Give Me Your Heart (25 page)

Ethel had slapped him; he’d been yelling and laughing and stomping in the house so hard the windowpanes shook like a army bomber from Fort Drum was passing too low over the roof. Martin
had hardly felt the blow, only brushed Ethel away like you’d brush away flies.

A few minutes later they heard him outside. A noise of breaking glass.

“Miriam, what the hell? You crying?”

It was the smoke. Making her eyes water. Her eyeballs burned in their sockets. She was annoyed, shaking her head,
no,
why’d she be crying? She was having a great time.

Her left wrist where Kevin had grabbed and twisted was reddened in overlapping welts. Half consciously she was touching the skin, caressing.

“He do that? Your wrist?”

“No.”

Brandon McGraw’s blood-yellow eyes were peering at Miriam’s wrist. His bristly eyebrows nearly met over the bridge of his nose, which was large, red-flushed, with deep,
stretched-looking nostrils.

A look of shocked tenderness in Brandon’s face so you’d almost want to laugh. Like the look she’d seen once on her father’s face as he squatted in the driveway to stare
at something small, wriggling, dying, a fledgling robin blown out of its nest.

“Like hell, Miriam. This looks like a guy’s finger marks.”

“Really, no. I’m just clumsy.”

Miriam drew her arm away. Shrank both arms against her chest.

How she’d got there she didn’t know. Six miles from home. Too far to walk in the dark. Missing her shoes. She was drunk, she’d been sweating so.
Miriam! I’ve been sick
with worry.

She hated Ethel. Couldn’t bear to see Ethel.

Alone. The two of them. In the house on Salt Isle Road. Ethel, Miriam. Where there’d been six people, now reduced to two.

These guys felt sorry for her, Miriam knew. Seeing her, they were thinking
Orlander: bad luck.

“He didn’t hurt me. I don’t care about him. See, I’m having a great time. I want to dance.”

Dance! Miriam wanted to dance! Stumbling and almost falling. The floor tilted beneath her like the deck was a boat. Were they on a cruise boat, on the lake? Choppy waves?

Through the speakers blared heavy metal rock. Maybe you could dance to it. Was anybody dancing? Miriam wasn’t the girl this was happening to. Miriam wasn’t the type. How she’d
got here to the Star Lake Inn, which was a biker hangout on the marshy side of the lake, she didn’t know. Underage but looking eighteen at least. No one asked her for ID. The kind of place
the bartenders stayed inside and there were no waiters. You pushed your way in, got drinks from the bar, pushed your way back out onto the deck. Lights on tall poles. Insects swirling around the
lights like demented thoughts. Miriam’s brothers had come here. She’d been eating cold french fries from one of the greasy plates. Hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. None of this was
remotely like Miriam Orlander. At the boathouse, she was the girl who blushed easily. The girl who didn’t flirt with men. Had not wanted to waitress, so she worked in the store, where she was
the youngest salesclerk and got stuck with the hardest work, like unpacking the merchandise, stocking the shelves. What embarrassed her was the female employee uniform she had to wear. Red T-shirt
with white letters, au sable boathouse, straining against her breasts. Worse yet the white cord miniskirt trimmed in red. The miniskirt rode up her thighs. Sitting, she had to keep her knees
pressed tightly together. Walking, she had to tug at the skirt, uncomfortably aware of her thighs rubbing together. Men stared. Some smiled openly. Miriam was a healthy girl: five feet six, one
hundred thirty pounds. Ethel had crinkled her face at the uniform.
Miriam! I don’t think this is a good idea.
She’d wanted to come with Miriam to the boathouse to speak with Andy
Mack, who’d hired Miriam and provided the uniform for his girl employees, but Miriam had screamed at her and run out of the house.

Now Miriam was dancing. Wild and tossing her body like it’s impaled on a hook she’s got to wriggle, wriggle, wriggle to get free. Oz Newell was dancing with her, and for a while Hay
Brouwet. For such burly muscled guys, they got winded fast. Miriam laughed at them. Miriam loved how the music poured like something molten into her veins. The beat was so fast her heart raced to
keep up. Maybe it was ice he’d given her; maybe this was the ice rush, and she loved it. Breathing through her mouth, panting. Bare feet, kind of pudgy pale feet, toenails painted dark to
match the sexy lipstick, she’s picking up splinters in the tender soles of her feet from the raw floorboards but doesn’t feel any pain. Not a glimmer of pain. No more pain! Maybe it
doesn’t matter if she isn’t beautiful, the way Oz Newell is looking at her. His eyes on her breasts in the tight red T-shirt, his eyes on her soft rounded belly, her hips and thighs in
the tight white miniskirt trimmed in red. Rivulets of sweat trickle down Oz’s sunburned face. Oz does construction work for Herkimer County. Oz had some kind of disagreement with Gideon; they
didn’t part friends. Miriam is weak with sudden love for him. Laughs to think how surprised Oz would be if she slipped her bare arms around his neck and tongued his face, licked away the
sweat droplets like tearor -six is twenty-five orsix. Ten years older than Miriam. Gideon’s age. Not a boy but a man. His hair is a blond buzzcut. Eyebrows and lashes so pale you almost
can’t see them. Gray eyes like pinwheels, spinning.

Hay Brouwet is back, and another guy, fattish and drunk-silly, grimy baseball cap on his head advertising watertown raceway. The dancing, if you can call it dancing, is getting out of control.
Hay is shaking his shiny stub-finger in Miriam’s face, gyrating his hips like some stoned rock star, collides with an older man carrying beers, two beers in the stretched fingers of each
hand, and the beers go flying, there’s a comical scene like something on TV, Miriam is helpless, laughing, panting, and breathless, and almost wets herself. There’s a feeling like fire:
wildfire. The guys’ eyes on her, the heavy-metal vibrations thundering inside her head. Like, with a fire, the wind blows it in one direction and not another—it’s the difference
between somebody’s property going up in walls of roaring flame and somebody else’s, only a few hundred feet away, untouched. There are controlled burns in the Adirondacks. You have to
get permission from the county. And there are uncontrolled burns—lightning, campers’ fires, arson.

Arson. There’s times you are so angry, so beaten down, you need to start a fire. Toss a match, evergreens dead and dried from acid rain, it’s like a fireball exploding. Miriam
remembers one of her brothers saying this.
Hey—just joking.

Miriam’s father had been a volunteer fireman for Au Sable township. There’d been years of the excitement and dread of hearing the siren, a high-pitched wail from the firehouse a mile
away, seeing Daddy roused to attention, hurriedly dressing if it was night, running out to his pickup. Often they’d smelled smoke, seen smoke rising above the tree line, heard sirens. Those
years Miriam had taken for granted would go on forever. But after Ogdensburg, Les hadn’t rejoined the volunteers. Maybe there was a law against ex-convicts being volunteer firemen, Miriam
hadn’t wanted to ask.

Abruptly the deafening rock music stopped. For a moment Miriam didn’t know where she was. Her eyeballs were burning as if she’d been staring stupidly into a hot bright light. Inside
her tight-fitting clothes she was slick with sweat like oil. Damn miniskirt had ridden up to practically her crotch. Like a child, Miriam wiped her damp face on her T-shirt. Somebody’s arms
came down heavy on her shoulders, somebody stumbling against her, a big guy, soft fleshy belly, a smell of whiskey and heat pouring off his skin. Quick as a cat, Miriam disentangled herself and
backed away. Ran barefoot to the edge of the deck, where, overlooking lapping water just below, it was quieter, smelling of the lake. Miriam recalled as if through a haze that she was at Star Lake:
six miles from home. The way the moon was slanted in the sky, now east of Mount Hammer, it had to be late.
Worried sick about you. You’re all I have.

Star Lake was dark, glittering by moonlight. Said to be in the shape of a star, but up close you couldn’t see any shape to it, only glittering water and opaque wedges of shadow that were
trees and, on the far shore, the east side, lights from the new houses, not visible from the shore road. Miriam had never been in any of these houses; she had no friends who lived in them. Mostly
these were summer people who kept to themselves. Their houses were architect-designed A-frames, split-levels, replicas of old Adirondack log lodges. The last months of his life, Miriam’s
father had worked for a roofing contractor on several of those houses. He’d been disbelieving, the prices people from downstate were paying.
Like another world,
he’d said.
It’s another world now.
He had not seemed especially grieving that day. Quiet and matter-of-fact, informing his daughter as if it were something she should know.

“Hey, baby. Where you goin’?”

A hand came down on Miriam’s shoulder. Fingers kneading the nape of her neck beneath her damp crimped hair. Miriam felt a stab of panic even after she saw it was Oz Newell. Now the music
had stopped, she wasn’t so sure of herself.
I don’t want this. This is a mistake.
Miriam managed to twist away from Oz but grabbed his hand, as a girl might do, to pull him back
to the others, to the table. Oz slung his arms around her shoulders and nuzzled her hair, called her baby, as if he’d forgotten her name. Miriam felt weak with desire for the man, unless it
was fear. “I miss Gideon. Damn, I miss your dad.” Oz’s voice sounded young, raw, clumsy. He had more to say but couldn’t think of the words. Miriam murmured, “I do
too. Thanks.”

Halfway back to the table Miriam saw the jut-jawed young man from the marina weaving through the crowd. It was a shock to see him; she’d taken for granted he’d dumped her. Was Kevin
his name? Was this Kevin? Miriam hadn’t remembered him wearing a Yankees cap, but she remembered the arrogant jut-jawed face, the streaked blond hair. He was walking unsteadily and
hadn’t seen her. Or, seeing her, had not recognized her. He was alone, appeared to be looking for someone. Miriam wondered if maybe he’d been in the men’s room all this while,
being sick to his stomach. His face looked freshly washed and not so arrogant as he’d seemed with just him and Miriam in the Jeep, when he’d bragged of his father’s sailboat and
twisted Miriam’s wrist. Miriam pointed him out to Oz: “That’s him.”

2.

Did it to himself.

This was a way of speaking. It was the way she knew they were speaking. It was a way of wonderment, and of accusation. It was a way of consolation. In Au Sable County and Star Lake and where Les
Orlander had been known. A way of saying,
Nobody else is to blame, no one of us. Nobody did it to him, he did it to himself.
Yet it was a way of admiration too. It was a way of saying,
He
did it to himself, it was his free choice.
A way of acknowledging.
He did it to himself, he had the guts for it, and not everybody has.
In the Adirondacks, a man’s guns are his
friends. A man’s guns are his companions. Les Orlander had not been a fanatic gun collector, like some. Like some of his relatives and in-laws. Shotguns, rifles. Legal weapons. Les had owned
only a shotgun and a rifle, and these were of no special distinction.
Did it to himself, used his rifle,
was a tribute to the man’s efficiency.
Did it to himself, out alone in the
woods.
A gun is a man’s friend when friends can’t help. A friend to protect him from shame, from hurt, from dragging through his life. A gun can make a wounded man whole. A gun can
make a broken man stronger. No escape, except a gun will provide escape.
Did it to himself
had to be the legacy he’d leave his family.

3.

You know I love you, honey. That will never stop.

He’d said that. Before he went away. Miriam was staring out the school bus window. Her breath steamed faintly on the window. Her eyes were glazed, seeing little of the landscape: trees,
fields, roadside houses, mobile homes on concrete blocks at the end of rutted driveways.

. . .
come see me, okay? Promise?

There came the tall, clumsy Ochs girl lurching toward her. As the school bus started up, lurching along the aisle, staring and grinning at Miriam. She was at least two years older than Miriam:
fourteen, one of the special education students at school. Her face was broad and coarse and blemished in dull red rashes and bumps. Her small cunning eyes had a peculiar glisten. Lana Ochs
wasn’t retarded but was said to have “learning disabilities.” Her older sister had been expelled for fighting in the school cafeteria. On the bus, no one wanted Lana to sit with
them: she was so large-boned, fidgety, and smelled like rancid milk. Miriam’s backpack was in the seat beside her. She was saving a seat for her friend Iris. Miriam stared out the window as
Lana approached, thinking,
Go away! Don’t sit here.
But Lana was hunched over her, grinning. She asked, “This seat taken?” and Miriam said quickly, “Yes, it
is.” For Iris Petko, who was in Miriam’s seventh-grade homeroom, would be getting on the bus in a few minutes, and Lana Ochs knew this. Still she hung over Miriam, swaying and lurching
in the aisle, as if about to shove Miriam’s backpack aside. In a whiny, insinuating voice she said, “No it isn’t. It isn’t taken, Miriam.” Miriam was sitting halfway
to the rear of the bus. There were several empty seats Lana might take. In another minute the bus driver would shout back at her to sit down; it was forbidden to stand in the aisle while the bus
was in motion. Miriam said, “It’s for Iris. You can sit somewhere else.” Her eyes lifted to Lana Ochs’s flushed face, helpless. Lana’s hair was matted and frizzed. Her
lips were fleshy, smeared with bright red lipstick. Older boys on the bus called Lana by an ugly name having to do with those lips. Lana leaned over Miriam, saying in a mock whisper, “Hey,
Miriam—your father and my father, they’re in the same place.” Miriam said, “No they’re not.” Lana said, “Yes they are. That makes us like sisters.”
Miriam was staring out the window now, stony-faced. She was a shy girl but could be stuck-up, snotty. In seventh grade she had that reputation. Her friends were popular girls. She received high
grades in most subjects. She’d had three older brothers to look after her, and there had been a certain glamour accruing to the Orlander boys, who’d preceded their sister in the Star
Lake public schools. Now the youngest, Martin, a sophomore at Star Lake High, no longer rode the school bus but got a ride into town with friends. Miriam was vulnerable now, not so protected. She
could smell Lana Ochs leaning over her, saying in a loud, aggrieved voice for everyone to hear, “You got no right to be stuck-up, Miriam. Your father is no better than my father. You think
you’re hot shit but you’re not.” Miriam said, “Go away. Leave me alone. I hate you,” and Lana said, “Fuck you!” swinging her heavy backpack against Miriam,
striking her on the shoulder. Now the driver, who should have intervened before this, braked the bus and shouted back at them, “Girls! Both of you! Stop that or you’ll get out and
walk.” Lana cursed Miriam and swung past the seat, sitting heavily behind her. Miriam could hear her panting and muttering to herself. Miriam fumbled to open her math book: algebra. Her heart
was beating frantically. Her face burned with shame. Everyone on the bus had been watching, listening. Some she’d thought were her friends but were not. Wanting to scream at them,
Go away!
Leave me alone! I hate you.