The Exceptions

FIVE


I hold the door for a line of students, a group more alert and talkative than the eight o’clock crowd, follow the last one in and make my way to the restroom. I wash my hands and arms and face with astringent antibacterial soap, run wet hands through my hair until I shape it back into something recognizable, gargle with tap water. There’s nothing I can do about my thickening five o’clock shadow, my wrinkled clothes, a neck stiff from sleeping against a car window.

I quietly make my way back to the classroom where Melody had taught just moments earlier, except she and all of her students have disappeared, their replacements now getting situated in the desk chairs. Melody’s equations have been erased, nothing left but a white smear of chalk dust, no proof she ever stood at the front of the room and instructed the class, that she ever took a portion of the brilliance inside her and transferred it to those young minds. No proof. Vanished.

I walk down the hall, check each successive classroom to see if Melody is teaching another course elsewhere: nothing. At the end of the corridor, I open the door to the stairwell. Echoes of voices and lazy footsteps bounce about the cement walls, float their way down to me. I begin quietly walking up to the next floor while two males discuss the solution to a math problem. I hear their words but can make no sense of them, like strangers speaking in a foreign tongue.

But then Melody’s unmistakable voice reverberates throughout the concrete spiral: “Your methodology is sound, but you’re missing the gist. The infinite sum of terms calculated from the values of the derivatives is at a single point. If that single point was centered at zero then, yes, you would have a Maclaurin series—except in your case the center is not zero. Which means?”

No response, only footsteps and the opening of a door.

Finally, one of the boys answers, “A Taylor series?”

Melody says, “Bingo,” and the door slams shut, leaves me alone in the wake of its boom.

I run up the remaining steps and gently open the door to the top floor, know she must be on the other side. I take a deep breath and hold it, move so slowly I’d be able to avoid triggering a motion detector. From behind and to the side I see Melody leisurely stroll down the far end of the hallway, flanked on each side by the students, two textbooks pressed against her chest. Near the end of the corridor three more students wait on a bench between two large wooden office doors. They look at Melody as she heads toward them.

I can no longer hear her voice, but I can see her lips move as she turns and unlocks the door to the first office, the boys nodding every now and again as she speaks. She struggles with the door, leverages her weight against it with a shoulder, and as it opens in a burst she disappears out of view. One boy follows her in, the other sits down on the bench.

I step into the hallway, close the door behind me, hold it back so the sound of the latch is nothing more than the tick of a clock hand. Then I lumber down the hall, pretend like I’m supposed to be here, that I’m one of them, though nothing would indicate such a thing. I have no texts, no book bag, no clue where I am or what I’m doing, hope I somehow appear to be a graduate student. I’m at least ten years older than every kid on the bench, yet as I approach with obvious hesitation, the girl at the end picks up her book bag and puts it on the floor, slides over a few inches so I can sit.

She looks like she could be my brother Jimmy’s daughter—long midnight hair in a ponytail, pudgy tanned skin, large nose and eyes—right down to the faded sweatshirt and black Chucks. As I sit next to her, she turns and addresses my apparent awkwardness.

She nods and says, “You here to see Ms. Emerson?”

I stare at her. Felicia Emerson. “Yes,” I say, but the lack of moisture in my mouth makes it come out as a whisper. I clear my throat and say it again. “Yes.”

She nods some more, says, “She’s awesome. I don’t understand a thing Dr. Ames says when I attend the main lecture. But Ms. Emerson… I’d be failing this class—again—if it weren’t for her.”

I smile a little and look beyond her, at the closed door to the office.

The girl nods again, appears to be a tic that accompanies every word she says. “I really love her.”

I lean forward, rest my elbows on my knees, and drop my chin between the knuckles of my fist. “Yeah,” I say, “I love her, too.” I look back at the girl. “She has a way of explaining things, of understanding things.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says.

“Makes you want to just be around her all the time, learn everything about who she is, you know?”

She squints a little. “I… guess.” And that’s the last she says to me, never looks my way again.

After ten minutes, the office door opens and the boy finishes a sentence as he walks out, smiles a little and waves as he heads down the hall, is quickly replaced by the next student. I’ve apparently arrived in the middle of her office hours or tutoring slots, or both.

I sit idle, wait as the students come and go. I’m not on the unseen list that Melody uses for meeting with these kids, yet the students seem to understand their order, their appointment times and predetermined lengths. Melody never surfaces from the room, remains concealed behind the door like a doctor seeing her patients.

Ninety minutes later the bench has cleared. Jimmy’s daughter is Melody’s final appointment, eventually meanders out of the office and studies a paper marked up with red ink, does the nod thing as she scuffles toward the stairwell, her Chucks squeaking against the tile floor with every step.

I wait until she disappears.

The hallway is silent; I am its only visitor. I stand and take baby steps to the door of the office. I swallow twice but can’t remove the lump, take two deep breaths but can’t find any oxygen, wipe my hands against my jeans but cannot dry them of sweat.

I reach the doorway and look in from the side, see Melody standing in the far corner with her back to me. The room’s dim light is supplied by a pair of matching desk lamps, one on each of two old oak desks facing opposing walls. Posters of ancient mathematicians are affixed crookedly on the center wall above a green seventies-style couch covered in books and overstuffed folders. Melody looks down, leafs through a stack of papers. I can hear the snap of each sheet as she iterates through the pile.

I step inside and face her back, am overcome with a sense of her presence. I can smell the mix of fragrances that compose her unique formula, immediately recall the way scents change once they’ve touched her skin, no matter the original essence—roses, powder, apples—they all become her distinctive version. Today, vanilla. And with this awareness, everything resolves at once: The lump gets swallowed down, the hands go dry, the air fills with all the oxygen I could ever consume.

I lick my lips and quietly speak to her: “Felicia.”

She does not turn, but her leafing slows. She shifts her feet a little and I can see her torso inflate as she takes a deep, slow breath and holds it. The only sound between us is her page-flipping.

I say it again: “F-Felicia.”

Keeping her back to me, this time she jumps a little, as though I’d caught her by surprise, as though it was my first word spoken. One of the papers from her stack drifts to the floor as she riffles through them at a slower pace. She does not turn, does not say a thing, does not try to pick up the fallen paper. I hear her release that deep breath as a second page falls to the floor; she doesn’t bother to pick that one up either. The pages rest on the tile like the first fallen leaves of autumn; they’re hard to ignore, signal the official start to the change of season.

I say so softly it might only be audible to me, a whisper so faint I might have confused it for a thought: “Melody.”

She stops ruffling through the pages and carefully places them on a small table in front of her, slowly turns her body around and faces me, puts her hands behind her as she rests back against the table, a single tear running down each cheek.

“Oh…” she whispers. She says something else but I can’t make it out, only see her lips move in an attempt to form words, then slightly quiver just before she puts her hand to her mouth. She sighs and laughs at the same time while she studies me, a pair of fresh tears dropping from her eyes.

I take a small step forward and offer my hand and say, “My name is Michael Martin.”

She doesn’t budge, never shakes my hand. I can read her lips as she repeats my name to herself a few times, tries to affix it to the man before her. I drop my hand. She looks into my eyes like she’s trying to put me in a trance, or has somehow fallen into mine, finally says, “Nice to meet you, Michael.”

“I was wondering if—”

“Close the door,” she says.

“I…”

She brushes her bangs with her left hand and as her fingers cross her forehead, the diamonds in her wedding band sparkle and form an arc like a comet, leave a series of dots in my vision like spots from the sun.

“Close the door, Michael.”

Without turning away, I step back, reach behind me, and push the door shut.

“Lock the door, Michael.”

It takes me a second, but I eventually pull my eyes from her, find the lock and turn it.

She walks to the couch, puts her arms behind the stack of books and slides them off. They go crashing to the floor, spill into an even spread like fallen dominoes. She sits down and stares at me.

I feel like a little boy, don’t know what to say, can’t find the right place for my hands.

Suddenly, she covers her face and bursts into tears.

I walk over and kneel in front of her, rest my arms on the couch along each of her thighs and lightly hold her lower body. “You’re not in any harm,” I say. “You need to believe me. You’re safe.”

She looks up and wipes her nose and eyes. “I don’t care.”

“Everything you’ve built, all that you’ve worked for is safe, okay?”

“I don’t care.”

“I will never let anything—”

“I. Don’t. Care.” She brushes her bangs to the side again. “I love what I do. I love this place. I love all I’ve learned and all the students. But you know what this is? All of this? This is what killing time looks like. I’ve been killing time waiting for you.” Melody looks at me and touches my face like she’s not convinced I’m who she thinks I am, then throws her arms around my neck and pulls me in, holds me and shakes. I slip my hands around her frame.

“But the risks,” I say. “You know the risks.”

She whispers in my ear, “Every relationship has risks, Jonathan. Not a single one is safe.” She takes a deep breath and pulls back to look at me. “I practiced this moment a hundred times, the things I would say if I ever saw you again”—she laughs a little and more tears fall—“but I’m so unprepared, can’t think straight.”

“I—”

“I realized it too late,” she says, touching my face again, “but once I got settled out west I finally understood how I’d blown it, nearly crushed me when I realized what I’d done.” She swallows, runs her fingers through my hair and holds the back of my head. “You were my loophole.”

I study her expression, her eyes wide and searching mine for an understanding. I try to remember what she once told me, the way she defines loophole.

She can read my confusion, clarifies without my asking. “Do you remember? I never allowed myself to love anyone because I’d have to lie about who I was, could never be myself, and always feared having to one day leave that person without notice when I was pulled away by the feds. And if I chose to be honest and bring that person with me, I would’ve opened them up to all the danger of being on the run and in the line of fire, being with me. That would be the case for any man I would ever meet in my life.” She gulps hard, wipes her face, and says, “Except you.”

I shake my head a little.

“You,” she says, “knew who I was. You would always know the real me. And if anyone could handle the dangers of being on the run, it would be you. I blew it. Realized it all too late. The one man I ever truly loved also happened to be my loophole. By the time I understood, I’d already seen what you’d done on the news, what you’d surrendered to keep me alive and protected. I loved you all the more after that, was determined to be faithful. I waited and prayed you would come to me. I… waited.” Melody’s chin wrinkles and before she starts crying she pulls me in, says softly, “Never leave me again. Never, do you understand?”

I reach around her body and run my hands up her back and pull her against me, try to hold her firmly enough to stop her trembling. She does not yet know how I longed for her every day, how I waited and prayed as well, but that our circumstances, our outlook on what could’ve ever come of us differed in one major way: I lost faith. Melody, with no hope and no sign that we might ever find each other, believed in something beyond my ability and comprehension, kept her eyes open to the light while I collapsed into the cold darkness.

But now, as we share the same space, our bodies intertwined, I relinquish all power and control, allow them to be replaced with optimism and intimacy. I’m going to neither look back nor question what lies ahead. My hope exists in her grasp, in her command.

Melody and I are not heroes, not victors by any means. We are two terribly damaged individuals, cripples suffering from the same disease, cured only by being in one another’s arms.

We hold each other so tightly that neither of us can draw a breath.

“Never,” I promise.

And as with a flash from a camera, I am blurry-eyed and startled, realize Melody fulfilled my hope and prayer from so many years ago when I spirited her away from Cape Charles, that she would one day set herself free, that she would open her life to another person, that some man would get lost in her, look in her eyes, and hear not a single word she is saying, that he would pull her to his chest and lightly stroke the skin of her face and wonder, What could I have done to deserve her, that he would whisper in her ear, I will never leave you. I will love you forever.

That man is me. That moment is now.

“I promise,” I say. “I love you, Melody. I’ve loved you all my life. I will never leave you. I will love you forever.”

We loosen our grip on each other and her cheek scrapes against the stubble on my face as her lips slowly find mine.



There is a song I have never forgotten, a favorite. I heard it too few times many years ago, listened to it with a careful ear and memorized every nuance, every beat, every note. A haunting melody paired with carefully chosen words, a tune that defined a moment in my life and shaped the man I was, the man I became.

As time passed, I never experienced the joy of hearing it again, could find no station to play it, no person who could emulate the artist. How lucky I was that the song was etched in my memory, that enough bits and pieces remained so I’d never forget what it meant to me, so I’d never fail to recognize it should it return to the airwaves.

That music swirls around me now, and as it drifts through my brain it brings elation, a euphoria I thought I might never know again. This woman, the composer, so deft at her manipulation of every instrument and the intonation of every word, so easily hits the high notes and the lows, has me humming along. And as she finishes, completes the performance and waits for my response, I wipe the tears from my cheeks and close my eyes, have only one request on my lips. “If I begged, would you play it one more time?”