The Constant Heart (25 page)

“You don't get it,” said Sara. “Oh Jake, it's sweet that you don't.”

“What don't I get?”

“See, I don't want to let you see things you never should see. I don't want to be the one to tell you.”

“It's working a little now,” said my father. “It feels a little like being kissed. Like being in love.”

“Good,” said Sara.

But, she said, the way it was supposed to work is that Sara would get a job at the Palm and she would make friends with some of the girls there. The idea, she said, was that she'd find out which ones had friends and family and were, say, college students or something like that, and who would be missed if they disappeared. The others, well, maybe she would talk to them about making some money and how much you could get for a kidney, and just think of the coke and meth you could buy with forty thousand dollars. So, then MD would set it up, and they'd rent a motel room or someplace like that, and that doctor, the one who came to see Sara, would do the job. Sara asked MD how they would pay the girl who agreed, and who, according to MD, was young and healthy and “prime.” MD said, about the payment, well, maybe it wouldn't work like that. Maybe the doctor wouldn't want to leave all that stuff around, all worth money, the other kidney, a liver, corneas, why, there was an entire market, bone marrow, if they found a donor who matched, and god knows what else. Why, they'd pack it all in ice. What did you think a dancer at the Palm, in good shape, although with maybe a little liver damage from all that smack and coke, was worth? Add it up. Why, you'd have to sell five or six stolen Mercedes to come close. See?

So that was the deal. Sara could work off what she owed by being what MD called a mole. Her job would be to find those girls who, when gone, wouldn't be missed.

“So, Jake,” she said. “You see why I didn't want to tell you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So,” said Sara to my father. “What do you think?”

It took me a while to figure out that the slight
squeak
,
squeak
,
squeak
was my father grinding his teeth. Then he turned on his side to get away from the pain, as though he were on a spit. “You end up like me, the way I am right now,” said my father. “And you'd like to think you don't have to kill someone.”

“Maybe it'll be all right,” Sara said.

“Maybe,” said my father. “We can hope.”

“What did you say?” I asked. “When MD talked to you in the parking lot?”

“Nothing,” Sara said. “I said I'd think about it. Playing for time.”

“The morphine is working a little better,” said my father. “But I'm a little nauseated.”

He got out of the bag, and of course he tried to get far away, but even so he was sick twenty feet away and then went down to the stream to wash while Sara took my hand and said, “He's getting worse.”

“He told me it could be a month or an hour,” I said.

My father splashed at the side of the stream.

“He's going to need another pill. Don't you think he threw one up?”

“We'll see,” I said.

My father's heavy breathing came through the synthetic fabric of the tent.

“He was proud of you for trying to help that sick girl,” I said. “It's almost better, even though he's angry, to make a fight about that. It will keep him alive a little longer.”

Sara swallowed.

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess that's something.”

My father came in and asked for more pills and then made that silky noise as he got into bed. Sara moved in her sleeping bag, that nylon sound like a woman slipping out of her underwear.

She turned her head. “Can you hear them out there?”

“No,” said my father. “I think they've gone to sleep.”

Outside the silence seemed to ooze up out of the ground and to make everything stop.

“You could go to the police,” I said.

“Were you born yesterday?” she said. “We'll all end up in jail. The cars. I've already been involved with the cars. Did the deal with the doctor in Mexico. And I've been in a jail already. You remember when you came to see me, Jake? No, whatever happens is going to happen up here.”

For a while we just made the occasional hiss of the rayon of the sleeping bags as one of us turned over. My father lay awake, staring at the ceiling.

“What are you thinking about?” I said to Sara.

“That note you left me, Jake,” she said.

“Are you all right?” I said to my father.

“Everything's fine,” he said.

Still trying to be a gentleman. Even now.

“You know what I'm thinking about?” Sara said. “How when you first take those trout from the water they are cold and sparkly. Like diamonds.” She touched my face. “Or small stars.”

My father turned again, as though so perfectly on that spit, and rubbed his chin.

“Yes,” he said. “I like to think about that.”

“
I
T GETS ROUGHER further up,” said my father. “They won't like that.”

“OK,” said Sara.

“Jake?” said my father.

“Sure,” I said.

The fog came up from the stream. Everything we did seemed loud as we shoved our things into the packs, the rayon slick and practical as we rolled it up and pushed it in. We walked into the fog and vanished as though we had never been there at all. The wet brush made a swish at the side of the trail and our boots hit the path with a muted pounding where it was packed earth, and these sounds were the only reminders that we existed, since otherwise we were absorbed by the mist. The dampness clung to our hair. Trees rose into the gloom above us like pillars that held up the masses of fog and the noise of the stream intruded from time to time, but it sounded the way it does when you are lost and don't know which way to go.

The stream was cauldron-like as the fog rose, and above
the turmoil of the water, the last of the mist glittered in the sunlight. The trees emerged from the fog, too, shedding their claw-like shapes, and we seemed to come out of the mist, too, no longer appearing as vague creatures with humps on our backs. We came into the sunshine that stung our faces.

“Whew,” said Sara. “It's getting hot, isn't it?”

“Yeah, it's warming up,” said my father.

“Does it hurt?” she said.

“Not to speak of,” he said.

He sat down on a piece of deadwood that had moss, green as a frog, along the dark side. Sara paced one way and then another and sat down next to him.

“I'd like to say something,” said Sara. “But all this . . . ” A slight film of moisture appeared on her forehead, her nose. She closed her eyes.

“You mean dying,” he said.

“Yeah. You always helped me,” she said. “Even now when it's hard to say something.”

“You'd be doing me a favor,” he said, “by speaking honestly. It would make me feel less like I had already been excluded from the living.”

“Well, I feel like an idiot, since here we are, and all I can do for you is to get you a good deal on a Subaru and to hope the trouble I'm in doesn't hurt you. That, after thirty years.”

A hawk appeared at the edge of the trees, wings rigid against the air, its circle such that it was visible for a while and then swung back above the wall of trees.

“I wish I could take you up on the car,” he said. “But I want to say something, too. That's the hard part. You can't say so easily what you want to say.”

“I know,” Sara said.

“I don't want to be alone,” said my father.

“Jake and I will be here,” she said.

“Here's something else that's hard. As for me, well, it's just flesh. That's not going to last. So what have I got left? What I think is the one thing I can control. Why, if I don't think it's a wrong against me, is it?”

“Does that mean you don't care?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “No. I care more than ever. I can see how precious it is to be alive, to take advantage of that Subaru. To have a child. That was the happiest time of my life, in a way, when Jake's mother was pregnant. Such a fruitful, anxious time. No, I care. Maybe I've tried to live by a sort of Hippocratic oath. The first thing is to do no harm.”

Sara leaned close to him and took his hand.

“Just tell me,” she said. “Anything you want.”

“I don't want to give that up. That not doing any harm.”

The stream made that noise I couldn't quite understand, although the water was as green as the needles of the pine.

“And as far as those men are concerned, we'll see how that works out,” said my father. “Maybe they don't know they've made a mistake.”

He turned downstream. Nothing but the sound of the river, that murmur, which, I realized, had the same mystery as the silence of the stars.

“I'm thankful for what I've had,” said my father. “It's all just a breath. Just a sweet moment, and then it's gone. If you're lucky.”

“I'm not letting those guys do anything to me,” she said.

“I know,” said my father.

He took her hand and they walked along. The trail ended, and we had to go single file, around the stumps and over deadwood, through brush and cane, the stream to our right.

My father sat at a section that was cobbles and sand and he strung up his fly rod and passed it over to Sara.

Sara and I waded into water that had chains of bubbles on it. They reminded me of the strings you see inside a glass of champagne. The trout were picking at the surface at some little creamy bugs that were hatching and I thought, Well, it's fast water so maybe we will get away with a little royal wulff. It's a fly tied with white deer hair, red silk, and some feathers, and, frankly, it's a pretty gaudy-looking thing, but if the water is right, it's not so bad.

“What is that?” said Sara. “I thought you said that these flies were supposed to imitate things that are actually alive?”

“The trout think this is dessert,” I said. “Like a banana split or something.”

The river was deeper here and she stood in it up to her waist where she could feel the water's squeezing grasp. We weren't casting very far, just flicking the fly into fast water.

“Watch out,” I said.

She looked over at me.

“For what? A fish can't do anything in current like that, can it?”

“Watch the fly,” I said. You could see the trout splashing around here and there and you'd have to be blind or not know what you were doing not to see them.

“Was that a fish?” she said. “Oh, look. It's jumping.”

She caught one and put her hand over her mouth as she felt the electric sense of the trout.

“It's like playing the clarinet,” she said.

She held an imaginary instrument and moved her fingers and hummed. But you could see her hands were trembling.

“OK,” my father said, “Let's have some lunch. I've got some soup. Chicken noodle.”

He passed out the soup in the bottoms of canteens and the top of a thermos and we sipped it. He took a sip and burned his mouth.

“I'm sorry I told you about the stolen cars and the kidney and the doctor in Mexico,” she said.

“It's OK,” said my father.

“Is it?” she said.

“Sure,” said my father.

“People like that attach themselves to me,” she said. “They are always waiting for me to make a mistake. But one day it's not going to be me who makes a mistake. It's going to be them.”

My father poured out the rest of his soup on the ground.

“I guess I'm not hungry,” he said.

My father's soup made a Rorschach-like pattern on the ground. A rhino? A bear? She looked at him now, the desire to speak still perfectly mixed with the fear of doing so, of saying the wrong thing. After all, how many chances would she have to fix an awkward comment, and what is more awkward than the wrong comment at the end?

“Go on, Sara,” said my father. “This isn't the time to hold back. Believe me.”

“I didn't mean to spoil anything,” she said.

“You mean saying good-bye?” said my father.

“I guess that's what I mean,” said Sara. “You and Jake. Isn't that what you're doing?”

“I don't know,” said my father. “Not really.”

I swallowed and put my hand to my forehead.

“And if we were,” said my father. “You could only help. So maybe I owe you my gratitude.”

“Oh, shit. Oh, fuck,” said Sara. “You remember when I said the soufflé was the best fucking thing I ever ate.”

“Maybe it was the best fucking thing you ever ate,” said my father.

Sara laughed and then with a transition that was like moving along the spectrum from violet to red she started to cry. Just for one sob, which she turned back into a laugh.

“You didn't spoil anything,” my father said.

Finally, an osprey flew along.

After we finished lunch, we started walking. My shirt got damp, but at least the bugs weren't too bad, and after an hour or two we came to a flat place with a little grove of deadwood on one side, and the water close by. We set up the tents and looked at the river, and finally Sara said, “I've never really had such a good time. Let's just forget about everything that happened before. Can we do that for a little while? Will that help?”

“Sure. We'll forget it,” said my father. But you could see he wasn't going to forget those useless scientific papers about the lining of the esophagus sloughing off, the heavens, and the thanks he was trying to give. You see why I loved him? And he glanced at Sara now, too. I thought that maybe this was the real temptation, not just sleeping with a woman now because you are getting sick and are desperate to hang on to a little vitality, no matter how tawdry so long as it is alive, but something else altogether: the real temptation was to give up on
what you have always believed. He wanted the best for her. Or the really dark thing: that letting a lifetime of fury out of the reservoirs where it had been carefully concealed and directing it at MD would be so cathartic and pleasurable, if not almost sensual, as to be indistinguishable from something wonderful and good. So he was just waiting for a chance of some kind. Or worse. Afraid that he was waiting. Then he looked downstream: If MD and the others had any idea what they were facing, they'd turn around and go back to the blacktop and think about something else.