Heartsong

by V. C. Andrews

  Curious, I sat on the bed and lifted the cover. What I found amazed me. In the pad were excellent India-ink drawings, many of which were of me. There were pictures of me standing on the beach, pictures of me in the kitchen, and pictures of me holding May's hand and walking with her down the street toward town.

  I quickly signed how wonderful I thought her pictures were, and then she shook her head.

  "What?" I asked, even more curious. She took the pad from me and flipped the pages to the end to show me the inside of the back cover. I gazed down at it and felt my blood freeze in my veins.

  "I don't understand," I signed. "Aren't these your drawings?"

  She shook her head and I looked at the words scribbled on the inside back pages again.

  "But--"

  I flipped through the pad, gazing more closely at the drawings I thought were drawings of me. I guess it was just that I assumed it was I who had been depicted. How strange . . . eerie. This pad had belonged to Laura. She had been the artist and she had drawn pictures of herself and pictures of herself with May.

  Somehow, maybe because of the way Aunt Sara treated me and spoke to me, or because I was living in her room and wearing her things, I had mistaken Laura for myself in these drawings. At this moment I could appreciate and understand what Aunt Sara was experiencing when she looked at me with sad eyes that told me I reminded her of Laura.

  "Do you draw, too?" I asked May. She shook her head and asked me if I wanted to show the pictures to Kenneth.

  "Yes, maybe I will," I signed, which pleased her. I perused the rest of the pad and found a picture of Cary that intrigued me. In it he was standing on the beach, holding his hands out while sand was falling through his fingers. It was as if he were saying that something he thought was important really had no meaning.

  Just then, as if on cue, I heard Cary coming down the ladder. May saw the direction my eyes had taken and turned in anticipation, too.

  "Hi," he said. "How did the rest of the day go?" "Fine."

  "But nothing . . ."

  "No."

  "What do you have there?" he asked stepping through the doorway.

  "May brought me these pictures Laura drew and gave her. She wants me to show them to Kenneth."

  He saw that I had turned to the page containing the picture of him.

  "I gave May that pad the week Laura died," he said, his dark eyes gone bleak, "so she would have something to cherish, but it's not the sort of thing I wanted to show everyone. I don't mind your seeing it, but Laura was very choosy about whom she would show those drawings. Nobody in school saw them, not even her art teacher, and if she wanted Kenneth to see them, I'm sure she would have shown them to him herself."

  "Okay," I said, trying to hide my nervous laughter. "What's funny?"

  "I thought May had done them and was bringing them to me to show her own work." I answered, though I didn't add that I thought they were pictures of me.

  He signed to May, telling her she should keep the pad in her own room where it belonged. She looked disappointed, but took the pad back when I handed it to her.

  "Did you deliberately pose for any of them?" I asked. It was more than just curiosity. I wanted to know what he felt like modeling for someone, but he wasn't willing to talk about it.

  "For a few," he admitted. "I'm starving," he quickly added to change the subject. "Is dinner ready?"

  "I think so. Did you hear about my invitation to Grandma Olivia's?"

  "As soon as I walked in the door. It was the first thing Ma told me," he said.

  "Why just me?"

  He shrugged.

  "She wants to get to know you better?"

  I smiled skeptically.

  "Maybe Grandma's easing up. Old age," he added with a grin.

  We all went down to dinner, where I helped serve. I noticed throughout the meal that Uncle Jacob was staring at me from time to time. Finally, before we were finished, he stopped chewing, drank some water, and leaned back.

  "You mean to tell me," he said as if we were still in the middle of our earlier conversation, "you've been there over a week and he hasn't mentioned nothin' about Haille?"

  Cary shifted his eyes to me quickly.

  "He spoke of her," I said, "but he didn't say they had been romantically involved."

  "Romantically involved?" Uncle Jacob said with a laugh. He shook his head. "Romantically involved for Haille meant sneaking behind some boat house."

  "Jacob!" Aunt Sara said. "Shame on you speaking of the dead that way, and especially in front of young people."

  "I'm sure they've heard a lot worse," he said, glancing at me and then at Aunt Sara. "I'm just sayin' how it was."

  "There's a time and place for such talk and you know it's not at the dinner table, Jacob Logan," she insisted.

  He turned a little crimson at the reprimand. The tension was so thick, it felt as if we were sitting in a roomful of cobwebs. Yet I thought I knew the underlying purpose to all these questions about Kenneth and me.

  "I'm sorry I'm a burden to you, Uncle Jacob," I said. "I know you would like Kenneth Childs or someone to admit to being my father so he would have to look after me," I said firmly.

  "Well that isn't my whole reason, but it would be the right thing to do, wouldn't it?" He looked across the table at Aunt Sara. "The Bible tells us to suffer the children. It means our own, Sara."

  "She is our own," Aunt Sara said. "God brought her for a purpose, Jacob," she retorted with more grit than I had seen or heard in her voice since first coming to their home. She looked as if she would heave a plate at him if he uttered one syllable of disagreement.

  Uncle Jacob just grunted and mumbled about being finished. He left the table.

  I helped clean up and while I washed the silverware and dishes, Aunt Sara told me not to mind anything Uncle Jacob said.

  "What he says today, he regrets tomorrow," she told me. "He's always been like that. That man has swallowed more of his own sour words than anyone I know. It's a wonder he doesn't walk around all day with a bellyache."

  "He's not completely wrong, Aunt Sara. People shouldn't have children and then leave them for someone else to look after. Even though you've been more of a mother to me than my own mother, she shouldn't have just dumped me here," I added. Aunt Sara's eyes filled with tears. She turned to hug me.

  "You poor child. You never think of yourself as being dumped here, understand? And don't you ever think of yourself as being an orphan, Melody. Not while I have a breath left in my body, hear? We've both got holes in our hearts and we're plugging them up for each other," she said and kissed my forehead. I hugged her back and thanked her before going upstairs. Cary poked his head through the attic trapdoor as soon as I reached the landing.

  "Want to see the model I just finished?" he asked.

  "I promised May I'd play Monopoly with her."

  "So, you will," he said. I looked toward May's doorway and then hurried up the ladder into the attic.

  The attic hideaway wasn't much bigger than my room. The biggest piece of furniture up there was the table on which Cary worked meticulously on his model ships. Above the table were shelves filled with the models he had completed over the years. There were also a small sofa and some boxes and sea chests sharing the space.

  Cary knew a great deal about ship building from studying the historical models he had completed. There were Egyptian, Greek, and Roman models, even Chinese junks. He had clipper ships and battle ships, steamships, tankers, and luxury liners, including a replica of the Titanic. His newest model was a nuclear submarine.

  "Look," he said drawing me closer. Carefully, like a surgeon operating on a human heart, he snapped off one side of the submarine and showed me the interior. I couldn't believe the details, even down to tiny lights.

  "It's beautiful, Cary. All of your work is tremendous. I wish you would let more people see it."

  "I don't do it for people. I do it for myself," he said sharply. "It's almost like . . . like why Kenneth painted those
portraits of your mother."

  The smile left my face and I thought again about Kenneth's proposal for me to become his model. I wondered if I could confide in Cary, or if he would get so upset about it, he would do something to stop me. In my mind I still saw the whole thing as Kenneth's way to reveal his deep secrets and perhaps bring me truly home. I wasn't willing to risk losing that just yet. The other thoughts, of me being like my mother and posing just like a model in a sleazy magazine, I pushed to the back of my mind.

  "A real artist like Kenneth doesn't look at someone the same way," I offered, but turned as I spoke so I could gaze out the small window toward the ocean in the distance. The moonlight cut a pathway over the silvery surface. "He sees something else."

  "What?" Cary pursued.

  "He sees beauty; he sees deep meaning."

  "That's hogwash. A man sees one thing when he looks at a naked woman."

  "Cary Logan, that's not true!" I snapped, turning sharply on him. "Does a doctor see one thing when he looks at a woman patient?"

  "Well no, I guess not," he admitted.

  "Then it all depends on his purpose for looking, doesn't it?" I asked sharply, not knowing whom I needed to convince more, Cary or myself.

  Cary shook his head.

  "I'm sorry, Melody. I can't imagine looking at you with your clothes off and thinking about anything else but you. My hand would shake so much, the paintbrush would go all over the page," he added smiling. The way he looked at me made me blush all over. It was as if I were really naked and standing in front of him.

  "That's because you're not an artist," I insisted. "They have more control of themselves."

  "I guess so," he said. Then he laughed. "I don't think I'd want to be an artist if that's what happens to them."

  I stamped my foot in frustration.

  "You're just like any other boy, Cary Logan." I started toward the door, but he reached out and grabbed my wrist.

  "Whoa. Set anchor for a minute, will ya. I'm just teasing you a little. I thought you believed we were all too serious in this house. Didn't you tell me that once?"

  I hesitated, the smoke I imagined coming out of my ears, disappearing.

  "Yes, I did, and I still say it."

  "So?"

  "That doesn't mean you should tease me like that," I said. "Don't joke about anything when it comes to Kenneth. You of all people know how sensitive I am about it all."

  "Okay." He let go of my wrist and raised his hand. "I promise."

  I relaxed.

  "I better get down to May."

  "Okay. But you didn't tell me anything. What happened when he returned?"

  "He was all excited," I said. "He had an idea for his block of marble."

  "You mean he saw the shape in the stone finally?"

  "Yes."

  "What's the shape?"

  "He calls it Neptune's daughter. I'll know more tomorrow and the day after. He's going to draw it first."

  "Artists really are strange," Cary said shaking his head.

  "You better stop saying things like that, Cary Logan. You're an artist, too. All this is creative," I said sweeping my hand toward the shelves of models.

  "It's just something I do to take up time, but it's really what I'd like to do someday--build ships. I want to build custom sailboats for people. You know I'd rather do that than anything," he admitted.

  "Did you do what I said? Did you tell your father?"

  "Yeah." He dropped his gaze and turned away.

  "He disapproves, of course," I concluded, "but did he see how much you wanted to do it?"

  "We've been fishermen forever in this family. He has this religious belief in tradition."

  "What you want to do still has to do with the sea, doesn't it?"

  "It's not the same thing to him," he said.

  "Well, it's not fair. It's not his life, it's yours. You've got to do what you want to do," I asserted.

  Cary nodded, but smiled.

  "Sure. Only one small thing. It takes money."

  "Well, I'm getting a lot of money someday. You remember what Grandma Olivia told me about my inheritance. And when I get it, I'm giving you what you need to start your business."

  "You are?"

  "Yes," I said firmly. "Uncle Jacob will probably hate me a little more, if that's possible, but I don't care," I said. Cary beamed.

  "For someone who has had such a hard time of it, you're the most generous, sweetest person, I know," he said as he stood up from his desk. Because of the size of the room, we were only inches apart. He took my hand in his.

  "I'm glad you're not my uncle Chester's daughter, Melody. I'm glad you're only a distant cousin, at most. No one can condemn me for feeling more for you," he confessed. I saw that it took all his courage, but these were words that had been hanging between us for months now. I knew that having feelings for your cousin, even a distant one, was supposed to be wrong, but neither Cary nor I could hold back our hearts.

  I didn't speak. Our eyes seemed incapable of moving away from each other's faces. Slowly, almost as slowly as the turning of the earth, our mouths moved toward each other until our lips grazed and then gently pressed together. His left hand moved to my shoulder and his right to my waist. My hands remained at my sides.

  I was both surprised and a little frightened by the small bursts of heat I felt coursing through my body. It was as if warm massaging fingers moved under my clothing, tracing down between my breasts, over my stomach. He slipped his lips off mine and kissed my cheek as his right hand began to move up my side, over my ribs. I raised my hand quickly and caught his just as it touched my breast. We stood there, gazing into each other's eyes, neither moving, neither speaking, each feeling as if we had opened some door to a forbidden room. It was the moment when we would decide to go further or softly close the door again between us.

  "I can't help myself," he simply admitted. Was I to say the same thing or was I to bear the

  responsibility of stopping something that we both knew would bring more problems into this already unstable family? If I lifted my hand from his, I would be pulling him into that room. I wanted to, but I also wanted to be confident that it was right. My heart was thumping so hard, I thought I would lose my breath. His lips had tasted sweet and the warmth that trickled down my spine and through my body was a delightful feeling. Nothing about our kiss was unpleasant to me.

  The moonlight reflecting off the ocean lit the world outside the small window. It was as if a giant candle had been lit on a birthday cake to celebrate this birth of love, if it truly was love. What was that special yes that followed the surge of excitement in your body? How did you know when the kiss that tingled was a greater kiss than any other? Where were the bells, the trumpets, the voices of angels that were supposed to sound when true love appeared?

  These thoughts zipped through my mind with lightning speed. Meanwhile, Cary's courage grew. His kisses became more intense, firmer, and his other hand moved up to caress my shoulders. I felt my resistance soften as I kissed him back and let him turn my body neatly into his. He started to move me with him toward the sofa. What would happen? What would we do? I wanted to go along almost out of a curiosity about myself, to see what I was capable of wanting, of doing.

  But just as we reached the side of the sofa and were about to lower ourselves to it, we heard May's cry at the bottom of the ladder.

  Cary moaned his great disappointment and his body tightened with frustration.

  May called again for me. She had gone into my room looking for me and then realized I was upstairs. We heard her start up the ladder. Quickly, we parted and I straightened my hair. There was no way I could quickly diminish the flush in my face, but I was sure May wouldn't understand. She poked her head through the attic doorway.

  Cary quickly signed his anger. She looked confused, hurt.

  "Don't Cary. I promised her I would play with her."

  He turned away and took a deep breath. I put my hand on his shoulder and he looked at me.
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  "She's all alone much of the day, shut up in a soundless world. We're all she really has right now," I said.

  He nodded, looking ashamed. Then he shook his head and lifted his eyes to me.

  "You're just like Laura. You bring out the good in all of us," he said.

  I know he meant it to be a big compliment, but it left me cold. When would he stop comparing me to his dead twin sister? Did he have these feelings for her as well? Did everyone see me as someone else? Was that to be my fate? Kenneth saw me as some mythical goddess, Aunt Sara saw me as her lost daughter, and even May must have seen some of Laura in me to have brought me those drawings earlier. Perhaps I wouldn't be able to be my own person until I found out who my real father was and everyone knew where I had come from and to whom I really belonged.

  All the threads of lies I had started to unravel had to lead me to the threads of truth.

  Instead of shouting out that I did not want to be like Laura, I kept my anguish inside and signed to May that I would follow her down the ladder. When I looked up as I reached the bottom, I saw Cary gazing down at me. The disappointment that lingered in his eyes made him look as distant and as forbidden as love itself is for one still searching for her own name.

  Kenneth's excitement over his new artistic vision hadn't diminished one bit by the time he arrived to pick me up the next morning. Even Ulysses seemed to be affected by the change in Kenneth's mood and demeanor. He was more energetic; his tail wagged like a windshield wiper in a rain storm and he barked as soon as I appeared in the doorway. I laughed and hurried to the jeep. Almost before I closed the door, Kenneth put the vehicle in gear and whipped it around to accelerate and head back to the studio.