by Sarah Weeks
What the magazine article didn’t mention was that after her time in the spotlight, Annabelle stopped giving concerts and went home to Royal, Indiana, where she became a piano teacher and eventually got married and started a family. Annabelle Winters had been America’s darling and the pride and joy of Royal. She had also been Melody’s mother.
“This is the Annabelle I remember,” said Bee-Bee. “After this picture was taken, your mother’s career began to take off. Then my family moved west to Cloverhitch, and Annabelle and I lost touch.”
“That’s too bad,” said Melody. She was having a hard time imagining her mother as a little girl in elementary school with long yellow braids and a best friend.
“You look just like her, you know,” said Bee-Bee.
It was the second time in a week someone had told her that. Melody studied the photograph carefully, but she couldn’t see any resemblance between her and this beautiful girl with the long yellow braids.
“You can keep it if you want,” said Bee-Bee.
“Thanks,” Melody told her. “But my father might not like that. He probably wouldn’t want any reminders of my mother lying around, now that he and Miss Hogan are getting married.”
“What?” said Bee-Bee.
“That’s the whole reason Nick and I came here today. Teeny Nelson heard somebody talking about Henry being bitten by the love bug when she was here this morning with her mother.”
“I don’t remember hearing anything like that,” said Bee-Bee. “Then again, things were a little crazy around here this morning.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” said Melody. “I knew my dad was seeing somebody — I just didn’t know who she was. Now I do.”
“I gather you’re not too fond of Miss Hogan,” said Bee-Bee.
Melody shook her head sadly. “Can I ask you something?” she said. “What was my mother like?”
Bee-Bee smiled and put her hand on Melody’s shoulder.
“Why don’t we go sit down?” she said.
Bee-Bee led Melody over to a wicker bench under one of the windows and they sat down next to each other.
“I only knew Annabelle when she was younger,” Bee-Bee began. “But I doubt she changed very much. Everybody always wanted to be around her. She was smart and pretty and funny —”
“She was funny?” asked Melody. The few times her father had talked about her mother, he was so sad and somber. It never occurred to Melody that her mother could have been funny. She’d always pictured her as this serious person who could play the piano in front of huge audiences without even getting nervous. Not some funny little girl who chewed Bazooka and knew how to crack a joke.
Bee-Bee nodded. “I remember she used to do these impressions of her mother that were so accurate it was almost scary.”
Melody wasn’t close to her maternal grandparents. Omi and Opa had moved back to Switzerland not long after Melody was born. They sent her a card on her birthday each year, but other than that, she had very little contact with them.
They had disappeared, too.
Now Melody felt something she hadn’t let herself feel before. Left behind.
“What else do you remember about my mother?” she asked Bee-Bee.
“The same thing everyone else remembers: She was unbelievably talented. When she sat down at the piano, she’d get this faraway look on her face. And when she started playing — well, have you ever heard her play? There were lots of recordings made.”
Melody shook her head. There were boxes of tapes and CDs on the shelves in the music room, but the door to that room was always kept closed. It wasn’t that Melody wasn’t allowed to go in; she’d just never had any real desire to.
Melody cleared her throat. There was a question she had been wanting to ask for a very long time. A question her father had made clear he didn’t want to answer.
“How did my mother die?”
Bee-Bee hesitated. Obviously Melody’s father was not comfortable talking to Melody about her mother, and it sounded as if he must have communicated this somehow to the people around her, too. Bee-Bee didn’t want to go against his wishes. But on the other hand, it was clear Melody was looking for answers to some very important questions.
“I don’t know the details,” Bee-Bee said, “other than that it was sudden and unexpected. Your mother had wanted a home birth, but there were complications. That’s really all I know.”
Melody was quiet. Deep down inside her something was stirring, a feeling she couldn’t quite find the right words to describe.
“Will you tell me about the funeral?” she asked.
Bee-Bee reached over and took Melody’s hand. Her fingernails were painted a pale shade of pink that reminded Melody of the inside of the conch shell Gramp-o had brought back for her from a trip he and Gram-o had taken to Florida.
“There were lots of people there,” Bee-Bee began, “but nobody spoke a word. There was no minister, and no speeches were made. There was only music.”
“What kind of music?” Melody asked.
“If I remember correctly, it was a string quartet. Wonderful musicians your mother had played with when she was younger. Then, at the end, your dad played a tape he’d made of your mother playing one of her favorite pieces. He’d recorded it himself at home, not long before you were born. You could hear Annabelle laughing and talking about —” Bee-Bee started to get choked up and had to stop for a minute. “It was a lovely memorial. Lovely, just like Annabelle was.”
Melody felt tears prickle up in her eyes and the mysterious feeling got stronger.
“Miss Hogan isn’t lovely,” she said. “And she isn’t funny either. Why would my dad want to marry someone like that?”
“I don’t know,” said Bee-Bee, shaking her head.
“Neither do I,” Melody told her. “I wanted him to find someone special, but I thought she’d be more like —”
“Your mom?” said Bee-Bee.
“No. Me.”
A single tear rolled down Melody’s cheek, and she brushed it away.
“Don’t worry, Melody,” Bee-Bee said, squeezing her hand. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
How Melody wanted to believe her — but she didn’t see how it could possibly be true.
Mo felt uneasy. The large orange cat had been lurking around outside all day. He’d barked at him earlier, and he had run under a bush, but Mo could tell he was still nearby. The tall woman would be back soon, to give him his supper. After that, she would probably sit at the kitchen table and clickity-click-click until it was time to go to bed. Lately she’d been too busy to spend much time cooking. He couldn’t even remember the last time she’d made him chicken and dumplings or a nice roast. Instead she’d been giving him kibble with a few table scraps tossed in. He hoped she hadn’t grown tired of him, and that she wouldn’t disappear into thin air, the way the large woman had. Even though it had happened a long time ago, he still remembered her and the silver necklace she’d given him. How he’d loved the way the jingle-jangle made him feel.
Mo looked out the window. The cat was nowhere to be seen. He thought about chicken and dumplings. The tall woman always made sure to give him plenty of gravy. And she was careful to remove the bones first before she filled his dish. Chicken bones could splinter and get stuck going down. Mo thought about roast beef. The tall woman always saved the end piece for him. Crispy and dripping with juice, he would barely take the time to chew, he was so eager to gobble it down. Mo’s stomach rumbled. What would he be having for supper that night? He wondered. Whatever it was, he hoped there would be a lot of it. He lifted his nose and caught a whiff of new-cut grass. Then he went and sat by the door to wait for the tall woman to come home.
Since Melody wouldn’t accept the photograph, Bee-Bee tried to give her a bottle of nail polish instead.
“I’m not really a nail polish kind of person,” Melody explained. “As you can probably tell. Don’t get me wrong — I think the colors you make are really beautiful. This yellow
one reminds me of a daffodil, and this blue one looks like a swimming pool, and the one you’ve got on your toes is the exact color of a ripe papaya.”
“I wish you would come up with names for all of my polishes,” said Bee-Bee, impressed.
“Why do you put numbers on them, anyway?” asked Melody.
“I’m not clever with words, the way you are,” Bee-Bee told her.
Melody held up a bottle of dark blue polish. Bits of glitter caught in the light and made it sparkle like a thousand stars. If they were real stars, Melody would have made the same wish on every one of them, but wishing was what had gotten her in trouble in the first place.
“I should get going,” Melody said, putting the bottle of polish back on the shelf. “Nick must be wondering where I am.”
The phone started to ring.
“I’d better get that,” Bee-Bee said. “It might be a customer. Please come back and see me again soon. My door is always open if you want to talk.”
As Melody left, she heard Bee-Bee pick up the phone.
“It’s a beautiful day at the Bee Hive!” she sang into the receiver.
But it didn’t feel like a beautiful day to Melody. It felt more like the end of the world.
When Melody got home, Nick was waiting for her on the front steps with a bag of Skittles in his hand.
“They were out of Wild Berry, so I got you Original,” he said.
Melody thanked him for the Skittles and immediately tore open the pack.
“How did it go with Teeny?” she asked, tossing a handful of candy in her mouth. Wild Berry or not, they still tasted good.
“Luckily for her, her mom was still asleep when we got there. But Teeny’s going to have some explaining to do about the state of that tutu.”
“Do you still want to stay for dinner?” asked Melody. She offered him some Skittles, but Nick shook his head.
“I kind of figured dinner was off. I’m sure you don’t exactly feel like celebrating.”
“Believe me,” said Melody, “eating Gramp-o’s tuna noodle casserole is no party.”
Nick laughed. He was relieved to hear Melody making a joke.
“You know,” he said, “if your dad and Miss Hogan actually do get married, you don’t have to go to Siberia. You can come live with me. We’ve got a spare room in the basement, and my dad and Jenny are crazy about you.”
“Tell the truth,” said Melody, tossing another handful of candy into her mouth. “If things had gone differently at the Bee Hive today, and we’d actually had to get our fingernails painted, would you have gone through with it?”
“Absolutely,” said Nick. “But only if I got to pick my own color.”
Melody smiled. She was lucky to have a friend like Nick.
It would be several hours before it was time for dinner, so Melody asked Nick if he’d like to help her dig up some dandelions.
“My dad said he’d pay me a nickel for each one,” she explained. “If we make enough, maybe we can buy a new bowl for Bee-Bee.”
“That’s a great idea,” said Nick.
They found a second weed fork in the garage and got down to business.
Nick turned out to be pretty good at pulling dandelions. Meanwhile, Melody came up with a new strategy, picturing Miss Hogan’s face on every plant she yanked out.
It was very effective.
“Bee-Bee was pretty nice, didn’t you think?” asked Nick.
“Yeah,” said Melody.
“She sure does like bright colors,” said Nick, loosening the dirt around another plant. “Good thing she’s not a dog.”
Melody stopped what she was doing and looked at him.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll bite. Why is it a good thing that Bee-Bee isn’t a dog?”
“Because dogs are color-blind. They can only see yellow and blue — everything else looks gray.”
“How do you know that?”
“Mrs. McKenna told me last year. Remember all those stories she used to tell us about her dog, Oreo?”
“His name was Mallomar,” said Melody.
“I knew it was a cookie,” said Nick.
By the time Gramp-o called them in for supper, Nick and Melody had amassed an impressive pile of dandelions, all with the roots still attached.
“If you want, I can come back tomorrow and help you pull more,” Nick offered.
As soon as they sat down at the table, Nick and Gramp-o started arguing about who the top draft pick for the Pacers ought to be. Melody liked basketball, but she had more important things on her mind. She couldn’t stop thinking about her father and Miss Hogan.
“What’s the matter, Melly?” Gramp-o asked after a while. “Don’t you like my casserole?”
“I’m not very hungry,” she said, pushing a slimy noodle across the plate with her fork. “I’ll just drink my milk.”
Nick, who was always hungry, cleaned his plate in two seconds flat and asked for more.
“What did the two of you do this afternoon?” asked Gramp-o, dropping a heaping spoonful of tuna noodle casserole onto Nick’s plate.
Nick glanced at Melody.
“Not much,” he said, shoving another forkful of noodles into his mouth.
Melody had asked him not to discuss their trip to the Bee Hive with Gramp-o. When her father got home on Monday, she planned to tell him what had happened with Miss Hogan. He could give Gramp-o the big news about the wedding himself.
After dinner, Nick and Melody helped clear the table and load the dishwasher, then Gramp-o looked at the clock and asked if they’d like to watch Jeopardy! with him.
“It doesn’t count as screen time because it’s educational,” Gramp-o insisted.
“Way to circumvent, Gramp-o,” laughed Melody. He often let Melody stretch the rules when he was around.
Melody popped up a bag of microwave kettle corn, and she and Nick joined Gramp-o in the den to watch Jeopardy! One of the categories in the first round was American Classics.
“What is the Grand Canyon?” Gramp-o called out in response to a clue. “No, wait, I take that back. What is American cheese?”
It was during Final Jeopardy that Nick started rubbing his stomach.
“I don’t feel so good,” he said.
“Me neither,” said Gramp-o.
What followed was not pretty. It turned out that Melody was lucky to have lost her appetite at dinner. The tuna noodle casserole, having sat in the hot trunk of Gramp-o’s car for hours, wasn’t in the best condition, and as a result both Gramp-o and Nick got food poisoning. Nick had to call his father to come pick him up, and Gramp-o retreated to the upstairs bathroom, where he would revisit that casserole many times before the night was over.
It had been a long and difficult day. Melody was exhausted, but the sound of Gramp-o dragging his oxygen tank back and forth to the bathroom was too much for her to take, so she decided she might be better off finding somewhere else to sleep. Nick had thrown up on the couch in the den right before he left, and the pullout sofa bed in her father’s office was covered with books and papers. This left only one option, so, grabbing her blanket and pillow, Melody went downstairs to the music room.
She had never slept there before. In fact, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d gone in. There was something sad about the way the room felt, like a party after the guests have gone home and all that’s left is a bunch of empty cups and crumpled napkins. Tall sets of shelves crammed with books and boxes lined the walls, and in the corner of the room sat her mother’s piano, the lid closed and the glossy black surface dulled by a layer of fine dust. Gram-o had taught Melody how to play “Chopsticks” on the piano when she was a little girl, but that was the extent of her repertoire, and it had been ages since she’d played even that. There was a faded blue velvet couch along the back wall. Melody spread out her blanket, switched off the light, and settled herself in.
As she lay there in the dark, going over the events of the day in her head, she remembered how, when Teeny was havi
ng her meltdown, Bee-Bee had asked if there was anything she could do to help Teeny feel better.
“Candy makes my feelings feel better,” Teeny had told her.
Melody wished the solution could be that easy for her now. She had enjoyed the Skittles Nick had brought her, but candy couldn’t even begin to touch the misery she felt inside. The only thing she could think of that would make her feel better was if she woke up the next morning and found out this whole thing had been a bad dream.
If only that could really happen, Melody thought as she turned over and closed her eyes. If only, if only, if only …
Sunday morning when Melody woke up, the sky was an ominous gray and raindrops were pelting the windowpanes like spitballs. She went upstairs to check on her grandfather, but found his door closed. Pressing her ear against the wood, she could hear him snoring. Poor Gramp-o. It must have been a long night, but at least he was resting now.
Melody poured herself a bowl of Raisin Bran. She thought about calling Nick, but decided it might be best to wait until later. Chances were he’d had a rough night, too.
After she’d finished her breakfast, Melody returned to the music room to retrieve her pillow and blanket. As she was leaving, something caught her eye. It was a small black tape recorder, lying on its side on one of the shelves. Melody picked it up, flipped open the lid, and found a tape inside. The yellowed label was peeling off around the edges. On it, in her father’s handwriting, it said, Brahms Intermezzo, Op.117-1 and then the day and the year. Exactly two days before Melody was born.
There was a rumble of thunder. The rain was coming down harder now. Melody set the tape recorder on top of the piano and pushed PLAY. When nothing happened, she used her fingernail to pry open the little slot on the side and discovered four badly corroded triple-As inside. After a fruitless search of all the logical places in the house a fresh battery might be, Melody suddenly remembered there was a tape player in Gramp-o’s car.