The Song Reader

by Lisa Tucker

  “All right. Did Mary Beth ever tell you what she and I did on our first date?”

  “No.”

  “When Rebecca first told me about song reading, I didn’t think much of it. I was being a snob. I thought it was like astrology or tarot cards or any other bullshit. When I told your sister I wouldn’t be coming back, this was in her office that first morning, she said fine. But then she said she’d never gone out with a graduate student. She was looking straight at me. Her eyes were a challenge. And then she elaborated; I believe her exact words were: ‘I’ve never slept with a graduate student. Is it any different?’”

  I was pretty shocked but I grabbed a potato chip and chewed, casually, maturely.

  “What could I do?” Ben laughed a short laugh. “I was depressed but I wasn’t dead. Of course I asked if she wanted to go to dinner.

  “I don’t remember how she got me talking about Aaron that night. I hadn’t talked to anyone about it since I left school, and there I was, sitting with this gorgeous hick at some greasy spoon in the middle of the country, spilling my guts. After our dinner, we drove to the river. She was very friendly. I thought this was a prelude to—”

  “I get it.” I was still bristling at the word “hick.”

  “Right.” He sat up straighter. “Leeann. Sorry, honey.” He took a deep breath. “I’d already told her at dinner that I felt responsible for Aaron’s death. Everyone always reassured me that I wasn’t responsible, it was an accident, it was fate, it was bad luck—until your sister. She waited until we were at the river and then she said perhaps I was responsible. I thought she meant in some mystical boogeyman sense, like the tree being responsible for the squirrel climbing it, but she said no. Maybe I could have prevented my best friend’s death.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  “Of course I was surprised, but I wasn’t angry. I’d believed this myself for so long. The truth is, it was something of a relief hearing another person say it. In the conversation that followed, Mary Beth insisted she didn’t want to talk about my feelings, just the facts. Place, time of day, weather, condition of the road, and our bicycles. Was I in front or behind Aaron? Approximately how fast were we going when Aaron was hit by the motorcycle?”

  Ben paused and wrapped his hand around his empty beer mug. “While I was relating all this, I found myself telling her what I’d never told anyone: that I saw the motorcycle weaving. I was behind Aaron, and I remember thinking the driver had to be drunk. We were going up a hill and I was winded. ‘Stupid,’ I said, under my breath. ‘Stupid asshole.’”

  The waitress picked up my empty plate. The bar was getting more crowded now. Several minutes passed when Ben didn’t say anything. Finally I asked what happened next.

  “The motorcycle slammed into Aaron. He flew off the bike and crashed into the pavement, head first. The paramedics said his neck snapped. I don’t know about that. What I remember is the blood. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be surprised by it—I knew the brain has fully twenty-five percent of all the blood in the human body—but I was surprised.” Ben’s voice was flat. “There was blood all over his face and neck, pooling in the gutter, dripping down the arms of my jacket when I tried to stop it. It was the first time in my life when I would have given anything for it all to be wrong: fluid dynamics, gravity, the irreversibility of time. All of it.”

  I shuddered, but I waited as long as I could stand to before reminding him, “I meant what happened with Mary Beth.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Right. She told me she wanted to go farther down the river, and I drove until she told me to stop. That part of the road was an S, similar to the road Aaron and I had been biking on. Same forty-five-degree angle to the hill. We got out and walked for a while before she told me to fall back. Get behind her about as far as I was with Aaron. I went along; I didn’t have the energy to argue. She was screaming at me, but it was impossible to hear what she was saying. Whenever a car went by, I couldn’t hear her at all.”

  I thought I had it. “She wanted you to know that Aaron couldn’t have heard you if you’d warned him about the motorcycle?”

  “Yes. She was trying to prove to me that even if I’d yelled, it wouldn’t have made any difference. There was nothing I could have done. But that was only part of it.” He exhaled. “We were standing on the side of the road. It was pitch-black when she grabbed my arm, this woman I barely knew, and made me admit that the facts mattered. The truth mattered. Even if her little experiment wasn’t valid, it was only because she didn’t know how to design an experiment. But you do, she told me. ‘You’re a scientist,’ she said. ‘The real thing. And you’re too smart to act like all the things you know have nothing to do with your own life.’”

  “And then you felt better?”

  “On the contrary. Then I felt much, much worse, but your sister was right. I was hiding in a blame that was completely irrational to keep from accepting that Aaron was dead.”

  After a minute, Ben said he also realized that night he’d been wrong about song reading.

  “Had Mary Beth done your chart?”

  “Perhaps, but it didn’t matter. I thought she was the most intuitive person I’d ever met, and if she believed people expressed emotions in the songs they remembered, so did I.”

  It was true: Mary Beth had an astonishing ability to know how people felt. I still thought it was a gift, but Dr. Kaplan talked like it was part of the reason my sister was sick. “She needs to know that she doesn’t have to continue this song reading,” Dr. Kaplan told me. “That who she is, is sufficient. She doesn’t have to take care of everyone to be loved.”

  “But she also needs to know that what she did was good,” I said to Dr. Kaplan. “It was good to help all those people.” Then I rattled off a quote Mike gave me about rainbows being miracles, not just the aftermath of storms. I thought it proved my point perfectly. “The storm would be like our family’s problems, and the song reading is the rainbow.” I crossed my arms confidently and looked at her. “Get it?”

  Dr. Kaplan said it was interesting but she wasn’t completely persuaded. We argued like this almost every time I saw her now. I liked her more and more.

  Ben said we should probably get going. I nodded, but before I stood up I told him I was sorry about his friend.

  “Thanks,” he said. “And thanks for listening to me.” He tilted his head to the left again, like he always did when he was feeling serious and thoughtful, a habit Mary Beth once joked would make him a hunchback by the time he was forty. I shook myself to keep from remembering the way she laughed then. A normal laugh.

  “I find it very difficult to convey what your sister has meant to me. Rebecca keeps insisting I have to find someone else, ignoring how hard I’ve tried. My father thinks I feel responsible for Mary Beth, and if he found her a place at St. Christopher’s, it would free me to move on with my life. It might have, if I wanted to be free.” He smiled but his eyes were sadder than they’d been all day. “Of course they don’t know her like we do, do they?”

  “No,” I said, letting him take my hand as we walked out of the bar and across the street, where Rebecca’s car was parked. It was already dark, but I heard the catch in his voice when he thanked me again, adding the “honey” that I didn’t mind anymore. None of this was his fault, of that I was sure. He and Juanita and Dr. Kaplan were like innocent bystanders to the crime that was my family.

  When I got home, it was after ten; Tommy and Juanita were already in bed. Tommy had had the flu for days. Dad said his fever finally broke around suppertime. Juanita was exhausted.

  “Were there any calls?” I asked Dad.

  “That girlfriend of yours. Darlene.”

  I wanted to ask if that was all, but I knew Dad was terrified of forgetting a message and I didn’t want him worrying he had. Especially since he probably hadn’t. I was hoping Mike would call, but I didn’t expect him to.

  Dad was sitting in the recliner. The TV was on, but the volume was so low I knew he wasn’t watching.r />
  “How was Mary Beth?”

  “Pretty much the same.” I fell back on the couch and yawned. “Her doctor said she probably won’t be out for a while.”

  “This must be so hard on her,” he said softly. “Being away from home.”

  I shrugged but then I glanced at him. Juanita had made him worry beads for Easter. He had them clutched in his left hand and his thumb was rolling them, one by one.

  I forced another smile. “You wouldn’t believe how good she looks. I was just telling Ben, I think she may be better a lot sooner than those doctors think.”

  He didn’t say anything, but his hand relaxed a little. After a few minutes, his hand stopped moving, and not long after that, I realized he’d fallen asleep. I wasn’t surprised. He had to be tired, too, from taking care of Tommy. I knew he’d just waited up for me.

  I walked over and gently took the beads, put them on the lamp table, next to his glasses, and then headed to the front porch. It was Saturday night, a warm spring night, and I was tired of thinking. I wanted to forget about Dr. Kaplan, Ben’s friend Aaron and all that blood, Mary Beth’s laughing at everything. I wanted to be a kid who didn’t know that damn near everybody’s secret was the same: that their life had been full of heartbreak.

  By the time Mike pulled up in his truck, I was hunched over on the porch bench, knee-deep in self-pity. He was wearing a suit, which struck me as odd but then I remembered his new job at the condo development by the river. He was trying to save money for college now that he wouldn’t have his grandfather’s help. He’d said the hours were long, especially on weekends. Maybe it was true.

  He sat down on the bench next to me, reached in his pocket, and handed me a letter. I couldn’t make out most of it in the dim porch light but I saw the letterhead. And I saw him beaming.

  I looked up and smiled. “You got in to Stanford.” It was his first choice, and he almost didn’t apply because he was so sure they wouldn’t take him. He had great grades and test scores, but he was just a regular Joe from nowhere Missouri. That’s what he always said anyway. “Oh, Mike, this is so great.”

  “They gave me a scholarship, too. Not all of it, but I really think I can do this.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  He put his hands on my shoulders. “And now I think we need to go to the prom.”

  “What?”

  “It’s our last chance. In a month, I’ll be done with River Valley forever.”

  “So? You hate River Valley.”

  “Come on, Leeann. I want to do this for you.”

  “But it’s so late.”

  “Run in and get dressed. We’ll have plenty of time to dance.”

  “You hate dancing.”

  “That was before I became a gentleman and a scholar.” He smiled again. “Plus, I’m Maniac Mike. You never know what I’ll try next.”

  I slipped inside, careful not to bang the door and wake up Dad. Fifteen minutes later, I was back on the porch wearing the only fancy dress I owned. It was an old gown of Mary Beth’s; Juanita had hemmed it for me to wear to her cousin Rafael’s wedding at the beginning of April. Luckily I hadn’t spilled anything on it. It was pretty but not exactly right for a prom. It was deep green with a high neck and little pearl buttons, a big flouncy skirt—not a single sexy thing about it.

  But Mike loved it. He said it was very Victorian, and so tonight I would be Elizabeth Barrett and he would be Robert Browning.

  “Unless you want to be married.” He had a corsage on the seat of the truck. He was pinning it on me. “Would you rather be Elizabeth Barrett Browning?”

  I felt so happy I had to stifle a giggle. “Yes, I think I would.”

  “Okay then, Mrs. Browning.” He did a very deep, very silly bow and held out his arm. “Shall we go?”

  When we got there it wasn’t quite midnight, but the River Valley parking lot was almost empty. Most people had already cut out for a party or the river bluffs or anywhere where teachers wouldn’t be watching.

  “All the better for us, Mrs. B,” Mike said, opening the door of the truck. “We can sail across the dance floor undisturbed.”

  “Sail” wasn’t quite the word for what we did. Mike and I had to be among the world’s worst fast dancers. Slow dancing was better, mainly because we just stood and held each other while Mike recited his—that is Browning’s—poetry.

  “If one could have that little head of hers, painted upon a background of pure gold, such as the Tuscan’s early art.”

  I leaned back and looked at him. “My head isn’t little, is it?”

  “How can you ask that? You know I dream of a red-rose tree. And which of its roses three, is the dearest rose to me?”

  It actually fit pretty well with the Lionel Richie and Air Supply.

  In between dances, Mike told everybody who would listen about Stanford. Only the teachers seemed to get what a huge deal it was. Mrs. Wood, our English teacher, had written one of his recommendations. She was manning the punch bowl and she damn near knocked it over, rushing around to give him a congratulatory pat on the back.

  I didn’t see Darlene anywhere, but I did see Kyle and Amanda. They were prom king and queen; they probably couldn’t leave until it was over. When he walked by and gave me a smirky smile, I was glad Mike was looking the other way. He hated Kyle’s guts now that he knew what happened to me.

  But all of that was over now. This was a new night, and I was in a dream, dancing with my boy. My gangly, beautiful Robert Browning.

  I only knew one poem of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s. It was very late when I finally blurted it out. The song playing was Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which always made me emotional. It was popular when Mary Beth got sick.

  “How do I love thee?” I said, pulling him closer. “Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.” I paused, and tried not to sound as embarrassed as I was. “Nice, isn’t it? It’s my newest sonnet.”

  “And I love thee,” he said. His voice was quiet, strangely serious. “Freely, as men strive for right, purely, as they turn from praise.”

  I swallowed hard. “I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.”

  He kissed my hair. “And I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints.”

  I could feel tears standing in my eyes. It was just hitting me that he was going to California. He would be so far away from Tainer, and from me.

  The song was over but I didn’t want to let go of him. Finally I looked up and whispered, “I think I’m ready to stop squandering time.”

  He knew what I meant. His voice was very surprised. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” I said, and smiled. “No, really sure.”

  He didn’t seem as excited as I expected. Maybe he didn’t believe it would actually work out this time. But twenty minutes later we were parked at our secret spot at the river bluffs. It was my idea to stay in the truck. Tommy’s flu meant we couldn’t go to my house, but also the truck felt like our home now. Everything important to us had happened here: from the night he drove me home from Juanita’s party to the snowy afternoon he saved Dad and me at the mall and nearly everything since.

  We’d barely started when I knew something was wrong. He wasn’t kissing me in the passionate way he usually did; his arm around me was heavy and motionless, a duty. When I tried to move his hand to my breast, he managed to drift up to my neck. I asked if he was okay and he said yes. I asked if he wanted to talk and he said no. It wasn’t until I went to unzip my dress—hoping to inspire him—that he whispered, “Stop.”

  He sat up straight.

  “Something is wrong.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and exhaled. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  My face was on fire, but I crossed my arms tightly across my chest and watched him open the glove compartment. He smoked for a while, and I listened to the crickets and an owl hooting in the distance as
I wondered how this could be happening.

  By his second cigarette, I’d settled on the theory that he wasn’t attracted to me anymore. I’d gained a few pounds since we moved to Juanita’s; maybe he thought I was fat. Maybe he’d realized how dumpy I always was that night in St. Louis, when I put on that T-shirt and old terry cloth shorts. He was so tall and elegant, especially in that suit. I’d never been more attracted to him, unfortunately.

  “Remember when you told me I looked like my mom?”

  His voice startled me out of my self-loathing. “Sure,” I said. It was after Christmas, the first time I went with him to visit her in the rehab, when she was well enough for visitors. But I couldn’t imagine what it had to do with anything.

  “No one else had ever said that to me. Growing up, everybody said I looked like George.”

  Mike never called him Grandpa anymore. Holly didn’t call him Dad. He was George. Just a guy they knew. No relation.

  I turned to him. The breeze had picked up and the trees were blowing, making the moonlight dance across his face. “I don’t see that at all.”

  “Because you haven’t seen the pictures.” He took a long drag. “They used to show them to me. Pictures of him as a kid. They said we could have been twins.” He put out the cigarette and leaned his arm on the window. After a minute he said in a harsh voice, “Old George used to talk to me about what this would be like.”

  “This?”

  “Sex. He talked like it was so powerful, like it could turn you into a person you didn’t recognize. It was one of his favorite sayings: a stiff dick has no conscience.”

  “God.” It was still warm, but I was shivering a little.

  “When we were in the hotel and you told me what Kyle did to you, I wanted to break his stupid neck. It was like Mom all over again. I couldn’t believe the two people I love most were hurt by some fucking guy.”

  “You thought that?” My voice was soft, amazed.

  “Yeah, but that wasn’t the only thing. I also thought about having sex with you. And I don’t mean for a minute. I mean constantly, the whole night. You were crying about your mom, and I was looking at your breasts. You were telling me how bad it hurt when that moron tried to force you, and I was imagining how you would look naked. Even when you were asleep, I was staring at you, wishing I could touch you.”