A Solitary Blue (27 page)

 

I
T WAS the first week in June, ten days before school got out. Jeff, his guitar on his back, walked the bike up the driveway. The air shone bright with sunlight, the shadows shone cool. May and June were his favorite months, before the summer heat began. And September and October. He didn't mind the rest too much, either. He sang as he walked, “Oh Lord, you know, I have no friend like you, if heaven's not my home, O Lord, what shall I do?” He sang the song happy because that was how he felt. Not for any particular reason, unless the shells sharp under his feet were a reason, or the patches of sunlight warm on his shoulders, or the idea for a slightly different riff to play between the verses of the song. He might, he thought, try to catch a few crabs for supper. He wouldn't succeed, not at this time of the year, but he'd like to get out on the water. That evening, he and as many of the Tillermans who wanted to, and Mina Smiths and a couple of her brothers, and the Professor, too, if he could talk his father into it, were going to see
Star Wars.

He saw the car, Max's car, first. When he went into the house, he saw Melody, sitting cross-legged on the lawn. He stood for a minute, looking at her back. The sun shone around her, and her hair had grown long again. She wore it in one braid down her back. He slid the glass door open and walked out to find out what she wanted: he couldn't just ride away. He thought for a second he
might, but the Professor would be home in an hour or so, and she was Jeff's responsibility.

She turned when she heard him, but didn't get up. “Jeffie? Are you angry at me? I wanted to see you.”

He sat down in a chair. “Hi, Melody. Have you been here long?”

“Awhile. Awhile. It's poky, but it's quiet, isn't it?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “What can I do for you?”

She shifted, to look directly into his eyes. She clasped her hands together in her lap, like a little girl. “Can't we put all that behind us?”

“All what?”

“Everything.”

Everything. Starting when, Jeff wondered, and including how much? “I've already done that,” he told her.

The beautiful eyes filmed with tears. “Oh, Jeffie, I don't know how to talk to you, you've changed so much. Grown up, I guess they call it, you're so tall, and handsome — and your voice — and I bet you've started to shave, too.”

“Just once a week.” She was flattering him, and he wondered why.

“But you used to love me. You'll deny it now, but you did. Men have convenient memories. But I remember, I remember that. What happened to us, Jeffie?”

Jeff couldn't take his eyes from hers and he felt — rising up within him — feelings so complicated he didn't know if he could stay cool, stay quiet. Anger, again, and guilt — he had been horrible to her. She looked so small and sad, he felt sorry for her. He thought he ought to apologize to her for what Gambo had done. And he had to get rid of her before his father came home. “What is it you want, Melody?” he asked.

“Oh, Jeffie, the way you say that. Nothing, I don't want anything. I just wanted to see you before I went away.”

“You're going away? Where?” She'd let him know what she wanted, in her own time, in her own way. He could wait.

“Colombia. That's in South America.”

“Why?”

Her hands separated, waved helplessly, then clasped together again. “You wouldn't understand, about the way people have to live in some places, about how ignorant they are. There's a village, in the
mountains, and seventy-five percent of the children die before they're five. Diphtheria, typhoid, fever. Little children. And those that live — the girls marry at twelve and die in childbirth or are old women by twenty-five. In this day and age, Jeffie. They can't read and write, they just work, just to get enough to eat that day, they don't know anything about farming methods, or sanitation. There's so much that needs to be done. Nobody cares about them, and the young men go off to the cities and get ruined and the old are left alone. Brief, miserable, unhappy lives — and it doesn't have to be that way. We sit here like fat cats and don't do anything about it.”

She was right, in her way. Jeff could think whatever he liked about her, personally, but she really wanted to help people who needed it. She really did feel for them, she really tried. “Where's Max?” he asked her.

Her eyes slipped away from his. “He's there already. He wants to buy a farm-land is really cheap. We're going to — to live with them and teach them.”

Jeff was beginning to see. His lack of feeling about it surprised him, pleased him. He looked out over the creek and marsh. He guessed Max would be putting in a crop of marijuana, or poppies — that was his guess. But he guessed Melody really might love the guy.

Her voice went on behind him. “I can't ever be happy, knowing about them and not doing anything.”

Happy, unhappy — Jeff was beginning to think that wasn't the question at all. The Tillermans never worried about that, they worried about . . . living right for each one of them, together. He guessed you might call that happy, but he didn't think that was it, he didn't think that was the half of it.

“You used to love me, I know you did.” Jeff kept his eyes on the spacious horizon. “But you chose your father because he's the rich and famous one. Well, I don't blame you. I want you to know that I don't.”

Jeff didn't need to argue.

“And you don't love me any more, not even a little. I don't know why I came.”

Jeff turned his face back to her at that. Because he did love her, or at least he felt tied to her, in a way, in a way as close as love would tie them. Poor Melody — she didn't know the first thing about love. “Why did you come?” he asked her gently.

He saw her face light up with hope. Poor Melody, he thought again, because she saw love as something that gets you what you want. She didn't understand at all.

“I need money. To get me there. And start work, for supplies and some books. So we can make a difference there.”

“I don't have money, not that kind,” Jeff told her. “I'm sorry, Melody, I gave what there was to Miss Opal, all I have is an allowance.”

“You have Gambo's ring,” she told him, angry.

He looked at her hand, then, and saw the green jade. She followed his eyes. “This one's not worth anything.”

“Oh. OK,” Jeff said, hiding his smile. Oh, Melody, he thought. He went into the house to get the box out of the bookcase where he kept it hidden. He returned to find Melody standing up, watching for him. He passed her the little box, and she opened it. She slipped off the jade ring so that she could put the big diamond on.

“You keep that one,” she said. “Really, I'd like you to.” Jeff took the ring. Gambo wanted Melody to have it, but Melody didn't want it.

Melody had the diamond on her hand and held it out to catch the sunlight. “It's a pity to sell it.” She sighed.

“Maybe you don't have to.”

This was the ring she'd wanted when she married the Professor and was pregnant with Jeff. She'd finally gotten what she wanted; he didn't see why she should sell it — unless it was the money all along. Not the thing but its money value all along, in everything. Except Max, he remembered. There were always exceptions. The pieces of Melody didn't fit neatly together any more than the pieces of the Professor did, or of Jeff — or of anybody, for that matter, or anything. Even the blue herons nested in colonies, all of them together.

“Maybe you can keep it.” He knew she didn't want to.

She laughed up into his eyes. “You are a goose, aren't you? But now I know you love me, whether you'll admit it or not, I don't need anything else to make me happy. And I better run, before your father catches me here. He'll be angry at you, if you tell him.”

“No, he won't,” Jeff said.

She wasn't listening to him, she was slipping her sandals onto her feet, bending gracefully over to pull the straps tight, her long
braid falling over her shoulder. Jeff held Gambo's ring in his palm. You couldn't send anyone to college with it, he knew. But all the same it was the one he wanted. He hadn't known that and was surprised at his impulse to wrap his fingers tightly around it.

This was the ring that connected to what had been, to whatever it might mean to be a Boudrault of Charleston, where the tombstones stood in silent rows along crumbling brick walls, where tall houses looked over enclosed gardens, where so many lives had been lived out. Where the silent white beaches of the sea islands were washed by ocean waves, washed up, washed away. Poor Melody, he thought for the last time, watching her walk around the house and away; she never knew what the real treasures were.