The Song Reader (7 page)

“I can’t believe you really want to.” She paused and looked at me. “This guy is not your type, you know that as well as—”

“But are you saying I can’t?”

“Okay, then yes. This boy is a cheater and a drinker. I don’t want you in any car with him, not even his fabulous Honda Prelude.”

I’d forgotten that I’d told her about his car and the keg parties he and his friends were known for. For a split second, I considered that she was right, but a second later, I found myself feeling furious. How dare she tell me what to do?

“You don’t even know him. This is so unfair!”

“I know you, and I know you have no business with a guy like that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re an honor roll student, Lee. You need to be with somebody smart.”

“Somebody smart?” I hissed. “You mean like Ben?”

“Is that what this is about?” She walked across the room. The record was over but there was a crackling in the speakers. She snapped off the stereo and spun around to face me. “You’re mad at me because it didn’t work out with Ben? Well, I’m sorry, honey, but the world can be a very hard place. We don’t always get what we want.”

I could almost hear Mom. It was one of her favorite sayings, that the world is a hard place, and you have to be hard to survive it. I’d never heard my sister say this, though. Actually, it was Mary Beth who took me aside when I was about six, to whisper that even if the world was hard, it was a friendly hard, like the calloused touch of an old man’s fingers. A beautiful hard, she said, like the most magnificent diamond, given by a prince whose love for his princess was so strong it could never be broken.

We were always talking about princesses back then. She’d told me about Cinderella, and when I asked her if it was a true story, she said no, but it was still true. “It’s what everybody dreams about. A love so grand it can change your life.”

She was eighteen. With her long blond hair and perfect pink skin, I thought she looked exactly like a princess should look. “And what people dream about,” she’d said, touching my cheek, “comes from the deepest place inside them. The place where lies never reach. The truest place of all.”

It had been a long time since I believed in fairy tales, but still, I hated that she said the world was hard. Even if it was true, it made me feel like my heart was shriveling up inside my chest. It made the room seem smaller and dirtier. It made everything seem dusted gray with hopelessness.

“There’s nothing wrong with
Bride’s
magazine,” I said. I’d never read it, but I shot her a look of defiance. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to fall in love.”

“Honey, I didn’t say there—”

“It’s not silly!”

It was finally starting to hit me that everything Rebecca said was true. Of course my sister had dumped Ben: why hadn’t I suspected this before? She’d dumped every guy she’d ever dated. Nick and James. Chris and Scott. Even the one who took her to the prom, the one whose name I couldn’t remember, who brought her violets each and every time he came over. Never roses, because he knew Mary Beth didn’t care for roses.

And come to think of it, I’d liked them all. Not as much as Ben, but well enough. They were all nice guys, but she threw them away as easily as trashing a scratched-up record.

“Did you care about Ben at all?”

“Of course I did.” Her voice was strangely hollow, but she was smiling because Tommy had just woken up. He walked across the room and was hanging on her leg. She picked him up and nuzzled his neck.

“Park,” Tommy muttered into her hair.

“I have to take him to the bathroom,” she said. I shrugged and slumped down on the couch.

As they walked down the hall, I heard her say that they’d leave for the park very soon, but first she had to talk to Leeann, because Leeann was upset. “Why?” he asked. More of a whine than a question, but Mary Beth answered. She asked if he remembered Ben, and then she said that Leeann was missing Ben today, pretty bad.

His little hug of comfort when they returned did nothing to erase how angry I was. I knew what was coming. I could feel myself breathing quicker before she opened her mouth.

“There’s something going on here that worries me,” she said. “You’re tangling up Ben with that boy Kyle, and I don’t think you under—”

“This isn’t about me!”

“You were hurt when he left, I know that.” Her voice was so incredibly gentle, it made me want to scream. “You liked him so much, and you’d also confided in him, which had to make you feel—”

“He told you I confided in him?” I felt a blush creeping from my forehead to my neck.

“About Mom,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Of course he did, honey. We were living together.”

I wasn’t bothered that Ben had told her. It was what I’d expected. It made sense, and it fit with what Rebecca said. He loved her; of course he told her. But I was stunned that Mary Beth had never mentioned it until now. I was stunned that she could stand there, looking so innocent, when just last summer, she’d told me she was worried because I never talked about my feelings about Mom to anyone. Had she been trying to make me admit I’d talked to Ben? Had she been trying to make me feel guilty? (If so, it had worked.)

Tommy was pulling on her shirttail, reminding her that she’d promised to take him to the park. She told him to wait, but he stomped his foot. “Now.”

“All right, just tell me one thing.” I stood up and faced her. “Did he ask you to marry him?”

“Rebecca shouldn’t have—”

“Forget Rebecca! Just tell me: yes or no.”

“But it’s not that simple. There were circumstances. It was—”

“Answer me!”

“Okay, okay,” she said, sounding defeated. “He did say the words ‘will you marry me.’ Yes. But we’d been fighting for weeks, and he was just trying to make it all go away.”

“I don’t remember any fights.”

“Because I didn’t want you involved. I was trying to protect you from my personal problems.”

I was wavering, but I put my hands on my hips. “What were these fights about?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” Her voice was flat. “The truth is, he only thought he was in love with me. He didn’t even know me. It never would have worked.”

I felt a little afraid but mainly angry. How could she say this? I’d heard her tell Ben many times that he knew her better than any other man she’d been with. He knew about her song charts and Mom’s accident and how she got Tommy. He knew she liked Diet Coke for breakfast and orange juice before bed. He knew her dress size and her favorite color and even that she liked to have two towels when she took a bath. He knew everything about her that I did.

Tommy was wailing about the slide and she said she had to go. Before she turned around, she glanced at me. “Are you satisfied now?”

I looked right in her eyes, but still I said it. I said it loud enough for Tommy to hear. “No, I’m not satisfied,” I said—and then I called her a liar.

She didn’t defend herself. She winced, but it was only a moment before she recovered enough to tell Tommy they were leaving and to tell me that I still couldn’t go to the dance with Kyle. “It’s my job to protect you,” she said, “even if I am a liar.”

I stomped into my room, muttering a complaint of how unfair this was, but fighting a sudden wave of panic. She and Tommy had shut the apartment door and gone down the stairs when I realized what was bothering me. I hadn’t told her to drive carefully. I’d forgotten to tell her, for the first time I could remember.

I always told her. I put friends on hold to say it; I forced myself to look up from the most fascinating movie to say it, I even yelled the two words from behind the door of the bathroom, the first time I got my period and I was nervously trying to read the Tampax directions. It wasn’t that I thought the words were magic, but I did believe the old saying that terrible things happen when you least expect them. So to get them not to happen, I reasoned, what you had to do was keep worrying over them. Most people could say “drive carefully” only in a snow-storm. Or late at night. Or before a long trip. But Mom’s accident was in the middle of July, broad daylight, and just five miles from our house. So I had to say it all the time. I had to expect the terrible thing that most people got to forget about.

My panic subsided when I realized I was expecting it right now. Even if I hadn’t told her, I was more afraid than ever something would happen to them. And I stayed a little wary, for almost two hours, until Mary Beth and Tommy were back home, safe and sound.

Then I refused to speak to her, because she wouldn’t let me go to the dance. And because she’d lied. And because she was going about her business, listening to music and talking on the phone to customers as though nothing had happened.

Later that evening, I called Kyle and told him I couldn’t go. It wasn’t that hard, especially since Denise told me she’d heard a rumor that he was only asking me to make his real girlfriend jealous. But of course I didn’t tell Mary Beth this part, and I didn’t tell her that Kyle seemed even more interested in me afterwards. The next morning, he was at my locker, smiling that cocky smile but whining that I’d broken his heart. All that week, he pressured me to go, and even when the dance was over, he was still flirting with me, reminding me that I hadn’t even given him a chance yet.

“Come on, Leeann,” he’d say, and wink. “What’s it gonna take to change your mind?” And then he’d plead with me to go to a movie or out to eat or at least let him give me a ride home.

I told him no as long as I could stand it, but then one day, I just didn’t see the point. My status at school had gone up so much just from flirting with him, and I thought Darlene was right that I’d be crazy not to capitalize on this while I could. Of course Mary Beth wouldn’t like it, but so what? She wasn’t my mother.

I had myself convinced she’d never even have to know. She was very involved with two new customers: one with breast cancer she couldn’t bring herself to tell her husband about; one with what Mary Beth called a “fear of fear.” I was still updating the charts with her; actually I was doing more now, because I was older and better able to understand the process. “You’re a real help to me,” she would say, after I pointed out a pattern or repetition on someone’s chart that she hadn’t noticed. Then she would smile. “I bet someday you’ll be doing readings yourself, hon.”

I was flattered, but I always told her it wasn’t going to happen. “I don’t have the gift,” I’d say, and I meant it, too. It was a gift, I knew that, because she was still as good at it as ever—except when it came to me. I was the one person she couldn’t and didn’t understand. Even when I sang songs that were disgustingly obvious about cheating hearts and guilty lies, she didn’t guess that I was sneaking around seeing Kyle.

Later, I found out that she did notice the songs and she did think they had a meaning. She even kept track of them on a chart, and as far as I know, it’s the only chart she ever got completely wrong. But it was understandable, I guess. Since it had never occurred to her that I was a liar, she had to conclude that I was singing those songs as my way of telling her, over and over again, that she was.

A
s upset as I was, I did try to give her the benefit of the doubt. I spent an entire week jotting down every song she hummed; I thought it was a truly brilliant plan. I would present her with her own chart, and see what she would make of it. I would help her discover how she really felt about Ben.

The chart went on for pages, and she said she was impressed I’d gone to all this trouble. “It does make me feel a little like I’ve been spied on,” she admitted, before proceeding to hand back all my hard work with a shrug. “A person can’t ever read themselves, it’s too dangerous.”

“Come on, Mary Beth. Just take a look at it.”

“I told you, I can’t. It would be like being part of your own experiment.”

Her using the science language she picked up from Ben just made me more determined. I stuck the pages out. “Tell me what you would say if it wasn’t you.”

“But it is me.”

“Pretend it isn’t.”

I kept pushing her until she took the chart from my hand and told me she would say that the person was a song reader.

I smirked. “Thanks a lot.”

“I’m serious. You think these songs are mine, Leeann?” She tapped her fingernail on the chart. “Each and every one of these is an echo in my head of somebody else’s problem.”

“What about ‘Golden Slumbers’?”

“What about it?”

“You’ve been singing it as long as I can remember. It can’t be a customer’s.”

“I used to like it, but now it belongs to whoever tells me they’re hearing it.”

“But nobody did report that song this week. I checked.”

“What’s your point?”

“Don’t you remember playing it for Ben when he first moved in with us? Couldn’t it be that you’re humming it now because you’re still trying to figure out what happened with him?”

She was so taken aback, she looked almost afraid. I was wondering how she could react so strongly to such an obvious thing when she rearranged her mouth into a dismissive smile.

“Or it could be that I’m humming it now because a customer reported it last week or the week before. Woo hoo, how strange! The songs in my mind don’t get erased every week like the tape on the answering machine.”

She laughed then. She actually laughed. So I gave up, and went back to what I’d been doing before I had the brilliant plan: stacking up my reasons to be angry with her until they grew as tall as Tommy’s tallest block tower.

Of course she had lied to me, not once, but every time she let me keep believing it was Ben’s idea to break up rather than hers. She’d turned her back on a sweet, intelligent man who really loved her; I was positive, no matter what she said. She’d thrown away our chance to get out of Tainer, to move with Ben to some exotic new place like Seattle or New York after he finished his degree. She’d thrown away Tommy’s chance to have a normal family with a dad who cared about him. And worst of all, she’d damn near ruined my fragile belief in perfect, endless love.

But I would get it back. I would believe in a wonderful future, full of possibilities—no matter how unlikely it looked.

It was the beginning of 1983, a full year and a half before the Morning in America ads, when unemployment was still terrible and people were scared of everything from Tylenol tampering to computers that would take over the world. But I was determined. I threw Tylenol into our shopping cart without hesitating; I tore off the cover from the
Time
magazine announcing that the computer was 1982’s Man of the Year and hung it on my bedroom wall. I listened to Mary Beth’s customers talk about automatic teller machines as though they were an evil plot, bound to lead to bar codes on our wrists and government spies who knew everything about us—and shook my head. I watched the nightly news, full of gloom and doom about everything from the farm crisis to the increasing tensions with Russia—and told myself that they were just trying to scare us. The world was about to get better; it had to be. By the time I was my sister’s age, all of this stuff would be solved, and I’d live in a big apartment in a big city with a dome over everything to keep out nuclear bombs and keep the temperature at a perfect seventy-two degrees, hole or no hole in the ozone.

My optimism extended to everything, even my relationship with Kyle. I wanted to believe it was a good thing, even though almost every date ended with us parked on the cliffs by the river—and me fighting him off.

“Come on, Leeann,” he would say, as he tried to pull my tights down. “I can tell you’re ready.”

“I’m only fourteen,” I would remind him, thinking, I’m not a meat loaf. You can’t look at me and tell I’m ready.

I admit, I liked making out with him. Not so much the reality, which was often awkward: our noses would bump together, out front teeth would clink, I would worry about my breath when I realized his smelled like garlic and we’d eaten the same pizza. It was the idea that pleased me, that and the knowledge I had a private life my sister knew nothing about.

She had her secrets, I had mine. Then too, who knew where this could lead? It certainly didn’t seem like my great love, but maybe great loves don’t seem so great in the beginning. And so what if I was often a little bored listening to him talk about basketball and his car and the next thing he was going to buy? Everyone said I was lucky and I thought so, too. At least I wasn’t like my sister, who’d turned her back on men and romance and everything important in life.

Even her opinions grated on me now. For instance, her constant harping about the Maneater song. Right before winter break it had been the most popular song in the country and weeks later, it was still on the radio—and my sister was still talking about how much she detested it. Of course she had to listen to it, for customers, but she thought it was a very bad sign if a woman found herself stuck on
that
tune. “It’s not only anti-female, it’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard,” she said, wrinkling up her nose. “Girls chewing up boys and spitting them out? Please. Most of the girls I know barely eat in front of boys. Oh no. Can’t let themselves want anything.”

I knew she was right, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear it. It may have been her calling to figure out what was wrong with everyone and everything, but it sure wasn’t mine. I wanted upbeat, meaningless music like “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll.” I was for looking on the bright side, blooming where you’re planted, and my favorite cliché, the one I had on my key chain: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade.

“Don’t you ever get tired of all this sadness?” I asked her one Saturday. She’d just finished a long session with Frieda Jones, a weird customer who was convinced the songs in her head were literal warnings. If Frieda heard “Don’t go out tonight,” she wouldn’t. If she heard “I need you,” she’d drive herself crazy worrying that someone needed her help and couldn’t ask.

“Sure,” Mary Beth said. She was peeling potatoes for stew. Her hand was moving so fast the peels seemed to be raining into the trash can. “Not half as tired as Frieda does, I bet.”

“But it’s not your problem.”

“Yes, it is.” She looked up at me, surprised. “It’s mine because I understand it. Frieda has to live it, but I have to see how she feels and what she’s up against. And once you know, you can’t unknow.”

“I’m glad I don’t know then.”

“You don’t mean that.” She blinked and turned back to her peeling. “To me, that would be hell.”

“Hell?” I thought she was exaggerating.

“I’m not talking about the place filled with flames. I mean the hell the world is when cruelty doesn’t have a reason. When suffering is unrelenting and unrelieved by love.”

Obviously what happened with Ben had not stopped my sister from using the L word. In fact, if you’d asked her, she probably would have said she loved more people that year than at any other time in her life. Sometimes she talked about her customers as if she couldn’t even see their flaws. She called Frieda, who had to weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, “fragile.” She said Carol Dale had the “sweetest face,” even though Carol’s skin was covered in pock marks.

She was still working night and day. She had a tape deck and a Walkman now, so she could listen to her customers’ songs without waking Tommy. She kept a thick yellow pad on her night-stand; half the time when I woke up to go to the bathroom, I would see her sitting cross-legged on her bed, drinking coffee and writing notes. At one-thirty in the morning. At three-fifteen. At five, even though she had to get up at five-thirty to get Tommy dressed and make it to work.

She swore she slept plenty, but I didn’t see how that was possible. She had to be exhausted, but she wouldn’t take a day off from the diner and she wouldn’t take even an hour to get a haircut or shop for shoes with a friend. But no one seemed to see this as a problem. Even her friend Juanita accepted my sister’s excuses that she had a preschooler; of course she couldn’t go anywhere. A preschooler and a teenager, that is, because she threw me in, too, even though she said she wasn’t worried. I heard her telling Juanita and anyone who would listen that I was going to be just fine.

“Leeann’s so mature for fourteen,” my sister would say. Or, “She knows what she’s doing. I can’t imagine her getting in trouble.” Or, “She’s gifted, you know. I’ll bet she ends up with a scholarship to a great college.”

I could have felt guilty for lying to her about Kyle (and I did, sometimes), but I also felt annoyed. Why didn’t she spend time trying to understand me? Frieda Jones was important. They were all so important. What was I, chopped liver?

She was right about one thing though: I did know what I was doing. I could go with Kyle to the big party to celebrate the end of the basketball season, no problem. I was so mature, I wouldn’t be bothered by the drinking, even though I didn’t drink myself.

This was how I handled the issue—I claimed I’d tried alcohol
many
times and just didn’t like the taste. I thought it was a brilliant solution. I congratulated myself for coming up with it, especially since Kyle seemed to understand my feelings perfectly.

The party was at a huge house in the hill section, unsupervised of course. None of my friends were there, and the other girls were all cheerleaders and jock worshippers who didn’t seem to mind being either ignored or pawed or both at the same time. All the boys were either football or basketball players except for one guy, Maniac Mike, who Kyle said was only invited so the party could get “wild.” I didn’t know Maniac Mike, but I knew of him, everyone at River Valley did, because he was supposedly crazy enough to try anything—jump off a building, snort cocaine, destroy the teacher’s lounge, you name it.

In my opinion, the party was wild enough already. Every single person was drinking; some of them were already drunk when Kyle and I arrived. I’d expected beer, but this party had a fully stocked bar with vodka and whiskey and even a blender to make margaritas.

The bartender was another basketball player, Jordan McInnery. It was his fault I started drinking, but my fault I kept going. He spiked my first Coke with rum and I took a big gulp before I realized. I choked a little, which three senior girls thought was hilarious, and so I forced myself to finish, to show them. I had the second drink when Kyle brought me back a Sprite and vodka, rather than just a Sprite like I asked for. He said it didn’t taste that different, and I couldn’t argue the point in front of all those people. Maybe I was already a little drunk. I know I felt warm and a lot calmer. So what if I didn’t know anybody? I was sitting on Kyle’s lap, laughing at Ian Reynolds belching the River Valley High fight song.

I don’t know how many drinks I had altogether. It seemed like every time I finished one, Kyle was handing me another. After a few hours, I was so drunk I couldn’t walk without stumbling, and he had to help me up the stairs. He said I needed to lie down and I couldn’t disagree. I was feeling really dizzy and it occurred to me this might be what it felt like right before you passed out.

I didn’t know whose house this was, but I knew it was their parents’ bedroom when Kyle opened the door. The bed was huge with a tall oak headboard. There was a massive dresser with family pictures and powders and a weird brush shaped like a bird. And it smelled like adults. It smelled serious and stale and responsible.

Kyle closed the door and helped me to the bed. He turned off the overhead light and turned on the little lamp by the bedside table. When he started unbuttoning my shirt, I didn’t cooperate but I didn’t say no, either. My entire body felt heavy and strange, like it was asleep even though I wasn’t. And it was like he was taking care of me, helping me get undressed and into pajamas. He seemed sweet. I might have even mumbled the word “sweet” aloud.

I don’t remember him unzipping his pants. Maybe I did pass out for a moment because the next thing I knew I was being crushed by his weight and he was already trying to push himself into me.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey!”

“Relax.” His breath was coming in short gasps. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Stop it!”

When he still didn’t move, I began to struggle like mad, trying to get my elbows out from under his arms. I was thrashing my back and legs, trying to bounce him off, but he was too heavy—and too determined.

“Hold still. I can’t get it in.”

“I don’t want to!”

“Wait,” he said, moving a little to the left, and then a groan, “oh, here we go—”