Twice Melvin

by James Pumpelly

  A plausible excuse, too, as it’s desperately cold outside, the Winooski’s sluggish slabs of ice as gray as the dusky sky, the swirling snow sifting silence over the valley, silvering the stubble of a summer lost. What color once bloomed from earth’s nurturing breast is long unremembered in the stark and numbing chill. With Thanksgiving but a day away, Mother Nature is joining the celebration, enchanting the warm windowed-views of rosy-cheeked children eager to brave the slopes; and of old-timers, too, content to remain behind, relishing the warmth of lullaby hearths to the wistful remembrance of youth; to the savory scent of venison roast, of turkey and hot apple pie.

  “Weren’t we going to check in on Thelma…cast your spell on her march?” I ask hesitantly - the snow, drifting in irresolute patterns against the windows, like a hypnotist’s chant, prompting but vague, a fleeting suggestion I need to discover the edges.

  “What am I, a witch?” she quips playfully, replacing the mariner’s manual with a disregard screaming her ignorance of first editions, “your personal genie?”

  “If you’re the lamp sent to guide me,” I gibe, reluctant to fly in such poor visibility, “then why not be the genie, too?”

  “I am,” she chortles, flitting over to Artie’s display window to better enjoy the white-icing treat outside. “And to prove it, I’ll let you in on a secret: Thelma’s still asleep - dead to the world, as it were - her restless arms holding tight her one last hope for a man.”

  “Is that why you knocked that first edition of Human Sexual Response from its stand?” I tease, stooping to retrieve the disheveled book before its pages are permanently crimped. “I’m referring to the Masters and Johnson treatise partitioning intercourse into four separate stages. Was it disbelief that made you knock it off? Disbelief the stages of excitement, plateau, orgasm and resolution are something a man can produce? Or was it your overt disbelief in the sensuality of senior citizens? ”

  “You can knock it off yourself,” she barks, the accuracy of my barb etched in her face. “You’ve got us all wrong, sweetheart. After all, why do you think they call us sexagenarians?” she poses - disdaining my answer, should I give one. “I can assure you it’s not for the yogurt and bran we consume before going out on the prowl.”

  “Right,” I retort, “the word comes from the Latin sexageni, meaning ‘sixty each’.”

  “Ha!” she scorns, “there you have it, Melvin; for that’s fifty-eight more than you had when you abruptly quit the race!”

  “Race, march…I don’t care what you call it,” I respond, returning to my present perturbation, “I just want to be sure Thelma Peabody doesn’t pull one of her infamous placard punches on this straight-man nephew of yours.”

  “If it’s placards you’re worried about,” A.M. rallying to my concern, “I’ll show you what she’s prepared so far-“

  “So far?” I interrupt, such a chilling thought making my light head swirl like the wind-blown snow. “Do you mean there’s more to come?”

  “Nothing of the sort,” A.M. emphatic, waving her attenuated arms like a director before an orchestra of flakes. “You do see what I’ve done, don’t you?” she asks, pointing her phantom baton at the storm while turning to me for praise, “I’ve made her march impractical. And I did it for you!”

  “You-you have to help me here,” I stammer. “Our Lord walking on the water is a miracle I can believe, if for no other reason than He who created the water should know how to employ its properties. But, you?” I guffaw, “you, my erstwhile aunt? Are you claiming to possess such power, too? Or such knowledge?” I amend, “since knowledge is power? But wait!” my thoughts coming as fast as the snow, “I think I grasp your meaning! You’re saying if our Master walked on water, the least you can do is walk under it; the fact that it’s frozen, and falling harmlessly about you, something only He can explain!”

  “Do you want to waste your morning smarting off?” A.M. smirks dismissively, “or see what Thelma has to make you smart?”

  “One can never know enough,” I submit, “…take me to task, if you must.”

  “Then we’re off to Thelma’s basement,” she announces; just the thought of being underground – though it takes us to Thelma’s instantly - making me uneasy, like standing in a quiet room with a crooked picture.

  “It’s really cold down here,” I grumble, shaking my ethereal limbs in hopes of a little friction. “I didn’t realize we’re still subject to such mundane effects as changing temperature and inclement weather.”

  “Actually, we aren’t,” she assures me. “It’s just your imagination…your memory of how cold once felt…of how a damp cellar once chilled you…of how the grave-“

  “The grave?” I interject, shivering uncontrollably.

  “You don’t remember, do you?” she mumbles to herself, switching on Thelma’s basement light before I can remember I don’t need it.

  “I don’t; nor, do I-I wish to,” I rattle.

  “Not many do,” A.M. posing dramatically as she slowly turns a pole-mounted, lace-fringed placard to a full-frontal view, “not many stay behind,” she adds, giving the weird, feminine sign a flutter, “not many stay buried in self-pity, responding, instead, to the light calling them into the clouds.”

  “Which is hardly the call of Thelma’s placard,” I observe, wincing as I read it aloud:

  MOTHER! MOTHER!

  A name that blesses

  lest the ‘M’ be set aside;

  OTHER! OTHER!

  A name that curses

  the women it may deride.

  “What’s this about Mothers?” I quiz, too cold to pick up the trail.

  “From Thelma Peabody’s twisted perspective, it’s not so much about mothers as it is about the charismatic letter ‘M’,” Aunt Martha’s twist of the protest placard sending a mason quart of apple butter crashing to the floor.

  “T-The letter ‘M’?” I shiver, “a-and charismatic?”

  “Sure. Don’t you get it?” she shrills, bouncing upward to avoid the shards of glass. “The letter ‘M’ stands naked in shame…like Hawthorne’s scarlet letter. It’s the letter of your initials, Melvin. All that gibberish about Mother, and Other is just smoke from another fire. And do you know why?” her cold blue eyes staring me down in hungry anticipation, “because this isn’t Thelma’s placard…it’s Charlene’s!”

  “But where’s the charisma?” I parry, denying her the satisfaction of my guilt. “Where’s the magnetism? the charm?”

  “That’s your memory,” she snaps, disappointed. “I mean, not yours, but the recollections of those you left behind, what they recall of the recently deceased Melvin Morrison; the bright-eyed, big-hearted kid they portray all too kindly in the screening room of the dead. But then, we’re all so inclined,” she allows, “even me. Why, I can remember when your father died, how I was forgiving him even before he thought to look me up, forgetting all the times he took dead aim at me with those hell-fire sermons of his; how he all but called my name in his scorching, accusatory delivery; how he-“

  “The more you go on about it,” I interrupt, “the less it would seem you’ve forgiven him.”

  “Right,” A.M. turning abruptly to retrieve another sign. “Helen the organist composed this one,” A.M. safely negotiating, for the moment, the over-stocked shelves of Thelma’s home-canned fruits. “And if it makes you feel any better,” she adds pretentiously, “Helen and Charlene were the only Other Women who completed Thelma’s questionnaire. All the rest were frightened off by Melody’s commie bugster ploy.”

  “Only two?” I chime, my shivers subsiding, “then Thelma isn’t marching today, even had the sun shown hot on the statehouse lawn! So much for your snowstorm trick,” I cry, “and so much for you taking all the credit, too. By your own admission, Aunt Martha, it’s Melody I have to thank for Thelma’s failure, not you.”

  “Read the sign,” she growls, jabbing it in front of my third eye, “…read it before elation runs away with your
prudence.”

  “As if!” I retort with scorn - reading it just the same:

  March for our own dear Melvin,

  And his midnight ride for to see,

  The plight of the Other Women

  Who come not by land nor by sea.

  “I see you have a new cause,” she declares, almost indifferently, her cold shoulder holding me at fault, “a cause beyond my help. Perhaps Melody can get you out of this one, too.”

  “What’s there to get out of?” I ask, peering about my former Sunday-school teacher’s cellar with ardent curiosity. “If there’s to be no march, these protest slogans are harmless.”

  “Harmless?” she echoes acidly. “Would you say they’re as harmless as Thelma’s private gallery in the corner behind you?” her chilling remark prodding me to turn about.

  “So what?” I voice weakly, Thelma’s color montage of muscle men, grotesque in their posed positions, spread out across the dank stone wall like decadent trophies. “It’s her private vice. No one else will be the wiser.”

  “But how does this discovery make you feel?” she asks scathingly. “After all, she was your spiritual mentor, you know.”

  “That’s all in the past now. It’s something she’ll have to deal with herself. And with the advent of Simon, maybe she’ll tear down her secret temple, her altar to Adonis…put it behind her here and now…correct her karma, as it were.”

  “Or un-correct Simon’s,” she snips witheringly.

  “Short on forgiveness today, Aunt Martha?”

  “Short on patience,” she responds, letting the remark double as an apology. “And I must admit I kept my own gallery when I was mortal…though it was all in my mind, not my cellar.”

  “Which explains why it’s still with you. But I can appreciate that; for it’s a natural thing to do: imagining your perfect mate; a kind of mental measuring stick attempting to abet the heart; abetting till one meets the truly perfect mate - a mate different than what one has imagined; but immeasurably superior.”

  “You have set me up to tell you,” she replies, after a pause.

  “Tell me?”

  “Yes…tell you about Charlene – oh! and George, of course! Charlene has announced the breaking off of her engagement.”

  “To George?” I ask stupidly, her news disturbing my short-lived sangfroid.

  “To everyone. She’s announced it to everyone who’ll listen, complaining of George’s inattention, his drinking bouts, his promiscuity, his-“

  “Go no further,” I interject. “You’ve said enough – enough to raise alarm on another front.”

  “Concern for your child?” her eyebrows raised approvingly.

  “Never! Ever!” I declare. “Charlene, if she’s nothing else, is a splendid, doting mother. I know, because I was looking over your shoulder when you called up her record, her life pattern.”

  “Touché!” she shoots back, unwilling to give me advantage, “but I thought you were after something else…something other than her qualities as a mother.”

  “What else would I have been interested in?”

  “Oh…love, perhaps? Perhaps you were curious - after marring your record on the subject - as to whether Charlene would have been a better mate.”

  “If you think that, you’re dead wrong!”

  “Dead, yes; wrong, no. There’s always that question lurking in the shadows of an affair. I should know. I‘ve had my share of them down through the centuries.”

  “But wait,” I interject, forestalling her dissertation on concupiscence, “does George know about this yet? He’s been down in Boston for two days, and won’t be home till later today. So-”

  “He doesn’t; though the news will be welcomed when he hears it.”

  “Conflict of interest? Are you suggesting George will be only too happy to recuse himself from a case of diapers?”

  “You got it,” she laughs, “…before it gets down and dirty – which reminds me, you haven’t seen Thelma’s placard yet…the one she prepared expressly for you.”

  “Do I want to?” I ask, too late to catch another mason jar as she reaches for the sign. “Thelma’s going to wonder what happened down here, with a trail of broken glass and sticky fruit leading right to her gallery.”

  “Maybe it’ll suggest her penance,” A.M. twirling the largest of the three placards for me to view. “It’ll take more than a little chastening of the soul to wash out the stain of this composition,” she exclaims, reading it aloud for emphasis:

  Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

  For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

  “But it’s not her composition,” I quibble; though none too pleased by Thelma’s selection for my memorial, “it’s from the book of Galatians, an epistle Paul wrote to the church in-“

  “I know,” A.M. breaks in, using her expertise with the heavenly index to find the passage before I can cite it, “6th chapter, verses 7 and 8,” she continues pedantically. “By calling it her ‘composition’, I mean she cheapens its purpose, misapplying Paul’s message to-“

  “Cheapens?” I return the favor of her frequent interruptions. “Are you inferring the Holy Bible is debased when Thelma quotes it on my behalf?”

  “I’m not inferring it, I’m affirming it!” she rages, suddenly irked in my defense. “She’s hypocritical! No, worse than that, she’s demoniacal to fault your peccadilloes when, as the good book says, she should remove the beam from her own eye before fishing for the splinter in yours.”

  “I appreciate your bias, Aunt Martha,” I tender, hoping to calm the tempest, “especially when I’m on the long side of your equation. But I must remind you that no harm has been done since the march is not to be. There is no cause now for anger.”

  “Oh?” she whines, capitulating ever so slightly, “and what are we to do about Thelma meddling in our new incarnations? Can you answer that one?”

  “Meddling, did you say? And here I thought you ranked first among meddlers. Be that as it may,” I say, “Thelma may be a lot of things, but she’s no Methuselah.”

  “I read life patterns, remember?” A.M. as morbid as her subject.

  “’That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is,’” I philosophy, quoting some remembered Bible lesson.

  “Ecclesiastes 3:15 - and I’m here to tell you,” she appends menacingly, “to warn you: we haven’t seen the last of Thelma Peabody!”

  What is allowed, we scorn; what’s

  not allowed, we burn for. (Ovid)

  XXII

  Up before the discontented dawn, before the nervous past can find him out, George escapes Boston Jesus clean. A strange and new elation, this boy in a man’s body, a childhood memory reviving his deadened heart - an August night, under moth-fluttered lamps, the envy of his pals for the excitement of Mexican jumping beans. What strife remains in the dark of his mind, fades slowly away, his bygone failings like swords in the frenzied hands of gladiators annihilating themselves in the past, the present unscathed by their violent passing. A rebirth, it is; a new beginning; a grafting to the vine of a superior vineyard, the Winooski River valley seeming all of this world he’ll ever need.

  And Melody.

  Thoughts of Melody are sanguine, yet they summon Charlene, her rancor like a siren before a storm. And the innocent babe, the little boy born under his name? what hope has he in a hopeless home? what peace under Damocles’ sword? For even as he thinks of Charlene, it’s as though she’s beside him in the car, her slighting eyes, her scorning smile, her biting words so heavy on his mind he stops for a cup of coffee, stops to escape the oppressive air, to feel anew a divine autonomy, the silken freedom of the evening before.

  The quaint New Hampshire diner is like a coddling aunt, an order of blueberry griddle cakes and Vermont maple syrup reminding
him of his farm - the great oak table he rescued from the barn, a table on which to spread the fruits of a life well-lived with one’s mate, one’s children, one’s community; the joy of sharing the very fuel for his flight of fancy.

  As he butters his pancakes, he recalls how he’s never been afraid of superlatives, using them like keys to his lovers’ hearts, believing all the while he was immune, untouched by the sentimentality. Too selfish to love, he once promised himself he’d never give his heart; and now he’s breaking that promise, being untrue to himself. Or is he? The question brings a chuckle as he imagines being in a drugstore, standing in line with the women, believing what he reads in the Valentine cards.

  How is Melody so different? What magic does she wield to transform a man? And willingly, too, he thinks, savoring a bite of blueberries; for where once he’d known Ovid by his poems, now he’s met him in her eyes! And the mystery doesn’t end there, Ovid writing his Art of Love just before the birth of Christ; his Metamorphoses a few years afterward. Is there significance there? Is Melody his own Madonna? He hopes not - some vague imagining bringing a blush at the possibility. Of this only is he certain: having known her, he dare not demand of his God any greater happiness.

  Oracular, this move to Vermont, this transmutation of failure into fortune - fleeing his old misdeeds, convinced there could not be despair where hope has never been, only to discover hope has been there all along, awaiting his arrival – the result answering fully to the zeal awakening it.

  At first, it was Melody. But the shame of his past decried his passion, Charlene, with her ready problem, the scapegoat for atonement. Ironic as the rich being drawn to charity, his misplaced desire, his need in hand with sympathy, going off to get lost in the dark.

  Nor is his mistake any easier on Charlene. There are moments when she seems amiable enough, patronizing him like the English listening admiringly to a good Irish tenor. But there are others when she moves through the void of his presence with magnificent indifference, a look of fatigued resignation meeting his embassy of words. Answering him neutrally, if she answers at all, her contemptuous dignity, her bumptious manner, sends him off to sulk in the gloom of a hopeless distance.