Hidden Hearts (2 page)

He licked his lips. “Let’s take a look.”

He led her into the next room, and I held my broken arm for another five minutes. I thought about putting my ear against the door, but I was pretty sure that Mama would break my other arm again if she caught me.

I saw my reflection in the mirror above his sink. From a distance I guessed I looked like her, although I had Pops’ dark hair, which I’d recently cut with her sewing shears one day. She’d been so mad that she had me wear a big hat with a sunflower on it when we went to church. She said that it looked like I’d stuck my head in a threshing machine and I deserved what I got. I said I’d rather wear Pops’ fedora and she’d scowled.

The calendar on the wall caught my eye. Somebody had forgotten to flip the months and it was still on January and February. The picture was friendly. A boy sat in an attic room, showing a clock to his grandma, who sat on a bed. A cat curled up at the foot of the bed, right above the name of the painter—Norman Rockwell. I decided I liked Mr. Rockwell’s pictures very much and would ask my art teacher, Mrs. Curry, if she knew who he was.

The door flew open and Mama went straight to the window. She lit a cigarette and stared into the sunlight. Her eyes were red and I looked over at Dr. Steele, who was writing on my chart. When he finally stepped to the table and took my arm in his hands, he shook his head.

“Vivi, Vivi, what are we going to do with you?”

*****

On the way home Mama said nothing.  She kept her eyes on the road. I waited for the lecture that usually followed our return from the doctor or the hospital, but she only drove, which was a bad sign. I much preferred her yelling since I’d learned to block it out after the millionth time. Will had told me it was her way of showing she cared, and there was always plenty to yell about. My grades were too low, I continually did stupid things, and I just wasn’t as good as him, a conclusion she’d made the last time she’d retrieved me from the principal’s office.

She often said, “I’m almost positive, Vivian Battle, that you were switched at birth. How your father and I wound up with such different children could only be explained by such a thing.”

I didn’t think it would be wise to mention that
Will
could have been the switched one.

I glanced down at the cast on my arm. It itched, and Dr. Steele said I’d need to wear it for at least six weeks before he could cut it off. He’d offered to sign it, but Mama had hurried me out of the office before he could.

“I’m sorry,” I offered.

She puffed her cigarette. “Sorry is a word, Vivian. Don’t be sorry.”

“But I
am
sorry. I know it costs money to go to the doctor,” I said, hoping I could show her I was mature. I knew Pops was struggling with the orchard, or as she called it, his harebrained idea to get rich.

At the mention of money, she shot me a cold look. “Yes, Vivian, that’s right. Everything has a price, a
cost
. You should learn that.”

Her eyes returned to the road and I stared out the window, ashamed that I’d caused so much trouble. I vowed to do better and thought about saying so, but I remembered what she’d said about words. I’d need to prove it to her.

I could tell she wasn’t just mad at me. I guessed she was mad at Dr. Steele for some reason, but I knew she was mad at Pops, too. She was always mad at him.

We’d moved from Iowa to Phoenix in forty-seven when I was six. Pops had said Phoenix was “money land” because they were building so many houses. He’d heard stories of rich men pulling up in fancy cars carrying wads of cash that they showered on the folks fortunate enough to own the property.

So when he inherited the family farm, he sold it, moved us to Phoenix, and took every penny he had and bought thirty acres of orange orchards and a farmhouse that reminded him of home. Mama hadn’t wanted to leave her family but after the first mild winter, she’d fallen in love with the dry climate.

But no one wanted to buy the land, and he wasn’t very good at running the orchard. When they’d fight over money, she would point at the trees and scream, “There’s the gas bill, Chet, and the kids’ school clothes and the gasoline!”

He’d shrug and say, “If I’d wanted to be a damn farmer, I’d have stayed in Iowa. This is our way out.”

We pulled into the long driveway, and I automatically smiled at the sight of the orchard in the distance and our beautiful farmhouse. On its walls built entirely of red brick, the white wooden windows looked like enormous eyes, and the long brick path that extended from the road to the large oak front door seemed to go on forever. We had a fancy dining room with a chandelier and something called a sun porch with glass walls. It got hotter than the oven during the summer, but Pops said it was a great place to sleep in the winter after he and Mama fought.

There were four bedrooms so Will and I didn’t have to share anymore, but the best part was the backyard—rows and rows of orange trees. I’d tried to count them once and got lost after forty-eight. Right now the blossoms were just beginning to turn and by February there would be millions of oranges dangling from the limbs.

“Go upstairs and do your homework,” she said wearily. “Tell Will he needs to do his chores.”

I ran up to his room, glancing at Mama’s amazing sweet potato pie as I passed through the kitchen. I found him hunched over his desk, his pen moving effortlessly across a paper. It was always easy for him. Once I’d asked him to explain my homework since he was two grades ahead of me, and he’d tried but it was like he wasn’t saying the words in the right order. I knew he’d been speaking English, at least part of the time, but it was too confusing. I’d just nodded and never asked him again.

“Mama says you need to do your chores.”

He turned and grinned when he saw my arm. “Was it broken?”

“Just my wrist.”

He looked half like Mama and half like Pops. He had a friendly smile that Mama said would charm the ladies and Pops’ thick hair and spindly build. And I loved looking into his pretty blue eyes. They always reassured me that everything would be all right no matter what happened.

“How’d Mama pay Dr. Steele?” he asked suspiciously.

“He was really nice. He said she could pay him on Friday.”

He frowned and turned back to his book. “I’ll be down in a minute. Go do your homework.”

Instead of reaching for my schoolbooks I went to the window seat and gazed out at the orchard and the mountain. The acreage Pops bought was near the base of Squaw Peak and seemed close enough to touch. I’d wake up in the morning and stare over the treetops to the rugged switchbacks that crossed the face. Once in a while Will and I would ride our bikes to the trailhead and climb to the top. We’d look at Phoenix and he’d say something about how different it was from Iowa—so flat, no rolling hills or blue rivers. I knew he missed home a lot. He’d been eight when we moved so he remembered Cedar Rapids but Phoenix was all I’d ever known.

If we turned the other way we saw the tall buildings of the downtown and all the fancy stores. Central Avenue sliced the city in half and houses chewed up the sorghum fields. But nobody seemed to want our orchard. Mama had said once that Pops’ price was too high.

He’d just laughed and said, “It’ll happen. Just wait.”

The day turned dark and he still wasn’t home. He worked long hours and sometimes we ate without him. My stomach rumbled and I stole down the stairs to see what she was doing. I’d given up on my homework after only completing a few problems. Hopefully I could copy off someone when I got to school.

I sat at the base of the stairs in the shadows of the dark living room and faced the kitchen. Dinner was on the table but Mama sat alone, smoking a cigarette and drinking her water, which was what she called vodka. She didn’t know I’d read the bottle one time before she put it away. She stared at nothing in particular, and the smoke twisted around her as if she were surrounded by a dream.

I wondered what she thought about. Did she think about us?
Him?
Was she worried he wouldn’t like his dinner? Whatever it was I knew it didn’t make her happy. She never looked happy.

I went back upstairs guessing that if he didn’t show up in a little while we’d eat the dinner cold as usual. I’d learned not to say anything about the condition of the food, then, which tasted as if it had been sitting out all afternoon at a picnic.

I stared at my unfinished math homework, meaning to finish, but soon I was doodling and copying the picture I’d seen in Dr. Steele’s office. I closed my eyes trying to remember the exact details, the light and dark as Mrs. Curry would say. With only a lead pencil it was impossible to re-create Norman Rockwell’s colorful painting but I did my best.

“Get down here, Vivian!” my father’s voice boomed.

I dropped the pencil and hustled down the stairs. He stood in the living room, his arms crossed. He was lanky and tall, with wavy hair that rarely looked as if it needed to be combed. It just sort of sat on his head naturally. He was tanned from living outdoors every day, and I thought he looked like a movie star, although Will always said Mama was the good-looking one. But whenever we tagged along on one of his errands to the store, he’d smile and laugh with the pretty cashiers, more so than he ever did with us or Mama.

He stood over me, his angry face a million miles away. He reached for my arm and studied my cast.

“Bend over,” he commanded.

At least he hadn’t brought out the paddle he kept on the bathroom doorknob, but the three swats still hurt and it was hard to sit down at the table. Will grinned, and I stuck out my tongue when Mama and Pops weren’t looking.

“Meat’s dry,” he said, scowling at his pork chop.

Dinnertime was the main event, and Mama’s cooking was usually the topic that started a fight. Even though we’d moved out of the Midwest, she still cooked as if she were there. I can’t imagine why he would’ve thought that could change. She cooked what she knew and that meant meat at one o’clock on the plate, potatoes at six and vegetable at ten. There wasn’t a lot of love in the meals but she tried.

The only thing he never complained about was her sweet potato pie. She made the
best
I’d ever tasted, and we always fought over the last piece but that fight was good-natured. The rest of the arguments weren’t. He wanted to be proud of her for certain things—the ones he chose.

“Perhaps if we could afford something more substantial it would taste better,” she remarked as she went to the cabinet for the vodka.

Ever since we’d moved to Phoenix, I noticed she’d taken to drinking at the table, which by our midwestern standards was bad manners, but he didn’t seem to care.

“You need to keep your comments to yourself, Lois,” he said sharply. “And I don’t appreciate your fancy words.
Substantial.
What the hell kind of word is that? Maybe if you’d keep our children in line, we’d have some more money for food,” he said, throwing a glare in my direction.

I hung my head.

“So how much did that little trip to Dr. Steele’s office set us back?” he asked.

“Fifteen,” she said quietly.

He harrumphed but never asked where she got the money. That’s how it always was. Conversation between my parents was like Will and me playing catch. He’d throw the ball and I’d always miss it, since I wasn’t very coordinated.
Them
talking was just like that—a lot of dropped balls.

“Well it won’t be long until we can pay for everything up front. We’re having a visitor tonight,” he said, “a man named Rubenstein.” He looked up and offered a little smile. “I think he wants to buy our land.”

Will and I glanced at each other. Maybe if Pops sold the land they’d be fine.

“Now, when he gets here, I don’t want any fightin’ between the two of you, ya’ hear?” He was holding out his fork like a weapon and we nodded. “You say your hellos and then you get upstairs.”

We nodded again for salvation’s sake. While we were scared of Mama, we were terrified of him, not just because he swung the paddle, but because we didn’t know him. He was always in the orchard or at the bar with his friends. Once in a while he’d take Mama out for special occasions, but when he was home, he ignored us mostly. 

“How did you meet Mr. Rubenstein?” she asked.

“He bought the grove next door. Came by the other day and said he wanted to talk.”

I glanced at Mama, who opened her mouth to say something but decided to swirl her drink instead. He was the only one who could keep her quiet. When she was angry with me, her mouth was like a motorboat on a full tank of gas. She only stopped when she ran out.