Second Hand Heart (12 page)

Whether it was Lorrie’s heart I felt leaving, or the girl wrapped around it, I can’t say.

So what was I supposed to do, Myra? To deal with feelings like that?

I guess in the morning I could have called a friend and said, I washed my face just now and yesterday night I let myself feel.

But I didn’t. And do you know why not? You’re smart, so you probably do.

Because my friend would have said, Marvelous, Richard. You will survive. Oh, and by the way, Richard. Life goes on from here.

You see what I’m trying to tell you. Don’t you, Myra? I will now be expected to get on with it. It’s over. I don’t have the numbing shock any more. And I’m no longer entitled to it. That fog has lifted, and now I can feel everything.

Everything is spinning out of control.

Richard

From:
Myra Buckner
To:
Richard Bailey

Richard,

I’ll be out the door in less than an hour. The drive will take me almost twelve. And even that is assuming I miss the rush hour going through San Francisco.

Just don’t do anything, Richard.

I’ll be there as fast as I can.

Love,

Myra

From:
Vida Angstrom
To:
Richard Bailey

Dear Richard,

PLEASE DON’T HIT DELETE.

Just listen for just a second, OK?

First of all, I apologize for getting your email address off my mom’s computer, and I hope you’re not mad about that, but I’ve called you a lot, and you don’t seem to like it much, and I was afraid you would yell.

It’s not that I don’t get it that you don’t want me getting any closer. I mean, for a while I guess we were in that maybe place, but I tested it pretty hard and it got real definite real fast. And I’m not such a freak that I don’t get that. I’m also not such a freak that I don’t even know to be ashamed that I did what I did when you didn’t want me to.

I’m put together pretty much like everybody. Except my heart.

I mean my old one. I keep forgetting.

Still, I guess the fact that I have this heart that used to be your wife’s makes me different than everybody else, and I guess the fact that I lived every day of my life getting ready to die might make some differences.

But I’m more like everybody else than you probably think.

I’m only bugging you again because I lost my worry stone and I have to get it back. I have to. I have to find it. Esther brought it all the way over from Germany more than sixty years ago, and she put all her worry into it on the boat, and since she just barely got liberated from a concentration camp, and since nobody else in her family made it out, I think that adds up to a boatload of worry. (Pardon my pun. I didn’t actually do it on purpose.) Anyway, so it was absolutely amazing that she would give it to me, and I can’t lose it. I can’t.

The last time I had it was on your couch, and then I fell asleep, so I’m thinking if you pick up the couch cushions you’ll find it. I definitely think it will be right there. I know it, in fact. I have to. I have to know that. Otherwise it will be gone, and it can’t be. Gone, I mean. It can’t be gone. It has to go like this.

Thanks for not hitting delete. Which, if you read this far, you didn’t do.

Love (not the scary kind),

Vida

From:
Richard Bailey
To:
Vida Angstrom

Vida,

I have your worry stone.

I also have a confession to make.

I’m not sure why, as I’m usually not a big fan of the confession. I have to feel my back pretty firmly up against the wall before I’ll spit something like this out. Maybe it’s because you always tell the truth. I never met anybody before who always tells the truth. At least, not as far as I know.

Maybe you inspired me.

I picked up your stone from behind the couch cushions and put it in the pocket of your pajamas. Which I guess was stupid, because that’s not a very secure place. I heard it hit the driveway as I was carrying you out to the car. I could have said something to Abigail. I almost did. Instead I just picked it up later and held on to it for you.

I guess I feel a little better after confessing that. I’m not sure. My own feelings have gotten so muddled these days. It’s like I need a map to navigate around in them, but all the maps are outdated and wrong.

I’ll give it back to you, of course, but right now Myra is here, which makes it a bad time for a visit. Myra is my mother-in-law. Lorrie’s mother. She came down to help me with some things. Like staying alive and not flying apart into millions of little pieces.

See? You did it again. Inspired me to tell the truth. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not.

Anyway, if you can be patient for just a little while, I’ll make sure your stone gets home safely to you.

My best to you,

Richard

PS:
Maybe I wanted to see if it would hold some of my worry, too. Maybe I wanted to see if there was anything to it. I do have some worry I’d like to be rid of. I guess we all do. But I might be a little accelerated in that department lately.

I’m sorry I didn’t give it back to you that night. I was wrong.

I think I just wanted to spend a little time with it, alone.

From:
Vida Angstrom
To:
Richard Bailey

Dear Richard,

You carried me out to the car? That’s so sweet and strong and brave and romantic and sweet. Oh. I guess I said sweet already.

I wish I’d been awake for that. It seems sad that I had to miss it.

How long will Myra be there? Why can’t I meet her?

I won’t pull anything weird. You can trust me.

Love,

Vida

PS:
Maybe you just wanted to be sure you would see me again.

From:
Richard Bailey
To:
Vida Angstrom

Vida,

Myra is a very strong, very practical woman. And she advised me not to meet with you. Right from the beginning. She felt it would be opening up a can of worms, emotionally. And that I would be better off if I just stayed away. Maybe that we all would, but definitely that I would.

So that’s why I think it would be better if you could just wait a few days, until she goes back to Portland. And then I’ll make sure you get our worry stone back.

I’d be afraid to mail it. If it was lost in transit, I’d never forgive myself.

Don’t worry about losing time wearing it down, because I’m wearing it down on your behalf. I hope that’s OK.

Actually, it probably isn’t OK, seeing as I didn’t ask your permission first. But that’s what I’m doing, and I hope it’s OK after the fact.

Best,

Richard

PS:
I just gave this a quick read-over. Even though I have my email set to do automatic spell-checks.

Force of habit.

And I noticed I dropped the
y
at the beginning of “your worry stone.” So it came out our worry stone. Maybe I didn’t hit the key hard enough. Anyway, I’m not trying to claim it. I know it’s yours.

I left that little typo in place. Thinking Freud would want me to own up to it. Or you would. Or both.

From:
Vida Angstrom
To:
Richard Bailey

Dear Richard,

Best? What does that even mean? Best what?

Is it so important to you not to love me that you can’t even use the word to close an email? That seems weird.

And here’s the other thing that seems weird: you say I inspire you to tell the truth. But you’re keeping it a secret from Myra that you’re about to see me again.

You know what that makes me think? That makes me think that maybe some little part of you does love me just a tiny bit. And I think that scares you.

I realize I’m being intense again. My mother always tells me I’m too intense. Lots of people tell me that. Everybody tells me that. They just don’t tell me how to stop. Or why. It’s the way I am. I don’t tell them not to be the way they are.

So, this is me. And if you didn’t want anything to do with it, you wouldn’t have purposely kept my worry stone.

That’s the truth, Richard. I hope you find it inspiring.

Love,

Vida

PS:
I love that you’re rubbing my worry stone. That’s a good thing. Please keep doing that.

From:
Richard Bailey
To:
Vida Angstrom

Dear Vida,

I told Myra you’d be coming by sometime soon to pick up something important that you left here.

I asked her if she wanted to meet you.

She doesn’t.

Please don’t take this personally. It’s not that she has anything against you. But she was the mother of that heart. She formed it in her womb, and meant it for her daughter. Not that she begrudges it to you in any way. Just that it would be very painful for her to see you and know you had something in your body that she grew herself, from her own blood and cells and DNA, to create Lorrie.

It’s more than she can take on right now.

I could tell she was curious to meet you, and that part of her wants to. She’s like me in that respect. But she can’t bring herself to do it. In that respect, she is not like me. She takes better care of her own interests.

Did I say she was practical? I’m beginning to think she’s more cautious than practical.

But really, to be honest, she was right when she said that meeting you could turn out to be stressful and complicated. Sorry if that doesn’t feel good to hear, but it’s the truth.

I also think that she believes it could open up a whole can of worms for her, too. And she is definitely less fond of canned worms than I am. Not to suggest I’m overly fond of them either. But I seem to find myself among them all the same.

So how about we meet at some neutral location, like that coffee house where I met Abigail when she wanted to talk?

Just so you know, Myra will know I’m doing that. There will be nothing short of the truth. I think you’ve spoiled me for anything short of the truth. I think there will be no going home again.

Love,

Richard

Matricide

I
sat at that same table with her. The table I’d shared with Abigail, some time earlier. How much time earlier, I wasn’t sure. I guess about … I have no idea. Seemed like years ago, but probably a couple of months. I’m no good with time any more. But I probably said that already.

Vida’s feet reached the railings of her tall chair.

The worry stone sat on the table, looking weighty and important — at least to me — next to my cup of black coffee. I had not yet slid the worry stone over to her side of the table. And she had not yet reached for it. I don’t know what that was about. I don’t know much of anything. I guess I used to think I did, but it’s funny how entirely wrong you can be about a thing like that.

“How did you get here?” I asked. “Did Abigail drive you? Or did you take a cab?”

I had more or less decided, without checking, that Vida had never learned to drive.

“Neither,” she said. “I took the bus. Well. I took three buses.” A silence, while I wondered why I thought that would pass for conversation. “I brought you some things I wanted you to see,” she said.

She slid them across the table to me. Papers. Print-outs from the Internet. I could tell because she’d printed the navigation bars and the ads as well as the text. There appeared to be three or four separate articles, a few pages each, carefully stapled at their corners.

“I forgot to bring my glasses,” I said, turning the top one around and glancing at it. “So I can’t read it.”

“Oh,” she said.

But that was not entirely true. The headline was large enough to read with uncorrected vision. Just not the text.

Only Vida always tells the truth.

It read,
ORGAN TRANSPLANTS AND CELLULAR MEMORY
.

“I’ll take them home and read them,” I said.

“No, you won’t. You’ll take them home, but you won’t read them.”

I bristled, of course. Because she couldn’t possibly know what I would or would not do. And because she was right. I almost said, “How did you know that?” I stopped myself in time.

“Why would you say a thing like that?” I asked instead.

“Because you said it in the exact same voice as when you said you’d come visit me again in the hospital.”

This time I was the one who could only manage, “Oh.”

“It’s like this,” she said. “I understand how you don’t believe me yet. Because you’re not in this body, and you don’t know what I know. But I’m trying to spell it out for you. I’m trying to tell you that … when you walked into that hospital room … I don’t know how to explain it. I thought it might help if you read the articles. I asked you if you believed in love at first sight, but I’m not sure that’s what it was, really. It was just the only thing I knew to say about it. But it’s not exactly like I started loving you the moment I saw you. More like I’d already been doing it for a long time.”

At a loss for what else to say, I said, “OK. I’ll read them.”

It didn’t change her trajectory.

“I guess I thought it was love at first sight because I’ve heard of that. And how did I know it wasn’t that? Because I don’t know how that would feel. I don’t really know much about love in general. No experience. So I just figured that must be what it was. I was guessing.”