Heart's Desire (3 page)

Chapter Four

AS THE PINK GLOW OF EARLY MORNING CREEPS ACROSS MY DESK I put the finishing touches on the campaign to launch a high-performance cat food, a product for which your “feline will make a beeline.” Where is Olivia when I need a decent rhyme?

Bernard is busy in the kitchen whipping up what he calls a “brain breakfast” of strong Chilean coffee, fresh-squeezed orange juice, fried bananas, and scrambled eggs with red peppers and hot sausage.

After handing in the cat food assignment I pack my bags and call Ray on his cell phone to say good-bye, but his voicemail answers. I hang up since there’s really nothing to say. We’ve made plans to get together in a week, right before he leaves for New York City. And we both know what’s supposed to happen then, since Ray’s given me the “fish or cut bait” ultimatum about sleeping with him. Which I want to do. At least I think I do.

Finally I climb into the secondhand green Cabriolet I purchased last spring and follow Bernard back to the Stockton homestead in Cosgrove County. He makes no secret of the fact that he’s been waiting for me because he’s afraid to confront Olivia without backup. Apparently she’s threatening to ship him off to Dalewood, the local booby hatch.

In the sky above flocks of geese honk as they make their return, the soft spring sunshine silvering their wings. The light falls in great sheets between the trees along the highway, transforming them into bright green parasols of new leaves as I speed past. It’s good to be heading east, toward home. I hadn’t been back since the middle of winter. While my roommates spent spring break in Key West, lying on the beach all day and sneaking into bars with fake ID at night, I’d remained at school. The entire two weeks were spent drafting an album cover and T-shirts for an imaginary rock band, and making up three overdue papers for freshman composition. By that point I’d fallen far enough behind to briefly qualify for academic probation.

The problem isn’t the work, or even the freewheeling schedule of college life. College itself is terrific. No more bells. No alarm clocks, at least if you don’t sign up for morning classes. I was finally free. No Attendance Nazi scouring the student lounge for wayward youth. No dress code. No curfew. No students making out in every hallway and around every corner. Heck, if you ask they’ll assign you a bed in a co-ed dorm, to sleep in, or to do whatever else you want in it.

However, what college administrators don’t tell you in the acceptance letter is that the first year is entirely about sex. It bubbles through every aspect of campus life like an underground stream. I’m positive that this is the sole reason they give us through second semester of sophomore year to declare a major. Since it’s not until then that students start to recover from the initial fornication rampage. And that’s just the Baptists, Jews, Lutherans, and so forth. Some of the Roman Catholic and Fundamentalist Christian girls never made it past the first six weeks and had to be taken home, pregnant or else headed for a folding chair in a church basement to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. When I lived on campus the first semester, my resident adviser basically ran a twenty-four-hour Planned Parenthood office, complete with relationship counseling, STD pamphlets, and home pregnancy tests.

There were a few exceptions—those who arrived bohemian, agnostic, or just plain lonely, and through the Soldiers for Christ campus ministry or some other religious organization, found Jesus. But more often than not they lost him again by homecoming weekend.

On the other hand, the sex scene isn’t entirely the result of the students’ inclinations. The school gives you a list of classes to choose from and tells you to “get involved,” which I suppose the parents assume means extracurricular activities. But they may as well just say “sex.” Going out for coffee or a drink in the student union is usually a vague, “Will you sleep with me?” A frat guy sidling up to a girl at a party with an extra beer means “Will you sleep with me?” More often than not “What are you doing this Friday night?” translates to “Will you sleep with me?”

College is not at all like high school when it comes to dating. This is the fast track, courtship on crack cocaine. Two meetings, three at the most, people jump into bed together. None of that high school test-driving by going to a dance or kicking the tires with a kissing and fondling session at a make-out party.

Sex is in the air like sweet perfume and freshmen are the bumblebees. You arrive in class the first day and the professor stands at the front of the room discussing the syllabus. Only instead of deciding whether the teacher is any good or the workload is too much, you look around at everyone and make a candidate list. Then you either ask the other person out “for coffee” or else organize to meet at a party. A party is best because kegs can crush nerves and embolden a person to move at an even faster clip. Keg parties also provide a built-in clause to eject after a one-night stand, pretending not to remember the encounter, or in cases of extreme alcohol consumption, not remember it
for real.

Then there’s the handful of sophomores who were too grade-conscious the first year and decide not to make the same mistake twice. So they’re like freshmen emeriti who jump into the fray as enablers by planning parties and E-mailing all the frosh girls. Now add in the sophomore guys who already ran through their entire class and are hitting on the new crop of girls, and you have a seven-day-a-week orgy.

Also belatedly diving in are sophomore girls who were faithful to their high school boyfriends throughout freshman year. Week-nights were spent crying on the phone and as soon as classes finished on Friday, they dashed off to catch a train or bus, just when the real fun was starting on campus. Those relationships had mostly gone up in flames after one drunken evening of confessions, usually the result of a female spy reporting illicit activities back to her high school girlfriend.

My high school boyfriend, Craig, and I attempted to avoid that trap by agreeing to see other people when we left for schools eleven hundred miles apart. Everyone we talked to at our respective orientations said the same thing: “Don’t come to college with a boyfriend or girlfriend at a different school, especially one more than two hours away.” They told stories of promising young lives ruined by long-distance relationships. Even suicides. Plus, with my spending so much time in the art rooms and Craig taking the bus all over the Midwest for lacrosse games, there wasn’t any chance we’d be able to visit each other. Best I could tell, he’d ended up playing lacrosse well and playing the field, too, casually mentioning the names of different women friends almost every time we spoke.

The college juniors are mostly in one-on-ones, or else some sensible dating pattern, focused more on pulling their academics together so they don’t need a victory lap to make up for lost credits. Basically they’ve just come off a two-year roller coaster of sex and binge drinking and suddenly realized that a major is exactly that, requiring a concentration of courses, and as of now, they have one from every department.

Meantime the seniors are like old married couples, mostly paired off, having at some point worked out a verbal contract with a significant other. A number of them are engaged and a few have already married. The seniors bear a striking resemblance to grown-ups and it’s easy to mistake them for professors or administrative staff. They don’t appear to have time-management problems the way the rest of us do—flying across campus at 9 A.M., barefoot and wearing the ketchup-stained sweats we slept in. They can often be seen in dress clothes since they’re interviewing for jobs. And some even carry briefcases because they’re already working in real offices.

It’s a relief to leave the gray slab and brown brick buildings of Cleveland behind and once again see the Ohio countryside with its white clapboard houses and front lawns littered with kids’ toys and garden hoses. Spring is everywhere, from the restlessness of birds and squirrels as they dart across the road to the mashed banana sunlight creating dark shadows alongside anything blocking its determined path. The warm winds cause the young leaves in the trees above to flutter, while down below clouds of feathery white Queen Anne’s Lace appear to drift through the gullies adjacent to the highway. All that’s missing is a soundtrack.

When we reach the sign for Timpany it means that home is just ten minutes away. Only I’m amazed how it’s gone from being a town twice the size of Cosgrove to The Town That Charm Forgot, a cement industrial park with sprawling office buildings and factory malls. However, I soon discover a circuit board of new housing developments and plazas on the outskirts of my own town, replacing what was all farmland when I returned to school just five months ago.

Before pulling into the neighborhood I pass the old maximum-security high school, where my younger sister Louise is now finishing her sophomore year. The teachers must be starting to wonder exactly how many of us Palmer children there are. And the answer is, to quote from the SAT study guide,
myriad,
translate: a vast number—or in this case, eight! Next fall the school gets Teddy, and after he graduates there will be the twins, Darlene and Davy. Francie will eventually follow, if the administration hasn’t installed a Palmer family quota by then, and in a few years baby Lillian will be of legal torture age. We were fast becoming a public education dynasty. At least budget-conscious Dad must be happy that he’s getting his money’s worth when it comes to paying local property taxes.

Chapter Five

WHEN WE ARRIVE BACK AT 48 NUTHATCH LANE IT’S ALREADY lunchtime. In the afternoon light the old Victorian-style house appears bright and fresh, the coat of white paint I applied last year having held up well throughout the rough winter. Same with the shiny black shutters. And the gutters don’t seem to have broken out with rust patches. The silvery-white birch trees lining the driveway stand tall, their papery-thin bark appearing almost too delicate to withstand so much as a spring breeze. The gravel driveway is sprinkled with fallen pink blossoms from the gnarly old cherry tree, making it look as if a bucketful of confetti has been tossed down from one of the upstairs windows.

The only visible problems out front are that a recent storm has pulled up the weather vane atop the cupola so that the arrow is now stuck into a shingle, and the grass is so overgrown that I can’t help but wonder if anyone has mowed the lawn since last summer.

Inside the house Olivia and her live-in Italian lover, Ottavio, are sitting next to each other at the dining room table enjoying hearty servings of fettuccini.

“Hallie!” Olivia leaps up and with a spirited tilt of the head pulls me to her. “Thank goodness you’ve returned!” Her soft musical laugh rises and descends like a flute playing a scale.

“Yes, Mother, Hallie has agreed to care for the yard this summer.” Bernard seems a bit frosty with her and quickly turns to leave the room.

“Hey, where are you going?” I call after him.

“Bertie’s been a slave to unpredictable bowels since the breakup,” says Olivia.

Bernard stops in the archway and informs us, “It’s
not
a breakup.” However, he doesn’t dispute the bowel accusation and makes a dash for the stairs.

Ottavio bounds over and gives me one of his enthusiastic Italian greetings, complete with a bone-crushing hug, cheek pinches, and a big kiss on the nose. If this is what I’m entitled to after only five months of being away, I’d be slightly afraid to suddenly show up after ten or twenty years. He’d probably do a full running tackle before trying to feed me all the meals that I’d missed. And though with his slightly rounded body and thinning hair he’s not nearly as handsome as was Olivia’s husband, who passed away last winter, Ottavio is effervescent, passionate, and loving, and certainly not afraid to be caught demonstrating these capacities.

Olivia has soft fan lines of wrinkles around her eyes but they don’t make her appear old. Her blue eyes are not gentle, but silvery clear, and they flash like sapphires with vitality and anticipation. As always, she has the power of suggesting things even more lovely than herself, as the perfume of a single apple blossom can call up the entire sweetness of spring.

“It’s a stroke of good fortune that you’ve returned,” Olivia says to me. “Brandt is very sweet but his head is in the clouds with periodic tables and perpetual motion. In fact, Ottavio has nicknamed him Galileo.”

Ottavio smiles at the mention of Brandt’s nickname and then hurries off to get another bowl from the kitchen. If Bernard is away at an estate sale or busy down at his antiques shop, Ottavio dives into the kitchen and makes all sorts of northern Italian dishes containing pasta, vegetables, and shellfish. The men appreciate each other’s cooking and often exchange notes and ideas, though I’ve rarely seen them occupy the kitchen at the same time.

Rocky the chimpanzee comes gamboling in from the sunporch and jumps up and down while exuberantly waving his arms as if he’s playing charades. Then he lopes over, gives me a big hug with his gangly arms, and plants a loud smack of a kiss on my cheek. A dog barks outside and Rocky quickly turns and scampers toward the front door.

“He’s taken a shine to Lulu, the Great Dane from next door,” explains Olivia. “A nice older couple with the last name of Shultze moved in last month.”

Rocky began as one of Olivia’s humanitarian projects, eventually segued to household pet, and is now a full-fledged member of the family. When Olivia first adopted him, Rocky was about to be put to sleep because he’d been specially trained to work with diabetic paraplegics and his patient of many years passed away. Reassignment wasn’t an option because it happened that his mistress was an alcoholic and the two of them had been enjoying Singapore slings all day long, Rocky acting as bartender and eventually becoming an alcoholic himself. Apparently there isn’t any chimp rehab, and so Olivia stepped in and placed him on a moderation program, since which he’s been doing fine, aside from a few setbacks near the beginning.

Bernard reappears in the archway. “I’m tired of having to hide all the leftovers because Rocky’s constantly sneaking that hound treats from the refrigerator,” he says, and frowns after the excited chimp. “Now Hallie, I thought you could sleep on the sunporch and we’d move Rocky into the den. But Mother feels you’d prefer the summerhouse, so I replaced one of the couches with a daybed and added a space heater, in case it gets cold at night.”

“And if all that light bothers you, we can install some blinds,” adds Olivia.

“Oh no, I like to be able to see outside,” I say. “And light doesn’t bother me.” At college everyone keeps a different schedule and if you can’t sleep with lights on and music playing then you aren’t going to sleep at all. I’d become a prime example of how evolutionary theory works on a college campus. Adapt or die.

“I’ll go ahead and move your personal effects out there,” Bernard announces as if he’s a professional bellhop. His lips are tense as wire and he seems anxious to make another escape.

“Why don’t you have some lunch first, Bertie?” suggests Olivia.

Bernard haughtily waves her off as if he’s dismissing an invisible royal court and then disappears again. Meantime, Ottavio lays another place for me and sets down a bowl of delicious-looking fettuccini with fresh vegetables covered in marinara sauce, along with a salad of tomatoes, mozzarella, and artichoke hearts.

As soon as we hear the front door close, Olivia places her fingers to her temples as if staving off a migraine and the usual gaiety drains from her voice. “You have
no idea
what it’s been like around here, Hallie. I mean, of course we all miss Gil terribly, but Bernard has completely lost his grip, and I’m
very
worried.”

“Pazzo in testa,”
Ottavio circles a finger around his ear to correlate with his Italian for “crazy in the head.”

“I know my son has always had a tendency toward the melodramatic, but he’s now fallen solidly into the operatic,” confirms Olivia.

At the word
operatic,
Ottavio places the back of one hand up to his forehead and moans, “Pagliacci,” and then rolls his eyes toward the ceiling.

“Who’s Pagliacci?” I ask. Has Gil run off with another man? An Italian?

“
Pagliacci
is an opera by Ruggiero Leoncavallo,” explains Olivia. “It contains some of the saddest music ever written, especially Act Fifteen.” She turns to Ottavio. “Don’t worry, darling, I hid the CD while he was off at Hallie’s school.”

Ottavio appears relieved and offers me more salad as Olivia continues, “Whereas others wear their heart on their sleeves, I’m afraid that Bertie buys airtime. Seriously, Hallie, I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but my son really needs to see a counselor. He’s miserable beyond belief, doesn’t shop or cook, and hardly sleeps a wink—just watches old movies in his room all night long.” Her mouth draws tight and she looks down. “I’m afraid . . . that . . . well . . . he might do something. . . .”

“No!”
I’m aghast. Because I know how those operas that Bernard listens to can end. And it’s terrible to think of the normally bright and cheerful Bernard suddenly identifying with the tragic suicides that accompany all of his favorite arias—Aida wanting to share in her lover’s suffocation; Selika inhaling the deadly perfume of the manchineel tree; and his all-time favorite, Tosca leaping to her death after her lover has been shot by a firing squad.

Olivia places her hand on mine. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, but I
am
concerned. I’ve been reading to him from A. E. Housman.
‘And now the fancy passes by, And nothing will remain, And miles
around they’ll say that I, Am quite myself again.’
”

As always, Olivia can produce a verse to suit every occasion.

“What can I do to help?” I ask. But what I really mean is,
Are
we truly on a suicide watch?

“Just be yourself and don’t leave any Hart Crane poems lying around the house. Bernard so enjoys your company. Though I do wish he’d give up this notion of winning Gil back, and start moving on with his life—perhaps even get out and meet people. But he’ll have to arrive at that in his own good time. Bernard must learn to embrace the shadows, because they indicate there is light nearby. And the deepest shadows result from the greatest illumination.”

I don’t mention the shadow cast by his recent meeting with my professor, and the resultant round of sobbing, rather than flirting.