Change of Heart (26 page)

“It's … lovely.”

“Hard to see much at night,” he said.

Touché, Sharlie thought, and looked at Brian.
Despise,
that's the verb form of
contempt.

“Well, got to be up at five
A.M.
,” John Morgan said. He nodded to them both, said good night, and left the room abruptly. Sharlie could hear his steps receding up the stairway somewhere in the back of the house. She looked at Brian, trying to keep the dismay out of her face.

“Warm fellow,” he said grimly, taking a swallow of beer.

“He's a little … shy,” Sharlie said, and Brian hooted, nearly choking on his sandwich. Her voice rose a little in protest. “He has to be nice. He looks so much like
you.”

“Yeah, well, my brother looks like Dracula, and he's about the nicest kid on two feet,” Brian said.

“Are we going to see them, you think?” Sharlie asked.

“Probably don't even know we're here.” At Sharlie's exclamation of disbelief, he went on, “Unless Dad happened to run into them out in the fields. And they happened to ask if he'd heard anything from me lately.”

Suddenly she was overwhelmed by the excitement of the day, the long trip, meeting Brian's father at last. She thought she couldn't possibly hold herself upright at the table for one more second. She must have looked as feeble as she felt, because Brian set his sandwich down and said softly, “Where's your medication?”

“Suitcase,” she answered.

He pushed back his wrought-iron chair with a scrape and went to fetch her pills. He returned with the special travel kit he had bought her for the trip, a square canvas case that held her bottles in neat compartments. Her instruction sheet was enclosed, and Brian read the directions under 10
P.M
. She sat quietly while he sorted the drugs. Then she swallowed them down with a large glass of lukewarm water.

“I'm going to put you to bed,” he said, helping her up.

She didn't protest, just leaned against him and let him lead her upstairs to Brian's and Marcus's old room. The two youngest boys had lived together until Brian left for college, and their beds were still there, neatly made up with plaid blankets. Sharlie sank down on the bed farthest from the door. Brian smiled at her.

“This was yours?” she asked. He nodded. “Don't you want it, then?”

“No, I like seeing you on it.”

“I don't know if I can get undressed,” she continued, smiling apologetically. He undid her buttons and draped her clothes across the cane chair by the window. Then he opened their suitcase, pulled out her nightgown, and put it over her head, lifting her arms through the sleeves. It hung loosely on her, and she knew that when she stood, it dragged on the floor a little now, as if she had shrunk in stature.

She kept her face averted for fear that he would see her tears, and said softly, to explain her hanging head, “Wow, I'm wiped out.”

Brian went to get an extra blanket out of the closet, and when his back was turned, she quickly drew her sleeve across her cheeks. By the time he returned, she could show him a dry face. He snapped off the table lamp, and moonlight streamed in the high windows.

“Want me to pull the shade?” he asked, cupping her face with his hands as he stood over her.

“No,” she said fervently. He bent down and kissed her on the top of her head.

“Sleep tight. See you in the morning.”

She smiled, and he left her, closing the door quietly behind him. She tugged feebly at the blankets but didn't have the strength to pull them back far enough to crawl in. So she lay back on the rough wool and gazed out the window at the silver light.

She had thought sleep would be instantaneous, but she found her mind whirling with memories of the trip. Often after a special event she would spend the hour before sleep sorting through the day's images. The habit reminded her of the rainbow jukebox she'd seen when she was a child. Walter had shown her how to slip a quarter into the slot and choose three songs—J-6, K-5, M-11. The lights would flash, the machine's long arm stretching to select the favorite tune. Mechanical fingers laid the record precisely onto the turntable in full view of Sharlie's enchanted eyes.
Number J-6, as you wish, little girl.

Today had added dozens of new selections to her collection. She would begin at A-1 and work her way through, relishing them one by one, playing them over and over if she chose, until she knew them all by heart.

This house. That was A-1. Despite her aching exhaustion, she could barely wait until morning to explore the rambling old place. So remarkable to think of Brian growing up here, playing on the floor in the kitchen under his mother's feet, reading by the fireplace in the sitting room, where, she imagined, his father had waited tonight, this bedroom with its ghosts of childhood and adolescence—the dreams and yearnings and heartbreaks suffered here by someone whose life had shaped hers so profoundly. Brian and Marcus murmuring back and forth in the dark with sleepy, conspiratorial voices—Brian, the little boy she could sense so vividly in the shadows of the old house.

The place touched her deeply, as if by visiting here she was in some way sharing the beginning of Brian's life. She imagined the child Brian, his small fingers exploring the worn books in the shelves between the beds. She heard his young voice, eager to please, calling out to his mother with some new discovery, smelled the odor of his boy's body as he tumbled on the floor, wrestling with his brothers. She felt her knowledge of him deepen and intensify.

Selection A-2:
John Morgan. Astonishing to look into the face that Brian's would someday become. How grateful she was, because she knew she would never touch Brian's cheek when his face was carved and lined like his father's.

Same eyes, bright blue and deeply set, the father's shadowed with great bushy, grisled brows. She remembered her first glimpse of the man, framed by the front door, his shadow stiff, lean, a little bent, a figure cut out of black paper against the orange light of the hall.

She thought of Brian and his father, eyes averted from each other, formal and uncomfortable but each one needing the other's—what? Respect? Good opinion? No. It was care. Their caring was evident in the surreptitious glances each gave the other when there was no chance of being caught. The old man had asked about Brian's law office. Surely that was an overture after all the years of bitterness. But Brian remained rigid and wary, determined to barricade his father into some remote place where he could no longer wound.

The jukebox was blurring, colors fading from bright neon to pastel, the outlines wavering. She gazed once more at the moonlit window and drifted into sleep.

She woke up once in the middle of the night, tangled inside the blanket Brian had tucked around her when he came to bed. She looked over at him and could see his face quite clearly in the moonlight. Eerie how he almost seemed to have become a little boy again, the child she had sensed in this house—the outline of his face softened by sleep, his hand curled by his cheek.

She felt sorrow mingle with her tenderness. Only a few weeks ago Brian had slept either facedown or lying on his back, arms and legs flung out, totally open and vulnerable. Recently, however, she had noticed that he often lay clenched in the fetal position, as he did tonight. It hurt her to watch him curl up protectively, defending himself against injury. Against me, she thought sadly. She resisted the impulse to reach out and touch the curly head. Instead, she ran her hand along the edge of her sheet. It felt curiously dry and smooth for such a damp old house. She was certainly awake for good now, she thought, but very soon she slipped into a quiet sleep and didn't open her eyes again until six thirty the next morning.

The sound woke her with a start, an odd, jarring, daytime sound and somehow familiar. Suddenly she realized she was listening to a rooster. Crowing, just like in the movies, except that it wasn't exactly
cock-a-doodle-doo,
more like
aw-aw-aw-aw-AWW.
Same rhythm, same ridiculous self-proclamation. She rolled over to tell Brian, but he was sleeping so peacefully that she couldn't bear to wake him. He'd heard the damn thing so many times, she thought, it was probably like fire engine sirens for her, just subliminal background muttering. She got up, dressing quickly in the cold early morning air.

There wasn't anyone in the kitchen, so she helped herself to a cup of tea and, since she couldn't find a toaster anywhere, a slice of bread. The butter was delicious, so she shrugged away the disapproving specter of Dr. Diller and had another slice, surprised at how well she felt.

She let herself out the back door and strolled toward the barn. John Morgan emerged, carrying two large gleaming silver pails filled with what Sharlie presumed was milk, although it was bluish white and foamy, not like the creamy stuff that Brian consumed by the carton at home in New York.

“Morning. You're up early,” he said. He kept on walking, the load heavy in his hands.

“Is it okay if I come with you?”

“Unh,” he answered. Sharlie interpreted this to be affirmative, and followed him into a shed where there were large aluminum troughs into which he poured the milk.

She asked him questions about what happened to the milk next, and then followed him back to the barn again. She watched him as he moved among the cows, nudging them with his shoulder, comfortable with their steamy bodies.

“The closest I ever got to a cow was the Children's Zoo in Central Park. It was the raggediest-looking thing I ever saw, not like these. It had great big bored brown eyes. I think it must have died.”

“City air probably killed her off,” John Morgan said gloomily, attaching a milking machine to the pink udder by his knees.

“Do you ever do that by hand?”

“Nope,” he said, then glanced briefly at her from under the bushy eyebrows. “Except every once in a while.”

“It must be slower,” she said. He either grimaced or smiled, Sharlie wasn't sure which.

“Good—what do you call it—good therapy,” he said.

Now Sharlie saw that his eyes were laughing—the same way Brian's did, except that the rest of his face didn't change at all. The man would be a whiz at poker, she thought.

“Yours or the cow's?” she asked, and he chuckled a little.

“Both, most likely. I get down in the mouth or mad and I get me and my stool and sit by this old lady here,” he leaned against the side of the cow. ‘Takes the sting out of me after a while.”

“I bet she likes your fingers better than those steel things.” He didn't answer her, just watched the pail fill up at his feet.

“Mister Morgan,” Sharlie said shyly.

He peered at her with such intensity that she almost lost her nerve.

“Will you … do you have time to teach me?”

His face broke into a grin. “Just let me get my stool,” he said, and disappeared into a neighboring stall.

Brian stood in the doorway, peering into the dim light of the barn. The shadowy forms puzzled him. Marcus here now? But what was Dad doing? What were they both doing, hand-milking? He moved closer and stopped dead in his tracks as Sharlie and his father turned around to look at him. Sharlie's face was flushed from hard work and pleasure. His father looked embarrassed, but pleased as well.

“Brian, look at me!” Sharlie exclaimed. “Do you believe it? I learned
very
quickly.”

His father nodded. “Better farmer already than you ever thought of being.”

Sharlie flinched at this but then returned to her cow and said, “Why didn't you
tell
me this was so terrific?”

Brian stood watching as she became absorbed in her work. Then he left the barn to walk back to the house in confusion, his feelings a jumble of gratification, irritation, and a vague, disembodied jealousy. Mostly he felt he'd been manipulated into a position he wasn't sure he was prepared to accept. But he wasn't certain he was so angry about it, either.

He fixed himself some breakfast, toasting his bread on the stove burners as always. What did they have against electrical appliances in this place anyway? It had taken years to buy an electric iron finally instead of that cumbersome thing his mother had to heat every few seconds. Brian munched on his toast and thought about the scene in the barn. Every now and then he'd shake his head and smile.

After a while, they came clattering up the porch steps outside, Sharlie's voice happy and comfortable and his father chuckling. He hadn't heard that sound since long before his mother died.

They burst in, and Sharlie said, “Quick. Liquid refreshment. All that squirting …”

The old man pressed her into a chair and went to the refrigerator to pour her a huge glass of milk. When he cracked a raw egg into it, Brian began to protest, but Sharlie put her hand on his arm.

“Drink this. You'll get another one in a couple of hours.”

Sharlie sipped and made a face. John Morgan took the glass from her and rummaged through the cupboards until he found the vanilla. He added a generous dollop to her milk, plus a tablespoon of sugar. Then he took a fork and stirred the mixture rapidly, his strong wrist whipping.

She took another sip, smiled at him, and swallowed some more. He stood over her until she drank it all, then glanced at Brian with triumph. “She ought to have one of those with every meal. Fatten her up in no time. Damn, she's just a slip of a thing. Look at those arms.”

“Your father says he'll come see us in New York,” Sharlie said. Brian's eyes widened while John Morgan looked out the window. “If I can milk a cow,” she continued, “your Dad can ride the subway. Right, Mister Morgan?”

“Guess so,” he muttered.

Sharlie kept her voice neutral as she stood up, holding tightly to the edge of the table. “I'm kind of tired all of a sudden. I think I'll go rest awhile.” She leaned over and gave Brian a kiss, then planted one on her father-in-law's cheek. He looked startled at first, then both men's expressions pleaded,
Don't leave us here alone together.
But Sharlie turned and walked out of the room.

She had to haul herself up the stairs by force of will. She was dizzy and weak, and had begun to feel the disorientation again, the sensation of being disconnected to the world and the people around her. It was as if she were watching everything from a distance.

She lay down on the bed and thought about the first time she'd felt it, during her most recent trip to the hospital. In the beginning she had been frightened and wondered if another undetected medical problem had arisen. Then the strange feeling faded, not completely, just enough to leave her with a slightly shifted perspective. It was as if she no longer stood in the center of her life, with the people she cared for revolving around her. Rather, she was edging slowly toward the circumference of the circle. At first the implication of her displacement seemed terrible, but gradually she acknowledged it as a merciful process. She knew that once she stood well outside the circle, it would be far less painful to turn and walk away from it.

She awoke to see Brian staring down at her solemnly.

“How long have you been here?” she murmured.

“Just a few minutes,” he lied.

She turned her face away from the late afternoon glare streaming in the window. Brian went to pull down the shade. “You don't feel so hot, do you?” he asked her.

She shook her head. She could feel tears beginning behind her eyelids and kept them shut tight.
Two steps away from the center, one step back,
she thought. That must be the way it would happen.

“Tell me about your father,” she said.

“Thanks for leaving me there like that, you witch.”

The corners of her mouth twitched a little. “So?”

“So he says he's really coming. I don't know.” He stopped to shake his head. “There's no way you could have made me believe it. He says he wants to see the agriculture exhibit.”

“Didn't know there was one,” she whispered, fighting the urge to go back to sleep.

“And also the Statue of Liberty.”

They were silent a moment, Sharlie, through the mist, aware of a vague contentment.

Brian said slowly, “He's smitten with you.”

She smiled at the word and opened her eyes. “He's not bad himself. Reports to the contrary notwithstanding. He tell you about the mortgage thing?”

Brian nodded. “I gave him some advice. Not that he had the guts to come out and ask for it.”

“Oh, come on, Brian, have a heart.”

He took her hand and held it to his face. “Anyway, he's full of helpful hints about what to feed you—all the stuff you're supposed to give an undernourished cow.”

She laughed. “We're going to have to tell him about me, or he'll drown me in cholesterol.”

Brian said, “He thinks you look ill.”

“I am, honey,” she said gently, but suddenly he wouldn't look at her. “Bri, would you do something for me?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Take me to the ocean.” He looked at her in surprise. “Instead of staying here, we could go to the Jersey Shore, couldn't we? It's not that far.”

“I thought you wanted to meet my brothers.”

“Well, I do. But I've got this urge, and we only have another two days. Could we?”

“All right.” His face was puzzled, but he didn't question her. Sharlie realized that his loathing to press her emerged from his fear of her answer.

“We'll go first thing in the morning,” he said. He opened their suitcase and started piling clothes inside.

“Are you hungry?” he asked finally in a muffled voice.

“No.”

“I'll bring something up,” he said, still not looking at her.

“Bovine nutrients, please. On rye, and hold the mayo.”

He didn't laugh, just continued packing in silence. His movements were clumsy, and he had to keep bending down to retrieve things that slipped off onto the floor.

After watching this for a few moments, Sharlie said softly, “Bri, I wish I could help.”

“I'll manage. You rest.”

“I didn't mean the packing.”

He froze for a second, then continued working deliberately.

“Can we talk about it?” she asked.

“About what?”

“About me. My not getting better.”

He turned around, and his face was fierce. “You've had a long trip. You're worn out. You'll be fine in a couple of days.”

She watched sorrowfully as he muttered something about her dinner and bolted from the room.

Brian marched around the kitchen pulling things out of the refrigerator and slamming cabinet doors, hoping that if he moved fast enough and made enough of a racket, the sensation in his chest would disappear. His lungs seemed to be packed with dry ice, burning and yet frozen, the icy vapor making it difficult for him to catch his breath.

He imagined himself in the midst of a nightmare, running along the beach on a foggy winter morning. Behind him loomed a huge dark shape, cold, steady, invincible. The faster Brian pushed his legs, the deeper he sank into the sand until finally he was using every bit of energy just to free his feet from the heavy earth. And behind him the shadow grew, thundering, its breath like icicles piercing the back of his neck.

“What's for dinner?”

Brian started, dropped the glass he had been holding. It smashed on the floor. His father regarded him thoughtfully.

“Daydreaming,” the older man said.

Brian bent to pick up the shards of glass.

“I still spend a lot of time doing that,” Brian said bitterly. His father handed him the broom.

“Sharlie coming down?”

Brian shook his head.

“Still asleep?”

“No.”

“Gotta eat.”

“I'll take her something.”

“She doesn't look so good.”

“You've never seen her when she's bad. I have, and right now she looks just fine. Tired. Anybody'd be tired.”

John Morgan looked steadily at his son. Brian swept furiously at the dark wood floor.

“She been real sick?”

“Yeah,” Brian said. The old man put his hand on Brian's shoulder briefly, just long enough to stop the compulsive movement of the broom.

“Don't do what I did, son.” His eyes bored into Brian's. “There's a lot of things I wish I'd of said to your mother. Too bad I was such a coward.”

“You don't know she's going to … what's going to happen. You're not a doctor.”

John Morgan just shook his head and took the broom from Brian. As he put it away, he spoke carefully into the dark mustiness of the broom closet. “Well, if you ever need anything … or her …” Then he shut the closet door and went outside in a hurry.

Brian watched at the window until his father's wiry figure disappeared into the barn, then sat down at the table and put his head in his hands.

The next morning Brian packed everything up in the car before Sharlie even got out of bed. He took a tray to her and pressed her to eat, but she could only manage a swallow of orange juice.

He helped her dress, finally, and carried her down the stairs. “Don't you think we ought to go straight back to Saint Joseph's?” he asked.

“No,” she said firmly. “I'm not sticking one toe inside any hospital.”

“They could give you something.”

“They can't do anything for me.”

He started to protest, but saw by her pallor that he was tiring her.

In the rutted driveway outside he moved the front seat of the car back into its reclining position and stepped aside for her.