One Heart (15 page)

The pond looked smaller to me. The whole area did. I had my arms crossed. I wanted to go. I believed I'd said my good-bye. Or that I was always saying it, somehow. Wasn't that the real truth? I believed I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was like the place was too small. The place in my head, in my heart, it was gigantic. It was oversized. Bigger than life. This place, this real place, it was so small.

But James looked like this good-bye would take a while.

“I'm real sorry,” I told him, suddenly, looking out at the trees. “For all I did wrong. For all I never said. I'm just sorry.”

He looked at me. I think he thought I could read his expression. But I couldn't read a thing. I couldn't trust a thing. He could've been looking at me with the eyes of a murderer, or a saint. I wouldn't have been able to tell. Finally James looked back at the water.

“I think I'm going swimming. I'm going in.”

“It's too cold to swim.”

He was taking off his shirt.

“You sure about this?” I said.

He looked older to me, his skin looser. Different from how he looked stored in my mind. Now he was taking off his pants. He had on the oddest boxer shorts, flannel, a wildlife scene on them, a bear and a fish or something.

“You coming in?” he asked me.

“I don't know.”

I felt sad just looking at him. But I felt something else too, some old urge. I felt both things at the same time, along with other things. Confusion.

“You should come in. That's what I think, anyhow.”

It began to feel like I was dreaming. Just like when I dreamed about this it felt like it was real. It seemed to me there was a siren blaring in the distance, but there weren't. It was just silence. Silence that sounded like a siren getting louder and closer.

I took off my shoes, not my dress. I waded into the water. In my dress. Now the siren was gone. It was just the sound of water disturbed now. Then James came in. And then we were swimming out into the middle of the pond. The dusk above us. And out there in the middle I said, “James, this was a bad idea.” And I began to shake, like I was freezing cold. But the water wasn't that cold, he said. I treaded water. James dove under. He stayed under for a while and I looked at the purple sky and shook. James came back up.

“It's not deep,” he said.

Then he was swimming toward the bank, and I was too. And he dressed and rushed to the car. I thought he was going to leave me behind.

Instead he ran back with two blankets. A red one that smelled like gasoline, and a white flannel one with yellow roses on it. He said, “Wrap yourself up.” I used the white flannel one.

I took the red one and put it on the ground. We sat on it. It wasn't a bit comfortable. Nothing was. I wanted to weep. Because I could remember the ease that used to be between us. I could feel how James was stunned that none of it was left. Where was it? Where did the ease go? And how was it we could stand being in that pond? We sat there for about ten minutes. James had a small stick he was biting.

He said, “What did Ann
think
when she was drowning? What did she think of
us
for not coming to save her? I still think about this every night.”

“Don't. Don't.”

That's all I could say. I stood up.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I wanted to talk for so long. To
you
.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. But I wasn't as sorry as I was angry. Not so much that he said what he said. But that I let myself go into that pond. I don't even know why I was angry about that. But I wished I'd never gone in.

“James. I wish I didn't go in. Wish I'd stayed dry.”

“Gladys, please. Please sit beside me. I miss you. I miss you.”

I went back and sat beside him. He put his arm around me. I'll tell you what. His body did not feel familiar. The way he had his arm around me did not feel at all familiar. Still, there was something in him, something about him, it felt like my home.

I fought that feeling. I closed my eyes and said to myself, Take me away from here. But meanwhile my body just leaned right into his. And meanwhile we kissed each other. And he said, “We're not strangers, we're not strangers, we can't be strangers.” Like saying it over and over would make it true.

And it was true. We held on to each other.

“Did it help?” I asked him. “Did it help to swim in the pond?”

We'd had a long, quiet drive back. We were walking toward the house now. The porch light was on. Ivy was in the kitchen. I could see her in the window. She was sitting at the table with a beer.

“Help? I don't know. I guess not. No, it wasn't what I had in mind,” James said. He stopped me and held on to me for a second, his eyes on Ivy in the window. “Thank you for coming along,” he said.

Later I gave him sixteen pictures. Eight of Wendell, six of A., and the others of the two of them together. Wendell holding A. I said, “It's high time you forgave yourself, James.” I said this out on the back stoop one night when the moon was bright. The night Ivy was cooking a stew and listening to Billie Holiday. That stew was the last meal the three of us ate together. A few days later, the two of them were gone. I'd told James and Ivy, “Don't worry about me. I need time alone.”

And what I thought I felt watching them drive away together was a small amount of sorrow or pity for Ivy, because James loved me. I knew that. And Ivy loved James. I knew that too. I imagine she always had. Couldn't blame her.

I stepped in and took over Ivy's job canning vegetables with the kids. The kids didn't much care for me. I wasn't Ivy, asking questions like
Have any hobbies, honey?
But nothing about it was terrible. We canned, we put up the squash, then got the ground ready for the next summer. They mostly laughed and talked and weeded. And ignored me. Unless I stepped in to tell Connie Kaiser, the ringleader, to cut the mean crap when they teased the child with the wayward eye. That child ended up working quiet beside me, grateful I think.

I worked with my hands in the dirt, and it was saving me. The dirt was. How my hands felt digging. Gripping on the roots. The smells out there. The dark mornings. It made me feel stronger than I was. Because I had my hands on the earth. And the earth needed my hands, or so it seemed. And for those hours I didn't think much, or if I did the thoughts didn't feel as real. I'd think of Raelene. I'd think of Gus. Of James. Of Ivy. Of James. I'd think of worse things, like giving birth.

And then the thoughts would float away easy as a balloon, and I was back to the real dirt. Taking a deep breath, starting all over.

And the children all around me sang rock and roll songs sometimes.

But there was an undersong. I mean something
under
all the sounds of the day. A voice, almost. Poking me in my stomach.
You've had your loves. You've had your chances. You've lived your life. Now who are you? Who are you? Who do you love?

Do you love? Do you? Did you?

“Let's keep up the good work here, kids,” I'd say.

And the undersong would play again, softer, and I'd be both relieved and regretful that it didn't play louder.

Some nights I'd sit out on the stoop with a beer. And a blanket. My book beside me because I'd be tired of reading. I'd start wondering when I'd hear from Ivy or James. And a moment would come when I'd feel like I'd never hear a thing. Does it matter, I'd wonder. Does it matter at all if I ever see their faces again?

I supposed not. That's what I told myself.
I suppose not
. But that's when I knew deep inside I'd be hearing something soon. Most likely James would circle back this way.

I began in the middle of that month to have the strictest routines. I felt for the first time that house maintenance was important. I painted the whole house except for the basement, I cleaned with a vengeance. I also began to feel that getting exercise was important. I was like Ivy now, walking, walking. And I spent more hours in the garden than I needed.

I'd go down there in the evening sometimes. The child with the wayward eye, her name was Marie. Marie and her sidekick, Kate, they began to take a liking to me. Kate was twelve but acted more like ten. Didn't seem on the verge of anything like most of your twelves. And she had terrible horsey teeth. Marie with her eye, Kate with those teeth and when's-the-flood-ma'am pants, and me with my whole life inside me like a car wreck.

But in the evenings it got cool and the sky was pretty. Pretty in that violent purple way the sky gets in the evening when late autumn's coming at you like a train. And Kate and Marie would stop playing and sit down on the cool ground and talk to me. All about their teachers or parents who were mostly “boring,” “crappy,” or “so stupid you wouldn't believe it.” Camp was over, school was started. These children were in sixth grade. They'd gone home to their rich parents for three weeks between camp and school.

Kate, she had herself a fake English accent. She weren't from England but she had an accent and she came out with things like, “You bloody well bet-tah!” and “Have you gone round the bend?” which meant “Have you lost your mind?” which she was always asking Marie. Along with the wayward eye, Marie was one of your children who lived in the land of outer space. I couldn't get too involved with her. Or not in a human way. I think I got involved with her the way you get involved with a dog. Because she started hanging around the back stoop at different times in the day. She'd just hang around, not saying a word. Just sort've sniffing around like a dog. Finally I'd spot her and open the door and say, “Marie, hello, want a treat?” And she'd smile her martian smile and walk into the house and sit down at the table, her bony hands crossed. And I'd give her a cookie or a cracker, some small treat. And I'd want to say, Don't you ever scrub your fingernails? But I kept my mouth shut.

Then she started bringing Kate. They'd eat and look around the house and look at me, just glad they weren't in the school building, glad they were here in this strange woman's house getting away with something. One day Kate might come in and say, “Marie loves Tony Romoni.” And I'd say, “Why? What's the story with Tony Romoni?” And Marie would get beet red, and Kate would say, “He's conceited! He thinks he's God's gift to women! And he got thrown out of class because he raised his hand to say his balls hurt!” Marie wouldn't say a word, just stared at her hands, her face crimson. I was glad to have them around. A good distraction. Because I was beginning to be afraid that James and Ivy really wouldn't be calling. I'd be thinking
sonofabitch, Ivy and James. Of all people
. And then I'd freeze my mind so it wouldn't think about it.

I went back to the kitchen in early November. I was glad to return. Glad because I knew that kitchen so well. And the woman they'd hired that September weren't bad at all. She was a pretty thing built like a pencil and just wanted to be left alone. She liked her talk radio, her Wrigley's spearmint, and spotting birds out the window. “A convention of warblers,” she might say, nodding her head. But that was about it. Mostly we worked listening to a bunch of talk radio strangers. It would've been pleasant if I was the type who got comfort from hearing how many people were crazier than me. But it was better than talking. I was in the mood for moving through the days, just moving right through, and waiting. Waiting.

You can only be hiding in a life of routine for so long. The heart of autumn will come. It'll come when you're all alone in your bed, in your cleanest, whitest sheets. It will come when you smell like Jergens soap and your hair's still wet.

I had showered, I was there in that old dark room with the mirror on the closet, and I brought my hands up to my face and smelled the Jergens soap I'd always used. All I can tell you is the smell was too old, too familiar. I felt I'd been alive forever and in the next minute like I'd only lived a second, like I was a small child.

And why'd I let him go off with Ivy? And why'd Ivy go off with him? Why would she do that to me? And why hadn't I found a goddamn thing to say to him to find his heart again? And if I'd found a thing to say to him to find his heart again, what then?

And then I thought,
You didn't let him go off with Ivy. You are not the boss. You are not in charge. You did not have a say. Did your goddamn sister even ask you?

And then I thought,
He might very well love Ivy. And you, you who had this idea in the back of your tired head that someday you and he would circle back. Well you are the fool. Fool. Fool. You are
.

You are the fool smelling your own hands in the night, not a soul you could call on the telephone, not any old relative, not some lost friend, not Raelene.

Maybe Raelene.

I hoisted myself out of that bed, shaking. I had the Oregon number. I let the phone ring twenty times, then hung up. Then I got something to eat, a thin sandwich, and ate it in the dark. And I knew as I sat there listening to myself chew that I had to hear a human voice. Any voice.

So out I went. Out went the big wet-haired lady into the cold night. And she walked like hell, walked into town on the black narrow road, ridiculous and afraid, because don't I know it's only the crazy people out at four in the morning, crazy and lonely.

One place was open, that was the spoon called Vinny's. I made it a point never to go in there. The rumor in the early 1970s was that Stan the counterman, Vinny's jailbird brother, made rat burgers. But that night I walked right into Vinny's and sat down in the first booth and a man behind the counter with a Walkman on his head said, “Hello,” and his voice broke like it was still changing. He wore a T-shirt that said
I
'
D RATHER BE SNORKELING
on it.

And the only other person in there was an old man eating a plate of baked beans at the counter. His black cap sat on the counter. His feet were in sandals.