Second Hand Heart (4 page)

“What did she say?”

“Not much. And she did not look completely convinced. But she went home. And you are still here visiting. So that says a lot.”

So Esther and I have been talking ever since.

So, now that I’ve got all that scribbled down, hopefully the next things I say won’t seem so weird and out of place.

On Esther Dying

L
ike I said, I guess all this Esther stuff seems like a weird thing to sandwich in here. While everybody else is thinking and talking about the heart. About nothing but the heart. But I’m really not getting so far off track here as you might think.

This morning I was reading back in this blank book (OK, right, time to call it a journal because it isn’t blank any more), and I was reading the part on dying. And I realized I shouldn’t have called it “On Dying.” I should have called it “On Me Dying.”

Esther dying is a whole different ball game.

I wanted to change it, but then I would’ve had to squeeze a word in-between the two other words, or cross it out and write it again, and either way it would have been messy. I couldn’t bring myself to make this book messy. Even though it’s kind of messy now anyway because I’m in a hurry and writing really fast.

I guess I’m getting a little off track here after all. Here’s the thing: I was supposed to die before Esther.

This is more or less why we’re friends. Most people who are not quite twenty don’t have a really good friend who is over ninety. What would they have in common? But Esther and I have something in common. We are wrapping up here.

Oops. Look what I just wrote. A mistake. Something that might not be true any more. Esther and I had something in common, because we were both people who were going to die pretty soon. But I just got a heart. Let’s say I survive the operation. What if it works, and I just keep being OK? We won’t have anything in common any more. Plus, then I’ll have to deal with losing Esther. I’m not sure how I would do with that.

This is why I don’t have what you might call tons and tons of friends. Because nobody really wants to get close to someone when they are just on their way out the door. I did have one nice friend named Janie, from about the third grade to halfway through sixth, but then she moved away. We still write. Now and then.

Sometimes I wonder if the reason I didn’t make lots more friends was because they stayed away from me, or because I stayed away from them. When you’ve been doing something for so long, it gets harder to dissect it and figure it out. But it’s possible that I was the one who didn’t want to risk my heart too much.

Oh, interesting. That’s interesting what I just wrote, and I didn’t realize it until after I wrote it.

But I did with Esther (risk my heart, that is), because I was so sure I would die first. And then I would never have to deal with my friend flickering out.

See, all that stuff I said about the light flickering off and flickering on again somewhere else? There is a very definite difference that depends on whether or not you are the person doing the flickering, or the one who gets left behind. I don’t want to be here when Esther flickers out. I don’t want to get left behind.

Maybe it should make me more patient with my mom. In fact, I’m sure it should. But, truthfully, I don’t make Esther’s life miserable just because I don’t want to lose her. I let her be. All the same.

Listen to me go on and on about my mom. I should get off her case. I’m sure she’s doing the best she can, even if it is a little shaky.

Anyway. Everybody thinks getting a heart for me is all good. And it’s good, don’t get me wrong. It’s more good than it’s not good. But nothing is really all good. Everything always looks all good from the outside, but then when it finally lets you in it’s more complex and layered inside than you ever would have guessed.

Don’t ever try to explain that to anybody. They are outside. It will never work.

I guess it really should make me understand my mother better. Like I said.

But, really, if you knew her, I think you’d want to scream, too.

About My Father

M
y mom just brought me in an email from him.

She was holding it like it might have some kind of a disease.

I think she never forgave my father for leaving. But it’s not like he left because he was disinterested or something. I don’t think there was another woman or anything like that. I think it just got too hard to stay.

I wish she could cut him a little more slack. But I know better than to say so.

“Did you tell him about the heart?” I asked.

And she said, “Of course I did.”

“Did you call him?”

“Yes.”

“You always say that’s too pricey.”

“This seemed too important not to.”

Usually I don’t really ask much about how often she talks to him, or what she says.

He used to come see me every weekend. Until I was seven. Then he moved to Sweden. So after that he just sends me a card and a present every birthday and every Christmas. Mostly they’re good presents, except for a while they got a little too girly for me, because he wasn’t here to see me grow up, in which case he would’ve known I was going toward the tomboy side.

Can’t really fault him for that.

I write him letters three or four times a year, because it’s too “pricey” to call (I would say expensive, but you-know-who calls it “pricey”), and he always writes back, but his letters are about ten times shorter than mine. He has a new family with four kids, so I guess that’s why. Four kids will keep a guy busy. But at least he always answers.

I took the email and she left me alone for a minute to read it. Almost like my father was in the room for real and she didn’t want to see him. Also, like she hadn’t already read it and then printed it out. Like retroactive privacy.

Sometimes I wonder if all families are this weird, or if it’s only mine.

He always calls me Kiddo. It’s a sign of affection. I like it a lot.

From:
Paul James
To:
Vida Angstrom

Hi Kiddo,

An email doesn’t seem quite right, but your mom just now told me the good news, and I guess she hasn’t known for much more than an hour herself. I guess when a thing like this finally happens, it happens all at once. No time to really think. I wanted to talk to you on the phone, but she was calling from the lobby, and we thought maybe you were asleep. And I figured God knows you need your rest and your strength. But I did want to talk to you. I was disappointed that I couldn’t, but your rest comes first.

And I’m sure you can figure out that if I sent you a nice card or something, it wouldn’t get to you until about two weeks too late. So, email for now. Proper card and letter later.

I’m so glad there’s a later for you, Kiddo. I think in my gut I always knew there would be. Everybody said otherwise, but I never believed them. I didn’t say so, because they would’ve thought I was delusional. Now I wish I had. I could say I told you so. Oh, well.

I’ll be thinking about you all day today. That’s as close to being there as I can get, under the circumstances.

More to follow.

Love,

Your Dad

I waited a few minutes. To see if my mom was coming back on her own. Then I called for her, in case she was right out in the hall. Which I was about ninety-nine per cent sure was the case.

I said, “OK. Thanks. You can come back in now. He’s gone.”

And she stuck her head back in, sort of tentative, like he really had just left the building. Like she had to look first. Make sure the coast was clear.

It’s funny how we give some people so much power over us. Not funny funny. Strange. At least, I think it’s strange. Everybody else acts like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

What I Remember Best About My Dad

I
didn’t know I was about to take time to write this, but here I go. This memory is from back when we were all living together.

It’s the one when he took me for a ride on his motorcycle.

You see, I would always sit in the window and watch him drive up and watch him drive away. Partly because I was sad to see him go, and excited to see him come back. Partly because I just loved to watch him ride the thing. I liked the way the wind caught up in the back of his shirt in the summer (in the winter he wore a leather jacket and it didn’t look the same), and blew it all around. It looked like some kind of freedom I’d only seen from a distance.

It was summer when this happened. I think I was four.

It was dusk, kind of a warm night. He came up the stairs, and I was still sitting in the window, staring at his motorcycle, where it was parked down at the curb. I spent a lot of time looking out the window, because my health wasn’t too good when I was four. That was right before the third heart surgery, my Phase III Norwood procedure, and I was flagging big time. So I didn’t get much time out of doors.

My mom rushed out as soon as he came in, because she’d been waiting to go someplace, but she couldn’t go until he got home to take care of me. I don’t remember where she was going. But I think she was mad at him for keeping her waiting.

After she left, he looked at me. I guess I looked really sad. I didn’t know I looked sad. I knew I felt sad, but I didn’t know it showed. But I could see it on his face.

“Poor kid,” he said. “Poor Vida. It breaks my heart to see you staring out the window like we we’re keeping you in a cage or something. Come on. Let’s get you some air.”

He put me on his shoulders and we walked around the block, and people smiled at me when they walked past.

Then we got back to the front of the house, and he lifted me down from his shoulders, and I looked at the motorcycle and so did he. Then he looked at me. Then back to the bike.

“Do not tell your mother,” he said.

I nodded in triple-time. I felt like I was about to explode.

I got to sit on the gas tank, kind of wedged between his thighs, so I couldn’t possibly fall off. Of course he didn’t have a helmet my size, so he just went slow. But it felt fast to me. It blew my hair around, and I got to laughing so hard I couldn’t stop, so then he turned back for home, like he was afraid I was going to laugh myself to death.

I remember how I was holding one of his sleeves in each hand, and how I had to reach up and out to do it.

Then he put me to bed, and I lay there feeling exhausted from the excitement, like he’d taken me to Disneyland and the circus all in one evening. My nerves were all jangly, and it’s like I was so tired I couldn’t sleep.

After a while my mom got home and they had a really bad fight. I have no idea how she found out. One of the neighbors, maybe? I just know she was pissed.

I don’t remember too much of what they said, specifically, which is strange, because they were yelling the same stuff over and over, just in slightly different words each time. You’d think I’d have had plenty of time to memorize it. Maybe I don’t remember because I don’t want to.

I just remember how my dad said somebody needed to take care of other parts of me, besides my heart. My other needs, too. Not just the physical stuff.

Of course, that just made my mom even madder. If there’s one thing you don’t want to do to my mom, it’s suggest she isn’t taking care of me exactly the right way. That’s her specialty in the world, so you’re taking your life in your hands to question that in any way.