The Song Reader (16 page)

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “You’re here now and everything will be okay.”

He was shrinking into his chair, twitching the frame of his glasses, making them beat against his face like the wings of a trapped fly—but she was sitting up in bed. And miracle of miracles, her eyes were as clear and focused as though these last few weeks had never happened at all.

I had no idea she was upset. Actually, I was thinking she was going to comfort him. She was a song reader after all.

“Stop!” Her voice startled me, but it was the way she looked that was really a shock. She’d jumped up on her knees, clutching the edge of the blanket. Her face was white as bone. “Please, don’t do this!”

“I’m sorry.” His jaw was slack, his head was hunched into his shoulders like a puppy about to be whipped. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Please,” she said, with a spray of spittle she didn’t bother to wipe off her chin. “I can’t stand it!”

“Maybe you should wait in the living room,” I said to him. I was horrified at the way she was talking, but I was also embarrassed for her. Her nightgown had come unbuttoned at the top and her hair was sticking up like a madwoman’s.

He nodded weakly, but he lunged out of his chair. On the way out, he stumbled over my sister’s shoes and whispered another apology. I heard him pacing in the hall as I shut the door.

“God, Mary Beth.” I walked over and stood in front of her, but she was so tall, even kneeling on the bed, she seemed to tower above me. “What’s—”

She put her hands over her ears. “I can’t listen!”

“Listen to what?” I pulled at her arm. “Come on. Tell me what’s going on with you!”

She shook her head so violently it hurt to watch. But I refused to give up. Even when she collapsed on the bed in tears, begging me to leave her alone, I said I wasn’t going anywhere until she told me what she was upset about.

No question, I was more than a little freaked. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen my sister cry. Even when Mom died, she hadn’t cried this hard.

“Are you afraid of him, is that it?” I was sitting next to her, rubbing her back. I gulped hard, thinking of Holly Kramer. “Did he hurt you somehow?”

If she’d answered yes, I would have tried to believe it, even though it didn’t fit with the father I remembered, and it certainly didn’t fit with the cowering man pacing our hall. He was a stranger and she was my sister. I wanted her back, no matter what it cost.

But she didn’t answer yes, she started babbling about Mom. Most of it was too incoherent to make out, but I heard one part perfectly. Mom said Dad ruined her life.

“What do you mean?” My hand was still rubbing her back, but my voice had become hollow, suspicious.

“Mommy was so desperate. She needed me so bad.”

“Needed you for what?” I insisted, but my sister’s only reply was to go on and on about how desperate Mom was. And she wanted to help Mom. Mom had such a hard life. Mom tried so hard and was the only person who had ever really loved her.

Later, I would have time to think about what this meant, but not now. Now it felt like being kicked in the gut.

“But I love you,” I said, more pathetically than I intended. “Don’t you know that?”

She stopped talking and I looked at her closely. Her eyes had dark circles underneath, her face was crisscrossed with creases from her pillowcase, but she still looked pretty. I remembered Ben used to say Mary Beth would look pretty in a hurricane.

I took a breath and reached for her hand. The skin was warm and soft. Her fingernails had grown long. “Tommy and I both love you. We need you so much.”

I don’t know what I expected, but I know I surprised myself by how angry I was when she jerked away and slumped back into her usual fetal position, closing her eyes. Most likely, she wasn’t even listening when I stomped across the room so hard her perfume bottles clanked against each other on the dresser. And she made no response when I turned around and yelled, “Mom is dead, and Dad is going to live with us now. If you have a problem with that, tough shit!”

But it made me feel better to say it, whether she heard or not. It felt like a decision, even though I knew there was no real choice in the matter. I had to plead with him to stay and help until Mary Beth got better.

There was nothing for him back in Little Rock, I knew that even before he admitted it was just luck he got my letter because he was about to move again—no doubt because he’d lost another job. And I wasn’t surprised to learn that beat-up black duffel bag contained every single thing he owned.

T
o say things were hard is an understatement. It was a week later, on Thanksgiving, and here was my family. Dad, sitting in the window chair, presumably watching TV with Tommy but really touching his thumbs to his fingertips repeatedly, obsessively, as though he was counting his own breaths. Mary Beth, in bed as usual, but now on the bare mattress, after I’d yanked her sheets from beneath her the day before, to wash them, and she’d refused to get up when I wanted to put them back. And Tommy, poor kid, sprawled out on the floor, pouting and sucking his thumb, watching a rerun of
Trapper John,
because I told him I didn’t have time to play; I had to cook dinner.

Such that it was. The turkey was more bones than meat, the stuffing was Stove Top, the mashed potatoes, instant, and the gravy from a can. And my poor frozen pumpkin pie. It was as flat as if it’d been stepped on, which it had, by Tommy, when I was trying to put the groceries away. But still, I was going to have this holiday, even if it killed me. Juanita had just called and invited herself over, and though she wouldn’t have cared if we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I cared. Just once, I wanted to do it right. Just once, I wanted to do the normal thing like everybody else in the U.S. of A.

Juanita claimed she was coming over to hang with us, but I knew what she really meant. She was coming over to hang with Dad. It was almost the last thing I’d expected: that Juanita would really enjoy being with my father, even though she admitted he was, as she put it, “a little screwy.” She’d been over nearly every day since he arrived, and they’d had these long, involved conversations. She told him things about herself: from her childhood to her marriages to the latest letter she got from the Arrested, who was no longer arrested, as it turned out, but was still keeping his distance from Tainer, and from Juanita, which bothered her even though she knew it was a really dumb way to feel. And Dad listened and sympathized, but also talked himself, not as much, but a hell of a lot more than he ever did with me.

It was Juanita who got out of him that he felt like a burden, being here. And on Thanksgiving, after the meal was over and I was stuck washing the pile of dishes, it was Juanita that he told he would probably leave again, as soon as Mary Beth was better.

Good riddance, I thought, and I didn’t even feel all that guilty as I listened to Juanita assure him he’d feel differently if he just gave it time. “Your family needs you,” she said, and I nodded when she looked at me for support, though I felt the hardness inside my chest get bigger.

He’d only been here a week, and already, I had moved past the horrible disappointment to an absence of feelings so total it scared me whenever I let myself think about it. What kind of person was I if I didn’t care about my own father?

Yes, I had my reasons for being annoyed. He’d taken my bedroom without even putting up a fuss, leaving me on the couch to wake up sore every morning from the busted spring in the middle cushion poking my back. He was incapable of doing housework or the dishes or even driving the car. But he tried so hard. I watched him as he went around the house, trying and failing to do things that were effortless for normal people. Cleaning Tommy’s room, for instance. Only Dad would spend more than four hours sorting the Legos by color and size only to leave all the piles on the floor, where one careless kick by Tommy left them messier than before. Dusting, too. Only Dad would insist on moving every knickknack off Mom’s shadowbox and then attack the tiny line of dust between the mirrors with Q-tips, but fail to do anything about the thick pile of dust all over the wood.

It was only a few days before I started telling him no, there was nothing I needed him to do. But still he tried. I would find him in the bathroom, washing out Tommy’s shirts or underwear in the tub, but without any soap. I would see him in the kitchen, going through the cabinets, looking in the boxes of cereal and the sacks of flour and sugar, counting the cans of chicken noodle soup and baked beans, making sure we weren’t about to run out. And if we were low on an item, he wrote it on one of his lists. Even though they seemed to embarrass him—he stuffed them into his pocket whenever he noticed me watching—he couldn’t help making them. Whenever I had to go in my room to get clothes for school, I found them all over my dresser; I even found a few crammed between the mattress and box springs of my bed.

I hated going in my own room, now that he was living there.

But still, he tried so hard. Even with me. That was the worst part: knowing he realized how much he was bothering me. He apologized so often that when I closed my eyes at night, sometimes I could still hear his voice saying he was sorry. I’m so sorry, he would say, until I had to bite my lip to keep from yelling, “What the hell for?”

With Juanita though, he was so different. This was what I was thinking as I stood with my hands in the warm sudsy water, washing our plates, listening to them. With her, he was almost normal. With her, he’d never once had to apologize.

They’d moved on to the topic of my sister. Dad was worried she was getting worse, but Juanita said that wasn’t true. After all, Mary Beth had taken a shower yesterday, even washed her hair. (Juanita was ignoring the fact that Mary Beth hadn’t had much choice in the matter. I’d come home from school and dragged her off the bed, pushed her into the bathroom, and basically torn her nightgown off her, all the while barking threats of what would happen if she refused to clean herself up—fungus and bacteria, mainly, but also the loss of her bed to Goodwill.)

But Juanita claimed it was Dad being here that was helping. How could it not help, she insisted, when he so obviously cared?

When I told Juanita what Dad was doing for Mary Beth, I expected her to think it was a little strange and most likely useless. After all, what good could it do to sit with my sister when she gave no signs of knowing he was there? But Juanita thought it was the sweetest thing in the world, especially when I admitted he’d done it every day since he arrived, for hours.

I would come home from school and find him in the same chair I’d pulled next to her bed, looking at my sister’s back, and scribbling in that notepad of his. At first, I thought he was sketching her, or at least writing something relevant to her, but now I knew it was probably just another one of his lists. I couldn’t sit next to him and find out. I had homework and housework and Tommy to handle. I had bills to pay and muddy shoes to clean and lunches to pack—all the real stuff of life.

“You want more coffee?” I asked them. I wanted to empty the pot to wash it.

“No thanks, kiddo,” Juanita said. “I’m jumpy enough already.” She smiled at Dad. “How about you, Henry?”

He said yes, throwing in that it was good coffee. Then Juanita said I always make good coffee. As I poured him a cup, I imagined my obituary. Not loving daughter or loving sister or loving anything, just Made Good Coffee. No flowers please, but donations in her name to Maxwell House would be appreciated.

Juanita was in the middle of a long story about her basement flooding when I finished with the dishes. Dad was nodding along, tearing up his napkin in what might seem like a normal, absentminded way, if you didn’t notice all the strips were exactly the same width and the same length. I was walking out of the kitchen to check on Tommy when Juanita leaned across the table and picked up the strips of the napkin, holding her palm out for the piece he still had in his hand. He gave it to her, and then, without even pausing in her story, she walked to the trash and threw it all away. Soon enough he would find something else to mess with, and eventually, Juanita would take that from him, too. She always did, but never with any fuss. Occasionally, she kidded him about his “tics” and once or twice, I heard her ask if he was even listening, but there was no accusation in her voice. I felt even more like the scum of the earth.

I was dying to get away for a while. Tommy was busy with his train. His room was so messy, there was nowhere to sit. The living room was too close to Dad and Juanita. My room was Dad’s room, and out of the question. So I went down the hallway and opened her door. At least it would be quiet in there. I could think about the paper I had to write for history or call one of the Ds on her phone. Or more likely, I could do what I usually did: sit on the side of her bed and think about what was happening to me.

Dad wasn’t the only one who was spending time in Mary Beth’s room these days. But at least I knew it was for me, not her. At least I wasn’t pretending I was helping, when all I was really doing was causing more work.

I was being unfair and I knew it. I was always unfair and believe me, I had mountains of regret. That night, for instance, I regretted everything from the dirty look I gave him when he woke me up in the morning—accidentally, when he knocked into the side of the couch on his way to the kitchen—to the sigh I let out right after dinner, when Juanita was in the bathroom and I saw him staring at me like he wanted to say something but didn’t have the nerve.

Mary Beth looked better than she had in weeks. After her shower yesterday, I’d insisted she get dressed, and the gray pants and green sweater were wrinkled, but still a hell of a lot better than her faded pink nightgown. And she was facing me for a change. She was still lying in bed, staring at the wall, but it was the wall behind me.

It was comforting in a way. True, she rarely spoke, but she also didn’t start counting her fingers or messing with her glasses or tearing up napkins. Even her breathing seemed calm and soothing, compared to the nervous flutter of his.

I stood up and got the afghan from the floor. I could have put her sheets on while she was in the bathroom, but I was punishing her for refusing to cooperate. Now I felt bad. At least I would cover her.

I didn’t intend to lie down next to her. I told myself I was just tired. And I had to lie pretty close to her, because she was in the middle of the bed.

She smelled good, like lemon shampoo and Ivory soap. The afghan was soft and warm, and big enough to cover us both.

“You know what I wish?” I whispered, after a while. It had gotten very dark in my sister’s room. The sky was cloudy: no moon, no stars. The only light was the yellow crack under her door. Juanita and Dad had turned on the TV. Tommy was with them. I heard him ask Juanita for a bowl of ice cream.

I knew she probably wasn’t listening, but I had to say it. “I wish I’d never called you a liar.”

It had nothing to do with what was happening now. It was a thousand years ago. It was so simple and easy compared to what was happening now.

About an hour later, I heard Juanita put Tommy to bed. Then I heard Juanita and my father talking in the living room when they turned off the TV. I heard the chain lock clink after Dad let Juanita out. I heard him moving around the apartment before he settled in my room for the night.

And still, I was lying in the dark next to my sister, listening to her breathe. Convincing myself that though it seemed like the root of all evil, it had nothing to do with what was happening now. It was so simple and easy compared to what was happening now, and it didn’t cause all this, no matter how much it felt like the beginning of the end.

And there wasn’t any end anyway. That was the hardest part. Days filled with drudgery and loneliness bled into nights tossing and thrashing on the couch which bled into more days and nights exactly the same. Sure, I had school, but school wasn’t long enough to make a difference. School was like a comma in the middle of the long sentence that began with the stressful mornings getting Tommy out the door, and continued with the endless afternoons and evenings, taking care of him and the apartment and my father and everything.

I was keeping my grades up, but my teachers thought I looked “troubled.” They kept me after class, their voices full of concern when they asked if I had any problems at home. I told them no. And I said the same thing to Darlene and Denise when they asked if I wanted to go anywhere. No, I would say, without any explanation. I said it to casual friends who called, and I said it immediately to the only guy who asked me out, Leon, one of Kyle’s best friends.

Afterward, Leon mouthed “cold bitch” whenever I saw him in the halls, but I didn’t really care. It was no worse than whore, and it certainly fit me better. I was cold all right. Even Juanita had taken to calling me “tough,” sometimes with approval, but other times with a look that said I was taking this toughness too far. It was fine to rip up George’s letters and slam the phone down when I got one of those antifamily calls, but it wasn’t fine to bark orders at Tommy and my father and even her, occasionally. “You’d make a lousy supervisor,” she said, and I shrugged and told her I was never going to work with other people. I would be alone and responsible to no one. I would do my work exactly as I wanted, with no one to get in the way.

My dad was listening during this conversation, but he didn’t jump in. He never jumped in or objected to anything I said. I overheard Juanita telling him that he had a right to reprimand me if I was bossing him around, but he disagreed. “She barely knows me,” he said. “I haven’t been a father to her for years. I can’t start now.”

You got that right, I thought, but later, I felt angry again. What was he doing here if he wasn’t willing or able to act like my father? If he wasn’t willing or able to give me anything?

Mary Beth’s doctor seemed to be wondering the same thing. His name was Dr. Edgar P. Dunham. He was like a hundred and he wasn’t even a shrink, but he was the only doctor in the county who agreed to come to our house.