The Song Reader

by Lisa Tucker

  After Mary Beth hung up, she proceeded to tell me the whole story. It wasn’t until she got to the magazine part that I began to feel uneasy—this was very unlike my sister to rely on a magazine article or a radio show or anything but songs—but I forced myself not to interrupt. When she was finished, she rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Jeez, I’m tired. I keep forgetting yesterday was my birthday. I think I’m getting too old to stay up all night.”

  Tommy ran into the kitchen. He wanted Mary Beth to be the bad-guy robot in his pretend game. I told her I would do it so she could get some sleep, but she waved her hand. “I’m okay.” She smiled before she walked out of the room with Tommy. “I love being the bad guy.”

  I sat at the kitchen table, drinking my milk, thinking. I’d like to say I realized it was a bad idea for Holly to confront her family, but it wasn’t true. Misgivings I had, sure, but they were too vague to put my finger on. And I was busy wondering how this might affect Mike. Would he have to know, and if so, how would he handle it? How would anybody handle discovering their grandpa had done that to their mom?

  “By the way, who drove you home last night?” Mary Beth was back in the kitchen about fifteen minutes later. Tommy was busy lining up the robots for the next battle.

  “Mike.” I forced a shrug. “You know, Holly’s son.”

  “Oh, right,” she said, as she took my empty glass and sat it in the sink. “Holly adores her kids, especially Mike.” Mary Beth came over and pulled the hair off my neck. Her voice was soft. “She told me last night in the bar that she feels like they’re the only thing keeping her alive.”

  When Tommy came into the kitchen, Mary Beth picked him up and hugged him hard even though he was squirming and telling her to come on, play. “Play, play, play,” she finally said, and tickled his sides. “You’d think I was another toy, rather than your mom.”

  I went to take a shower, did some homework, talked on the phone with Darlene, tried to call Denise, and lay on my bed and listened to my Walkman. All my usual stuff, the only difference was I spent a lot of time thinking about what I would wear tomorrow. I had to look my best when I walked into English class and saw Mike.

  It was six-thirty, already pitch-black when Mary Beth asked me if I would bike to the grocery store. She said she was too tired to drive, and I said no problem. It wasn’t that cold and all we needed was milk and lunch meat. I was standing in Nancy Lyle’s checkout line at the Kroger, wondering if I had room in my backpack for all my impulse purchases, when I overheard Nancy whispering to Raylene Grob, the owner of the dry cleaner over on Second Avenue, who was in line in front of me. They had a lot of time to whisper, since Raylene had five kids and her cart was loaded with enough food to feed an army.

  Nancy had been at the party last night, Raylene hadn’t. At first, the whispering was about how bad Holly seemed at the party, and I lost interest and thumbed through a magazine, all the while thinking Mike was sure right about gossip in this town. But then I heard the words “suicide attempt” and I froze as my hands started to sweat on the shiny pages of the magazine.

  “An overdose,” Nancy whispered, as she picked up a package of spaghetti. Her husband Eric was an orderly in the emergency room; he’d called to tell her they were working on Holly right now. “Supposedly, she downed enough pills to knock out the entire town.”

  “Good Lord,” Raylene mumbled.

  “Her whole family is in the waiting room. George and Betty. Even the kids.”

  “Those poor babies.”

  “Yeah. Eric said the girls can’t stop crying. But the boy and his dad are like stone.” Nancy weighed a bag of apples and shrugged. “You know how men are.”

  Raylene shook her head. “Can you imagine how George and Betty must feel? Holly is the only child they really have now. Their son is in Chicago, and their other daughter is somewhere out west. They don’t visit much, don’t even call but twice a year, from what I’ve heard.”

  Nancy sighed. “I don’t know what she could have been thinking, to do something like this. What with her family relying on her. I hate to say it, but it seems so selfish.”

  The whole time I was listening, I kept telling myself to be calm, don’t move, don’t scream. I wanted to hear it all, and we really needed that milk. But at that point, something in me just snapped and I deserted my basket and ran over to an empty aisle and right out of the store. I had to get home and tell Mary Beth.

  When I walked in the door, Tommy was yelling for her from the bathtub and she was on the phone. I had a feeling she already knew. Her chin was resting on her hand like she didn’t have the energy to hold her head up, her forehead was wrinkled as though she was trying hard to figure something out, and her eyes were closed like she wanted to hide from whatever she was hearing.

  After she hung up, she went in to hand Tommy a new bar of soap. Then she nodded while I rushed through what Nancy said. “Yeah, Juanita just called. She found out from a nurse who stopped in at the restaurant.” We were standing in the living room; Mary Beth was motionless but her eyes were darting around. Finally she said, “I have to go there. As soon as she’s conscious, I have to be there for her.”

  I sat down on the couch and watched as Mary Beth put her coat on. “Why’d she do this? Why would anyone?”

  “I guess she just couldn’t go through with it.”

  Mary Beth looked back at me. Her eyes were lined with red and it hit me she’d been up for thirty-six hours at this point. “I think I made a big mistake,” she said. “I should have offered to be there with her. Hold her hand. Then maybe she could have finally told them.”

  I nodded agreement. It wasn’t until I’d checked Tommy’s ears and washed his back, given him a towel and his favorite race car pajamas, and read him four stories, that I realized Mary Beth was assuming Holly hadn’t told anyone. But of course, that had to be it. Holly had lost her nerve. And last night, Holly had been so far down, according to Mary Beth, that telling was her only hope. Obviously, Mary Beth had been right again. Holly hadn’t told, and now this terrible thing had happened. What if the doctors couldn’t revive her?

  As soon as Tommy went to sleep, I snapped on the television; I was too on edge to do anything else. When I heard the downstairs door open about a half hour later, I figured it had to be our landlady Agnes—Mary Beth couldn’t be back already. But she was, and Juanita was with her. They walked into our apartment; Juanita was standing right next to her, holding her arm. I watched, stunned, as Juanita helped my sister across the living room and placed her in the window chair like she was an invalid.

  I thought Holly had to be dead. Only that could explain the look on Mary Beth’s face—beyond pain, beyond numbness even, like someone had reached right into her heart and taken away every feeling she’d ever had. I felt my eyes fill with tears for Holly and for Mike and for us, too. There was nothing I could do; it was all too familiar; my mind was going back there again, back to that summer night five years before when my sister and I were sitting right here, watching the evening news with the windows open, and we heard the sound of a car pull up outside and then a car door slam. Mary Beth looked out the front window and said, “It’s a cop.” Then she laughed. “I wonder what Agnes is afraid of now.”

  Agnes called the police at least once a month, always for what she claimed were extremely dangerous situations. She’d heard a noise. She’d seen something out back. She’d received an odd phone call. She’d been positive somebody in a black car—the kind criminals drive—followed her home from the drugstore.

  Both of us listened as the policeman’s slow, heavy footsteps came onto Agnes’s front porch. “Poor guy,” Mary Beth said. “No wonder he’s dreading this.”

  Of course the real reason Officer Spellman was walking so slowly must have been that he didn’t want to tell us our mother had been killed. I don’t remember exactly how he said it, but I do remember the way he kept sniffing between sentences, until my sister finally asked him if he’d taken anything for that cold. He told us it was
allergies; he said he was particularly sensitive to fresh cut grass. That’s when I realized the roaring I heard wasn’t in my head at all: it was old Mr. Haverly two doors down, mowing his backyard.

  I was back there all right, because I could hear that roaring perfectly. I glanced at my sister and Juanita, but I was too dizzy to focus on them. I leaned back on the couch and then I did this thing I used to do a lot after my mom died, where I would close my eyes and push my fingers against the lids until I could see patterns forming. I would watch the purple and orange and green swirls until my mind went blank; it was the only way I could forget about Mom’s accident, the only way I could calm down.

  “Are you all right, Leeann?” Juanita’s voice interrupted my patterns, brought me back to now. I opened my eyes and looked at Mary Beth. She was still sitting like a zombie.

  Before I could ask, Juanita told me Holly wasn’t dead. She wasn’t conscious yet, but she wasn’t dead. She was in a coma, the doctors said maybe she’d come out of it later tonight, maybe even in an hour or so.

  I exhaled loudly, feeling the relief all through my body. “Why didn’t you guys stay then? Until she woke up?”

  Mary Beth showed no signs of having heard the question. Juanita crooked her finger to motion me into the kitchen. As soon as we got there, she put her hands on my shoulders and whispered, “This is very hard for Mary Beth. They told her to leave. To get out.”

  I felt my stomach turn over. Juanita looked down at the table. “They blame her for what happened. That creep George and Betty. They have the nerve to blame Mary Beth for Holly taking them pills.”

  “No way!” I couldn’t help yelling. “She tried to help Holly! She stayed up all night with her, trying to make her feel better and telling her—”

  “I know.” Juanita shook her head. “But it’s gotten all screwy now. They think Mary Beth gave Holly all kinds of sicko ideas, last night and even before, when she came to her. They think Mary Beth warped Holly’s mind. Made her want to kill herself.”

  I sat down at the kitchen table as it hit me what Juanita was saying. What must have happened. “So before Holly took those pills, she talked to her parents.”

  Juanita sat down, too. “Yeah,” she said, grabbing her long black braid and nervously flipping it back and forth. “I don’t know what she said, but whatever it was got them all pissed off at Mary Beth.” Juanita paused for a moment. “Damn, it was ugly, Leeann. As soon as we walked into the ICU waiting room, George stood up and stuck out his fat finger at Mary Beth and called her a liar. Then he told her she didn’t belong there since it was all her doing. Mary Beth tried to talk to Danny, you know, Holly’s husband, but it was impossible ’cause George was just screaming all this shit.”

  Juanita inhaled. “Your sister didn’t flinch; she just stood her ground and kept saying she was here to see Holly. But then Betty came over, bawling, and Mary Beth naturally felt sorry for her. When she reached out to hug her though, that woman slapped her across the face and called her a pervert.” Juanita shook her head. “I would have decked her, I swear to God, if she wasn’t such an old lady.”

  “Jesus,” I mumbled.

  “You damn right Jesus. This is one big-ass mess.”

  We sat there silently for a moment or so until we heard a noise in the living room. Mary Beth had left her chair; she was standing by the window now, and tapping her foot so loud it occurred to me the noise would wake Tommy.

  I went over and tried to put my arm around her, but she shrugged me off. “I’m all right.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mary Beth.”

  “What for?” Her voice was airless; she hadn’t turned around to look at me.

  “For what they did to you. Holly’s parents.”

  Mary Beth laughed harshly. “Of course they feel that way about me, right? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Why they would?”

  “Well, yeah, maybe, but—”

  She spun around and stared at me. “Is it obvious to you or not, Leeann? Think about it and tell me the truth.”

  I pretended I was thinking but I wasn’t really; I was too confused. Finally I said, “In a way, I guess. I mean, I don’t know what—”

  “And so when Holly confronted them this afternoon, they probably screamed at her too, right? Told her it was a lie, and she was sick for even mentioning it.” Mary Beth smacked the side of her head, hard. “Think! Isn’t that exactly what you’d expect?”

  I didn’t want to answer; she was being so weird it scared me. I looked at Juanita for help but she shrugged and then nodded like, go ahead, humor her.

  I glanced down at the floor. “I guess her dad wouldn’t just admit what he did. Especially if the whole family was there, or his wife or whatever. So yeah, he’d act mad. He’d probably go off on her. That’s what I’d expect.”

  My sister burst out laughing, but the laugh was horrible: high-pitched, squeaking—it hit my ears like a scream. Juanita went over and told her to relax; then she went into the kitchen. When she came back, she held up a glass of water to Mary Beth. “It’s okay. Drink this, then we can talk about it.”

  She barked out no, still laughing that horrible laugh, but when Juanita moved the glass closer, Mary Beth pushed it away and it spilled down the front of Juanita’s sweater. “Shit,” Juanita muttered, but Mary Beth ignored her.

  After a while, her laugh lost its air and become a strangled, desperate, choking sound, which scared me even more. I took a step towards her. “I don’t get this, Mary Beth. It’s not your fault. It’s her father’s fault, for being so mean.”

  “Right. He’s a mean guy. Very mean. Terrible.” Mary Beth slumped down in the window chair. She wasn’t laughing anymore, but she was wringing her hands and blinking so hard she looked like she had a tic.

  “I need a smoke,” Juanita said. She stood up and went into the kitchen. When she returned she was holding an empty soda can and flicking ashes into it.

  We were all quiet for a while. Finally, Juanita dropped her cigarette in the can and walked closer to Mary Beth. “You have to forget about George. He’s an asshole. Hell, I won’t set foot in his store. Not after the time he tried to feel me up when I asked him to find a Philips head screwdriver.”

  “He is an asshole, isn’t he?” Mary Beth whispered, as she looked over and glanced into my eyes. “And anyone who isn’t stupid should have expected he’d be horrible to Holly.”

  Then I tried desperately to backtrack. I said lots of people wouldn’t expect it, because who can predict the future, and somebody who’s mean can be nice later, people change after all. I babbled on and on about how tough it is to know anything about anyone until I realized Mary Beth wasn’t even listening. She’d turned her face to the wall and pulled her knees up; her body was curled in a fetal position.

  Juanita knelt down beside her. “Come on, Mary Beth. You can’t let this bastard do this to you.”

  “Don’t you see? Leeann sees. She understands what I did.”

  “Leeann just told you that you didn’t do anything. It’s George’s fault, all of it.”

  “But I did.” Her voice was so soft, it was hard to hear her. “I did a terrible thing. And it is my fault Holly took those pills. It will be my fault if she dies.”

  Juanita cursed several times before she turned to me. “Tell her that isn’t true, Leeann. I don’t know where she’s coming up with this crap.”

  I glanced at the violet star in the afghan hanging on the wall and took a breath. “She thinks it’s her fault because she told Holly to talk to her family.”

  Mary Beth shook her head. “No. It’s more than that. You know it is.”

  I was thumbing the scar under my chin at a furious pace. I stood up and walked around the room, looking at Juanita kneeling by my sister, looking at Mary Beth staring at the wall.

  And suddenly I found myself thinking about Mike sitting in the hospital right now. Scared to death his mom wouldn’t make it, but putting on a stone face, according to Nancy. Because he couldn’t let anybody see him cry.
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  “All that matters now,” I said slowly, “is if Holly is okay.” I was standing over by the bookcase. “So what if you made a mistake? It’s too late to care about that.”

  “But she didn’t,” Juanita stammered. “What the hell are you saying?”

  Mary Beth sat up straighter and looked at Juanita. “I told Holly to talk to George. I didn’t think of how cruel his reaction might be. It’s so obvious, but I didn’t prepare her. God, I acted like all she had to do was open her mouth and everything would be fine!”

  “It ain’t obvious,” Juanita said, but she didn’t sound like she believed her own words.

  “Yes, it is,” Mary Beth said flatly. “And now Holly could die because of me.”

  “Cut it out, Mary Beth,” Juanita whispered, leaning back and shaking her head.

  After a moment, Mary Beth jumped up and paced back and forth. I stood very still, mesmerized by her jerky movements, listening to my breath coming in nervous gasps.

  “I can’t take another minute of this,” my sister finally said, as she walked to her room. “I have to sleep. I have to.”

  As soon as she closed the door behind her, Juanita said she had to leave or she’d be late for work. She did call the hospital, though, and they said Holly’s condition was unchanged.

  When Juanita had her jacket on, she stood there for a moment, mumbling stuff about what a jerk George was, but how well liked he was around town. “This could get ugly.” She looked at me. “If it does, your sister is going to need you to be there for her. You understand that, right?”

  “I understand,” I said, but of course I didn’t. Not yet.

  chapter

  twelve

  The next morning she woke up at five-thirty, got up and showered, put on her uniform, fixed her hair up with the brown hair clip, woke Tommy and made him breakfast, pleaded with him to brush his teeth, begged him to hurry and get dressed, and finally, yelled to me to wake up right before they walked out the door. Same as always, the only difference was I was already awake, listening for these familiar sounds. Comforting myself with how routine it all was.