Through the Heart (2 page)

What might be the strangest fact of all is that my best friend, Tammy, predicted them both. Sometimes I wonder: if I’d listened to her, would it have made a difference? And then I ask myself, would I go back and change it if I could?

 

 

 

 

There is no “happily ever after” here.

Am I giving it away? I don’t think I am. I believe that all beginnings contain the end hidden within them. You can try to ignore it, but it’s there. The sadness is always tucked away within the happiness.

Maybe I’m a spoilsport. It certainly isn’t the worst thing that’s been said of me. Lots of people have called me a lot of things. They’ve called me cruel. They’ve called me unfeeling. They’ve called me dangerous. The worst thing you could throw at me? I’m sure I’ve heard it before, though I have to say that all the people who said those things were women. Does it make a difference? I don’t know. I just think it’s interesting.

But the women who said those things were right. All I can say is—you try growing up having everything. See how you turn out.

When I say I had everything, money is always the first thing people think of. Why do we make such a big deal about it? It’s just pieces of paper—even less real than pieces of paper. For most of us, dollars and cents are just numbers in a computer somewhere. But I grew up with a lot, and when I got old enough, I made more. Easily. Effortlessly. The money doubled and tripled.

It’s never just the money though. Since my father had money, he married a beautiful woman. I got her looks. Just a mistake of the genes, an accidental arrangement of features: this chin, that nose, those eyes. But the difference it makes—I think it might have more of an impact than money. It’s amazing the effect that a little bit of beauty has on people.

And just to complete the package, I had brains, too, and all the trappings that come with them: the Ivy League degree, Wharton MBA. I can even pull out the SAT scores, if you want to go that far back.

I know you’re probably thinking, “Oh poor little rich boy.” Believe me, I would dislike me too. But all these things we call blessings, I promise you, we have misnamed them, but we keep chasing after them, thinking they will give us what we want.

For me, there was only one thing I wanted—the only thing I didn’t have, couldn’t buy, and didn’t know how to get. Love. Real love. But how do you find that? How can you test it for genuine-ness? Is there a glass to test that diamond on?

A lot of people might think I wasn’t worthy of it, and I definitely had days when I would have had to agree with them. I wasn’t. But I found it. Or rather, it found me. And it found me in the last place I would ever have thought to look. It’s a miracle I even recognized it when I found it. But when I did recognize it, guess what I did? Everything I could to shake it. That’s what. You try finding real love and see if it doesn’t scare the hell out of you. You might even find that you would choose the same path I did. Judge at your own risk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he day Tammy made her prediction was a normal day—normal for me anyway.

When she came by the house, I was in the kitchen, about to make a grilled cheese sandwich for myself.

My mother was upstairs, locked in her bedroom. We’d had another fight.

That morning we had made the long drive up to Kansas City for her fifth chemo session. Second round.

I think my mother actually enjoyed our fights. I wish I could say I did. The problem was, they got in the way of what Tammy called my Florence Nightingale delusion. I thought I’d move home and even though the cancer would be awful, it would also be a sort of miraculous thing that would bring us together. I would take care of my mother, and we would become close in a way we never had been when I was growing up.

It hadn’t quite worked out that way—not by a long shot.

I was in the kitchen, heating the skillet, when I heard the front door slam and then the familiar holler, “Nora? Hellooo? Anybody home?”

Tammy had been coming in this way since we became best friends in second grade, and Tammy was not one to give up habits easily.

I went to the kitchen door and motioned her inside with a finger to my lips. As if that would do any good.

“Oh, is it puke-your-guts-up day?” Tammy asked.

That was Tammy. She liked to say shocking things. I never did find the thing that Tammy wasn’t willing to laugh about. Other people might say they laughed about the bad things, but you always reached the one thing that sobered them up, the thing that made them say, “No, that’s just not funny.”

That wasn’t Tammy. She laughed.

“You know she can hear you,” I said, as Tammy crossed the li ving room.

“You think she’d be surprised?” Tammy shot back, a little louder than necessary, so I knew it wasn’t just for me. It was a small house. You could hear everything, especially if you had my mother’s ears.

“You’ve got a point,” I said.

That was part of Tammy’s magic—my mother had heard the kinds of things Tammy said, and though she always pretended to be outraged, strangely she never gave me a hard time about our friendship. I think it might have been the one and only thing that was important to me that my mother hadn’t tried to take away or ruin. I didn’t understand it, but I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“You want a grilled cheese?” I asked, closing the door firmly behind Tammy.

Tammy flopped down on one of the rickety wooden chairs with caning so old it squeaked every time you moved.

“God, yes. I’m starving. Robbie had absolutely nothing at his place.”

“Robbie?” I asked, starting to butter the bread. “Do I know about this one?”

“Put a lot of butter on mine,” Tammy instructed. “I told you about Robbie last week.”

“Wait a second. Don’t tell me,” I said, turning around, my hand still poised in the air as if the bread was in front of me. “You didn’t! Not the boy who bags your groceries at the Price Chopper?”

“That’s the one,” Tammy said.

“Is he even legal?”

“You’re asking me that with a knife in your hand?”

I looked at my hand holding the knife, then at Tammy. “Tammy, it’s a butter knife. Don’t get dramatic.”

“Anyway, he’s nineteen,” Tammy said. “Oh, to be nineteen again.”

“You have no shame,” I said, turning back to the sandwiches.

“None,” Tammy agreed. “It’s a useless emotion, along with guilt and regret.”

“Hey, you’re knocking my staple diet there. Guilt, regret, and grilled cheese.” I peeled slices of cheese out of the package. “How many slices of cheese. One or two?”

“Three,” Tammy replied.

“Did you tell him how old you are?” I asked

“Yes,” Tammy said. “I told him I was twenty-four.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

I was the same age as Tammy: we were thirty-three.

“Well, it’s how old I feel,” Tammy replied.

“It’s certainly how old you act.”

“And how I look,” she shot back.

That was true. But a big part of it was that Tammy hadn’t changed her look since high school. She had long blonde hair, which she wore most of the time in a ponytail. And she wore the same makeup, the most important item of which was pink lip gloss. But it was mostly her height. Tammy was tiny. She was barely over five feet, tiny all over except one place—her chest. It was comical to watch men when they met her. They’d try to look at her face, but their eyes would be drawn like a magnet down to her chest.

“You’re just jealous I’m gettin’ some,” Tammy said.

“You’re absolutely right.” I slapped the sandwiches in the pan with the heat turned high.

“How long has it been?” Tammy asked.

“You know exactly how long it’s been. Don’t make me say it aloud.” I pressed the spatula on top of each sandwich.

“What about the guy in Chicago last spring?”

“No.”

“I thought . . .”

“No,” I said again. “How is it you can find so many men in a town the size of a pea, and I get nothing?”

Our town was actually not so small by midwestern standards, since something like 90 percent of the towns in the Midwest have fewer than three thousand people. Apparently, everyone was leaving the small towns—they called it the rural exodus. I fervently wished I could be a part of it.

“You get nothing because you’re not approachable,” Tammy said. Then she added, more kindly, “And I’m obviously not picky. You actually want to like the guy. I just want to be entertained.”

“What do you mean, I’m not approachable?”

“You’re not. You’re actually a bit intimidating.”

“Me?” I said. “Give me a break.”

“You’ve been stuck in this town too long. You don’t even know what damage you could do somewhere else. You’re not bad-looking, you know,” Tammy said.

“Gee, thanks.” I flipped each sandwich. The undersides had turned a perfect golden brown.

“Okay, you’re beautiful. You happy?”

“I know, my hair . . .”

My mother always said my hair was my beauty. It was a color you don’t usually see: dark red, straight and thick. I never felt like I was beautiful, just my hair.

“No, I’m not talking about your hair,” Tammy said.

“You’re full of it,” I said. “I’m not ugly, but I’m not beautiful.”

“You didn’t use to be,” Tammy agreed. “You were cute. But you’ve changed.”

“That’s true. I’ve become miserable. I guess it must be the drawn, lo ng-suffering look.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Tammy said. “Speaking of suffering, how’s it going with,” and she rolled her eyes up to the ceiling.

“Not so good.” I checked the other side of the sandwiches, but they weren’t done yet.

“Worse than usual?” Tammy asked.

I shrugged.

Tammy knew me too well. She didn’t buy the understated reaction. “Oh no. What happened?”

“I asked her again if I could come into the hospital with her.”

“Oh, the horror,” Tammy drawled, pressing a hand dramatically to her chest. “Wanting to go into the hospital with your sick mother instead of waiting in the car—how could you?”

I checked the undersides of the sandwiches again. They were done. I forked them onto the waiting plates and brought them over to the table and sat down. The chair creaked in protest. Nothing in this house was stable.

“Well, that’s pretty much what she said,” I admitted. “But you know she doesn’t mean it.”

Tammy couldn’t answer right away because she’d taken a huge bite of her sandwich while it was too hot and now had her mouth open, fanning the air ineffectually with her hand. But she looked like she was about to choke, she wanted to talk so badly.