Melody and she stares up at me, head shaking, mouth ajar, eyes filling. “Please, no, Jonathan.”
I’m looking at her but remembering Peter’s words to me on our last phone call, the relief I felt when Tommy left the Baltimore area: Whatever Tommy Fingers was trying to get or locate was achieved—not exactly sure what it is but Eddie Gravina’s anxious for Pop to have it—and he’s now on his way back to New York.
Peter chimes in: “Geez, Johnny, please tell me you did not discuss what this family does. Did she ask you about our family? Did she ask you to cough up information about our personal business?”
My memory serves up every instance where she probed me for information about my family; the recollections drift and stop in front of me like I’m being dealt a hand of cards. Though most obvious, her simple command—“Tell me the worst thing you can tell me”—was a demand I met with such ease, an offering surrendered with a harmony of heart and mind. I gave her everything she wanted. Worst of all: As I stare at her now, I have no choice but admit I was powerless all along, that no matter how I might rewrite this story, it would always end the same.
“No, Jonathan,” Melody pleads, “this isn’t right. They’re not right.”
But the pictures cannot be denied, their proof as convincing as a bloody shoeprint. Melody reaches up to try and claim my hand, tries to gain my attention, but my eyes are locked on the image again. I drop the picture to the floor, look at the next one: Melody in Sean’s arms, looking up at his face. Drop. Melody and Sean getting out of the black vehicle. Drop. “Souvenir,” I whisper. Melody being escorted into a larger black vehicle. Drop. “That was how you knew what a souvenir was.” The vehicle disappearing down an empty, dusty road. Drop.
I feel the collective weight of my family’s shame bearing down on me; I can barely breathe, yet the only regret I have is that Melody had not been genuine with me. I wanted her love so badly I would have lied to myself, to everyone, to get it. Turns out I lied in spite of it.
“Oh, God, Jonathan, no,” Melody says. “No. I didn’t make any deal! I—”
“How did you pull this off?” I ask. “I thought you were at the spa.” She becomes a blur as my eyes fill with tears. “I thought you were waiting for me.”
Her voice shakes. “I was. I was. They came and found me and took me to some place called Safesite. I was only gone for a couple hours. They wanted me to play you, they did, but I told them I wouldn’t do it!”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
Her head shakes like she’s nervous, like she’s saying no. It takes her too long to answer, and when she does: “I don’t know.”
Pop laughs so loud it startles me, turns to my family, and says, “She doesn’t know! She’s quick, this one.” Nervous smiles fill the room. He turns to Melody and says, “What you mean to say is you tricked my son into thinking you were at a spa all day, managed to sneak out with some federal agents for a bit, then slipped back in before he ever knew you were gone. And this didn’t seem shifty to you?”
Melody looks across the range of faces in the kitchen, gets a glimpse of her tenuous future from each and every one, different scenarios that all arrive at the same denouement. Her eyes land on my face last; they’re wet and red and dim with exhaustion. She shrugs and says softly, “I just… I—I don’t know why I didn’t say anything, Jonathan. We were living minute to minute and I didn’t…”
I toss the remaining pictures—all unviewed—on the floor; Peter bends down and picks them up, starts flipping through them and comparing each image to Melody, passes them along to the rest of the crowd.
I can’t convince myself that Melody had been disingenuous, that my interpretations of her words, of her touch, were anything but real. I don’t believe the way she kissed me and held me and looked at me were false; the intimacy between us that felt so practiced was anything but manifest. Yet my father is right: Her hatred for my family has to have been so severe that she could’ve acted her way through this, a performer taught to lie and deceive