The Unremarkable Heart (2 page)

Her eyes were always open. The morphine wore off in the early morning hours. The pain was like thousands of needles that pricked her skin, then drilled deeper and deeper into the bone as the seconds ticked by. She lay in bed waiting for Richard, waiting for the shot. She would stare at him as he stood at the door, his hesitancy a third person in the room. He would not look at her face, but at her chest, waiting for the strained rise and fall.

And somehow, she would force air into her constricted lungs. Richard would exhale as June inhaled. He would come into the room and tell her good morning. The shot would come first, the sting of the needle barely registering as the morphine was injected into her bloodstream. He would change the catheter. He would wet a rag in the bathroom sink and wipe the drool from her mouth as she waited for the drug to take away the gnawing edge of pain. He would ignore the smells, the stench of dying. In his droning monotone, he would tell her his plans for the day: fix the gutter, sweep the driveway, paint the trim in the hall. Then, his attention would turn to her day: Are you hungry this morning? Would you like to go outside for a while? Would you like to watch television? Shall I read you the paper?

And today, as always, he did these things, asked these questions, and June checked each item off her mental list, shaking her head to the offer of food, to the trip outside. She asked for the local paper to be read, wanting him here, unreasonably, after wanting him away for so long.

Richard snapped open the newspaper, cleared his throat and began reading. ‘A severe weather pattern is expected to hit the county around three this afternoon.’

His voice settled into a low hum, and June was consumed with the guilty knowledge of what the day would really hold. It was a secret that reminded her of the early days of their marriage. They had both been children of loveless unions, parents who hated each other yet could not survive in the world outside the miserable one they had created. In their young fervor, June and Richard had promised each other they would never be like their parents. They would always be truthful. No matter how difficult, there would be nothing unsaid between them.

How had that façade cracked? Was it June who had first lied? The obfuscations had come in dribs and drabs. An ugly shirt he loved that she claimed had been ruined in the wash. A forgotten dinner with friends that she did not want to attend. Once, June had accidentally dropped a whole chicken on the floor and still put it in the pot for supper. She had watched him eat that night, his jaw working like a turning gear, and felt some satisfaction in knowing what she had done.

Had Richard done that to her as well? Had there been a time at the dinner table when he had stared at her, all the while relishing the knowledge of his crimes? Had there been a night when he made love to her in this bed, his eyes closed in seeming ecstasy as he thought not of June, but of the others?

‘The school board has decided to renew the contract with Davis Janitorial for the maintenance of both the elementary and middle schools,’ Richard continued.

Early on in this process, June had felt much derision for the simple stories told by the
Harris Tribune
to the twelve thousand residents of their small town. Lately, they had taken on the importance of real news – The Renewed Maintenance Contract! The New Bench Erected in the Downtown Park! – and June had found herself thinking of all those foolish stories people told about near-death experiences. There was always a tunnel, a light up ahead they chose to walk toward or away from. June saw now that there was, in fact, a tunnel – a narrowing of life, so that stories as simple as what the elementary school was serving for lunch this week took on infinite importance.

‘What’s that?’ Richard was staring at her, expectant. ‘What did you say?’

She shook her head. Had she actually spoken? She could not remember the last time she’d participated in a real conversation beyond her grunts for yes or no. June was capable of speech, but words caught in her throat. Questions caught – things she needed to ask him. Always, she said to herself – tomorrow. I’ll ask him tomorrow. The Scarlett O’Hara of dying high school administrators. But there would be no tomorrow now. She would have to ask him today or die without knowing.

‘Harris Motors has asked for a side set-back variance in order to expand their used car showroom. Those wishing to speak either for or against the proposal can—’

His shirt was buttoned to the top, the collar tight around his neck. It was an affectation he’d picked up in prison. The pursed lips, the hard stare – those were all his own, conjured during the lead-up to the trial, when June had realized with shocking familiarity that for all their attempts, they had become the one thing they set out not to do: trapped in a loveless marriage, a cold union. Lying to each other to make the day go quickly, only to get up the next morning to find a whole new day of potential lies and omissions spread out before them.

She remembered glancing around the prison visiting room, seeing the other inmates with their stiff collars of their blue shirts buttoned snug around their necks, and thinking, ‘You’ve finally found a way to fit in.’

Because Richard had never really fit in. Early on, it was one of the things she loved about him. Friends joked about his lack of masculine pursuits. He was a voracious reader, couldn’t stand sports and tended to take contrary political views in order to play devil’s advocate. Not the ideal party guest, but to June the perfect man. The perfect partner. The perfect husband.

Before her cancer diagnosis, she had never visited Richard in prison, not once in the twenty-one years since he had been sent away. June was not afraid of losing the hate she felt for him. That was as firmly rooted in her chest as the cancer that was growing inside of her. What scared her most was the fear of weakness, that she would break down in his presence. She didn’t need a Dr Bonner to tell her that love and hate existed on the same plane. She didn’t need him to tell her that her bond with Richard Connor was at once the best and the worst thing that had ever happened to her in her life.

So it was that the day she drove to the prison, not the day that she was diagnosed with end-stage lung cancer, was the worst day of June Connor’s life. Her hands shook. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Standing outside the door to the visitor’s area, she let the fear take hold, and imagined all the horrible things that could make her weak before him.

The feel of his lips when he kissed her neck. The times she had come home from school, exhausted and angry, and he had cupped his hand to her chin, or pressed his lips to her forehead, and made everything better. The passionate nights, when he would lie behind her, his hand working her into a frenzy. Even after almost twenty years of marriage, after loving him and hating him in equal parts, the thought of his body beside her still brought an unwelcome lust.

He never closed drawers or cabinet doors all the way. He never put his keys in the same place when he got home from work, so every morning he was late for school because he couldn’t find them. He belched and farted and occasionally spat on the sidewalk. He took his socks off by the bed every night and left them there for June to pick up. There was not an item of laundry he knew how to fold. He had a sort of domestic blindness which prevented him from seeing dust on the furniture, carpets that needed to be vacuumed, dishes that needed to be cleaned.

He had betrayed her. He had betrayed everything in their lives.

This last bit was the only reason June was able to walk through the visitor’s door, force herself through the pat-down and metal detector, the intrusive rifling of her purse. The smell of prison was a slap in the face, as was the realization that five thousand grown men were living, shitting, breathing the same air in this miserable place.

What was she worried about – her nose wrinkling, her hand going to her mouth – that she’d get lung cancer?

And then Richard had shown up, a shuffling old man, but still much the same. Stooped shoulders, because he was tall but never proud of it. Gray hair. Gray skin. He’d cut himself shaving that morning. Toilet tissue was stuck to the side of his neck. His thick, black-framed glasses reminded her of the ones he’d worn when they’d first met all those years ago outside the school library. He was in two of her classes. He was from a small town. He wanted to teach English. He wanted to make kids feel excited about learning. He wanted to take June to the movies that night and talk about it some more. He wanted to hold her hand and tell her about the future he wanted them to have together.

There was nothing of that excited eagerness in the old man who’d sat across from her at a metal table.

‘I am dying,’ she’d said.

And he had only nodded, his lips pursed in that self-satisfied way that said he knew everything about June before she even said it.

June had bristled, but inside, she understood that Richard had always known everything about her. Perhaps not the dropped chicken or the ugly shirt she’d gladly sent to the town dump, but he could see into her soul. He knew that her biggest fear was dying alone. He knew what she needed to hear in order to make this transaction go smoothly. He knew, above all, how to turn these things around so that he made her believe his lies, no matter how paltry the proof, no matter how illogical the reasoning.

‘I’m a good man,’ he kept telling her. ‘You know that, June. Despite it all, I am a good man.’

As if it mattered anymore. As if she had a choice.

The secret that horrified her most was that deep down, part of her wanted to believe that he was still good. That he cared about her, even though the hatred in his eyes was so clear that she often had to look away. She could snatch the truth from the jaws of a tenth grader at twenty paces, but her own husband, the man with whom she’d shared a bed, created a child, built a life, remained an enigma.

June turned her head away, staring out the window. The curtains needed to be washed. They slouched around the window like a sullen child. Her hands still remembered the feel of the stiff material as she had sewn the pleats, and her mind conjured the image of the fabric store where she had bought the damask. Grace had been eight or nine then. She was running around the store, in and out of the bolts, screaming, so that June had finally given up, quickly buying a fabric she wasn’t particularly fond of just to get the annoying child out of the store.

And then came the horrible realization that the annoying child would be in the car with her, would come home with her and continue screaming the entire way. Outside the store, June had sat in the blazing hot car and recalled stories of mothers who’d accidentally left their children unattended in their cars. Their brains boiled. They died horrible, agonizing deaths.

June had closed her eyes, summoned back the cool interior of the fabric store. She saw herself browsing slowly down the aisles, touching bolts of fabric, ignoring the prices as she selected yards of damask and silk. No child screaming. No clock ticking. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but please herself.

And then her eyes popped open as Grace’s foot slammed into the back of the seat. June could barely get the key in the ignition. More shaking as she pressed the buttons on the console, sending cold air swirling into the car, her heart stopping mid-beat as she realized with shame that it was not the act of killing her child that brought her such horror, but the fall-out. What the tragedy would leave behind. Grieving mother. Such a sad story. A cautionary tale. And then, whispered but just as clear, ‘
How could she …
’

Every mother must have felt this way at one time or another. June was not alone in that moment of hatred, that sensation of longing for an unattached life that had swept over her as Grace kicked the back of her seat all the way home.

‘I could just walk away,’ June had thought. Or had she said the actual words? Had she actually told Grace that she could happily live without her?

She might have said the words, but, as with Richard, those moments of sheer hatred only came from longer, more intense moments of love. The first time June had held little Grace in her arms. The first time she’d shown her how to thread a needle or make cookies or decorate a cupcake. Grace’s first day of kindergarten. Her first gold star. Her first bad report card.

Grace.

June came back to herself in her dank bedroom, the sensation one of almost falling back into her body. She felt a flutter in her chest, a tapping at her heart; the grim reaper’s bony knuckles knocking at the door. She looked past the dingy curtains. The window panes were dirty. The outside world was tainted with grime. Maybe she should let Richard take her outside. She could sit in the garden. She could listen to the birds sing, the squirrels chatter. The last day. The last ray of sunlight on her face. The last feel of the sheets brushing against her legs. The last comb through her hair. The last breath through her lungs. Her last glimpse of Richard, the house they had bought together, the place where they had raised and lost their child. The prison cell he had left her in as he went off to live in one of his own.

‘A house on Taylor Drive was broken into late Thursday evening. The residents were not at home. Stolen were a gold necklace, a television set and cash that was kept in the kitchen drawer …’

She had loved sewing, and, before her life had turned upside down the second time, before the detectives and lawyers intruded, before the jury handed down their judgment, June had thought of sewing as a metaphor for her existence. June was a wife, a mother. She stitched together the seam between her husband and child. She was the force that brought them together. The force that held them in place.