Twice Melvin

by James Pumpelly

  “I suppose you’re referring to me,” I think meekly, just the nearness of Melody humbling me after all I’d done to dishonor her.

  “Regarding a commendable start, yes; but as to contemplation?” she appends, rocking from side to side, convulsed in an agony of merriment, “I don’t think so, Melvin. No. I wouldn’t call coming home drunk after winning that Boston case-“

  “Not the contemplative type, am I?” I interject, the while contemplating the sleeping beauty before us, her pictures of me on the bureau, on the wall, and on the nightstand near the crucifix I’d bought her in Rome. “Then contemplate this!” I snap, removing my prism and fixing my gaze on the cross:

  Twenty centuries past a star

  And still the moment lives

  When love came gently down;

  The healing hand sent from afar

  To pained and hopeless gives

  A peace on Earth unfound.

  “Very nice, but unpolished,” she remarks, “a diamond in the rough.”

  “A diamond, to be sure!” I retort. “Melody inscribed those lines to me on our first night in Rome. We were-“

  “I know,” A.M. cutting me off, “…I was there.”

  “You-you were?” I gasp stupidly, her curt admission leaving me colder than I already am; for I had not, until now, considered what private moments she may have invaded.

  “Yes, and Melody was expressing her love for Christ, not-“

  “Hush!” I fume, not wishing my memories altered, “what’s done is done. What’s needed now is a plan for the future.”

  “What’s done is done,” she mimes, “a plan for the future. Why, Melvin, you speak as though time were real.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s real,” I say, through tears where no tears should flow, “Melody’s love, that’s what. And to the extent it’s confined to the body beautiful there is how much I believe in time. And what’s more,” I add sorrowfully, “it’s being wasted.”

  “How quickly you learn,” she murmurs, her customary quibbling subdued, “if…if only you had listened before.”

  “Listened?” I ask, her murmurs not as audible as her thoughts.

  “Yes…listened to the voice within. That still, small voice ever there if we listen.”

  War-daubed, her patchwork face seems yet in battle, her fire-blue eyes still keen for quarrel, there being not one among our relatives whom she hasn’t bested in her time. But as I observe her in the peace of Melody’s sleep, the truth of what she has said begins spreading as light across her scarred and wizened mien, her cloistered spirit unfolding like some gold and bejeweled chrysalis, her velvet rays of forgiving love reaching out to touch my tears. And I love her in return, understanding who she really is - how alike we tortured souls must be within our pride-erected walls.

  “You’ve got to go back to her, Melvin,” she affirms sweetly, her very words a heart’s caress. “Her faith requires it…her love demands it…and your love, dear…your love can do no less.”

  “So be it,” I whisper worshipfully, placing Melody’s crucifix, with a photo of us together in Rome, atop the empty pillow on the double bed, “…so be it.”

  Not every man that saith unto me, “Lord, Lord,” shall

  enter into the kingdom of heaven… (Matthew 7:21)

  VI

  Passing over not long after giving his daughter’s hand, Melody’s father left his wife Thankful to look after their only child. “Happiness is a clear conscience, a kind heart, and a worthy aim,” Thankful’s husband had been wont to espouse; and with Thankful in cheerful accord, her worthy aim - indeed, her only aim – is the happiness and well-being of Melody. And now with Melody coming home for the weekend - home from Harvard to stay with her mother instead of going back to the house Melvin had purchased in the village - she wants the old farm to be as it was, the familiarity of things to have that indescribable sense of welcoming, that peculiar amiability with a placid past.

  Hobbling happily through her chores, Thankful abandons her kitchen routines for the memories in Melody’s room, adjusting the lambrequin over the mullioned window to better invite the sun; shaking a throw - passed down from her own dear mother - to drape over the rush-bottomed chair; dusting the silvered glass in a birch-bark frame her grandfather had made as a boy; smoothing imaginary wrinkles from the patch-work quilt laid out across the old rope bed; filling a bulbous, porcelain, blue jardinière with the best she can find in her hothouse; all the while letting slip an occasional sigh belying her inner delight, her round-shouldered stoop seeming out of place, out of character with the spark in her eyes - her face like unto one who has seen an angel as she answers a backdoor knock.

  Far from an angel, the caller is Simon Farley, out on one of his bike rides, requesting a dip from her deep-water well. As Plainfield’s would-be poet and needs-be bicycle repairman, Simon’s most talked about line is his own name, his comic insistence on being addressed as “See-MOAN Far-LAY” outshining his most ardent verse.

  “And to what do I owe the pleasure?” Thankful’s face losing some of its shine. “What brings you by on this fine October morning?”

  “Same thing as always, Thankful,” See-MOAN par-LAYS, gambling on her hospitality, “seems I’ve worked up a powerful thirst.”

  A three-season fixture along the Winooski trails, Simon is ever on some idyllic pedal in search of new inspiration. Frequently, his quest tires more than inspires, returning him panting and gaunt to his hay barn-turned-studio, repair shop and bed loft, in hopes of a better day.

  “I’ve taken to leaving a dipper for you,” a suddenly inhospitable Thankful replies, “so you can help yourself as the need arises.” Barring the door, it’s obvious she’s “involved”, betwixt and between some secret endeavor Simon is determined to discover.

  Fidgeting, her bandy-legged visitor will not be put off, drawling, “W-e-l-l, I’m athirst, Thankful…but it isn’t water alone that will quench it.”

  “What have you in mind, See-MOAN?” Thankful quibbles, unflinching in defense of her doorway. “Be ye a’hungered, too?”

  “Aaaah! Blessed are they which do who hunger and thirst after righteousness,” he oozes, running wind-blushed fingers through his sparse gray hair, “if only you had that to fetch me, Thankful, I’d-“

  “Out with it, SI-mon!” Thankful’s patience run dry. “What be it you’re after?”

  “It’s See-MOAN,” he frowns, lips drawn tight as a Baptist deacon’s, “and it’s about our Melvin. I think I might know why he…what made him keel over out there on the trail.”

  “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted,” she mutters ponderously, standing aside for his entry, “but what, pray heavens, do you mean?” Thankful closing the door behind him. “What’s there to know about heart attacks? I thought when you found him out there he was already…well….”

  “Departed?” he helps her, helping himself to a fresh lemon cake, still warm on the sideboard for Melody. “The coroner said he’d been…said I found him at least an hour after he’d….”

  “Departed?” Thankful hanging his jacket on a Shaker peg, then pouring him a glass of cream-thick milk. “You needn’t mince words with me, See-MOAN; not after that fiasco of a funeral we had.”

  “And I’m glad you put it that way,” he sighs, taking the fresh morning milk as an offer to join her at table, “the ‘needn’t mince words’ part, I mean; for:

  Today, amidst the beauty of fresh fallen leaves;

  Along crisp-scented paths under river-edge trees;

  I recalled there a tryst, a young lad and his lass;

  Their matutinal mattress of dew-freshened grass.

  And how, me bethinks, I passed slowly unnoticed;

  The lad too intent on his sweet lassie’s bodice.

  Twas Melvin I tell you, and young Melody;

  The morning too-“

  “Are you going to eat that piece of cake?” Thankful interrupts, “or blow it stale
with your breeze?”

  “I was just trying, Thankful, to lead you somewhere,” See-MOAN moans, “…to take you there gently.”

  “Lead?” she echoes, pretending alarm.

  “Yes,” he mouths, his face in the frosting:

  Take you back to a scene,

  Where love was implicit;

  To contrast the obscene,

  Where love was illicit.”

  “What in heaven’s name are you trying to say, See-MOAN?” she asks bewilderedly. “Skip the rhyme and give me the reason – if you know what it is.”

  “Oh, I know alright,” he sputters, the flecks of frosting on his stubbled chin like pins in a New England ski map. “I know, Thankful; it’s just the knowing how to tell you that’s the problem.”

  “Well, trying to sing it in verse only heightens the problem,” she complains.

  “Heightens?” he repeats hopefully, “then-then you think my verse high-class?”

  “High-country would be closer to the mark, See-MOAN; but we’re straying from the mark in question. What do you know about Melvin? that’s what I want to hear.”

  “Right,” he mumbles, washing down the last of his cake with a gulp of milk, “if that’s how you want it: straight, with no sugar. I was trying to tell you about espying them - Melvin and Melody – a few summers ago, pitching woo along the banks of the Winooski.”

  “You mean ‘spying’, don’t you, See-MOAN?”

  “Spying?” Simon playing ignorant of her implication, “no, I didn’t spy on Melvin till…well, not till I was forced to.”

  “The devil made you do it?” she teases, poking holes in his thin rationale.

  “No, but the prince of this world must have been present considering what it was I saw,” he rejoins, surprising her back to attention. “It was that pretty little assistant of Melvin’s - that Aphrodite if ever I saw one – spreading out a blanket, and taking off, t-taking off her…her….”

  “Well? Go on,” she urges, a trace of agitation blushing her sunken cheeks, “she was taking off her-“

  “Bonnet!” he lies, truth lacking the allure of invention, “and quite the stunning one, too. A bonnet over-sewn with brilliant, vermilion sarcenet; each ruffle, I tell you, each pleat, augmented beautifully by a colorful-“

  “Come back to me, See-MOAN!” an unthankful Thankful implores, “your mind is astray again. Melvin, it is…or was. Melvin and Charlene by the river. Melvin was there, wasn’t he?”

  “Indeed he was…bewitched by those deep, dark eyes…those eyes, excessively deep…love-shaded…secret; eyes no man dare question past-“

  “Melvin, See-MOAN, we were talking about Melvin-“

  “Yes…and he was trying to explain, trying to tell Charlene that Melody could never know, could never be hurt…that he worshipped her – Melody, that is – that he kept her on the pedestal of his heart…and…and….”

  “And what, See-MOAN? and what?”

  “And-and then that heart must’ve burst, must’ve gone to its temple in the woods…must’ve gone there to worship, and-”

  “So is that it? that’s what you’ve pedaled out here to tell me? that Melvin passed over in a spasm of love?”

  “Well, I was going to paint it up a bit…call it a romantic seizure, Thankful; but yes, that’s what I came to say. I think Melvin may have been revisiting the sacred grove, the place where he and Melody first-first…well, where he could repent his sins.”

  “And what about his partner in sin, See-MOAN? your so-called Aphrodite?”

  “Yes, well…as I was telling you, he was trying not to sin anymore – since you put it that way – telling Miss Mally how he loved his wife.”

  “His wife?” Thankful portentous, posturing, eyes averted, a faint disdain contorting her brow, “…you mean this was happening after they were married?”

  “Try to understand, Thankful…a man is just that: a man. And given the chance to consort with goddesses…well…what can I say? Though in the end, he made the right choice, what with him choosing your Venus over Aphrodite.”

  A long silence follows: Simon displacing another quarter section of cake from the sideboard; Thankful pondering how to displace Simon.

  “I think,” Thankful refilling his glass, “…I think we should keep this our secret, See-MOAN. No need to be-“

  “Twas never a question, Thankful,” he interjects. “My thoughts were custom-made for your ears.”

  “Tis good I’m not deaf, then,” she quips through a restrained smile.

  “So it is,” Simon, uncertain of her meaning.

  “If I ever hear this from anyone else, See-MOAN, I’ll know it wasn’t from you shouting it out in my kitchen.”

  “I-I wouldn’t think of it, Thankful,” Simon nodding thoughtfully - the growl of tires on the granite-chip drive summoning them to the kitchen window.

  “She’s home!” Thankful erupts, “My baby’s home, See-MOAN!” her excitement essaying joy.

  “So that’s why you’ve been so pesky this morning,” Simon thinks - Melody coming blithely through the rear picket gate, her mother stepping lightly down the back porch steps as though age has forgotten her feet. “So that’s why,” Simon repeats to himself, brushing the crumbs from his soiled flannel shirt as though Melody just might have an interest; her heart-melting smile, her dancing-blue eyes, her little-girl voice more inspiration than he’s had in months. “Melvin is with me, Mama,” he hears her say, “he gave me a sign last night. Put my crucifix on the pillow beside me.”

  “Damn that Melvin!” Simon swears. “Damn that boy!”

  “Did you hear that, See-MOAN?” a gleeful Thankful asks, tugging her beautiful daughter into the kitchen, “Melody had a visit from Melvin last night, says he’s with her now,” she improvises, helping Melody out of her sheepskin coat. “Felt his presence the whole way up from Boston. Now what do you make of that?”

  “I think our Melvin…our Melvin should he be here now,” Simon’s eyes having a feast of Melody, “why, he…he would walk…would:

  Walk amidst the beauty of fresh fallen leaves;

  Along crisp-scented paths under river-edge trees-“

  “I do regret you have to rush off, See-MOAN,” Thankful’s insistent tone not lost on her milk-lipped, frosting-faced visitor, “and just when Melody is about to tell me of Melvin’s…of Melvin’s-”

  “Visitation?” Melody coos. “Melvin came to see me last night, See-MOAN! Put a crucifix-.”

  “Which is where See-MOAN’s going to be if he doesn’t hurry back to the village,” Thankful emphatic, forcing a laugh.

  “Uh-right,” a beaten Simon mumbles, donning his jacket and giving Thankful an expression suggesting pressure in his abdomen, “and blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

  “Yes, and blessed are the merciful,” she counters, “for they shall obtain mercy - if they know what’s good for ‘em.”

  “Whoa! What’s all this about?” Melody prods, as Thankful shoves Simon through the door, “a new Sermon on the Mount?”

  “A new mount,” Simon attempts in reply…but:

  The door is shut ‘fore the poet can rhyme,

  As back in his rut, Simon’s back-ending time.

  Now peddling his Schwinn, now licking his chin;

  The lemon without vies the lemon within.

  The spirit must not reach for the clouds while

  the belly is at the table. (Montaigne)

  VII

  Thankful could not have known, but I have accompanied Melody from Boston. Not that I wouldn’t choose to, if given the choice; but I haven’t the choice, Aunt Martha all aglow for the jaunt. “At the heart of our lives we hold all the cards,” she lectures me, “it’s just up to us to play the game.” This, to justify her eagerness to up the ante in Melody’s. And though I have good cause to distract A.M. from her aim, it requires a hardier soul than I to suggest another game. />
  Notwithstanding my apprehension over Aunt Martha’s return to Vermont, my fear is vastly outweighed by the pleasure of my dear wife’s company. From Melody’s alembic memory, I’m dispensed into her morning as fragrant thoughts - like the night we kissed on an ancient arched bridge over the river Tiber, her delft-blue eyes turning hazel in the moonlight; her high cheekbones and pouting lips strikingly genteel - a mark of nobility. I smile at the thought, for she can claim nobility, albeit native: the kin of her blood among the noble frontiersmen who tamed the Green Mountains. But whether because of or despite her pastoral past, there is an inner refinement about her, an innate sense of class; her instincts, at least socially, beau monde - a grace, a kind of courtly élan I sorely miss as the protégé of A.M..

  My aunt’s past smacks more of dime store perfume, of drugstore cigars, of too much gin and a Sen Sen effort to hide it. It doesn’t take Edgar Cayce eyes to see where Aunt Martha has been, or where she’s going; the civility of silence, the courtesy of vagueness, both averse to her clamorous nature. Nor is this nature wont to go quietly off in some stately novel, “to the manner born” not ranking among her pretensions. In fact, reading anything is too “stately” for Martha, what knowledge she professes obtained by a kind of intellectual osmosis, by a rubbing of shoulders with more fortunate minds, a rubbing of bellies in more fortunate times - which is why I’m against her getting involved with Arthur Steinberg again.

  Arthur has been a Plainfield fixture for as long as I can remember; though I’m aware – as is every old midwife in the county – that Arthur hails from New York (Brooklyn, to be exact). But Artie has a way about him that makes you forget he’s foreign. Maybe it’s the cockeyed felt cap he wears everywhere, or maybe his disarming humor – or perhaps his business.