A Solitary Blue

  It wasn’t that he regretted it, it was just that he couldn’t forget. The knowledge was always with him, wherever he happened to be. Nobody else knew. Nobody else could know. Jeff felt as if there was an invisible wall around him that separated him from everybody else. Because he had done to Melody just what she had done to him: she had thought he loved her and he had told her he didn’t. It was the truth, but that didn’t make it any better or make him any better.

  Except occasionally, when he saw Dicey in the hall, he didn’t see the Tillermans, now that school was in session and their crabbing business closed for the season. He was still friendly with her and with Mina and with Phil and Andy. He still played the guitar and got straight A’s. He even went to football games and to parties. But he didn’t tell anybody, not even the Professor, what he was thinking. It wouldn’t do any good, and it would be like asking for comfort. He didn’t deserve comfort, or even sympathy.

  He was responsible for what he had done, and that responsibility buzzed around his head like birds — like sea gulls in a flock, squabbling in midflight about some morsel of food, trying to grab it from whichever bird had it, attacking each other so greedily that the food fell into the water. He and only he had done that — that knowledge flapped inside his head. He couldn’t undo it. He didn’t even want to.

  So he kept himself aloof, inside himself. When he remembered — waking up in the middle of the night — what he had said, how she had looked, what he had answered, shame washed over him like waves, and he buried his head under the pillow. He woke frequently at night that fall and would wander out from his bedroom to the kitchen. Hang on, he told himself, just hang on and it’ll get easier.

  He drank a glass of milk, looked out into the blankness of the night, and reminded himself that it was just what he deserved; it was fair enough. He had known what he was doing and he had done it. He thought, he hoped, that the vivid memory would eventually fade. He was young and in good shape: he didn’t need eight hours of sleep every night. He would endure, like the Professor had, until his feelings faded a little.

  He was sorry the Professor hadn’t gotten to meet Dicey, and the Professor even mentioned that once, but not again. He also missed seeing the Tillermans, but that was just something he’d have to put up with. A part of some punishment, a part of the gulls quarreling and reminding him he wasn’t to be trusted — like Melody. Not exactly like her, but enough. Phil and Andy were all wrapped up in talking about colleges that fall, and Jeff listened to their conversations, adding in his opinion when he was asked. Jeff didn’t think about colleges for himself.

  One November day, when an icy rain sleeted down from the sky, making it chilly even inside the heated car, Jeff passed Sammy Tillerman riding on his bike, a sack of newspapers over his shoulder. The kid’s yellow hair was pounded down over his ears by the rain. Jeff pulled the car over and waited for Sammy to ride up. He made Sammy put his bike into the back, and the two of them drove the rest of Sammy’s paper route. Sammy was starting to grow. His legs, in soaked jeans, were getting longer and his feet looked big. He was going to be a big, muscular man, Jeff thought. He looked pretty strong, even shivering beside Jeff in the car.

  Instead of taking Sammy straight home, Jeff took him to his own house and told him to take a hot shower while he put Sammy’s clothes in the drier. He couldn’t stand looking at Sammy so cold, even for the ten minutes extra it would have taken to drive him to his grandmother’s house. Jeff made cocoa while Sammy called up to explain where he was. It was Maybeth he talked to, saying Jeff would bring him home in a little while. Jeff knew it was Maybeth without asking, because the pace of Sammy’s conversation was slower than usual.

  “She says hello to you,” Sammy reported. He wore one of Jeff’s long-sleeved T-shirts while his clothes dried. “She’s funny. She asked me if you were all right, because we haven’t seen you, I guess. She didn’t ask about me.”

  “Well,” Jeff said. “That’s interesting.”

  Sammy stared at him, as if he’d said something pretty stupid. “But she’s right, isn’t she? I mean, she knows I’m all right, so she doesn’t have to ask. They used to say she was stupid — retarded. Dicey never believed it, but I did. And she is, in some ways, anyway she acts it sometimes — sometimes it drives me crazy she’s so slow.”

  “Not me,” Jeff said.

  “I used to think,” Sammy continued, sitting at the table, drinking cocoa slowly, “that she was going to end up like Momma. I used to think that was bad. Because of how Momma was. But Momma wasn’t just one thing or another, she was more than one, all at the same time. And now I’m older, when I think about it I can understand her better. She’s dead. She died.”

  Jeff could see that Sammy was making himself say that. “I never knew her,” he said, because he thought he ought to say something, and the Tillermans didn’t like sympathy.

  “She was a lot like Maybeth, I think,” Sammy said. “I was too little to really know.”

  “If she was like Maybeth, I would have liked her,” Jeff said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Liked who?” the Professor asked. He had come out from his study. “I heard voices. Is there enough cocoa for me? This is miserable weather.” He sat down with them, and Jeff introduced Sammy, then explained why Sammy’s clothes were in the drier. Sammy told the Professor about his paper route, and how much money it brought in. He boasted a little. Then he said, his hazel eyes mischievous, “James’ll be jealous I met you. Won’t he?” he asked Jeff.

  “Why should he?” the Professor wondered.

  “Because of your book.”

  “How old is James?”

  “Eleven.”

  “That’s too young to read my book.”

  “He’s smart,” Sammy explained.

  “But it doesn’t have anything to do with being smart,” the Professor said, a little surprised.

  Sammy sat back and grinned. “Good-o. Wait’ll I tell James you said that. It’ll serve him right.”

  “Serve him right for what? Being smart?”

  Sammy squirmed in his seat. He didn’t want to answer that question.

  “But I didn’t even let Jeff read it until he was fifteen, and he’s smart too.”

  “Is that true?” Sammy asked Jeff. Jeff nodded. “Why?” Sammy asked the Professor.

  “Because there’s more to it than just brains, or just being able to read the words. You have to be able to read the ideas, too.”

  Sammy studied the Professor. “Could James meet you? He’d like that.”

  “I might like it too,” the Professor said. His eyes, full of humor, met Jeff’s.

  As Jeff drove Sammy home, the boy asked him, “Is that what fathers are like?”

  “I guess so. What do you mean?”

  “I never had one,” Sammy said. “Mine left before I was even born. I never wanted one, but yours has thought about things. He’s really steady, isn’t he? Mine wasn’t — he couldn’t have been, and Gram met him and she said so too. I guess, maybe, they’re all just different. Do you think?’

  “I think,” Jeff said. He didn’t go inside to say hello to anyone, just dropped Sammy off in the yard and waited while he unloaded his bike.

  “Thanks a lot,” Sammy said.

  “Any time,” Jeff told him. He ought to bring James over, he thought, because the Professor would like talking with him. He wondered what the Tillermans’ father had been like. He guessed a man could walk out as easily as a woman. He guessed he was sorry he’d met up with Sammy, because he knew now how different remembering was from being there, being with them.

  Melody didn’t try to get in touch with Jeff or, he thought, the Professor. He couldn’t be positive about his father, who was perfectly capable of keeping a secret. But he thought, watching him, that the Professor kept on in his usual way. He thought also that the Professor would tell him this time, rather than trying to keep it secret. Sometimes Jeff worried over Melody and almost wished she would get in touch just so he would know i
f he’d really hurt her. Most of the time, he was just relieved not to have to deal with her, or think about her — he had enough trouble living with his own sense of guilt. He had bad days, when he despised himself and guilt gnawed at his heart; he had not-so-bad days, when he felt responsibility buzzing around his head like flies. He was managing, he reassured himself, getting through the bad days all right, trying to measure if they were growing easier.

  All that winter, Phil and Andy were preoccupied with the future: where they were going to apply to college, what they were going to study, what jobs they wanted to have when they were through with school. Even the Professor started to talk colleges. Jeff, feeling that he couldn’t make any decisions, tried to put the whole subject off. “Have you thought about it at all?” the Professor asked him.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know what I want to do or study, I don’t have any plans or ambitions. It seems like a waste of time.”

  “What, college?”

  “Thinking about it. Thinking ahead, maybe.”

  “Why?”

  Jeff shrugged. He didn’t want to answer. His father couldn’t guess, and Jeff didn’t want to tell him about how much energy, and work, it took to make it through every day. His father would worry and feel responsible, if he ever did guess.

  “Jeff, you know I don’t like to pester you or nag at you, but — ”

  Jeff waited.

  “But I’m afraid I’m losing touch with you.”

  “No, you aren’t,” Jeff said. “I’m not. I wouldn’t let you.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m getting the feeling — the way I got it that fall before we moved. I’m trying to learn from experience — what kind of an historian would I be if I didn’t? I get the feeling something is worrying you, and I thought maybe it was college.”

  “I’m not worried about college,” Jeff told his father. His father wouldn’t ever guess what it was, because his mind didn’t work that way. “Honest. If you really want to talk about it, I will.” There was just the one thing he wasn’t going to talk to his father about. In a way, it was for the Professor’s sake he had done it. The Professor had needed him to do it. If the Professor could forget about Melody then that was the best thing for him.

  “I’ve been sort of thinking about it. For example, I sort of think I’d like to go into ecology.” The Professor’s face went expressionless. “No, not saving the world or getting back to the good old prehistoric days, not that. But responsible management of it, somehow. I’m thinking about marine biology — with some chemistry and some economies, because it’s never going to be a simple problem — and computers too, because that’s the only efficient way to collate material, so you have to know programming, I guess. Don’t you think?” The Professor nodded, watched, waited. “Nobody understands the bay, nobody really knows how it works. It’s an incredibly complex system, but . . . I want to preserve it, I’d like to do that for a job. Maybe even enrich it.” The Professor nodded. “Or be a waterman, that would be OK too; it’s hard work, but I can do it.”

  “You are thinking about it then.”

  “Of course. What did you think?”

  But the Professor didn’t answer. Anyway, Jeff knew what his father had been thinking, and he hoped he had reassured him.

  “And you haven’t seen your friends the Tillermans, have you?”

  Jeff shrugged. He hadn’t, and he really missed them — missed the singing and the way they were always working at some project, and the way when they laughed together they egged one another on. The first time that had happened, he’d gotten so choked up he’d had to pretend he had to go home. “I know,” he said, and heard the sadness in his voice.

  “I don’t understand,” the Professor asked.

  Jeff could see that, and he was glad, because it wasn’t the Professor’s responsibility, it was his own. If the Professor couldn’t understand, that meant Jeff had done something right, at least in that one respect. “I’m going to be OK, I think, Professor.”

  “I’ve never heard you say that before.”

  “Anyhow, I think it’s the truth,” Jeff said. Keeping an eye on the truth was one of the hardest parts; accepting what he’d done to Melody. No matter what anyone would say she’d done to him, he had still done what he had done to her.

  That year, Brother Thomas didn’t come down for Thanksgiving or for the days after Christmas or for any weekends. He sent Jeff a postcard at Christmas time: “Adeste fideles. Did you know that the preferred meaning of fideles is trustworthy? Seasons greetings to the Tillermans. Thinking of you. BroT.” During the Christmas holiday, Jeff saw a couple of movies with Phil and Andy, went to a couple of parties, but didn’t go to the Tillermans’. The reason he didn’t go was simple: he didn’t go because he really wanted to.

  Dicey never said anything about it, but she didn’t seem angry at him or anything. When they ran into each other at school she’d talk to him in the ordinary way. She didn’t say anything much except she’d answer his questions carefully. They were usually “How are you?” or “What’s new?”

  There was no snow that winter, only a long spell of cold weather that froze the muddy fields into ruts, as if they had been fossilized, that sharpened the edge of the winds so that Jeff rode the bus to and from school every day.

  The weather broke in February, near the end of the month, into a long thaw. March was warm and gentle, without any lion to it at all. In the middle of March, the Professor told Jeff that Brother Thomas wanted to come down after Easter for the remaining week of the spring vacation.

  “That’s great,” Jeff said. “But how come?”

  “I don’t ask him questions,” the Professor answered. “What he said was, he thought we should do some planting. He wants to put in a vegetable garden. I think he’s inspired by your Mrs. Tillerman.”

  That was a curious word, inspired. “He said she was strong,” Jeff said. “He’s pretty strong too, isn’t he? I mean, you have to be, to be a brother.”

  “I think so,” the Professor said. “Maybe it’s like love; it’s so easy to fall in love — the way you fall into the water when the weather is hot — but living in love is different.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Jeff pointed out.

  “Unhm,” the Professor said.

  One afternoon in early April when the Professor’s vacation had begun but Jeff’s hadn’t, he got home to find the Professor vacuuming the kitchen. He shut off the vacuum when Jeff came in. He wore flannels and a regular shirt, with a sweater vest. His hair shone from a recent washing. He had tidied up the room and even washed the big glass doors. “Professor, what’s going on?” Jeff asked. He took his books into his room and hurried back. “What do you want me to do now?”

  “Make a pot of coffee,” the Professor said. He finished the floor and coiled the vacuum cord around the machine. “It’s not warm enough to sit outside, is it?”

  “Too damp still,” Jeff said. “Who’s coming?” Brother Thomas wasn’t due for another ten days, and besides, they didn’t clean like this for Brother Thomas. He put water on to boil, then emptied the dishwasher. The Professor’s nervousness was catching.

  “A gentleman named Beauregard Jacobs,” the Professor said. “Jeff, Gambo died last week. It was a peaceful death he told me.”

  Jeff didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” he said at last.

  “This Beauregard Jacobs is her lawyer. He said he had to see us, me because I’m your guardian.”

  “You’re not my guardian, you’re my father.”

  “He called this morning, he’ll be here in about half an hour. I don’t know, Jeff; does it look all right?”

  “She can’t do anything,” Jeff told his father. “She won’t. Don’t worry.” He knew that, for sure. He had finished Melody last summer, finished her for good and all. She couldn’t get at the Professor again, not any more; and Jeff could only hurt himself.

  “I just want to look as if I’m doing a good job,”
the Professor said, his eyes going around the room, to find anything he’d neglected. “Just in case.”

  But it turned out that Beauregard Jacobs wasn’t interested in the Professor or the housekeeping at all. He had come to see Jeff. He came wearing a white suit and carrying a straw hat in his hand. His shoes narrowed to polished points. He was a big man, as tall as the Professor, but broad and heavy as well. He had dark hair with silver streaks in it and small brown eyes under shaggy eyebrows. He carried an attaché case.

  They sat at the table, Jeff and the Professor at the ends, Mr. Jacobs in the middle so he could spread out papers, with a view out the windows. He had shaken their hands and presented his condolences, as soon as he came in. He had been grateful for a cup of coffee. It had been, he said, a long drive down from the Baltimore airport. This was surely, he said, the most secluded spot he’d ever seen, but then he guessed writers naturally hankered after seclusion.

  “Is that right, Dr. Greene?”

  “I’m not a writer.” The Professor too had a mug of coffee to fiddle with.

  “But surely Miss Melody told me — ”

  “Just a history book,” the Professor said. “But you said you wanted to talk to Jeff?”

  “Yes. Yes, indeed, I do.”

  Jeff waited attentively. He thought about getting a glass of water, so he too would have something to turn in his hands, but decided not to. The lawyer looked straight at him. He waited, listening.

  “Your great-grandmother was a fine lady, very old-fashioned in many ways, which I for one find a rare virtue these days. A rare virtue.”

  Jeff nodded.

  “My father was the man she originally consulted. I inherited her, as you might say.”

  Jeff nodded.

  “I’ve administered her property for a number of years. I think you might say I’m more intimately aware of the structure of the estate than anybody else. She trusted me, I’m glad to say, absolutely. Yes, absolutely.”