"Melody, Unchained"

I try to remember my mom and stepdad as they were the day of their wedding. They were so happy… I mean, they were always happy, but that night they glowed. Mom, in her pretty, cream-colored three-piece dress set. Raymond, in his tux. All eyes were on them during that first dance- “Unchained Melody”. By the Righteous Brothers. That was their song. And the funny thing is, it was their favorite song before they even met. I was named after it ten years before they even met. That’s how I know they were soulmates. That, and the way they stared at each other that night.


It’s something how two people, different races, a decade and a half between them could, after leading separate lives, come together and be more right than anything anyone has ever seen. Like they were high-school sweethearts who knew they were right for each other their entire lives. And then, a year-and-a-half later, it all ended. Because of, of all things asinine, shoes.

It would be kind of funny if it wasn’t my life.

It was raining the day of the funeral, as it had the night I got the phone call from the hospital. It was the end of June, no less. The service was unbearably dull and long. Everyone there (many of whom I’ve never met more than once, if at all) had something to say. Kind words. Words of encouragement for “the family” (me and Jason). A couple people from their jobs got misty. And those who righteously ventured up to the podium droned on for their fifteen seconds of fame, pretending like they hadn’t written and memorized their bullshit the night before. Acting like they spoke from the heart. Expressing their “grief”. How close they were to my parents, and how their lives will never be the same without them. It was a joke.

Arlene Chase-Grier was not their mother. They didn’t spend nine months inside her, suckle her for fourteen more, and depend on her completely for everything. And the only other person in that graveyard that Raymond Grier raised was too busy being coddled and comforted by his flavor of the week to appreciate the irony.

I zoned out after most of it. I didn’t need some pedo priest to tell me how to remember my parents, how happy they were in paradise, bullshit bullshit, and I damn sure didn’t need anyone’s sympathy. All I wanted was to get the hell out of that dress and sleep and never wake up.

We dropped our white roses into the ground. They fell in slow motion, it seemed.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Amen.

“Mel- You all right kiddo?” my stepbrother asked, a hand on my shoulder.

I nodded, but the answer was ‘no’. I wasn’t all right. And I’m sure he wasn’t, either, but the difference was one of us was a twenty-eight year old man who could use sex as a memory-cleanser that night and one of us didn’t even have that.

At the very least, he had the courtesy to sneak her in and out that night, so I wasn’t visually confronted. But I could still hear their muffled groans on the way to the bathroom.

Hmm, I thought, so this is what grief-sex sounds like.

Hell, I couldn’t sleep. Big surprise, huh? And I figure he must have needed to replenish his energy. I doubt he purposely walked into that big vat of awkward that was us in the kitchen that night. He strode in wearing his robe. He didn’t go the extra mile in closing it.

“Hey…” he said in an awkward way unintentionally reminiscent of Arthur Fonzarelli, “How’s it goin’?”

Are you shittin’ me?

“I’m the happiest orphan on the block,” I deadpanned.

He frowned.

“That’s not funny, Melody.”

“Really? I thought it was...”

He swigged from the milk carton.

“I’m, uh- I’m moving back in. I hope you’re all right with that.”

“It makes sense that you would ask me after you’ve already made yourself at home.”

“Well, this is my home,” he scoffed, slightly adorable when indignant, “and I’m an heir just as well as you, so in all honesty, I don’t really have to ask.”

“So, why did you?” I challenged.

This seemed to stump him. He shrugged, folding his arms over his bare chest, thinking a second.

“I don’t know. Common courtesy?”

“Well, then, in that case, you might want to start by not drinking out of the milk carton. Night.”

In retrospect, I was a little on the not-so-nice side to Jason after our parents’ accident, but I was hurt and he was just so easy. And maybe I was a little resentful, and a little bitter. We hadn’t really existed to each other until that point. We were grown when my mom married his dad, with eleven years between us, and he wasn’t really around before then.

For the first couple of months, he did try to reach out, sweetheart he is. But I suppose someone like him was so unused to any sort of resistance from a member of the opposite sex that it jarred him. By the time I matriculated, we were back to ignoring each other.

So the happy fun time college was supposed to be? Yeah, no. I lived at home, so half the experience was shot to shit from the start. Our car was wrecked, in an impound somewhere, containing bits of my parents, so I commuted on public transit which, in Philadelphia, is like a festering sore on the anus of society. So let’s recap: my parents died the end of my senior year, and now college was getting off to a suck-ass start. I was pissed.

All the time.

And then Jason, and his perpetual partial nudity, which I wouldn’t have complained about if not for his endless stream of floozies- all of which, infinitely more attractive than myself. Christ! He’s a very good-looking man, but it was getting ridiculous. I figured he must spout absinthe from his penis or something.

The more women that came into my house, the more I began to realize just how lonely I really was. I would have liked to have had a boyfriend, but only really pretty, skinny girls can afford to be bitches. I didn’t even have a date to my senior prom, which made the entire situation extremely ironic.

But as irony is almost always entertaining in retrospect, in the present, it’s a son of a bitch. And I was just getting used to the idea that I could do whatever I wanted.

So, naturally, I drank.

I’m not going to lie. It was pretty fun at first, but I shortly realized that I was an angry drunk, at the expense of an Alpha Pi I shoved over a coffee table for looking at me funny. Thankfully, she was deathly afraid of me, because otherwise, she could have gotten me expelled. I decided it would be a lot safer to just drink at home, so the only person in danger would be Jason, and he was a sturdy 6’1”.

I don’t think he noticed for a good month or so- again, irony, he was a bartender. Something must have tipped him off later on, though. He’d been following me around giving me these sympathetic puppy-dog eyes, all that “Lean on Me” crap. But he didn’t come out and say anything until Christmas break that year. He was raiding the fridge, half-naked, as was his habit, and I was sitting at the table enjoying a bowl of Lucky Charms when he uttered a dramatic “Whoa!”

When I turned around, he was grimacing at the decanter of orange juice, holding it out in front of him like a bomb.

“Oh, that’s mine…”

“Yeah, no shit. It sure isn’t mine. What’s in this? Vodka?”

“Iunno. You’re the bartender, you tell me.”

“You mixed a whole pitcher?” he gaped incredulously, “And, like, overkilled on the vodka, by the way.”

“You know, I’m not quite seeing why you care…”

Folding his arms across his chest, “Well, because when I’m looking for OJ in the morning, I shouldn’t have to ask for a virgin.”

“Look, he made a funny.”

“And because you’re my baby sister.”

“That’s a fallacy. I’m your younger stepsister,” I corrected testily.

I hated when he called me his sister. It made me feel dirty.

“Either way,” his eyes flitted away, “It’s still my responsibility to look after you since…”

“Since our parents died,” I nodded matter-of-factly, pretending the words didn’t stab at me, “Well, here’s the thing- I’m an adult and I don’t need you or anyone else to look after me. I can take care of myself, thank you.”

“You’re doing a great job, nineteen and boozing at breakfast-“

“Look, I don’t ride your ass for being a poonhound, so why don’t you just stay the hell out of my business?”

His brow furrowed and his eyes flickered, wide and green and hurt.

“Mel, I’m just trying to-“

“WELL STOP TRYING!” I shouted, “You’re nothing to me, and I’m nothing to you-“

“That’s not true!”

His earnestness was almost heartbreaking.

He reached out a hand to me, but I swatted it away, and he sighed.

“I know you’ve been having a hard time-“

“You don’t know anything.”

“But you can’t blame yourself, Melody- MELODY!”

I vaguely remember flipping something or throwing it- the cereal box, probably, before storming out. I needed a drink.

Jason stopped bringing his women around. Either what I said got to him, or he was afraid I might snap and we’d have a dead stripper on our hands. It didn’t make me feel any better, though. It made me feel slightly guilty- him spending his nights on the couch in front of the TV, when he could have been doing whatever- whomever he wanted. There’s something even more depressing about an attractive couch potato.

I personally tried to stay out of the house. I liked there being some distance between me and the house, me and Jason. I didn’t have to deal with any of it. I didn’t have to remember. I didn’t have to feel in that seedy little campus bar that “sometimes forgot” to card. All I had to do was throw ‘em back and hope that it was true what they said about extra pounds and alcohol. It had proved right, so far.

Only thing about solitude, though, was the occasional flashback. Standard stuff mostly- distant childhood memories of my mom- memories of Ray when he was still just “that strange white man”. Every so often, the memories would be more recent things- the not-so-happy things, the angsty teenage shit that I took out on my parents. It really wasn’t their fault that I was at the brunt of checkerboard/zebra-family/jungle-fever jokes, and I knew that, but I didn’t care. Even still, they tried. My mom, especially. Prom… She had been looking forward to my prom ever since I was yea high.

That spring, it was all she could talk about. I was nonplussed. I wasn’t going to have a date. I just saw it as another necessary rite of passage, like getting your period, or slightly less pleasant. But her…

“Baby, you’re gonna look like a little princess.”

She was beaming, as she always was.

And I grunted, “Mom, even if there were anything ‘little’ about me, princesses don’t shop at Boscov’s.”

“Still, you’re gonna be beautiful, sugar.”

“I won’t even have date.”

“I’m sure Jason would love-“

“Ew, Mom. I’m not taking my stepbrother to prom,” I grimaced.

“Why not? You’d make all your little classmates jealous, him on your arm. And at least I’d know we wouldn’t get any surprises nine months from now,” she winked.

I laughed, “Ahh, Mom!”

“I’m just sayin’…”

The unmistakable “Unchained Melody” was playing when I stumbled in on Jason, on the couch, leaning forward, just staring at the TV. He probably wouldn’t have heard me even if I did speak. From over the couch, and over his head, it was Mom and Ray. They were swaying and grinning like Anna and the King of Siam. The light from the chandelier above them made Mom sparkle and Ray glow. I caught a glimpse of myself in the background, smiling. They were so happy then. And I didn’t know it until that very moment, but so was I.

Then I remembered: It was their second wedding anniversary.

Jason spoke first, through a misty smile.

“They were quite a sight, huh? Only time I ever saw my dad in a tux. He cleaned up nice, though. And look at Arlene-“

“She was beautiful,” I said softly, watching my mom’s eyes glitter up at the love it took her all her life to find.

He turned toward me, nodding.

“Well, you look just like her…” and we paused for a short, awkward moment before he patted the seat next to him, saying, “Come on. We’ll watch it together.”

I took another look at the television. Ray dipped my mom. Jason was right. I do look like her. And at that moment, he looked an awful lot like Ray.

“I’ll pass.”

And I bounded up the stairs, nearly falling over.

Sprawled on my bed, head lolled to the side, I could see the bottom of my prom dress peeking out of my closet. I hadn’t looked at it since the day I bought it, I almost forgot what it looked like. Then I remembered. It had a beaded bodice, strapless and the one detail I never forgot: it was the same color as my mom’s wedding dress, cream.

“Mom, my dress is cream.”

“Yeah?”

“These shoes are white, Mom, they don’t match.”

“Well, they don’t clash. And you’ll barely see them under the gown-”

“Mom, you’re forcing me to go to this stupid thing tomorrow- I don’t even wanna go. Can you at least get me the right color shoes so I can go looking half-way decent?”

“Well, that’s no problem. I’ll just swing back around to the store after I pick up Ray, okay?”

“Thank you.”

But I wasn’t grateful. I never was.

That was the last conversation I ever had with my mother.

By the time I had relived it several times, my face was completely wet and Jason was standing in the doorway. The front of him was all shadow, but I could still make out his wide, sage-colored eyes and the flecks of gold in his hair.

“Are you okay?” he asked gently, propped against the doorpost.

“No,” I whispered.

That was the first time I had been honest with him about anything, I realized. He sat beside me on the bed and nestled a hand in my hair. That was the first time I had ever really allowed myself to feel his touch. It was silken and gentle, and he smelled softly of sandalwood and other warm, manly smells. He leaned in close.

“It wasn’t your fault…”

“They went off the road on the way to the damn shoe store, Jason.”

“But, still-“

“Just…don’t…”

“Okay,” he sighed, defeated, “I’ll leave you alone.”

“No-“ I grabbed his hand and held it there, “Please.”

I looked up into his large eyes and couldn’t look away. In an instant, I fully understood why multitudes of women flocked after him.

I could see myself reflected in his pupils, as clear as day, and the way I was staring at him…

It was at that moment I realized why I couldn’t stand to be near Jason for extended periods of time. It was because I was Arlene and he was Raymond and I loved him, and we were going to die. People as happy and as beautiful as our parents don’t belong on Earth.

Jason watched that video every night for a week before conking out on the couch, and I would come down, every night for a week, with a blanket and cover him, kiss his lips, and watch my parents dance to “Unchained Melody” a while.

I hadn’t had a drink since that moment of tenderness Jason and I shared, simply because if I can make a revelation that heavy under the influence, there really was no need to drink anymore. But after he and I visited my parents’ grave site on the anniversary of their death, shit got too heavy. I realized that I had for the most part gotten on with my life, while they were to lay confined in the ground for all of eternity.

Because of me.

So me and Jason shared a few libations, toasting our parents until I ran upstairs to use the little girls room.

I’m not sure what impulse drove me to try on that prom dress that night, 364 days after my senior prom, but I guess that’s why it’s called an impulse. Or maybe it was the alcohol.

It still fit. I was surprised to see that I hadn’t gained or lost any weight.

Time goes by so slowly.

For a moment, it felt as if it stood still- as if it were a year ago, and my parents were waiting downstairs with a camera, and my limo was waiting outside, and Jason was going to be standing there all tall and beautiful in his tuxedo, holding my corsage and waiting to pin it on.

But when I got downstairs, my parents were still dead. I didn’t have to look out the window in order to know that there would be no limo out there- at least, not for me. The only part I had right was Jason, but he was wearing jeans and a plaid button-up, and his hands were corsageless.

But that was all right.

Mom and Ray were dancing on the TV, and he was watching them again, unaware of my presence. I wanted to keep it that way, but my foot creaked on the bottom stair and he turned around, his eyes widening and sparkling. He stood.

“Melody…Wow…Why..?“

“I wanted to see if it fit,” I shrugged self-consciously, biting my bottom lip.

“You look beautiful,” he sighed, “You look like Arlene.”

I smiled.

“And you look like Ray.”

He sighed again, smiling, his shoulders relaxing, and outstretched his hand tentatively. I simply looked at it.

“Well- uhm- Arlene Chase-Grier…” he said with an awkward grin, “May I have this dance?”

I floated toward him, my cheeks tight from smiling so hard.

“Raymond Grier, I would be honored.

We didn’t look at the TV as we held each other, swaying. We could hear “Unchained Melody” and the guests murmuring in awe. I pretended they were talking about us as I looked up into his eyes.

He smiled.

I smiled back.

Our fingers laced together slowly as our smiles faded. His hand swiped across my neck and shoulder, as he leaned, whisper-singing.

“…My darlin’…I’ve hungered for your touch… A long, lonely time…”

“And time goes by so slowly…” I whispered breathlessly, pausing to look in his eyes one more time. “I need your love… I need-“

And we kissed.

And it couldn’t have been longer than a few minutes, but time stood still again- not in the past this time.

The two seconds it took him to unzip my dress were suspended in two lifetimes as we locked eyes. And the couple hours we made love were like two eternities.

And I’m still living them.

My step-boy-brother-friend proposed to me last night. I respectfully declined. If ever I were to marry anyone, it would be him, but I don’t know if I could ever drive myself to be that selfish. To get married, have kids, have them love and depend on you, and then leave them. I don’t know. I can’t see that right now. But if I do say yes, at least I have a dress.