“Elvis-Pelvis,” I mutter, Doctor X ready with his mic. “Miss Peabody says he’s satanic…but Aunt Martha…Aunt Martha says…Aunt Martha!” I abruptly scream; or rather, try to scream, all the tension Doctor X has charmed from my body returning to collect in my throat, my hoarse attempt at a scream sounding more like a pillow-muffled whisper.
“It all began the day of my funeral,” I whimper, “Aunt Martha literally dragging me over my casket, forcing me to look at my body, to accept my death…and more importantly, my continuing life-”
But I’ve already related that part, and most of what happened in between – between my life as Melvin Morrison the attorney, and my reappearance as Melvin Jr. on the snowy bank of the Winooski River – so I’ll return to the present, to the year 2000.
Simon Says book store has been my favorite haunt for as long as I can remember, my mother taking me there to buy fairy tales and picture books, all of which are still safe in my bedroom bookcase. And although I have no memory of Thelma Farley, Mom says she used to rock me in her sun-browned arms while Mother browsed her shelves. But Simon Farley is another matter, a recent memory; one of those ‘foundation blocks’ one realizes, as an adult, was there when the building of character was in its critical stage. A local celebrity by virtue of Cycles, his prize-winning collection of poems, the wizened Simon was every young rhymester’s confidant, the veritable proof persistence pays; his economic freedom, he assured his young admirers, hard-won after years of composition. His was a romancer’s tale I chose to believe, despite Mother’s assertion it was Thelma’s persistence, not Simon’s, that got him published.
Later, my faith in Simon’s persistence theory saw me through Harvard Law School with an almost religious expectation of success; albeit, my definition of success going through several metamorphoses. Disregarding the changes, I am successful; and successful, as Simon defined the term. I’m happy. Happy with my almost-now-and-hopefully-soon-to-be-profitable Black-N-Blue Bar-B-Q, my riverside smokehouse and bar; and marginally happy with Dot.Com, provided she survives Dr. X; which is something the deceased Simon hasn’t done, his life dredged up in the local press in a kind of third round of Twice-Told Tales.
“Ran across him in the cemetery one night,” remarks my stepfather, while peering over the top of the Sunday paper, “lying cold as a ghost, he was…lying atop the stone next to Artie Steinberg’s grave.”
“What did he have to say for himself?” Mother asks matter-of-factly, the trauma of my party numbing her to the preternatural, the pleasure of having Little George and me over for Sunday dinner damping her doubts.
“That was before he died,” explains my stepfather, “before the locals decided Little George is Artie reborn…that his father is really-“
“Now, now,” interjects my mom, feigning the bland emotion of greeting-card sentiment, “there’s no point in bringing that up when the only one who could tell us for certain has been gone for twenty-some years.”
“Uh…that would be me,” offers my sister Pamela, “I’m supposed to be Charlene reincarnated; but I can’t help you, my memory fades out near the age of two.” (Pamela is the result of my mother’s second draw against the deposit account my father left in the Boston sperm bank, and, according to the “revelations” garnered at my party, the current embodiment of Charlene, Melvin Senior’s seductive secretary.)
“How could a man be certain back then?” replies George, ignoring Pamela and addressing Mom. “DNA wasn’t even-“
“I wasn’t referring to him,” Mother breaks in, any reference to my supposed father requiring such emphasis when George and my mom are talking in front of us kids, “I meant Charlene,” she avers, the mention of the long deceased Charlene getting the same emphasis. Not that their strange behavior has any effect on the three of us, for we’ve talked it out - especially Little George and I - agreeing that we’re abundantly blessed to have not only each other, but two loving parents. And besides, if there are any scores to be kept, we’re even, George, Jr. and I each claiming a stepparent; the fact that my father and his mother died young - and suddenly - balancing the score. Now, we feel even closer; or, I should say, the fact that we want to feel closer makes us believe what my party touts: that my supposed father is his actual father - meaning I am his father - that I was the former partner of his stepfather, while Little George – Artie - was our client. Which makes it logical, or genetic, if you will, for Little George – as Artie, his stepfather’s client - to become my son-cum-stepbrother; the whole convoluted chain binding us closer than identical twins.
The one exception is Little George’s frequent spells of nightmares starring Dot.Com; terror dreams from which he awakes mid-scream, admonishing me tearfully to break the engagement, assuring me she’s a drunk, a card thief and a scamp. Only when he’s awake and fully composed does he rationalize his behavior and employ such nebulous phrases as “distortions from behind the veil”, or “old sins so long forgiven.” It’s then he advises me, with downcast eyes, to “go on…marry the wench. Who knows? perhaps it’s in your karma this time to reform her.”
But my sister Pamela has no such reservations, her own dreams revealing marriage as an ideal – one in which her shining knight, yet unknown, spirits her away. Caught up in the festive preparations for my wedding, she unabashedly assures any who’ll listen that she’ll catch the bride’s bouquet – even if it means knocking down her peers. Pamela’s assertion is disturbing because she usually keeps her word. I say “usually” in deference to a glaring exception. I’m referring to P.M. (my sister’s moniker among family and friends) promising to cover for me with Dot.Com while I enjoy an innocent night of flirtation with an ex-girlfriend, a Harvard grad visiting from Louisiana. P.M. doesn’t cover; nor do I enjoy the evening. P.M. blames Dot.Com for both failures. I know better, Pamela’s cute little asides, in moments of trial, always more revealing than entertaining.
P.M. tells Dot.Com I’m reworking my Black-N-Blue menu, adding hot specials that literally headline my evening’s activities - items like “Bayou, Get-Two” and “Blue-Fun-Due for Two”. And her allusions to two new desserts only exacerbate Dot.Com’s worries, “Get-It-While-You-Can Flan” and “Blue-Brown Betty with Hard-To-Get Sauce” screaming my clandestine fun. It’s enough to send my fiancée storming into the bar with her own menu suggestion: scratch the hot chick-dish appetizer of the night, “Illegal Tenders”, and blaze a trail for home.
And there are aftershocks: Dot.Com, half-lit at my bar, imploring me to sell the restaurant and use the law degree I’d worked so hard to earn. It’s a most compelling argument, I admit, Dot.Com asserting, “As a black attorney in the ‘whitest’ state in the union, you’d stand as stark as an exclamation mark behind your every win,” and “you, of all our local stock, should feel most painfully the bickering and slights stirred up by Vermont’s civil union law. After all, being black should have taught you something!” (I’m always amused by my Dorothy’s blindness to her own brand of bias.) “The protest signs, ‘Take Back Vermont’, and its opposite, ‘Take Vermont Forward’, or the onerous one down on the border with Massachusetts, the one that reads, ‘Leaving the Bay State and entering the Gay State’, should inflame a crusader like you, Melvin. You could develop a following,” she exhorts, waving her empty martini glass, “find a timely path to the governor’s mansion, if only you’d raise your standard! And with your parent’s support…your mother’s, in particular,” she adds abruptly, “being the most popular state representative-”
“You mean my stepdad’s support,” I interrupt, her diatribe putting me on edge. “Not that I don’t admire and adore George, mind you, it’s just…it’s…”
“Well?” she prods with a threatening scowl.
“Well…it’s just that George, by his reluctance to accept what we learned at my party…makes me feel as though I have no depth…as though I just dropped out of the sky like a stray raindrop. A raindrop that’ll eventually evaporate into the great formless mist. And not only me, but the rest of
us, as well.”
“Ah!” she retorts, her flashing black eyes giving me the fright of close lightening, “do we have a little storm cloud brewing?”
“Are you suggesting you’re pregnant?” my humorous attempt to ameliorate only darkening her glower – Pamela’s breezy entrance dispelling the clouds.
“So, what do you think?” my sister bubbles, parading inappropriately in her bridesmaid’s gown, “am I not the perfect pick in this dress? the nobody-else-has-got-a-chance knockout choice for the man of my dreams?”
“That depends,” rejoins a sullen Dorothy, turning over her empty martini glass as a signal for a fourth free drink. “Depends on whether or not your knight errant has returned from his quest-“
“That’s exactly what’s bothering me,” I interject, ignoring the overturned glass, “that’s what’s irking me about George’s unbelief. According to my past-life regression tape, P.M., here, is the reincarnation of Charlene returning from her quest, an unfulfilled quest, the poor lady dying in a car wreck on her way to see Mother-“
“Calls for a toast!” Dot.Com. screeches, shoving her glass across the bar - P.M. adding, “Yeah…and you’d better watch out, bro, for a seductress I still may be!”
“Not my point,” I scold P.M., getting Dot.Com a coffee instead of a gin and serving it with a stern admonishment, “and not yours, either, if you know what’s good for you. No, it all seems to add up, when you think about it: Charlene was about to risk her own reputation for the sordid satisfaction of revenge. She was going to tell my mother that she’d played around with my father; but the angels prevented it by an assumed accident. And before that, my father was about to scar my mother’s trust by admitting infidelity; but the angels prevented him, too. Now, Charlene (Pamela) and my father (me) are back together under the care of the very lady we were about to injure. Such ineluctable ‘coincidence’ proves love can never be overcome. Never outdone. Love always wins in the end…and without the first fist raised, without a harsh word spoken-“
“What’s that have to do with George’s unbelief?” Dot.Com grumbles, accepting the coffee with cross resignation.
“Don’t you get it?” I ask, disgruntled by her denseness. “George’s offer to marry Charlene was more than a gentleman’s gesture to a lady in distress. It was an offer to her unborn child, an offer to give it a name, a father, a start in life equivalent to all the other little tots in Plainfield with married parents. And what happens? he ends up adopting the boy, standing in as his father, despite the tragic death of Charlene. It’s as though his offer was made and accepted in the next world, too; a pledge of love transcending the-“
“Don’t tell me,” Dot.Com blathers, “love can never be overcome. Never outdone. It wins every time. Right?”
“It did this time,” I affirm. Look at us. We’re all back together, the dark chains of adultery, of pseudo-romance, no longer shackling our hearts. Brothers and sister in one happy family; our regard for one another unselfish, our highest concern for the others’ good.”
“But Daddy does want that for us,” P.M. argues petulantly, accepting my offered soda. “Our happiness is always his…what did you call it…his highest concern?”
“Never said it wasn’t,” I mumble, surrendering to the misdirection of her usual inattention.
“Fathers can be like that,” Dot.Com sardonic, stirring a second dose of sugar in her coffee, “concerned with getting high. My Dad has regaled me numerous nights with tales of the old hippie commune and the weed that choked out their flowers; or of Thelma Farley and her thrill-seeking feats of intervention-“
“Thelma Farley went after the pot smokers?” I query, amenable to any subject that might cheer my dear Dorothy’s mood.
“At least that would have been commendable,” she rejoins, amid noisy slurps of coffee, “but, no. Dad claims Thelma took an immediate and inordinate interest in me when I was born. Like I was her grandchild – could she have had one – her intrusion into our home an almost daily affair; her threat of some curse by Jehovah Herself, if she wasn’t named my godmother, the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“Wow! Your dad had an affair with an Arab?” P.M. taking leave, momentarily, of her reflection in the backbar mirror. “I didn’t know camels were ever-“
“How do you account for Dorothy’s ebony eyes?” I break in, trading a wink with Dot.Com, “or her raven hair? Mr. Compton doesn’t have either.“
“But that old woman who wanted to be your godmother…what was her name?”
“Thelma,” Dot.Com intervenes.
“Yeah…Thelma,” P.M. turning back to the mirror, “her stepson does…or did, I suppose. For though his hair is salt and pepper, his eyes are still as black as Dorothy’s.”
“So let’s be sure of your implications, sis,” I reply, pretending to ponder as I perfunctorily wipe the bar. “You’re suggesting the deceased Mr. Farley’s son - the son he never knew he had until the boy was in his thirties – came wondering up from Boston, a tall, thin stranger in search of a father his ailing mother disclosed on her deathbed…only to have an affair with Dorothy’s mother?”
“Really? A Bostonian?” she quips. “Do you really think that’s where my knight will come from? Some summa cum laude-“
”Some sooner, some later,” I interpose, “and for their sake, I hope it’s the latter.”
“That’s right, sweetheart,” Dot.Com joins in, a smile softening her face, her eyes, her entire demeanor becoming empathetic. “Marriage is a commitment, dear, not a complaint you can rid by prescription.”
“Oh, do tell,” P.M. retorts acidly, giving me a glance forewarning disaster. “Then what were you doing, Miss Commitment, with that young Doctor Brigham I saw you kissing last night?”
There is no merit in a faith whereof human
reason furnishes the proof. (Augustine)
XXVIII
George O’Malley has enjoyed over two decades of enhancements since moving to Vermont - some voluntary, some not - but marriage to his widowed law partner is his epiphany, a veritable act of ennoblement. And though it took him more than five arduous years to win her hand, Melody Morrison-O’Malley remains his raison d’être, the joy of his desiring, the model of motherhood for each of their three grown children - none of whom are his. Conceived by the miracle of modern science, Melody’s son Melvin, Jr. and daughter Pamela are the progeny of a love forever sacred, forever separate; Melody retaining, by the vogue of a hyphen, her widower’s surname for the benefit of their children. And with the death of Charlene Mally, and the subsequent passing of Charlene’s mother six years later, Little George joined the family by way of adoption, an act almost unnoticed by the children at the time, their bonds formed long before Little George became ‘legal’.
And so it was with Simon Farley - his son, from a youthful affair, coming up from Boston to discover the dad he’d never known, Simon’s sensitivity gradually fostering in the hardened young man a latent tenderness, a likeness of his father that would have never been save for the elder Simon’s gentle guidance. Seeping through the Bostonian’s crusty façade like a penetrating oil, Simon’s kindness proved practical, indeed, when dealing with his stepmother Thelma.
For Thelma had never changed. Love merely redirected her energy, making Simon, Simon’s son, Simon’s work and Simon Says, her new quartet of causes, her incessant promotion of which prompted the natives to look back fondly on her more impersonal marches and placards. But succeed she did, seeing Simon published, then selling her farm to buy him his namesake bookstore; even living long enough to approve, begrudgingly, of Simon Junior’s management; a “guarantee”, as she called it, on Artie Steinberg’s dream. When the school bus stops fell into disrepair, she nagged Simon Jr. to make a name for himself by organizing a drive for their mending. And not only of the structures, but of the brass plaques Artie had bequeathed for display, Thelma insisting they be polished and permanently encased in frames bestowed by the family store - Art
ie’s original inscription conveniently in harmony with her motive:
Simon says ‘cause he can’t read
Is why they call him Simple;
As they will you, if you don’t heed
The call of learning’s temple.
So study well the printer’s art,
Buy books and read them through;
So, Simon says, will you be part
Of Future’s well-to-do.
“Simon Says the Bus Stops Here” was Thelma’s last public drive, the fiery old lady expiring on the statehouse lawn like a saint on a mission from God. But hers was an act that could not be topped, her death and funeral remembered like D-Day; her demise only enhancing the tales of her feats - Simon Senior not missing a beat, his compositions in Thelma’s honor increasing the bookstore’s traffic, former visitors returning to gawk and buy at her shrine. “Vermont’s own Emma Goldman,” Simon was wont to claim, “a woman ahead of her times” – to which George countered privately, “If we could but know the times ahead, I’m sure we’d be glad she’s behind them.”
Life evolved for George in a similar fashion: a going private, a smoothing-out, a quieting-down, a mellowing appreciation for the peace of rural life; his knack of finding controversy now political instead of personal; his law office, with Melody in the Legislature, more a think-tank for the establishment than a bastion for the unhappily wed.
Accordingly, it’s an out-of-the-ordinary social disturbance when young Doctor Brigham comes calling for an audience, his discordant demeanor suggesting a war afoot in the brush.
“It’s about your son,” he announces officiously, slamming George’s office door for emphasis. “I’ve come to appeal to your reason, to your long years of hard-earned wisdom.“
“Out with it, my good doctor,” George taking subliminal advantage of the chair lodged comfortably behind his desk. “And which son might that be?” he asks, motioning for the young fellow to select one of the armless chairs floundering on sea-green carpet.
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