Strange but True (2 page)

“But won't you be up all night?”

“Nope.”

They don't say anything after that. She gets a can of Diet Coke from her stash in the fridge and a bag of Doritos from the cabinet, then sits on the wooden stool by the chopping block and chews. Loudly. As Philip pours water into the machine, he thinks back to the last time Melissa Moody came for a visit. The summer after Ronnie died, she stopped by unannounced. His mother had been upstairs staring at her bedroom ceiling, his father puttering around his study, pretending to read one of his medical books. Philip had to put aside the assignment he was working on for his poetry class at the Community College of Philadelphia and drag them to the family room, where they sat, staring at this blond, broken-hearted girl covered in bandages until finally, his father walked her to the door and told her good-bye.

Now, as the coffee machine starts to gurgle and spit steam, white lights fill the room from the window. A car door slams in the driveway. Philip's heart begins to beat hard and fast, just like it used to those nights in New York. He places his hand against his chest, then absently traces his fingers up to that wound beneath the turtleneck as he follows his mother to the foyer. To each side of the thick paneled door is a narrow slit of glass. She presses her face to the one on the right and broadcasts in a how-dare-she tone of voice, “She's pregnant. I can't believe it. The girl is pregnant.”

Before Philip can remind her that Melissa has every right to be pregnant, she begins rambling again, keeping her face to the glass.

“Do you think that's what she's come to tell us? It better not be. That's all I have to say. The last thing I need to hear right now is how happy she is married to someone else when my son is rotting six feet beneath the ground.”

“M,” he says, “why don't we try something unconventional? Let's wait for her to tell us what she wants
before
you throw a fit.”

She turns around and looks squarely at Philip, a pink smudge in the middle of her forehead from where she had pressed it to the glass. “I wasn't throwing a fit.”

“Well, I can tell you're getting ready to. Besides, it's obvious you've never liked Melissa. But it's not her fault that Ronnie is gone.”

“Maybe not,” she says. “But you don't know everything.”

“What don't I know?”

“I just told you. Everything.”

“Whatever,” Philip says, giving up on the discussion.

He puts his face to one of the narrow slits too, standing so close to his mother that he can smell the sweat beneath her Right Guard. As he gazes out at their snow-covered lawn, Philip inhales and holds it to keep from breathing in her odor. In the silvery winter moonlight, Melissa's body is a perfect silhouette, her stomach bulging before her as she navigates the icy, unshoveled walkway. When she gets closer, he sees that she is wearing nothing but a baggy Indian-print shirt that hangs down past her waist, and a loose pair of army green cargo pants. Before she reaches the front porch, his mother pulls open the door. Her lips part to say hello, but her mouth just hangs there.

“Hi,” Melissa says from the shadows.

His mother is blocking the view, but Philip calls out, “Hi. Aren't you freezing?”

“It's not that cold.”

Even as she says it, a gust of wind kicks up in the yard and blows into the house. Behind her, the branches of a tall oak tree make an angry scuttling sound in the darkness. Philip's mother is still locked in her strange, stunned silence, so he asks Melissa to come inside. Once the door is closed and she is standing in the bright light of the foyer, he realizes why his mother is so taken aback. Melissa is no longer the pretty blond girl his younger brother had taken to the prom five years before. Her once shiny, shoulder-length hair is now impossibly long and straggly, the color darkened to the same drab brown as Philip's. Her small ears, formerly bare and delicate, are now pierced with so many silver studs and hoops that it looks painful. The biggest change, though, is Melissa's face, which used to be so gentle and feminine, the kind of pure, all-American girl you might see in an ad for spring dresses in the department store circulars that come with the Sunday newspaper. Now that face, that smile, those eyes, are ruined by the scars from her last night with Ronnie. Philip would have assumed that she'd gone to a plastic surgeon, like the ones his father played golf with in Florida, but no. Imprinted on her left cheek is a crisscross of lines. Above her right eye is a mangled patch of skin that has somehow interfered with the hair meant to grow there, leaving her with half an eyebrow and a permanently lopsided appearance. She keeps her lips sealed in such a tight, unyielding way that it makes him think of a coin purse snapped shut. Only when she speaks does he get the briefest glimpse of the dark vacancy where her two front teeth used to be.

“What happened to you?” she asks Philip.

He is so preoccupied by her appearance that it takes him an extra second to remember his own physical state. “Oh,” he says, realizing that it's best not to bring up what his mother calls “that business back in New York.” He looks down at the hard gray plastic of his cast, the black bucklelike contraptions across the top of his foot. “I had an accident. A skiing accident.”

“Are you okay?”

Philip wants to ask her the same thing, but it doesn't seem appropriate. “In another few weeks, I'll be good as new.”

Melissa stuffs her hands into the pockets of her Indian-print shirt, causing the material to shift against her swollen stomach as she glances up the staircase. “Is Mr. Chase here?”

The question snaps his mother out of her trance. “No. Mr. Chase is not here.”

Before she can go off on the topic of his father—one of her favorite and most easily triggered rants—Philip says, “So you're pregnant.”

Melissa looks at her belly, then turns her moss green eyes toward his. The tremble in her voice returns when she tells him, “Nine months.”

“I guess you're due any day then?”

“I guess so,” she says.

The moment feels tense, awkward suddenly, and Philip lets out a nervous laugh, trying to lighten the mood. “Well, don't go into labor on us or anything.”

Melissa doesn't so much as smile. “Don't worry,” she tells him. “I know when the baby will come.”

And that's when his eyes trail down to her hand. He notices that she is not wearing a ring. In his mind, Philip hears his mother's voice saying,
The last thing I need to hear right now is how happy she is married to someone else when my son is rotting six feet beneath the ground
. Apparently, she doesn't have to worry about that. “Why don't we go into the kitchen so you can sit down?” he suggests, already leading the way.

Once they're inside, Melissa eases herself into one of the ladder-back chairs that Ronnie and his father used to complain were uncomfortable. His mother, who is keeping suspiciously quiet, resumes her position at the chopping block.

“M,” Philip says, “why don't you join us over here?”

“I'm perfectly content where I am.”

If Melissa notices his mother's peculiar behavior, she doesn't let on. Her face remains as still and vacant as a mannequin's, or a damaged mannequin anyway. Her mouth is sealed tight like that coin purse he'd imagined. Only those moss green eyes of hers move as she stares around the room—from the streaky pea-soup mess in the sink and on the counter, to the clutter of prescription slips held to the hulking refrigerator by a Liberty Bell magnet, to the wooden key rack hanging by the telephone, to the empty metal pot rack above his mother's head.

“Would you like something to drink?” Philip asks. “I just made a fresh pot of coffee.”

“Thanks. But I can't have caffeine because of the baby.”

This response relieves him, because he'd been wondering if someone so far along in a pregnancy should be driving, let alone walking around without a coat on such a frigid winter night. But Philip decides that maybe she knows what she's doing after all. Melissa tells him that she'd like water instead, so he pours her a glass from the Brita pitcher, then takes a mug from the cabinet for his coffee. It is one of his mother's from her days as the head librarian at Radnor Memorial Library, and the question
Can You Do the Dewey?
wraps around the side. Philip sits at the table and stirs while his mind busily churns up random details about Melissa that he'd all but forgotten: her father is a minister at the Lutheran church, and Ronnie used to complain about how strict he was; she has a twin sister named Tracy or Stacy; she had been accepted to Penn, just like Ronnie. “So I guess you're done with college by now,” Philip says in an effort to get the conversation moving.

Melissa shakes her head. “I never went.”

“But I thought you got into Penn?” He remembers specifically because he hadn't bothered to apply to any decent schools like that one, since he was too busy getting the crap beaten out of him in high school to earn the kind of grades he needed.

“I did get in,” Melissa says. “I decided not to go.”

“So where are you living these days?”

“Right here in Radnor.”

“With your parents?”

She is about to answer when his mother leaves her stool and comes to the table. “Listen, you two can chat all night after I go to bed. But it's late. So if you don't mind, I'd like to skip the small talk. Why don't you tell us whatever it is you want to tell us?”

“M!” Philip shouts. “Don't be so rude!”

“It's okay,” Melissa tells him, rubbing her hand on the exact center of her stomach where the Indian print comes together in a tangled cross. In her faint, shaky voice, she says to his mother, “Of course you want to know why I'm here.”

“You're right. I do. So let's get on with it.”

Philip doesn't bother to reprimand her again—not that it ever does any good anyway.

Melissa clears her throat and slowly picks up the glass from the table. When she takes a sip, her fingers are shaking so much that water sloshes over the rim and dribbles down her chin. She wipes it with her sleeve, then opens her mouth to speak, showcasing those unsightly black gaps front and center in her mouth. This is how she begins, this is how all the madness of the coming days begins: “I understand that it must seem strange for me to appear back in your life after all these years. But … well, I've thought about your family a lot as time has gone by. Especially you, Mrs. Chase. Because there can't be anything worse than a mother losing her child.”

Philip glances at his mother and sees that her face has softened. For her, grieving has been a competition these past five years—the slightest acknowledgment that she is the winner makes her happy. With that last comment, Melissa may as well have draped a gold medal over her head.

Melissa goes on: “And I've never once stopped thinking about Ronnie either. That's why … well… I'm sorry I'm so nervous. It's just that I've thought about this moment for a long time. I wanted to come and tell you, months ago. But I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Philip asks.

“That you wouldn't believe me.”

“Believe what?”

“Believe that—” She stops and swallows, making a lump in her throat that puts Philip in mind of the pet snake he took care of for Donnelly Fiume back in New York, the way it looked when it was digesting a mouse. “I'm sorry it's taking me a bit to get it out. But you know how you plan something in your mind, and then when the moment finally arrives, you forget exactly how you wanted to say things? That's how I feel sitting here right now. I guess… I guess I don't know where to begin. So maybe I'll just ask you first if you've ever watched that guy on TV, the one who talks to the dead?”

The question does something to his mother's face. Philip sees her blink three times in rapid succession; her upper lip twitches. But his face goes blank. His heart, which had been steadily picking up speed, feels as though it has just slammed into a wall. He has seen the guy Melissa is talking about plenty of times on late-night TV. Maybe you have too. A cherub-faced balding man with a thick Long Island accent who calls out random initials to people in the crowd as though he is summoning their beloved. When he hits the right initial and guesses a name, the guy spews details that the dearly departed is supposedly sending:

You once lost your engagement ring…

You took a trip to an island…

The two of you had a favorite song that you used to dance to…

These bland bits of information cause people in the audience to weep, but Philip always finds himself wondering why they don't ask for more concrete details that might actually prove something, like a Social Security number or the name of a first-grade teacher. Instead of saying any of this, he stays quiet and listens to his mother and Melissa.

“Did you see this guy?” his mother asks, her lip still twitching as hope bubbles up in her voice.

“Not him. But there is a woman in Philadelphia named Chantrel who does the same thing. I went to see her.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“But I thought you said you've wanted to tell us this for months.”

“This is all leading up to what I want to tell you.”

“Well, what did this Chandra woman say?”

“Chantrel.”

“Okay, Chantrel. What did she say?”

“Well…”

“Well, what?”

Melissa's eyes move to Philip, then to his mother again. “Ronnie communicated with me from the dead.”

Philip's body language does nothing to hide his reaction. He leans back from the table and crosses his arms. At one time, he might have believed in this sort of thing, but there is a lot he used to believe that he doesn't anymore: God, love, fate, luck, and psychics who channel the dead, to name a few.

Meanwhile, his mother sits at the table and leans so close to Melissa that it looks as though she's going to take a bite out of her. “What did she say?”