Jane's Harmony (Jane's Melody #2)

by Ryan Winfield

  Jane sat and listened to the muffled thud of the car door shutting, followed by the purr of the car driving away. And she sat for a long time after, just listening to the dead quiet of the old house and staring at her mother’s uneaten egg.

  Jane stood on the ferry deck and watched the island grow against the dark clouds stacked up on the horizon. It wasn’t raining, but everything was wet as if it had recently been. The cold air felt good against her face, and she closed her eyes to listen to the familiar hypnotic hum of the ferry’s engines, the quiet splash of water against its bow, and the call of seagulls in its wake. She couldn’t tell if this felt more like a homecoming or a trip into the past, but either way she was happy to be alone for once. But she wasn’t alone, was she? She had another life deep inside her, pleading its case against her fears, against her doubts, against her choice.

  The announcement came for passengers to return to their vehicles, pulling Jane from her private thoughts. Her hair was tangled from the wind and her eyes were watering from the cold. She tossed her half-finished coffee into the trash and went inside and down the stairs to the vehicle deck. She started her car and angled the vent to let the heat blow over her numb cheeks. It felt good.

  The ferry docked and she disembarked, driving up and out of the terminal and onto an island that had not changed. No, the island had not changed, she thought. But she had. The wet streets seemed to suck the color from everything until only gray skies and dark trees remained, and the scene out her windshield matched her mood as she drove toward the cemetery with a foggy head and a heavy heart. She slowed at the cemetery entrance with her blinker on, speeding up at the last minute and passing it by. Not yet, she thought. I’ll go. I will. But not just yet.

  The road led her around the island, providing peekaboo glimpses of the gray water through the trees, not unlike her fragmented memories flickering just beyond her conscious thoughts, always there like an old movie in her mind, despite her desire not to see them.

  Jane found herself working her way slowly toward her old home. She feared it might already have been torn down; she feared that it hadn’t been. When she finally arrived on her old familiar street, she found her house much the same as she had left it, other than a different car in the driveway and new curtains in the kitchen window.

  She put the car in park and sat looking out her windshield at the house she had called home for fifteen years. What was this place, really? she wondered. Just four exterior walls and a roof. Just a rectangle of land on a big lonely planet, marked out with two-by-fours and plywood by some cunning carpenter, topped with composition shingles and skinned with slat siding painted blue. But it was more than this. It was the place she had raised her daughter, the place she had kept warm with hope and love and dreams. It was a place filled with memories. And then it had become the place she cried herself to sleep each night, wondering why her daughter had to die.

  “Why, God, why?”

  Caleb had come into her life here. And he had helped her to heal. Then she had left it all behind to make a new life with him. But now she wondered if perhaps she hadn’t been running from something when she followed him to Austin, running from a place that had become too painful for her to face. She knew now that you could never outrun your memories. The place might be the trigger, but the past lived in her heart and in her mind. Although perhaps a different future could live in her heart as well—a different ending to a similar story, another chance to make things right, a hope to someday heal.

  Movement caught her eye, and she looked toward the door of her old house and saw a mother and her young son step out. As the mother turned to lock the door, the boy stood looking at Jane from the step. His hair was as fine and blond as corn silk, and he smiled innocently. The mother took his hand and led him toward their car in the driveway. She didn’t seem to notice Jane, but the boy never did look away. Even when he was buckled in and they were backing out, his little towhead turned to keep her in sight. Then he raised one small hand to the glass and the car was gone, taking with it Jane’s nostalgia for this place.

  It was someone else’s hopes and dreams that lived here now—someone else’s future, someone else’s memories. She had been curious to see if Caleb’s fountain remained in the backyard, but it no longer mattered. She put the car in drive and pulled away. She didn’t look in the mirror. Perhaps because she knew there was no longer anything there to see.

  She was driving back toward the cemetery on the main road when she saw a sign for Island Crest Assisted Living. The arrow pointed to a winding road that led up the island’s central hill, and Jane slowed and took the turn.

  What the hell, she thought, it was worth a shot.

  The assisted living center was a sprawling single-level building built on top of a hill providing northwesterly views of the sound. The parking lot had a sprinkling of cars and several small buses with the center’s logo painted on their sides. The air smelled of wet blacktop and of pine. She walked up beneath the portico and through the automatic glass doors to the lobby inside. It smelled of lemon floor cleaner and just a hint of disinfectant. She crossed to a circular welcome desk and addressed a man idly flipping through a Sunset magazine.

  “Hello. I’m here to visit one of your residents. If she’s here, of course. I’m not sure.”

  “Name, please,” the man said, tossing the magazine and pulling his keyboard toward him.

  “Mrs. Hawthorne. I’m not sure of her first—”

  “Oh, her,” he said, pushing the keyboard away without bothering to look anything up. “She’s here, all right. Take a left there to the end of the hall. Then take a right. She’s in room twenty-three F. And if she’s not there, you’ll probably find her hassling the nurses at their station.”

  Jane walked the long hall and turned as he had directed. The place was quiet and infused with fluorescent light, and it felt like a place where people came to say good-bye more than they did to visit. She passed open doors into rooms where she saw feet sticking out from blankets, pointing toward the soft blue glow of murmuring televisions. Talking heads lulling them toward death. She saw bulletin boards filled with cards and tables lined with flowers. She saw a man on the edge of his bed, rubbing lotion onto the stump where his leg had once been. She saw another man with his toothless mouth agape in dementia’s telltale silent and final scream. She wondered if her mother would someday be in such a state and in such a place. She wondered if she herself would be. Perhaps sooner than any of us care to admit, she thought.

  She came upon 23F and stopped. A small placard outside the door read: HAWTHORNE. A woman was sitting in a wheelchair, her head silhouetted against the TV. Jane knocked on the open door, but Mrs. Hawthorne didn’t turn to look.

  She reached up a hand dismissively and said, “Just leave it by the bed and I’ll take it later.”

  Jane took a few steps into the room. “Hello, Mrs. Hawthorne. It’s me, Jane. Jane McKinney.”

  The old lady placed her left hand on the wheelchair wheel and moved it backwards, then slowly turned the chair until she was facing Jane. She looked exactly the same, except maybe with a new touch of melancholy on her birdlike face. They looked at each other for a moment. Then the TV came on with a commercial for an upcoming documentary marking the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of JFK. Mrs. Hawthorne glanced at the screen and shook her head.

  “I just absolutely hate it every time I see that man’s face on the television.”

  “You didn’t like Kennedy?” Jane asked.

  Mrs. Hawthorne dismissed the TV with a wave. “Oh, he was a fine president. Maybe one of the best. It’s his hair I hate. It drives me to a rage every time I see it.”

  “You hate John F. Kennedy’s hair?”

  “Well, of course. It almost bankrupted us.”

  “And how did his hair manage that?” Jane asked.

  “My second husband owned a chain of hat shops, and we couldn�
��t get inventory fast enough. Hats, hats, hats. All the men wore them. Very classy look, I say. Then along came JFK with his wavy locks and that charming smile, and I’ll be damned if every man in the union wasn’t running around with his head as naked as the day he was born. It nearly ruined the country, if you ask me.”

  Jane had a hard time trying not to laugh. “Maybe you should name a goat after him.”

  The old lady chuckled too. “I did name a cat after him once, but that’s a different story. How are you, dear? Come in, please. Sit down.”

  Jane took the only chair in the room, and Mrs. Hawthorne rotated her wheelchair a bit more so that they were facing each other. The room was simple. A window with lace curtains. An adjustable power bed. A chair. The TV. There was a small, plain dresser, its top adorned with an antique lamp that Jane thought she recognized from Mrs. Hawthorne’s old house. Next to the lamp was a brass urn with a decorative lid.

  “It seems nice here,” Jane lied.

  “Oh, don’t give me that crap,” she replied. “This place is a warehouse for the dying. Every week one leaves feetfirst, and a new one takes their place. The hallways fill with the families. All a-chattering too. Oh dear, you should hear their lies. ‘You’ll love it here,’ they say. ‘It will be fun, Grandma.’ ‘We’ll visit all the time, Granddaddy.’ Then they’re gone and the next time you see them, they’re back with the funeral van.”

  “Doesn’t anyone visit you?” Jane asked.

  “No one cares to come,” she said. “No one except my one greedy son who’s furious that I’m leaving my property to the state. They have instructions at the front not to let him in.” She lifted her head and swung her eyes toward the dresser. “But I’ve got Jim and Carl there to keep me company.”

  “Jim and Carl?”

  “My first and second husbands. I was widowed twice, you know. They’re both in the urn there, waiting on me to join them. But you didn’t come to talk about an old lady’s slow crawl toward the crematorium. I see our man has put that ring he worked so hard for on your hand.”

  Jane looked down at the yellow diamond on her finger. Then she covered it with her other hand, because she worried that it might make Mrs. Hawthorne uncomfortable to see her wedding ring worn by someone else.

  But Mrs. Hawthorne just smiled. “How is he?”

  “Caleb’s doing fine. He’s in Los Angeles right now, playing his guitar and singing for a TV show. It’s a nice break for him. I didn’t know that I’d be coming today or I would have told him. I’m sure he would have asked me to say hello to you.”

  “No sense troubling a young man about an old woman,” she said, passing her hand in front of her face as if to wave the idea away. Then she focused on Jane. “Tell me, my dear, how are you? I’ve seen happier faces in here on hospice nurses.”

  Jane sighed. She hadn’t meant to; it just came out. She looked past Mrs. Hawthorne to the yellow lace curtains, and she tried to keep the tears from coming into her eyes.

  “I’m just having a tough time, I guess.”

  When Jane let her eyes find Mrs. Hawthorne again, she saw that the old lady was looking at her with her hands folded on her lap, as if waiting for more but in no way wanting to force it from her. There was a clear patience in her gaze, a sharpness of mind dulled only by a motherly compassion. It was something Jane had not seen in a long time, and it was comforting. She let down her guard and just spoke the truth.

  “My mother had a stroke, so I left my job and flew home. But she doesn’t want me here. And I guess I don’t want to be here either. Caleb’s busy filming his show. And I want him to be there. I do. It was even my idea. But I just feel cut off from everyone. I don’t know if I should fly there or just fly home and deal with this alone. You see, I don’t know if I can go through with this. Not again. I don’t know if I’d survive. And if I tell him, I know I’ll have no choice. I know how he feels. Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. I’m sure this makes no sense at all. Please, never mind my rambling.”

  When she finished, Mrs. Hawthorne lifted her clasped hands from her lap and leaned forward in her chair, resting her chin on them as she looked directly into Jane’s eyes. “How long have you been pregnant, dear?”

  The room blurred into a smear of yellow light, and Jane felt the tears slide down her cheeks. She opened her purse and fished out a tissue, dabbing the tears away as she spoke.

  “I found out the other day. And I’m scared to death about it. I think that’s why I came out here. To see Melody at the cemetery. To ask her if it was me. If it was my fault. The sickness, I mean. Alcoholism. Addiction. The disease. You see, I couldn’t live through that again. I just couldn’t.”

  “Melody is your daughter who passed away?”

  Jane nodded. “Caleb told you?”

  “Yes. We talked a great deal while he was working for me. Mostly he talked about you and how much he loved you.”

  Jane felt herself smile despite the tears. “Really? Did he say why?”

  “He gave lots of reasons, I’m sure, but I was probably too busy watching his ass working in those jeans to even listen.”

  Jane couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Hey now, I might be old as dirt and damn near dead, but I’m not buried yet,” the old lady said. Then she leaned forward and touched Jane’s knee. “You’ll be all right, dear. You will.” Then she rose from the wheelchair.

  There was a moment when she looked to be stuck, half in and half out, but Jane didn’t want to insult her by helping so she waited and watched. She finally stood and reached for her cane. Then she shuffled over to the dresser and laid her hand on the brass urn. When she spoke again it was to Jane, even though her eyes remained on the urn.

  “I was lucky to have had two men to love in my life. But two more different men there never were before and never will be again. If I tipped their ashes out, I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if they poured into two separate piles on the floor.”

  She half turned, lowered herself onto the edge of her bed, and sat staring at the carved handle of her cane.

  “Jimmy was my first and my one true love. But he was a wild man with a wild spirit. Never fall in love with a sailor, dear. Their hearts are quick to love, but there’s nothing that holds them like the sea. And the only way they seem to be able to stand land is when they’re drunk. He came home from the navy and surprised me with that ring you’re wearing. Spent his entire inheritance on it. We had our wedding in a friend’s backyard. Small but perfect. We rented a little apartment in San Francisco, and we made love day and night for nearly a year. Oh, did we make love. But it wasn’t long before he was back out to sea. This time on a commercial ship. That’s when I found out. I was alone and I was terrified too. I sent a telegram to their port to let him know. But I never heard back and I thought he hadn’t received it. But he had. Oh Lord, I’ll never forget that look on his face when he stepped off that ship and saw me.”

  She paused and looked down at the floor, and Jane saw her shudder beneath her shawl.

  “He didn’t say a word and neither did I,” she continued. “He thought I’d lost the baby, and I guess I had. Three nights later, he was out drinking to ease the grief when he tried to break up a fight and took some bastard’s knife in the gut. And just like that, I lost him too.”

  She brought her hand slowly to her chest, as if to comfort her own broken heart.

  “It took ten years for me to see Carl for who he was. We had known him through friends. Not close, but from a distance. He said he had always loved me. And I grew to love him too. He was a good man. A quiet man. A loyal man. He had been widowed too and he had three daughters, then I gave him a son. I don’t hear from the girls now that he’s passed. But I wouldn’t change a day of it.”

  There was a long pause while she stared up at the urn on the dresser.

  “I’m not telling you all of this just to reminisce. I’m telling you because I was for
tunate enough to have found what I needed in my life in two men. You’re one of the even luckier ones who have managed to find everything in just one. That Caleb’s a keeper, and I’d hate to see you break his heart like I did my Jimmy. He thought it was a miscarriage and I didn’t tell him any different. But I always wonder what might have been.”

  Jane watched her, sitting there on the bed with the brass urn visible just above her shoulder. Everyone has their secret regrets, she thought, and maybe none of us will truly reconcile them until we’re finally dead.

  Mrs. Hawthorne rose on her cane. “There’s something you should have to go along with that ring, but you’ll have to drive me to my old house to get it. Do you have time?”

  “Of course,” Jane said. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  Jane was pushing her wheelchair down the hall when a nurse stopped to ask them where they were off to.

  “Just out for a little fresh air,” Mrs. Hawthorne said.

  They wheeled past the front desk and out beneath the portico. Jane helped Mrs. Hawthorne from the wheelchair and into the car’s seat. She was light and frail, and her nails dug into Jane’s arm as she held her for support. Jane was wondering what to do with the wheelchair when Mrs. Hawthorne told her she didn’t need it and to just leave it there.

  “They come out to collect them like shopping carts,” she said. “We should hurry and go, though.”

  As Jane drove away, she looked in her rearview mirror and saw the wheelchair rolling down the sloped parking lot, with the man from the reception desk chasing after it.

  “You weren’t supposed to leave, were you?” Jane asked.

  The old lady looked back and chuckled. “I’m not sure, but I’ll be damned if I’ll ask permission like some prisoner.”