The Song Reader (9 page)

“For the record, I don’t think you lost yourself just now.” He cleared his throat. “That was you and this is…God knows.”

She didn’t say anything. He stared at her for a moment, and then turned to leave.

Before I could move back into the shadows, he spotted me. I started to make an excuse for intruding, but he shook his head, and motioned me over to where he was standing by the door. “I want you to have my phone number in Philadelphia.” He reached into his wallet, pulled out an old receipt, and wrote his number on the back. I noticed the wallet wasn’t unraveling. “Here,” he said, pressing the scrap of paper into my hand. “Call me if you need anything. Promise?”

I looked at him, but I couldn’t say yes. My sister had walked up behind me. I could feel her breath on the back of my hair.

He glanced over my head at Mary Beth. “For the record, I still don’t think I did anything wrong. I know you do, but I will never understand why.” He paused and his voice cracked a little. “And I don’t wish I hadn’t met you. How could I ever wish that?”

Then he was gone, and Mary Beth and I rushed out of the restaurant and into the car without saying good-bye to anyone. She started the Ford and we were back on the road. She was sitting up very straight; her eyes looked directly ahead. We’d only gone a few miles when she apologized for taking me to the dinner. “It really wasn’t fair to make you deal with all this. I wanted you to come because I knew you missed Ben. I am glad he gave you his phone number. I told you he really liked you.”

“I won’t call him.” I was thinking about their conversation, and his claim he didn’t do anything wrong. What were they talking about? Could there be a reason she dumped him after all? Even a reason why she was acting so completely weird?

We’d been on the road for about an hour when she suddenly said, “He’s going to be all right, honey.”

We were in the middle of nowhere; Mary Beth had tuned in a radio station from Lexington, Kentucky. The song playing was, “Baker Street.” The moon was so low in the sky, it looked like we could drive to it.

Her voice startled me, but she was right, I had been thinking about Ben. It was just hitting me that he was moving to Philadelphia. It was so far away, at least a thousand miles if I remembered my geography. It wasn’t even in the same time zone.

“I know,” I said lightly, reminding myself that if he had done something to her, I couldn’t possibly miss him.

The next day, I decided I had to know, once and for all.

I came home from school and I didn’t even get a soda or a snack before I went into Mary Beth’s bedroom and opened the top dresser drawer and took out his letters. Most had been written before they broke up, while he was away at school, because they’d agreed to keep their daily phone conversations down to ten minutes to save on long distance. A few had come since that horrible night at Scalatti’s.

My family was in trouble, that was my justification for invading her privacy. As I was taking off the tinfoil from the letter pile, it occurred to me that I might feel worse afterwards, but it was a price I was willing to pay. At least I wouldn’t feel as confused as I was feeling now.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. I felt much more confused after I read the letters, and the enormity of what my sister had done hit me like a blow. It was one thousand four hundred and eighty-five days by my calculations, which were, if anything, giving her the benefit of the doubt. One thousand four hundred and eighty-five days, at least, of her knowing where our father was and not telling me.

Later, Mary Beth would explain that she had had to track Dad down to get him to sign some papers, since he and Mom were still legally married when Mom had her car accident, and the insurance company kept refusing to release the money from Mom’s life insurance policy. But no, she never thought of telling me, even though this was only a month or two after that day we spent looking for him in Kansas City. Actually, if we hadn’t gone to Kansas City that day, she never would have found him, she admitted as much. But she didn’t thank me for writing all those letters to Dad’s relatives. And she didn’t thank Ben, either, for telling her she shouldn’t be keeping this big secret from me.

This was the sign I used to look for that he really had cared when I told him things I’d never told anyone about my parents. The letters made it clear he’d discussed my feelings with Mary Beth many times. “Don’t you think she has a right to know where he is?” he wrote in a letter from February. “I understand your desire to protect her, but he is her father, too.” And then in early March: “I still don’t see what you’re accomplishing by keeping her from making contact. Even if you’re right that he won’t respond, she may feel better knowing she made the effort.”

It wasn’t an argument yet. These same letters were filled with expressions of love and plans for their future. In a way, what to do about Dad was just part of those plans. Ben wondered if Mary Beth would be comfortable moving across the country without trying to see Dad one more time. “California is a long way from Little Rock,” he wrote. “Most of the good labs are a long way from Little Rock.”

From which I gathered that Dad was in Little Rock now. A lot of the information I got had to be teased out of what Ben said—until I got to the after-Scalatti’s letters. The very first one contained the crucial fact that Ben had driven the three hundred and fifty-one miles from St. Louis to Little Rock to see Dad. He’d done it without Mary Beth because she couldn’t get off work and he could—his spring break. He did have to delay some experiment but he didn’t mind. This was more important than his work. We were more important: his new family.

I couldn’t tell from the letters whether he’d discussed the possibility of such a trip with her, but my sense was he had. And she’d told him not to do it. But he did it anyway, because he thought Dad might be mentally ill, and rather than sending him money from Mom’s life insurance from time to time, Mary Beth should try to get him treatment.

To say she didn’t appreciate his opinion is an understatement.

“Ill does not mean crazy,” he wrote, more than once. “I don’t know why you can’t see that.

“I only wanted to see if I could help him,” he continued. “I thought you of all people would understand. I still can’t believe you said this means I don’t really love you. Why the hell else would I do it?”

There were only a few letters after that Scalatti’s dinner, and they were all Ben expressing how upset he was. The most interesting letter was probably the last one in the stack. It was dated June of last year, and I remembered it coming, but Mary Beth had told me it was just another question about some of his stuff he couldn’t find.

First, he went on about how hurt he was that Mary Beth wouldn’t write him or return his phone calls. Then he accused her of being a “control freak,” who was afraid to let anyone get close to her. “I’m sure you’ll disagree, point to your friends and customers as evidence that you’re not afraid. Sorry, but that’s just bullshit. You and I both know that taking care of other people can be a means of avoiding your own problems.” Then he told her that she was in denial about Dad. And her version of reality was naive: “Not in all ways, of course. But God help the person who dares to question you.” He even threw in that her song reading was hypocritical. “Family problems are your specialty, except when it’s your own goddamn family.”

Finally, he wrote, “I thought I understood you, but it seems I was very wrong. Of course this is no surprise, is it? It’s part of your self-image. You understand everyone, but no one can possibly understand you.”

My hands were trembling as I put this letter on top and wrapped them back in foil. Nervous is too mild to describe what I felt, it was more like shaken to the core.

I told myself I was just angry with her for lying about Dad. I told myself I’d feel differently once I talked to her, once I gave her a chance to explain. Ben was wrong, he had to be. Sure, Mary Beth was acting a little strange lately, but she was the wisest person in town; everybody said so. She couldn’t be a “control freak,” who was “afraid to let anyone get close to her.” It just wasn’t possible.

All I needed was to hear her explanation. Of course she would have a reason for all this.

I waited until we were in the kitchen that night to ask her. She was getting ready to fry chicken; I was sitting at the table, helping Tommy finish coloring in a picture of a bunch of zoo animals Mary Beth had drawn for him. I picked this moment because I knew we wouldn’t be interrupted. The hour between six and seven was the only hour left in the evening that she wasn’t available for her customers. Of course the phone still rang, but she always let the answering machine pick up. She called it our family’s sacred time. Even her house projects always had to wait during that hour.

I expected her to be upset that I’d looked at her letters, but I figured she’d get over it quickly enough and apologize to me. After all, I was the injured party here, the one who’d been lied to. But no sooner were the words out of my mouth than her hands dropped to her sides and she blinked at me as though she didn’t recognize her own sister anymore. “God,” she gasped, “how could you?”

Even Tommy could tell something was very wrong. He pointed his chubby finger at me. “You’re in big trouble.”

“I was only trying to help you,” I said quickly. “I was worried. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Her voice was so insistent, it was staccato. “I do not need your help.”

“I think you do,” I began. The phone was ringing, but I could talk over it, I did it all the time. Except this time, when she picked it up on the second ring. I could tell from the sudden shift of her voice—she sounded so calm and cool, like nothing could ever upset her—that it was a customer.

“Right now is fine,” she said, before she hung up. I was staring a hole right through her as she walked back to the stove. When she didn’t say a word, I asked her if she’d just told a customer to come over now.

“No, I told her I’d come and get her.” Mary Beth’s voice was sharp like the popping of the grease in the pan. “Her car’s in the shop, and it’s urgent. We’ll have to finish this conversation later.”

It took all my concentration to absorb this news and I was going out of the lines, messing up the elephant’s tail. Tommy took the crayon out of my hand and told me not to scribble.

“Is that all right with you?” she said, finally.

I hesitated for a moment. “Well, no. I mean, I really need to talk to you. And it seems kind of weird that right when I bring this up, you decide to break your rule and—”

She spun around. “Weird how?”

When I didn’t answer, she walked over and sat down across from me at the table. Her eyes were narrow and her breath was coming out in short, angry bursts. Tommy took this moment to escape into the living room. I leaned back in my chair, wishing he’d asked me to come with him.

“Do you think my song reading is hypocritical, Leeann?” She was rubbing her temples like she had a headache. “You read what Ben said about me. Do you think he’s right?”

I wasn’t sure what the answer was, but then I glanced in her eyes and saw it: a self-doubt I’d never seen before, a pain I’d noticed the first time the night of my accident but had a feeling had been there for a very long time. I didn’t hesitate, I told her absolutely not. “Ben doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s like he must not get how gifted you are.”

She touched my hand lightly with her fingertips. “Thanks, baby,” she said, and exhaled. “I knew I could count on you.”

When she got up to turn the chicken over, she apologized for getting so mad. “You shouldn’t have gone through my things. But I guess I understand why you did.” And then she changed the subject to the customer who was expecting her any second, whose music all had to do with—ironically enough—the fight she was having with her older sister Laurie.

I decided to let the topic of Dad wait. I’d waited years to know where he was; I could wait awhile longer. For now, I would just do what Mary Beth wanted me to do. Cut up Tommy’s chicken. Stir the corn. Make sure he drank his milk. Wrap up the leftovers for her to eat later tonight.

I was trying to make up for all the lying I’d done and the worry I’d caused her, but that wasn’t all. Something bad was happening to my family, I could feel it, and I was determined to keep it from getting any worse. Even if my sister was wrong about Dad and Ben and a hundred other things, she was still here, frying chicken and remembering Tommy’s milk and always wearing her seat belt, no matter how short the trip. And tonight she would be here, like always, maybe rearranging the furniture, but also making sure we weren’t coughing or sick, always standing ready to defend us from strange noises or imagined intruders with the old baseball bat she kept under her bed.

Mom was dead, Dad was a vague memory, and Ben was a thousand miles away now. Ben was gone, and there was nothing I could do to get him back. My sister was here, it was just that simple. My sister was my family.

A
ll that summer, I hung around the house, helping Mary Beth. Summer was always her busiest season, and that one was downright crazy with all the customers she’d taken on in the last year. Every time we turned on the answering machine, it seemed like they all had new songs to report, new lines that were keeping them awake, tossing in their beds. Mary Beth said it was the sun’s fault, for making people remember what it was like to be a kid wishing for swims in the lake and ice-cream cones and other things you could just reach out and have.

No hour could be kept sacred for our family anymore, but Tommy didn’t seem to mind. Mary Beth did what she could, grabbing him up and spinning him around to the music whenever she had a spare moment, making notes in his room so she could help him run his trains. Also he loved having all these people around, especially when the customers brought their children along. The kids would hang out and play with Tommy while Mary Beth was with their moms down in the office. I didn’t mind either, even though of course I had to baby-sit all those extra kids.

It was the summer of ’83, and the number one song on the radio was “Every Breath You Take.” A creepy song, my sister said, and I nodded though I was spending most of my time doing just what the guy in the song did—though I knew
my
motives were good. I was always watching Mary Beth, trying to figure out if she was really all right. She’d given up on the home improvements at the beginning of June, finally, but she still didn’t seem exactly herself. There was a fragility about her now, a sense when you looked at her that she’d been hurt so many times, the slightest disappointment might topple her again. At least that was my fear, which was why as curious as I was about Dad, I vowed not to bring up the topic until I was sure she was ready. Of course I was hoping she’d bring it up herself sometime. She knew I’d read the letters; she had to figure I’d be dying to talk about it.

I made it until the middle of July before I finally broke down.

At least I picked a good time. It was a Tuesday evening, Tommy was in bed, and Mary Beth was in a great mood because one of her customers, Irene Danston, had just called with the happy news that she was leaving her husband, Jack. According to Mary Beth, Jack kept Irene a virtual prisoner at home, refusing to allow her to get a job or go to night school, refusing to let her question any of his decisions. Mary Beth had been working with Irene for two years to get her the courage to do this (Irene’s very first song she reported to my sister was a country tune about escaping from a guy), and now, it was finally happening. Mary Beth had been smiling ever since she hung up the phone.

I was sitting on the couch, pretending to read, when I glanced up and asked if we could talk about something. She put down the chart in her hand. “Of course, honey.”

“Can I turn the music off?” The song was too upbeat for my mood.

“Sure,” she said, and I did. When I sat back down, I picked the window chair, so I could have some distance to make my point.

I planned to ease into the topic, but I was too anxious to do it. I reminded her that I knew she knew where Dad was, since I’d read her letters, which of course was wrong and I’d never do again, etcetera. (I didn’t want a lecture, even though it wasn’t true, what I told her about never doing it again. I’d already gone through the whole place looking for Dad’s address, to no avail.)

She looked at me and calmly repeated her explanation of why she’d had to find him: that life insurance business. And she threw in that the money had sure come in handy for bills in the last few months.

I knew she was talking about the hospital bills for what happened to me. Kyle’s auto insurance should have covered it, except, as it turned out, Kyle didn’t have auto insurance. His dad had taken him off the family’s policy—and absolutely forbidden him to drive—as punishment for getting bad grades. My sister had been round and round with Kyle’s parents, who were petitioning the insurance company, and still promised to pay for everything, one way or another, eventually. But Mary Beth couldn’t wait. Tommy was having those ear infections again, and he was going to need tubes inserted and more visits with the specialists. We had to be the family who always paid on time, since we didn’t have health insurance.

As I looked down at my hands, I wondered if I’d ever stop feeling guilty about this. The guilt was like the scar under my chin: I had touched it so often in the last few months, secretly, shamefully, and always with a sense of embarrassment that I couldn’t just leave it alone and go on with my life.

Finally, I took a breath. “Okay, well, the thing is I really want to know where Dad is.” Then, before she could interrupt, “I just want to write to him. Maybe he’ll write back this time, even if he is ill or whatever you want to call it.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. She held up her hand like a crossing guard, palm out, and her voice became almost too gentle, angry gentle if there is such a thing. “Dad is not ill, Leeann. You have to trust me on this. He has problems, yes, but he is not crazy. No matter what some people have to say about it.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, glancing in her eyes. “Then why didn’t you tell me you knew where he is? Why don’t you want me to write him?”

“Oh, Lee,” she said, leaning back, “it’s so complicated.” She paused for a minute and twisted her fingers in the spaces of the afghan on the couch until it looked like she was wearing rings. “Remember when we were at the cemetery? Remember what we talked about?”

I remembered being at the cemetery, but I wasn’t sure which time she was referring to. We’d been there a lot that summer, starting with Memorial Day, when we spent all morning arranging flowers at Mom’s grave, and at least once a week since. It was the one place Mary Beth always seemed relaxed, so I went with her without complaining for a change. The last time was just two days ago, on Sunday, when she decided we should have a picnic even though it was so hot the ham was limp and the cheese turned plastic and Tommy’s little friend Jonah didn’t understand why we had to eat at this place where there were no swings or slides or water of any kind, not even a wading pool.

Tommy wasn’t fazed. He was used to the cemetery; he’d been coming here since he was a toddler. All those times I told Mary Beth I couldn’t handle going, Tommy was too young to say yes or no. He knew all the graves in the vicinity of Mom’s, and though he couldn’t always read the names, he could recite the numbers like statistics from baseball cards. 1-9-0-2, 1-9-6-4. That is, Clarence J. Sutter, 1902–1964. Husband of Ida P. Sutter, who was buried right next to him, and as Tommy told his friend Jonah, was so newly dead she probably wasn’t even rotted all the way.

At four and a half, Tommy’s idea of death sounded a lot like a sci-fi movie. The body was like a mechanical shell you threw off when you went to heaven. Heaven was like another planet, but better, where you could have all the candy you wanted. Cemeteries were like portals from heaven to earth, where the dead people could still see you. And that’s why we came here all the time. So his grandma could see what a big boy he was getting to be.

Jonah’s mother told us later that Tommy’s explanation must have made an impression since Jonah came home upset that he didn’t have his own dead relatives to visit. It would have been funnier if Mary Beth had laughed, too.

We’d been at the cemetery plenty, but we’d never talked about Dad there. We didn’t talk about much at all there that I could remember.

The phone was ringing, but before Mary Beth got up to answer it, she reminded me of a comment she’d made last Sunday about Mom maybe being better off now. She didn’t mean because Mom was in a more sophisticated version of Tommy’s heaven with all the candy, but because Mom was finally free from all her suffering.

It was the kind of thing you usually say when someone dies after a long, painful illness, but I knew what Mary Beth was getting at. And it wasn’t just how hard Mom had to work to support us or how alone she was after Dad left; it was a deeper unhappiness that was always with her, maybe all the way back to when she was a kid in the children’s home. When Mary Beth got off the phone though, I told her the truth: I had no idea what that comment about Mom at the cemetery had to do with me writing to Dad now.

She inhaled. “The last few years of her life, Mom wanted so badly to believe that things happen for a reason. It wasn’t her nature to think that way.” Mary Beth smiled a wry smile. “Punishment she believed in, but never grace.”

My sister wasn’t looking at me; she was staring out the back window. The wind was blowing. The moon was shining big and yellow through the flickering leaves, and maybe she thought, like I did, that the moon looked lonely, because she stood up and shut the curtains before she said, “Do you think we’re better off now?”

“Better off?” I had a hunch what she was asking, but I couldn’t believe it.

“I’m saying if things happen for a reason, are we better off without Mom?”

“No,” I said firmly. It was the only possible answer. It was what she was waiting to hear.

“Okay. Now what if God told us we could have her home, but she was happier where she was. How could we drag her back here anyway?”

I paused until I thought I got it. “Are you saying Dad might be better off where he is?”

“I don’t know. I have no way to know that, Lee. But neither do you, and I doubt you’ve even thought about it.”

She had me there. I crossed my arms tightly, and willed myself not to mess with my chin.

“Isn’t it possible that someone who’s been gone for more than nine years wants to stay gone?” She looked at me and her voice grew soft. “Isn’t it possible that’s why he’d already disappeared when we got to Kansas City? Because even though he was happy to get your letter, he didn’t want to be found?”

Before I could answer, the phone rang again. It was Irene Danston, who was losing her nerve about leaving Jack, and so of course Mary Beth had to talk to her, and of course Mary Beth had to offer her our couch, just for a few nights, until she decided where to go. As I helped Mary Beth make up the couch, we talked about what we’d do if Jack dared to show up here. We were being silly, bragging about how tough we were with our punches and kicks. When Irene came, she joked that we could be like
Charlie’s Angels,
with Mary Beth as Farrah Fawcett and me as Kate Jackson and her as Tanya Roberts, the one season replacement everyone forgot as soon as the show got canceled.

By the time I went to bed that night, I was so confused I felt like even wanting to contact Dad made me a little like Jack Danston. If Dad wanted to be gone, what choice did I have but to respect that?

But my respect got me no closer to the truth. This was what I kept coming back to, as the summer went on and Mary Beth and I sat together night after night, doing the charts, talking about her customers. It was too ironic: me knowing the secrets of half our town, while my own father remained this huge mystery.

And I’d always hated mysteries. Every week, I would beg my sister to turn down the stereo so I could watch my favorite TV program: the one where Arthur C. Clarke showed that some famous mystery—the Bermuda Triangle or a man who claimed to have lived a past life during the Civil War or a Christian whose hands bleed like Jesus’ every Easter—was really perfectly reasonable, explained by some scientific principle or another, and so not really a mystery at all. I loved hearing that there were pockets of methane gas in the Bermuda Triangle and not space aliens; that the man with the past life had found all those details about the Civil War in diaries he’d read so long ago he’d forgotten them; that the brain could actually make that old woman’s hands bleed just because she believed in Jesus so strongly. I loved the idea that confusion didn’t just feel like a headache; it was just as capable of being cured.

All I wanted was a little truth. Of course I’d thought about asking Ben; I must have fingered that slip of paper with his phone number on it a hundred times. But summer was almost over when I found myself standing in the kitchen, holding the phone.

My hands were shaking a little, but I kept reminding myself of his claim that he went to see Dad because he thought he could help him. Even if it made Mary Beth mad, it touched me more than anything Ben had ever said or done. I’d seen Dad’s apartment, all those lists he made on the walls. Whether he was crazy or not, he needed someone’s help.

It was Saturday morning but Mary Beth wasn’t seeing customers because it was Labor Day weekend; she and Tommy were at a welcome open house for his kindergarten class. Ben answered on the second ring and was surprised, to put it mildly. After I said my name, he repeated it, lifting his voice like it was a question, like he couldn’t believe it was really me.

“Is something wrong?” he said quickly.

“Oh no. Everything’s fine.”

“Mary Beth is all right?”

“Yeah.” It was closer to true than a “no” would have been. She did seem fine now. Sometimes I even wondered if I’d imagined the problems last spring. After all, our house did look a lot better. What was wrong with fixing the place up?

“How about you?” I asked lightly. “Are you doing okay?”

“My work is coming along. Same old story. Work, come home to an empty apartment, go back to work. Not much else.”

“Cool,” I said idiotically. My foot was thumping against the table as it hit me that Catherine person hadn’t moved to Philadelphia with him. I wasn’t very surprised. “I mean, it’s cool that your work is going good. Not the other part.”