The Song Reader (6 page)

When we got home, she gave me a little packet of expensive shampoo that had come in the mail, stapled to a coupon. After I washed and blow-dried my hair, she brushed it and then twisted the front locks into perfect little braids. She had me sit right by the fan, so I wouldn’t sweat on my new shirt. When I was all ready, she went into the back of her closet and pulled out a dusty shoe box. Inside were what she called her “magic shoes.”

Tommy said they were “sparkly.” They were shiny red with little straps around the ankles. I looked at her, wondering why I’d never seen them before.

“Wear these shoes,” she said. “They will give you your center. If you forget who you are, look straight down at the shoes—they will remind you that you are Leeann Norris, a wonderful girl, with a home full of people who love you.”

“Full of people?” I glanced in the hall mirror to see if the makeup stick was still doing its job—hiding my new, angry zit. “Last time I looked there was just Tommy and you.”

“And Big Bird!” Tommy said. He was holding his stuffed Big Bird and pulling the voice cord over and over.

“And Big Bird.” I smiled at Tommy. He’d insisted on wearing a shirt that didn’t really fit anymore. He was three and a half now, but he still had his baby fat tummy. It was so cute on him, but it made me suck in my own stomach. I was always afraid of being fat, but so was everyone else, even Denise, who wore a size four.

“Very funny, Leeann,” Mary Beth said. “You get my point, don’t you?”

Jason was already downstairs, ringing the doorbell. I told her yes and I was grateful for the shoes, even though they were so big I had to keep my toes curled down all night to keep them from falling off. And I convinced myself that maybe they were magic later, when Jason gave me my very first kiss and it wasn’t even awkward. The talking part on the way to the movie had been tough, since Jason and I didn’t really have anything in common—and Darlene was too busy smiling at Greg to do more than glance in the backseat—but the kissing part during the movie was actually pretty good. I wasn’t worried that there was something wrong with my breath or my lips or anything else. I had the magic shoes, and I was all right.

We were in Greg’s Camaro, driving away from the theater, when Greg said we were going up to the river bluffs. I shot a look at Darlene, but she didn’t say a word. The bluffs were the big make-out place, that much I knew, but what guys like Greg and Jason considered making out, I wasn’t sure.

“I have to call my sister first,” I said. It was almost eleven, and I’d told Mary Beth I’d be home by then. Greg pulled into the next gas station. The phone booth was so bright and hot I felt dizzy.

When I told Mary Beth what was going on, she paused for a long minute. “Tell them you have to come home.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“Tell them I’m in a very bad mood and you’ll be in trouble if you don’t.”

I let out a long, deep breath. It was as close as I could come to thanking her.

Greg grumbled about having to drop me off, but Jason didn’t complain. As I got out of the car, he said he’d call me. I wasn’t sure if he meant it, but I wasn’t sure if I cared, either. I’d had my first date, that was the important thing. In one day, I had changed into someone who dated boys rather than just whispering their names and letting out sighs.

When I walked in the door, Mary Beth grabbed my hand and pulled me into the kitchen. It was time to eat ice cream and talk, she said. An occasion like this should always be capped off with a Nutty Buddy.

I smiled and wondered for the hundredth time how Ben could have left her. She was always so good at knowing what mattered to other people and reflecting it back so it seemed both the most natural thing in the world and as particular and special as their birthday.

I’d given her the highlights of the date; I was down to the bottom of the cone, when it hit me that our stereo wasn’t on for the first time in weeks. I asked my sister what happened with Holly.

“She had a real tough time today.” Mary Beth was still licking the top of her Nutty Buddy. “But I think she’s going to be all right now.”

I looked at her, surprised. “You mean you figured it out?”

“No, Holly did.”

She always said this. It was one of her biggest beliefs: that she was only a guide. She could ask the right questions and interpret the music, but the customer had to do the real work of accepting what the music was trying to reveal.

“I should have known what was going on,” she continued. “Looking back now, I see all kinds of clues. She kept mentioning her dad at the weirdest times.”

“Her dad?”

“That’s who she felt like a ghost around.” She was down to her cone now, too, and she was wiping nuts from the table onto a paper towel. “You know, in the song.”

“Didn’t you tell me Holly’s father is George, the hardware store guy?”

She nodded.

“And he owns that store?” I sounded irritated, and I was suddenly. “He owns that store, and probably lives on the hill just like Holly?”

The hill was a neighborhood on the west side of Tainer that was home to most of the richer people in town, including the mayor. Very few of Mary Beth’s customers were hill people. She said they usually saw shrinks for their problems, not song readers.

“What are you getting at?” She was holding the crumbled-up paper towel, but she hadn’t moved to the trash.

“Holly’s dad was there when she was growing up. They had piles of money.” I paused, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I just don’t see what
she
could possibly have to bitch about.”

“There’s a lot to life you don’t know about yet.” Mary Beth’s voice was soft, but I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious, Lee. Trust me, there are worse things than being left. Much worse.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, but I turned away from her because I had a feeling I did know what she meant and I felt a little sick. We knew Holly’s father George—he’d sold us the child-proofing web for Tommy’s window. He was a loud, big-faced, blustery man who told jokes no one thought were funny. At least my sister didn’t. I didn’t really understand most of them.

He seemed harmless enough, though. He seemed like any other old guy.

“That’s Tommy,” she said, and stood up. It was thundering, the way it did almost every night, but there was never any rain. Once the sound woke him up, he remembered how hot he was and started yelling for my sister.

Usually it took her a while to settle him, but this time she was back in only a minute—with Tommy right next to her. He was blinking and rubbing his eyes but he was wearing his getting-away-with-something grin.

I looked at him. “What do you think you’re doing, you little goof?”

“Mama says I get to sleep in her bed.” He climbed up to the chair with his booster seat. Mary Beth was getting his apple juice box from the refrigerator.

“Why? Is something wrong with yours?”

“It’s sticky!” he said, and grinned wider because he knew I’d laugh. I’d just told him this morning that sticky and sweaty weren’t the same thing.

We were still sitting at the table when the rain started. It was very sudden: one minute there was nothing, and the next we were running around checking windows, talking about how hard it was coming down as it pounded against trees and rattled the metal gutters.

It was after midnight and Mary Beth told Tommy they had to get to bed, rain or no rain. “You should come in my room, too,” she said to me. “We can move the big fan in there, and listen to the storm and cuddle.” She smiled. “That way if we lose power, we’ll be together.”

I started to say no, but I realized I didn’t want to be alone yet. I couldn’t stop thinking about Holly and her dad. That wasn’t tainted love, it was disgusting. It even made me feel weird about kissing Jason, although I knew that didn’t make sense.

I threw on my sleep shorts and T-shirt and crawled in with them. Within just a few minutes, Tommy was snoring softly, one arm around Mary Beth and the other one thrown across my stomach.

“Can I ask you a question?” I whispered, turning my head in her direction.

“Sure, sweetie.”

I gulped. “How could anybody do that? I mean, to their own daughter?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “I’d like to believe that something happened to him to make him that way. But then whoever hurt him must have been hurt, too, and it just keeps going.” She exhaled and rubbed her eyes. “All this suffering, passed from generation to generation, but where did it begin? With God?”

The lightning was so bright it lit up the room for a second. I could see her blond hair streaming over the pillow and her face looking straight up at the ceiling. “Maybe it was God. When He threw Adam and Eve out of their beautiful garden just because they made a mistake, and even though they cried with loneliness for Him, He would never let them back home.”

“Did that really happen?” Our family rarely went to church, and my Bible knowledge was pretty weak. All I remembered from the Eden story was a talking snake, a bad apple, and two naked people in fig leaves.

“Oh, honey.” I could hear the gentle laugh in her voice. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She reached over Tommy and touched my shoulder. We listened to the storm for a few minutes before I remembered the other thing I wanted to ask her.

“Those magic shoes of yours.” Somehow I knew this wasn’t a question she’d want to hear, but I had to know. “Where did you get them?”

“Oh, you can’t buy them anymore. The store they came from has been closed for almost ten years. Remember the old W. T. Grants over on—”

“No, I’m talking about who gave them to you.”

She sounded surprised. “How did you know someone did?”

“It was Dad, wasn’t it?” I was thinking about the day we drove to Kansas City and the story she told me on the way home about her and Dad watching
The Wizard of Oz,
year after year.

She let go of my shoulder before she whispered, “Yes.” My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I could see her put her arms around herself.

“You still miss him?” Now I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. Why wouldn’t she miss Dad? He was her father, too.

“Of course I do…. I think it’s the price the heart pays.”

I was hoping she would say something else, but if she did I didn’t hear it. I woke up the next morning still in her bed, with Tommy’s foot against my nose.

It rained all that day. The next day it was still pouring. By the third day, people were getting nervous, listening for the emergency sirens, ready to help out with sandbagging. But the Mississippi didn’t go over its banks that time. As suddenly as it began, the rain just stopped, leaving behind only a few flooded basements and a cool spell that brought everyone back outside.

Naturally, my sister thought it was a sign. I heard her tell Holly it was like the sky opened up because she had opened up, finally.

Holly had dropped by our place to give Mary Beth her payment: a five-hundred dollar check (the most my sister had ever made) and a violet afghan with a silver star in the center that reflected in the sun like a real jewel. The card with the check was a basic thank-you from the drugstore with phony-looking daisies, but Holly had written “To Mary Beth, who saved my life,” under the verse, and she kissed my sister when she gave it to her.

She was still a little slumped over, but she was wearing nice white pants and a green blouse and even a necklace and pearl earrings. And she was very friendly. She asked me how my date went and whether I was looking forward to school; she asked me and Tommy whether we’d ever played Pac-Man. “My kids love Pac-Man,” she said. “I tried it yesterday and I have to say, it’s certainly addictive.”

When she stood up to leave, she had tears in her eyes, but this was pretty normal. A lot of Mary Beth’s customers choked up a little when their reading was finished.

“You know you can come see me anytime,” Mary Beth said, hugging her and smiling. “I’m always here for a follow-up.”

Holly nodded and whispered another thanks and then she was gone. Within a few days, we’d stopped talking about her, although I still thought of her sometimes whenever I glanced at her afghan hung on the wall by our stereo.

The afghan was beautiful but that’s not why we framed it. Poor Holly, it turned out she didn’t really know how to knit. After she left that day, my sister took one look at it and said there were threads you don’t dare touch for fear of unraveling it all.

I
’m trying to remember if I ever fought with Mary Beth before that Sunday at the end of November, my freshman year. It seems like we must have had arguments, but when I try to remember them, I keep coming up empty-handed. Even before Mom died, when we could still turn on each other in the casual way of families who think they have forever, I don’t recall anything but how close we were. But maybe this just shows how huge that fight in November felt to me—that it was capable of blocking out all the other fights, and dividing our relationship into a before and after.

It started when I decided to go to the annual crafts fair down by the river. Mary Beth and Tommy were supposed to go with me, but then they didn’t, I don’t remember why. I didn’t mind riding my bicycle. It wasn’t bad for November, fifty degrees, and the trip was downhill for the most part. Getting home would be another story, but by then I would have what I wanted, what I’d been saving for since I heard they were going to have a glassblower at the fair.

I loved those delicate little figures. So far, I’d collected an elephant, a dolphin, two unicorns, and a blue angel. I’d saved up thirty dollars and I was hoping to get at least one new piece, maybe two. My goal was to cover my windowsill with them, so the sun could refract through the glass onto my bedspread and my floor, spraying light everywhere.

The fair was about twenty minutes away by bike. The glassblowing demonstration was at the end of a row of craft booths, past the quilts and the pipes, the jewelry and the clay pots. A small crowd had gathered to watch the glassblower. He was making what looked to be a harp, but I couldn’t see much beyond the flash of the propane torch. I’d just put down my kickstand and started moving closer when I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a woman’s voice say, “Leeann?”

I turned around, and came face to face with Rebecca. I hadn’t laid eyes on her since last Christmas, when all of us went to Ben’s parents’ house for dinner, but I had no trouble remembering who she was. She still had that flat purse, and her red wool jacket was as stylish as something out of a magazine.

Her smile was so friendly it was a little disconcerting. And she fired loud, friendly questions at me: who did I come with, what did I think of the fair, had I ever seen glassblowing before, did I like it. My answers were as short as I could manage. Then she pointed to a man standing across from us, in front of the candle booth. She said he was her new boyfriend, Andrew. “We’re looking for a present for his mother. She’s fond of crafts.”

He had on one of those sweaters with the polo player logo. He looked like a short, plump Michael Douglas.

“So,” she said lightly, “how is Mary Beth?”

“Just fine.”

“That’s good to hear.” She paused. “I always liked your sister. I was very sorry it didn’t work out.”

“How about Ben?” I said, after a moment. I felt like I had to know, even if it was going to upset me. If he was engaged or married already, I’d just have to deal with it.

“I wouldn’t say he’s fine.” She smiled but it was forced. “Of course he hasn’t had a tremendous amount of experience with women. I suppose that makes all this much harder for him.”

I blinked at her.

“I’ve told him repeatedly that he has to move on.” She glanced in Andrew’s direction and lowered her voice. “Even if you don’t find The One, you distract yourself. It’s part of the game.”

I was having trouble keeping up. “Are you saying Ben is upset?”

“I suppose anyone would be under the circumstances. I don’t blame Mary Beth, although I’ll confess that initially, I found it difficult not to. It’s one thing to be afraid of commitment, but it’s another thing to get so involved and then back away. Of course he could have misread her, but knowing my brother, it’s unlikely. He’s always been very cautious. Typical scientist.”

The glassblower had finished the piece and the crowd was clapping. I was standing as close to Rebecca as I could, but people kept walking by, making it hard to follow what she was saying.

“Granted your sister is very pretty, but I don’t think that explains it. I consider myself attractive, and yet none of the men I’ve dated have asked me to marry them.”

“What?”

“I’m just saying that normally a man doesn’t ask, unless he’s been given reason to believe the answer will be yes.” Rebecca stood up straight and smiled. “But as I said, I don’t blame Mary Beth anymore. And perhaps there were reasons none of us are privy to.” She looked over at Andrew. “I really should get back.”

I was more than ready for her to go. I needed to be alone, to digest all this, but before she walked away, I thought to ask, “Do you know if he bought her an engagement ring?”

“My poor big bro.” She sighed loudly. “He still has it. It’s sitting on a shelf in his apartment, right next to her picture and the letters she sent him. I call it the Mary Beth Norris shrine, not that he finds that very amusing.”

I mumbled some kind of good-bye and was on my bike before she finished telling me to say hello to my sister. I nodded and stomped on the pedal, and in minutes, I was flying along Main Street so fast that I felt the wind stinging my cheeks.

All the way home, I kept reminding myself there had to be an explanation. No way could this be true. Mary Beth loved Ben, she said so herself. She still loved him, I was sure of it. His letters were in her top drawer, wrapped in tinfoil, in case of a fire, just like Tommy’s adoption papers. And she still had a picture of him, stuck in the frame of her bedroom mirror. I’d wanted to tear it up many times but she obviously didn’t feel the same way or she wouldn’t have kept it there.

I was so out of breath when I walked in our apartment that she rushed over to see if I was all right. Tommy had just gone down for his nap, and I could tell she’d been working. Her fingers were stained with ink from writing on the charts.

“Sit down, sweetie,” she said, leading me by the elbow to the couch. “Your face is on fire.”

I leaned back into the couch and waited a moment, but that was all. It never occurred to me not to blurt out exactly what happened. Later, I would wish I’d handled it differently. Tricked her into some kind of revelation, rather than handing her everything I had, so she could change it all around until it seemed like nothing.

At first, I thought she was very upset. She was so quiet. She was blinking furiously, especially when I got to the shrine part. And her lips were quivering a little. I saw them with my own eyes.

But then she said, “Rebecca is such a gossip.”

“What?”

“She’s always making up things about other people.” Mary Beth shrugged. “I think she believes other people exist just to entertain her.”

“But she really seemed like she was telling the truth.”

“Of course she did. She does this all the time.”

“Then he didn’t ask you to marry—”

She waved her hand. “Rebecca is obsessed with marriage. Ben told me she’s been reading
Brides
magazine since she was nine.”

She launched into her usual speech about how sad it was that so many women feel they can’t live without a man. I knew it by heart, but I didn’t see what it had to do with what we were talking about. Before I could ask her, she stuck her finger in the air, like she was getting to a grand conclusion. “Women like Rebecca always turn breakups into tragedies. It’s the way they see the world: coupled and happy, or alone and miserable.”

“But you were sad when you and Ben broke up.”

“Yes, I was. I was also very sad when Mom died.”

“Huh?”

“Bad things happen. This is reality, Lee, not a soap opera.”

I was speechless with confusion. She moved a strand of my hair out of my eyes—and tried to change the topic to the fair. She wanted to know if I got to see the glassblowing at least, before Rebecca started up with all her
gossip
.

I told her I was thirsty, and got up and went into the kitchen for a drink of water. When I came back, she was messing with the stereo. The record player needle was dirty, she said. At least she hoped it was that, because she couldn’t buy a new needle on Sunday and she had a lot of records to listen to.

“Nancy Lyle called again. You know that pretty brunette who works at the Kroger?”

I stared at her back. She blew on the needle again.

“Nancy said she’s had bad insomnia for the last month, and while she’s lying awake, she always hears certain songs. But she doesn’t have any idea why. And she’s totally exhausted, poor thing. She wants me to help her so she doesn’t have to take sleeping pills. She said they make her so groggy it’s hard to get up and fix breakfast for her kids.”

Mary Beth stood up and walked to the shelves. While she thumbed through the records, she talked about Nancy’s songs. All oldies and most not so goodies. The only one we even had was Henry Mancini. Nancy said she didn’t know why she was hearing that old stuff.

My sister had the Henry Mancini in her hand. It was from Dad’s old record collection. She said she wanted to get some listening in before Tommy woke up. She’d promised to take him to the park, so he could do his favorite thing: slide down the big slide. Now that he was almost four, he could do it all by himself. He was as proud of that as I had been about starting high school.

My water glass was empty but I hadn’t set it down. I hadn’t moved since I walked back into the living room.

“Are you ever going to tell me what really happened?”

My voice was a whisper, but she shrugged. “I don’t know what else there is to say. I fell in love with a man and we didn’t end up happily ever after. It was sad, like I said. It still makes me sad, as I think you know.” She gave me a sideways glance before turning back to the stereo. A moment later, the Henry Mancini orchestra was filling the room with “Moon River.”

I flopped down on the couch and watched her as she scribbled notes. I’d heard this song before, but it had been so long ago that I couldn’t remember most of the words. It was about the Mississippi, Mary Beth said. Then she joked that we crossed the river in style all the time, just like in the song—whenever we went to the outlet stores in Illinois in her Ford.

I might have let her get away with it. I was already tired of the topic, and part of me knew it was none of my business anyway. If the phone hadn’t rung right then, maybe we would have spent the next hour talking about “Moon River” and Nancy Lyle and who knows what else. Maybe I wouldn’t have made the mistakes I did.

But the phone did ring, and it was Kyle Downey—even though I was sure he hadn’t meant it when he said he was going to call me this weekend. He was a junior and a big deal on the basketball team. He was also considered one of the cutest guys in school.

Why he’d even started talking to me was a mystery. Darlene said it was because he liked me, but Denise thought he just wanted to copy my math homework. I was the only freshman in the advanced algebra and trig, full of juniors and sophomores. I thought Denise was probably right, but after I told him I didn’t believe in cheating, he was still stopping me after class and in the halls. It flickered across my mind that it was something else about me that attracted him, even though I always wore loose shirts and usually a jacket, too, no matter how warm the school got. I hated my breasts. I would have given anything to be a nice normal B cup like my sister and Darlene and Denise and everybody except Harriet Wheeler, who smoked and dyed her hair purple and was rumored to have sex with guys with tattoos.

The real miracle was that Kyle didn’t just call to talk; he called to ask me to the homecoming dance. I told him yes without hesitating; I figured Mary Beth would be happy for me. She knew how bad I felt about having zero dates since Jason last summer. She also knew that I’d felt like an oddball ever since the beginning of freshman year, when the principal decided my test scores were so good he had to put me in the honors program, with all the other geeks.

She knew everything I knew, so naturally I assumed she’d see it the same way I did. I wasn’t thinking about the other things I’d told her, including that Kyle had tried to look at my math homework. “He doesn’t sound very smart,” she’d said, and I’d agreed. Even his looks weren’t that great, in my opinion. All those muscles, but such vacant eyes. And his smile was so cocky. “Why would you want to go out with a cheater?” she continued, and I’d said I didn’t want to go out with him, which was true—then. As desperate as I was for a boyfriend, I’d learned enough from Mary Beth’s customers to know when women went out with guys they couldn’t respect, they ended up not respecting themselves.

But this was the homecoming dance. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I felt. And like I told my sister, I wouldn’t have to keep seeing him. I could show up and impress everybody and have him take me home. Simple as that.

“I heard you on the phone, honey. You didn’t even sound like yourself.”

“I was a little nervous. So what?”

“Come on, Lee, I know what jocks are like. You have to be careful with guys like that. They’re used to a lot of attention, and they think they deserve whatever they want.”

“So I’ll be careful.”

“It’s not a good idea. I’m sorry, but you’re only a freshman, honey. You have lots of years to go to dances.” She clapped her hands together, like we were finished with the topic.

“Are you saying I can’t go?” I didn’t try to hide my surprise. She’d never told me no before, but then again, she’d never had to. Normally, her disapproval was enough for me to decide not to do whatever it was she disapproved of.