Twice Melvin

by James Pumpelly

  One must consider the circumstance of that kiss, I reason; most any red-blooded male, regardless of his pigmentation situation, prey to thrilling lips when accompanied by Otis Redding – the dance notwithstanding.

  One must consider the circumstance of that dance, I venture; most any high-spirited male, regardless of his fermentation situation, prey to willing arms when accompanied by-

  But I hadn’t consumed a drink! And furthermore, it was I, not Otis, who turned to that tent of temptation. Again I succumb to bewilderment, feeling at once both guileless and guilty, saintly and sinful; the entire delightful morning replaying in my mind, only to end with Dorothy at my bar, in the dregs of her gin, while I climb a stone-strewn hill, the grave of the man who gave me my name now a pedestal to hold my hurt.

  “My father told me I’d find you here,” an unmistakable voice announces, Simon’s long, thin shadow like a diaphanous calling card falling across my knees, “told me you needed the poet’s eye; needed to peer through the dismal mist; to recognize advantage when cloaked in the guise of failure.”

  “What calls you up to cemetery hill on this cold and friendless night?” I ask, unperturbed by his nocturnal rambling.

  “I told you. I’m here as an emissary. My dad-“

  “I appreciate what you did today, Simon,” I break in, any credit due his dad not on my list of obligations. “What happened there in the tent…let’s just say it was misunderstood.” Simon taking a seat on the edge of my great-grandfather’s grave, its headstone reading:

  Manassas Melvin Morrison, minister, husband, father - and in that order - rest in peace

  the inscription in dreadful disagreement with my present predicament. Meriting not one of my great-grandfather’s titles, I can’t imagine resting in peace.

  “Never noticed your grandpa’s tombstone before,” Simon straining to read through the wreathes of mist collecting about our feet, our legs, the chill crawling up from the river below like the icicle breath of death. “Minister, husband, father,” he says as though reciting an incantation, “…now, where have I heard those words before?”

  “Common enough,” I respond. “And not that it matters, but that’s my great-grandfather’s resting place, not my grandfather’s.” Anxious to inquire of Minnie, of what she may have related after their unexpected pairing at the fair, I redirect. “Common enough as words, I mean; but what I was going to ask-“

  “Church!” he exclaims, “I heard them at church! Well, almost-“

  “Almost?” I quiz, amused by his interest in epigrams; especially one as terse as my great-grandfather’s.

  “Yes, yes, it was your lady friend,” Simon referencing Minnie with cheerful delicacy, “she said a similar thing in church. Remember?”

  I do not - a firm wag of my head punctuating my denial.

  “Yes. Her exact words were ‘Minister, helpmate, mother – and in that order’, just like your grandpa – I-I mean, your great-grandpa. And I’ll tell you what else she said,” he continues, brandishing his skeletal arms as though the rising mist were a monster, “she told me the fortuneteller revealed the two of you have matching birthmarks. And I told her about one of your tapes – one she hadn’t read about in the press – the one about Little George being born with the same mark, the mark he shared with Melvin Senior. In the same place, too; and-”

  “Judicious of you,” I interject, pleased to be a part of their discussion, and hoping her heart is not yet in touch with her head. “What was her response?”

  “Keenly interested, I’d have to say. Intrigued.”

  “Are you certain?” I press, hope building.

  “She told me as much,” he avers, challenging any doubt of his opinion, “said she had a lot of reading to do. Said she’d see me in my store tomorrow morning – which is why my dad sent me up here to find you.”

  “Your dad?” I query, elation obscuring my memory.

  “Sure, like I told you: I communicate with Dad all the time,” his matter-of-fact assurance convincing, save for his frantic eyes; his fixation with the disappearing stars a trance I’m compelled to disrupt.

  “Look at me, Simon,” I demand, getting up from my father’s grave, “it’s Melvin Morrison you’re talking to here; Melvin, Jr.; the same Melvin who’s been the target of ridicule over what some consider to be my fraternizing with ghosts. So take my advice,” I counsel, returning to my granite slab, “don’t be telling people you talk with the dead! Reclining across my father’s tomb, my hands clasped behind my head, I continue, “Now, tell me…what did he say?”

  “Came to me in his usual way; just an impression I get sometimes - like when I rest in the old rocker by the stove,” Simon’s face upturned, his eyes now as closed as Sunday. “Said you need to recall some things…figure them out from the evidence provided you thus far.”

  “Evidence?” Simon the soothsayer beginning to sound like Simon the detective. “Evidence of what, for God’s-“

  “Says you need to watch your mouth,” he scolds, shiver-twitching, “pay homage where homage is due. And right now your account’s in dire arrears.”

  “I don’t know about this-this impression business,” I reply, turning my head in my hands to keep him in view, “it’s too vague…leaves too much to our biased interpretation – that is, if we can decipher what it is that needs interpreting.”

  “Try fidelity,” he returns, the word clambering up my spine like ice-cold fingers; my recollections, on those damning tapes, looming as ghosts in the moonlit mist.

  “But it’s only now that I…that I suspect…that I think…that-that I know I’m in love,” I protest, all the guilt I’d laid down on those party tracks coming back to haunt my admission.

  “Says there’s more to fidelity than romance. Says you should consider your destiny, your chosen work…the plan you were given before you returned. Says your work demands fidelity, too.”

  “Aaah,” I sigh, turning back to what stars still burn through the mist, “sort of a ‘be true to yourself’ admonishment, is it? Like maybe I shouldn’t be dabbling in the restaurant business if it robs my time, my attention, my will to achieve in my chosen profession. Is that it?”

  “Says that’s part of it. But you know that already. Says you discovered long ago that an attorney could do more than just practice law. A profession that wastes an entire career by ‘practicing’ lacks direction. But you have direction. Says you shared it with him as a teenager - and it wasn’t to turn a spit on the banks of the river.”

  “But I’ve been progressing on an as needed basis,” I argue; recalling the winter’s night old Simon let me spin my dreams round his wood-burning stove, the old man wafting along in my aerial flights as though he, too, were a youth this side of adventure.

  “As needed, you say? Well, you need to know…need to do…need to proceed with the plan,” Simon says, slipping insubstantially off my ancestor’s tomb like the shadow he’d cast at his entrance, the thump of his boney frame on the mist-moistened ground jolting him back to our mountain; his, “Holy Moses!” as harmless as his crumpling fall.

  “Drift off to sleep?” I ask; curious to know if his impressions are as unremembered as my regressions.

  “Must have,” he mumbles, unscrambling his limbs to sit upright on the granite, “…must have. I was in the middle of a dream when I fell.”

  “What were you dreaming?” I ask nonchalantly, masquerading my investigative purpose.

  “I-I think it was about my father. Must have been the suggestion of your grandpa’s grave.”

  “My great-grandfather,” I correct, sitting up in the throes of a shiver, “but do you remember any part of the dream?”

  “No…yes…well, maybe,” he struggles, fumbling with the collar of his jacket in search of warmth. “I think I recall a scene…a little vignette…and-and you…yes, you were there, Melvin…yes…there with my dad, the two of you sitting by the old wood stove.”

  “What happened next?” I prompt
, eager to hear his rendition of what I assume is my memory of a night with his father.

  “What happened next was…I fell off the tombstone,” he blurts, disappointing me, rubbing his hands, his legs, his upper arms with a vigor that warms even me. “But I do remember what we were talking about before I dozed off,” he pipes, a return to Minnie Ruth Taylor apparently forthcoming, “Your brother’s chair at Godhard College,” dashing my expectation.

  “We were not!” I object. “We hadn’t mentioned Little George; nor, for that matter, his English chair at Godhard.”

  “Then, I suppose I was about to,” Simon disarming my objection; “for Little George was much on Miss Taylor’s mind.”

  “He was?” I rejoin, giving Simon a prosecutorial stare to be certain he’s awake. “Little George, and not me?” I question, broadcasting my alarm.

  “Yes; because I told her about your brother’s problem…his reticence to admit his sexual bent; and she-“

  “You what?” I bellow, coming up from my father’s grave as though Gabriel just blew his horn. “Tell me you didn’t!” I cry, taking a belligerent stance before his folded figure. “Tell me you didn’t break my brother’s trust!”

  “Okay, okay,” Simon cowering, waving his attenuated arms to the vestige of stars disappearing in the blanket sky, “okay, I didn’t.”

  “That’s better,” I say, lowering my voice, though still holding him suspect for entertaining the thought.

  “Little George told me I could discuss it with her,” he vacillates, shivering me back to my grave, to my raft on the sea of the dead, “see if she’d be willing to talk with him about it, explore his options.”

  “His options?” I echo, dumbfounded that we’re having this conversation; that this issue - of all issues - should have been broached on such a day of discovery for Minnie. “You know, Simon,” I whisper, the effect more virulent than a scream in the pregnant dark, “…you know, I suppose, the Supreme Court recently ruled on the Boy Scouts issue - ruled the Scouts can ban homosexuals from acting as Scoutmasters. And when one couples this finding with our Vermont’s obsession with our private lives, our private parts…there’s nothing civil about it. We appear to be at war with the national majority.”

  “So?” a seemingly complacent Simon mutters.

  “So…I can’t hold Miss Taylor accountable for her opinions,” I argue, “at least, not in the light of their origin.”

  “And Little George?” Simon cutting to the heart of my distress.

  “Has my total support,” I parry, and quickly; my brother and I having years before found a mutual strength in our difference. “I think – and he knows it – that he should live his life with the same enjoyments as his peers; and that includes his-his-“ I falter, recalling what Simon just said, “his chair at Godhard. Were you suggesting-”

  “I was about to say your brother is considering a change, his love of literature, of poetry - in fact, of everything beautiful – suggesting a broader path, one more accommodating than his local professorship.”

  “And this is why you were seeking Miss Taylor’s advise?” I ask, “a career counseling session couched in the guise of gay rights?”

  “Of course not,” Simon’s tone indignant. “Your personal fascination with the very lovely Miss Taylor is most warranted; but I dare say you would agree that her credentials as a guidance counselor are somewhat lacking.”

  “Then how do you explain your attempt to arrange, on behalf of my dear brother, what appears to be just that: a counseling session?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t admit to the reason yourself,” an adversarial Simon poses. “After all, he is your brother.”

  “And what’s that supposed to infer?” I quip, our impromptu powwow taking on the ominous aspects of a war council, my gentle visitor bristling at every turn.

  “That your brother loves you…perhaps even more than himself…and in consequence, is fully aware of your burgeoning feelings for Miss Taylor – something he supports, if for no other reason than she appears to inspire in you a new vigor for life; ‘an awakening’, as he puts it.”

  “But-“

  “I’m not finished,” Simon cutting me off; his ire now up to his task. “Returning to your comment but a moment ago - the one where you compared the Boy Scouts finding with Vermont’s civil union law – I’m shocked by your blindness, Melvin; by your failure to discern, as a man of the bar, what’s really at issue here. This ruling, and this law, is not about gays at all – no matter your views on that subject - but about the rights of a private organization, and of private citizens, respectively.”

  “I surrender,” I reply, not wishing to engage his umbrage. “But the question remains: how did Miss Taylor respond to your portrayal of Little George? to his request for a private meeting?”

  “Most agreeably,” he says, and with a force I take as honesty. “She told me her morning with you had been like a heavenly visitation…like Saint Peter’s dream.”

  “Afraid I’m not familiar with that one,” I admit, suddenly much enamored with Simon and his winsome way with the object of my affections, “but I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”

  “Saint Peter dreamed of foods being offered him from heaven; foods judged unclean by the old Hebrew law,” he explains. “But with the heavenly offering came a heavenly voice overruling the law…making all foods acceptable.”

  “Never thought of it that way, but I doubt any of the food she saw at the fair was kosher,” I muse, smiling over Minnie’s ‘heavenly visitation’, imagining my high and honored place among her angels.

  “Remind me never to retain your services, my dear boy,” a laughing Simon retorts. “You’ve missed her import entirely! Your little lady was implying an ordered change in her beliefs; an acceptance of certain worldly goings-on she’d heretofore deemed immoral.” The word ‘immoral’ key to my understanding, Big O descending from heaven in a vision akin to Saint Peter’s - only food isn’t the pleasure so blessed.

  “Going shopping tomorrow, is she?” I ask, giving my limbs a regenerative stretch before standing up. “Perhaps we should get some sleep…you know, be bright and alert at tomorrow’s call, our duty a supreme demand.”

  “Ours?” Simon queries, joining me above the mist, “I guess I hadn’t mentioned it, Melvin, but Miss Taylor is expecting the benefit of your brother’s knowledge, Little George’s untrammeled familiarity with books…such anticipation a constructive force we shouldn’t toy with.”

  “Un-trammeled familiarity?” I repeat, my salacious smile going unnoticed in the dark. “Un-tried familiarity is closer to the mark.”

  Wear a smile and have friends;

  wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

  (George Eliot)

  XXXIII

  Simon has no patience for an obdurate mind; and with Dorothy storming into his store under the steam of his first pour of coffee - his morning ritual of fresh-ground hazelnut-mocha - he can’t disguise his displeasure. The immediacy of her attack, the asperity of her manner, are more than civility can manage; what modest satisfaction he admits, for arranging a meeting between Little George and Miss Taylor, smoldering in fiery aspersions, a volatile Dorothy shouting him into a fray.

  “How could you do such a thing?” she screams, slamming her sequined clutch on his book-cluttered desk. “How could you be so thoughtless, so cruel as to set me up like that? knowing all along Melvin was trapped, was stupefied by that-that Jesus junkie, that-that-“

  “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone,” Simon screeches, pointing to a faded wall placard Artie had nailed, years before, over a hole in the plaster, Simon’s sudden whirl to point at the sign-cum-patch spilling his coffee.

  “You and your moralizing,” Dot.Com sneers, ignoring his attempt at expulsion, “your song and dance about Little George - about me, about my advantages gained through the tapes - it was all a smoke screen wasn’t it? an attempt to soften me up for the punch you were planning to del
iver.”

  “Young lady, you do need Jung - and how!” a shaking Simon rebuts, fumbling in a desk drawer for a cloth to wipe up his spill.

  “Like hell I do! It’s you and Little George who could do with some therapy!” she snarls - as behind her, the thunder of books crashing to the floor halts her barrage; a groaning morass of sprawling limbs causing her to turn and gasp:

  “Little George…w-what happened?”

  “I heard you screaming from across the street,” he grumbles, getting gingerly to his feet. “Thought you were being attacked. Raped, maybe. So I came running to save you; and this is my singular reward: a pile of two dollar, third-hand hardbacks, and a four-alarm fake from you.”

  “Never mind the hardbacks,” Simon sighs, daubing the front of his trousers with a dust cloth from the drawer, “just help me with this hardheaded woman, would you? The books I can manage, but I haven’t a shelf small enough to handle her piece of mind.”

  “I’ll see you in court for that wisecrack,” Dorothy steams. “And with George as my witness. And Melvin, to boot – my attorney to boot your ass, that is!”

  “She’ll cool off,” Little George advises, Dorothy’s hand now firmly in his, the big man backing towards the door, half dragging his fuming charge - that the door is opening as they approach, seen only by Simon, his brisk, “Good morning, Miss Taylor!” serving as both a greeting and a warning.

  “Your timing couldn’t be better,” Simon avers, pouring a much-needed brew. “Hazelnut-mocha,” Simon rolling his eyes in pleasure. “Care to savor its ecstasy?”

  “Try it before you say no,” Little George interposes, his grimacing companion on her knees from the crush of his hard-gripping hand, “it’s better than you-know-what.”

  “My goodness! How can one say no to that?” Miss Taylor replies, her cheerful acceptance mistaken by Dorothy as the wiles of a wanton woman.

  “That depends on just who your ‘you-know-what’ is with,” Dorothy manages between writhes under George’s grasp, “but I wouldn’t count on a comparison from either of these gentlemen - the emphasis being on the ‘gentle’, if you get my drift. They’re just happy, happy, happy, these two; just gay, gay-” little George pulling her through the door before she can further tarnish the morning.