Hearts (29 page)

“You didn’t want to all along?”

“No, never. I tried to have an abortion in Des Moines, and it was foiled by someone even crazier than me. Somebody who was willing to
murder
me and a few other people, in the name of life. That has nothing to do with my decision, though. If I could go back to that time, to the way I was then, I’d still have it, the abortion, I mean.”

“So what changed your mind?”

She realized that he expected her to say that it was because of him—he
needed
to hear it—but she could not. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe partly because of the wedding ceremony today. You know, when the minister said about an end to loneliness? And after we were together last night and I went back to bed, I thought about how lovely it was, but how
random
, I mean our ever meeting in the first place. In the second place. Do you remember those trees you told me about, coming up by themselves through sidewalk cracks? And this whole planet from a broken piece of sun, imagine!” Linda inhaled deeply, and she shuddered. “And the sperm and the egg getting together like that, by total chance, like two nervous strangers in a singles bar. I started to wish them well …” She lifted her hands. “I don’t even know what I’m saying any more. And I have to go.” She pushed away from the tub and stood up.

“I still want to go with you,” he said, his voice cleared of seduction, his hands to himself.

“Wolfie, you don’t,” Linda said. Why was it always up to her to declare the truth? Now she could stand here
for a hundred years before he’d deny it. She waited, anyway, in the beating silence.

Then Wolfie said, “This morning, before I was even awake, I reached for you. It was like we’d been together for a long, long time.”

“Yes.”

“And I kept thinking how much I wanted to find you there, every morning.”

“But this changes everything, doesn’t it?”

“Well, it makes it harder, that’s all. More complicated.” Wolfie sighed. “I wish …” he began.

“Oh, don’t!” she said. “Wishing never does any good.”

They looked at one another until the fervor of Wolfie’s gaze softened. “No,” he conceded then. “I guess it doesn’t.”

“So, I’d better go now,” Linda said, not moving.

“But how will you take care of yourself?” he asked.

“I have a little money. I can still work for a while now, and after …”

“At what? Will you dance?”

Linda considered the question thoughtfully. “No,” she answered. “No, only for myself.” She saw his face change and before he could construct a new case, she said, “I’m healthy, and willing. There are other things I can learn to do.”

“What about the baby?”

“I don’t know. A day-care center, I guess.”

“You’re such a good person, Linda. But you’re very romantic. And with everything that’s happened to you, you’re still kind of … inexperienced. What I’m trying to say is that it won’t be easy.”

“I know that. I never thought it would be easy.”

“Have you ever really
thought?
”

Linda went past him in the narrow doorway, managing not to make contact. It will go away, she promised herself. Eventually it will go away.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay? I want to know,” Wolfie said. “I
care
about you.”

She kept moving and didn’t answer him.

“And Robin?” he said, following her. “Are you going to keep her, too?”

“No, I’ll take her to her mother, the way we planned.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “I can’t help this right now, babe. It’s this particular time.”

He walked outside with them to the car. “You can reach me here, through Vincent and Elena,” he said. “I’ll be in touch with them. I really want to know about you. Linda?”

Linda had turned on the ignition. The windows of the Maverick were open, and they were sitting there, inhaling the exhaust.

Wolfie leaned in, the way he had that first time at the gas station in Ohio. His hand grazed her face. “Hey, Robin,” he said. “Don’t get married or anything. Wait for me, okay?”

What was making him stay like this? Guilt? Confusion? Relief? They would all be asphyxiated. Robin didn’t give him any encouragement. She had reverted to her former self, and was crouched in the backseat like a stowaway.

“Goodbye,” Linda said. She released the emergency brake and put the car into drive.

“Goodbye,” Wolfie agreed finally, and withdrew his head. He said other things she couldn’t hear over the motor’s thunder. He waved, shouted, ran after the car for a few yards, and then disappeared.

31
Miriam Reismann Hausner placed the last rose in the arrangement she was fixing in the large crystal bowl on the piano. “Oh!” she said. “You startled me. I didn’t hear the door chime. Did Parker let you in? Are you here about the maid’s job?
”

The blond young girl in the doorway did not answer. Miriam, whose eyesight had grown worse this year, put on her glasses and stepped closer. The girl came into focus, and Miriam could see they looked exactly alike, except for the color of their hair. And except for their clothing, of course. The girl was poorly dressed, in denim shorts with a raveled edge, and a T-shirt with permanent chocolate stains on the front
.

She, Miriam, was wearing a pure-silk hostess gown and suitable jewelry. She put one perfectly manicured hand against her breast and murmured, “It’s you, isn’t it?” She could hardly see because of the tears that were gathering in her eyes and fogging up her eyeglasses. “Why, you’re beautiful!” she exclaimed
.

Miriam Taylor-Harding (her pen name) put the final page of her new novel into the typewriter. It had the same kind of plot she always used. This time, the mother and daughter are separated during the war, each one going on with her own life, each one believing the other has been killed by the enemy. Sometimes they are separated by a mistake in the hospital where the girl is born. Sometimes there is a kidnapping. In TV interviews Ms. Taylor-Harding admits that she cries while she writes
.

She began to type. She heard the French doors open behind her, and she felt a little chill on the back of her
neck, but she didn’t turn around. This was always the most difficult scene to get down on paper—the reunion. She was so incredibly moved. And yet her fingers flew, as if the story had come to life by itself. She sobbed as she typed
The End,
and she shut off the electric typewriter
.

“
Nicky, darling,” she said. “Pour me a Manhattan, will you? I’m emotionally drained.” And then she turned around
.

The distinguished, but ailing, man closed the trunk of the white Mercedes 450SL
.

The once beautiful, dark-haired woman said, “That’s it, I guess. Well, goodbye Arizona, hello New Jersey!”

“
Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Mimi?” he asked. “Giving up all this, to go back to that life?” His rings flashed in the sunlight as he waved his hand at the huge mansion behind them, at the gardens and the pool and the tennis courts
.

She laughed bitterly. “Oh, yes, I know what I’m doing, all right,” she said. “I only hope to God it’s not too late.”

They climbed into the Mercedes, put on the air conditioner and the tape deck. The motor roared as they pulled away from the curb. Neither of them looked back. Neither of them saw the other, small green car pulling up to the curb near the mansion, and the lovely blond girl opening the door and stepping out
.

A man came to the door. He said, “You don’t have to tell me who you are. The resemblance is uncanny.”

The girl stepped into the drawing room. She kept one hand in her pocket
.

The man said, “Was the trip difficult? Have you had lunch? You’ll want to freshen up before you go in. You’ll want to prepare yourself. It’s not a pretty sight.”

The girl shook her head and he noticed how lovely her hair was when it moved like that, sort of in ripples. It looked freshly shampooed
.

He led the way up the spiral staircase. “I must warn you,” he said, “she does not recognize anyone anymore. And even the latest wonder drugs cannot calm her.”

Their footsteps were silent in the carpeted corridor. As he opened the heavily carved doors leading to the bedroom, the girl could hear the clinking of chains—and then the horrifying cackle …

Linda sneezed and Robin was jerked from her reverie. She had forgotten that Linda was there, that both of them were in the car again, being borne away from the last place. That happened occasionally, allowing Robin to feel cozily alone, free to daydream or remember things. For most of their trip, Linda hadn’t let her be for more than a minute at a time. She was always butting in, always asking questions, her voice as carefully polite as a guidance counselor’s. It was hard to even think.

But since they’d left Albuquerque, and Wolfie, Linda had become quiet, even withdrawn. Robin knew it was unhappiness that was keeping her to herself. It wasn’t a difficult deduction to make. Wolfie had run after them like one of those mad dogs that chase cars. He yelled at Linda to wait, that he cared, that he wanted something
or wanted to tell her something. It was impossible to hear him over the noise of the car. She had sped away like she did after that time they stayed in Buddy’s Siesta. When she was really upset, Linda became a driving fiend, a maniac who made everyone else on the road get out of her way.

She and Wolfie were in love. That wasn’t difficult to figure out, either. All that dumb, love-struck whispering and touching that had gone on in the car and back at Elena’s, and before that at the motels. Robin guessed that this was only a lovers’ quarrel, a necessary ritual in love affairs, and a passing thing. Any minute now, Linda would come to a skidding stop in her daredevil driving, and turn the car around and head back toward Albuquerque at the same breakneck speed. Or she would keep driving like this, blindly forward, while Wolfie took a faster car or a helicopter to get ahead of them, and would show up all out of breath, but playing it cool, after the next curve in the road. Then Linda would let him in again and that whole craziness between them would start once more. All the time and energy they wasted in fighting and making up; Robin would never understand it.

For a couple of hours after their getaway, she looked out the window, waiting for the reunion, and when it didn’t happen, and when Linda’s driving reduced to its old normal creepy speed, Robin gave up her first theory and wondered if Linda and Wolfie were simply star-crossed lovers like Tony and Maria in
West Side Story
. Though she couldn’t see what was stopping
them
. And why did she care anyway? Why did their separation interest her so much and sadden her? She was never
going to see either of them again, anyway. And she had her own future to think about. But her concern for them stayed, a peculiar ache that resisted the comfort of reason. They were like characters she had been cheering on in a movie, for whom she wanted a satisfying ending, and they were also heroes in her real life. Even while she made private fun of them, she had enjoyed the protective atmosphere of their loving, and felt betrayed and lonely in its absence, the way she’d felt after her father’s death. It was the scariest thing to consider, that you might always have to depend on other people for your happiness. It meant you had no control at all, and who else in the world could be trusted?

Robin decided not to think about that, or about them, if she could help it. Grateful for Linda’s simultaneous retreat, she leaned back against the seat cushions and dozed and woke, dreaming and planning.

Later in the day, Linda pulled off the highway at some exit, without a word to Robin, who said, “Where are we going now?” She hoped Linda didn’t have some more asshole friends from high school to visit, and that they were only going to stop for lunch. Linda didn’t say.

It was a little hick town, and they drove slowly up the narrow main street in the broiling sun, past old ladies in white shoes and straw hats, past Indian men clustered in the shade of doorways and awnings, past shimmering parked cars that appeared to be dissolving in the heat.

Linda parked near a storefront movie in the center of town. She got out of the car and went to the cashier’s window without even glancing up at the marquee to see
what was playing, or back at Robin, who followed her without being told to. When Linda was in one of her schizo moods, it was no use asking her why they were doing anything, why they were going to the movies now, in this particular place. Robin knew she’d never get a straight answer. She walked quickly behind her, catching a glimpse of the advertised program—two thrillers—and the blue plastic icicles over the door that promised air-conditioned comfort inside.

It
was
cool, a little cold even, and neither of them had taken sweaters from the car. Robin was wearing a tiny stretch of puckered elastic that left her arms and shoulders and midriff bare. She had broken out in goose bumps before they even sat down. The theater was almost empty. There were only some little kids sitting in the front row and a few others running up and down the aisle.

Linda and Robin had come in right in the middle of one feature. It was an old murder mystery with a shaky sound track that made all the actors sound as if they were gargling when they spoke. There were already a few dead bodies lying around, and a million suspects. Robin couldn’t make head or tail of it. She turned to ask if Linda knew what was going on, and to complain about the cold, and saw that Linda was staring straight ahead without seeing anything, tears streaming down her face, and her whole body shaking.

They stayed for both features, Linda crying soundlessly the entire time. When the show ended and the lights came on, they left the theater, got back into the car, and out onto the road again.

“Where are we?” Robin asked as she came awake. The car was pulling in somewhere and the sky was brilliant with stars.

“Motel,” Linda said. Then she opened her door and staggered out, past the lit
Vacancy
sign, toward the motel office.