Melody Crumbley's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The station wagon rolled down the cracked road. Melody sat with Mr. Boots on her lap. She pinched the glass eye into the socket. It slipped out. She pushed it in again. It rolled onto her knee. The rabbit's face looked worse than before, the eyelid puckered around a hole that would not hold. She sniffed. Her chest hitched. The wailing was starting to come back up her throat. "Don't," Marge said from the front, not turning around. "Don't you start again. I swear to God." Dexter kicked the back of the seat and grinned at her. "It's gonna fall out on the floor and roll under Daddy's pedal." "Shut up." Melody clamped her hand over the socket. In the far back, Edith sat wedged against the door. Her thick glasses hid her eyes. She had been mumbling since the pump. Melody had learned not to listen. Grandma talked to the ceiling and the ceiling never talked back. But now Edith turned her head. The lenses caught the light. "Girl," she said. Clear as a bell. Marge glanced in the rearview. "Ma, hush." Edith ignored her. She held out one spotted hand toward Melody. The fingers opened and closed. "Give it here." Melody stared. Grandma had not spoken a real word to her in as long as she could remember. Just noises about a war nobody could name. Melody crawled over the seat with the rabbit and the eye in her fists. Edith took Mr. Boots. Her hands were steady. She turned the rabbit under the window light and studied the ragged socket like a woman reading a price tag. "Needle," she said. "We don't have one, Grandma." Edith lifted her chin. She reached up and pulled a hairpin from the white bun at the back of her head. A wisp of hair fell loose. She bit the plastic tip off the pin and spat it on the floor mat. Then she plucked a long thread from the hem of her scarf and wet it in her mouth. "Ma, what are you doing back there," Marge snapped. "Fixing it," Edith said. Melody held her breath. Edith threaded the hairpin. She pushed the sharpened metal through the felt above the socket. The point came out clean. She looped the thread around the glass eye's rim, drew it snug, and knotted it against the rabbit's cheek. Three more stitches. A tug. A bite to cut the thread. She handed Mr. Boots back. The eye sat where it belonged. It did not slide. It did not roll. Mr. Boots looked at Melody with two eyes for the first time in a year. Melody's mouth fell open. "Grandma." Edith settled back against the door. Her glasses tipped forward again. But she watched Melody now, alert, waiting. "Don't tell your mother," she whispered, "that I can hear her."