I should have known. I should have been able to see from the way Melissa carried herself that something deep inside of her was hurting. If I was really paying attention, I would have known. There were fundamental things about Melissa – her seriousness, her awkwardness around strangers in small crowds, her need to always make things right – that should have told me she had been marked by a darkness I couldn’t otherwise see. When we made love in the early days of our relationship, there was a tentativeness to it that I perceived as Melissa’s holding back, waiting for our love to deepen. Now it was impossible not to think of it some other way – that the very act caused at least a little bit of the darkness to return. If I really loved her as much as I said I did, I could have asked the right questions, allowed her to trust me enough to reveal this to me and in so doing maybe allow her to unburden herself.
But I didn’t allow her to trust me enough. What did that say about us?
My little fantasy was meant to be a pure act of whimsy, a tiny pleasure cruise. I thought – though admittedly I obviously didn’t consider all the ramifications – that maybe I’d find the source of some quirk of hers, some little thing she did now that she’d started doing when she was three and I’d chuckle about it to myself long into our marriage. However, if I’d found those things on my journey, I didn’t remember them now. Nothing came from my trip to Melissa’s past other than one, horrible, burning image.
Something I would absolutely never forget. Still, it couldn’t come close to approximating the effect this event must have had on Melissa. I had to do something about that. I simply had to.
The light through the balcony window darkened with my mood. They say music soothes a troubled soul, so I rose and walked over to my iPod dock. I scrolled through some of my favorite bands, like Phish and the Dave Matthews Band. I realized, though, that crashing drums and wildly improvising musicians were the last things I needed right now. I went to the stereo cabinet and found a compilation of classical music still in its shrink wrap. I popped the CD into the player and watched the display flicker. Piano and violin flowed into the room, majestic and unruffled.
I sat back down and contemplated the ceiling, wondering what was tugging at my consciousness. Something else I should know. I finally realized that all of the music in this apartment was all mine. I had never seen Melissa buy music. I had never seen her play music. If I played it, she seemed to enjoy it. If I asked her to dance to it, she danced, and with a grace that I lacked. However, she’d never put on a song of her own volition. When she listened to the radio, it was always the news shows on National Public Radio. This made sense, of course. She was an environmental activist and she listened to the news like all the news junkies in Washington. But never once did she flip on the radio while we were driving and say, “I love this song.” Never once did she put on a piano concerto and sit back enraptured the way she had that afternoon in the music room.
Of course not. Music was one of the many things that had been stolen from her that day.
Glass glinted from the wall opposite the balcony as the rays of the dying sun reflected off the casing of the photo montage on the wall. Melissa’s mother had put it together from our photos and hers. There we were swimming in a Maine lake, frolicking like porpoises in the clear water nestled deep in the woods. There we were lying on a Bermuda beach, Melissa looking spectacular in her bikini and me with a face as red as the lobster I ate every night. In the center of the montage was my favorite picture. Kate Jordan snapped it soon after Melissa moved in here. It showed Melissa and me sitting on the sofa, my arm draped over her shoulder as Wizard lay contentedly in her lap.
As I stared at the photo, Melissa’s eyes twinkled like tiny orange stars. But the light was not hers. The light that made them shine came from a fading sun.
The Melissa I knew was not the Melissa I saw on my journey to her past. The Melissa I would marry had the same passion and fire that her younger self had, but her inner light was gone, that special zest for living that made young Melissa such an extraordinary girl. A medical doctor could not restore it, nor could a psychologist. Not even a loving husband.
But I could do something. I could restore Melissa’s inner light. She would continue to study piano, and develop her talent until she became expert. She would become a great pianist, her life a celebration of happiness and success contributing more to the world by far than she could ever contribute as an activist. She would find her destiny in Carnegie Hall, not Capitol Hill, and her influence would range across nations.
I could do that and I would. None of Stephon’s caveats would stop me.
A key clicked in our lock and the door opened. I wasn’t sure I was entirely ready for this moment. Melissa stood in the doorway clutching her briefcase. She looked puzzled for a second and then smiled.
“I didn’t know you were going to be home early.”
I didn’t even attempt a smile. I was glad her eyes were invisible in the gathering dusk.
“I had some things to take care of.”
“I know what you mean. I can’t wait until all this planning is over and we can relax. Meanwhile, I’ll be glad to get away from work. I had another briefing paper to finish before I left. It’s amazing I was able to leave before midnight.” She walked into the kitchen. “You didn’t start anything for dinner?”
“I’ve been a little preoccupied.”
“Do you want to order takeout tonight?”
I didn’t get up from the couch. “Melissa, do you think you could come in here for a few minutes. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
I’m sure the tone in my voice suggested something dire. A look of concern crossed her face as she sat on the sofa.
“Is everything okay?” She glanced at the stereo. “Where’d this music come from?”
I reached for the remote and shut the CD player off. The room was still for several long moments.
Melissa offered a nervous smile. “What’s going on? You look way too serious. Did something happen?”
“Melissa, I know what happened to you.”
She seemed very confused. “What are you talking about?”
“What happened to you years ago.”
Her smile faded to bewilderment. “I’m really not following you.”
“I know about the horrible thing that happened to you when you were a teenager.”
Her expression relaxed a little. “This is about those pictures, right? You’ve drawn some ridiculous conclusion from the fact that I didn’t want you to see what I looked like in high school.”
“Not that. Melissa, you know what I’m talking about. You could have told me. You should have told me.”
“Told you what? Ken, if you’re going to talk in riddles, I’m not playing this game.”
“I know about Miss Hoffman.”
I braced for tears. For anger. I tensed my muscles to grab her if she fainted. Instead, Melissa gave me a look of incomprehension.
“Hoffman? I don’t know any Hoffman?” She thought a moment. “Isn’t that the name of the woman at the catering place? What does she have to do with anything?”
“I mean Miss Hoffman, your piano teacher.”
Her expression remained puzzled. Then her face fell, imploding like a condemned building. She buried her face in her hands, and for a long time she didn’t make any sound at all. It was almost as though she was trying to hide from me, hoping that when she finally lowered her hands, I would be gone and the world would be as it had been five minutes ago.
“Melissa, please,” I said finally to break the silence.
“How could you know?” She spoke into her hands. Her voice was a deep whisper from her chest. Finally she looked at me again.
“I know.”
“You can’t know. No one knows.”
“I know. How I know isn’t important.”
Anger flashed from her ey
es. “Really? You uncover the ugliest, deepest secret from my past and you think it isn’t important to me how you found out?”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s just that I’m not sure you would believe me if I told you.”
“Let me guess,” she said sharply, “a genie came along and offered you three wishes and you said, ‘Tell me the most disgusting thing about my future wife.’”
I was feeling very uneasy, both because of Melissa’s reaction and the fact that she wasn’t all that far from the truth – though I never wanted to see anything like this. “It wasn’t exactly a genie,” I said, though it sounded ridiculous even to me.
Melissa leaped off the couch and paced across the room. “It wasn’t exactly a genie? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Stephon performed a little…magic trick. I told him I wanted to see what you were like growing up. I saw a lot of things, all of which were wonderful. Until this.”
She stopped pacing. “Stephon? The jeweler?”
I nodded.
“Magic trick?” she said, her voice wavering.
I nodded again.
She approached me with tiny steps. Her expression was unbelievably sad. I reached out to hug her. I wanted to hold her as long as I could. As long as she would let me.
Instead of coming into my arms, though, she slapped my face. I was stunned and my cheek stung.
“I didn’t give you permission to spy on my past, Ken,” she said bitterly. “It was none of your business. It was no one’s business. Why did you have to pry into my life?”
I prepared for her to hit me again, but instead, she crumpled onto the couch and then buried her face in my chest, sobbing. I pulled her into my embrace and kissed her hair softly, allowing her to cry until she felt she could raise her head. She cried for a very long time.
“Tell me the truth, Ken. Did this ‘magic trick’ really happen? Or did you hear me talking in my sleep? I haven’t had the nightmares for years, but maybe they’re back.”
“It really did happen. I never would have known about this any other way. And I never would have pried into your past. I just wanted to see if you were really as gorgeous with braces as I imagined you were.”
She tried to smile, but it was a strained, painful-looking attempt. I reached out to touch her face and she took my hand and held it to her chest.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” she said softly.
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. None of this is okay. I didn’t want anyone else to know. Ever.”
“You could have told me. I love you. There isn’t anything you can’t tell me.”
“Not this. It was a long time ago. I buried it. Buried it so deep, I thought. So, so deep. After a while, the nightmares went away. It’s amazing how you can forget something if you try.”
“But you didn’t forget.”
She stared at me blankly for a moment, then lowered her face again. “No, I didn’t forget.”
“So what happened after that day?”
“I went home and told my parents I didn’t want to study piano anymore. I told them the lessons were interfering with my school work, and that I wouldn’t be able to get straight A’s unless I gave up music. My father was about to leave for Okinawa and my mother was busy with Tim. My super-Marine brother had a couple of scrapes with the law when he was a kid. But you’ll never hear about that from my family.”
“You played so beautifully.”
She looked at me with a mix of revulsion and sorrow. “It didn’t matter.”
“You should have told someone. Why didn’t you tell the police?”
Her mouth twisted into something – someone – that I had never seen before. Words spat out like poison darts. “And let my parents find out? Tell my father the colonel? My mother the perfect homemaker? These things don’t happen to nice girls, you know. This couldn’t happen to their perfect Melissa. They didn’t want to hear things like that. They would have blamed it on me.”
“They wouldn’t have. They were so proud of you. They are so proud of you.”
Melissa wiped her eyes. “Which is why I never wanted them to know about this.” She offered me a look that approached panic. “Ken, you can never mention this to them. Never.”
I shook my head in assent. “Of course not.”
She sat back against the couch, her head tilted toward the ceiling. “Maybe I wasn’t a nice girl. Maybe I encouraged that woman somehow. Maybe I was provocative to her in some way.”
“Melissa, I was there. I saw it happen. You did nothing wrong. There was nothing you could have done.”
“That’s exactly it, Ken. I couldn’t have done anything. I can try to save the environment. I can save wounded animals. I can fix dinner and fix a flat tire. I pride myself on being a can-do person. But I couldn’t stop her. When she put her hands all over me, I didn’t know what to do. I should have fought her, screamed, did something. But I was scared and confused. I just let her fondle me and rub herself against me until she had her fill. I should have pushed her away, but I couldn’t.”
I tried to put my arms around her, but she jumped back, animated again, frantic.
“I don’t want to touch anyone right now,” she said. “It has nothing to do with you. I have a horrible, horrible secret and somehow you’ve unearthed it. Now I need to hide it again. I won’t live with this, Ken. I worked too hard to get rid of it. I don’t want to be stuck in the past, Ken. We’re getting married. That’s all I want to think about. The future. The past is gone forever.”
“And that’s it? We just bury it under the carpet? Melissa, I heard you play. That woman was a monster, but she was right about one thing. You were born to be a concert pianist. You were cheated out of it.”
“That Melissa is dead, Ken.”
“She can’t be dead,” I said, moving forward on the sofa, wanting to get up myself, but not sure what would happen if I did. “There was too much life in that Melissa for her to be dead.”
She shook her head sadly. “You’re just going to have to live with the package you got.”
“This isn’t about me. I fell madly, irretrievably in love with ‘the package I got.’ This is about you. About losing more than anyone ever should.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” she said combatively. “Go back to Stephon to perform another ‘magic trick?’”
I leaned forward a little more. “What if I could?”
She covered her face in her hands again and then wiped at her eyes one more time. “Ken, please rejoin me in the real world.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“It’s a ridiculous question.”
“It’s not a ridiculous question. Really, I mean it.”
She put her hands on her hips and stared at me. This was a Melissa I barely knew, one who ran from a fight, one who allowed the world to take her down. “Get over it, Ken.”
“Like you’ve gotten over it?”
I didn’t mean for the words to sting quite as hard as they obviously did. “Yes, just like I’ve gotten over it,” she said. Again she stared at the floor, shaking her head. “I need to go out for a while.” She turned and quickly exited the apartment.
I watched her from the sofa, wanting to chase after her, knowing that I mustn’t.
I couldn’t allow her to go on this way. Not when I could do something about it.
Chapter 8
Transfixed by My Own Power
“This is Melissa’s wish, as well as your own,” Stephon said the next day.
“Yes, it is,” I said determinedly. I was convinced that it really was. That she would have said as much once she’d had the chance to think about it. She hadn’t come home until late last night. I knew she wouldn’t do anything to hurt herself and I also knew that she didn’t want me coming after her, so I just stewed fo
r a long time and then went to bed, though there was no chance I was going to sleep. When she came in, she snuggled up next to me and asked me to hold her, making it abundantly clear that she didn’t want to talk and she didn’t want me to ask her where she’d been. She was still asleep in the morning when I left.
“I feel the need to remind you again that there are significant risks involved in what you are doing.”
“We’ve been through this already.”
“I’m not sure you were listening.”
“Trust me, I was listening. And trust me when I say that I’ve given everything – including everything you said – a great deal of thought. Can we please get on with this?”
Stephon seemed a little miffed, but he nodded. “Yes, we can.”
“My plan is this: I go to the moment where Melissa is attacked. I have a very clear picture in my head of how I’m going to prevent that from happening. Then you pull me out. Everything will be the same, except that Melissa’s horror will have been erased.”
“Or not. There’s no way of knowing how events affect one another.”
“Are you telling me that you know something?”
Stephon raised his hands. “I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m saying that things might not turn out exactly the way you expect them to.”
“But there’s an excellent chance that they will.”
Stephon didn’t respond.
“Regardless,” I said, “Melissa will have this terrible blot removed from her soul.”
“If you are successful.”
“I will be successful. As long as I can touch things, interact with this world. That’s really essential.”
“That much is not a problem.” Stephon held my eyes for a moment and I could see he was conflicted. Not that I really cared what he thought. “I must emphasize again that your decision is irrevocable. Whatever awaits you at the end of your journey will be permanent. Twice you have been given the opportunity to bend the universe to your will. I won’t be able to allow it again.”
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