If they stared, she’d ignore it. If they frowned, she’d smile sweetly in return. And if someone murmuredCommie!as they walked past her, she’d wish them a merry Christmas.
She wouldn’t engage, wouldn’t cause a scene, wouldn’t draw attention, wouldn’t linger. She’d do as June suggested and watch other mothers shop for toys for their little ones. Then she’d pick something up for Elwood and perhaps something for June, too. Maybe a fountain pen for Elwood; he had told her once he thought fountain pens made him write better. That had made them both laugh.
Some fancy bath salts for June, perhaps?
And she’d get something for poor Eva, too. A little bracelet, maybe. Something pretty.
Melanie had been alone, angry, and afraid when the Gilberts’ house had become her home, and she’d assumed she’d make no friends living there, secluded as it was and Carson’s cautions making her uneasy about meeting new people. It amazed her now as she stepped inside the department store how different she was beginning to feel about the place where Carson had dumped her. The house had grown on her, surprisingly enough.
And not just the house—also a sense of belonging was starting to fill her that she would never in a million years have thought would happen.
That first day completely on her own at the Gilberts’ house had seemed like it would never end.
When the sun finally set on that hot July day, Melanie knew she was going to need to make a schedule for herself of what she was going to do to fill her days—and nights—and she needed to do it quickly or she would seriously lose her mind. The following morningon Day Two, she made the list in fifteen-minute increments, from the time she got up in the morning until she clicked off the light for bed. Every activity was on the list, no matter how mundane. She wanted the daily record to be long so that she could feel a sense of accomplishment as each item was checked off, even if it was just teeth-flossing, exercising with Jack LaLanne on the TV in the living room, playing rounds of solitaire, andnoteating the peach melba ice cream Carson had included in the first grocery delivery.
On Day Three, Carson called, and she wrote in the activity and checked it off:
Talked to Carson.
She watched the paid gardener mow the front and back lawns in diagonal lines, and she shooed a spider outside and plunked out a melody on the baby grand in the far corner of the living room:
Watched the grass being mowed.
Saved a spider’s life.
Figured out the notes of “Mr. Sandman” on Mrs. Gilbert’s piano.
On Day Four, she added to the daily list to stand on the backyard patio in the mornings for an hour and recite the lines she still remembered from her high school plays.
It was while she was engaged in this activity on the sixth day of her Exile in Paradise, as she was starting to call it, that she first heard Elwood Blankenship’s voice.
She was reciting all of Gwendolin’s lines—the ones she could recall—fromThe Importance of Being Earnest. She’d just spoken the words, “Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quitecertain that they mean something else. And that makes me so nervous,” and was imagining in her mind the character Jack’s reply when suddenly that line was floating her direction from across the fence.
“I do mean something else,” the voice said.
Melanie was only momentary startled into silence. But she was far too curious and hungry for human interaction to think how strange it was for the next-door neighbor—whom she hadn’t even met yet—to be listening in on her, and then, on top of that, playing her little game. She faced the fence and delivered Gwendolin’s next line.
“I thought so. In fact, I am never wrong.”
Jack’s reply glided across to her. “And I would like to be allowed to take advantage of Lady Bracknell’s temporary absence.”
Melanie took a step toward the fence. “I would certainly advise you to do so. Mamma has a way of coming back suddenly into a room that I have often had to speak to her about.”
The next line wafted over the fence as she took another step.
“Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl…I have ever met since…I met you.”
Melanie grinned at the line everyone always laughed at and took a third and fourth step: “Yes, I am quite well aware of the fact. And I often wish that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative. For me you have always had an irresistible fascination. Even before I met you I was…I was…”
She couldn’t recall the rest of the line. But she was at the fence now and peering over it. She could see a trim, well-dressed man, gray at the temples, sitting in a kitchen chair at the open door to his own patio. The front legs of the chair were just over the threshold. He was as close to the outside of a house as one could be while still being inside it.
This was the screenwriter who never left his house. She’d seen his last name on his mailbox at the curb. Blankenship.
He was leaning slightly forward in his chair, and a cat was rubbing a cheek on his pant leg. The man smiled lightly with a closed mouth.
She smiled back and then tried the line again. “I was…”
But the rest wouldn’t come.
