was more or less trapped on the boat and had to hear his side of the story, of course. She said she was tempted to jump into the water and swim to shore, but she was trembling so badly she couldn't trust her body
to be strong enough to make it.
"The impact of hearing he was her father was
great, but what was even greater was the realization
that she and I--that we were half-brother and sister
and the budding love between us was incestuous and
forbidden. Imagine the feeling of betrayal she felt at
that moment.
"My father defended himself by saying that if
she and I had never shown any indications of
becoming serious lovers, he would never have told her
the truth. Isn't that incredible? He would have kept it
secret forever, for as you know now, who would
believe poor deranged Belinda, right? Oh, they made
sure of that, my father and Olivia Logan.
"Of course, he insisted Belinda was really in
need of psychiatric help and they were giving her the
best, most expensive treatment possible. All men who
have affairs and impregnate their lovers should have
his opportunity and logic."
Kenneth laughed.
"Some force their lovers to have abortions,
some pay them off and send them away, some deny
having ever known them, if they can. The fortunate
rich and powerful stuff their lovers into rest homes
where they can be kept institutionalized, medicated,
and humored. Everything Belinda said after that was
just fantasy or lunacy.
"And you want me to forgive him," he said. He
lay his head back again.
"That's because I see him now, Kenneth," I
replied in a small, trembling voice. "I wasn't there
from the beginning and I didn't know the details as
you do. What did my mother do when he finally
brought her back to shore?"
"She got away from him as quickly as she
could. At first she called him a liar, thinking Olivia
had put him up to it to keep her and me from being
together."
"Why?"
"That's something only Olivia can answer. She
and Haille never got along, and I think--" He
hesitated and gazed up at me, deciding whether or not
I was old enough to understand or whether he had a right to say it. He decided to continue. "I think Olivia always loved my father and was jealous of her own sister. That jealousy manifested itself in her relationship with Haille. Olivia treated her like
Cinderella, the beautiful but inferior step-daughter. "Anyway, Haille came home and shut herself in
her room. No one knew why yet, I suppose. When I
got home that night, Dad called me into the den and,
fortified with a half dozen bourbon and waters, told
me what he had told Haille.
"Now it was my turn to call him a liar. Who
wanted it to be true? I, too, was hoping it was just a
connivance to keep Haille and me from becoming
boyfriend and girlfriend and eventually marrying, but
he broke down and cried and confessed and blabbered
like I had never seen.
"I was stunned. I rushed out of the house and
over to see Haille. That was when she described the
sailing and the way Dad broke the news. She was
already different," Kenneth said, nodding to himself. "How?"
"I sensed this abandon, this feeling that
whatever had been keeping her in check was gone.
She was like a kite whose string had broken and she
was being tossed about, but not minding it. She was laughing a lot, acting like the daughter of a mentally disturbed woman. I got frightened, especially when she embraced me on the beach and said, 'Let's not care. Let's do what we want and let's do it right now,
right here.'
"I panicked. It was as if a vampire had asked
me to become a vampire with her. I broke her hold on
me and ran from her, hearing her laughter trail after
me. I still hear it sometimes.
"Anyway," he said, "the rest you know. Haille
became the woman Olivia accused her of always
being: promiscuous, uncaring, indifferent, reckless,
and wild. The rest is as I told you. Oh, I tried to be
friends anyway, tried to give her good advice, come to
her aid whenever she needed me, but it was like
holding back the tide, the inevitable disaster. Dad was
right. It wasn't very long afterward that she became
pregnant with you and then Chester came to her
defense. Blindly in love with her, he stood by while
she accused Samuel of unthinkable things. Maybe that
was her way of getting back at my father, attacking
his close friend. To her, they were all the same:
Olivia, Samuel, my father, all part of the conspiracy.
Anyway, shortly after that, they ran off to West
Virginia.
"I don't know who your father is," he added
before I could ask again. "I'm not holding back
anything anymore, especially since you have spoken
with my father. Haille never told me. When I asked
her, she laughed and said, 'You are Kenneth. In my
heart, you always will be.'
"That was why I was so taken aback when you
told me you suspected I might be your father. It was
eerie, as if Haille were speaking again through you. I
know how much you want to know. I wish I could
give you the information, give you that gift, but I
can't. The truth is buried with your mother, Melody,
I'm sorry."
I didn't realize I was crying until I felt the tears
drip off my chin. Kenneth rose and handed me a
handkerchief. I blew my nose, wiped my eyes, and
took a deep breath. He smiled and nodded at me. "You know this makes me your uncle, don't
you?" "Yes."
"Do you mind?"
"No," I said but I meant yes. I minded because
for a while I had dreamed of him as a lover, too. Now,
that looked even more ridiculous. I felt so ashamed, so
lost. Will-o-wisp dreams never came true for me and
never would. There were too many clouds in the skies
over my family's past.
"Well, we'll have to give all this some serious
thought now," he added and turned back to the
sculpture.
"Serious thought? What can we do about any of