Second Hand Heart (20 page)

W
e sat on the stairs outside where Esther and I used to live. And where I used to live with my mother. And where my mother still did. Waiting.

I cried. A lot.

Victor didn’t cry. I guess I shouldn’t have expected him to. He wasn’t really Esther’s friend. He was just her driver.

Jax was still in the back of the car with Esther. He wouldn’t leave her.

We were waiting for somebody to show up, but I’m not sure who. Victor made the calls. Not me.

I was busy crying.

After a few minutes my mother came out and stood in front of me with her mouth open. It was like she wanted to say so many things at once that they jammed up and got stuck, and then she couldn’t say anything at all.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. I think I was hugging my own knees by then.

She didn’t seem to notice that I was crying.

When she finally got unstuck, she shrieked at me. She shrieked, “Vida, where on earth have you been?”

I didn’t really feel like fighting or anything. Because, you know, Esther just died. And I wasn’t feeling so great.

So I just said, “I went to Manzanar with Esther.”

“You were with Esther?” The shrieking was getting louder. I was wishing she’d get stuck again. “She swore you weren’t!”

“Well, at the time she swore that, it was true.”

“I am going to give that woman a piece of my mind,” she said.

It made me tired. It reminded me how incredibly tiring it is to be around my mother. I almost didn’t have enough energy to answer.

But I understood how she felt and all. I’d left her pretty much completely out of the loop, which I guess is a very bad place for a mother to be left. I should have known that. Well, I guess part of me did. It must have been hard for her to suddenly find out that Esther was in the loop all that time, when she wasn’t.

I should’ve done better.

Interesting how when I’m talking about my mother I use the word “should” a lot. Interesting to me anyway. I just can’t help noticing that lately.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think you can give Esther a piece of your mind.”

“I’d like to see you stop me. I’d like you to tell me what’s going to stop me.”

I looked over at Victor. I couldn’t be the one to say it. And I told him so with my eyes. Now, at the moment I did that, I really didn’t know Victor well enough to know if I could tell him something with my eyes. Some people you can do that with. Some you can’t. But he seemed to pick it up just fine.

Score one for Victor.

“Esther passed away,” he said. “She’s down there in my mother’s car. You can tell her anything you want, but I don’t think it’s going to make much difference.”

My mother gave him the evil eye, one eyebrow raised. She looked over her shoulder. Down the stairs, toward the car.

Then she went down there and looked for herself. Jax growled at her. Like he was protecting Esther. It was so sweet.

My mother came bounding back up the stairs. “Well, don’t just sit there!” she said. “Call somebody! Do something!”

“I already did,” Victor said. “I called the police, and they called the medical examiner. We’re just waiting for them to show up.”

I thought it was weird that he seemed completely unintimidated by my mother. How could anyone find Esther intimidating but not my mother? It’s weird how we’re all scared of such different things.

She was still staring him down. “Who are you?” she said.

I said, “That’s pretty rude,” but she didn’t pay any attention.

“I’m Esther’s driver,” he said. Without much emotion. I could tell that my mother definitely got it that she was getting nowhere with Victor. She turned her wrath back to me.

“You missed an EMB.”

“Yeah. I know. But it’s going really well. You know that. You know what Dr. Vasquez said.”

“What did he say?” Victor asked. Like he’d been very interested in my health, but hadn’t been able to bring himself to ask until now.

“She. Dr. Vasquez is a she. And she said I’m showing less of a tendency toward rejection than any patient she ever treated. I haven’t had one single rejection episode. Not one. Which is so far above the curve I can’t even tell you. And you were right there when she said it, Mother. So I don’t see what you’re so worried about.”

“That doesn’t mean you have a right to miss an EMB.”

“Mother. I just turned twenty. I have a right to do anything I want. Including go someplace else. Someplace that isn’t home.”

“You had a birthday?” Victor asked. “When?”

“While we were on our trip.”

“You should have told me. We could have celebrated.”

“We had a nice trip. I mean, until Esther died it was nice. So, that’s a celebration. Sort of.”

“You should have told me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. There was a lot going on.”

Speaking of which, my mother was getting even madder, if such a thing is possible, because we were talking about something that had nothing to do with this important thing that was all she could think about, and that she wasn’t done talking about yet.

“Vida! Pay attention! Are you going to stay and have the EMB?”

“Yes. I will. I promise. Now, please, Mom. Please. My best friend just died. And I don’t want to talk about this right now. I’ll come in and talk to you soon. I just can’t talk right now.”

“I was worried out of my mind,” she said.

And Victor kind of stood up — but only figuratively speaking, because actually his tall body was still sitting there on the stairs — and said something really brave.

He said, “You obviously didn’t hear what Vida said. She said her best friend just died and she doesn’t want to talk right now.”

Amazingly, my mother backed off two steps’ worth. For a long time she just stared. Her eyes were kind of narrower than usual.

Then she said, to me, “I’m going to go back in now, but I’ll expect you in soon.”

“Well, I don’t know how long this will take. Because I never turned a dead person over to the medical examiner before. But when I’m done, I’ll come in.”

She turned to leave.

“Mom,” I said, and she turned back around. “Here. I have a postcard for you.” I dug it out of my overnight bag and handed it to her.

She turned it over in her hands twice. “There’s nothing written on it.”

“I couldn’t think what to say.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks, I guess.” Then she went back inside.

I sat watching the empty spot where she had just been. Kind of amazed and grateful for the silence.

“So that was my mother,” I said.

“Yeah. Got it.”

“You were really good. You didn’t let her back you down at all.”

“I’m sick of being intimidated,” he said. “I’ve had it with that.”

“Good. Good for you.”

“What’s an EMB?”

“Oh. Endomyocardial biopsy. Yeah, before you say it, I do realize that doesn’t answer the question. It’s this really yucky test where they go in through a vein, like my jugular. They’re monitoring for allograft rejection. Oh, my God, listen to me. Talk like a human being, right? It kind of warns them if my immune system is trying to kill the heart. Which I’m pretty sure it isn’t. But they still like to run a lot of tests. You can’t just tell them you’re pretty sure it isn’t. They want answers they can take to the bank.”

We were quiet for a little while longer.

Then I said, “I really am going to go away now. Well, not right now. I’ll go see the doctor, like my mother wants. Make sure everything is good with the heart. But then I’m going. I can’t stay here without Esther. She was the only thing keeping me here. It would break my heart to be here when she’s not. I just don’t know how I would cope.”

“Wow, you were really close to her, huh? I could go away with you. Let me go with you.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why would you want to go off all alone? It’ll be safer this way. And not so lonely. And you don’t even have a car. I have a car.”

“Which car, though? Your car? Or your mom’s?”

“Oh. Well. I can’t exactly run off in my mom’s car, now can I? She’ll need it.”

“Yeah, but you told Esther your car might not even get to Manzanar without breaking down.”

He chewed on his lip for a minute.

“Well, which would you rather have when you want to go away? A car that might break down, or no car at all?”

“That’s a good point,” I said. Then I thought about it a while longer. “But what about your band?”

“Screw the band. Who cares? They suck. They can get a new bass player. They’re never going to amount to anything anyway. I’d rather go with you.”

And, you know, really, it was pretty terrifying thinking of running off all by myself. I’d walk away from the front door and then … what? What would I bring with me, and would I have to carry it all? How could I carry it all? Where would I go to lie down when I got tired? At least you can sleep in a car. Even if it breaks down, you can sleep in it.

“Maybe,” I said. “Only … just friends, right?”

He squirmed a little. But then he said, “Yeah, OK. If that’s the only way it can be. Just friends, then.”

“OK. I guess that would be good. If you’re really sure you want to go with me. Leave me with your phone number. When I find out how soon I can get this lovely EMB experience done, I’ll give you a call.”

“We need to go through her place,” he said. “See if there’s somebody to contact.”

“Esther doesn’t have any family. They’re all dead.”

“Oh. Well, what do you think she would want for a funeral?”

“I have no idea,” I said, and right away started to cry again.

So Victor waited on the stairs for the police and the medical examiner, and I went through Esther’s stuff. It didn’t take long. She wasn’t what you might call a pack rat, like I guess I’ve mentioned before. She lived like a person on a camping trip in a solid wood tent in the city. Only what she needed to survive.

I found some bank statements in a file. The most recent one showed she had $148 in a checking account. And I found a certificate for a pre-paid cremation.

Cremation.

Doesn’t that seem like a weird choice for somebody with Esther’s background? Cremation.

But that’s what she wanted.

I took it back outside to show to Victor and whoever was about to show up.

When I Went Back In

O
f course, sooner or later I had to go in and talk to my mom.

I hit what I hoped was a happy medium. Not so much sooner that I couldn’t bear it, but not so much later that she exploded or anything.

“OK, I’m back,” I said. “Sorry.”

She had calmed down quite a bit by then. Not that she was any less mad. She was just mad in a way that made a lot less noise.

“Just out of curiosity,” she said, “which part are you sorry about?”

So I said, “Well, I guess the part where I didn’t handle leaving very well, and also the part where you were worried out of your mind. Which I guess isn’t really two parts, exactly. I guess it’s really more like one part. One thing pretty much being the result of the other and all.”

I was making it a point not to look at her eyes. Because she was using them to punish me. Maybe I deserved some punishment, but I was still a little raw and sort of in shock about the whole Esther thing.

Didn’t she know that Esther was really important to me? She should have.

Then again, I should have known that being told where I was going and when I’d be back were really important to her.

There I go with the “shoulds” again.

But really, I guess you can’t go around knowing nothing about other people and expecting them to know everything about you. It’s common enough. And it’s easy enough. But it isn’t really fair.

“Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?”

“Because if I had, you’d have run right out there and dragged me home by the ear.”

“You need to be home taking care of yourself.”

“So you admit that’s what you would have done.”

“I would’ve done what needed doing.”

“So that’s why I didn’t tell you.”

I braved a quick look at her eyes. They were busy wrestling with something, which I guess had made them lose that intense focus on making me feel bad. Just to be safe, I didn’t look for long.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “I’ll tell you my decisions if you’ll respect them.”

“Only if they’re decisions worthy of respect.”

“You don’t get to be the judge of them. I’m twenty, Mom.”

Then nobody said anything for a long time. So I went to my room to lie down.

On my bedside table I found this huge bouquet of dead flowers, with a teddy bear sitting next to them. I opened the card. It was from my dad. He said he was sending a teddy bear with the flowers because “nobody should have to be a grown-up at a time like this.”

Then I felt bad because I went off and became a grown-up without ever hugging the teddy bear, and because the flowers were dead by the time I saw them.

I curled up on the bed with the little brown bear, and, sure enough, I found a part of me that still didn’t want to have to be grown-up yet. It made me cry again.

After a while my mom stuck her head in and said, “We didn’t really settle anything.”

“That’s true,” I said. “We really didn’t.” But at least I could say I’d tried.