It was good to prepare a meal, to do something useful. She looked forward to eating. She’d scarfed down a pack of Nabs on her way back from the grocery, could still taste the orange crackers and peanut butter between her teeth. This feast would be a great improvement over the road food she’d been shoveling in her mouth for the past three years. She was sick of diner food and vowed she would never again eat a casserole held together by cream of mushroom soup.
She shook a pot of butter beans on the back burner, turned down the heat to a low simmer, and set to making cornbread—real cornbread with buttermilk and oil and egg, none of that sweet stuff from a box. For sweet stuff, she was fixing a cobbler. She stirred the batter with a wooden spoon and sang louder. She never heard Maurice enter.
“This smells delicious,” he said.
Melody managed to hang on to the bowl in her hand, but dropped the spoon on the floor as she spun around. Her face went hot. How long had he been standing there, listening to her sing? “You scared the life out of me,” she said. “You’re always sneaking into a room. Make some noise, for God’s sake.”
Maurice picked up the spoon, washed it, and ran a dish towel over it before handing it back. “Sorry. My mother always said I was too light-footed. She threatened to strap a bell around my neck like a cat.”
He had changed clothes since the morning and was now dressed in a pair of dark fitted jeans and a starched button-down oxford shirt, blue pinstripes on cream. She, on the other hand, wore a pair of too-tight gym shorts and an old pink sorority T-shirt imprinted with a kickline of faded ladybugs. It was all she could find in the chest of drawers in her old bedroom. Or at least it was all she could find that would actually slide up over her fat ass. She’d tried to pull on a pair of linen trousers, but they were much too tight. The gym shorts were hideous but stretchy.
She gestured toward the stove. “Pork chops and onions, butter beans, cornbread, and blackberry cobbler with ice cream for dessert.” She hoped he ate cobbler. He looked like he could still fit into his clothes from high school and might be the kind of person who shied away from butter and sugar. “Do you like cobbler?”
“Are you kidding? I love cobbler. It’s probably my favorite food. I wouldn’t trust a person who didn’t eat cobbler.”
“That’s a wise policy.” She laughed and stabbed the spoon into the air. “Death to the cobbler haters!”
Maurice looked around the kitchen. “Can I help?”
“Oh, fear not. I know it looks like a great big mess, but I’ve got this under control.”
Maurice nodded. “Bobby said you could sing, but he didn’t tell me you could sing. I mean, woowee, that’s quite a voice.
Melody did not want to talk about her voice. It just led to thinking about her ruined career. She turned to pour the batter over the berries. “How’s Daddy doing?”
“Bobby told me you were in a band.”
“It’s nothing.” She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “I was in a band. Now I’m not.”
“Their loss,” Maurice said. “You don’t even need a band. You could just stand in the middle of a stage and sing, and people would come from miles around to hear you, I bet.”
“Well, you’d lose that bet.” She slammed a pot down on the stove.
“Sorry,” Maurice said. “Your father’s fine. I’ll turn him right before we eat, and once again before I leave tonight. That’ll get you through to tomorrow. Save you a bit of trouble.”
“Thank you.” Melody forced a smile. “There’s some tea in the fridge, if you want it. Also I picked up some beer. I wasn’t sure what you drank. If you drank. I’m sure Daddy has a bottle of whiskey stashed somewhere. Help yourself.”
“Tea’s fine. Thank you.” A whisper of cool air ran across Melody’s skin when Maurice opened the refrigerator.
Bobby burst through the back door. A gust of wind followed, and Melody inhaled the cool, metallic scent of the coming rain. Bobby looked around at the activity in the kitchen as if he didn’t quite trust what he was seeing. “What’s going on?”
“Where on God’s green earth have you been?” Melody shook a spoon at him. “You’ve got to quit disappearing on me. I need your help around here.”
Bobby glared at her. “I help. Don’t say I don’t help. It ain’t fair! I do everything more, everything more. I do more. I do everything.”
“Don’t say ‘ain’t.’” Melody crossed over and slammed the door shut behind him. “You’re letting in bugs.” She felt Maurice watching them, judging them.
“You’ve been gone,” Bobby whined. “You don’t, you don’t, you don’t know what all I do.”
“There’s no evidence you do anything useful.” She hated the sharp tone in her voice and turned to apologize. Bobby’s hair was a mess, full of twigs and dirt. He was working something around in his hand.
“What have you got there?” Melody grabbed for him. “What have you got there in your hand, Bobby?”
Maurice stepped forward and held his own hand out toward Bobby. “Let’s see.” He looked genuinely curious.
Bobby dropped something into Maurice’s outstretched palm. Maurice let out a shriek and dropped the thing on the floor. He wiped his hand on his jeans. “Oh, Lord—what is that slimy thing?”
Bobby laughed. “I found it.”
Melody picked up the small gelatinous orb, held it lightly between her index finger and her thumb. It was dirty and disgusting and looked as if it might have been alive not so long ago. She dropped it into the trash.
“Hey!” Bobby lunged at her. She slapped him away.
“Can’t you see that I’ve just spent a whole day cleaning this place? I can’t believe you dragged that filthy thing in here while I’m cooking dinner. It’s like you don’t have any sense at all.” Melody ran her hands under hot water and squeezed soap onto her palms. “Get washed up. We’re eating soon.” Bobby stomped out of the kitchen.
“Sorry,” Melody said to Maurice, who was now washing his own hands. “Sometimes Bobby is just a little off. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
Maurice wiped his hands on a paper towel. “He’s fascinating, isn’t he?”
“Fascinating” was not the word she’d use to describe Bobby. “Infuriating” was more like it. “He wasn’t always like this. You should have seen him as a kid. He was just beautiful. So smart.”
“I’m going to go check on him,” Maurice said. “Make sure he’s not upset.”
“Don’t worry about it. He’ll get over it. He’ll be fine.”
Maurice left the kitchen, and Melody heard him walk up the stairs. It was weird, this concern Maurice had for her brother. Even weirder that Bobby seemed to like it, though Melody remembered a few other odd relationships Bobby had had with strange men. He’d been particularly close to the special education teacher at the high school, hanging out at his house after school and eating dinner with the creepy old man. Melody asked Bobby what he did over at Mr. Pimentel’s house, and Bobby just shrugged and said the man was helping him with schoolwork. “You can tell me if he ever does anything you don’t like,” she assured him. “Go to hell,” Bobby told her.
Melody pulled the cornbread from the oven just as Daddy started in on a loud coughing fit. She set the hot skillet on the stovetop and ran out to check on him. His cough rattled, so deep that Melody’s own chest ached.
Maurice was already there. He cleared away a wad of crumpled, blood-streaked tissues.
“He’s bleeding.”
Maurice nodded. “It’s normal enough. He’s coughing up blood.”
“That’s not normal,” Melody said. “How can that be normal?”
Maurice gave her a look.
“What he’s telling you, little girl, is that I deserve it. Brought it on myself.” He coughed again, pounded his chest with a weak fist. “This is what happens when you smoke all your life.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Daddy. It’s not your fault.”
“I ’spect it is,” he said between coughs. “I’m not stup
id, little girl. I know what caused this. I’m just real sorry you had to come home and see me like this. Better to remember your daddy as the wild, strong man you always knew.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. “You were never all that wild.”
“I don’t know what you’re cooking, but it sure smells good.”
Maurice ran a damp cloth over her father’s forehead. Bobby clomped down the stairs. He wore a plaid oxford shirt and a pair of dark jeans. It looked like he and Maurice were shopping at the same store. His hair flopped over his forehead in a mass of black curls. He looked like the brother she remembered, handsome and fastidious. “You don’t do everything around here,” he said. “Maurice does plenty.”
Maurice snapped fresh pillowcases onto the pillows. “She’s cooking dinner. That’s not nothing.”
Bobby smiled. He could still charm with that smile.
“Yes, and supper is ready,” Melody said. “Is it all right if we just help ourselves from the stove? It’ll keep me from dirtying every dish in the kitchen.” Bobby put an arm around her shoulder, hugged her close to him. Perhaps he was not quite so impossible as he seemed.
She poured tall glasses of sweet tea and they piled their plates high. The doorbell rang before she could take a bite. She pushed back from the table. “Eat,” she instructed Bobby and Maurice.
She couldn’t imagine who would be at the door. They lived too far from town to attract solicitors or missionaries. Daddy had long ago chased off any well-meaning deacons come to bring them back to the church. They had no friends.
She didn’t know whom to expect, but she sure as hell didn’t expect to see Chris on her front steps. Her face turned hot, just as it had that night in the alley. She gripped the door handle so hard her hand went numb.
“Why?” She stared at him. “Why on earth are you here?”
“You are a hard person to track down. I’ve been all over the county. Someone told me that you lived in the house in the middle of nowhere. You should put your name on the mailbox or something. I thought I was lost and then, suddenly, a house.” He looked around as if he were discovering a foreign land and didn’t want to miss anything. “I never pictured you out here in the country.”
She stepped onto the porch and pulled the door shut. The moist heat of the evening hit her like a force. Sweat broke out on her bare legs and upper lip. “Everyone who needs to find us, finds us just fine.” The porch was soft beneath her bare feet, the wood rotted and worn down. Wisteria vines crept up the railings like sinister arms working to pull the house down.
“I heard about your father. I’d like to help.”
The sky was luminescent, gray clouds turning silver in the sunset. Wind stirred the warm air, moist and lilac scented. Trees swayed; oak leaves and pine needles reached out, as if grasping for the same prize. “Shouldn’t you be halfway to Florida by now?”
“I was fired.”
“Fired?”
“I aired your, um, profanity on the radio. It was a live broadcast. We’re supposed to air all live broadcasts on a five-second delay, but I didn’t. It was a Christian concert. I thought, what could happen?”
She plucked at the clinging hem of her shorts. “Well, now you know.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.” She thought about the way Chris had run from the alley and how ashamed he was to be caught with her. She wasn’t about to feel sorry for him. She grasped the door handle. “Go home, Chris. Marry your fiancée. Get a new job.”
“We broke off the engagement. I’ve been trying to tell you that for months.” Chris stepped closer, put his hand over hers on the door handle. The touch sent a spark through her arm. “We prayed about it. Marriage was not what God had planned for us. It was what everyone expected of us, but it wasn’t right.”
Melody envied Chris’s ability to pray and make decisions, his confidence about right and wrong. She was just bumbling through life. She looked past Chris. In the waning light, the land didn’t look so bad. The rusted-out vehicles and the overgrown gardens seemed almost beautiful, wild and untamed and free. “Well, what do you want? Do you want me to call the station and apologize?”
“I don’t want my job back.”
“You’ve come all this way. You’re all the way out here in the country.” Her voice was sharp with sarcasm. “You must want something.”
Chris tightened his grip on her hand, stepped closer, put his face right in front of hers, so close that she could feel him exhale against her lips, smell the sharp, grassy scent of his body. “I want your voice. Rather, I want you to use your voice. I have an idea.…”
She was dizzy with so much closeness. “I think my singing career is over, don’t you? I can’t imagine the Christians would welcome me back after I poisoned their ears with such profane language. I know Joy won’t have me back.”
“Joy!” Chris rolled his eyes and threw his hands in the air. “Who cares about Joy?”
“Joy cares about Joy,” Melody said.
“Exactly. Look, I told you before, you could have a great solo career. You were always better than that band. They won’t last five minutes without you.”
Melody wished she didn’t feel so flattered by Chris’s compliment. “I can’t deal with this right now. Daddy is sick. He’s dying. I can’t think about anything else.”
“You don’t belong here.” Chris spoke with conviction. He acted like he knew Melody, even though they’d never shared more than one sordid alleyway encounter.
“This is my home. If I don’t belong here, I don’t belong anywhere.” The truth of that statement hit her hard.
“I have a friend in Memphis. He has a recording studio, runs a small Christian label, does a bit of soft pop crossover. I told him about you. He’s interested.”
“I can’t just leave,” Melody said. “And even if I could, how am I supposed to go solo after what I said? In front of a bunch of Christians? In front of a bunch of Christians with children? My God, you lost your job because of my big mouth. I think I’ve burned my bridges.”
“I don’t think so.” Chris rubbed his palm across his stubbled chin. “We just have to script the right narrative. Write a new story.”
Melody brushed a persistent mosquito from her upper arm. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Redemption acts are big right now.” Chris leaned in. “All you have to do is repent. Publicly, of course. I’ll help you with what to say.”
“Well, I could certainly use some help choosing my words,” Melody said. “But this isn’t going to work.”
“It’s good PR. We’ll set up some interviews, talk about the stress you were under because of your dying father—”
“No!”
“But, Melody.”
“No! I’m not using Daddy’s illness as an excuse. That’s sick!”
“It’s not an excuse if it’s true.”
“I’ll tell you what’s true, Chris. Daddy is dying and my life is a mess. I have no idea what I’ll do with my future, but I know what I have to do today.”
“The future comes whether you plan for it or not, Melody.”
First George Walter and now Chris. Prophets everywhere. “I have to go.” She turned to open the door. “Sorry you came all this way for nothing.”
Chris grabbed hold of her shoulder. “God brought us together for a reason.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.” He opened his mouth to speak, but she barreled on, holding up her hand to keep him from interrupting. “You can’t possibly be shocked by my language at this point. Anyway, God didn’t bring us together. Our jobs brought us together. That’s not divine intervention, that’s just life.”
“I’m not asking you to lie. I can call some spiritual leaders. We’ll work to build you back up as a strong voice for God.”
Melody pictured a dozen scary white-haired men in flowing robes looming above her, chanting for her lost soul.
“We’ll build up a set l
ist that emphasizes forgiveness and humility. I can help you craft the message. We’ll set up radio interviews, and television.”
Melody had very little experience with television. Her mother forbade them to turn the set on, said she couldn’t bear the “infernal racket.” Melody wasn’t even sure the old set in the house still worked. Chris didn’t know her. He imagined she could repent, but she wasn’t sorry. He imagined God would save her, but she didn’t believe there was a God.
“What you did is nothing in the big scheme of things. When people understand about your father, your family problems, they’ll be dying to forgive you and to listen to you.” His voice rose and he talked faster. “There’s money to be made. That would help your family, wouldn’t it?”
“I thought money was the root of evil,” Melody said. “I thought it was easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
“If you obey and believe, the Lord will grant you abundant prosperity. It’s right there in the Bible. Abundant prosperity.”
Melody snorted. “I don’t buy that.”
“You don’t buy the word of God?”
“Look around. Look at all these people who obey and believe and struggle all their lives just to put food on the table. Where’s their prosperity? This area is full of those people. Why is God punishing them?”
Chris stared down at his hands. “Maybe they don’t truly believe.”
“Maybe I don’t either.” Melody opened the door a crack, careful to keep her voice low in case Daddy was sleeping.
Three Rivers Page 10
