Jane's Melody Read online

  She thought ahead ten years to when she would be fifty, and he would be only thirty-five. What would people say? Would he listen to them? Would she? She heard Grace’s voice in her head, telling her that being anxious over something that hadn’t even happened yet was sure to make the thing you were worried about happen soon enough.

  “Live for today,” she always said. “Just be right here, right now, because the present is always enough.”

  Jane leaned down and touched her lips to his forehead. He stirred slightly and smiled in his sleep. Then she switched off the lamp and rested her head on her pillow, letting herself be lulled to sleep by the soft sound of his breathing.

  Chapter 12

  DESPITE HOW HER BODY ACHED from two days of almost non-stop sex, Jane had never felt better as she pulled into her Saturday morning Al-Anon meeting.

  The women inside greeted her with the same expressions of condolence she’d become accustomed to from them since her daughter had passed away. But when they saw the smile on her face, they couldn’t help but smile back and make guesses.

  “You look better than ever.”

  “You must have been to the spa.”

  Grace, on the other hand, just looked at her with a knowing grin.

  When it was Jane’s turn to share, the women were all on the edges of their seats, excited to hear what turn of events was responsible for her sudden change in mood.

  “It’s official,” she said, deciding to just throw it out there. “I’m sleeping with my gardener.” She paused to watch several of the woman nod to their neighbors, as if to say ‘I told you so,’ and then she added: “Plus, as I’m sure some of you know from me sharing last week, he’s fifteen years younger than I am.”

  Several women gasped.

  “But he really is an old soul, and I feel more comfortable with him than I have with any other man, maybe ever. But something’s eating at me, too. I’m happier than I can remember being, but I don’t feel entitled to it. Sometimes I get this stab of grief about my daughter, and it almost seems like I’m a terrible person for being happy. I mean, it hasn’t been that long since Melody passed. Shouldn’t I still be racked with grief? Shouldn’t I be tortured every day like I was just a few weeks ago? Am I being selfish? These questions keep popping up in my mind. Anyway, I’m just putting it out there to hear myself say it—to take the power out of it—because as my wise sponsor here Grace always says, ‘You’re only as sick as your secrets.’”

  After the meeting some of the ladies went to the local diner for coffee and pie. Jane tagged along and snagged a seat next to Grace and waited for a private moment to talk.

  “So you think it’s all right?”

  “Do I think what’s all right, sweetie?”

  “Me and Caleb?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Do you?”

  “You think it isn’t?”

  “I’m just happy that you’re moving forward, J. Wherever that leads you. Just trust your gut and don’t be secretive. That’s the only advice this old lady has for anyone anymore.”

  “Come on, you’re not that old.”

  Grace reached to her bag and held up the half-knitted scarf she’d been working on during the meeting.

  “Not that old? Really? I’m knitting, Jane. When did you all let me start this up anyway? And you’re not the only one who wants a personal midlife crisis musician lying around her house, either. My old strings could use a little plucking too, if you know what I mean? Sex is a rumor for me.”

  Jane just shook her head and laughed.

  WHEN SHE GOT HOME Caleb was gone and so was her bicycle. For a brief moment her heart sank, thinking maybe he had left for good. But she found his clothes and his guitar right where they always were in his room, so she figured he must have just gone out for a ride.

  She sat for a while on the small bed and looked at the pink walls. She could see the brush strokes where the light hit, and she recalled with perfect clarity the day she had painted them, singing to entertain Melody, who had watched from her crib. It had been a big step to move her from the co-sleeper in her room, and she remembered coming back here to check on her every half hour for the first several nights. Melody had always been a difficult baby, often crying for hours for no apparent reason. Colic, the doctors had said. But Jane couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t something wrong with her even then, something that the drugs and alcohol had finally relieved when she found them—until they conspired to kill her, of course.

  Jane had heard addicts share about never having felt quite right until they first discovered their drug of choice. The idea filled her with an immense guilt, not just for being unable to arrest the progress of her daughter’s disease but for possibly having passed it on to her in the first place.

  As she looked around the room, she decided it was time to let go of the past, at least symbolically. She got up and went to her car and drove to the hardware store.

  Ralph wasn’t working, but an energetic young man she hadn’t met before helped her pick out several gallons of latte-colored paint with primer, along with the rollers and brushes she’d need to do the job. She was driving back home when she came upon Caleb riding her bicycle on the side of the road, the back of his shirt drenched with sweat. She slowed beside him and rolled down the passenger window.

  “You must be training for the Tour de France,” she joked.

  Caleb laughed.

  “How’d you guess?”

  “I figure if that Armstrong guy can win it while he’s on drugs, imagine how well you could do clean and sober.”

  “I think my outfit is a little wrong, though,” he said. “I’d need to get one of those costumes. You know, the ones with the flags of the world and all that.”

  “Maybe I’ll sponsor you,” she said.

  “Maybe I’d like that,” he replied.

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Just for a ride.”

  “A ride where?”

  A car pulled up behind Jane’s and honked. She looked in her rearview mirror and realized that they were taking up nearly both lanes, so she smiled at Caleb, sped off and continued home. She parked in the garage and got out and leaned against the back of her car, waiting. Before long Caleb came pedaling onto her street and turned into the driveway.

  “You look exhausted,” she said. “How far did you go?”

  Caleb stowed the bike, came around the car, and kissed her. The combination of coffee on his breath and the smell of his sweat turned her on. When she pulled away and looked him over, she noticed that he had wood chips caught in his hair.

  “What on Earth have you been up to?” she asked. “And why won’t you answer me? You’re being sneaky.”

  “I’m not being sneaky.”

  “Then where were you?”

  “I went over to Mrs. Hawthorne’s place.”

  “You little sentimental sap. You rode all the way over there and stacked that wood for her, didn’t you?”

  “I was bored is all,” he said. “Besides, it was sure to rot where she had it.”

  “Did the old nag at least thank you?”

  “She’s not that bad.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  Caleb laughed.

  “She said she couldn’t afford to pay me, but she wanted to give me a little reward. So she gave me this.”

  He dug in his pocket and pulled out a small, worn, pewter figurine of a man playing a trumpet. Jane noticed a weathered piece of tape on its base that read: 1963, 55 CENTS.

  “Generous of her,” Jane said.

  Caleb took it back and laughed again.

  “I told her I was a musician, and she dug through twenty boxes to find it. I thought it was nice. You’d be surprised at all the stuff she’s got saved up.”

  “Nothing would surprise me about her.”

  She opened the trunk, taking out her cans of paint.

  “Well,” she said, “it looks like your poor hands could use a break from yard work. You want to help me paint?”


  “What are we painting?”

  “Melody’s room.”

  Caleb looked at her for a moment.

  “You sure you want to do that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then I’d love to help,” he said.

  They moved the bed and dresser into the hall and spent the afternoon taping off the walls and painting over the pink. It was a strange feeling for Jane to see the past disappear beneath the sweep of her paint roller, the pink being covered up one pass at a time. When there was only a small corner of pink left on the final wall, she hesitated with her roller in her hand. She stood there for a long time and paint began to collect beneath the roller and drip down the wall.

  Then she felt Caleb’s arms wrap around her from behind, and she felt his gentle kiss on her neck.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too.”

  Jane hadn’t planned to say it; the words just slipped out.

  And the moment that they did, she knew she could never call them back again—that with those three simple words she had committed her heart into Caleb’s care, to nurture or ruin at his will. She felt vulnerable, but she also felt good—as if she had given up control and was finally willing to trust.

  Trust the universe.

  Trust destiny.

  Trust Caleb.

  He reached up and wrapped his strong hand around hers on the handle of the paint roller, and together they pushed it up the wall and erased the final stretch of pink. Then he took it from her hand, set it down in its tray, and rose to take her in his arms and kiss her. They stood kissing for a long time. Jane felt an unbearable need to consummate her declaration of love, to fully surrender to him there and then.

  She pulled him to the ground, kissing him. She struggled to remove her pants, got them half off, and then undid his belt and his zipper. They lay intertwined on the floor amidst the old sheets she’d used to protect the carpet and the nearly empty buckets of paint, each of them half-clothed and lost in the absolute worship of the other.

  He entered her and she felt complete, as if they had been made to fit together, as if they had always been one and had only been separated by the illusion of space and time until this surrender brought them together again. Jane looked up into his eyes and silently promised never to add to the pain she saw there, and she swore by his expression that he had understood.

  Before long, she felt it coming on, and she let it happen—allowing her body to completely surrender to the moment as she lay beneath him seized in the glorious grip of an orgasm for nearly a minute, and then he came too. She felt the warm flood of his relief enter her, and she heard the whimper of ecstasy that parted his perfect lips.

  They embraced on the floor, peaceful and drained.

  Jane smelled the drying paint mixed with the sweet scent of their sex, and she wrapped her arms around him tighter and buried her head in his neck and breathed him in. She kissed his sweaty skin, tasting his salt and a hint of the outdoors.

  If she could just lie like this forever, she thought. Forever wouldn’t be nearly long enough.

  Chapter 13

  HAPPINESS SPED THE CLOCK—at least that’s what Grace always said, and Jane guessed she must be right because the next several weeks passed like a dream.

  With her savings running low, and not wanting to dip into her small retirement plan, Jane began taking sales calls from her company again. It turned out to be a good thing, because it got her thinking about other people and their needs rather than obsessing about her own misfortune about the death of her daughter. Whenever someone she knew brought it up, she felt a little guilty because she wasn’t as sad as she thought she should be. But Grace had told her there was no wrong way to grieve, and Jane supposed that she was right about that, too.

  Caleb spent his days working in the backyard, making fast progress. The blackberries and Scotch Broom were soon gone, and he had started to have hay bales delivered so that the goat could eat. Some evenings, if she was home early, or he was working late, Jane would join him to help, and she found the physical labor refreshing. The weather was unseasonably nice for Washington, broken only by an occasional spring shower. Even then the rain seemed only to wash everything clean.

  They rented a gas-powered tiller, and she sat in a lawn chair with a cup of coffee and watched as Caleb guided it across the yard, his strong back moving away from her, his sexy smile coming back. She never thought she could love a man so much. There seemed to be nothing he couldn’t do, and it made her feel safe to have him around. It wasn’t just his work ethic that she loved; he was sweet and kind also. She caught him on several occasions sneaking over to Mrs. Hawthorne’s place on her bicycle, and she guessed he was doing work for her there, too, or perhaps just keeping her company.

  “I’m getting a little jealous,” she had joked with him one night when he came back from there. “I know how much you like mature women, and Mrs. Hawthorne is much more mature than I am.”

  He had just smiled and kissed her.

  On another afternoon, she called him in from the yard and sat him down with her laptop open and asked him questions as she filled out a health insurance quote form.

  “What do you need all this information for?” he asked.

  “I’m getting you a health insurance policy.”

  “What? Why? I’m healthy as can be.”

  “I know, but what if something happens?”

  “To me? Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “You never know,” she said. “I meet with people all the time who’ve lost everything because they got sick or injured and were underinsured.”

  “But I don’t have anything to lose.”

  “Well,” she said. “You’ve got me. And I’ve got you. And if you get sick, I want you taken care of.”

  “Fine,” he said, relenting. “But you have to promise you’ll take the premium out of my pay.”

  “With all these deductions you’ve got me making, you’ll be lucky to have anything left,” she joked. “You might have to keep working for me forever.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe,” she said, smiling.

  On a particularly hot and sunny day, she came home from an afternoon appointment and found him working on a strange project. He had staked overlapping black, plastic garbage sacks into the ground, making a sort of long runway down a natural slope in the backyard, leading to the creek.

  “What’s this?” she asked, handing him an iced tea.

  He drained the tea, crunched the ice between his teeth, and handed her back the glass. Then he hooked his hands on his hips and looked down on his project with pride.

  “My original plan was to make a foot path down to the bridge there. Maybe with garden stones and some ground cover between them. Anyway, the bags are to keep the seed I’m about to spread from taking hold where I want the path. But while I was doing it, I had an idea.”

  “An idea for what?”

  “Go put a bathing suit on, and I’ll show you.”

  “A bathing suit? Why?”

  He leaned over and kissed her.

  “Don’t you trust me, baby?”

  The way he said “baby” would have made her do just about anything, so she smiled and went to change.

  When she came out again, wearing her favorite bikini, she stood near the house in the shadow of the roof, feeling shy. He looked her up and down and whistled. The goat raised its head and bleated out from the corner of the yard, either responding to Caleb or adding its own approval to her swimwear.

  Caleb walked a circle around her.

  “If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I might just think you were trying to seduce your gardener.”

  “Maybe I am, but it isn’t fair that I’m standing here nearly naked and exposed, and you’re still dressed.”

  He immediately peeled off his shirt and tossed it aside.

  Jane looked at his strong chest
and his shredded abs and she felt a familiar ache that she knew he could relieve. Then he stepped out of his pants and stood before her wearing nothing but his boxers. She wanted to take him inside that second.

  “Better?” he asked.

  She looked him up, then down, and nodded. But when she reached for him, he stepped away and held up his finger.

  “No, you don’t. I’m not going to let you distract me from my project, you sexy siren you.”

  He turned on the hose and dragged it over to his runway of plastic bags and sprayed them wet. Then he locked the hose head on spray, laid it down, and let the water run the length of bags until it spilled into the shallow creek.

  “I still don’t understand what you’re doing,” Jane said.

  “Didn’t you have a Slip ’n Slide when you were a kid?”

  Jane threw her head back and laughed.

  “Are you telling me you’ve spent your whole day back here making a Slip ’n Slide?”

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” he said.

  “I’m not going down that thing.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  He lunged forward and dove onto the plastic bags and slid down them, landing in the creek with a splash. Then he stood up, laughing, and shook water from his hair.

  “Come on,” he called, “I’ll catch you.”

  Jane stepped up to the slide and hesitated. She felt silly even thinking about it. She looked around to see if any of her neighbors could see them, but the trees were flush with leaves, providing complete privacy in her yard.

  “Don’t be a chicken,” Caleb called.

  She crouched down and jumped onto the slide, surprised by how slick it was and how fast she slid. She plunged off the end and into Caleb’s waiting arms—he cut her laughter off with a passionate kiss. She felt carefree, standing waist-deep in the creek and wrapped in her lover’s arms. She felt young again.

  They climbed out and scampered up the hill and slid down again, splashing one another and then wrestling in the creek. The goat stood watching them from above, chewing its hay, as if they were little more than a curious distraction from its meal. They played for nearly an hour, until the slide was covered with mud, and their skin was rubbed raw from the plastic. Then they hosed each other off, went inside, and made love on her bed.