A Solitary Blue

  “Yes, he did,” Jeff said, his face expressionless.

  “Well, maybe he did, and I just wanted you to be right here, right then, so I could see you right away. You don’t have any plans that can’t be postponed, do you?”

  “No,” Dicey said when Jeff didn’t answer. “I’ll go along then.”

  “Maybe tomorrow?” Jeff asked her.

  Her eyes, trying to read his expression, were bright with their secondary colors, green, gold. She shook her head. “We’ve got some friends — they have a circus and we’re all going over to Ocean City. I was going to tell you, there won’t be anybody to crab with you for a couple of days.”

  “OK,” Jeff said.

  “Oh dear, it is just the wrong time, isn’t it?” Melody said. “I’m so sorry — what did you say your name was?”

  “Dicey.” She wanted to go, and fast, Jeff could see.

  “A good, old southern name,” Melody said. She tried to get Dicey to like her, to smile at her. “And I am sorry to ruin your day, truly I am. But you know how demanding mothers can be.” Melody smiled as if she and Dicey shared an amusing secret.

  Dicey’s chin went up and her eyes snapped. “No,” she said, “no, I don’t.” She turned abruptly and got back into the boat. Without looking at either of them, she raised the jib and unfurled the main.

  Jeff looked at Melody, who had said about the wrongest thing to Dicey anybody could say.

  “Well, I am sorry, Jeffie; whatever your little friend thinks.”

  Dicey had the main up and cleated. The sails flapped in the wind, snapping with a sound like whips. As she waited by the tiller for the boat to swing around and catch the wind, Dicey stood to sudden attention. Jeff looked where she was looking. He saw the great blue, alarmed now by the sound of the sails, draw itself clumsily up out of the water. It spread out its great wings and looped out toward the bay. Dicey turned to grin at Jeff and raise her hand in farewell. He had his face under too careful control to grin back, but he waved.

  “Let’s go where we can talk, really talk,” Melody said to him. She tucked her hand under his arm and he looked down at her face. She wore makeup on her eyes now, and her hair shone like the night sky. “I’m sorry I drove your little friend away, Jeffie.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference,” Jeff told her. He said it just to say something, but he realized when he heard himself that it really didn’t, not to his friendship with the Tillermans. He wondered who these circus friends were, but James would tell him if Dicey wouldn’t, because James liked to talk. If they were all going, then their grandmother must know them too.

  “It doesn’t make a difference to you, of course,” his mother corrected him as they climbed the wooden steps then stood staring at the windows along the front of the house. “But you ought to think of her, what it might mean to her. She looked like such a bedraggled, lonely little thing. I felt really sorry for her. The poor girl probably has a crush on you.”

  Jeff bit at his lip to keep from smiling.

  “But I can’t feel too sorry for her, not while you’re here. I was so impatient.”

  “Have you been here long?” Jeff asked. Where was his father?

  “It felt long to me. Your father said you’re getting A’s in school. I’m so proud of you. I always knew you were smart; I was always on your side. I’d love to sit out here. See? I’ve been sitting and waiting. He even gave me a glass of iced tea. Really, sometimes he seems perfectly civilized, just like a real human being. Then he went inside to work. What work does he have during the summer?”

  Jeff sat down in the chair, and she sat on the grass dose beside him, her body turned eagerly to him, her eyes fixed on his face, all of her attention on him. “I think he’s writing another book,” Jeff said.

  “Well,” she said. “He is clever after all, isn’t he. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I saw it in a bookstore. ‘That’s my husband,’ I told a perfect stranger next to me. A perfect stranger, I was so proud. Of course, I can’t say that any more, can I?”

  Jeff just shook his head.

  “Poor Jeffie, I was so worried about you in all this. It’s the children who really suffer during a divorce. It must have been so hard for you. But I just knew, somehow, we haven’t been communicating properly, you and I. That’s really why I’m here. If he wants a divorce, that’s all right with me, and goodness knows I wouldn’t say I’ve been much of a wife to him. But really, this selfishness with you — I just couldn’t believe it. So I thought it over and decided to come right up here and get the question settled openly. Your room is all ready for you. Gambo — she’s failing so badly she even made a will and she never would do that before — she needs to see you again. The schools are at least as good as the school here, I’m sure of that. So I just came right up here to collect you.”

  “But — ”

  Melody waited, her eyes smiling into his, light gray rimmed with dark, lovely. She didn’t look any older, she never did, she probably never would, somehow. She was always beautiful.

  “But I thought that was all settled,” Jeff mumbled. What was he supposed to say and where was his father? He looked over his shoulder to the house. A shadowy figure stood by the kitchen window.

  An expression of great sadness washed over Melody’s features, and she turned to hide her face from Jeff. Her voice changed, to a hesitating, little-girl voice. “He said that. Your father. He said you were sixteen and knew what you wanted. But I guess I have to hear that for myself. I couldn’t just believe what someone else told me about my own son. Could I?”

  “No,” Jeff agreed. He felt how sad this made her and how brave she was being, how hard it was for her to be reasonable when she was so sad.

  She stood up slowly, dusted the back of her skirt, subdued now. She walked back to the house. They slid back the big door to enter the kitchen. The Professor stood with his back against the stove, like a man facing a firing squad. Jeff took Melody’s glass to refill it with iced tea, and she smiled sadly at him, sitting down. He glanced out the window of the kitchen door and saw Max’s car, parked down the driveway, almost hidden by bushes and trees. He wondered why she hadn’t pulled it up behind their car.

  Melody leaned her elbows on the table and said, “Well, you win Horace.”

  “Oh, Melody, it’s not that way at all, you know that.”

  The Professor sounded terrible. Jeff looked at his father, whose face was absolutely expressionless, but whose eyes behind the glasses stared at Melody.

  “I don’t know what way it is. I only know — when lawyers get into it the human beings go out. I even hired a male lawyer — me! I thought it was practical; you don’t go up against men with women; I thought I’d have at least an even chance. You’re going to make me beg, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, Melody,” the Professor said.

  “I can talk to him, can’t I? I don’t need permission to do that, do I? Sit down, Jeffie, and just listen. Just hear my side of it. You know your limits, Horace; you know the kind of man you are.”

  The Professor lifted his mug and swallowed helplessly, nodding his head.

  Jeff looked from his mother to his father. His father’s expressionless face masked something, he couldn’t see what.

  “Although this book — you must be very pleased. And the dedication — moved me. Jeffie tells me you’re working on another.”

  The Professor nodded again.

  “I wouldn’t mind a dedication.” Melody smiled across the room into the Professor’s eyes, warm and amused at herself, confident again. “A girl would like a little immortality. Isn’t that right, Jeffie?” She reached across the table and put her hand over Jeff’s. He studied the turquoise rings.

  “After your last visit” — she switched topics abruptly — “I did some serious thinking. About myself — I wasn’t any too pleased with myself, I have to admit it. Or with Max — and I finally figured out that he was jealous, jealous of you, Jeffie. I broke it off with him.” She was lying again, Jeff
knew. “He was a bad influence, on me,” she went on, “and on everyone he came in contact with. I don’t know how he managed to fool me for so long. Some real soul-searching went on that winter, I can tell you. I had neglected — so many things. Even Gambo — it’s Gambo I’m thinking of too, Jeffie; she needs to have you around, especially now, because . . . you let her know that the family goes on. She’s dying and she knows it, and she’d like to have her family around her. Did you think of Gambo? Did you?”

  Jeff shook his head, no. But the decision had been made, it was settled. She couldn’t do anything now.

  “It’s a secure life for him, Horace; it’s safe for him. And civilized, too, and not just because it’s lovely there, gracious and — ” She laughed, stood up, and walked to the window. She turned around to face both of them, where they were frozen into place. “I must admit, with all the money you must have made, I don’t know why you moved down here. It’s not much of a house, nothing like Gambo’s, is it, Jeffie? And the bay — you could have done so much better than that, the bay is a dying body of water, between pleasure boaters and those factories up north dumping who knows what into it, it can’t flush itself clean, you know that, Horace, in ten years. . . .” Her voice trailed off on the threat. “John Smith wrote about the bay and how fertile it was. You could stick a sword into it and fish would jump onto the blade. It’s not like that anymore, is it?”

  The Professor cleared his throat. “John Smith was a terrible liar,” he said, but there was no humor at all in his voice.

  “He’s my son,” she said. Her voice was low and sad. “He’s my only child. I don’t know how you can be so uncaring and selfish. You didn’t used to be so uncaring and selfish. You didn’t used to be unreasonable, Horace; I always admired you for that, and that’s probably the reason I’ve never been serious about another man. Can you honestly say it’s right to grudge me my only child? The only child I’ll ever have?”

  The Professor didn’t answer. He held onto the handle of a mug as if it were a lifeline. He looked at Jeff.

  “I’m not asking for everything, not for all the time, just for the summers, just for a month, or a week, just for a little bit I can count on.”

  Jeff didn’t think he could stand it. It hurt him to feel so sorry for her.

  Melody kept looking at the Professor, talking to him, with the sun behind her making her hair shine gold around her head. “What can you offer him, Horace; be honest, you always were honest. Don’t you think he needs what I can give him? What you can’t give him and never could?”

  Jeff had to break the tension, somehow. He couldn’t think, not even about what he wanted. He only knew that the longer she talked, the worse he felt, and the Professor too, if his face was any indication. The Professor was looking from one to the other of them, back and forth, his head moving in a helpless and bewildered gesture. His father was frightened, miserable and frightened; Jeff saw through the mask to that. Because the Professor still loved her, even though he didn’t want to, even though he didn’t like her or respect her. How could he still love her? The Professor was helpless, and he knew it. And she knew it too, Jeff saw; she was taking advantage of the Professor’s weakness. Somebody had to protect the Professor, or she would really get to him again.

  “How’d you find us?” Jeff demanded. He sounded angry; but then he was angry. Somebody had to stand up for the Professor; somebody had to defend him against what she was doing to him — and doing on purpose too. Jeff knew that intuitively.

  Melody looked as if she had forgotten Jeff was there. “I called the publisher — it’s a wonderful book, Horace, I loved it. I explained who I was, and your editor gave me the address. I thought I might telephone first, but — well, I knew I had to be brave and face you two head on. I was right, wasn’t I, Horace?”

  “But how’d you get here?” Jeff interrupted again. He could figure out what she was up to, and he tried to keep her attention on himself.

  “I rented a car and drove. It’s quicker than flying, with the bridge-tunnel highway. My goodness, Jeffie, why are you grilling me? Then I asked directions. You’re quite a famous man down here, Horace.”

  She hadn’t changed a bit, Jeff thought to himself. And he hated her as much as ever. He thought he had put her behind him, put himself beyond her. He hadn’t changed either, after all. He made himself say it, she made him; well, it was her own fault:

  “It’s my choice.” He heard how cold his voice was. “It was up to me, the Professor said; he always let me choose. I don’t want to live with you. Not all the time, not for the summer, not for a week. Not ever. It’s my decision, not his. It’s what I want.”

  All of her attention turned onto him; and he already felt like he’d been battering at himself. He didn’t need her to add to that. He looked briefly at his father, to remind himself what was at stake.

  Her beautiful eyes looked into his, hurt, surprised. “How can you say that? To me. I’m your mother; doesn’t that mean anything to you? I carried you inside me, under my heart. I’m the one who endured giving birth to you. I nursed you, took care of you. He doesn’t love you the way I do. He can’t, he doesn’t have it in him.”

  “I mean it, Melody. I don’t love you. I really mean it.” Jeff kept his voice level.

  Her eyes were wide and beautiful, drawing him in. “You’re killing me,” she said. “Here,” and she drew one fist up under her heart and pressed the other hand against it.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeff said.

  “You owe me more than that. I’m your mother,” she said, angry now.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeff said again.

  She stared at him. He stared back at her. His shoulders hurt from holding them stiff. After a long time, tears poured out of her eyes. “You’ve made me very unhappy — you, Jeffie.” He nodded, expressionless. “I hope you’re pleased, Horace,” she said.

  “It’s nothing to do with him,” Jeff reminded her, and she just walked out of the door. He heard a motor start.

  Jeff didn’t look at his father, who hadn’t moved. “I’m sorry,” he said, yet again, but meaning something entirely different.

  “Me too,” the Professor said. His eyes were now on the door, and he didn’t really hear Jeff at all, Jeff guessed.

  “I was bringing Dicey over too.”

  The Professor did look at him then, like a man waking up, and asked, “Were you? Well,” and a little humor was back in his eyes, Jeff thought, or hoped. “The best laid plans gang aft a-gley. Don’t they? Another time, maybe.”

  “I couldn’t have picked a worse one. Anyway, she won’t be back again.”

  His father understood who he was talking about. “You can’t predict what Melody will do,” he told Jeff. “I wonder what made her do this,” he said thoughtfully. “Are you OK, Jeff?”

  “I’m fine,” Jeff lied. “I’m just glad it’s over. How about you, are you OK?”

  “I think so,” the Professor said, without confidence.

  CHAPTER 11JEFF WASN’T FINE, and he knew it. But the Professor didn’t know it, which was the important thing.

  Five days after Melody’s visit, school started. During those days the subject of Melody didn’t come up. In fact, both the Professor and Jeff avoided it. Jeff didn’t see that there was anything left to say. What he was thinking — about himself and how he’d acted, about the Professor and what Jeff had guessed — he didn’t see any reason to burden the Professor with that. Jeff knew he’d done what he really wanted to do, and he knew why, and he even thought it was the right thing. But he wasn’t too pleased with himself, all the same.

  On the first day of school, Phil came up to him smirking, his face so tan his grin looked like a TV advertisement for toothpaste. “I met your Mom. I’m still recovering. I mean, Jeff — ”

  “How’d you do that?” Jeff asked. It was the end of lunch break and they sat outside, while people with new school clothes and deep summer tans made themselves reacquainted. Jeff figured Phil had made some mistake.

>   “I was covering for my sister at the stand, last Wednesday afternoon — and to think I almost didn’t do it. This dusty old car pulled up, the kind you expect fusty middle-aged people to ride around in, you know? And look at every tomato before they decide which to buy then try to argue down the price. And then buy exactly three ears of corn because she only eats one, and more than two is bad for his digestion. This car pulled up. I didn’t pay any attention, except to notice that it had South Carolina plates, because we don’t often see those. Then the legs emerged — and the rest of her. By then I was riveted to attention. And that voice. And those eyes — they’re like yours only . . . not the same. I mean, she looks right into your eyes with hers. Wow.”

  Jeff didn’t want to talk about Melody.

  “When she asked for you, I almost asked if she was your mother. She asked if I knew your address, as a matter of fact. I said you were in my class. She said I looked older than you. She couldn’t remember the directions, which makes sense, I guess; we’re so rural and she said she lives in the city — so I drew her a map. Is she still there? I’d sure like to see her again. She knows about pesticides and herbicides — she liked our tomatoes.”

  Jeff just shook his head.

  “I mean, what a great mother for anybody to have,” Phil went on. “Did she say she’d met me?”

  Jeff shrugged. He guessed, in her way, Melody was something special.

  “With women like that in the world, it makes you glad to be a man, doesn’t it?”

  That too, Jeff couldn’t answer, because he judged himself to have acted like not much of a man in relation to Melody. He had acted the way he felt: scared, and cruel because he was scared. As far as he was concerned, nobody should ever be as cruel to anyone as he had been to Melody. There was no excuse. Phil drifted away from his unresponsive company, and Jeff continued his own thoughts. He’d do the same thing again and the same way if he couldn’t do better, but he’d never kid himself about liking what he’d done.