Twice Melvin

by James Pumpelly

  “Three…I bid three,” Melody interrupts, drawing closer on the makeshift podium to inspect the book. “Melvin’s copy?” she mouths with surprise, noting his scrawl on the flyleaf, “must’ve donated it to the library’s book sale-“

  “And then Artie ended up with all the books that didn’t sell,” George finishes for her, “…free!” his half-whisper keeping the observation from the crowd. “No wonder he made money…and with so little effort.”

  “Considering a change of profession?” Melody teases, handing the book back to George as an old dairy farmer startles them with a shout: “I’ll match that, and raise it a dollar!”

  “This is an auction, not a card game, Mr.–“

  “Buck. Mr. Buck,” Melody coming to George’s aid, “one of Artie’s poker partners. Probably thinks you-”

  “Raised the ante?” George’s cheeks grin-dimpled. “Well, he’s right if he thinks you’re in the game.”

  “Five!” she offers brightly, forcing his return to business, “I’ll go five on Bridey Murphy…and then raise your ante later,” she trails under her breath.

  And raise it she does, Melody in sudden discomfort, her baby stirring as though threatening an early entrance.

  “Do I hear six?” George rallies, his back to her obvious cramps, “six? six? then sold for five dollars to Mrs. Melody Mor-, to my partner, Melody.”

  “Partner? then you should take better care of her,” bellows Mr. Buck, pointing a barn-calloused finger at Melody, “shouldn’t be workin’ a little lady that close to birthin’.”

  Thankful thinks otherwise, her gratitude for George’s quick response effusive as they enter the hospital. “My daughter’s fortunate to have a friend like you,” Faithful says, holding a snow-dampened cloth to Melody’s brow. “You’ll make it easier for her to come home-” George offering no reply, just the thought of Melody’s return leaving him word-struck.

  Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

  (Emerson)

  XXV

  “You had me in a fright down there, Melvin,” Aunt Martha rousing me from a troubling trance, “had me convinced you were making a run for it early on.”

  “Run for it?” I repeat groggily, a faint recollection of thumbing through Bridey Murphy and thumping my mother’s belly somehow merging under an ER lamp. “Wh-where are we?”

  “We were in the hospital - you were toying with your birthday package,” she scolds, “trying to make it Special D.”

  “Oh…now I remember!” I gasp, glancing round to ascertain my whereabouts. “It was that damn George again, making moves on my mother…I mean, my wife. I had to do something to throw him off track.”

  “Honey, there are no tracks here except the one in your mind,” A.M. protests. “If you’re not careful, it’s going to derail you before you leave the station. And another thing, Melody is your mother now, and as such, she can’t be your wife; a distinction you’d better accept before heading back south for milk.”

  “Who, me?” I ask impetuously, “me? abreast of the times? Never have been and never will be. I’m a Vermonter, remember?”

  “Books read the same no matter where they are,” she snips, “though Vermont makes for a darn good reading environment.”

  “Which is not why you burned all those midnight candles in Poor Art’s Book Mart,” I retort, fueling her fire.

  “Nor why you blew yours out at the office,” she shoots back, damping mine. “But never mind our past mistakes; it’s the clean slate we have in store that’s important now. Especially yours.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I challenge, still sullen over George. “And what makes you think so?”

  “It’s not what I think, young man; it’s what I know!” she declares. “Too much care has been taken, too much editing of too many life patterns to have you spoil the production. The surprise I’ve promised you is a masterful stroke, a finale to please all involved.”

  No less perturbed than she is persuaded, I’m ready for a war of words. But just as I give a supercilious harrumph, my eyes take in a sight knocking the proverbial wind out of my airy chest - A.M. jerking me back to Star View Station and the Galaxy Lounge to pull up barstools on either side of a new arrival.

  “What in heaven’s name!” I exclaim, as bewildered as the traveler sitting stone still between us, “w-what is she doing here?”

  “There’s a major shift going on among a few life patterns right now - a reaction. In fact, you could call it a chain reaction, since you’re the cause of it all.”

  “Me?” I cry, staring incredulously at the woman between us, her astonishment rendering her speechless. “But-but I left her behind months ago.”

  “If you define ‘leaving’ as physical separation, yes,” Aunt Martha signaling the bartender for drinks, “but if you mean your spirits ceased to compound the good or ill achieved when you were together, you’re mistaken – yes, two glasses of your best port,” she interposes, sending the bartender on a mission. “You’ll discover I’m right when she sips her drink,” A.M. continues, “it’s her connection to you. A glass of port will loosen her tongue; her reaction to an action you took late one Wednesday night when she was-”

  “Point taken,” I interrupt – the lady between us turning her head as though I’m addressing her.

  “This is a bit much just to make a point, isn’t it?” the new arrival finding her tongue, her deadpan expression dead-ending me.

  “So how did you find me up here?” I ask foolishly. “Some people will go to the ends of the world just to-“

  “That must be where I am, if you’re here,” she interjects, a sip of port reviving her. “Then again, if I’m with you…I…I must be-”

  “Dead?” Aunt Martha’s tone as bitter as failure, “but you aren’t, sorry to say.”

  “Who is she?” the now-coming-alive-imbiber asks, hitching a thumb over her shoulder at A.M., “my conscience?”

  “Always were insightful, weren’t you?” I respond, avoiding a direct reply. “I’m surprised you don’t recognize Martha Morrison,” I chide, as I signal the barkeep for a glass of port. I don’t want to miss the opportunity, if my aunt is buying – not to mention the incredible age it’s likely to be.

  “I’m getting the picture,” my auditor responds, casting a furtive glance at A.M., “I’m in hell, right? for what torment could exceed the company of two Morrisons?”

  “She’s got some major negativity to discharge,” A.M. prattles, going on as though the suddenly much distraught woman isn’t present, “some substantial bitterness to work through.”

  “You make it sound like a tour of duty,” I say, sandwiched awkwardly between women refusing to speak to each another, “or maybe I have a bad case of dyspepsia.”

  “Not to worry, she has family on the way,” A.M. disregarding our subject’s presence, the approach of a little prune-like woman prompting me to offer my seat, the frail figure wringing her withered hands over some long-lost hope, her pinched smile the only hint of imminent reunion.

  “Charlene’s grandmother,” A.M. informs me, sliding off her stool to accompany me to the exit, as the barkeep calls, “Your tab, ma’am?”

  Halting at the diaphanous door, Aunt Martha’s lack of propriety deepens my distress. “Charge it to him!” she yells back, jabbing a finger where Adam’s rib is supposed to have been, “it’s his turn to treat, not mine.” Whispering, she adds, “those Southern boys always make the best bartenders, topping off a lady’s drink at will - the lady, too, if she’s so inclined - and expecting not a cent for the gins. Or grins.”

  “Didn’t know I had a tab,” I remark, circumventing her Southern blockade. “Furthermore, I don’t know how I’m going to pay.”

  “Looks as though your other woman’s grandmother is going to settle your tab,” A.M. whirling for the egress. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but she accepted the port you ordered for yourself. In my book, if someone commandeers a barstool and the drink in fron
t of it, the bill’s been commandeered, as well.”

  “Now that you mention it,” I tease, relieved to be out of the lounge and lost in the jostling throng of intergalactic pilgrims, “Artie once told me about your barroom feats, how you’d accept an offer to dance and end up at another table – and on another’s bill – with the uncanny regularity of another round.”

  “Call it another dance, another round…call it anything you will,” she sidesteps, “but the disoriented traveler we left in the lounge proves change to be inevitable.”

  “Rrrright,” I growl. “I was going to ask you about her - how she came to be traveling. The last I knew, she was going nowhere fast.”

  “Funny you would put it that way,” A.M. titters, tugging me to a bookstore-cum-gift shop to escape the press of the crowd, “it’s funny, because nothing’s changed. She’s still going nowhere fast. And even when she does go, it will still be nowhere. Some of us are inordinately stubborn, requiring multiple incarnations to admit a single fault.”

  “Not what I asked,” I redirect.

  “I know, and I’ll address that, too,” she promises. “If there’s anything quick about your other woman, it’s her temper. That, and her driving. The two don’t mix with ice. She had quite a crash, I tell you – but would you look at this!” A. M. holding up a pair of gossamer wings. “Training set…big sellers to the outward bound. Guess folks figure it’s never too late to straighten up and fly right.”

  “Aren’t wings in fashion here?” I ask, trying on a pair of exceptionally large flappers. “I mean, if one is upwardly mobile, aren’t wings a prerequisite?”

  “Yes; but like love, they can’t be bought,” A.M. donning an extra-small pair. “And just like love, the less one thinks of one’s self, the more one’s wings will grow.”

  “That explains how a mother can be an angel,” I remark wistfully, unclasping the over-sized fakes from my arms. “Melody is definitely an angel, an orphan of beauty among a bevy of beast,“ Aunt Martha sliding me a wink of delight, her bright eyes sparkling with a joy of which I’ve heretofore thought her incapable.

  “My dear nephew, I believe you’re ready to be readied!” A.M. returning the extra-small wings to their hanger, only to sidle up to a revolving display of what appears to be backpacks: gossamer contraptions, in a variety of shapes and sizes, emblazoned with pithy maxims. Just Say No to Snakes, reads one; and another, No Apples a Day Keeps the Devil Away.

  “Auntie, have we stumbled into a celestial bank of slogans?”

  “You might call it that,” A.M. chortles, holding up a capacious, rectangular selection with Study to Show Thyself Approved inscribed in orange letters across six of its many sides. “You’ll need this for your course in human causes, your prep school for advanced returnees.”

  “S-School?” I stutter, fear of celestial classes never far from my attention. “Do I have to?” I groan, “can’t I just move on without the certificate? I’ve learned the basics empirically. In fact, there should be a test for travelers like me; one that earns the graduate a certificate without the boredom of classwork.”

  “Step over here!” Aunt Martha imperious, leading me to a wall of reference tomes and textbooks, her selected backpack secured under one arm. “Just show me a book you don’t need to study,” she barks, “…just one.”

  “That’s easy,” I say, noting the section on law, “take, for example, Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences, a work which accomplished for theology what Gratian’s Decretum did for canon law. But how far do you want me to go back?” I ask pompously, “and on which discipline do you wish me to elaborate? We’re in the middle of the twelfth century with these two, both of which were influenced by earlier Roman law. And if that’s what you’d prefer, one of the first compilations of secular law, the Codex Constitutionum, or The Code, was compiled in the sixth century by Justinian’s commissioners; although the work was centered in Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, and was not generally known in the west until-“

  “Melvin, Melvin, Melvin,” A.M. shaking her head as though I’m to be pitied, “when will you learn? When will any of us learn? Law - true law - is the opposite from that of which you so amply demonstrate your familiarity. Remember our discussion of Plato? It’s the essence of law that’s taught up here, not imperfect representations. Not mistakes. And only when one discovers the ultimate deduction of deductive reasoning, the sole rationale of rational inquiry, can one truly grasp the purpose of law.“

  “Then why are they up here?” I quiz, suggesting the mistake to be hers. “Why would imperfect representations be shelved in a perfect library?”

  “Back to Plato again…though in this case, I must confess your Greeks have it over my Romans,” she exhorts with a chuckle. “But to continue, a shadow can be employed to prove the existence of its cause, a mistake the existence of perfection. Where mortals have attempted to legislate good behavior, we learn up here that good behavior is like the shadow, the result of something higher than a commitment to a code. It’s internal. It’s within the perfect self, a disinclination to stray from the bliss of perfection. So, in the cause of higher education, these books serve as shadows.”

  “I want a blue backpack,” I say submissively, shelving the tomes I’d believed could free me, then returning to the revolving display. “Orange is for orangutans, and I’m-“

  “Not a monkey?” she interposes, handing me the backpack.

  “Monkeys are primates,” I correct, pleased to know something she doesn’t. “Orangutans are anthropoid apes. But as I was going to say, I’m not one to ape. I’m my own man…do my own thinking; and blue is-“

  “The color of my eyes, and your mother’s,” she breaks in, handing me a smaller version of her first selection, its slogan If Blue is True, What is False? in bright white script. “Don’t think you’ll be needing as many books as the orange one holds, anyway,” she says with a wink.

  “Thanks, Auntie,” I mutter, pondering the backpack’s question.

  “You’ll take a crash course up at True-Blue U,” she informs me, charging my gift to a card of gold, “I hear the campus is divine.”

  “You’ve never been there?” I query, surprised her curiosity hasn’t earned her a tour.

  “No, but your Emperor Justinian teaches Philosophy there - something to do with his atonement, I’m told. Aristotle still chairs the Department, of course, but Justinian-“

  “I was going to mention that,” I interrupt, eager to be back on a familiar subject, “Justinian, I mean; for although Justinian did much for the law, and, in his opinion, much for Christianity, his reign was austere, his ban on paganism extending to the centers of learning - including the University of Athens - spelling an end to the Platonic Academy.”

  “But just as nothing is ended, everything is begun,” she muses, leading me back to the busy concourse. “The Platonic Academy – or the essence thereof – is alive and well, and enjoying the enthusiastic participation and patronage of its one-time enemy. Go figure – or so said my old friend, Euclid-“

  “No!” I cry, stopping her dead in her tracks, “don’t tell me you knew the great Greek mathematician-“

  “I didn’t,” she giggles, pulling me along to join the flow. “I was testing you, checking to see if you were still with me.”

  “And where else would I be, Aunt Martha? Hey! Wait just a blessed eternity!” I exclaim, abruptly bringing her to another halt. “Weren’t you just telling me that books read the same no matter where they are? So how can Lombard’s Book of Sentences, or Gratian’s Decretum read any differently than they did eight hundred years ago?”

  “Great question…and by asking it, you’ve passed your entrance exam, Melvin,” says a gorgeous, dark-haired, olive-skinned maiden.

  Sitting yoga-style opposite my beautiful companion, we’re shaded by the most spectacular tree I’ve ever seen, its overarching limbs like a father’s arms, protective and trustworthy. I don’t question where I am, a flash
of memory prompting me to bid my femme fatale a pleasant day and set off in search of something far more beautiful, far more rewarding than a mere pleasure to the eye: Aristotle and his theory of rational inquiry.

  Men are subject to an illusion regarding matters apparent to

  the senses…for things have changed their nature in the very

  moment we see or touch them. (Heraclitus)

  XXVI

  Christmas in Vermont is like seeing the world through a child’s eyes: the carpet of snow across the roll of George’s meadow a magical ride in the offing; his ice crystal pond, under a pinnacle moon and chandelier stars, a shimmering palace ballroom - that Cinderella might glide into view as likely as cookies and milk; the aroma of chocolate and hazelnuts begging his indulgence, his belief in the conjuration; the abracadabra fire in his hearth charming a visiting Melody.

  “Mother made the cookies,” she says - George slouching in his chair, enjoying a Currier and Ives fantasy, a scene fitting nicely the tinkling of bells, the clipity-clip-clop on his ice-hardened drive. “She thought you might like them, and I’m sure you’ll appreciate them even more after a sleigh-ride,” the elfin scuff of her stocking-feet on the parlor rug, the perfume of her golden hair as she leans near his ear, enhancing his reverie; Melody’s delicate touch on his shoulder like a wand to awaken her prince. “Silver bells, George…silver bells. Do you hear them?”

  “Sleigh bells?” he mumbles, the hearth-glow in her porcelain blue eyes bringing him back to the moment. “Surely not…not unless you-” George erupting from his chair in disbelief.

  “It’s Mr. Buck; the old farmer who raised my bet on Bridey Murphy, remember?”

  “Remember?” the edge of eagerness on his every word, “that’s all I do anymore, Melody! You stoke my reverie like a glowing hearth!”

  “How sweet,” Melody backing away as though the fire is causing her blush. “But let’s not keep Mr. Buck waiting. He has chores to get back to. Cows to milk.”