The Heart Is Not a Size (7 page)

“Guess,” she had said, looking into one of the horse’s big eyes, “what happened to me today.” Windfall had stirred the straw at his feet with one of his hooves; reading that as encouragement, Riley continued. She spoke so softly that I had to move closer to hear her.

“Well,” Riley said. “Well. Some background: My mother is the kind of woman who had a child just because that was the fashion—because there were
toddler clubs and play date clubs that she decided to want access into.” She pulled a bag of baby carrots from her red cotton tote and put some on her palm and continued talking. Lowering his head, Windfall started chomping. “You need a kid,” Riley explained, “to get into kid clubs.

“Well, today, Mr. Windfall, my mother took the cake. At school, like, around noon, we lost all power. Weird, but true. Blue-sky day, no storm coming up, no wind—yeah, I know, I didn’t get it either—and still the whole place fizzes. Classrooms go gray. Cafeteria goes cold. The machines in the admin office go quiet. Like dead, you know? A dead zone. We all hung and waited for twenty minutes or so—some teachers still teaching, the cafeteria aides handing out soft pretzels for free because the registers weren’t working, the secretaries sitting around on their green metal chairs talking—and then we get word that school is canceled. The buses rolled up, the walkers walked home; but see, Windfall? I don’t take a bus and I live five miles away. I’ve been driven to school since I started going to school—one of my mother’s ten commandments. She says buses are just mobile trouble; and besides, driving me looks really
good on her mom résumé. She’s sensitive, let’s put it that way, to people’s opinions.

“So I call my mother—you know, the fashion maven, Mrs. Marksmen—with my cell; and she says that it’s just
slightly
inconvenient
at this very moment
to stop everything and pick me up, but that she’ll get there, she will, give her some time. She says I should stand by the flagpole, where I always wait, and that she’ll come when she comes; I should do some homework or something, I should read, stay occupied. So what are my choices, Windfall? What would you do? My best friend over here, she’s already on a big bus, headed home.”

“Ri…,” I started, but she held up her free hand like a traffic cop’s stop, and I knew that if I pressed, she’d end her story.

“So, guess what, Windfall,” Riley continued. “I sit there, and I’m sketching. I sit there, and I’m reading. I sit there, and above my head the flag is flapping. I sit there, and my butt is hurting from the concrete wall on which I’m sitting. And all this time, my mother never comes. She up and forgets—forgets. It’s not like she’s got fifty kids to tend to. Somebody called, and after that somebody else, then someone stopped by, and she’s
feeling sorry for herself because my father’s away on another trip, and she’s telling that story, and whatever. Whatever Mrs. Marksmen does all day, that’s what she was doing while I waited.”

“You should have called
me
, Ri,” I said, couldn’t help myself from again interrupting, from asking, “Why didn’t you call me?”

Ri put up her hand again, silencing me with her eyes. “I know my friend’s mom would have given me a ride,” she continued, keeping her voice low and calm. “I know that. Because my friend is the coolest ever, and so is her mom, and they are always there for me, they always have been—on my gravestone, it’s going to read A
UDREY
(R
ILEY
) M
ARKSMEN
: R
AISED BY
G
EORGIA AND
H
ER
M
OTHER
. But that’s not the point. Because the longer I sat waiting by the flagpole watching the teachers leave and the parking lot empty, watching the principal go, even the principal, Windfall—all this time I sat until it was just me and the landscape guys and the security guard—the more I wanted Mrs. Marksmen to feel the shame of having abandoned me for, like, forever. I wanted her to pull up and see that the whole place, practically, was empty, that of all the
parents of all the kids in that whole school, she had managed to do the very worst job.” Riley’s voice was so steady, so quiet, not threatening. Windfall continued to munch from her palm.

“I walked home,” she told the Hanoverian. “That’s the end of my story. I walked all that way after more than an hour had gone by, in my flip-flops, too, which was, like, a hundred minutes of pure torture. When I opened the door to my house, I found my mother with her knees tucked up to her chin on the white plush couch in the great room, having a cup of ginger tea with Julie Caruthers from down the street. You should have seen the expression on her ravishing face, Windfall. Not concern, it wasn’t that. It was embarrassment. ‘Nice one, Mrs. Marksmen’ is what I said. That’s it. Sum total of my accusation and complaint; I’d practiced the sentence all the way home. Mrs. Caruthers left about five seconds later. My mother took me to Georgia’s in a snap-of-the-fingers instant.”

“Jesus, Ri.” I felt sick to my stomach. Clammy. Wrong.

“I didn’t say a single word the whole drive over.” Ri looked at me then. “For once I didn’t have to.”

Windfall whinnied to register his opinion. A trainer walked by. We moved on.

This particular day at the horse show, in this summer of Juárez, I’d been telling Riley a story about Geoff. About how he’d come into my room the night before and just hung out until—lightning bolt—I realized he actually wanted to talk. To me. I had grown so used to Geoff’s absences, his barricades, his sending Kev away, that I’d stopped hoping for time with him myself.

Because the fact of the matter is that Geoff’s an über-talented, funny-when-you-catch-him-right guy, and when he leaves for S. I. Newhouse in the fall, Rennert High will be less than it was. Geoff has been the voice of the school’s morning announcements for three years running. He masterminded these insanely popular TV Studio shows. He started a club to help a friend with cancer. Geoff was a million things to a million people—outside in the world, away from home, where I’d concluded he belonged. All through high school I’d been asked one question: Are you really Geoff Walker’s sister? And the answer was yes, and I bet you can’t believe it, and no, I rarely see him, and
when he’s home, he’s closed his door.

Geoff wore his thick, black hair buzzed close. He wore T-shirts winter, spring, summer, fall, and rotating pairs of jeans. The only variable was his shoes; that night he wasn’t wearing any. He just came in, sat at my desk. I put down the book that I’d been reading—Jack Gilbert’s
The Great Fires
, which is, I have to say, a really great collection of poems, even if it did come by way of Mr. Buzzby.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” I put the book facedown on my bed, propped myself up on my elbows. I must have given Geoff a funny look, because he shook his head, said, “What?” in his morning-announcements voice.

“
What
what?” I said. “You’re the one who just barged in here.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Trespassing. I pulled a Kev.”

I laughed. “What’s up?”

“Miss Barham,” he said, “is a
très
cool English teacher. I told her you were going to Juárez.”

“You did? You were talking to her about me?”

“It happens.” He smiled. “Sometimes.”

“Okay.” I grew self-conscious; I don’t really know
why. Geoff’s just my brother, after all.

“Miss Barham suggested Cormac McCarthy,” Geoff continued. “You know, as an author to read in prep for Juárez. I was in the library anyway. It was right there; I grabbed it. You know. What the heck.” He lifted the book so that I could see the cover.
Cities of the Plain
. A dusty landscape red with fire.

I hadn’t noticed until then that he’d had something in his hand, and if I had, I wouldn’t have dreamed it was for me. “Wow,” I said, flabbergasted. “Well. Thanks.”

“No problem, G.” Geoff stood, left the book on my desk. He began to cut across the room, then stopped. “Take it easy,” he said. “In Juárez, I mean.”

“I’ve got to survive another two months before I’m even on the plane,” I said. “Still plenty of time to save you from Kev.”

“Yeah,” he said, leaving. “What about
that
? Leaving me to the wolves. Thanks a zillion.”

This was the story I was telling Ri—the my older-brother-pays-a-visit story—as we stood in the stables among the horses that day. I was going to tell her, too, about some of the research I had been doing, an article
I’d just read:
Across the border from El Paso, Texas, and 15 minutes northwest from Ciudad Juarez, sits a population of people with hopes for a better life.
I was going to say that every time I read about our destination, there were fuzzy collisions of optimism and despair, opportunity and danger, welcome and barbed fences. The ghosts of murdered women. The faces of children left behind. The chance to help. The possibility of being helpless.

But Riley seemed distracted, far away, and finally I stopped, let silence come up between us. I gave her the room I knew she needed if she was going to confide in me at all. I
hoped
she would confide in me. I’d been waiting for it.

“Georgia?” she finally said, her hand on the spotted nose of a pinto whose name, we’d read, was Splash.

“Yeah?”

“I kind of screwed up this year. Academically, I mean.” Which I knew, even though we weren’t in any of the same classes. School for Riley had always been about her clay pots, her sculptures, her paintings. Her work was hung in the halls on Parents’ Night; in the case near the TV Studio they displayed her jewelry; she won scholarships to art camp. Science, math, English,
world cultures, foreign languages, were all secondary to Riley. Her intelligence lived in her art. In junior year, especially, her grades had gone south; and every time I’d mentioned the tutoring center or a mentor Geoff himself once raved about, she shut me out. But now it was May, the end of the year. In the fall we’d be filling out our college applications.

“Nothing’s permanent,” I told her. “You still can fix things.”

“I’ve got a 2.9, Georgia. What college is going to look at me with that? Coming from Rennert High, especially, where a 3.5 is muck.”

“You’re an artist, Riley. It’s your portfolio that counts.” I said it because I believed it, and because, within the stable shadows, she looked infinitesimally small. I put my arms around her. “You’ll be fine,” I told her. “You’ll see.”

It was right then that we heard the commotion outside, when both of us turned and started hurrying for the door. When we reached that place where the shadows were intersected by the sun, we turned left and looked. There in the nearest exercise ring was Don Juan, dragging his tail like a long white hem.

“That’s him,” I said to Riley, and she didn’t even ask who. She started walking, faster and faster now, toward the big white horse and his trainer and the ring that was full of nothing but them.

“Lord,” she said, her voice hushed. “He’s gorgeous.”

“I told you.”

“I mean, really gorgeous, Georgia.”

“I know it.”

Now she was up against the fence of the exercise ring, braiding herself into its horizontal slats, her body like twine, folding in places mine never would. The trainer glanced our way but didn’t mind us. Don Juan stomped and snorted, stepped, studied us. He seemed strong enough and proud enough to save the entire world.

“Mister Don Juan,” Riley was saying. “There you go, big guy.” He raised his tail and he swung it from side to side while Riley kept talking to him, saying, “You look so fine.”

I was watching Riley; she was mesmerized. I shifted my gaze to Don Juan. When I turned to look at Riley again, I saw that she was crying. Big tears, like long rain on bright window. Big tears, drowning out her freckles.

“Hey,” I said, and I reached out to touch her—to
put my hand on the small, hard wing of her shoulder. To touch her too-diminished self. “What is it, Riley? What’s wrong?”

“He’s so beautiful?” She shuddered.

“Yeah?”

“So beautiful, Georgia, and he isn’t even trying.”

“I get that, Riley. But how’s that sad?”
Tell me why you’re sad,
I wanted to say.
Tell me why you aren’t eating, because I know you’re not eating. Look at you, Riley. What’s up?

“If you lived with my mother, you’d know.”

“Riley,” I said, but she wouldn’t say more.
Riley,
I wanted to say,
I’m your best friend. Talk to me, Riley. We can fix this.
But she’d said what she could and there would be nothing else—no more sign of anything wrong until we were too far from home. No more chances that I found or made to get to the heart of our troubles.

PART
Two

one

W
e were out of our minds with the heat the second we stepped off the plane. Even inside the El Paso airport we were feeling flattened and woozy as we stood waiting for our bags to spit down the chute and wind their way to us. Mack, Mr. Thom, and Mrs. K. had gone to get the vans that would take us through the heat, across the border, to the church where we’d be sleeping. I’d had to buy a new sleeping bag. I was hoping not to use it.

We stood in the blaze of the sun for an hour—no one even close to straying. Corey and Sam played some
kind of card game. Jazzy blew bubbles through huge wads of gum. The guy who didn’t talk just stood, staring out toward streets that appeared to be melting.

“You know Dalí?” I heard Sophie say.

“Dalí?”

“The painter?”

“Sure,” Riley answered. Casually, not for an instant betraying that art was what she knew.

“He should be here, painting our picture.” Sophie threw back her head and made her whole body go loose and limp. She looked, for a minute, like goo. Riley started laughing, and she could not stop. She tossed her arm across Sophie’s shoulder: “It’s official,” she said. “You’re one of us.”

“Cool beans,” said Sophie.

“Don’t even talk about beans,” Riley said. “We’re going to get our fill of those.”