Second Hand Heart (11 page)

I wanted to say, “Now you know how I felt when I first saw you.”

I didn’t.

She went on. “Lorrie, right? My mom told me her name was Lorrie. That’s an OK name. I hate my name. It’s weird.”

“You know what Vida means, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” she said.

“Then I would think you would like it.”

“Know why she gave me that name? Cause I tried to die the first night I was born. From all my heart stuff. She was trying to make sure I never pulled anything like that again.”

Transplant statistics rattled around in my brain. How many patients, by ratio, would still be alive in five years. How many in ten. Quite possibly I was remembering the numbers all wrong. But the message in my brain felt clear.

“Tell me something about her,” she said.

“Like what?”

“I don’t care. Anything.”

“That doesn’t help me narrow it down much. She was a whole person. A fairly complex person, at that. There were a lot of ‘things’ about her, and I have no idea how to separate out which one you want to hear.”

“What was her favorite color?”

I paused briefly in that odd moment. Felt it. Which was odd in itself. Just to feel a moment, right there in the moment.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Her mouth fell open. Almost laughably so.

“How can you not know your own wife’s favorite color?”

“It’s just not the sort of question I would ask her. This is not high school, Vida. That’s more like a teenager’s dating question. It’s like asking someone, ‘What’s your sign?’ It’s not an important detail about someone. It’s not significant.”

We stood awkwardly for a moment. I was becoming more aware of the fact that we were both still standing, and had been for a long time. It was growing more awkward by the moment, but I didn’t want to ask her to sit. I didn’t want to issue any invitations.

She pulled her coat more tightly around herself, which I took as a sign — the only sign she betrayed — that I had hurt her slightly. Or maybe more than slightly.

“But you know her sign,” she said. “Right?”

“Yes. I know Lorrie was an Aries.”

“Well, good. Then you’re not totally hopeless.”

She began to wander around my living room, looking a bit aimless. Gazing up at each wall and window treatment. Running her hand over the back of the couch and the two big recliners.

“Did she decorate this place?”

“Yes.”

“Then her favorite color was green.”

I looked around at my own living room as if for the first time. The rugs and the furniture all carried a color theme of deep hunter green. It seemed absurd that someone from outside the house, outside the marriage, needed to point that out to me.

I didn’t answer. All answers felt like snares.

“That’s weird,” Vida said. “Green. I wouldn’t have thought green. I would’ve guessed blue. My favorite color is blue.”

“Not surprising,” I said.

“Meaning what?”

But I just shook my head. Never answered.

I knew what I meant, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Couldn’t put it into words. There’s a big grouping of people who like blue, and they have something in common, but I couldn’t get a verbal bead on what that was.

“OK,” Vida said. “So colors aren’t important to you. They’re not significant. Fine. Tell me something about her that’s significant. Just one thing. Tell me the one thing about her that you think is the very most important thing.”

I didn’t even have to take time to consider the question.

“She was calm,” I said.

“Calm?”

“Yes. Calm. Peaceful. Serene.”

“That’s important?”

“It was to me. Because I don’t have that. I would get all spun out on the smallest details. The most insignificant complications of my day. But then when I got home and we had dinner, I could borrow some of her calm. She actually had enough to spare. I could breathe it in. Drink it. And then I’d be grounded again.”

“OK,” she said. “That’ll do.”

I felt vaguely insulted, as if my most important memories shouldn’t have to pass muster for her purposes.

Vida turned off the light. I thought maybe she just didn’t want to see the pictures of my late stranger-wife any more. The only light left in the room was the lamp in the corner, more of a glow than a light.

Vida let her coat drop to the floor. She was naked underneath.

I wasn’t entirely surprised. Part of me was. The part of me that was surprised seemed to be under scrutiny by the part of me that wasn’t. I registered no genuine feeling about it. One way or the other. I think it mostly just bumped me back into a state of numb.

I just want to clarify that it was unwelcome. But I’m not sure I registered that as a genuine feeling, either.

She looked painfully thin. Her breasts were small and hard, like unripe fruit. So different from Lorrie, whose breasts had been full and soft, a little drooped, like over-ripe fruit, sweeter and more promising.

After that comparative observation all I could see was the scar.

I walked to where she was standing, picked up the coat, handed it back.

“Cover yourself,” I said. My voice sounded authoritarian. I noticed that. As if I had unexpectedly slipped back into my professorial mode.

“I’m not going home.”

“Put on your coat, Vida.”

She did. Blinking back what I think might have been tears. But blinking a lot, in any case. She flew off into my bedroom, which seemed odd. I thought I’d made myself so clear on that point.

Then I heard the bathroom door slam shut, and the deadbolt click into place.

That clarified a lot.

•  •  •

When she ventured out again, it was nearly two hours later.

I was sitting under the glow of the corner lamp, reading a novel. I tried to show no special reaction to her presence.

She stood over me, all full to exploding with her own deficiencies, whatever they may have been. I could feel energy pouring off her in waves. Intensity. But she didn’t speak.

With a flip of my head I indicated the couch, where I’d laid out a pair of Lorrie’s old pajamas.

Ah. I just wrote down a secret in black and white. I told Myra I’d boxed up all of Lorrie’s clothes. And yet somehow I’d been allowing the dresser drawers full of underwear and pajamas to fall into a different, non-clothes category. I’d pretended they didn’t count.

Vida threw off her coat and threw it on the back of the couch. In my peripheral vision I could see her look back to catch if I was watching. I didn’t watch. She put my wife’s pajamas on and tucked in under the blanket I’d left for her.

By this time it was close to midnight.

“Why are you being so cold to me?” she said.

I put my book down, took off my glasses. Pressed my eyes shut and squeezed the bridge of my nose, the way I always do when I’m trying too hard at thinking. It’s as if I’m trying to focus all my confusion into the bridge of my nose, but I don’t know why.

“I can’t afford to lose anything else right now. Can you understand that?”

“No,” she said.

And I found myself thinking, No? No? I didn’t expect that anyone would say no. But I said nothing.

“I set myself up for loss all the time,” she said. “Over and over.”

I wanted to say, “Yes. I know. I know lots of people who do. And I do not aspire to join their ranks.”

Instead I said, “Well. Women have a higher pain threshold. About nine times higher. I think. I think I read that somewhere. It’s for the purpose of childbirth, but I suppose it comes in handy for all kinds of things. I just lost my wife, Vida. Can’t you show any respect for that at all?”

“What if I waited?”

“It takes years to get over a thing like that.”

“What if I waited years? What if a couple years down the road I was still right here, waiting? A couple years is a long time.” She held up her right hand, stone and all, her thumb still smoothing. “Maybe I could even wear down you. You think I don’t know that you really wanted me here? All you had to do was tell me you never wanted me to call again.”

“I was just afraid of hurting your feelings.”

“You’re a lousy liar.”

“Well,” I said. “I guess I haven’t had enough practice.” And then I picked up my book again.

•  •  •

About an hour later I knew she was asleep, because her thumb stopped moving, and the stone slid from her hand. I stole over to the couch and sat on the edge without disturbing her.

I pulled her blanket down a little. Stopped to see if she would wake up. She didn’t. Then I placed my ear lightly against Lorrie’s old flannel pajamas. Again waited to be sure I wouldn’t wake her. But she just kept sleeping.

So I put my ear down and listened.

I closed my eyes, to block out everything that wasn’t right. All that remained was the feel of the flannel on my face and the sound of the heart beating against my ear. But it still wasn’t quite the same. I knew how it was supposed to sound. Slow and confident and healthy. This beat was quicker, as if unsure of itself. As if needing to remind me that even the most minute details had undergone change.

Even the heart was not exactly the same.

After a few minutes of that I felt around for the worry stone. I found it half-fallen behind the cushions at the back of the couch. I placed it in the pocket of Lorrie’s pajama top.

I wondered, if I’d taken Vida up on her offer and made love to her, would she have taken a few minutes off from her battle against rock? Or would she have held and worried that stone the entire time?

Of all the things I should have been wondering, I question why that was so high on the list. But that’s what I was thinking, all the same.

•  •  •

I rose and called Abigail. Even though it was very late.

“Oh,” she said. Obviously quite worried. “Mr. Bailey. I mean, Richard. You wouldn’t happen to know where Vida is?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I’m calling about. She’s sleeping on my couch. And I’d really appreciate it if you’d please come collect her and take her away.”

•  •  •

We stood over her, watching her sleep. We still had only the glow of the corner lamp, but I didn’t want to turn on a light for fear we’d wake Vida. Whatever she was about to say as her mother led her away, I wasn’t anxious to hear it.

“Who belongs to the pajamas?” Abigail asked. Sounding — understandably — a bit off balance.

“She can just keep them,” I said.

A strained minute, then Abigail said, “Where are her clothes?”

“I’m not sure that’s a story you’d enjoy hearing.” Abigail wandered over to the Lorrie wall, and stood with her back to me.

“I guess she thinks she loves me,” I told Abigail’s back. “Maybe it’s not so strange. When you consider all the circumstances.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Bailey. Richard. Not to diminish you one bit as a man, or as a human being. But my daughter has a lot of emotional problems. Always has. She thinks she loves a lot of men. Every couple of months she meets a man and decides it’s love at first sight.”

I felt a pang of loss when she said that. Just what I swore I could not afford. But it moved through me and I was left standing, so I suppose I could have been wrong.

I guess — I realized with no small surprise — I might have believed for just a moment what Myra was so afraid I believed. That Vida had seen something special in me, loved me the way Lorrie had, through her eyes or with her exact same heart.

Maybe I thought Vida would be there, years from now, waiting for me to come around. So there was the loss, and I felt it.

That’s when I knew I’d moved beyond the numbing shock.

“Usually the man is ten or twenty years older,” Abigail said. I wondered if she’d said other things in-between, and maybe I’d missed them. “Maybe if her father was around, but I don’t know. I’m not a psychiatrist. I just know it’s like she has some big empty hole inside. She’s always grabbing on to something or someone to try to fill it up. Most men are all too happy to take advantage.”

She just kept staring at the photos of Lorrie, all through this speech. I couldn’t tell if she was talking without thinking, or looking without seeing, or both.

“I guess I’m not most men,” I said.

She turned halfway back to me. Smiled a little. “Then I owe you two debts of gratitude.”

“Just take her home, and I’m willing to call it even.”

“Can you carry her to the car? She only weighs a little under a hundred.”

“She won’t wake up?”

Abigail laughed. “Nothing wakes Vida. She’s just like a child that way. You can carry her snoring over your shoulder like a six-year-old. It’s a part of childhood she never outgrew.”

One of many, I wanted to say. But it seemed cruel. Also unnecessary.

•  •  •

I placed one arm behind Vida’s shoulder blades, one behind her knees.

She wasn’t heavy. She didn’t wake up.

Abigail threw the coat over her like a blanket.

On the way from my front door to the car I heard a small tap, something hitting the driveway. I started to point it out to Abigail, knowing it was the stone. I almost said, “Get that.” It seemed a shame to let all that hard work go to waste. To spoil Vida’s chance to triumph over solid rock.

But my mouth froze up on me, and didn’t work.

•  •  •

I picked it up on the way back to my porch, knowing full well what I had done. I wasn’t stealing it. I would never do that. No, it was even worse. I was holding on to something of Vida’s, something important. Something that she would later come after, or that I would later have to return.

And I knew I was doing it all the time. Just not how to stop.

•  •  •

As soon as I got back into the house, I pulled it out of my pocket and began rubbing it smooth with my thumb.

From:
Richard Bailey
To:
Myra Buckner

Myra,

Vida was here last night. It was all very strange. I had to call her mother to come take her away. I stood in the street and watched them drive off, and in that moment, in that watching, I felt something pull out of me. It was as if something was being pulled from the center of my gut, following them away down the street. The way someone can take up a loose thread of your sweater and pull, and theoretically you could be left with no sweater.