Where the Heart Is (31 page)

He wouldn’t know for five days that he still had his fingers, wouldn’t know until then that he still had his thumbs.

But he would remember the smell of something dark and fresh . . .

and a pain that had teeth and claws.

And he would remember someone picking up one of his legs and bringing it back to him . . . someone who, like him, was trying not to cry.

Give me your hand.

And he would remember the sound of her voice calling from somewhere above him.

Feel right there . . . That’s where the heart is.

LEXIE, what do you think of this?” Novalee pulled a denim shirt-waist from a jumble of clothes piled on a patio table.

“It looks okay.”

“Here.” Novalee held the dress up to Lexie, then made a face. “No.

This would swallow you,” she said as she tossed it back on the pile.

They had been making the round of garage sales since seven-thirty to find Lexie some “skinny” clothes. She had lost sixty pounds and four dress sizes while her jaw was wired shut and even now, months later, she was still in her old size 22Ws. But Novalee was determined to change that.

“How about this?” She held up a black and white striped pantsuit.

“Isn’t that a referee’s uniform?”

“No. You’d look good in this. Why don’t you . . .”

But Lexie was as little interested in clothes as she was in food. The only thing she’d bought all morning was a game of Operation, which was keeping the kids entertained in the car—all the kids except Brummett.

He had just left for Outreach, a summer camp for boys in crisis.

And ever since Roger Briscoe, Brummett had been in crisis. He became more angry and sullen every day and had been caught twice stealing baseball cards from the IGA.

Pauline wasn’t stealing, but she still had nightmares and she was still fearful of men. The psychologist at County Mental Health said she needed a strong male role model in her life, which had sent Lexie into a spell of depression that lasted for weeks.

“Lexie,” Novalee said, “here’s a pair of elephant earrings. Look at their trunks.” Novalee handed the earrings to Lexie, who believed elephants with raised trunks brought good luck. When she worked the posts through her ears and posed for Novalee’s approval, it was clear Lexie could use a change of luck.

Her ruined eyelid drooped and blinked out of sync with the other.

And her lips, her once-perfect lips, were crimped and pinched with zigzag ridges of scar tissue, even when they smiled.

When they got back to the car, they found Peanut asleep, the twins in a fight, and Americus and Pauline sitting on the hood singing

“Old McDonald.”

“Novalee, I guess we’d better get back to the house. By the time we get the kids some lunch, it’ll be noon and I’m supposed to look at that apartment today.”

“Lexie, I wish you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to move.”

“Hurry? We’ve been there long enough now that by squatter’s rights, we own your house.”

Lexie hustled Americus and Pauline into the car, then crawled in behind them.

Novalee said, “You want to stop by and see the apartment now, on our way home?”

“No, I need my car.” Lexie leaned close and lowered her voice.

“Remember, I have to stop by the police station.” As she settled Peanut on her lap, she added, “For all the good it’ll do.”

The police had turned up four Roger Briscoes, but only one was from Fort Worth, and he was fifteen years old. Of the others, one was black, one was blind and one had been in prison for twenty years.

By now, the case was growing old, but a policeman would call from time to time and ask Lexie to come in.

Novalee started the car, then pulled into the street when the first fire truck raced by.

“Hope I turned off the coffeepot,” Lexie said.

Seconds later, they heard another siren.

“Can you smell smoke, or is that my imagination?” Novalee asked.

“I smell it, too,” Americus said.

At the next light, a police car blocked the right lane and a policeman was directing traffic, moving cars one at a time into the left lane.

“Everyone wants to go see the fire,” Lexie said.

“Can we, Momma?” the twins screamed. “Can we?”

“No.”

When Novalee reached the corner, she rolled down her window.

As she eased the Chevy around the policeman, she said, “Can I get through on Taylor?”

“I doubt it,” the policeman said. “They’re backed up six blocks in both directions from Locust and First.”

Novalee’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Locust and First?”

“Yeah,” he said. “The library.”

“No!”

“Yes, ma’am. The library’s on fire.”

On the day of his sister’s funeral, Forney moved into the Majestic Hotel, a decrepit 1920s brick with sagging floors and stained ceilings.

Whatever majesty it had enjoyed sixty years earlier was buried now beneath layers of chipped paint and the smell of cooked onions.

The pensioners who lived there, old men with milky eyes and clotted voices, looked up when Novalee opened the front door. They smiled at the sunlight shining through her white cotton dress as they recalled other summer days, other dresses. They sighed at the sound of her voice when she asked for the room of the librarian, and they remembered the smell of gardenias as she passed through the high-ceilinged lobby and hurried up the stairs.

She knocked three times before she opened the door. At first, she didn’t see him. The room was dark and he was wearing a slate-colored suit.

“Forney?”

He was sitting up straight on the side of the bed, his hands folded in his lap.

“I was worried about you,” Novalee said.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry. I don’t want you to feel sorry. I just wanted to see you.”

“Oh.”

“Forney, can I come in?”

“You want to come in?”

“If that’s okay.”

“Yes.”

When Novalee closed the door, the room was so dark she could barely make out Forney’s shape.

“You want to turn on the light?” he asked. “We can turn on the light.”

“No. This is fine.”

“I used to be afraid of the dark,” he said. “But sometimes, it’s the best place to be. Sometimes you can see things in the dark that you can’t see in the light.”

“What do you see here in the dark, Forney?”

From somewhere down the hall, Novalee heard canned laughter, then the voice of Fred Flintstone.

“When I was six,” Forney said, “in the first grade, my father always picked me up at school.”

As Novalee’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see a wedge of reflected light shimmering on the ceiling.

“But one day, he didn’t come. It was raining, so lots of parents came for their children, but my father didn’t come.”

Forney shifted his weight and the bedframe creaked beneath him.

“I watched everyone else leave, even the janitor . . . and then I was the only one left. I started crying because I thought I’d have to stay in the school all night by myself.

“Anyway, it was getting dark when I heard footsteps in the hall. It was Mary Elizabeth. She smoothed my hair and wiped my face, but I couldn’t quit crying.

“She took my hand and we started to leave, but when we passed the auditorium, she stopped. I knew she wanted me to stop crying, but she didn’t say anything, just looked at me for a moment, then led me inside.”

Someone shuffling past Forney’s door coughed, the thick, phlegmy cough of an old man.

“Mary Elizabeth took me to a seat on the front row, then walked up the steps to the stage. She looked out at me and began to hum a song, some tune I didn’t know. And then she started to dance.

“She lifted her arms, turned her body slowly and began to glide.

Moving to the sound of her song, she danced. She danced just for me.

“I sat very still and watched her. Never took my eyes away from her. She was so beautiful. And when she finished, she smiled at me.”

The TV was shut off down the hall and a door closed somewhere nearby.

“You know what, Novalee? I don’t think I ever saw her smile again.”

The room was so still that Novalee felt suddenly afraid.

“Forney . . .”

“I want to tell you about this morning, Novalee, and why I couldn’t go.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I tried. Walked right up to the church, right to the door, but I couldn’t walk in.”

“Forney . . .”

“I had four white roses . . . for her. But when I got to the church, they’d turned brown.” Forney wiped his face with the back of his hand, then he looked up at Novalee. “I couldn’t take her brown roses.”

Novalee would barely remember crossing the room and wrapping him in her arms . . . but she would never forget his breath against her throat as he murmured her name again and again. And when his lips found the silver scar at the corner of her mouth, she didn’t know that the voice whispering “yes” was her own.

FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Novalee’s life seemed routine. She started on the inventory at Wal-Mart and finished up a photography job for the Chamber of Commerce. She made Americus a costume for Western Days, had dinner with Moses and Certain and completed her enrollment for another class at Northeastern—a course in American literature. She was everywhere she was supposed to be and she did everything she was supposed to do, but she was only going through the motions. Her mind was with Forney Hull.

She thought about him all day and dreamed of him at night, troubling dreams in which Forney was always saying goodbye. Each time the phone rang she hoped she would hear his voice. Even at work, when she was paged, she imagined it would be Forney on the phone.

She wrote him twice, but each time she tore up the letter because she sounded like a schoolgirl declaring her love. Novalee loves Forney. NN + FH.

She found herself doing silly things . . . singing love songs in the dark, reading poems that made her cry. She cut her hair too short, bought herself a keychain shaped like a heart and watched Casablanca at two o’clock in the morning.

She was in love for the first time in her life, had been for months, and just couldn’t keep it to herself any longer.

“Oh honey, I’m so happy for you,” Lexie said as she took Novalee in her arms. “Forney’s been crazy about you from the beginning. I told you so myself.”

“Lexie, I’ve never felt like this before. I thought at first I was coming down with the flu.”

“You’re in love, Novalee. Trust me. I’ve had the flu. Now, tell me, what did Forney do when you told him?”

“Well, I haven’t told him yet.”

“Wait a minute! You made love in his hotel room. He said he loved you and you didn’t tell him?”

“No. But . . . it was strange.”

“Sure. It always is.”

“No, you don’t understand. When we . . . well, when we finished, Forney acted . . . strange.”

“Novalee, Forney always acts strange.”

“This was different.”

“So, you’re telling me you just left?”

“Oh, we talked—a little. Just ‘How long will you be gone,’ and ‘I’ll call you.’ Stuff like that.”

Lexie smiled and shook her head.

“Lexie, did I make a mistake?”

“Novalee, I know a little something about algebra and I can make a cherry cheesecake. I’m a pretty fair bowler and I used to be able to twirl a baton. But love? I just don’t understand it.”

And Novalee didn’t think she understood it either. She couldn’t understand why she had hurried away from Forney’s room when all she wanted to do was to stay.

She kept replaying what had happened at the Majestic Hotel. She saw herself in Forney’s arms and heard him whisper her name—like lovers in a movie. She only wished she could rewrite the end of the scene so she could hear herself say, “I love you, Forney Hull. I love you.”

Novalee was on her way to the Chamber of Commerce to drop off some photographs when she ran into Retha Holloway, the president of the Literary Guild.

“I’ve been meaning to call you, Novalee. I need to get Forney’s mailing address.”

“His mailing address?”

“Yes. I thought you might have heard from him.”

“No, but he’ll be back in a few days.”

“He’s coming back here? To Sequoyah?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I’m surprised. I figured he’d just stay there until it’s time for the new term to begin.”

Novalee looked puzzled. “Miss Holloway, Forney went to Maine.

He went—”

“To bury Mary Elizabeth. My, my. What a tragedy.”

“He should be back today or tomorrow.”

“You know the Hull family came from Maine.” Retha Holloway’s voice took on the singsong rhythm she had used in teaching English for over forty years. “Why, the first Hulls were Brahmin. Boston Brahmin. An aristocratic family,” she said making sure to enunciate all five syllables.

“I knew Forney’s mother quite well. His father only slightly. A difficult man to get to know. But very cultured, very well-bred.

“I don’t think they were ever happy in this part of the world. I know Mary Elizabeth wasn’t. And I suspect Forney would have chosen a different life if he could have. But all that is getting ready to change, don’t you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, with Mary Elizabeth gone and the Hull mansion destroyed, Forney can get on with his life. After all, he’s still a young man.

Thirty-six was thought to be old when I was a girl, but not anymore.

Why, Forney can go back to school now, finish his education.”

Novalee nodded as if she understood.

“You know, Forney was attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick when his education was cut short by Mary Elizabeth’s condition.”

Retha Holloway shook her head to emphasize the tragedy. Then, as if she were giving a test, she said, “Did you know, Novalee, that all the Hull men graduated from Bowdoin? As a matter of fact, Mr. Hull’s great-grandfather lived in the same dormitory with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Just imagine!”

Retha Holloway’s voice slipped into a higher register as she began to recite.

“Half of my life is gone, and I have let the years slip from me and have not fulfilled the aspiration of my youth . . .”