What Hearts (11 page)

He frowned. “Happy?” On the TV the man
with the pomade was sitting at a table in a restaurant. Smoke from a cigarette in his hand curled around his head like a turban; he looked impatient as a spoiled sultan as he asked a waiter what the time was.

His mother tapped his knee with one finger. “Yes, sweetheart. Happy. Look at me.” He did. She put the one finger under his chin, very gently. “When a girl knows a boy loves her, that—more than anything that can happen to her, until she has a child—gives her happiness.”

“What if she doesn't love him?”

“It has nothing to do with her feelings for him. It's a gift, that's all. And when you get a gift, you feel good. Doesn't matter if you haven't got a gift ready to give in return. Something as fine as love from someone as nice as you—well, knowing about it means a lot. It can mean
everything
.”

There was noise from the screen. They both looked. The young woman was squealing and gasping with her eyes closed, her chin on the dark-wool shoulder of the pomaded man and her hands white on his dark-wool back. His neck was bent forward, but stiff. The light
pinged off his hair; the woman was wearing another strange little hat. Asa pointed and said, “Is that it?”

“Who knows?” his mother said. “You can never tell by looking.”

They stared as the movie ended with a swell of music. Words rolled by on the screen. Asa looked at his watch. “Be right back,” he said.

He went upstairs to his room and took another pill from another bottle in his bureau. When he brought it back to his mother, she took it in her hand but did not put it in her mouth right away. “Sit down, honey,” she said. She looked serious.

“Take your pill,” he said.

“Sit down.”

He sat down. She put the pill in her mouth. He handed her a glass of water, and she sipped and swallowed. “Asa,” she said. “Tell me what this love you feel
does
, for
you
. The biggest thing it does. The best thing.”

He thought. She waited. He saw she was on the edge of something again, waiting for his answer. He couldn't figure out what she might
be hoping for or fearing, so he told the truth. “It makes me feel good about everything. Even things in my life that don't have anything to do with—with her. It—it's just something that's always there to feel good about.”

His mother closed her eyes and smiled. “Yes,” she said. “That's it.”

“Okay,” he said, suddenly flushed.

She looked toward the window. Holding her hand out toward him, she opened it and revealed the pill, a white capsule on her shadowed skin.

“Hey,” he said. “Mom.”

“Feeling good
about
something—about
everything
,” she said, still looking the other way. “Whereas this”—she rolled the pill a little on her palm—”this makes you feel
good
, but about
nothing
. That's what it's for. That's—whew. Where I am, apparently.” She grunted a chuckle and looked at him. “That's where I have to start, I guess. But you know what?” She put her hands together and shook them, then made two fists and held them out to him. “You know what, Asa?”

He stared at her, refusing to look at her
hands. He tried to appear stern. “You should take that. It's my responsibility.”

“Here's what,” she said. Her eyes were bright. “I think it's been long enough feeling this phony sweetness. Asa—” She opened both of her hands, and he looked despite his resolve; both were empty. She put them on his wrists and squeezed. “Listen—I've got it, too. I've got enough inside to make me feel good
about
things.” She patted his arms. “You've been a good young man, taking charge of my pills, taking such good care of me. And
I've
been good. I've taken every pill except once, when Dave and I were going to dinner and I didn't want to feel dopey, but we had a fight so I took them later. God, it's been, what, a year, more. You've been perfect. But the treatment's over.”

“I want you to be okay,” Asa said. “I don't want you to have trouble.”

She shook his arms. “Trouble,” she said, “doesn't just come from feeling bad when things are going fine. Trouble can also come from feeling good when you shouldn't. Hey, listen.” She put her hands up to his face and
smiled as deeply as he could remember seeing in recent years. “There's nothing to be afraid of. Things happen; they don't stop. Look what's happened to you while I've been sitting here taking feelgood pills and watching TV. You've gone and fallen in love and gotten to be man enough to want to do something with it.” She held her hands up. “Probably just as much has happened to me, but I would never know it, not while I keep sitting here smiling at nothing.”

Asa could not help asking, “What could have happened? To you.”

She held his eyes, still smiling. “Well,” she said, “I could be in love and not even know it.” They watched each other carefully. Then, only a little more softly, she added: “Or not in love, Asa. And I wouldn't know that either.”

He swallowed. His throat was dry. She handed him her water, and he sipped. “Okay,” he said. “I'll go along. I won't tell. About not taking the pills.”

“Then I won't tell,” she said, “about the love.”

“Mine?” he asked. “Or yours?”

She laughed. “Yours is your business,” she said. “Mine—” She shook her head, and he saw the match strike behind her eyes again. “Mine
should
be only my business, too. But—God help us, Asa—it never ends up that way, does it?”

She looked at him. He looked at the TV. Another movie was starting.

THREE

It took him only a week. He did not force things by trying to get Jean off by herself somewhere; he waited until it happened naturally, as if the movements of the class were some kind of tide and it was best to let the tide run its course.

One Tuesday he went in early from recess so that he could take a biography of Mickey Mantle back to the library and renew it. He walked into the classroom, and there she was, sitting at her desk, reading. They were alone.

She looked up, and watched him approach. He stood beside her desk. Holding her finger in her place, she closed the book. Her desk was in the row nearest the windows; the thin brightness of autumn was shiny around her. She smiled, waiting for whatever it was.

He had not planned anything. He had hoped the moment would come and he would know what to do. He had hoped it would be simple. It was.

“I love you, Jean,” he said.

That was all. His heart was steady; his breath was deep. He waited for a moment, politely, to see if she wanted to respond. When he saw her cheeks flood with color and her eyes widen with something that looked like fear, he made a little bow and withdrew, taking a moment to get the book from his desk. She did not speak, and he did not look back.

On the way to the library, he felt for the first time the uncanny strength he held in his body: his legs could launch a leap to the corridor ceiling should he choose not to restrain their power in these small strides, and his eyes, if he really opened them, could beam great
light upon things, enriching colors, revealing facts. He looked at the book in his hands. Probably he could squeeze it back into wood pulp.

Jean's expression had puzzled him for a moment, because he plainly saw that it was fear. She had been afraid. Why? He started to work on this, and in a few moments found the answer:
She thinks she is still a child
. He smiled. That was it; that was what she thought. Her childhood
—that
was what she had seen, all of a sudden, from the other side, from her future. He knew, because he had just taken the same step himself. He smiled again. Well, there was time. He would be here, waiting as long as it took. He would be here when Jean began to grow comfortable becoming herself.

He ran home from school and arrived with his full wind. On the way up the steps of his house he considered taking a deep breath and blowing the door off its hinges; he actually saw it toppling through the foyer. He chose to open it quietly instead. Then, stepping in, he smelled Dave's after-shave. He stopped. And he knew. It came to him in a heartbeat why Dave was home at such a weird time of
the day. Asa allowed himself a quick, quiet sigh, then rubbed his eyes, stood up straight, got ready. By the time his mother's voice came from the living room, asking him to come in, he was all set.

He entered the room and glanced at them, sitting in the two chairs, facing the sofa. He saw only shapes. The lights were out, the blinds were down, the curtains were closed, the windows were shut, and the television was off. He dropped onto the sofa like a leaf falling into a dark pool somewhere in a forest.

“Asa,” said his mother. Yes. Amazing: here it came. He almost smiled at the familiarity of it. He wanted to tell her she could stop speaking right there. But he let her go on, and the words sounded again: decision, difficult, respect, no love, divorce, best for all, moving away. He was surprised how well he remembered them, and how nearly they were repeated. There were some differences, of course: he and his mother were not leaving immediately with one suitcase, but tomorrow at noon; they were going not to the beach, but to an apartment Dave had kindly found for
them in Raleigh; in fact, Dave—no end to his kindness—was driving them there, in what she clearly called
his
car.

Another difference this time, of course, was that the man they were leaving was sitting right there, lumpy and still in the dark, listening, presumed to agree, ready to be helpful in delivering them out of his life. Asa looked at Dave and knew with a warm certainty that he and Dave, in silence, were feeling at least one thing the same: surely they were both relieved. There was more, of course—he knew that Dave, as a husband, as a boyfriend from olden times, was possessed by a mess of other feelings. But merely as a stepfather, surely Dave felt relieved, even blessed. Again Asa nearly smiled, tenderly, at the fact that here, at the end of their time together, they had a lot in common: the yearning for freedom from each other.

Asa's mother finished talking. This time she did not chatter and fret. She spoke with a commanding confidence, in a tone Asa had never heard before. He did not trust it entirely—he had been duped by her chipper bravado
before—but at least she seemed to be taking wing this time with a certain forcefulness, and surely that was preferable to wincing and stumbling. In the darkness Asa saw her turn her head pertly toward Dave: it was his turn to say a few words now, if he liked.

Dave cleared his throat. Asa waited, silently sending Dave a message:
You don't have to make a speech
. Dave evidently got the message. After an awkward pause, all he said was, “Sorry, Sport.” Asa stood up and said, “Me too. I'd better go pack.”

So he did. It took longer than he expected. He had to admit he had gotten soft: living in this house for nearly three years had taken the snap out of his reflexes. Once, a few years ago, it had seemed he was packing every other month, and he had refined packing to a crisp drill. Now he started slowly, holding things he had acquired in this place and savoring them a little before putting them into boxes. He reflected on the view from the windows, the light in the room, the smell of mothballs and cedar in the closet. Then he snapped out of it. His old drive returned with a rush of
efficiency, the point was to pack, to get ready, to move. It was, to tell the truth, kind of exciting. Moving—what was wrong with it; as a word, as a concept? As a life? Everything had to move; you could not really grow without movement. Pity the people who had to stay stuck in one place. Put it in a box and take to the road.

He finished just after dark. His mother looked in once, to bring him a plate of cold fried chicken and potato salad, while he was finishing with his comic-book collection. She said nothing, just left the plate and blew a kiss he did not look up to receive, nodding an acknowledgment instead: he was a busy guy. They both knew how this whole thing worked; they had shared it before, they were partners, really. His heart swelled with the closeness of it, this partnership, this resumption of the familiar adventure. He had a sense of orderliness now—a conviction that it was good to live the life you had established, especially if you had established it with someone. As he ate, hastily tearing the chicken, he was surrounded by the special bliss that came when someone
gave him something. A sense of opportunity came, too—for strength, and no-nonsense action, and perhaps, pride. He was a boy who appreciated an opportunity to be strong, so a wave of gratitude followed his bliss.

He went downstairs when he had finished. The public parts of the house looked much the same; he knew the furniture and stuff would be packed by movers. His mother was finishing in her bedroom. Dave was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was spending the night in a motel or something. That would be decorous of him. Asa went out through the screened porch, into the backyard, for a last look at the moonlight on the sycamore that grew in the middle. But as soon as he stepped onto the grass he smelled Dave's after-shave again, and heard himself called by name from the darkness.

He walked out toward the tree. There was no moon. In what would have been the tree's shadow, Dave lay on a long beach chair. He seemed to be doing nothing. Asa realized that in fact he had nothing to do: everyone else was busy packing. He was staying out of their way.
No doubt he would be moving, too; but for the moment the act of leaving belonged to Asa and his mother.

Dave moved on the chair. “Sit down with me,” he said. His voice was not soft so much as watery. He did not sound like himself. He sounded injured. Asa, who was feeling so bouncy, wondered if they had so much in common right now after all—or if his own bounciness was all that true. He sat down, and Dave hugged him close.