Harvesting the Heart (27 page)

He
held a dandelion in his hand. "This is for you," he said,
and I stepped back, frustrated because I could not see his eyes.

"That's
a weed," I told him.

He
came closer and pressed the wilted stem into my hand. As our palms
touched, the fire in my stomach leaped higher to burn my throat and
the dry backs of my eyes. This was like being on a roller coaster,
like falling off the edge of a cliff. It took me a second to place
the feeling—it was fear, overwhelming fear, like the moment you
realize you've escaped a car accident by precious inches. Jake held
my hand, and when I tried to pull away, he wouldn't let go.

"Tonight
was your prom," he said.

"No
kidding."

Jake
stared at me. "I saw everyone coming home. I would have gone
with you. You know I would have gone with you."

I
lifted my chin. "It wouldn't have been the same."

Finally,
Jake released me. I was shocked by how cold I became, just like that.
"I came for a dance," he said.

I
looked around the tiny kitchen, at the dishes still in the sink and
the muted gleam of the white appliances. Jake pulled me toward him
until we were touching at our palms, our shoulders, our hips, our
chests. I could feel his breath on my cheek, and I wondered what was
keeping me standing. "There isn't any music," I said.

"Then
you aren't listening." Jake began to move with me, swaying back
and forth. I closed my eyes and pressed my bare feet against the
linoleum, craving the cold that came from the floor when the rest of
me was being consumed by flames I could not see. I shook my head to
clear my thoughts. This was what I wanted, wasn't it?

Jake
let go of my hands and held my face in his palms. He stared at me and
brushed his lips over mine, just as he had three years before at the
drive-in, the kiss I had carried with me like a holy relic. I leaned
against him, and he twisted his fingers into my hair, hurting me. He
moved his tongue over my lips and into my mouth. I felt hungry.
Something inside me was tearing apart, and at my core was something
hot, hard and white. I wrapped my arms around Jake's neck, not
knowing if I was doing this right, just understanding that if I did
not have more, I would never forgive myself.

Jake
was the one who pushed away. We stood inches apart, breathing hard.
Then he picked up his jacket, which had fallen to the floor, and ran
out of my house. He left me shivering, my arms wrapped tight around
my chest, terrified of the power of myself.

"My
God," Jake said, when we were alone the next day. "I should
have known it would be like this."

We
were sitting on overturned milk crates behind his father's garage,
listening to the hiss of flies sinking into puddles left from the
rain. We were not even kissing. We were simply holding hands. But
even that was a trial of faith. Jake's palm enveloped mine, and the
pulse in his wrist adjusted to fit the rhythm of my own. I was afraid
to move. If I even took too deep a breath, I would wind up as I had
when I had run into his arms and kissed him hello—pressed too
close for comfort, lips burning a trail down his neck, with that
strange reaching feeling that started between my legs and shot into
my belly. For the first time in three years I did not trust Jake.
What was worse, I did not trust myself.

I
had been brought up with stricter religious values than Jake, but we
were both Catholic, and we both understood the consequences of sin. I
had been taught that earthly pleasure was a sin. Sex was for making
babies and was a sacrilege without the bond of marriage. I felt the
swelling of my chest and my thighs, heavy with hot running blood, and
I knew that these were the impure thoughts I had been warned of. I
did not understand how something that felt so good could be so bad. I
did not know who I could ask. But I could not help wanting to be
closer to Jake, so close I might squeeze through him and come out on
the other side.

Jake
rubbed his thumb over mine and pointed to a rainbow coming up in
the east. I was itching to draw this feeling: Jake, me, protected by
the bleeding strands of violet and orange and indigo. I remembered my
First Communion, when the priest had put the dry little wafer on my
tongue. "The body of Christ," he had said, and I dutifully
repeated, "Amen." Afterward I had asked Sister Elysia if
the Host really
was
the
body of Christ, and she had told me it would be if I believed hard
enough. She said how lucky I was to take His body into my own, and
for that precious sunny day I had walked with my arms outstretched,
convinced that God was with me.

Jake
put his arm around my shoulder—creating a whole new flood of
sensations—and wrapped his fingers in my hair. "I can't
work," he said. "I can't sleep. I can't eat." He
rubbed his upper lip. "You're driving me crazy," he said.

I
nodded; I couldn't find my voice. So I leaned into his neck and
kissed the hollow under his ear. Jake groaned and pushed me off the
milk crate so that I was lying in the wet crabgrass, and he brutally
crushed his mouth against mine. His hand slipped from my neck to my
cotton blouse, coming to rest under my breast. I could feel his
knuckles against the curve of my flesh, his fingers flexing and
clenching, as if he was trying to exercise control. "Let's
get married," he said.

It
was not his words that shocked me; it was the realization that I was
in over my head. Jake was all I had ever wanted, but I could see now
that this fever inside me was just going to grow stronger and
stronger. The only way I'd be able to put it out would be to give
myself completely away—unraveling my secrets and baring my pain
—and I did not think I could do that. If I kept seeing Jake I
would be consumed by this fire; surely I would touch him and keep
touching him until I couldn't go back.

"We
can't get married," I said, pushing away from him. "I'm
only seventeen." I turned my face up to his, but all I saw in
his eyes was a distorted reflection of myself. "I don't think I
can see you anymore," I said, my voice breaking over the
syllables.

I
stood up, but Jake still held my hand. I felt the panic building in
me, bubbling up and threatening to spill. "Paige," he said,
"we'll go slowly. I know you better than you know yourself. I
know you want what I want."

"Really?"
I whispered, angry that my self-control was slipping away and that he
was probably right. "What, exactly, Jake, do you want?"

Jake
stood up. "I want to know what you see when you look at me."
His fingers dug into my shoulders. "I want to know your favorite

Stooge
and the hour you were born and the thing that scares you more than
anything else in the world. I want to know," he said, "what
you look like when you fall asleep." He traced the line of my
chin with his finger. "I want to be there when you wake up."

For
a moment I saw the life I might have, wrapped in the laughter of his
big family, writing my name beside his in the old family Bible,
watching him leave in the morning. I saw all these things I had
wished for my whole life, but the images made me tremble. It wasn't
meant to be; I didn't know the first thing about fitting into such a
normal, solid scene. "You aren't safe anymore," I
whispered.

Jake
looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. "Neither
are you," he said.

That
night, I learned the truth about my parents' marriage. My father was
working in the basement when I came home, still restless and thinking
of Jake's hands. He was bent over his sawhorse work-table, screwing a
plastic fitting onto the back of his Medicine Pacifier, which, when
finished, would be able to dispense controlled amounts of baby
Tylenol and Triaminic.

My
father had been everything to me for so long that it did not seem
unnatural to ask him questions about falling in love. I was less
embarrassed than I was afraid, since I figured he'd think I was
speaking up out of guilt and send me off to confession. For a
few minutes I watched him, taking in his light-brown hair and the
whiskey color of his eyes, his capable, shaping hands. I had always
thought I'd fall in love with someone like my father, but he and Jake
were very different. Unless you counted the little things—the
way they both let me cheat at gin rummy so I could win; the way they
carefully weighed my words as if I were the Secretary of State; the
fact that when I was miserable, they were the only two people in the
world who could make me forget. In my whole life, only when I was
with my father or with Jake was I able to believe, as they did, that
I was the finest girl in the world.

"How
did you know," I asked my father without any preliminary
conversation, "that you were going to marry my mother?"

My
father did not look up at me, but he sighed. "I was engaged to
somebody else at the time. Her name was Patty—Patty Connelly
—and she was the daughter of my parents' best friends. We all
came over to the United States from County Donegal when I was five.
Patty and I grew up together—you know, all-American kids. We
went swimming naked in those little summer pools, and we got the
chicken pox at the same time, and I took her to all our high-school
proms. It was expected, Patty and me, you see."

I
came to stand beside him, pulling a length of black electrical tape
when he gestured for it. "What about Mom?" I said.

"A
month before the wedding, I woke up and asked what in the name of
heaven I was doing, throwing my life away. I didn't love Patty, and I
called her and told her the wedding was off. And three hours later
she called me back to let me know she'd swallowed about thirty
sleeping pills."

My
father sat down on the dusty green sofa. "Quite a turn of the
cards, eh, lass?" he said, slipping into the comfort of his
brogue. "I had to drive her to the hospital. I waited around
until they were done pumping her stomach, and then I turned her over
to her parents." My father rested his head in his hands.
"Anyway, I went to a diner across the street from the hospital,
and there was your mother. Sitting on one of the counter stools she
was, and she had cherry Danish all over her fingers. She had on this
little red-checked halter top and white shorts. I don't know, Paige,
I can't really explain it, but she turned around when I came in, and
the second our eyes connected, it was like the world just
disappeared."

I
closed my eyes, trying to picture this. I did not believe it was one
hundred percent true. After all, I had not heard my mother's side of
the story. "And then what?" I said.

"And
then we got married in three months. It wasn't the easiest thing for
your mother. Some of my old deaf aunts called her Patty at the
wedding. She got china and crystal and silver picked out by Patty,
because people had already bought the gifts when the first wedding
was called off."

My
father stood and went back to the pacifier. I stared at his back and
remembered that on holidays, when my mother served with the
rose-wreathed dishes and the gold-leaf goblets, she would get
tight-lipped and uncomfortable. I started to wonder what it might
have felt like to live your life in a place someone else had carved.
I wondered if, had our china been blue-rimmed or geometric, she
might have never left.

"And
what," I said, "ever happened to Patty?"

Late
that night, I felt my father's breath at my temple. He was leaning
over me, watching me sleep. "This is only the beginning,"
he said to me. "I know it isn't what you want to hear, but he
isn't the one you'll be with for the rest of your life."

I
heard his words still twisting in the air long after he'd left my
room, and I wondered how he had known. A stale wind blew through my
open window; I could smell rain. I stood up quickly and dressed in
yesterday's clothes; I moved soundlessly down the stairs and out of
the house. I did not have to look back to know that my father was
watching me from his bedroom window, his palms pressed to the glass,
his head bowed.