Hearts Left Behind (2 page)

“No arguments there,” I said, enduring Grandpa’s
overly firm handshake.  “So what’s this list about, Grandma?”

“Your list of chores,” she said.  “You didn’t
think you
was
going to board here for free, did you,
Tuck?” she said with her laugh.  And it was
her
laugh.  High
pitched and bursting, like she’d gotten a love-pinch on the behind. 
That’s how Grandma Gaines always laughed. 
Like it was
something inside her that couldn’t be contained.

“No, I suppose not, Grandma.  So I’m painting the
back stairs, what else do you have planned for me?”

“One thing at a time, dear.
 
One thing at a time.”

“Okay, Big Boss Lady.
 
Is it okay if I take my things upstairs first or do I need to get to work on
something?”

“That’s fine.  Take the room off the sun
porch.  I made it up for you.”

When I talked to Grandma on the phone about staying
here for a little while, she didn’t ask for how long, she didn’t ask why, she
didn’t ask anything.  She just told me that they’d be glad to have me and
that she’d make up my old room.  And so that’s where I slept that first
night - in the same room I slept in as a boy.  I could have asked for the
larger bedroom that had belonged to my little sister Heather when we were kids,
but there was less comfort in that thought. 

It was a strange sensation being there and I almost
convinced myself that I was a little boy again and that my brother and sister
were in their rooms just down the hall not yet asleep
.  A feeling of being safe settled on me, like
when I used to crawl into bed with my Mom and Dad during a thunderstorm. 
Nestled between them.
 
Softness on
one side, strength and shelter on the other.
 
Like
being inside of God.

As I drifted off that night, I tried to
feel like that little boy.  Tried to think his
thoughts, sleep his sleep,
dream
his dreams.  But
I couldn’t.  The little boy was dead.

Mary Lynn Gaines makes the best biscuits and gravy
that this world has known and that’s what she served for breakfast the first
morning of my stay.  When she had her fill of watching me and Grandpa
inhale
breakfast, Grandma got
up to do the dishes.  I offered to help but she would have nothing of
it.  Grandpa went out to the garage to tinker with something mechanical
and I went in the living room to sit on something cushy.  With three
servings of biscuits and gravy in me I was ready for a nap, but it was only
nine o’clock in the morning.  So I just sat and watched the unmoving world
through the big picture window.  From the kitchen came the comforting
clangs of glasses, plates, pans, and silverware.  When she had finished,
Grandma joined me in the living room, sitting down silently in the armchair
across from me.  She did her knitting and I thought about my family and
stared out the window wondering whether the rest of the world still
existed. 

Most of that first morning was filled with a whole lot
of not much, as I came to discover how a little old retired lady spends her
time.  Knitting, talk shows, crossword puzzles, phone calls to close
relatives, a bit of cleaning, game shows, phone calls to friends, a little
reading, a bit more cleaning, phone calls to distant relatives.

Later that afternoon, with Grandma napping and Grandpa
still tinkering in the garage, I went off on my own.  I was worn out from
chasing my racing thoughts, so I tried to walk away from them instead.  I
didn’t get very far.

I stopped in the middle of Madison Street and quietly
watched a man I once knew weeding his flower garden.  On hands and knees,
clawing and scratching at earth with a harnessed vigor, he tossed the flower
killers over his shoulder behind him with something like ruthlessness.  At
least that’s how I saw it.  An old man tending his garden was probably a
vision of peaceful nurturing for most.  For me, to see Howard Cooper at
all was to see his beautiful daughter lying inside an open casket with hands
folded unnaturally across her chest, which I really did see.  And it was
to see the violent scene of her rape and death, which I had only imagined a
thousand different times.

He stood, and he was not as tall as he once was. 
He took off his cap and revealed what few hairs t
he years had left him with.  From a side pocket of his overalls he
pulled out a red handkerchief and used it to wipe his brow and his near-bald
head.  He turned in my direction and squinted at me as hard as one might
squint at the sun.  I wanted to call out to him but couldn’t decide
whether I should refer to him as Mr. Cooper or Howard.  It would be silly
for me to call him Mr. Cooper so I quickly rehearsed saying “Howard” under my
breath.  I should call him Howard.  I was a grown man, after all.

“Hi, Mr. Cooper,” I said.

“Well, I’ll be,” he said with a smile that crept in
from a memory.  He tossed his gloves on the ground and waved me over.

“It’s
good to
see you, Mr. Cooper.”

“It’s
good to be
seen.”

He kept his eyes on me but sent his voice inside the
house.  “Mother, come on out here in the garden.  I want to show you
how things have grown.” Then he put his hand on my back and walked me toward
his house.

Mrs. Cooper poured me lemonade from a glass
pitcher.  Her dark auburn hair had thin streaks of gray, which ran exactly
where you would paint them were you the painter.  She put the pitcher down
and tucked some of that lovely hair behind her ears the same way her daughter
used to.  The same way my daughter does
now.  The same way every little girl ever has.  The corners of Betty
Cooper’s mouth used to curl upward in a beautiful Mona Lisa sort of way and I
used to wonder what secrets must be tucked away in there.  I say that they
used to curl upward because I noticed while eating her cookies and drinking her
lemonade that they didn’t anymore.  There is a stormy torment that clouds
her face these days.  She is every bit the small town beauty she had been
years back, but behind her glassy green eyes there is a sadness that had not
been there before. 
A gentle anguish where there once
had been a flowing peace.

“We heard about your loss, Tucker,” she said, sitting
down with Mr. Cooper and me at the table on the back porch.  “And we’re
just so sorry.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cooper.”

“You were always such a good boy,” she said with a
shake of her head and a frown that said “shame on the world.”

“You’re good people, too, Mrs. Cooper,” I said. 
“And so was Katie.” 

Then we talked about Katie and I told them the story
of the first time I met
their little girl.

I was never one of those boys who thought girls were
icky – not for even one day of my life.  For me, little girls were always
the melt away sweetness of a cotton candy at the county fair.  They are
red balloons and white doves and every other thing that rises high and lifts
our eyes with them.  They are bows and ribbons and every other thing that
colors and adorns. 

Little Margaret Bell and her bright
blue eyes and curly-q hair.
 
Stephanie Cross with
her pigtails and toothy toothless grin.
 
Christine
Holland and her long black hair and shy demeanor.
  Darla Lawson,
Amy Beth Harris, Roxanne
Crenshaw. 
No, I don’t believe there ever was a time when a pretty little girl didn’t turn
me into a dopey little boy. 

The story of the prettiest little girl of all begins
in the summer of 1980, the year that I fell in love with Katie Cooper. 
The moving van was parked
in the driveway
of the Duffy’s old place across the street and I rode by on my bike a few times
to see if I could catch a glimpse of our new neighbors.  On my third trip
around, I saw a kid my age struggling to carry cardboard boxes piled high above
his head.  “Hey, you need some help with that?” I yelled, steering out of
the street and into the yard.  I jumped off my bike and let it coast-crash
to a stop as I ran over to catch the top box which was sliding off.  I
caught it just before it hit the ground and cradled it under my arm like a
fumbled football.  “Good catch, huh?” I said, lifting myself up to see my
newest
wiffle
ball victim.  I had been expecting
to find a boy behind that stack of boxes, of course.  What I found instead
was the prettiest little girl of all and I thought so the second I saw her
freckle-faced smile peek out from behind the boxes that concealed her. 

“Not bad,” she said.  “Of course, it is the
lightest box.”

I swallowed hard and a thousand spiny creatures
crawled up and down my back, my neck, my every limb.  With an open mouth,
I gulped out a loud and stupid laugh. 
“HUH-HUH-HUH!”

She gave me a queer look and then a smirk that made me
feel like she had considered me,
sized me
up, and decided to like me all in an instant.  . 

“I can carry a heavier box,” I said.  Then added,
“ I
mean, if you want.”

And thus began my first great romance.

“Yep,” I said, “I spent about one-tenth of a second
disappointed that Katie wasn’t a boy and head-over-heels in love with her every
second after.”

Tears welled in
Betty
Cooper’s eyes and she put a hand to her mouth.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Cooper.”

She gave me a mock frown and pointed her scolding
finger at me, “Don’t you dare apologize for telling me you loved my little
girl.  You were the only boy who ever got to.”

Mr. Cooper gently rubbed his wife’s back and for the
second time in my life, I felt like my love for Katie Cooper was a gift I had
given.  And just like that first time, I got a kiss on the cheek in return.

“Now,” Mrs. Cooper said with a sniff and a wipe of her
nose.  “Who wants some chocolate chip cookies?”

I spent the next hour drinking lemonade and eating
chocolate chip cookies with Howard and Betty Cooper.  I told them
everything I remembered about their daughter and they listened to me like
wide-eyed little children hearing something brand new in a favorite story they
had heard a hundred times before. 
So many stories that
I had somehow forgotten to remember.
  We found joy inside those
memories. 
Laughter
,
too.
  And as I walked back to my grandparents later that afternoon,
I found myself wondering where Tammy and I would find our Ethan joy and laughter. 
Years from now, what stories will we comfort each other with?  We have no
stories.

In our never-ending quest for signs and wonders, Tammy
and I had visited Lady Denise, a local psychic. 
She lived out in the country in a two-story farmhouse
shingled in an uninspired brown.  The roof was spotted with missing tiles
and had a slight left-to-right slant.  There were several small shacks on
the property and a large hay barn that at one time must have been proud with
red but now stood gray and humbled.  The gravel driveway curved around to
the back of the house where we saw any variety of animals wandering the
yard. 
Cats, chickens, a pig, wild turkeys, goats,
geese, and even llamas.
  On the far side of the lot was a kennel
that housed two chesty
Rottweilers
who seemed ready
to dispel us of any “bark worse than bite” notions we might have had.

We got out of the car and walked toward the house
where the front door swung loose from its top hinge.  Invisible chimes
jingled the soft proclamation of a gentle wind.  The dogs stopped barking
as we approached the front door and Lady Denise suddenly appeared before us in
the doorway with a black lab at her side. 

“Oh, hi.
  I’m Tucker
Gaines and this is my wife Tammy.  I called yesterday.”

She was barefoot and dressed in blue jeans and a white
t-shirt.  She had long white-blonde hair, bright red finger and toe nails,
and could not have looked less like
the
image of a psychic I had in my head.  There wasn’t anything the least bit
mystical about Lady Denise. 
Except, perhaps, for the
bare feet.

“Have a seat at the table,” she said with a welcoming
gesture.  “I’m going to get something to drink.  Can I get you
anything?”

“No, thank you,” Tammy and I both said.

We moved to the dining room where a
tabby cat slinked over and curled around itself
around my leg.  The house was cluttered and gave me an uneasy feeling that
kept me from sitting down or touching anything.  The rooms felt old and
rays of sunlight exposed the dust that hung in the air.  On one light blue
dining room wall hung a painting of a close-eyed Virgin Mary holding a baby and
resting on a cloud surrounded by an army of angels.

The front door shut suddenly behind us.  We spun
around to see that Lady Denise had somehow crept back into the room without our
noticing and was already sitting on the opposite side of the dining room table,
a half-empty glass of lemonade in front of her. 

“You are being followed,” she informed us without
smile or sinister.  “Please, have a seat.”

I suddenly felt silly and sinful.  What was I
really expecting
to happen here?  I
glanced around for a crystal ball
,.
 

“Your husband said that the two of you lost your son,”
said Lady Denise.

“Yes,” said Tammy.

“I’ll try to help you find some understanding, but
don’t expect your son to possess my body and speak to you through me or
anything like that.  That’s not going to happen.”

“Okay,” Tammy said, squeezing my hand.

The conversation that followed was riddled with long
pauses and far away looks from Lady Denise.  She shuffled Tarot cards and
laid them out in front of us, explaining their meaning every step of the way
and then summarizing at the end.  She affected a knowing and sympathetic
smile when speaking and shifted her gaze rhythmically back and forth between
Tammy and me, although she never seemed to actually look me in the eye. 
Rather she seemed to stare between my eyes at the bridge of my nose in a way
that made me overly aware of my face.  She told us that we would be
reunited with Ethan’s soul in time.  That for reasons we cannot
understand, this was his path.  She said, too, that we would have two more
children, a girl and a boy.

There was nothing dramatic in our forty-five minutes
with Lady Denise, but it did bring us peace somehow.  She had a quiet
soothing manner and commanded trust when she spoke.  Probably because the
things she spoke were things we wanted to hear.  As we were leaving, Lady
Denise put her hand on my left wrist and with eyes bright with conviction told
me to watch for feathers. 

“F
eathers will
be Ethan’s way of letting you know he is with you.”

“Thank you for this,” I said awkwardly.  “How
much do we owe you?”

“Nothing.
  I don’t
charge for grief counseling.  It’s my way of giving thanks for my gifts.”

One evening a week later, I sat alone in my basement
dizzy on vodka.  Any sense of peace and acceptance that Lady Denise had
managed to instill in me was long gone.  Her words and comfort diluted
with drink until they lost all potency.  A sudden fury welled up from inside
me and I began punching the pillow I had been clutching.  When my rage
burned out, I tossed the pillow to the floor and sat back against the
couch.  Then right in front of my face, one perfect tiny white
pillow-feather drifted down and landed in my open palm as soft and as light as
an answered prayer. 

After my
visit
with the Coopers, I walked up to my old elementary school and took a seat on
the bench alongside the empty playground.  There was more equipment here
now than we ever had, but there are no children around.  The basketball
court had a fresh layer of asphalt, brightly painted boundaries, and newly
strung nets of chain - all ready for a summer of hoops, but nobody was
playing.  What a wonder that there are no children here on such a
day. 
To gather under a warm sun and play with friends.
 
To pretend and thrill.

I
thought back
to a time in the 4th grade when I was shooting baskets at one end of this court
while two high school boys played one-on-one at the other end.  My ball
accidentally rolled down to their end once and they tossed it back hard. 
When it rolled down there a second time one of them kicked it as high and far
as they could in the opposite direction.  I retrieved the ball and walked
home in tears.  When Dad asked me what was wrong, I told him what had
happened and he drove me back up to this very court where the boys were still
playing.  I sat in the car while he confronted the two. 

“You two boys ever bully my son again,” he said with a
single threatening finger, “you’re going to deal with me.  Got it?”

These boys were big.  And I don’t mean big-to-me
big.  I mean big
big
. 
Country
big.
  Dad was six feet tall and weighed around 180 pounds, but both
boys were taller and one was broader.  It was absurd to think that my dad
stood a chance against the both of them, yet all four of us there that day were
quite convinced of the absurd.  If he couldn’t lick them with size and
strength, he would lick them with a father’s rage.  My dad was fierce and
I loved him for it right then. 

From the playground, a little girl’s voice called
out, “Hey, Mister!”

I blink and yesterday’s gone.  On the ground
between my feet there is a small grey feather.

“Feathers will be Ethan’s way of letting you know
he is with you.”

Of course we saw more feathers.  We were
desperate for them.

“Hey, mister!”

The voice was not coming from memory – where I seemed
to be living often these days – but rather from one of the nearby swings where
a little girl had somehow snuck in under my radar. 
I guessed her to be about ten years old.

“Yes?”

“
Whatcha
doin
’?”
she said between smacks of bubble gum. 

“I’m sorry
-
what?”

The little girl pumped her knees and soared higher
into the Willow Grove sky, speaking only when she reached the highest point of
her swing.  “WHAT ARE…YOU DOING…HERE?” she asked.  Then she stopped
pumping and just stuck both legs straight out in front of her as if gliding in
for a landing.

“Oh, uh, I don’t know.  Just thinking, I guess.”

“Thinking?” she said.

She pumped hard one more time and launched herself
from the swing high into the air.  Higher than I would have thought
possible and my heart skipped a beat for her safety.  A spastic gasp
escaped me and both arms reached out involuntarily as if to catch her from
afar.  Such a rise and fall would surely have resulted in sprains or
breaks for me, but she was without the rigidness and doubt of adulthood and
landed softly and safely, almost fluttering to the ground.  Then in a
glorious ‘stuck the landing’ sort of way, she raised her arms high and lifted a
smiling face to the heavens.  I found myself clapping in applause.

“Thinking, huh?  That’s what you came here to
do?” she asked. 

Walking toward me now, I could see that she was taller
than I had originally thought.  And her hair - which had looked sandy
brown in the sunlight - seemed to grow darker as she approached.  She gave
me a reproachful stare that made it clear I had disappointed her.  As if
she had been looking for me to be evidence that all adults weren’t hopeless
bores.  That the love of going to the playground to rise, fall, climb,
slide, and spin did not have to die with youth.  I smiled and nodded
apologetically.  I had indeed disappointed her and it took her a moment to
recover.

“Well,” she said, “what are you thinking about?”

A good question without a good answer.
 
I had come here to think about everything and nothing at all.  “I’m not
sure,” I finally replied.

“Well that seems dumb.”

I laughed out my reply.  “Well, yeah, I suppose
it does.”

“I came here to swing.”  Then after a moment she
added, “I don’t think you came here to think.  I think you came here to
sit.”

Suddenly tired, I rose from the bench to leave.

“You know what?  You’re right. 
Enough sitting.
  It was nice talking to you.”

As I started to walk away, she called out to me one
more time.

“Hey, mister?”

“Yes?”

She blew a bubble and popped it with her pinky
finger.  “I’m just saying that if a person comes to the playground, maybe
they should swing
or something. 
That’s all.”  Then she turned and climbed back onto her swing. 

I picked that feather up off the ground
, rose from the bench, and headed back to Grandpa and
Grandma’s where I did swing.

That same old hushed feeling enveloped me as I settled
down into the porch swing on Grandpa and Grandma’s front porch.  This
swing has always been a special place for me and the rhythmic clanging of the
chains will always be my sound of summer.  It is a place to listen, to
look, to feel, and to find.

Clankity
-clank as I start to
rock and my summer sound sooths me with an echo of quiet memories as it always
has.  As a kid, I could sit for hours rocking here just watching the day
go by in whatever form it took.  I suppose every man has his thinking
spot, that one place he can go to tune out the noise of the world. 
To contemplate and to be.
  To get in touch with what is
within us and what surrounds us.  What we’re made of and what we’re part
of.  This has always been that place for me.  It’s not just a swing,
its therapy.

Of course, I have to admit that as a kid I didn’t
always see it that way.  Usually, I wasn’t thinking
therapeutic
,
I was thinking
boring
.  But I was a kid and that’s how kids define any
period of inactivity that lasts longer than eleven seconds.  You don’t
think
I’m nourishing the soul
, you think
I
wish I had
a twenty
-eight cents to go buy a Jolly Good
Root Beer
. 

My first memory of this swing is also my first memory
of
Charlie Skinner, my pre-Katie best
friend.  I was swinging in this very spot when Charlie came riding down
Third Street on the back of his dad’s bike licking a
popsicle
. 
We yelled hellos as they passed by and he said he’d come back later, but he
didn’t.  Turns out Charlie had gotten his shoelaces caught in the spokes
of his dad’s bike and mangled his foot pretty good.  Of course, not
knowing this at the time, I just waited in anger.  I swung on this very
swing and waited for him to come back.  Swinging back, swinging forth,
chains
clanking against each other in the most pleasant of
summer sounds.  Nice breeze blowing in my face. 
Back
and forth,
clankity
-clank.
  Cars passed
by every few minutes but the trees shushed them quiet.  Eventually, my
anger faded.  After awhile on this swing, you can’t really be angry about
anything.  See? 
Therapy.