Melody

  "You shouldn't be walking on this highway," he chastised.

  "I have no other way to go," I said.

  "Well, get in and I'll drop you off. Come on. My wife would give me hell if she heard I let a young girl walk along here."

  I smiled and got into the truck. The seat was torn and there was a basket of what looked like seashells on the floor of the cab, along with all sorts of tools.

  "Don't worry about any of that stuff. My granddaughter likes to make things with seashells," he explained.

  He had gray stubble over his chin and the sides of his jaw, and his thin gray hair ran untrimmed down the sides of his temples and the back of his head, but he had kind blue eyes and a gentle smile. He reminded me of Papa George. Papa George, I thought, how I missed him.

  "So where are you heading with your sails up like that?" he asked.

  "My grandparents' house, the Logans," l told him and his eyes widened.

  "Olivia and Samuel Logan?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "I heard their granddaughter was deaf."

  "I'm a different granddaughter."

  "Oh. Didn't know. Course, I don't keep company with your folks. I worked for your grandfather once a long time ago. Built a tool shed for him. Paid me on time, too," he added. His truck rumbled along about half the speed of the cars that flew by us, but he didn't care.

  "Everyone's in a mad rush," he muttered. "Chasing the almighty dollar, but they miss the good stuff along the way."

  He smiled at me and then he grew serious as though the thought just crossed his mind.

  "You're Chester's little girl?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What ever happened to him? No one seemed to know much about him after he left here with your mother."

  "He was killed in a coal mine accident," I said, my throat choking up immediately.

  "Coal mine? Is that what he left here to do? I never could understand. ." He gazed at me a moment and saw the sad look on my face. "Sorry to bring it up. Didn't know," he muttered awkwardly. Then he turned into a concerned grandparent again. "I'm surprised to see Samuel Logan lets his granddaughter walk along this crazy highway."

  "I just decided to do it on my own," I said quickly. He nodded, but his eyes remained suspicious. "That's it ahead," he said.

  "I know. Thank you."

  He stopped and I got out and thanked him again. "Now you don't walk that highway no more, hear?" "Yes sir," I said.

  "I'm sorry about your father. I just knew him when he was younger, but he seemed to be a fine young man."

  "Thank you."

  "Bye," he said, and drove off.

  I sucked in my breath, straightened my shoulders, reaffirmed my determination, and walked up the driveway to my grandmother's home. Before I reached the front door, a dark-skinned man of about fifty or so came around the corner of the house, pushing a wheelbarrow.

  "You looking for Mrs. Logan?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "She's around back in the vegetable garden," he said.

  I thanked him and went to the rear of the house, where Grandma Olivia was on her knees in her fenced-in garden. She was dressed in a pair of old jeans and she wore a flannel shirt and work gloves. She had a wide-brimmed hat with a few fake carnations sticking up in the rear of it. I was so shocked to see her looking so casual, I paused to watch her dig out weeds. The contrast between the woman who reigned like a queen in the elegant house and this woman with her hands in dirt, wearing old and tattered clothing, was so great, I thought I was looking at a stranger.

  She sensed me behind her and turned. "Hand me that iron claw there," she ordered, pointing to a pile of tools nearby. I hurried to do so. "Careful where you step," she said. "I don't want to lose any of those carrots." She took the tool from me and scratched the earth around a tomato plant. "You walk all the way?" she asked as she worked.

  "No, Grandma. Some kind old man in a pickup truck stopped to give me a lift."

  "You were hitchhiking?"

  "Not exactly."

  "You always get into trucks with strangers?"

  "No."

  She paused and wiped her forehead.

  "It's going to rain tonight," she said with the same tone of voice Cary had used when he made his weather prediction. "We need it. I had a better garden last year."

  "It looks nice."

  She shook her head and stood up. Then she pointed to a small table. There were a mauve ceramic pitcher and some glasses on it.

  "You want some lemonade?" she asked.

  "Yes, thank you."

  She poured me a glass and a glass for herself. Then she sat and looked up at me as I drank.

  "All right, you've come to see me. Why?" she demanded.

  My lemonade caught in my throat for a moment. I took a deep breath and sat across from her.

  "I want to know the truth about my parents," I said.

  "I'm tired of not knowing the truth and knowing only lies."

  "That's good. I can't countenance a liar, and goodness knows, this family's had more than its share of them. All right," she said sitting back. "What is it you want to know?"

  "Why do you hate my father so? He was your son." "He was my son until she stole him from me," Grandma Olivia said.

  "But I don't understand that. You adopted my mother, right? You wanted her in your home."

  She looked away for a moment.

  "That was something I couldn't help. I never wanted her in my home, but I had to have her."

  "Why?" I pursued.

  She turned back to me.

  "Haille was my sister's illegitimate daughter," she said. "My sister was a spoiled, silly girl from the start. My father spoiled her and she grew up thinking anything she wanted, she could have. She couldn't tolerate waiting or disappointment. Her solution was to turn to alcohol and drugs. I always did my best to protect and shelter her from herself, and maybe I'm to blame as much as my father, but I made him a foolish promise on his death-bed: I promised to look after Belinda and see to her happiness."

  Her sister was my grandmother? My mind spun. I tried not to look overwhelmed for fear she would stop talking.

  "What happened to your mother?" I asked.

  "My mother was a weak woman herself. She couldn't face unpleasantness and always pretended it wasn't there. The truth was my father had three daughters, not two. My mother died of breast cancer. She ignored the diagnosis, just as she had ignored all bad news.

  "Anyway, my sister became pregnant with your mother and I made the stupid mistake of having her here during the birth. I made the second mistake of not giving the baby away. My husband," she said bitterly, "thought that would be a horrible thing to do, and he reminded me of my oath to my father on his deathbed. So," she said with a deep sigh, "I took Haille into my home and raised her with my sons, something I'll regret until my dying day."

  "Then Belinda is my grandmother?"

  "Yes," she said with a nod and a twisted smile. "That wretch living in a home is your grandmother. Go claim her," she said. She looked as if she were going to end our conversation, so I repeated my original question.

  "But why do you hate your own son, my father? Because he married his cousin and had me?" I ventured.

  She regarded me with a cold, hard stare. "You think you're old enough for the truth?" she challenged.

  "Yes," I said, my heart pounding, my breath so thin I could barely utter the word.

  "Your mother grew up here, had the best of everything. My husband spoiled her just the way my father had spoiled my sister. All Haille had to do was bat her eyelashes at Samuel and he'd do her bidding: buy her the dress and jewelry, permit her to go out when I had already said no and on and on. I warned him about her, but he wouldn't listen. She was the little girl I had never given him. Just like all men, he thought he was supposed to spoil his little girl. They confuse flooding them with gifts and their kisses of thanks and hugs as love.

  "She had boyfriends. Dozens of boys marched through this house, followed her every
where, came at her beck and call, groveled for her kisses. Every time I forbade something or punished her for something, Samuel overruled me, and what was the final result? The hand that fed her was bitten."

  She paused. The telling of the story was exhausting her emotionally and physically. She sipped some lemonade and shook her head.

  "What do you mean, the hand that fed her was bitten?" I asked after she had rested.

  "Just like her mother before her, she slept around, and what do you think? She got pregnant, too. With you! Then she did the unforgivable thing." Grandma paused as if to get up enough breath and strength. "She blamed Samuel. She stood before me in this very house and claimed my husband, her stepfather, had slept with her and made her pregnant. Samuel was devastated, but I told him he deserved it for what he had done all those years."

  I shook my head.

  "I don't understand," I said, the tears filling my eyelids.

  She laughed a wicked, short laugh.

  "What's there to understand? She thought if she blamed Samuel, she could escape blame herself."

  "But my daddy--"

  "Your father, my son, turned on his own father. Chester turned on me," she said. "He took her side, believed her, actually believed his own father could have done such a thing. Can you imagine the heartbreak I endured, sitting there in that house and hearing my son tell me he believed that--that whore and not his own father? Can you? I told them both to get out, and as long as he took her side, to stay away. I told him I would have nothing more to do with a son who turned on his own parents that way. He knew Haille's background, but he. . . She beguiled him, too, just as she beguiles everyone she touches.

  "Jacob was heartbroken as well. He couldn't believe his brother would do such a thing. They had a terrible fistfight on the beach behind this house and never spoke again."

  I shook my head.

  "None of this can be true. Why did my mother bring me back here?" I cried through my tears. Grandma smiled and nodded.

  "Why? She wanted to get rid of you, dear, and she knew about Sara's loss. Sara's always been a kind person.

  She was willing to take you in, and Jacob, God bless him for his kindness, too, wants to do nothing but what will make Sara happy again. Haille took advantage of someone in this family once more. It's that simple.

  "I kept quiet about it," she continued. "After all, you are my sister's granddaughter, and, remembering the promise I made to my father on his deathbed, I didn't oppose it as long as I didn't have to set eyes on your mother."

  I sat there, shaking my head. It had to be more lies, lies built on lies.

  "My daddy never treated me as anything but his own daughter," I said. "He loved me."

  "I'm sure he did. If he only had remembered his love for his mother and father as well," she said.

  I stared at her, trying to make sense of it, slowly realizing what it meant if what she was saying was true.

  "If my daddy thought that Grandpa Samuel was my father then . . . he knew he wasn't my daddy," I concluded.

  "Precisely," Grandma Olivia said with some renewed energy. "And yet he still ran off with her, he still took her side and turned his back on his own mother and father."

  "But. . . who is my father?"

  "Take your pick. It could be anyone," she said dryly. "Maybe someday your mother will tell you, only the truth leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. She can't stomach it."

  I continued to shake my head.

  "I don't believe my daddy wasn't my daddy," I insisted.

  "Suit yourself." Grandma Olivia sipped the rest of the lemonade in her glass. "You demanded I tell you the truth and I have. You said you were old enough and I believed you. If you want to continue living in a world of illusions and lies along with your mother, be my guest, only don't come around here accusing anyone of anything.

  "What you should do," she said, standing, "is get your mother to come back for you and bear up to her own responsibilities. But I wouldn't get my hopes up." She gazed down at me. "As long as you behave, do as your told, pull your share, Jacob won't throw you out of his house. They tell me you really are a good student, so if you deserve it, I'll see that you get an education. I'll do it for my father, because of the promises I made."

  "I don't want anything from you," I said bitterly.

  She laughed a laugh that reminded me of glass shattering.

  "In time, I'm sure you'll change your mind about that. Just make sure you don't do anything to change my mind about being generous," she warned, pointing her small, crooked little forefinger at me. "That includes making my son and his family unhappy. I'm going in now to wash up. If you want, I'll have Ralph, my handyman, take you home."

  I sat there, my shoulders shaking, the sobs rattling my rib cage and throwing a terrific chill over me. I embraced myself.

  "I don't have the time to stand here and watch you become hysterical," she said. "When you're finished, come into the house and I'll see to it you're taken home."

  She started away. I looked out at the ocean. The heavier cloud cover was making its way toward shore and the wind had grown in intensity, lifting the whitecaps. For a few moments the monotonous way in which the ocean waves slapped the rocks hypnotized me. Terns screamed. I tried to shrink into that small hiding place in my brain where I could feel safe and unafraid, but that place felt like a cage.

  I hate Cape Cod, I thought. I hate being here another moment. I rose quickly, but I walked slowly, pensively toward the front of the house. When I looked back, I thought I saw a curtain part and Grandma Olivia gaze out, but the sun dipped behind one of those heavy oncoming clouds, and the shadows that fell over the house darkened the window and, like black magic, changed it into a mirror.

  When I reached the highway, I didn't turn toward town. For a long time, I just walked, feeling mesmerized. Cars and trucks whizzed by, but this time their closeness, the breeze in their wake, the loud horns that blared--none of them bothered me.

  My daddy wasn't really my daddy. He could be anyone. Is that what Grandma Olivia had said, with spite? How could Mommy have left me drifting in such a hellish place? She really was selfish. I didn't want to believe the terrible things Grandma Olivia had said about her, but in my deepest soul I knew it all made sense. If I honestly faced up to what and who Mommy was now, I would have no trouble believing who and what she was back then. But to make such a disgusting claim, to blame my grandfather for my existence. . . I almost sided with Grandma Olivia and Uncle Jacob.

  I don't know how long I walked or how far I actually had gone before I heard a continuous horn blaring and turned to see Cary in his father's pickup. He pulled to the side of the road behind me and hopped out.

  "Where are you going? I've been crazy with worry. Everyone has, even Grandma Olivia."

  "She told me the truth, Cary," I said.

  The sky had become almost completely overcast. The wind was even stronger and the temperature felt as if it had dropped a dozen degrees. I had been shivering without even realizing it. Cary quickly peeled off his jacket and put it around my shoulders.

  "Come home," he said.

  I shook my head and backed away from him. "That's not my home, Cary. Your father is not my uncle and your mother is not my aunt."

  "What are you saying?" he asked, a confused, half-silly grin on his face.

  "Just that. My daddy was. . my daddy--"

  "What?"

  "He wasn't my daddy. Mommy was pregnant with me by someone else and she accused--" I had to swallow first before I could continue. "She accused Grandpa Samuel. Daddy believed her and that's why they stopped talking to him. Your father and--my--" It suddenly occurred to me who he was. "My stepfather had a fistfight on the beach and never spoke to each other again. You didn't know that?"

  I saw from the expression on his face that he knew something.

  "I knew that they'd had a fight, but I never knew why," he admitted.

  "Why didn't you tell me that?"

  "I didn't want you to hate us and leav
e," he confessed.

  "Well, that's what I'm doing. I'm leaving this place." I turned and started away. He caught up and took me by the elbow.

  "Stop. You can't just walk down this highway."

  "And why not? I've got to go home," I said. "I've got to see Mama Arlene and Papa George."

  "You're going to walk back to West Virginia?"

  "I'll hitchhike," I said. "I'll beg rides. I'll do chores to get people to give me lifts or money for bus tickets. But I'll get home. Somehow, I'll get there," I said, my eyes seeing him, but looking beyond and seeing the old trailer house, Mama Arlene waving goodbye, Papa George smiling at me from his bed, and Daddy's grave, the tombstone I had hugged with all my heart before I was forced to leave. "Somehow," I muttered.

  "Won't you come home and get your things first? Have a good meal?"

  "I don't want to eat and I don't care about those things," I said. "Tell Aunt Sara I'll send this dress back first chance I get," I added and started walking again.

  "Wait a minute, Melody. You can't do this."

  I kept walking.

  "Melody!"

  "I'm going, Cary. Not you, not anyone can stop me," I said, full of defiance and anger. I walked and he was silent for a few moments. Then he caught up and walked alongside me. "Why are you doing this, Cary? You can't stop me."

  "I know. I'm just thinking about it."

  I stopped and turned to him.

  "What do you mean?"

  He thought and then nodded his head, "All right." He dug into his pocket and came up with a money clip stuffed with bills. "I'll drive you to Boston and give you the money you need for your bus ticket."

  "You will?"

  "Of course, I will. I'm not going to let you walk down Route Six and hitchhike, and I can see you are determined. Wait here. I'll go back and get the truck."

  "But your father will be furious, Cary."

  "It won't be the first time or the last, I imagine. He's already going to be mad about my taking the truck," he added and shrugged. "Don't worry about me."

  He ran back to the truck and drove up to rne. I got in and we started down the highway.