Twice Melvin

by James Pumpelly

  “Bedroom doors?” I crack.

  “And just who am I to be suggesting that to you!” she charges. “But since you brought the subject down, allow me to quote your Roman poet, my enlightened contemporary:

  …it seems absurd that souls should stand

  Beside the marriage bed, ready at hand,

  And at the birth of beasts; that without end

  For mortal husks immortals should contend,

  As in a race, to beat the others in!

  “You’re casting pearls before swine,” I venture, amused by her semblance and show; wondering if it’s obstinacy more than constancy that keeps her with me. “Of the two little gifts being wrapped down below, neither was found in a marriage bed. And as to beasts, I have to believe you’re referencing yourself, Aunt Martha, going back, as you claim, to Rome’s seven hills and the suckling wolves.”

  But try as I might to engage her, she’s gone, tugging me along to attend her favorite sport. Spying. It’s about as near to Eden as I’ll ever be – what with me playing Adam and Evesdropping.

  Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.

  (Andrew Carnegie)

  IV

  Charlene’s pregnancy is the best known secret in Plainfield. Between the chicken and the egg, there’s no doubting who has the egg, making George the suspect chicken. When your number’s up, it’s up, and guilty or not, George is taking heat for Melvin. If the truth be known, Plainfield’s gossips would take the same pleasure imagining Melvin taking heat down below. But they don’t know, making George their man.

  George is in an ecstasy of pity. With Melody’s heart in a sling, he yearns to woo her: widow, gorgeous, graceful; even a fool not missing her rhythm. But there’s Charlene, as well: single, seductive, pregnant; her rhythm long missed by a fool. And after Charlene’s visit with a Boston specialists regarding her baby’s prospects with Melvin as father, George is uncharacteristically focused, the specialist supporting Charlene’s belief that Melvin may or may not have been responsible for the way things turned out for the Ways. Her delusion allows George to try on another man’s shoes. “One step at a time,” he counsels himself, “one step and you’re halfway there” - “there” growing so large in his mind that imagination moves out (as well it should, it having dirtied the place for too long), leaving Charlene in charge, his chatelaine. And not only of his dream-castle, but of his law practice, too, her intuitive vision of Morrison, Morrison & O’Malley transmuting into real agreement. For Charlene, there remains only the dilemma of moving O’Malley to the head of the moniker, things changing so, since Melody committed to the firm (and George to the baby) that she rues her intervention.

  Her secrets are public now, The Plainfield Press, like a tardy town crier, announcing what is quietly known, redeeming the gossips by the glare of two cryptic calls: Morrison to Harvard, then Home to Hang Shingle & Diapers; and, O’Malley to share “O” with Miss Mally – the latter reducing George, in the smoke of tavern jokes, to just what it might be he’s sharing: whether the “O” stands for Obscene or Obstetrics.

  Despite all the butts and rebuttals, when the smoke clears, the press has measurable effect. Clients. Clients compelled by their wives’ curiosity. Clients compelled by their own curiosity. Clients clamoring for George’s time, inventing disputes a big city lawyer might settle, and congratulating him - if not sincerely, at least salubriously - on winning the pearl of great price. It’s as though he’s found the philosopher’s stone for all the handshakes his sore arm is suffering; an irony bringing a smile when he considers what might have happened had Melvin not died. It isn’t that Vermonters lack a worldview - one James Wilson, of Cabot, Vermont, fashioning America’s first globe way back in 1810. No. It’s what this view purports: no matter how slowly the world turns, Plainfield consistently places second.

  Plainfield natives work diligently for their moniker, “plain” a euphemism for most of the village women, while “field” describes the flat stretch of valley shared with the Winooski River - “Winooski” yet another euphemism: the Indian word for “onion”; though it’s probably the “plain” more than the “field” that has the onion’s effect on tourists.

  Melody and Charlene are patent exceptions. The prettiest, so far as George can tell, their beauty like the pall of death on their peers. But do we call it dying when the bud bursts into bloom? George reasons. Maybe so, if Melvin had been discovered in crime. And it was a crime, George conjectures, imagining himself a local; for it was audacious of Melvin to enjoy more than his share - nay, double what is culturally allowed!

  Then again, maybe Melvin’s affair - even Charlene’s pregnancy - would’ve passed unnoticed had he lived. After all, the natives take pride in their Godhard College, an institution renowned for Liberal Arts - an enigmatic fame translating to “anything goes.” The college has not let them down. In fact, about the only thing Godhard has let down is the jeans of its student body, the liberal art of tattoos on butts and bellies everywhere – Vincent’s unblemished derriere notwithstanding.

  Vincent Tenklei has renewed his bond with the firm, retaining George for his latest dilemma: Thelma Peabody. Upon Vincent’s overt display of grief at Melvin’s funeral (his profuse perspiration mistaken by some as “buckets of tears”), Thelma appointed herself his grief counselor. “Organic vegetable patch be damned!” she railed, “and protest marches to boot! I’m going to see you through this emotional trial if it kills me!” which it almost did: Thelma collapsing, in the dead of night, on the young man’s dormitory bed. Not to be outdone by calamity, Thelma let it slip - so to speak - that while her attacker was trying to escape, she espied her name tattooed on a cheeky part of his body.

  “Such a rumor is more than I can turn the other cheek to,” Vincent confides to George, “in as much as the other cheek may be the one in question – if you see my point.”

  And “see it” George does; or rather, “not see it”, the Polaroid he shares with Judge Nancy Whittaker providing the judge’s first peek at a dark moon, a tongue-in-cheek chuckle, and a hasty cease-and-desist.

  With marriage approaching, George is determined to shoot straight, the incident he dispatches for Vince about as close as he comes, post engagement, to unseemly action. But with George, even the lack of a problem can become one, his new resolve a matter of mind more than heart. Commensurate with his resolve plays the chatter of success, his new clientele tending toward the distaff side, wives who find it prudent to seek council from elsewhere. Coupled with this growing temptation is the restraint Charlene blames on her condition, refusing the innocence of a kiss, detouring the whole of his natural urges to a distant and unfeeling future. Even Judge Nancy Whittaker plays the temptress of late, inviting him into her chambers on the pretext of tea for two, dropping hints - and her robe - about his expertise with a camera. But despite such judicial buttonholes and juridical loopholes, his resolve is winning the day - if not the night - until Thelma makes her move.

  Not to be outmaneuvered, Thelma takes Judge Whittaker’s cease-and-desist as a call to action: contriving the Melvin Morrison Memorial March. Though George can’t publicly oppose the scheme (any tribute to Melvin benefiting the firm), he can well oppose the schemer. There is just no telling what might appear on Thelma’s placards. The more he ponders the possibilities, the larger her specter grows, until, with apprehension outweighing judgment, he prays advice from Judge Whittaker.

  “What to do? What to do?” he moans, “any action I take will be amiss.”

  “Why not manhandle the issue? Or, if you like, I’ll handle it for you,” the judge coos, switching off the lamp by her sofa. “I’m only too delighted to help.”

  George is not solely to blame for his indiscretions. Hidden deep in his tragic gray eyes is something that makes women melt, something that arouses their nurturing instinct. Tall and muscular, with just enough Irish ruddiness to boyishly blush his cheeks, his shock of curly, chestnut hair is the finishing touch, ladies sooner t
hinking him just down from Olympus than starved off the Emerald Isle. It’s this god-like aspect that leads him perilously close to the altar; only his scandalous escapes reducing him to mortal.

  What George lacks is a need to love - a need fatal to liberty - George skirting the nuptial sacrament with increasing aplomb. Skirting, until now; Charlene blinding him to the snare, what good there is in his self-filled heart playing hero to a damsel in distress – perhaps, because for once he’s not the villain.

  Charlene, that pert little vixen, minds not the least his rescue, her condition taking no account of facts. With a charm that’s cereal-crisp and just as thin, she woos George to submission, his resolve expressed in commitment. “Your child - our child - will not be fatherless,” he wheedles, unaware she provokes his cajolery - Charlene thinking: as fathers go, George has a reputation for leaving; a tragic possibility that might rank me up there with Melody.

  Melody is more than a wife; more than an obstacle to be challenged. With Melvin gone, she’s an icon, a virtual virgin to worshiping men; a fact abrading Charlene’s patience – not so much the virgin image as the worshiping thereof – Charlene’s desire to be desired eroding propriety; which is why she conspires with Thelma.

  Wiry as the beans in her vegetable patch and gray as the line she crosses, Thelma has lost nothing to her years, her snapping black eyes still as virulent as her long-remembered wedding day. Ever mindful of that fateful winter’s day, of a hope grown cavern cold, it has become the pain fueling her beacon, her guiding light for “women’s rights” - Thelma standing statue-still atop the church house steps, bleached fear-white as she waits, despairing, staring out across the sleet-marbled lawn with diminishing hope he will come, a hope strangling on rage until her blistering oration before the holy dais wilts the very flowers.

  “If a man can’t make it to his own wedding,” she advises Charlene, “he can’t make it anywhere.” Admitting, nevertheless, that love is the one thing a man can make. “If George O’Malley marries you, he will at least be there for that!”

  “Having been there once, to return lacks the appeal of discovery,” Charlene retorts.

  Their difference of opinion poses no threat to conspiracy, reason being a slave to revenge: for Thelma, Melvin to be a de facto defamer; for Charlene, Melvin to be in fact defamed – a slight to tarnish Melody.

  Melody, however, is anything but tarnished. Glowing from having lived so deliciously, her love for Melvin remains fever hot, her candle-scented evenings sweet windows of mind, the past wafting by like bright colored leaves to collect in soft, rustling heaps. And though her studies are ill-timed for childbearing, Harvard gives life to her memories, a symphony of scenes ever playing: the old horse chestnut tree on the Common, witness to their misty engagement; their ethereal plans for the future, dream-built in the stillness of Walden; their moon-kissed midnights on blankets, serenaded by the river Charles; their all-night, coffeed-out crams for exams before ecstatic release in lovemaking; Melvin beside her - then, as now - only now she carries in her, about her, a dream; a hope; an expectancy growing larger than life.

  Returning home for an October weekend only amplifies the dream, the nearness of Melvin: lovers strolling through her father’s orchard to the scent of apples-turned-cider under trees; hiking hand-in-hand over trail-crossed hills all ablaze under maple and birch; a table for two against a firewood wall in the old Montpelier tavern (a table shared, on a winter’s night, with chattering legislators bringing disputes from the statehouse next door, their farm-spun philosophies, their family names, all older than the flag they serve); the snuggling drive home, their hearts all aglow, their hopes Eiffel high - their love, eternal and warm in the feathery breath of dreams.

  Yes. It’s good to be going home – if only to remember.

  From the heart it has sprung, and to the heart it shall penetrate.

  (Beethoven)

  V

  Close as hillbilly cousins to our earthbound friends and family, Aunt Martha is making literal one of my mother’s expressions, “moving heaven and earth” to get what she wants. And what she wants is making me frantic in a realm with no frenzy; which, along with flying backwards, is making me an anachronism in a realm with no time. I’m out of it, in to it, kept from it, led to it, blamed for it; in short, fit to be tied to it, if guarding it can halt Martha’s devilment. But as the novice under Martha the master, my aunt calls all the shots (something I would gladly do if I knew how to aim one at her).

  “It”, of course, is the Melvin Morrison Memorial March, the pending triumph of Thelma Peabody in unholy alliance with my “other woman.” And not just my “other woman”, but with scores of this branded class, Thelma organizing a new women’s cause under “miscellaneous”; a cause with catastrophic effect, if the marchers live up to her slogan: “Miss Cellaneous is opening her files”. Even old Reverend Rolundo, as Aunt Martha irreverently reveals, is keeping Helen the organist in tune. And George? now that he lost, or rather, misplaced his resolve, he’s setting a pace even Aunt Martha has trouble matching, his troupe of pending divorcees approaching SRO in the old Montpelier tavern. I’m concerned for George; though not for the same reason as Aunt Martha. I’ve never known him to drink, his vice relating more to a wolf than a wagon; but now he’s wolfing them down, quaffing such quantities of Guinness stout his exit requires a lady on each arm to see him to bed – a staggering sight that steams Aunt Martha. (Or a steamy sight that staggers Aunt Martha? either way leaving her as drained as George.)

  Unlike A.M., my concern isn’t for the pleasure of his tavern-going clients, but for the incessant pleasure of his tavern-going. For the more chances he takes malting his parch, the less are his chances of halting my march. So, while Aunt Martha remains absorbed in bedtime affairs, I have to create a distraction, something to keep her from Thelma’s debacle.

  In all my excitement with everything new, I’ve yet to visit my parents, their crossing occasioned by an accident a few years before my demise. It’s a reunion I genuinely desire - the more so if it saves A.M. from her madness. Setting my distraction to work, I think decisively:

  “M-y f-a-t-h-e-r.”

  Getting no response, I try again, straining to surpass what is capturing Aunt Martha’s interest:

  “My father!” I shout aloud, “my father, and my dear, praying mother. Where might we find them now, auntie?”

  With a piqued look intended to make me seem the guilty one, she answers at last, “I’m surprised, Melvin, that you haven’t inquired before. And after all you put them through, too…sewing your wild oats. No wonder your dear mother spent her nights on her knees – probably praying for a crop failure, if you ask me-”

  “Which I’m not,” I break in. “But I do want to see them…to apologize for the worry I caused them; and,” I admit, succumbing to a tinge of triumph, “I’d like to see how they’ve adjusted to a place so different from the heaven they expected.”

  “Oh, that didn’t take long,” she cracks sardonically, “their contrition for preaching ‘thou shalt not’ to the exclusion of ‘thou shalt’ was so sincere they were put on an express back to Earth.”

  “You mean, I-”

  “I mean, Melvin, you can’t visit them when they aren’t here anymore. Your mom and dad are down there again,” she thinks convincingly, my gaze following hers to an Appalachian village appearing to rise out of the midnight mist. “They’re six years old now – your mother a boy and your father a girl - but they’ve already met at a summer camp meeting, making eyes at each other during prayer.”

  “Camp meeting?” I echo, recalling the sawdust floors of my youth. “Are they going to tread the same path as before?”

  “All paths lead to truth, my dear boy, if only we go far enough. The last time, your parents got stuck on the first page of rules…never looked up to enjoy the game.”

  “The rules?” I ask, wondering if A.M. really has all the answers. “Might those be the rules we were following tonight while pe
eping in on George’s game? You know, ‘rule of the roost’, and that sort of thing?”

  “Get too cocky, nephew, and you might end up like this youngster.” Zooming in on my mother - his little bed but a pile of rags by a potbellied stove - she rattles the coals for his warmth.

  “Better to be loved than lost,” I reply, referencing my current condition, “besides, poverty has fathered many a great man.”

  “Don’t give me that bunk,” she snips, whisking me off to my father. “In a universe replete with supply, demand has no cause to lack. Just look at this poor little girl,” A.M. adjusting my father’s ragged coverlet, “shivering in a coal-dusted shack while there’s coal aplenty to warm mansions.”

  “I suppose you’re going to say the folks in those mansions should be supplying the coal needed here,” I remark rhetorically.

  “Not the point,” she ponders with annoyance, “it’s the choice we make that allows that to be.”

  “So, am I to understand-“

  “You’re to understand if men would refuse to toil in the mines until their wages were commensurate with the price of mansions, then-“

  “Then mansions would be nonexistent,” I finish for her, “or coal in over-supply.”

  “Oh, enough of this,” she cries, flitting over Boston Harbor before I can argue the point. “I’ve done what I can - shown you haste makes waste.”

  “I don’t follow-“

  “Your parents’ eagerness to return to Earth, their continuing lack of patience, earned them births next available instead of selection by merit. Take, for example, your Melody,” she continues, closing in on a Back Bay brownstone with a view of Longfellow’s Bridge and a distant, hazy Harvard. “Before entering her present life, she waited patiently for parents most suited to teach her the lessons she needed. And though she came to them late in their life, it only made them love her the more. And now? well, now she’s practicing one of her lessons learned: giving birth by choice – a commendable start for any contemplating soul to consider.”