Second Hand Heart (15 page)

“Besides,” I told her. “I’d never stayed in a hotel before. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

She asked me if I enjoyed it. I said it was very nice.

“Why did you leave, then? Not that I mind having you here. I just wondered.”

“That was all the money I had.”

“Oh,” she said.

She doesn’t get all excited and nervous like my mother, and talk and talk and talk even though nothing more needs saying. If something doesn’t need saying, Esther doesn’t mess with it. And I guess it would be pretty hard to make her nervous. After everything she’s lived through already.

“So, she asked you where I was,” I said. “Right?”

“More times than I could count.”

“Think she’s done asking?”

“I can only hope.”

“Can I sleep on your couch for a few days?”

“Of course. But let’s try to be sure your mother doesn’t know. I would never hear the end of it. You’ll tell her where you are in time, though, right? Because, even though I understand your hesitance, it must be terrible for her.”

I got an attack of the guilts. And of course I promised.

I asked her why my mother would do something so horrible as to lie about me like that to Richard.

“There’s only one reason I can think of that makes any sense at all,” she said. “You are everything in the world to your mother. And she wants to be everything in the world to you, too.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Wow in what regard?”

“I guess I’m just really surprised I didn’t think of that myself.”

I think that might have been when it dawned on me that I’m going to have to give this life thing a try.

There’s a reason why I thought that. Sounds sort of weird and out of place, the way I just said it, but it made sense at the time. I just don’t have the energy to write any more about it tonight.

More About That

S
o, here’s the deal behind what Esther said, and why it made me want to give the whole life thing a try: Esther knew why my mom lied. And I didn’t. Until Esther told me.

Even though it was about my mother. Even though I was right there while all this was happening. Esther wasn’t even there, but I ask her one sentence about it, and she tells me what’s what, just like that. Like pulling a key out of her pocket and fitting it into a lock. A lock I should’ve had a key to, because, after all, it’s my lock.

There’s only one explanation for that. Life experience.

It was so obvious that Esther knew stuff and I didn’t. So it must be because she’s lived. And so far I’ve only rested and waited for a heart.

I decided it’s time to learn some of this stuff on my own. That it’s high time I jumped the nest. I mean, even more than I already have.

So I told her. I told her I was going out into the world.

It was first thing in the morning. Barely light. I was lying on the couch, not sleeping. And even though I hadn’t even heard her and didn’t know she’d gotten up, at least not that I was consciously aware of, I saw her moving around in the kitchen in the nearly-dark, making a cup of tea.

So I said, “Esther. I’m going out into the world.”

She said, “I had no doubt that you would. Sooner or later. Would you care for a cup of tea?”

“That would be very nice,” I said.

Survival

“H
ow will you survive?” Esther asked.

Not right then. Later in the day. When I’d made it clear that I meant sooner. That I was going out into the world sooner. Not so much later.

“How will I not survive?”

“There are many ways not to survive. You could starve. How will you eat? Where will you stay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it seems to me that most people who don’t have much money don’t starve. Mostly they figure something out.”

“Just so you know it’s possible that you could die out there.”

“I guess,” I said. “But I’ve been dying all my life. So that’s nothing new.”

“You and I are so much alike,” she said. “For a long time we thought we would die anytime, and then we found out we had much more time than we thought. So I think maybe it is our duty to protect that time wisely.”

I thought that over for a while. I was eating my half of a turkey sandwich she had made for us to split.

“I would think it would be our duty not to waste it,” I said.

Esther sighed. She looked sad, which made me feel guilty. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Esther sad before. Wait, no. That’s not right. Esther is always sad. But always the same amount. So far as I know there’s never been a time when she was any sadder than any other time.

“In a way I hope that’s not the case,” she said. “Because, if so, I have made a terrible mistake. All these years mostly just trying to stay safe. But I’m sorry to say you might be right. I hate to think so, but maybe.”

Then we just chewed and looked out the window. The window was open, like it usually was, and there was nothing on the windowsill for the birds, but the birds were there anyway. Like the situation could change at any minute, without warning. Like all they had to do was wait it out.

For a while we didn’t talk.

Then Esther said, “Are you sure you’re not doing it to see if the heart man will come looking for you?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” I said. “Definitely that, too.”

When

L
ater, when the sun was almost down, and I was sitting watching it out the window, Esther said, “Exactly when do you plan to do this thing?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. Because, frankly, it’s one of those things that sounds better in the very moment it bursts out of your mouth. “Definitely not today.”

“Well, of course not today,” she said. “Today is more or less over.”

“Probably not tomorrow, either.”

“I see,” she said.

And I could tell she did see. In fact, she probably saw way too much.

Manzanar

“I
’ve been thinking about what you said,” Esther told me at breakfast.

She had served me tea with milk and sugar, and I was sipping it. Wondering if, out in the world, somebody hands you tea with milk and sugar in the morning.

Probably not. “Which thing?”

One of the shoulders of her housedress was falling down, and I could see her bra strap, which was held in place by a little pink safety pin.

The flesh around her neck and shoulders was all soft-looking and “ample.” That’s what my mother always says about Esther. She’s an ample woman. I think it’s a polite way to say fat. I think when you have watched every friend and relative you ever had starve to death, or nearly to death, while nearly starving to death yourself, ample starts to seem like the way to go.

“About our extra life, and how it’s our duty not to waste it.”

“Oh. I’m sorry if I made you feel bad. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

“Well, not so very bad,” she said. “If it was too late, then I would feel very bad. But I’m not dead yet. So it’s not too late. It’s late. But it’s not completely so late that nothing can be done.”

“So … what are you going to do, Esther?”

“I would like to go somewhere.”

“Can I come with you?”

“I was hoping you would. I need that you would. I am too old a woman to be traveling alone.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Not every place, like you. You are young enough for every place. I’m thinking I had better stick to only one.”

“Do you know which one yet?”

She absent-mindedly pulled up the shoulder of her droopy dress.

“Yes,” she said. More than firmly. Regally. As if she’d been thinking about it for a long time. A lot longer than just since last night. “Yes, I have always known where I should like to go if I were ever to decide to go somewhere. I would like to go to Manzanar.” A silence. Then two pieces of toast popped up from the toaster, and she gave one to me and kept one for herself. I watched her slather on a great deal of butter, then wipe the knife carefully on her napkin before dipping it in the jam. “Do you know what it is, this Manzanar?”

“I think so,” I said. Looking at the toast and thinking I didn’t feel very hungry. Not that my lack of hunger was exactly breaking news. “I think I saw a movie about it once. Isn’t it that place where we sent all the American Japanese people during the World War?”

“That is correct,” she said.

“It’s an interment camp.”

“Let us hope not,” she said. “To inter someone is to bury them.”

“Oh. I always get that wrong. So what’s the word, then?”

“An internment camp.”

“Oh,” I said. “Funny how that one letter changes everything.”

“Not so much,” she said. “It doesn’t change all that much. I’m sure plenty were buried there. Besides, that’s the wrong word, too. It was really not an internment camp. That’s just the way you say something when you want it to sound better than it really is. It was really a concentration camp.”

I stared at my toast a bit longer. I was more sure than ever that I didn’t want to eat it. But I bit the edge of it to appear cooperative.

“But they didn’t kill people there.”

“Not as far as we know, no. I didn’t say it was a death camp. I said it was a concentration camp. When you round up a people and make them live all on top of one another you are concentrating them.”

“Yes,” I said. “I guess that’s true. Are you sure that’s where you want to go?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Very sure.”

“I was just thinking that if you were only going to go just the one place, then you would want it to be someplace really wonderful.”

“Are there still innocent Japanese people being held prisoner here in this camp?”

I think she knew there weren’t. She said it like she knew. Like she just wanted to hear me say it out loud.

“No. They let all those poor people out a long time ago.”

“Then it will be wonderful,” she said.

•  •  •

Just one thing, though. Just one little problem. Esther doesn’t drive and neither do I. So it’s going to be a bit of a challenge. Figuring out how to get us both to Manzanar.

Victor