Heart Song (5 page)

"It's not easy," I complained. "Now I know why people are paid a lot of money to do this."
He laughed. "Who said they are?"
"Aren't they?"
"You're tricking me into talking, Melody. Every time I answer one of your questions or you force me to respond, I stop thinking artistically. An artist has to lose himself in the work, not really see the person as a person anymore, but as the object of his art, and that takes very intense concentration."
I thought about Mommy in his paintings and wondered if that was precisely what had happened with her or if was Cary right. Did Kenneth look at her not as his subject but as a woman he desired? If Cary was right, what did that mean about the way Kenneth was looking at me?
Kenneth told me to turn toward him and he studied me for a while. Then he asked me to look more to my right. He flipped his pages and worked and flipped some more pages. Finally, he slapped his pencil on the easel and stepped back.
"Something's not right," he said.
"Am I doing something wrong?"
"No, it's not you. It's me." He thought a moment. "I'm going down to the sea. You can work in the house until I return," he said and marched out of the studio.
I went into the house and cleaned up the kitchen. Kenneth still hadn't returned by the time I finished, so I went to his bedroom. It looked as if he had been wrestling with someone in his bed. The blanket was twisted, the sheet was pulled up and nearly half off, and one of his pillows was on the floor. Clothes were scattered about as if he had thrown them against the walls. I scooped everything up, deciding what needed to be washed and ironed and what needed to be just folded and put in the closet or the dresser. When I couldn't find a second sock, I got on my hands and knees and looked under the bed. Something else attracted my attention. It looked like a photograph. I knew it hadn't been there the week before when I cleaned, so Kenneth must have dropped it recently.
I strained and reached under until my fingers found it and I could bring it out. Then I turned, sat with my back against the bed frame, and looked at the picture. It was a picture of Mommy and me when I was no more than two or three. It had been taken in front of our trailer home in Sewell and it was badly faded, the black and white had turned brown. I turned it over and saw the writing was nearly faded, too, but I could make out most of the words and figure out the rest.
I thought you'd like this picture. Her name is Melody. I'm sorry.
Sorry? Why was she sorry? Surely, she wasn't sorry simply because she had named me Melody. Should I just confront Kenneth with the picture and ask him about it right now? I wondered.
I stood up, holding the picture close to my heart. I went to the window and looked out at the beach. I could barely see Kenneth, sitting a little below a sand hill, gazing at the waves.
I've waited long enough for answers, I thought. I want to know the truth. Armed with the photograph and my own resolve, I marched out of the house and over the sand toward Kenneth. Ulysses was at his side, and his tail began wagging as soon as I appeared. Kenneth didn't turn, didn't move. He looked as if he had turned to stone himself.
"Can I talk to you?" I asked.
"Can't it wait?" he replied.
"No," I said adamantly. His shoulders sagged a bit with his annoyance and he turned.
"What's so important?" he moaned. "I can't keep having my concentration broken. This entire thing is an ongoing process. It develops in small stages, but the creative period has to remain smooth, fluid. I thought you understood."
"I don't understand a lot of things," I said sharply. He raised his eyebrows. I extended my arm toward him, the picture in my hand. "I found this when I was cleaning up your room. It was under the bed. It wasn't there the other day."
He looked at the picture and then took it from my hand.
"I wondered where this went," he said. "I was looking at it last night."
"Why do you have it and what does it mean?" I demanded.
"What do you mean what does it mean? It is what it is. A picture of you with Haille. She sent it to me years ago."
"Why?"
"Why? I told you. We were friends once."
"Just friends?"
"Good friends," he said.
"Why does she say 'I'm sorry'?"
He shook his head.
"You know most of this. She got pregnant and ran off with Chester. I guess she thought I was disappointed in her so she wrote, I'm sorry. What's the mystery?"
"Were you disappointed in her?"
"Yes," he said looking at the picture. "I had higher hopes for her. I wasn't surprised that she eventually had problems with Olivia and Samuel, but I had higher hopes. Okay?"
Tears burned under my eyelids, but I pressed my lips together and held my breath. He put the picture in his pocket and turned back to the sea.
"Why drag up the ugly past now?" he muttered. "That's what Grandma Olivia says," I retorted harshly.
"This time she's right. Nothing can be changed and all it does is make people unhappy."
"Except I'm the one who doesn't know what she has to know. I don't know who my real father is," I said. He was quiet. "Do you know?"
"Look," he said, "this can't be a pleasant subject for you. I don't think I should be the one to say anything. If you want answers to those questions, ask your relatives. Once, I knew your mother. She was a beautiful young woman. We had a good relationship for a while and then her lifestyle got between us and she went her way and I went mine. I don't condemn her, blame her, look down on her. I don't judge people."
"You're not answering my questions," I pursued. He shook his head.
"I don't know the answer," he snapped. "There were a lot of rumors, nasty rumors, and the next thing I heard was she and Chester had run off."
The tears were streaming down my cheeks now. I turned away from him.
"You're not telling me what you really know," I fired back and stomped down the sand hill to the beach. I folded my arms and walked along, just out of reach of the waves. Moments later I felt his hand on my shoulder.
"Why do you want me to tell you unpleasant things?" he asked when I turned.
"I'm old enough to hear the bad with the good, Kenneth," I said, full of fire and determination. He nodded.
"Okay. You want the bad with the good? The bad is that your mother was very promiscuous. She slept around a lot; she was very wild. Some guy would come riding. through here on a motorcycle and minutes later, your mother was sitting behind him speeding down the Cape highway for some rendezvous on a beach blanket. Then the guy was gone. She dirtied her reputation just to put a blot on the perfect Logan name, I think. She was angry at everyone in the family for one reason or another.
"She would come to see me often and confide in me and I would give her the best advice I could. Sometimes, I thought she had followed my advice, and then she would disappoint me. It happened more times than I care to remember. I got angry with her and I told her to stay away from me. She was driving me mad. Then she got into trouble, had that awful argument with Olivia and Samuel, and ran off with Chester, who was always head over heels in love with her anyway.
"She had him wrapped around her finger and she could get him to do anything she wanted anytime she wanted. I can't even begin to imagine how many times he rescued her from a bad scene, picked her up when she was dead drunk or stoned or just worn out from a night of wildness. He would forgive her anything if she would just talk to him or let him help her. So, she ran off with him. You told me you knew what happened afterward. You know how your uncle Jacob feels about it all, and you know Olivia's views."
"You let her go, too?" I asked softly. "You gave up on her?"
"I tried my best at first. You can't even begin to imagine the frustration I experienced. Haille could make a promise that sounded as if it were chipped in cement--or marble, I should say." He smiled. "She could make the worst agnostic a believer, melt a hard heart in seconds, charm a fish out of water. And then she would break that promise and laugh and just promise again, and you know what, everyone, especially men, wanted to believe her so much, they refused to see her for what she was. Only, finally I saw the truth. What else do you want me to tell you?"
"I want to know who my father is," I said.
"I can't tell you that."
"Because you don't know?"
"Let's just leave it, Melody. Have this
conversation with someone else. Go back to Olivia," he pleaded. "I like you," he said. "You're a very intelligent, sensitive young woman, and as you were probably told, I don't have many acquaintances, so I don't throw those compliments around lightly. I would really like for us to be friends. I hope you'll stay with me and help me create the Birth of Neptune's Daughter," he added, turning to walk away. Ulysses trotted at his heels.
The rhythmic chant of the waves sounded behind me and sea spray hit my cheeks. Terns circled and swooped over the waves. The breeze tickled my neck.
Some of what he had told me was the truth, but I knew in my heart that there was more. The secret he kept was burning at him. It was as if he had been branded with the knowledge and knew that every time he was forced to talk about the past, he suffered the agony of remembering.
How strange, I thought as he walked away with his head down. He had a lean, tall figure. His face was bearded, browned by the sea, sun, and wind, and his eyes were full of wisdom and insight beyond his years. I should have felt angrier at him, disappointed, and yet, at this moment, for reasons I was yet to understand, I felt more sorry for him than I did for myself.
And I was the one left standing in the darkness. I was the one who still felt incomplete, lost, drifting in the ocean breeze. I felt like a lone leaf that had fallen from the branch and longed to return if only someone, something showed it the way.
I followed behind Kenneth. He sat again by the sand hill and stared at the waves. I sat beside him and looked out at the turbulent sea.
"I'm looking for just the right one," he said. "Just the right shape, the right image. If I look long enough, the sea will unveil it. Truth requires patience," he said.
I wondered if he were giving me advice. I wondered if he were asking me to be patient.
Just like the sea, he had something more to offer. It was only a matter of time, time to strengthen me so I could handle the truth.
I finally decided.
I liked him. And I would trust Kenneth Childs whether he was my father or not.

3
Don't Look Back
.
I couldn't help feeling nervous before I went to

Grandma Olivia's for lunch on Saturday. I was always jittery whenever I was around her, but it seemed to me she made everyone stand or sit on pins and needles. The only one who appeared at all at ease in her presence was Judge Childs. Even Grandpa Samuel looked uncomfortable most of the time. I winced at the way she dished out biting criticism of him and the things he did. She talked down to him as if he were an insignificant or unintelligent person. I wondered why he tolerated it, and I couldn't imagine the two of them, younger, falling in love.

Nowadays, Grandpa Samuel wore his marriage as if it were a shoe two sizes too small. From what Cary told me and from what I had observed on other occasions, Grandpa Samuel spent as much time as he could away from home, even though he was retired. He played cards with his old friends a few nights a week, never turning down an opportunity to go somewhere in the evening if and when he was invited. Cary said Grandpa regretted retirement and had only stopped working because Grandma Olivia thought it looked as if they needed money if he continued to go to work year after year. During the day he was often down at the docks talking with fishermen and boatmen.

But Grandma Olivia would never permit him to miss one of her formal luncheons on Saturday. Usually, from what I understood, she invited someone of importance from Provincetown or the surrounding area. Political candidates, wealthy business people, even from as far away as Boston, were honored by her invitations and attended.

Grandma Olivia's driver Raymond was a man in his mid sixties, and what people in Provincetown called a Brava, half Negro, half Portuguese. He was one of Roy Patterson's uncles. Roy worked for Uncle Jacob and Roy's daughter Theresa was in my class at school. Everyone knew everyone else here, whether they socialized with each other or not.

Raymond came for me in Grandma and Grandpa Logan's vintage Rolls Royce. It was a partly cloudy day with just enough of a breeze to lift the sand and send it across the road in waves to salt the pavement. The sea air was crisp and fresh like the morning after the first snow in West Virginia. The clouds were the soft, marshmallow type, puffy, large, lazily drifting across the blue. It was a perfect day for an afternoon social affair.

I should have felt like some little princess in the back of the Rolls, sitting on the spotless leather, having a driver open and close doors for me and drive me up to the Logan compound, as it was known. Cary had long since left to work with Uncle Jacob by the time the limousine arrived. I was glad, because I knew he would tease me about it. Uncle Jacob only took Sundays off, and sometimes, not even the entire day. I felt sorry for May, who stood in the doorway watching me get into the limousine. She looked like a sad little rag doll gently waving good-bye. Why couldn't Grandma Olivia have invited her? I wondered. I asked Aunt Sara before I left.

"I don't know, dear," she replied. "Maybe she just wants to spend more time with you or introduce you to important people. But don't worry about May. She'll be fine with me. I'm going to take her in to town for lunch and some shopping."

Still, I thought it was a bitter pill for a little girl to have to swallow. How could a grandmother be so insensitive, especially to a grandchild like May who needed extra care and affection? It put tears in my eyes and washed away any joy or excitement I could have felt going to the luncheon in this plush automobile.

When I arrived, I found only Grandma Olivia, Grandpa Samuel, and Judge Childs sitting on the rear patio. As usual, whenever Grandma Olivia had company, she had servants. A maid was offering them hors d'oeuvres and glasses of champagne. They all turned as I stepped through the doorway.

Even seated, Grandma Olivia had a way of rising beyond her actual height. She stood only a little more than five foot four in her stocking feet, but because of the manner in which she carried herself and the way she sat regally in chairs and somehow managed to gaze down at people (even those who stood a foot taller), she presented a firmer, stronger appearance. As usual, her snow white hair was pulled back in a bun as severely as Aunt Sara's, with a pearl studded comb at the crown. Sometime after I had first met Grandma Olivia, I realized the reason Aunt Sara wore her hair that way was because it was the way Grandma Olivia wore hers. Whether she did it simply to please Uncle Jacob or because she believed everything Grandma Olivia did was, as Mama Arlene would say, "The cat's meow," I don't know, but she did it.