You Are My Heart and Other Stories (6 page)

“Next time what—?”

He shrugged. “Maybe next time I drop you down the sewer
if I get the chance. Then you'll come out black as me, right? Black as the devil's ass at midnight!”

He laughed at what he'd said, but when I started to laugh with him, his face went hard again.

“You just leave me be, is all, do you hear?” he said again. “Do you?
Do
you? Because you don't know, see. You don't know anything. You just don't know.”

Don't know what? I wanted to ask, but before I could say the words, he was gone.

 

I didn't see Karen that weekend—I telephoned her house a few times, but each time whoever answered told me she wasn't in—and on Sunday night, when I was feeling like shit because I was missing her so badly, my mother came into my room, knocking on the door before she did, which was a first, and sat down on my bed. It was killing her for us to be like strangers to each other, she said, and it was hard on my father too. What did I
want
? she asked. Could I just tell her what I wanted from them.

My answer was what it always was: for them to leave me alone.

But they'd been doing that, she said, and it hadn't made any difference. She said that my father believed that often you swallowed your pride and went against your own values, or you even lied—told white lies—to keep peace in the house.
Shalom habayis
, she said. That's what your father believes, and I do too.
Shalom habayis.

I shrugged, and when my mother changed subjects, telling me she'd had a call from a Mrs. Merdinger, in Belle Harbor, I knew she was getting to her real reason for coming in to talk with me.

Did I remember a young woman I'd met at Temple Beth El named Marcia Merdinger? she asked. I answered that I remembered Marcia, that I'd met her at a dance the year before, after a game we'd played against her synagogue's team. My mother nodded and told me that Mrs. Merdinger had called without
Marcia's knowledge because there was a big dance at Marcia's high school—a junior prom—and that Marcia was thinking of inviting me, but that since Marcia hadn't heard from me in a long time, her mother was calling to say that it would be nice if I gave Marcia a call first.

I rolled my eyes, and told my mother to forget the whole thing, but my mother, sensing my weakness somehow—the truth was that Marcia had been one of the hottest girls I'd ever made out with—said that I didn't have to marry the girl, that all I had to do was call her and perhaps go to a dance with her. Where was the harm? My mother knew I was still seeing Karen, and if I didn't call Marcia, she would of course understand. That was my decision. But she
had
promised Mrs. Merdinger she would talk with me, so if I could let her know what I intended to do…

Meanwhile, I wasn't seeing much of Karen. Whenever I asked her about going for a walk, she said she had “obligations at home,” and when, on Friday, I pointed out that a whole week had gone by without us spending any time alone together, and asked if she were avoiding me or if her mother and Uncle Joshua were putting pressure on her, she got angry.

We were standing in an alcove under the arch at the Bedford Avenue entrance to Erasmus—the school was modeled after a British university, built around a quadrangle with Gothic style architecture—and she kept her books between us, pressed to her chest like a shield.

“Am I avoiding you?” she asked, repeating my question. “Well, you might put it that way. But I'm not doing anything you're not doing to Olen.”

I told her I didn't understand.

“You call yourself Olen's friend?” she said. “You call yourself his
friend
?”

“Sure,” I said. “He's my
best
friend—”

“Then why aren't you spending time with him? This is when he needs you, and you're nowhere. This is when—”

“But he told me to leave him alone!” I protested. “He nearly chopped me in half last week at the schoolyard and then told me to go fuck myself and to never talk with him again—”

“And you
listened
to him?” Karen shoved her books against my chest, pushing me against the wall. “You
listened
to him?”

“But it's what he
said
,” I said. “I tried—believe me—but he just kept telling me to leave him be, to—”

“Talk about stupid,” Karen said. “I thought you were the big risk taker—the guy who never saw a dare he didn't like—”

“But this was
different
,” I began. “He really meant it, and I just didn't know what else to do…”

“You could have talked with me,” Karen said, as if to herself. She took a deep breath, and continued, without anger: “Olen's hurting bad—he's hurting real bad—the worst I've ever seen him, and he's been known to hunker down into some really foul moods. He won't open up to
anybody.
Even when my mother was so worried, she got Pastor Kinnard to come by the house the other night, it didn't do any good. So what's he gonna do? I mean, what's he gonna
do
? Answer me that if you're so smart. You're the only one could reach him, and now you just…”

I tried to put my arms around her, but she pushed me away.

“I counted on you,” she said, “and you let me down. You let me down big-time.”

“But what was I supposed to do when he said to leave him be—?”

“You were supposed to do
something
. You were supposed to use that famous daredevil imagination of yours. You were supposed to not take no for an answer.” She took a deep breath, put her face close to mine, and spoke in a whisper, enunciating each word very clearly. “
You-were-supposed-to-be-his-friend
.”

Then she pushed by me, and walked away. I followed and stayed by her side all the way to her block, but no matter what I said—no matter how I pleaded for her to give me a chance to show her I
could
do better—she just kept telling me to leave her be, to stop following her, and to get on home. And when we got
to her house, she told me we were finished and warned me not to telephone her or to
dare
to try to see her ever again.

By this time I'd had it, and I let go of the frustration that was boiling up inside me and told her that she was being as stupid as her brother, and to hell with both of them—that it was fine with me if we never saw each other again and if she ever came crawling back asking me to forgive her, it would be too late for her and me the way it was going to be too late for Olen and college.

Karen's grandmother came out on the porch then, along with two of Karen's little brothers, Edgar and Joel, and started yelling at me to leave her granddaughter alone or she'd call the police, and I told her to go ahead and call the police, and then for some reason I started in singing as loud as I could the first song that came into my head—“Oh Happy Day”—and asking her and Karen to join in with me, and when her grandmother went back inside and I kept singing, Karen told me I was truly nuts and that her grandmother meant what she said and that I'd better get out of there.

I thanked Karen for being concerned for my safety, and walked down the street—the Tompkins twins came out onto their porch and made circles at the sides of their heads with their index fingers, which they then pointed at me to show that they agreed with Karen about me being nuts—and I just waved to them and kept singing at the top of my lungs—“
Oh happy day… Oh happy day…
”—but with, I hoped Karen would notice, the best voice control I'd ever had.

By the time I got home I was feeling pretty low, and I telephoned Karen at least a half-dozen times before supper, but each time when I said “Is Karen there?” the person on the other end hung up on me. I walked from room to room of my apartment, then picked up the model of the house we'd been working on and in a sudden fit of frustration almost threw it against the wall, but instead I set it down gently on my desk and caressed it as if it were a puppy, and spoke to it, telling it that everything
was going to be all right. All I really wanted was to erase everything that had been happening, and for things to be okay between me and Karen the way they'd been before I'd shot my mouth off at Mr. Ordover. All I really wanted, I knew, was for somebody to tell
me
everything would be all right—to talk to
me
with some tenderness.

I lay down on my bed then and, imagining Karen was there with me, I closed my eyes and unzipped my fly. The next thing I knew, the phone rang but I was in such a deep sleep that at first I didn't know where I was or what time it was. I stumbled into the foyer, where our telephone was.

“Hi. This is Marcia, from Belle Harbor,” the voice said. “Your old flame.”

I said something back about being glad to hear from her, and she said she was only calling because she wanted me to know that she hadn't put
her
mother up to calling
my
mother. In fact, she had no idea how her mother even got my phone number.

“And I'm not calling to get you to go to the prom with me,” she added. “I just wanted you to know that I didn't put my mother up to calling.
God!
”

“I figured,” I said. “I mean, I figured you had nothing to do with it.”

“And also, as long as we're talking, that I followed your team this year. I saw a lot of your box scores.”

“You
did
?!”

“Sure. Some girls like saxophone players, but—shh: don't tell anybody—I've always had a thing for basketball players.”

“Well, we lost the big one—”

“Lose the game, win the girl—” she said quickly.

“Which one?”

“The girl of your dreams.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Only listen,” she said. “I'm probably embarassing you—which is definitely my intention—but I really did want you to
know what happened, and also that if you invite me to the prom, I'll go with you.”

“Don't do me any favors,” I said back, and when I did she laughed.

“Really, though,” she said. “I was just pulling your chain. You don't have to go with me. I mean, it's no big deal. Only—”

“Only what—?”

“I heard you were seeing somebody—keeping company, as my mother likes to put it.”

“We broke up,” I said. “I mean, we
just
broke up—”

“Oh Jesus,” she said. “Sorry and double-sorry.”

Then, after she apologized some more for giving me such a hard time, she told me the story of what happened when she'd broken up with
her
boyfriend at the end of the summer—he wasn't black, but he wasn't Jewish either—and about how her parents had been on her case and how devastated she'd been, and I said I didn't think that part of it—being devastated—had hit me yet. When I told her that my best
guy
-friend wasn't talking to me either—I didn't tell her he was Karen's brother—and that it felt good to talk to
someone
—her voice got softer and she said I could call her anytime I wanted to talk. She knew what I was going through, she said, and she knew it helped to talk with somebody who'd been there too.

We stayed on the phone for a long time, talking a lot about how our parents had bugged us, and we wound up deciding that the two of us could probably become Platonic friends—maybe even introduce each other to guys and girls we knew and double date some day, but that until then, where would the harm be if we called each other sometimes just to talk, or if I came out on Saturday night and we went to the prom together? If nothing else, it would make things easier for us at home with our parents so that we'd be freer to do what we wanted to do
outside
our homes. I asked about arrangements, and she said not to worry about a tux—it wasn't formal—and that she'd call me back later in the evening with details.

Instead of Marcia calling back, though, her mother called my mother to say that given the bus ride out to Belle Harbor, and given the fact that the dance might end late, I was welcome to stay over on Saturday night in their guest room.

 

So I went to the prom, and Marcia and I danced close all night, with her blowing in my ear sometimes and telling me she remembered what a great dancer I was and that if she remembered correctly, I was a pretty good kisser too. Mostly, though, she seemed happy just to be there, and to show me off to her friends—some of whom had seen me play in Madison Square Garden, and remembered when I'd come out to Belle Harbor before.

After the dance, we went to one of her friends' houses—all the kids from her crowd lived in private homes with garages, yards, and finished basements—and some of her friends passed around flasks of whiskey. There was a lot of necking and slow dancing, with the lights out except for a few candles, and some of the couples disappeared into other rooms. Marcia could tell I wasn't in the mood for much, and when she asked if I was mooning over my girlfriend, I admitted that I was, so after a while, and without making out, she suggested we go back to her house.

Her parents were still up when we got there, and we talked with them about the prom, and about which of Marcia's friends had been there with which guys, and then Marcia said that we were both pretty tired, and her parents said how nice it was to see me again and told me they would see me at breakfast. Marcia showed me to the guest room in the basement, took some stuffed animals and extra pillows off the bed, told me she'd had a lovely time, thanked me for coming, especially given what I'd been going through, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and left.

In the middle of the night, though—the clock-radio on the night table said it was 3:22—she woke me, lifted the covers, and got into the bed next to me.