Music in the Night

  I had hoped Cary would find Robert's devotion to his family and their business admirable. He and Robert really had a lot in common, but from the moment Robert had the courage to step up to me in the hallway and begin a conversation right in front of Cary, Cary's eyes grew small and dark whenever Robert was around me.

  Robert always tried to include him in

  conversation, but Cary's responses were short, sometimes not much more than a grunt or a shrug. I was afraid Robert would be either frightened away or bothered so much by Cary's behavior that he would stop speaking to me and walking with me, but instead he grew bolder and even took a break from working on the hotel and visited me at home one Saturday.

  Cary had gone to the dock to work on the lobster boat engine with Daddy and Roy Patterson. I introduced Robert to Mommy and to May, and May fell in love with him faster than I had. Robert was good at picking up signing, too. Before he left that day, he had learned to say "hello," "good-bye," and "I'm very, very hungry."

  Later, when Cary returned and Mommy told him and Daddy I had had company, Cary turned white and then bright red when he asked me why I hadn't brought him down to the dock.

  "I didn't want to interrupt you," I explained. Actually, I was grateful for the privacy, for not having Cary hovering over us.

  He looked hurt and then angry.

  "Ashamed of what we do?" he asked.

  "Of course not," I protested. "And besides, you've spoken to Robert. You know he's not like that. He doesn't come from a snobby family, Cary. If anyone's family is snobby, it's ours."

  Cary grunted, reluctant to admit I was right.

  "He probably knew I was down at the dock all day," he muttered.

  "What? Why would that matter, Cary?"

  "It matters," he said. "Believe me, all these guys take advantage, Laura. You're just too trusting. It's why I have to look out for you," he declared.

  "No, you don't, not with Robert, and I am not too trusting, Cary Logan. You don't know everything there is to know about me, and you certainly know nothing about romance," I flared, and stomped up to my room, closing the door behind me.

  After my heart stopped pounding and I grew calm, I lay back and thought about my wonderful afternoon with Robert, walking on the beach, holding his hand, just talking. We told each other about ourselves, our favorite foods and colors and books. He was surprised that we didn't have a television set, but he refused to criticize Daddy when he learned it was Daddy's decision.

  "Your father's probably right," he said. "You do read more than anyone I know and you're a great student."

  He smiled that sort of smile that embeds itself in your mind, prints itself on the surface of your memory, embossed behind your eyelids whenever you close them and think about him. He had azure-blue eyes that turned opaque whenever he spoke deeply or seriously to me, but when he smiled, his eyes brightened as if they had drawn sunshine into them. It was the sort of smile that warmed your heart, infectious, sweeping away any cobwebs of gloom.

  Robert was about an inch taller than Cary and just as broad-shouldered. He had longer arms, but was not as muscular. He wore his light brown hair short and always neatly brushed at the sides with just a slight wave in front. Because he was a year older and a senior, we didn't have any classes together, but I knew he was a good student and his teachers liked him because he was polite and inquisitive.

  Cary had never been a very good student. He wore school like a pair of pants two sizes too small, reluctant to get in, struggling to be comfortable, relieved when the end-of-the-day bell rang. He hated being shut up and regimented by the clock and the rules. He was truly a fish out of water.

  Consequently, Robert Royce's success in school was another thing Cary resented. He hated whenever Robert and I got into discussions about history or a book we'd read for class. To Cary, it was as if we had begun to speak in a different language. On a few occasions, however, Robert did try to talk about his family's problems with the hotel, construction difficulties, the use of tools and paints, things Cary understood and appreciated. Almost as reluctant as someone sitting in a dentist's chair, Cary would settle into conversation, offering his suggestions as dryly and as quickly as he could.

  Later, Cary would tell me Robert should stick to quizzes in history and leave the real work to men more qualified. That only brought a smile to my face and a look of confusion to Cary's.

  "What?" he demanded. "What is so funny now, Laura? I swear, you walk around with a stupid grin on your face all the time these days. You just don't know how silly you look."

  "You simply can't admit you like him, can you, Cary?" I said, and he reddened.

  "I don't," he insisted. "There's nothing to admit."

  Despite this gloomy prognosis, I hoped and prayed Cary would eventually become friends with Robert, especially after he had asked me to the school dance. Mommy really liked Robert, but Daddy hadn't met him yet and I knew he wouldn't give me permission to go to the dance with him until he had, so the Saturday after he had asked me, invited him to the house for lunch.

  Robert charmed Mommy again by bringing her a box of candy. Cary called it a bribe, but I patiently explained it was only a polite gesture, something people invited to lunch or dinner often do. As usual, he grunted and turned away rather than admit I might be right.

  At lunch, Robert sat beside me and across from Cary, who kept his eyes down and refused to talk. We began our meal as usual with a reading from the Bible. I had warned Robert that was something Daddy always did. Daddy paused when he opened the holy book and gazed at Robert.

  "Perhaps our guest has a suggestion," he said. Cary started to smile. It was Daddy's little test. He was always lecturing us that young people were slipping into sin faster because they didn't know their Bible.

  Robert thought a moment and said, "I like Matthew, Chapter Seven." Daddy raised his eyebrows. He glanced at Cary, who suddenly looked glum.

  "You know that one, Cary?" Daddy asked.

  Cary was silent and then Daddy handed Robert the Bible. Robert opened it, smiled at me, and glanced at Cary before beginning in a soft, silky voice.

  "'Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged . "

  He read on and then looked up. Daddy nodded. "Good," he said. "Good words to remember."

  "Yes sir, they are," Robert said, and Daddy and he began a conversation about the tourist business, the old Sea Marina and how Daddy remembered it. I was afraid Daddy would take off on his and Grandma Olivia's favorite pet peeve--how the tourists were ruining the Cape--but he was civil and said nothing critical.

  Cary sulked with his back against the chair, only speaking when he wanted someone to pass him a dish.

  Robert confessed that he knew little about the lobster fishing business, and even less about the sea and boats.

  "We've been so busy fixing up the place, I haven't had much time for anything else," he explained.

  "That's all right. Your parents need you first. Maybe after lunch, you can come down to the dock and see our rig," Daddy said and looked at Cary. But after lunch Cary claimed he had work to do on one of his models and had spent enough time on the boat that week anyway.

  I took May's hand and Robert took her other hand the way Cary always did. The three of us followed Daddy down to the dock. I turned and looked back at the house and thought I saw Cary looking out of an upstairs window. For a moment I felt like bursting into tears, but Robert's smile drove that feeling away quickly and we continued on.

  Most important, Daddy approved of Robert that day and so tonight I would be attending the school dance with my very first boyfriend. The school was buzzing like a beehive all day long. Everyone was fidgety in their seat in class and the cafeteria sounded like a hundred more students had enrolled that morning. Only Cary moved like a somber mourner through the halls, his face gray, his eyes dark. He sat silently, eating mechanically in the cafeteria.

  "Why don't you ask Millie Stargel to the dance tonight, Cary?" I suggest
ed when Robert and I sat down with him. "I know no one has asked her yet."

  Cary stopped chewing and looked at me with such pain in his eyes, I got a huge lump in my throat and couldn't swallow for a moment.

  "Millie Stargel?" He laughed. It was a wild, loud, and frightening laugh. "Whose idea was that, his?" he said, nodding at Robert.

  "No, I just thought--"

  "She's a pretty girl," Robert said, "and I bet she'd love to go."

  "So why don't you ask her?" Cary retorted.

  Robert smiled softly and gazed at me.

  "I've already got a date," he said.

  "Then why are you looking at other girls?" Cary shot back at him.

  "I'm not. I was only saying--"

  "See, I warned you," Cary said to me and got up. "These dances are stupid anyway," he said. "Hanging out in the school gym is not my idea of fun. If I go on a date, I'm not going to bring her back to this place."

  "Cary," I called as he started away. He just glared back and continued out of the cafeteria.

  "He'll be all right," Robert said, and put his hand over mine. "One day he'll meet someone and his heart will pound just like mine did when I first looked at you."

  I nodded.

  But I didn't have as much confidence in something like that happening to Cary anytime soon.

  Not for a moment. And I knew that until Cary was happy, I would have a very hard time being happy myself.

  It seemed to me Cary deliberately walked a great deal slower than usual when we left school. He didn't have to be a genius to see how eager I was to get back to the house.

  "May will be waiting for us," I complained. "I'm not waiting for you to catch up," I added.

  "So go on by yourself," he said, and I hurried away.

  May was actually just coming out of her school when I arrived. I signed for her to hurry and we started for home. Cary was so far behind, he was still out of sight of May's school. May asked where he was and I told her he was being a brat. She looked back, confused, but she didn't slow down. She knew why I was hurrying home and she was almost as excited as I was. When we got to our house she asked if she could help me get ready for the dance and I signed back that I would need all the help I could get. May laughed and signed that she thought I was already beautiful, so I wouldn't be needing much help at all.

  Despite May's words of encouragement, I wanted to do something special with my hair. I had shown Mommy a picture of a girl in Seventeen and told her I wanted to style my hair that way. She said she would help. She was almost as good at it as a regular beautician. So after I showered and washed my hair, I sat at my vanity table and Mammy began to brush out my hair and trim it. May sat on the stool beside me and watched, her eyes full of excitement: She was full of questions.

  Why, she wanted to know, did I have to change the way my hair looked?

  "This is a special occasion," I told her. "I want to try to look as good as I can."

  "Oh, you'll be beautiful, Laura," Mommy said. "You're the prettiest girl in the school."

  "Oh Mommy."

  "You are. Cary says so."

  "He's . . . prejudiced," I said.

  "I remember there was a girl named Elaine Whiting when I was in school. She was so pretty everyone thought she would become a movie star. All the boys tried so hard to be the first to ask her to the school dances. I never saw her without every hair being in place and there wasn't a boy whose head didn't spin when she walked by. I bet it's the same for you," Mommy said with a wonderfully happy smile on her face. She was looking at me in the mirror, but her eyes seemed to be focused on her own fantasy. I could tell that neither she nor Daddy had ever heard a nasty whisper about Cary and me. It would just break her heart if she knew what some of the students in the school thought. Ugly rumors could be like infectious diseases, corrupting, rotting, sickening even the most healthy of souls.

  "Which boys did you go to dances with, Mommy?" I asked her.

  "Oh, no one ever asked me. I was what you would call a wallflower," she said with a smile, "I'm sure you weren't, Mommy."

  "I was frightfully shy, especially around boys. I was glad when my father and Samuel planned my marriage to your father."

  "What? Your marriage was arranged?"

  "Well, I guess you could call it that, though it really wasn't as bad as it sounds. Our fathers discussed it and I guess Grandpa Samuel told your father and he decided I would do, and he began to take an interest in me.

  She paused and laughed at a memory.

  "What?"

  "I was just remembering the first time your father spoke to me. I was coming home from work at Gray's Pharmacy and he slowed down in his truck and asked if I wanted a ride. I knew who he was. Everyone knew who the Logans were. Anyway, I didn't reply. I kept walking, afraid to even turn my head toward him. He drove ahead and then stopped and waited until I reached him and he leaned out and asked me again. I shook my head without speaking and kept walking."

  "Then what happened?" I asked, breath bated.

  "He drove off and I thought that was the end of it, but when I turned the corner and started down the street toward my home, there he was. He had parked his truck and was leaning against the door, waiting for me. I tell you I was terrified," she admitted and then glanced at May, who was tilting her head, wondering what Mommy was talking about for so long.

  "I almost turned around and went the other way, but I kept walking, and when I reached him, he stood up and said, 'I'm glad you didn't accept my offer out of hand, Sara. Shows you're not a frivolous young lady. Your father and mine have been talking about how we would make a good couple. I'd like permission to come calling on you next Saturday, properly.'

  "Well, that just took my breath away," she said. "You see, I had no idea of my father's plan up until then. I didn't even know he and Samuel Logan were friends. Well, once I recovered, your father asked, 'Do I have your permission?' and I nodded. 'Thank you,' he said and drove off, leaving me standing there with the most befuddled look on my face, I'm sure."

  "Did he come calling the following Saturday?"

  "He did and then we began to go out on dates. Our fathers had discussed our marriage, but Jacob didn't bring me to see Olivia for some time. She wasn't exactly demanding he bring me up to the house," she added.

  "Why not?"

  "I think Olivia Logan had someone else in mind for your father, someone more . . . wealthy, someone with a social position," she said. "But Grandpa Samuel had gone ahead and discussed it with my father and Jacob took a liking to me, so that was that. No matter," she said with a small wave of her hand. "That's all in the past now. Let's get back to your hair," she said excitedly.

  "Did you have a nice wedding, Mommy?" I asked, not ready to give up the first glimpse I'd gotten into my parents' early life together.

  "It was a simple wedding at Olivia and Samuel's home. Judge Childs married us."

  "I never heard you talk about your honeymoon, Mommy."

  "That's because I didn't have one."

  "You didn't?"

  "Not really. Your father had to go back to work the next day. We told ourselves we would take a vacation soon, but we didn't. Life," she said with a sigh, "life just takes over. Before I knew it, I was pregnant with you and Cary. Don't look so sad, Laura," she said, gazing at me in the mirror. "I'm not an unhappy woman."

  "I know you're not, Mommy, but I just wish you had a chance to travel, to have some fun, to leave Provincetown just once. No one in our family ever leaves here. . . . No one except Uncle Chester and Aunt Haille. Mommy, I never understood why Daddy stopped talking to Uncle Chester and why Uncle Chester and Aunt Haille left Provincetown," I said,

  "You know your father doesn't want us talking about them, Laura."

  "I know, but--"

  "This is such a happy time. Please, dear," she begged. She closed her eyes and then opened them as she often did when she wanted to just forget or skip over something unpleasant. I didn't want to make her uncomfortable, but Uncle Chester and Aunt
Haille remained the big mystery in our family, and I just naturally wondered what had complicated their love affair and marriage to make them outcasts in our family.

  But Mommy was right: Tonight was not the time to press for answers.

  "Okay, Mommy," I said. She looked grateful. I smiled and turned to May, who was signing and demanding to know what all the talk was about. I told her as much as I could. While I was signing, I heard the creak in the floorboards above and realized Cary was in his attic workshop. I glanced up at the ceiling, thinking about him, thinking about how he would spend one of my most wonderful nights, alone and bitter.

  Suddenly, I saw what looked like a pinhole of light in the ceiling. My breath caught and I brought my hand to my chest.

  "What's wrong, dear?" Mommy asked.

  "What? Nothing," I said. "That looks fine, Mommy. I better lay out my clothes now," I said quickly.

  She stepped back and nodded. I glanced up at the ceiling again. The light was gone, as if someone had covered the hole. Why hadn't I ever noticed it before? I wondered. My fingers trembled as I sifted through my closet to find my most beautiful dress, the pink taffeta Mommy had made for me. It was the only formal dress I owned.

  It was a good dancing dress, too. All week I had been practicing dancing with it on. May sat on the bed and watched and then, when she got up her nerve, joined and imitated me. We laughed and grew dizzy.

  Now I thought about the hole in the ceiling and wondered if Cary had been watching us all that time. Did he feel so left out? Was that why he would do that? How long had the hole been there? The thought of Cary watching me muddled my brain for a moment, and I just stood there, holding the dress.

  "Are you happy with the dress, Laura?" Mommy asked. "I know it's not as expensive as some of the dresses other girls will be wearing."