The Song Reader

by Lisa Tucker

  Our present was a leather wallet. Mary Beth said the one Ben had was unraveling at the flap. I nodded, but I wondered if she was remembering the obvious—we hadn’t seen him for a year. Who’s to say he didn’t have a new wallet?

  Even with my sister’s lengthy preparations, we still would have been on time if she hadn’t gotten off Highway 270 at the wrong exit. As it was, we drove into the restaurant parking lot at eight forty-one, so late I was starving and worried the eating part might be over. We rushed inside and let a waiter lead us back to the banquet room. It was bigger than I expected. There were eight or nine tables, and probably thirty-five people. The only ones I recognized other than Ben were his parents and Rebecca.

  Rebecca was playing hostess. She gave air kisses to me and my sister and took our present before leading us to a table across the room from where Ben was sitting with his parents and some girl. Everyone was eating, but we’d barely sat down when a waiter arrived with plates of steaming London broil and vegetables for us, too. Ben glanced in our direction but he didn’t come over to greet us. He didn’t even wave.

  The situation was unbearably awkward from my perspective. I was so nervous for my sister I was afraid to look at her. But she didn’t seem to mind. She started eating and talking animatedly to the guy on her left, another graduate student named Gary. I heard him ask how she knew Ben and she said they were old friends.

  When the toasts started, she held up her glass and smiled through all the talk of Ben’s accomplishments and the funny stories about his years in grad school. She was still smiling when Ben’s father stood up and said that Ben was twenty-seven years old now, high time he started his life. “In my day,” Ben’s dad continued, “we had families at your age. What do you think, Catherine?” Ben’s dad smiled at the girl sitting next to Ben. “How long’s it going to be before you and Benjamin are ready to settle down?”

  I glanced at Rebecca as if her face could tell me how this happened. What about that shrine to my sister? The pathetic Ben, who couldn’t get over Mary Beth?

  This Catherine person had reddish brown hair, a little button kind of nose, big brown eyes. She looked cute in a bookish way. “What a question,” she said, but she laughed with Ben’s father before leaning over and giving Ben a quick kiss.

  I counted backwards to November, when I ran into Rebecca at the crafts fair. Seven months. A lifetime ago. Before I started dating Kyle, before we had the accident. Before my sister became so incomprehensible that I had no idea what she was thinking or feeling or even why she came here tonight.

  The toasts weren’t even over when Mary Beth stood up. She whispered, “Stay here,” and made her exit as gracefully as possible—considering that she was damn near running. I figured she was going to the bathroom and of course I was going to follow. I had to make sure she was all right.

  She wasn’t in the ladies’ room. I checked the hall by the pay phones; I even went out to the parking lot, to see if she was sitting in the Ford. I had a moment of cold white panic that she’d simply vanished before I remembered I hadn’t gone the other way down the hall. There were three banquet rooms; one of them was empty and half dark—and that’s where she was.

  I didn’t see Ben until I was already in the room. He must have walked in a second before I did, because Mary Beth was just beginning to congratulate him when he cut her off.

  “What are you doing here?” His voice was clipped and angry; I’d never heard him sound like this. I stepped into the shadows behind the busboy station. My breath was coming in short, nervous gasps and I was messing with the scar under my chin again. It was a tic I’d developed since the accident.

  “Well, your mom invited me.” She paused, but he just stared at her. “And of course I wanted you to know how proud I am.” She patted his shoulder. “I knew you could do it, Ben. I just think it’s so great that you’ll be out there, doing your research. I’ll bet I’ll be reading about you in the paper before long with some important discovery.”

  Her voice was a hundred percent sincere. No one listening to her could doubt that she really cared about Ben’s work. It was kind of impressive, actually, to think that she could still feel this way even though they weren’t together anymore.

  Ben, however, was not impressed.

  “Oh right. Now I remember. Mary Beth Norris, hurt, yet always the generous spirit right up until the end. Tell me, am I supposed to see this as noble?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “You talked me into going back to finish the Ph.D. You saved me, just like you saved all the rest of them.” He faked a bow. “Thank you very much.”

  Mary Beth’s voice was hollow. “Please don’t be this way, Ben.”

  “All right, how should I be? Should I tell you how beautiful you look?” He stepped back and moved his head in an exaggerated motion up and down. “A new dress, isn’t it? Very nice. Very—”

  “Ben, I—”

  “Don’t you want to hear that? Or should I tell you how it’s been for me for the last year, wondering how the hell this could have happened?” He lowered his voice to a hiss. “Maybe I should tell you how much I wish I’d never met you?”

  He spun on his heel to go, and that’s when my sister started crying. The sound was as soft as a kitten mewing, but I heard it and Ben did, too. He turned back to her, but he didn’t pull her into his arms until she muttered “Catherine.” The babble that followed was as blatantly jealous as a child whose friend has a better toy. And of course it softened Ben; he obviously still cared about my sister. The shock for me was how obvious it was that she still loved him.

  “Everything is such a mess,” Mary Beth cried.

  “I can’t argue with that.”

  “How did this happen?”

  “You threw me out, remember?”

  The anger was leaving his voice, but Mary Beth was still crying. After a while, he put his hand under her chin and lifted her face to his. It looked like she kissed him first, but it might have been the other way around. It was hard to tell from my corner. I felt a little bad watching them, but I couldn’t make myself stop.

  They were holding each other close now, pressed together like soaked fabric against skin. And their kissing was going on and on, like they’d forgotten where they were. In between kisses, they mumbled words like “want” and “need,” “baby” and “miss.” The whole thing was about as romantic as I could imagine. It made me feel a little sorry for myself, because no boy cared about me this way, and as far as I could see, no boy ever would. Mainly though, it made me feel a wave of calm that was so much like being tired I had to stifle a yawn. Even if I never knew why they broke up, if they got back together, it wouldn’t matter. The world would make sense again. My sister would be like she was before.

  I was just wondering whether Ben would come home with us tonight—and what he would think of all the improvements around our place—when we heard a woman’s voice. Catherine was walking down the hallway, calling for him.

  It was Mary Beth who pulled away, not Ben. Mary Beth who stood up straight, took a few steps back. And when Catherine came inside, Mary Beth stuck her hand out, asked questions about where she worked, where she lived. Mary Beth even told Catherine she was lucky to have Ben.

  I thought for sure it had to be an act. Ben must have thought so, too, because after Catherine left the room—apparently satisfied her boyfriend wasn’t about to be stolen—he reached for my sister. And Mary Beth stepped back again.

  “This is embarrassing, isn’t it?” She put her arms around herself. “Coming here, getting between you and the woman you’re with now.”

  “What?” His voice was airless.

  “I shouldn’t have come.” Mary Beth spoke slowly, as if she was convincing herself as well as Ben. “It was a mistake. I lost myself before, and I’m very sorry for that.”

  “You can’t be serious,” he sputtered. “Lost yourself?” He was running his hands through his hair. “Don’t you mean you remembered what you’ve been d
enying all this time—that you and I were happy?”

  I stepped out of my corner, desperate to hear how she would explain this. But all she did was whisper, “Maybe some people don’t deserve happiness.”

  He looked every bit as confused as I felt, but he didn’t argue with her. That long night at Scalatti’s must have taught him it was useless to try. When he spoke a moment later, his voice wasn’t even all that angry, although I figured he had to be. I knew I would be.

  “For the record, I don’t think you lost yourself just now.” He cleared his throat. “That was you and this is…God knows.”

  She didn’t say anything. He stared at her for a moment, and then turned to leave.

  Before I could move back into the shadows, he spotted me. I started to make an excuse for intruding, but he shook his head, and motioned me over to where he was standing by the door. “I want you to have my phone number in Philadelphia.” He reached into his wallet, pulled out an old receipt, and wrote his number on the back. I noticed the wallet wasn’t unraveling. “Here,” he said, pressing the scrap of paper into my hand. “Call me if you need anything. Promise?”

  I looked at him, but I couldn’t say yes. My sister had walked up behind me. I could feel her breath on the back of my hair.

  He glanced over my head at Mary Beth. “For the record, I still don’t think I did anything wrong. I know you do, but I will never understand why.” He paused and his voice cracked a little. “And I don’t wish I hadn’t met you. How could I ever wish that?”

  Then he was gone, and Mary Beth and I rushed out of the restaurant and into the car without saying goodbye to anyone. She started the Ford and we were back on the road. She was sitting up very straight; her eyes looked directly ahead. We’d only gone a few miles when she apologized for taking me to the dinner. “It really wasn’t fair to make you deal with all this. I wanted you to come because I knew you missed Ben. I am glad he gave you his phone number. I told you he really liked you.”

  “I won’t call him.” I was thinking about their conversation, and his claim he didn’t do anything wrong. What were they talking about? Could there be a reason she dumped him after all? Even a reason why she was acting so completely weird?

  We’d been on the road for about an hour when she suddenly said, “He’s going to be all right, honey.”

  We were in the middle of nowhere; Mary Beth had tuned in a radio station from Lexington, Kentucky. The song playing was, “Baker Street.” The moon was so low in the sky, it looked like we could drive to it.

  Her voice startled me, but she was right, I had been thinking about Ben. It was just hitting me that he was moving to Philadelphia. It was so far away, at least a thousand miles if I remembered my geography. It wasn’t even in the same time zone.

  “I know,” I said lightly, reminding myself that if he had done something to her, I couldn’t possibly miss him.

  The next day, I decided I had to know, once and for all.

  I came home from school and I didn’t even get a soda or a snack before I went into Mary Beth’s bedroom and opened the top dresser drawer and took out his letters. Most had been written before they broke up, while he was away at school, because they’d agreed to keep their daily phone conversations down to ten minutes to save on long distance. A few had come since that horrible night at Scalatti’s.

  My family was in trouble, that was my justification for invading her privacy. As I was taking off the tinfoil from the letter pile, it occurred to me that I might feel worse afterwards, but it was a price I was willing to pay. At least I wouldn’t feel as confused as I was feeling now.

  Unfortunately, I was wrong. I felt much more confused after I read the letters, and the enormity of what my sister had done hit me like a blow. It was one thousand four hundred and eighty-five days by my calculations, which were, if anything, giving her the benefit of the doubt. One thousand four hundred and eighty-five days, at least, of her knowing where our father was and not telling me.

  Later, Mary Beth would explain that she had had to track Dad down to get him to sign some papers, since he and Mom were still legally married when Mom had her car accident, and the insurance company kept refusing to release the money from Mom’s life insurance policy. But no, she never thought of telling me, even though this was only a month or two after that day we spent looking for him in Kansas City. Actually, if we hadn’t gone to Kansas City that day, she never would have found him, she admitted as much. But she didn’t thank me for writing all those letters to Dad’s relatives. And she didn’t thank Ben, either, for telling her she shouldn’t be keeping this big secret from me.

  This was the sign I used to look for that he really had cared when I told him things I’d never told anyone about my parents. The letters made it clear he’d discussed my feelings with Mary Beth many times. “Don’t you think she has a right to know where he is?” he wrote in a letter from February. “I understand your desire to protect her, but he is her father, too.” And then in early March: “I still don’t see what you’re accomplishing by keeping her from making contact. Even if you’re right that he won’t respond, she may feel better knowing she made the effort.”

  It wasn’t an argument yet. These same letters were filled with expressions of love and plans for their future. In a way, what to do about Dad was just part of those plans. Ben wondered if Mary Beth would be comfortable moving across the country without trying to see Dad one more time. “California is a long way from Little Rock,” he wrote. “Most of the good labs are a long way from Little Rock.”

  From which I gathered that Dad was in Little Rock now. A lot of the information I got had to be teased out of what Ben said—until I got to the after-Scalatti’s letters. The very first one contained the crucial fact that Ben had driven the three hundred and fifty-one miles from St. Louis to Little Rock to see Dad. He’d done it without Mary Beth because she couldn’t get off work and he could—his spring break. He did have to delay some experiment but he didn’t mind. This was more important than his work. We were more important: his new family.

  I couldn’t tell from the letters whether he’d discussed the possibility of such a trip with her, but my sense was he had. And she’d told him not to do it. But he did it anyway, because he thought Dad might be mentally ill, and rather than sending him money from Mom’s life insurance from time to time, Mary Beth should try to get him treatment.

  To say she didn’t appreciate his opinion is an understatement.

  “Ill does not mean crazy,” he wrote, more than once. “I don’t know why you can’t see that.

  “I only wanted to see if I could help him,” he continued. “I thought you of all people would understand. I still can’t believe you said this means I don’t really love you. Why the hell else would I do it?”

  There were only a few letters after that Scalatti’s dinner, and they were all Ben expressing how upset he was. The most interesting letter was probably the last one in the stack. It was dated June of last year, and I remembered it coming, but Mary Beth had told me it was just another question about some of his stuff he couldn’t find.

  First, he went on about how hurt he was that Mary Beth wouldn’t write him or return his phone calls. Then he accused her of being a “control freak,” who was afraid to let anyone get close to her. “I’m sure you’ll disagree, point to your friends and customers as evidence that you’re not afraid. Sorry, but that’s just bullshit. You and I both know that taking care of other people can be a means of avoiding your own problems.” Then he told her that she was in denial about Dad. And her version of reality was naive: “Not in all ways, of course. But God help the person who dares to question you.” He even threw in that her song reading was hypocritical. “Family problems are your specialty, except when it’s your own goddamn family.”

  Finally, he wrote, “I thought I understood you, but it seems I was very wrong. Of course this is no surprise, is it? It’s part of your self-image. You understand everyone, but no one can possibly understand you.”


  My hands were trembling as I put this letter on top and wrapped them back in foil. Nervous is too mild to describe what I felt, it was more like shaken to the core.

  I told myself I was just angry with her for lying about Dad. I told myself I’d feel differently once I talked to her, once I gave her a chance to explain. Ben was wrong, he had to be. Sure, Mary Beth was acting a little strange lately, but she was the wisest person in town; everybody said so. She couldn’t be a “control freak,” who was “afraid to let anyone get close to her.” It just wasn’t possible.

  All I needed was to hear her explanation. Of course she would have a reason for all this.

  I waited until we were in the kitchen that night to ask her. She was getting ready to fry chicken; I was sitting at the table, helping Tommy finish coloring in a picture of a bunch of zoo animals Mary Beth had drawn for him. I picked this moment because I knew we wouldn’t be interrupted. The hour between six and seven was the only hour left in the evening that she wasn’t available for her customers. Of course the phone still rang, but she always let the answering machine pick up. She called it our family’s sacred time. Even her house projects always had to wait during that hour.

  I expected her to be upset that I’d looked at her letters, but I figured she’d get over it quickly enough and apologize to me. After all, I was the injured party here, the one who’d been lied to. But no sooner were the words out of my mouth than her hands dropped to her sides and she blinked at me as though she didn’t recognize her own sister anymore. “God,” she gasped, “how could you?”