Heartsong

  upset with himself. I told him it was my fault. "It's not your fault," he snapped at me. "I

  thought it was a good idea and it is."

  He climbed upstairs to his work room because

  he was just as embarrassed by his father's reprimands

  as he was angry. I entertained May, playing Chinese

  checkers until she couldn't keep her eyes open. I kept

  looking for Cary to come down to the living room, but

  he didn't leave his attic retreat until after I had gone to

  bed myself.

  So much for Uncle Jacob's first night home

  from the hospital, I thought. In any other house, it would be a night of joy, but in this one, it was a night

  of tension.

  During the night I heard Aunt Sara leave the

  bedroom and go downstairs to fetch something for

  him, and before morning, I heard her do it again. At

  breakfast, the fatigue was still planted well in her

  eyes. She got herself up early enough to give Cary his

  breakfast before he went down to the dock, and then

  she began bringing things up to Uncle Jacob. I tried to

  help, but she said it would be better for now if she did

  it herself.

  "He's a little grouchy about being so confined,"

  she explained.

  I hated to leave for the day, but at least May

  was going to remain at home to be of some assistance.

  If Uncle Jacob would let her help, that is.

  I wondered when Grandma Olivia and Grandpa

  Samuel would be by to visit. I asked Aunt Sara. "Later today," she told me. "Olivia's mad at

  Jacob for forcing the doctors to release him from the

  hospital. She wasn't going to come at all, but I begged

  her and told her Jacob would only become more upset

  and it wasn't good for him."

  "She wasn't going to come?" I asked,

  astounded.

  "Oh, she was just blustering about," Aunt Sara

  explained. "I swear. This is the most stubborn family."

  She bit down on her lower lip as if she had uttered the

  worst profanity or heresy. "It will be all right. Please,

  God, everything will be all right," she said.

  I heard the sound of a muffled car horn and

  hurried out, but instead of Kenneth, Holly was there to

  pick me up.

  "He can't drag himself away from his block of

  marble," she explained. "I think I saw him for ten

  minutes yesterday. So, how was your visit with your

  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

&nbs
p; 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,