The Melody Lingers On Read Online Free PDF

his mother’s glass and filled it. “You may be pleased to know that I invited her to have dinner on Saturday night and she
accepted.”
    Anne Bennett smiled, a genuine smile. “Oh, Eric, that’s nice. She’s so pretty and I can see how smart she is. She made me feel so comfortable. That Glady Harper may be doing us
a favor, but she intimidates me.”
    “I suspect she intimidates everyone, Mother, even me,” Eric joked.
    Anne Bennett looked affectionately across the table at her son. Then her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Eric, you’re the image of your father. I so often think about how we met purely
by happenstance. We were both going down the subway stairs. It was raining and the stairs were slippery. I slipped and almost fell. He was on the step in back of me. He grabbed me by my waist and
held me against him and that was the beginning.
    “He said to me, ‘You are so pretty. Why do you look familiar?’
    “I told him I had just started working as a secretary at the same firm where he worked. We went down the steps and he walked me to my train. A few days later he called and asked me out.
That was it. When he proposed, he said that the moment he put his arms around me that day, he knew he would never let go of me again. I was dating someone else, but it didn’t matter. He was
history the day I met your father.”
    It isn’t a blessing to be the image of my father, Eric thought. I can hardly go anywhere that people don’t turn their heads and look at me. But what was more unsettling was that his
mother repeated that story over and over again. His parents had been married eight years before he was born. His mother was now almost sixty-seven years old. He was beginning to wonder if she might
be in the early stages of dementia.
    Another problem, he thought.
    “Do you want your coffee in the sitting room, Mrs. Bennett?” Marge asked as she began to clear the table.
    The sitting room was the new name for the den that had been designated for the help.
    “Yes we do,” Eric answered.
    “I’ll have another glass of wine,” Anne Bennett said.
    Eric frowned. Lately his mother had been drinking too much wine. The house is dreary and desolate, he thought. It will be good when she moves to Montclair next week. Once Mother is settled
there, I think her spirits will be much better.
    He guided his mother by the arm as they walked down the hall. But when they went into the room he was startled to see that the music box his father had given to his mother long ago was on the
mantel.
    Anne Bennett reached up and took it down. “I love to hear it play. I know I told you it was the first present your father gave to me. It looks expensive but in those days it was only about
thirty dollars. We both loved to dance. The figures dancing when the music plays are Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra. But of course you know that.”
    No, I don’t remember that, Eric thought. He did remember that the ornate little music box had been on his mother’s dressing table for years. He had never been around when she played
it.
    As Marge brought in a tray with coffee, his mother lifted the lid of the box and the figures of the doomed couple began to dance.
    “I don’t know if you will recognize it,” his mother said. “It’s my favorite Irving Berlin song. It goes like this.” She began to sing softly. “
‘The song is ended but the melody lingers on.’
    “Whether or not your father is alive or dead, our song is not ended and our melody lingers on,” she said, her voice fierce and allowing no room for contradiction.

9

    O n Friday morning Lane made her usual stop at Glady’s office and was surprised to see Glady poring over paint chips and swatches of
materials.
    She opened the conversation in her usual brusque manner. Holding up one of the chips, she said, “You’re right. This deep blue is too dark for Anne Bennett’s bedroom. But
you’re wrong about going to another color. The answer is to put white