Melody (21 page)

“Living room?”

“That's what we call that part of the trap. Later, we pull up the traps and if the lobsters meet the measurement, we prepare them to take to market.”

“How do you prepare them?”

“Well, you got to put rubber bands on the claws so
they can't pinch. One claw is a cruncher claw, strong, dull; the other is like a scissor, sharp and quick.”

“I didn't know they were so dangerous.”

“It's not really so dangerous if you're careful. I've been pinched a bit, but only once had blood drawn.” He showed me his right hand. I could see a faint scar along his forefinger.

“Did Laura go lobstering with you?” I asked. He blinked rapidly and turned toward the ocean.

“No, not much,” he replied.

“She didn't know the ocean as well as you did?”

“We should go back to the house. There goes Roy.” Cary nodded at the tall, broad black man who hurried away from the dock.

“Where do the Pattersons live?”

“In the saltbox houses on the other side of town.”

“What happened to Theresa's mother?” I asked.

“You're stuffed full of questions, aren't you?”

“Wouldn't you be if the shoe was on the other foot and you just arrived?”

His lips made that tiny turn up again and he permitted his eyes to stay on me for a few moments longer.

“I guess,” he finally admitted. “Theresa's mother died in a car crash coming home from work. She was a chambermaid in a hotel in North Truro. Terrible accident. Man driving a tractor trailer lost control in the rain and crossed the road. Smacked her clear into the other world. Dad says it was meant to be.”

“How can something so terrible be meant to be?”

“It's what my father believes,” he said.

“Is that why he doesn't seem one bit sad about my father's death, even though my father was his brother? It was meant to be?”

Cary was silent. He kept his head down and kicked some sand. A particularly loud tern cried at the approaching storm.

“And your sister's death,” I pursued. “Was that also meant to be?”

He looked at me, his eyes glistening with tears.

“I don't like talking about Laura's . . . Laura's disappearance.”

“If you keep sadness and pain bottled up, it swells and swells inside you until you burst,” I said. “Mama Arlene told me that.”

“Yeah, well I never had the pleasure of meeting Mama Arlene,” he replied. “I'm going back to the house. Do what you want.”

“Why did your father stop talking to my father?” I demanded, my hands on my hips. He hesitated and then turned. “He told me my daddy defied his parents. What did he mean by that? What did my daddy do to them?”

“I don't know.”

“But Aunt Sara and Uncle Jacob must have talked about it often.”

“I don't listen in on their private talks,” he said. “Besides, it's over and done, why talk about it now?”

“I know. You've got to go with the tide.”

He widened his eyes and lifted his eyebrows.

“Well,” I continued, “sometimes you have to swim against the tide and just be strong enough to get past it, too. Sometimes, you don't give up and give in.”

“Really?” he said, amused by my defiance.

“Yes, really.”

“Well, first chance I get, I'm going to take you out in my sailboat and let you buck the tide.”

“Good.”

He shook his head, his smile widening.

“The girls in school told me Laura and her boyfriend went out in your sailboat. Was that so?”

The smile quickly faded. “I have a different sailboat now. And I told you,” he said, turning away, “I don't talk about Laura's disappearance with anyone. Especially strangers.”

I watched him walk away, shoulders sagging, his head bent, his hands clenched in fists.

The wind grew stronger and whipped past me, catching my hair. Sand began to fly from the beach into my face. The small patches of blue had disappeared from the
sky, now completely overcast with dark, brooding clouds. I could feel the ocean spray even this far from the beach. It all began to terrify me. How could weather change so rapidly?

I started for the house, bucking the wind, every step harder than the one before it. My feet slipped on the sand that gave way beneath them. It was harder than walking on ice. The wind was so strong, my eyes began to tear. I had to keep them closed and pump my legs hard. I tried to run. My blouse flapped over my breasts and ribs.

Just before I reached the house, the first sheet of rain tore down, washing over me. I screamed and ran harder for the front door. When I burst in, Cary stood in the hallway, a look of glee in his eyes, an “I told you so” written on his lips.

“I hate it here!” I screamed at him and charged up the stairway.

The wind howled around the house and whistled through it. I thought it might take the roof off, but at the moment I didn't care. Let the sky fall, let the rain swell the ocean and wash over this place, I thought. I embraced myself at the window, watching the trees bend to the point of breaking. The rain came down like bullets fired by God. The street was being pounded. I shuddered and stripped off my blouse. Then I rushed to the bathroom to get a towel for my hair.

Moments later, when I emerged, Cary was in the hallway. He glanced at me before I realized I was standing there in my bra. I draped the towel around myself.

“I'm sorry,” he said. He looked repentant. “I shouldn't have left you out there.”

“It was my own fault. I didn't listen,” I admitted. “Where's May?”

“She's in her room. Sometimes, it's a blessing to be deaf,” he said. “She can't hear how hard it's raining and blowing.”

“How do you say it's raining?” I asked.

He demonstrated. “This means it's raining hard,” he
added and showed me. Then he smiled. “Not the same thing as being out there, huh?”

I relented and smiled. “No.”

“Maybe you ain't such a landlubber after all,” he allowed. He blushed before going to his room. It was the closest he had come to giving me anything akin to a compliment.

Daddy would say, “Be grateful for the little things.”

I went into my room to work on the needlepoint until it was time to help Aunt Sara with dinner. Before it was time to go down, I heard a knock on my door.

“Yes?”

Cary poked his head in.

“I just thought I'd let you know what we do in case it's still raining in the morning.”

“What do we do?”

“We walk faster,” he said. For the first time since I had come to Provincetown, I heard the sound of my own laughter.

9
 
Something Special

It rained most of the night. Twice, the loud drumming of the drops on the windowpanes woke me. I heard Aunt Sara come to my door after the second time. She stood there gazing in at me, her face in shadow, her head silhouetted against the dim hallway light. I said nothing and she finally closed the door softly.

The rain stopped just before morning. After I dressed and went downstairs, I was surprised to find most of the windows crusted with salt. It reminded me of ice and I remarked about it at breakfast. Aunt Sara said it wasn't unusual after a storm.

“The salt even peels the paint from our window casings. The weather is hard on us, but we endure it.”

“The weather's hard on people everywhere,” Uncle Jacob declared. “But it's good to us too, and we should be grateful for our blessings. Mark that,” he said sharply, waving his long right forefinger at us like some Biblical prophet.

“I can help you clean the windows after school today,” I told Aunt Sara.

“Why thank you, dear. It's kind of you to offer.”

“Kind? She should do nothing less,” Uncle Jacob fixed his eyes on me. “Most young people today don't know what it is to have regular chores and responsibilities. They think everything is owed to them just because they were born.”

I wanted to snap back at him and tell him I hadn't been brought up to be spoiled and selfish. I did plenty of work around our home in Sewell, and I often helped Mama Arlene and Papa George with their housework, too. I never asked them anything for it and I never expected anything. It was enough that they gave me their love.

I glared back at Uncle Jacob, the crests of my cheeks burning. He didn't know me. He had hardly spoken ten minutes to me my whole life. What right did he have sitting there on his high and mighty throne and lumping me in with all the spoiled young people he saw in town?

Cary must have sensed those words were at the tip of my tongue, for he shot me a look of warning before I had a chance to part my lips. I stared at him a moment and saw a gentle, but definite shake of his head. I looked down at my hot cereal and swallowed back my anger, even though it threatened to get stuck in my throat and choke me all day.

“Your father is an ogre,” I told Cary as we left for school that morning.

Cary didn't reply for a few moments and then said, “He's just afraid, that's all.”

“Afraid?” I nearly laughed. “Your father? Afraid of what?”

“Of losing another one of us.” Cary marched on, his lips tight, his eyes so focused on the street ahead he barely glanced at me the remainder of the way to school. Despite what Cary said, I think he was ashamed at how his father sometimes behaved.

Since it was Friday, at the end of the school day, Betty, Lorraine, and Janet reminded me about their beach party Saturday night. I said I would try to go, but I reminded them I couldn't go without permission.

“Then you won't be there,” Betty predicted. “You'll miss a great time.”

“I can't help it. I have to ask my uncle and aunt first. My mother left them in charge of me.”

“Just do what Janet told you to do: tell them you're going over to her house to study,” Lorraine instructed. “A little white lie is no big deal. We all do it.”

“It sounds like more than a little white lie. If my uncle found out I lied—”

“He won't find out,” Betty assured me. “We don't tell on each other.”

“Of course, if you tell Grandpa, he'll turn you in,” Janet said.

“Stop calling him Grandpa,” I snapped. “He's not anything like an old man.”

“Oh? Why do you say that? Do you know something we don't?” she asked quickly. The girls all smiled, waiting with expectation for my reply.

“No,” I said.

“Did you get him to smoke the joint?”

“No.”

“He didn't see it and tell your uncle, did he?” Lorraine asked quickly.

“If my uncle even thought I had something like that—”

“He'd turn you over to the police,” she suggested.

“He'd turn his own mother over to the police,” Betty added. “Do you still have it or did you smoke it yourself last night?” Betty asked.

“No, I didn't smoke it.” I didn't want to tell them I had simply thrown it out.

“You can smoke it at the beach party,” Janet said.

“Let's go, girls,” Betty said.

“Be at Janet's house at eight. You won't be sorry. Adam Jackson will be at the beach party,” Lorraine sang back at me as they all walked off.

I watched them go down the hallway and then I hurried out to meet Cary and walk home. I wanted to tell him about the party and ask his opinion, but I was afraid
even to mention it. I knew how much he didn't like these girls, but I wanted to go. I had never been to a beach party and I had to admit, Adam Jackson's eyes had been in my dreams last night.

I decided to wait until after dinner when I was helping Aunt Sara with the dishes. She had done all the windows herself, even the upstairs ones. “I would have helped you,” I told her.

“I know, dear, but don't fret about it. Work gets me through the day. Jacob always says idle hands make for mischief.”

I shook my head. What sort of mischief could she ever commit? And why did she permit her husband to treat her as if she were another one of his children and not his wife, his equal in this house? She did everything he asked her to do and as far as I could see, she never uttered a single complaint. He should worship the ground she trod upon and he should have been the one to have done the hard manual labor. My daddy would have done it for my mother, I thought. The more I learned about this family, the more it was a mystery to me.

“Aunt Sara, I was invited to a party Saturday night.”

“Oh? A party? Already? What sort of party? Birthday? School party?”

“No. Some of the girls in my class are having a hot dog roast on the beach,” I said. “It starts about eight o'clock.”

“What girls?”

I gave her the names. She thought a moment.

“Those are girls from good families, but you'll have to ask your uncle,” she said.

“Why can't you give me permission?”

“You'll have to ask your uncle for something like that,” she replied. I could see that the very idea of her solely giving me permission terrified her. She busied herself with the dishware. If I wanted to go to the beach party, I would have to talk to Uncle Jacob about it. There was no avoiding it.