Heartsong (Logan 2)

"She wanted to be sure I told no one. She's afraid of a new scandal and she is so concerned about it that she wants--she practically ordered, I should say--me to come live with her and Grandpa Samuel. She forbade me to live with you."

Kenneth stared at me and, just when I thought he was going to say something, turned back to his drawing.

"The way you just raised your right eyebrow," he said, "I never saw you do that. It's interesting. It sort of indicates some mature insight. I like it, but Haille never did that," he muttered more to himself than to me.

"Did you hear what I said, Kenneth? Grandma Olivia wants me to live with her. She says it would be better for Uncle Jacob's recovery if I was living there right now, too, and it would only fan the flames of scandal if I came to live with you."

"She's right about that," Kenneth said. "Olivia's always been the sensible one, the one with solutions in that family."

"You think my moving in with her and Grandpa Samuel is the right solution?" I asked and held my breath.

"Might be," he said and turned again to his sculpture.

I stood there, fighting down a throat lump and swallowing back my tears. I had hoped he would tell me not to go to live at Grandma Olivia's. I had hoped he would insist I move in with him, that there was no other real solution, no other place I belonged but at his side. Why should he care about scandals?

"One thing's for sure," he said as he approached the marble, "you'll get the best of everything living there."

"Except love," I muttered sharply. At first I thought he hadn't heard. He just stared at his work. Then he turned and looked at me with his eyes finally focusing on me.

"Don't put too much stock in that, Melody. Love is fragile at best and often a burden or something that blinds us. It's fodder for poets and song writers and they build it into something beyond human capacity. Falling in love means enrolling yourself in the school of disappointment. Being human means failing each other often, and no two people fail each other more than two people who pledge to do things for each other that they'll never do because they're just incapable of it."

He gestured toward his sculpture.

"That's why art is enduring. The look of love or hope, or the look of compassion, bravery, whatever, is captured forever. We spend our lives trying to get someone to be as enduring as a painting or a sculpture and we can't because feelings crumble as quickly as the flesh."

"That's not true, Kenneth," I insisted.

He turned back to me and sighed. Then he shook his head and smiled.

"You know what I miss the most about my youth? My gullibility. It's nice believing in everything and everyone. It makes you feel secure, but be strong and depend more on yourself and you'll be ready for disappointments. That's the best advice I can offer you.

"Go live with Olivia. She's the real guru, not Holly with her stars and moon. Olivia can read the future better than anyone. She's the true captain of her soul and the master of her fate. She's endured and she's stronger than anyone. Disappointment withers in front of her. She can stare down disaster. My father cries in his beer, mourns his lost youth and his mistakes, while Olivia will rage on until the day she dies. And even death gets little satisfaction when it takes someone like her. For death, Olivia is a reminder that it, too, is a slave to something bigger. It's just an errand boy for Nature.

"So live with her and learn from her," Kenneth concluded. Then he took up his tools and returned to his marble creation, not seeing the tears brim in my eyes.

I sucked in my breath and left the studio. He didn't need me there, I thought. The vision is all in his head now anyway, just as he always claimed.

Holly was sitting in front of the house on a stone bench, Ulysses at her feet as she worked on a chart and thumbed through her books. When I appeared, she looked up with surprise.

"Why aren't you working?"

"There's nothing for me to do in there. You were right about him," I said.

She raised her eyebrows.

"Oh? Ignored you, too, huh?"

"Something like that."

"Were you crying?" she asked after she gazed at me closer.

"No." I turned away quickly and took a deep breath.

"Oh honey, don't let him get to you. Artists are so moody and--"

"It's okay," I said and smiled at her. "Could you take me home? I'd do more good helping Aunt Sara today."

"Sure. Oh," she said, "about your chart, the planets . . ."