The Other Melody

As Melody Harmon walked victorious from the courtroom, she ignored the waves of her parents, who wished to talk with her. She preferred to savor the small, warm tension of victory in her stomach. This feeling was destined to repeat itself throughout her legal career.

Alone in her car, she tuned the radio to 103.1FM, Kane County's Classic Rock Party. She chose this station on the basis of some highway billboards that combined the voluptuous silhouettes of electric guitars with the names of great bands from the sixties and seventies. Those names, along with the song titles that flashed on the digital display of the car radio, were to Melody nearly self-sufficient pieces of poetry: "The Rolling Stones," "Since I've Been Loving You," "I Saw Her Standing There." Melody looked for a moment into the empty passenger seat, then drove to her apartment.

* * *

The jury awarded Melody forty million dollars in damages in the case Harmon v. Harmon. This judgement effectively bankrupted Mark and Judy, her parents. It would force them to sell the little parcel of land on which they used to garden and raise their child. After that, they would have to look for more lucrative work just to have paychecks worth garnishing. The difficulty of their situation would fulfill Melody's lifelong dream of punishing them for the many injustices they had inflicted on her.

(Melody, recently admitted into the bar association of Illinois after a legal education at her own expense, was qualified to represent herself in court. Mark and Judy, whose entire education consisted of a year and a half of community college between the two of them, a mountain's worth of travelogues and mystery novels borrowed over the course of several decades from the public library, and some rudimentary advice now and then from the proprietor of a neighboring gentleman's farm, were not really qualified to act as lawyers on their own behalf. Nevertheless, they went into the sixteenth circuit court of Illinois pro se because they didn't have the money for a lawyer and because they thought that a lawyer's expertise would be irrelevant to their strategy of appealing to the basic humanity of the judge and jury. Their notions of familial love and loyalty were defenseless against a legal case constructed from the steel springs of their daughter's mind.)

Melody successfully argued that the incompetence of her parents in the course of raising her had severely diminished her future employability and earning power while also inflicting life-long emotional distress. Out of the many instances of neglect, she selected the following three as the most significant:

–When Melody was in college, she requested but did not receive assistance from her parents to meet the additional costs of her wardrobe, hair, and makeup. Mark Harmon believed that he did enough for her by building her dorm-room bunk bed out of plywood and two-by-fours and by buying the books for her first semester of classes. Without the proper assistance, Melody was unable to gain membership in a sorority. This robbed her of a network of social contacts which could otherwise have provided personal happiness and might have formed the basis of a professional career.

–Throughout grade-school and high-school, Melody's parents relegated her to the public education system, which employed only one speech therapist for over ten thousand students. Melody saw this therapist for a single hour every other month. Her awkward and glottal attempts at friend-making did not improve between kindergarten and sixth grade. At that time, the Harmons sued the school district and won. This was, for Melody, a pyrrhic victory. In order to pay for a full-time speech therapist, the district cut its entire music program, thus putting Mr. Fellows, an extremely attractive and popular choir teacher, out of a job. While Melody's speaking voice improved thanks to her three-times-weekly therapy sessions, she was known and hated as the "music-killer" among the girls who had formerly populated the school choir. (Melody had hitherto hoped– longed– to be a part of that choir.)

–Bill Frisch, the father of Judy Frisch, was born deaf. When Judy met Mark Harmon, it seemed like a pleasant coincidence that he was raised by an uncle who was also deaf. Mark and Judy enjoyed communicating by sign language in public. They pretended it was their secret code. This familiarity added to the intimacy of their eventual marriage. What Mark and Judy failed to grasp was that their families suggested a one-in-six chance that any child they had would also be congenitally deaf. By haphazardly reproducing, they played god with the same odds as someone playing Russian roulette.

When Judy got pregnant, she and Mark studiously avoided the office of the genetic counselor. This office was right down the hall from their obstetrician of choice. The records of that obstetrician show that he suggested the services of this person to Mark and Judy, who demurred. At that time, Melody's deafness was a condition which could have been detected and, when found, prevented by means of a safe and legal procedure.

* * *

The court agreed that by not taking the necessary steps to detect and prevent a difficult condition which their family histories made likely, Mark and Judy Harmon demonstrated a severe neglect of their eventual child. Because of their malice, Melody was not all that she could have been. This diminution, the court decided, was worth about forty million dollars.

The verdict ratified Melody's nearly religious belief that a better version of herself existed. Her perfect self had been rendered unrealizable because of choices made before her birth. Still, she did exist, Melody was sure of it. The other self talked clearly. She was always able to make friends, she sang in the middle-school choir, she looked as pretty as she wanted, she joined a sorority in college, she got a satisfying and well-paying job. When she drove home from work, she listened to music. Melody could swear, when she played the radio and focused on the road, that she saw the upraised hands and rhythmically shrugging shoulders of herself in the passenger seat, dancing to the Rolling Stones.

Poor Boy Blues

Fear of Perfection

I don't normally fear perfection, because I'm unlikely ever to achieve it. This partially the result of my own efforts. I scarf down cheeseburgers and keep my music ragged with half a thought that Adonis and Jesus died because they were too good at what they were and did. There is, however, one part of my life that threatens to become so good I wouldn't belong in it: my office.

My office is the result of a multi-year process of furniture acquisition, disposal, rearrangement, and modification. The changes in my office tend toward the smaller and simpler thing. I traded in a five-ton, particle-board-and-laminate desk– a bona fide Ohisian antique with drawers and roll-out surfaces that could have put another respectable hole in the Titanic– for a narrow stand of shelves. I replaced a wheeled office chair that had levers and hydraulic adjustments with a pine dining chair.

These spurts of acquisition are relatively rare. More frequently, I decide that the acoustics or ergonomics of my office are all wrong, so I shove the desk from one end to the middle, or from the middle to the corner, I rearrange all the bookshelves, I raise or lower my computer screen, I change the microphone stands around, and I rewire my mixer and speakers. All this within about 70 square feet.

I was perfectly happy with this ongoing draft of an office. I liked shaking it up every two or three weeks. Every time I moved things around, it was like moving to a new place. I decided what I needed and didn't need, cleared out some piles of papers, and really thought about which things I wanted to have quick-to-hand and what I wouldn't mind walking ten feet to look for.

I almost have it. Now that I found place for my computer mouse, I can almost see not having to move or change anything else. This worries me because, as I said, I like moving things around. What if my self-made environment is a reflection of my mind? I'm fine with most of what that implies: pieces from my grandparents, a shelf full of books I hardly remember, a general sense of precarious half-assedness. But if I never have to move or clear this space out, it will never change. Will my mind never change? Will it calcify under a mudslide of just-right arrangement?

Two consolations: I will certainly have to move, for real, sometime in the near future. Grad school runs out, real life calls. I plan to populate a house away from the city, preferably by some woods. That will be a process. Second, I will never be satisfied. (This is a consolation.) I am judging from the evidence of my entire life so far: there is always another desk I want to make, a better position for the microphones, and a new way to write. Thank goodness: nothing to be afraid of.

Jezebel in Repose

I'm going to have to read some Charles Bowden, now that I've heard this episode of "Hearing Voices." Bowden's voice reminded me of this song, written a few months ago: