Jane's Melody

by Ryan Winfield

  “How so?”

  “Well, he makes us breakfast almost every morning. Even does the dishes after. And he insists on doing his own laundry when I’ll let him. Some nights I get treated with live music in my living room. And he’s smart and fun to talk to.”

  “Sounds pretty well near perfect to me,” Grace said. “Plus, he’s easy to look at.”

  “Yes,” Jane said, blushing slightly. “That’s the problem. I think I’m attracted to him, Grace.”

  “Well, who could blame you?” Grace asked. “A young, handsome man working around your house.”

  “But I feel guilty every time I look at him.”

  Grace twirled the flower in her fingers and nodded

  “Besides,” Jane said “it would be wrong, wouldn’t it?”

  “You have to decide that, dear.”

  “Some people are just off limits.”

  “That’s true if you believe it.”

  “How come you always speak in riddles?” Jane asked.

  “Because I’m old enough to know that life is nothing but one big riddle with a question for an answer.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Jane said. “Then again, you always are. But he still won’t tell me anything about Melody. If I bring it up, he shuts down. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “Everything in its own time,” Grace said. “It’s like these daffodils. They’re the first ones up with spring, but they’ll be long gone by the time the roses bloom.”

  “I don’t know,” Jane said. “I just feel like this conference might be a good getaway for me.”

  “Maybe it will. Sometimes a change is as good as a rest.”

  “I hope so, because I’m not sleeping well at all. I’m either up tormenting myself with memories of Melody, or I’m tossing and turning and thinking about Caleb sleeping just down the hall. It’s torture, really. I don’t think I’ve had a good night’s sleep since ... well, in years, to be honest.”

  “I’ve got some Ambien at home I can give you, if you want it,” Grace said. “It really helps me when I can’t sleep.”

  “I didn’t know you had trouble sleeping.”

  “I usually don’t. But lately I’ve been having these terrible headaches that keep me up. The Ambien seems to work.”

  “Maybe I’ll try one,” Jane said.

  After several minutes walking, Grace stopped abruptly on the trail. Jane followed her gaze to the top of a tall cedar. A bald eagle sat perched above its enormous nest in the crook of a high branch, staring off somewhere above the treetops.

  Grace spoke, almost to herself:

  “We only get so many springs.”

  “What’s that?” Jane asked.

  Grace looked away from the eagle and into Jane’s eyes.

  “It just seems so fragile, doesn’t it? The whole thing.Life.The world. You know, I remember being a little girl just like it was yesterday. I never thought there was any limit on anything then. No expiration date on living. But with each passing year, everything gets a little more precious. I just wish I knew how to cherish it all back then. I really do.”

  “Are you feeling okay?” Jane asked.

  “I think I’m just feeling,” Grace answered. “Life is short, J. You only get one chance to get it right.”

  “Sounds kind of depressing, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”

  They started walking again.

  Grace was quiet. After a while she looked up and said:

  “Don’t you let fear have a place in your life, J. Not even a tiny place. Get rid of it from every hidden corner. Chase it away with the truth, and do what you want to do while you can.”

  “Is that a piece of advice?” Jane asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you give me specific advice in all these years.”

  “Maybe I’ve never been so sure of anything until now.”

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Jane got home, and she found the sliding door open and Caleb working outside in the yard. He was making good use of the portable stereo Jane had dug from a box in the garage for him, and rock music from the local station was carrying into the house. She stood for a while at the door and watched him work.

  His shirt was soaked with sweat, and it clung to the shape of his back, showing the width of his shoulders and the narrow cut of his waist. His movements were smooth and sure, almost automatic. He hacked the blackberry vines down, pulled them free, and tossed them aside onto a blue tarp. Next he grabbed their severed stems with his gloved hands and ripped them from the ground, roots and all. Then he picked up the curved sickle and cut again. He had cleared a good deal beyond the creek this last week. Jane could almost make out the shape of her former garden.

  She realized that the work in her yard would someday be done and that when it was, Caleb would leave for Austin, as he should. The thought filled her with a melancholy that she could not explain. After all, she hardly knew him.

  Deciding maybe she just needed some rest, she retreated to the privacy of her bedroom, turned on the TV, and took the Ambien that Grace had given her. The History Channel was running a series on the Bible that held her interest for a while, but as the Ambien kicked in, the desert scenes of ancient warfare began to bleed together in her mind, making the show difficult to follow. She flicked through the channels until she found an all-day rerun of the latest season of The Bachelor. She paused the DVR and went to get something to eat.

  As Jane neared the kitchen, she heard the dryer buzzing over the sound of Caleb’s music. A man who could do laundry and yard work at the same time would make a nice partner for some lucky woman, she thought, detouring to turn it off. As she folded the laundry, her head began to feel light and her eyelids heavy. She put the clothes away in Caleb’s room, but as she started for the door, she stopped and turned back and grabbed one of his T-shirts. Then she went to the kitchen and retrieved a Costco-size bag of Doritos.

  In the privacy of her room again, Jane undressed and pulled on Caleb’s T-shirt. The cotton was still warm from the dryer, and it felt good. Then she climbed into bed with the bag of Doritos and started her show again. The Ambien seemed to be working on her appetite and her emotions more than it was on her ability to sleep, and she ate the chips one after another as she watched the rose ceremony on TV, the tears streaming down her face and running her mascara.

  Several times she wiped her hands, without thinking, on the front of Caleb’s shirt. Before long it was covered in orange finger stains. Still she couldn’t stop eating the chips. She sat in an Ambien-induced trance, mindlessly eating and crying as the handsome blond bachelor selected the lucky ladies who got to stay, and the unlucky one who had to leave. Jane saw her own fate tangled up in the disappointment on the rejected woman’s face. She thought about Caleb playing that sad song beside the fire, his head bent over his new guitar. She thought about him standing shirtless in front of her, rain-soaked and smiling, his eyes on hers as he unbuttoned his pants.

  She reached for another Dorito, but the bag was empty. Hadn’t she just opened it? She seized the bag by the bottom and held it over her head and tipped an avalanche of orange crumbs into her mouth and onto the front of Caleb’s already stained T-shirt. She was so configured when there was a tap at the bedroom door, and it opened. She sat, frozen, with the bag suspended above her open mouth and locked eyes with Caleb, who was now standing in her open doorway. He looked more amused than shocked, but Jane was overwhelmed with embarrassment. Before she could say anything or even lower the Dorito bag, he flashed a grin, retreated into the hall, and pulled the door closed behind him. Jane would have been even more mortified had the Ambien not completely kicked in shortly after and blurred the image from her mind as it knocked her out for the night.

  SUNLIGHT FROM HER WINDOW slid down the bedroom wall and landed on Jane’s face, waking her. She yawned and stretched, sitting up in bed. She felt more rested than she had in a long time. But as she looked at the closed bedroom door, she had a sudden image of Cal
eb opening it last night and seeing her in his shirt covered in crumbs. She looked down and saw her orange fingers and the Dorito stains plastered on her chest.

  “Oh, God,” she said, aloud.

  The empty Dorito bag crinkled beneath her bare feet as she stepped out of bed and rushed to the bathroom to check her appearance in the mirror. The front of his white T-shirt was streaked with orange handprints and dotted with black tears. Mascara tear-tracks dripped from her eyes. Her hair was a wild mess. And worst of all, orange powder ringed her entire mouth. She looked like a circus clown gone mad.

  “Ugh. I can’t believe he saw me like this,” she mumbled to herself, stripping out of his shirt and starting the shower.

  When she had showered and dressed and fixed her face in the mirror, she took a deep breath, pulled her shoulders back, and entered the kitchen. Thankfully, Caleb wasn’t there. She found a note from him next to the coffee pot, saying that her breakfast was in the microwave. She could hear his music playing outside through the cracked sliding door. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the table and thought.

  You’re acting crazy, she told herself. Here you are walking around your own house on eggshells because you’re attracted to your dead daughter’s boyfriend. It’s wrong. Some people are just off limits. Aren’t they? She knew it was wrong, but she still thought about him all the time. Wasn’t that why she had put his T-shirt on last night? To feel him close to her?

  She finished her coffee and retrieved his T-shirt from her bathroom and treated the stains and loaded it in the washer and ran it by itself. As she passed the open door to his room, she noticed Melody’s baby book lying on the dresser. She entered the room and picked the book up and sat down on the bed with it. She ran her fingers across the puffy, pink-silk cover, the lace ribbon stitched to its spine. She remembered picking the book out—the day the doctor told her that she was having a girl. She remembered looking through it in the maternity store, the blank pages, an unwritten story of her and her daughter’s lives ahead. Melody was already her best friend, turning and kicking in her swollen belly. She remembered the hope and joy she had felt at the thought of filling the book’s pages.

  She opened the cover and looked at the birth certificate glued to the front page. Melody’s footprints were stamped there like the impressions of a tiny angel walking briefly across the world of the living. Her vision blurred, and she blinked the tears away.

  She turned the pages and read the notations she’d written there, so long ago now—

  Melody’s first ten days.

  Her first tooth, her first word, her first step.

  As she flipped through the pages, the entries thinned until they faded away completely by year five. Why had she stopped filling it in? Because being a single mother was tough, and life had gotten busy. But too busy for this? Jane’s stomach seemed to sink into a pit, dragging the rest of her with it into an unholy abyss of depression. Her very soul moaned for the chance to go back—for God to turn back the clock and let her start over again, let her try something different this time.

  A single tear dropped onto the page and swelled the paper, blurring the ink on the last entry Jane had made—

  We’re excited to move into our new home tomorrow. Especially Melody, who makes me drive by it every time we’re in the car. She loves Destiny’s Child for some reason, and she has me turn up “No, No, No,” so she can sing along every time it comes on the radio, which seems to be every third song. She’ll start school soon, and I can’t imagine how I’ll get by without her during the days. She’s become quite the little helper at my appointments. Where does the time go?

  When Jane had finished reading, she looked up and saw Caleb standing in the doorway, watching her. His hat was off and he held it to his chest, as if in respect for her grief.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I was looking for a drawer to put my things in, and I found it.”

  Jane closed the baby book and wiped her eyes.

  “No,” she said, “it’s fine.”

  Caleb pulled his hat back on, stepped into the room, and sat down on the bed next to her. She felt the mattress give beneath his weight, and she tilted slightly into him.

  He nodded to the book in her lap.

  “You wrote some nice memories in there.”

  “Thanks. I’m not sure why I stopped.”

  “Well, I feel like I know her now after having read it.”

  “You mean know her better?”

  Caleb sighed.

  “There’s something I need to get off my chest with you, Jane. Something I feel just awful about.”

  She set the book on the bed and scooted herself up against the headboard so she could see him. His head was hung, and he was looking at the floor.

  “I never knew Melody,” he said.

  “What do you mean you never knew her?” she asked. “That’s ridiculous.”

  He shook his head.

  “I never knew her. Never even knew her name until ... well, until after she was gone.”

  “But I saw you at the cemetery. You left that silver dollar on her grave. I still have it in my purse.”

  He turned to her, and his eyes were filled with sadness.

  “I wish I’d gotten to know her. I really do.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me explain. You see, I used to play around the corner from the Devil’s Cup and she came by one day and stopped to listen. She was so beautiful, but so tortured at the same time. I felt like we were kindred spirits in a way. I played her a song, and she tossed that silver dollar in my case. The next morning I went in and ordered a coffee from her. I put the same silver dollar in her tip jar. But she came by my corner and tossed it back in my guitar case that same afternoon. It became this little game we’d play every day. I don’t know. Kind of flirting, I guess, but never talking.”

  Jane felt very fragile and very confused.

  “You never spoke with her?”

  Caleb shook his head solemnly.

  “But I started looking forward to her coming by. You know, it was the highlight of my day. But then one morning I went into the coffee house, and she wasn’t there. She wasn’t there the next day either. After a week or so went by, I finally asked about her, and the girl there told me what had happened. She told me her name. I went to the library and looked her up and found the funeral announcement in the paper. I was late, but I showed up anyway. I wanted to say goodbye. To just pay my respects, I guess. And to give back her coin.”

  There was a long silence when he finished. Jane could hear the washer spinning across the hall. She didn’t know what to feel. She felt numb and a little confused.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Honestly? Because I was selfish. When you offered me work and a place to stay, I really needed both. I was afraid that if I told you the truth, you wouldn’t want me here. And I feel terrible about it, Jane. I see the way it’s tearing you up inside, too, not knowing. I just had to tell you. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  Jane sat for a long time, looking at his face, his sad eyes. She could see that he was uncomfortable with her silence, but then she wasn’t sure what to say to him either.

  “Did you like her?”

  “I liked her.”

  “We’re you attracted to her?”

  “I’m attracted to you.”

  “What?”

  “Everything I liked about her, I love in you.”

  Jane felt a funny kind of confused, an excitement wrestling with disappointment and grief.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying ever since I saw you I’ve been attracted to you, Jane. I think about you all the time. Every night. I lay here in this bed at night, and I wonder if you’re awake down the hall. I can’t get you out of my head, and I don’t even want to.”

  “I don’t under—”

  He leaned over and cut her off with a kiss.

  She sat stunned, her hands frozen in her lap. She fel
t his strong, calloused fingers on the tender flesh of her neck, and she felt his soft lips on hers. She smelled the soap from his morning shower mixed with the sweat on his shirt. A warmth she hadn’t felt in a long time flashed alive deep inside her and traveled up to her lips and parted her mouth to let him in. He tasted as sweet as any forbidden fruit could. Her hand left her lap, and she pulled his cap off and tossed it on the floor and buried her fingers in his thick hair and pulled him closer and kissed him harder. She was overwhelmed by her need. She needed to taste him, to feel him. She needed to let herself be possessed by him. Right here, right now.

  But then the sun peeked through the window curtains and shone on her eyelids, sparking a tiny ember of guilt that grew until all she could think about was the fact that she was kissing the man her daughter had a crush on, in Melody’s own bed. And worse, she was worried she couldn’t stop.

  She pulled away from him and stood.

  He looked up at her from the bed with pleading eyes.

  She turned away and raced from the room without a word. She stopped in the kitchen and poured a glass of cold water and drank it down. Then she went to her bathroom and flicked on the light and looked at herself in the mirror. Her lips were red and swollen with lust. She ran the tap with hot water, splashed it on her face, and scrubbed to rid herself of the guilt. She brushed her teeth, spit, and rinsed with mouthwash—not because he had tasted badly, but because he had tasted so good. When she was finished, she sat on the edge of her bed with her face in her hands and cried. She cried because she missed her daughter. She cried because she was alive and her daughter was dead. She cried because her entire life was a failure, and the proof of it was buried along with her hopes in that little cemetery plot and capped off with a marble stone that she had paid extra for.

  It was nearly a full hour later by the time she left her room. She found Caleb sitting on the bed where she had left him, staring at the floor. She sat down beside him again and sighed. Several moments passed. Neither of them said a word.

  “Have you been sitting here this whole time?”

  Caleb nodded.