One Heart (25 page)

I felt her impatience when a pale boy with strange pointed sideburns that looked oiled into place answered her question about a character in a book they had all read called
Harvey the Doggone Ratfink
. The boy said something about how Harvey really was a nice person inside but he didn't know how to show it because he was too concerned with the lizard and maybe if he got to the cotton candy stand in time that girl with the bare feet could explain to him could explain to him could explain to him—the boy got stuck on this phrase, and I wanted to go help him out, and wished Gladys would help him out, but she just watched him and patiently waited, and finally he said “could explain to him about the lizard” and Gladys just nodded at him, said “Okay,” and called on someone else.

She wasn't exactly filling up the room with her warmth. Yet the children responded to her. They all wanted to answer her questions. Maybe she was a great teacher. She had her classroom decorated with the kids' own art and a fish tank. One bulletin board had red felt letters that said
LIFE
'
S SHORT
:
DON
'
T BE AN IDIOT
.

After class it was time for lunch.

“So, Raelene, what's new? You been here for two days, and I don't even know what's new with you.”

I told her about Moses, how he's off with his friends a lot now, how he gets decent grades.

And then I tried to tell Gladys that I'm almost glad that he fell off the roof that day, how after his fall and recovery, I became a different sort of mother, more grateful, more alert. I wasn't trying to brag. I was trying to bring us back to a time when I needed her, a time that brought us together. Gladys lowered her eyes, nodded her head. It was like she didn't want to remember those days. Like she had moved too far away from that time of healing in the hospital. Too far away from James, and that old life, that old Gladys. I was sorry I tried to talk this way, and for a minute felt foolish and alone.

What I really wanted was to have her remember me in the past, to talk about it some, but I could feel her resisting that. So I didn't say anything else.

“You have a good life,” she told me after a while, then squinted at me, as if thinking hard. “But don't be a loner.”

“I'm not,” I said.

“It's important not to be a loner,” she said. “You need companionship.”

“I know.”

A silence fell between us. I felt really disappointed, and didn't know why.

“You have a pretty good life too, you know,” I said, trying to keep the talk going.

“For an old dame who never loved the ways of the world,” she said. “I'm ready to retire, though, Raelene girl.”

I was glad she called me that. It pulled me closer to her for a moment.

“I figure if I'm one of the lucky ones, I got about ten, twenty years left of this life.”

“Or more,” I said.

“Whatever. It'll fly,” she said.

I said good-bye to Gladys then, who had to go back and teach. “You come back soon,” she said. “You should come see me too,” I said, though I knew she wouldn't. I knew the happiness she had now depended on this rooted life of hers, this living every minute in the present. She gave me a quick hug and patted my back, then turned and walked away, dressed like an old-fashioned teacher, in a wool navy blue dress and heeled shoes to match. I wondered when the next time I'd see her would be. I didn't think it would be soon.

I was sad watching her walk away. Something between us was gone now. It was just
need
that was gone, I told myself. I didn't need her anymore. Or maybe it was just that Gladys didn't need me. What was left was memory, I decided, there on the bus, riding back home. And she didn't particularly want to remember. Maybe I'll never see her again. Life goes that way sometimes.

But in the next moment I couldn't imagine that. Couldn't imagine that I'd never see Gladys again. Of course I would. I would visit when Moses was older. Maybe I'd visit her for a long time. Maybe I'd start to go up there for Thanksgiving sometimes, bring Moses along.

That night when I got home it was snowing. I opened the front door and found Nancy curled up under a blanket on the couch, The Wailers on the stereo.

“Hi! Where's Moses?”

Nancy, the baby-sitter, sat up and brushed her hair down, and blinked at me, like I'd caught her with a lover.

“He and Ruthie are out walking in the snow. We all watched
The Birds
tonight, and it freaked us out.”

“So was everything all right?”

“Yep, like I said on the phone, he's a doll, and he's got good taste in music. More than I can say for my past two boyfriends. They were into this retro seventies stuff like Kansas.”

“That's too bad.”

Nancy had the house looking great. I paid her, I went and took a shower and got into a nightgown, and combed out my hair. But I couldn't shake that sense of loss I'd felt the whole way home.

Why did I feel as if I'd lost something important? I'd had a good visit with Gladys. I hadn't lost anything, really. I'd been lucky enough to see that she had grown into her own brand of happiness, or acceptance, or whatever it was she had grown into.

And I had my brand too. That was true. I had a great son who had his health and his happiness. I had a good job. I had two or three friends. A full-enough life.

When I came out of my room, Moses and Ruth had just stepped into the front hallway. Both were bundled up in hooded coats. “Hi!” they sang. For a few seconds I just stared at them, taking them in.

I went to hug Moses, and he let me.

“How was it,” he said.

“Excellent, and Nancy said you were great too.”

They both had bright, dark eyes, and the kind of beauty I've noticed comes to kids' faces when expectations of the future are so high they can't be contained. I thought of myself sitting next to that boy on the bus whose touch had sent a shockwave of desire through my body, and I could hardly believe it had happened. If Moses and Ruth knew about such a thing, they'd laugh or feel disgusted, or probably both, for good reason. I stood in front of them in my bathrobe, feeling middle-aged for the first time in my life. I was envious of them. I should've been relieved that I'd already survived all that, but I wasn't. I was envious and my heart was breaking.

Ruth was weirdly quiet, dreamy almost. “We saw
The Birds
,” she told me. “It totally freaked us out.” She didn't look freaked out. She looked in love.
Girl, you're a baby, get that look off your face
. “Well, we just came in to see if you were home, now we wanna go for another walk,” Moses said. “If that's all right with you,” he added, cocking his head. I was glad that he was forcing it a little bit, the way he did when he was being sarcastic; I was always glad for those few times when I didn't feel too much love for him.

“Be my guest,” I said. “Bring me a snowball.”

Really, I wanted them to stay. Or invite me. I wanted my son back.

They turned and walked out the door. I turned out the light in the living room, and thought I'd go to bed, but stopped at the window when I saw them on the sidewalk passing by. They moved together like they were one person, slowly and surely in the darkness, not holding hands, but together all the same. The snow had already turned the street white. I watched them and their dark footprints that followed in a trail behind them until they turned the corner. I stayed right at the window, watching the night, empty of people.

Did my mother and father ever love me the way I loved my son? I supposed they had, at certain times. I knew they had. I could remember the look of my mother's face when I came home from third grade one day, hurt by the words of another child. I could remember my father's eyes, dark with worry when I came in one night too late. I could remember his face when he first held Moses, how he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said he was so proud of me and he'd never find words to explain. I could remember my mother fixing me dinner the time I stayed with her out west, how hard she worked to make something special. I could still see that food arranged on the plate like a painting.

And thinking about Gladys and my mother and Moses altogether like that, I decided I would call her. My mother, I mean. I hadn't seen her since my visit years ago, which really hadn't been such a good visit, but I had called her three or four times a year, on various occasions, and she had sent me packages of clothes.

“Raelene?” She sounded glad to hear from me.

“Just thought I'd call and say hello. How are things?”

“Well, things are okay, considering I'm on a no-fat diet,” she said. “I feel okay these days.”

“That's good.”

“And how are you? You're not in the area, are you?”

“No, no, still in Philly.” I looked out the window into the night. A woman in a long white scarf was out walking her dog.

“So is everything all right? Nothing wrong?”

“Everything's fine, I just wanted to say hello.”

“I liked that last picture of Moses,” she said. “He's awfully handsome.”

She'd stopped asking, Will I ever meet him?

“He's turning out real well. Right now he's walking in the snow with his true love.”

She sighed, painfully, then said, “Oh, the poor things. I feel so sorry for the young. All they have to go through.”

I said, “They're happy.”

She sighed again, and said she knew all about happiness.

A silence came between us now. She rescued us from that silence. “Okay, well thank you for calling, honey.”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure, Mom.”

It was not a good call, but I hadn't expected one, so it was all right. When I hung up I realized that what I really wanted was to talk about Gladys to someone. Maybe I'd wait for Moses. Maybe when he and Ruth returned I could talk with them about my visit. But I imagined them on the couch together with their cheeks red from the cold, me across from them on a chair, their faces trying to stay interested.

I turned the light off so I could see the snow falling, and the moon shining behind clouds. I could see the bricks of the narrow, empty street being whitened. I thought of Gladys, and even my mother staring out the window of their houses, where maybe it was snowing too. And it was all right. Everything was.

For a moment I saw the snow like it was breathing color, like it was freshly painted and set down before me as a gift to wake me up. It all seemed strange and alive, and so clear, and I wanted contact with it. I didn't want to just stand at the window and watch.

So I bundled up. I went out into that snow, into the wind, the flakes flying and shining in the streetlight. I walked through the silence for a long time. I had the feeling I was right where I wanted to be, seeing everything I wanted to see.

The wind blew, the snow fell.

Y
OU LOOK BACK ON LIFE
,
AND YOU WANT TO ASK WHAT
changed you. You want to point your finger. You want to say it was because you met this man, or you didn't meet that man, or maybe your mother died young, or she didn't. Or maybe it was something smaller, like you took in a stray dog. For me, I could have pointed to James, or Wendell, or to Ann, or maybe that day Ivy pried me open a bit, or Raelene, or when Raelene's little boy got sick, but in the end, I don't think it makes too much difference. Because in the end, you can't point. You can say this happened, and that happened. You try to say it, and you do say it, but you know the truth is you wake up one day and you've arrived somewhere else. You don't know how you got there. But maybe it's a blessing that you did.

When James sent me an airplane ticket to fly right into the New Orleans International Airport last year, I hadn't seen him in a long time. Eight years. We hadn't even talked or sent letters for about two years, so of course he hadn't heard that Brent Quinn had died, and Ivy was back working more than part-time in the kitchen at camp. She wasn't devastated by the loss. He'd been a good friend for a number of years, but even when they were married that was about all he was. In my opinion. Still, she missed him. She would stand with her arms crossed over her chest like she never did before. And you'd be talking to her and her mind would wander off, and she'd have to ask you to repeat yourself. And her hair finally turned completely gray.

Brent was replaced by a nice young fella from New York City who took the children's well-being too seriously, and Ivy complained about it.

I was still teaching school when I got James's card. I knew it would be my last year. I liked the job a lot. But it was too hard on me near the end. So many children with problems. I worked and worked for years trying to help them. In my own way. The way I knew. I took the loneliest ones home and fed them good food. Bought them books to escape into. Singled them out to be classroom helpers. Then, I started to get bone weary. A feeling of hopelessness would creep in. I knew it was time to step down.

Anyhow, James wanted me to come to New Orleans for his seventy-first birthday. He didn't mention his birthday, but I knew.

It was October when that airplane ticket came in the mail. He had written a note. “You should come visit for a few days. James.” To see that sincere and loopless handwriting again touched me. I didn't hesitate in my heart. My head hemmed and hawed a bit, but I knew I'd go. Not that I had any notion I was going to hitch up with James, because I wasn't. That was one place I knew I'd never arrive. But you respect the history you have with a person, and the losses too, and maybe, when you're older, it's that history you have to honor. Even more than the love you have left.

Doreen Manchester drove me to the airport. Doreen in the Sideshow, as she liked to call her 1974 Buick Electra 225. Doreen said whenever she drives the Sideshow she's scared a cop will pull her over. In certain up-and-coming parts, they pull you over these days if your car's not from the 1990s. They figure you committed the crime of being poor.