What Hearts (12 page)

Asa let himself be hugged; he even tried to lean into it a little. There had been a time, in the first couple of years after Dave and his mother had married, when Asa had wished for the kind of comfortable, casual-hugging relationship he saw other boys have with their dads. He believed he had enjoyed such a relationship with his true father, but he couldn't really remember. It was surprising that he couldn't remember, really: he could remember almost everything in his life. Things about himself and his father, back in the days before he knew such things as divorce were possible
had been wiped out, as if some hip skepticism looked on his innocence with scorn and obliterated its traces.

Despite his hope, however, he and Dave could never quite get the hang of being offhand. It was not possible for one to touch the other, or say even a few words, with true ease. Everything meant something, to both of them. They were watchful, taut. No hugs.

But now Asa settled in with his back against Dave's chest, and they sat looking up into the black sky showing through the tree limbs. The sycamore smelled like brown sugar. Dave said, “I don't know if you know this, but I want you to: I love you.”

“Oh,” said Asa.

Dave sighed. “I don't blame you. I wouldn't believe it either. But it's true. It's true in spite of how hard I
tried
to love you.”

Asa frowned. “What?”

Dave shifted a little in the chair, sighed. “Well, see, that was the problem, for a long time. Trying, I mean. See—I knew I
had
to. I had to love you. It was…necessary. I was marrying
your mother, and that meant I was taking you, too. So I just tried like heck. But I'm no good at that, Sport—I hate almost anything I have to try to do. I hate
having
to do anything.” He waited a moment. “I bet you can understand that part.”

“Yes,” said Asa.

“Right. You don't like having to do something either. We're alike in that way. We're alike a lot of ways, really. That's one reason we don't get along better.”

“Maybe so,” said Asa.

Dave chuckled. “You don't sound like you believe it.”

Asa said, “I guess I see some ways' we get at each other because we are both guys. There's
that
. But I guess I don't ever feel like we're the same
kind
of guys.”

Dave thought about it for a while. He laughed a watery laugh. “I guess you're right.” He sighed, and hugged Asa closer.

Asa sat for a while, being hugged. He
could
leave it at that. He
could
sit quietly and in another twenty hours this guy would be out of
his life. Certainly a year ago he could have exercised a strategic restraint, he could have skipped the last, few fine points. But something had changed. He said, “You don't know who I am.”

Dave said nothing. Asa went on. “You know who you'd like me to be, and I think that's the kid you love.”

He felt Dave tense a little, harden up in the chest, and start to speak. But then Dave relaxed again, and said only: “I guess I should say I'm sorry.”

Asa smiled at the clever phrase. “
Are
you sorry, then?” he pressed.

Dave struggled for a moment, then gave in. “No,” he said, forcefully. “No, by God, I'm not.”

“Ah,” said Asa.

“Because,” said Dave, warming up, “because maybe who I want you to be is better than who you are. And I'll tell you one thing for sure—you can bet I only want it to
help
you, help you be a better person, have a better life.”

“Even if it's someone else's life.”

Dave laughed, shallow and bitter. “Fine, son. All righty. You go ahead and enjoy your own precious self and your own precious life. Have a ball. To me, though, the prospects don't look all that hot. I hoped maybe you learned some things. You're in for some surprises, see; the world isn't just sitting out there waiting for Asa to be who he is in all his glory, so it can bestow it's blessing. You have to meet the world halfway.”

Asa waited a moment, then said, “Halfway doesn't sound bad.”

Dave snapped, “What do you mean by that?”

Asa sighed. He was tired. “Just what I said. Halfway would be fine. You always came
more
than halfway. You came right up into my face. No room left. But never mind. I'm cold. I'm going in. I'm sorry about you and Mom. I know it's been hard having me along, stuck into the whole thing. I'm sorry you had to try to love me and it didn't work.”

“But I told you,” said Dave with a kind of pleading, as Asa stood up. “I told you: I do
love you, Asa. I don't know
why
. There's a lot of reasons I shouldn't on the face of it”

Asa laughed. “Thanks a lot.”

Dave ignored him. “But you've got to believe me, son. And I'll miss you. I know I'm going to miss you. Bad.”

Asa faced him. In the darkness he could just see the outline of Dave's head, the pale motion of his mouth. He looked at the man. It was incredible that this indistinct thing had been the source of so many excruciatingly exact requirements in his life. He sighed again, and shivered. Time to go.

“Well,” he said, “good night.”

“Good night, Asa.” Dave's voice was watery again. Almost in a whisper, he added: “I love you.”

Asa started to go, then hesitated. He looked at the dark outline. Politely, gently, with all the cheery-but-sober charm he could muster, he said, “Then I'd
like
to say: I love you too.”

He turned away. But it wasn't enough. From the chair Dave called for the certainty of clarification: “You do, Asa? Do you?”

Asa stopped. He heard the pleading. It was almost soft. It was almost openhearted. It was almost, almost halfway.

One more time, Dave asked: “Then you do, Asa? You love me?”

Standing still in the dark, Asa said nothing. What was he waiting for? Why not just snap the obvious answer at Dave and leave him in pain? After all, Asa knew the answer, did he not? Well—that was where the hesitation took hold. Asa realized with a shiver that suddenly he was
not
so certain; it was not so easy after all to say “No.” The question hung in the dark air,
Do you love me, too?
and for the first time in his life Asa did not want to know an answer. If the heart could betray one's good sense—if love could take such liberties as to fasten onto stepfathers—then what hope was there for a boy of intelligence and will? What justice? Asa did not want to know. He stood there with his eyes closed, trying to feel absolutely nothing, holding his breath in the hope that enlightenment, for once, would pass him by. Then, quietly, without a word, he began to walk back toward the house.

FOUR

The morning at school got away from him. Withdrawing required a lot of little official duties. He looked for Jean before homeroom, but she wasn't with her usual friends on the grounds. She came into homeroom at the last minute, just before roll call; then Asa was called out, to go down to the office. He wanted to tell her himself, that he was moving away. He wanted to tell her things did not change because of this. He hoped this was actually true, in some wild way he couldn't imagine. He wanted to say it, anyhow.

Then, before first period, Jean's friend Brenda rushed up to him outside the classroom doorway. She looked at him quickly as if he were something between a hero and a ferocious animal, and she pressed a balled-up paper napkin into his hand. “From Jean,” she said. “She
means
it.”

Carrying the napkin, he took his seat, and stared over at Jean. She was looking down into her lap, at nothing.

In the middle of class he was called down to the office again; as he left he zipped a glance at Jean. She wasn't even watching him. In the hall, he stopped and unwadded the napkin.

Inside were two small candy hearts, one pale purple, the other white. They were the kind kids gave out at Valentine's Day, with pink letters printed on them; his heart sank as he remembered such messages as “Squeeze me!” and “Cute Guy!” Maybe she
was
still a kid. That would make leaving a little easier, perhaps.

But then he straightened the hearts out on his palm and read them. On each of them, the letters said:
I love you
. Twice:
I love you. I love you
. Two. In other words,
I love you, too
. He read them again. It was a smart bit of wordplay. He believed the smartness, and the hearts. He believed Jean. Okay: she loved him, too. He straightened himself. His feelings balled up and dropped, right through the bottoms of his feet.

He went to the office and signed whatever he had to sign, then came back to class. He nodded at Mrs. Halterman at the blackboard
and made his way to his seat. He did not look at Jean, but he could see that her face was turned toward him. It stayed that way, throughout the class: her head was erect and her face shone at him like a spotlight. He could see it. He could feel it. Her attention pulled at him like a great, calm tide.

It was clear: she knew now that he had read the hearts. She had hidden from him that morning like a child, until her message was delivered. Now, with her new power, she demanded that he meet her feelings, face to face. It was just the way he had felt when he told her he loved her. It was her turn now.

With five minutes left in class, he could not resist. He looked over at her.

She was waiting for him. Her face was clear—no hope or fear or adoration or humor. It was a naked face. It looked as if it had never been bared to the world before. Now it was bared only to him. Her eyes were bright and fixed, and at a glance someone might have said they looked almost fierce, hungry. But they were, not fierce; they were not hungry. They simply looked at what was outside—Asa—and
showed what was inside—Jean. Showed, and
gave
: in her open, naked, brilliant gaze, Jean was giving herself to him, child, girl, and woman.

He could not look away. He had no idea what his face showed—fear, like hers yesterday? Grief? A giving of his own?—because he had no idea what he was feeling. Things whirled before him, demanding consideration. There was Jean, right here; there was a call of mystery from the life he would start tomorrow, somewhere else, a life in which the spirit of adventure was ready to clear the heart of longings best left behind; there was his mother, spiraling close and familiar, spiraling strange and away.

He was certain of only one thing: He knew he would always
move
, inside and out. But Jean's face, more than anything, was still. It offered itself in silence and stillness: to explore, to accept what was being given, one would have to join the silence, find the stillness, stop moving. He knew: his moving would never stop. And he knew, somehow; that this showed.

In case it didn't, Mrs. Halterman stopped the lesson a minute before the bell and began to speak. He heard his name. Without looking away, he listened; he could see Jean do the same. “We are very sorry,” Mrs. Halterman was saying, “that we are losing Asa. Today is his last day in our school, and we want to wish him luck and tell him that we will miss him.”

Other faces turned his way, and a ripple of sound passed quickly over the class: disappointment, then curiosity. Asa had to look away from Jean to glance around, smile, nod. The bell rang. With a few more looks at him and a couple of waves, the kids left. That was it. One day he had stood outside their classroom door waiting to get in, and they had let him in. He
had
been completely in there for these years, hadn't he? It really
was
the inside, wasn't it? But now things had turned inside out again. He was to go. Good-bye, Ace, have a nice life.

He heard a sound from Jean's direction and turned. She was up, Brenda was glaring at him, together they were rushing out, Brenda's arm around the smaller girl's shoulders, which
were down, sunk, moving. Brenda was hating him hard with her eyes; he could barely look past them to Jean, but he got a glimpse of her face, and with a shock he saw there was no sadness there. There was only fury. She shook with it; the tears that caught the overhead light on her cheeks were tears of rage. He rose in his desk, tried to say something, but Brenda had her out the door. He stayed halfway up, awkward, staring after them. The room was empty. Nobody came back. Furious! The heat of it prickled his face like sunburn. Well, what did he expect? Sadness, probably, was for kids.

FIVE

On the way out of town they had a flat tire. Asa helped Dave jack the car up, and he took the lug nuts Dave handed him and placed them in the hubcap of the afflicted wheel. But when they had secured the spare and jacked the car down, they discovered that the spare was flat
too. Dave cursed. Asa volunteered to hitchhike to a service station they had passed a couple of miles back. Strangely enough, he was allowed to do this. The first car that came along stopped for him. In it were three people, two men and a woman, who hastily and urgently asked him about his religion while spitting politely into Dixie cups every sentence or so. He said he loved Jesus just fine, and asked them why they spit so much. They told him they “took snuff,” adding that it was godlier than smoking cigarettes. At the filling station he thanked them and got out.

He waited in the station while the tow truck went and fetched Dave and his mother and the car. The three of them waited for a while, to find out that a tire would have to be ordered from a station across town; the car would not be ready for another two hours. Asa, drinking Dr Pepper and studying random maps of the U.S. pulled from a dispenser, was content. But his mother and Dave seemed restless, and began to exchange odd looks.

“You know—” said his mom.

“Yeah—”said Dave.

“It's already so late—”

“Wasting time—”

“So close to home—”