Through the Heart (23 page)

She closed the folder and looked at me. Then she said, “I’m ashamed of you.”

I wasn’t expecting it. If she had punched me in the stomach, I think it would have felt better. She went on. “Do you realize what you let him do? You let him buy you. How are you any better than a prostitute now?”

I picked up the folder. I noticed that my hands were shaking.

She went on. “That’s pocket change for him. But he knew it would seem like a big deal to a small-town girl like you.”

“I don’t care what you think,” I said—and I desperately wanted it to be true. “I’m going anyway.”

“Who’s stopping you?” she said. “You think I want you here if you don’t want to be here? It’s not like I need you. I can get someone else to drive me to the hospital. And it’s not like you do a whole lot more than that for me.”

This was the opposite of what she’d been saying for three years. I had been prepared for her to do everything she could think of to try to get me to stay. Never in a million years did I think it would be worse for her not to care—or even to pretend not to care.

She said, “Go to New York. See how long it lasts. I bet he’s already on to some other girl. You think he’s going to sit around and wait for you? You think there aren’t a hundred girls, a thousand girls, back there in New York trying to catch him? He came out here, and you’re something a little different. But you think he’s still going to think you’re quaint when you get to New York and he sees you around those New York girls. You think you can hold your own against them? He’ll send you packing right back to Kansas. I guarantee you; you’ll be back here in under a month. But, please, don’t listen to me. Go ahead and see for yourself.”

“I will,” I said. “Because I think you’re wrong.” Then I turned and left.

But it was as if every word she said were burned into my brain. I tried to summon up the look on Timothy’s face when he’d been about to show me the folder—how excited he’d been. How much he’d just wanted to help me. I remember knowing it, but I couldn’t call up the image. It was as if my mother had erased it with her words and replaced it with her version of events.

All I wanted was to get to the one person who I knew would be thrilled for me: Tammy. I had told her that Timothy had asked me to go to New York, and in the same breath I’d said of course I couldn’t. Tammy had shown amazing restraint and hadn’t said a word, but I knew she almost certainly was thinking I was an idiot for not going. So I was excited to tell her I’d changed my mind.

I drove to Tammy’s apartment and knocked on her door. Actually, it wasn’t an apartment, it was a room over a garage—her parents’ garage. They let her live there for free, and she had her own kitchen, her own bathroom, everything, but she still spent most of her time over in what she called the “big house.”

Tammy had a relationship with her parents that was like nothing I’d ever seen. I don’t know if it was really disturbing or really wonderful. They did things like smoke pot together, but they also made their own Christmas ornaments and had evenings where they popped popcorn over the fireplace and made hot cocoa and watched old movies on PBS.

Tammy was over in the big house when I knocked on her door. She saw me from the kitchen window, and she opened up the window and said, “Hold on, I’ll be right over.”

A second later she came out.

“Why don’t you come in and have some fudge,” Tammy said.

I guessed it was one of their wholesome days—unless they’d gotten high and were making fudge, which could very well have been the case.

“I’m not really in a fudge mood.”

“How is that possible?” Tammy said.

“Well, you’re looking at the girl who can manage the impossible,” I told her.

“Uh oh. Come on in,” and Tammy led the way into her living room. Her apartment was decorated in warm colors, red and brown, with pictures of her friends and family, and lots of pillows and always a couple of throw blankets to wrap yourself up in. Tammy swore up and down that she had furnished it, even though I suspected her mother was really behind it. Sometimes I wondered what it would have been like growing up with a mother like Tammy’s. Would I have turned out to be just like Tammy then? In my situation, would she have been me? It was strange to think about.

“What happened this time?” Tammy asked me, curling up in her favorite corner of the couch. I took the opposite corner and the red fleece blanket.

Suddenly I got an image of myself of someone who always came to Tammy with some drama. Always some complaint. It wasn’t how I usually saw myself, so the sudden flash was disorienting.

As I opened my mouth to tell her what was going on, I got an echo of what I was about to say, and I have to tell you, my problem seemed ridiculous.

“I told my mother that I’m moving to New York, and she said she doesn’t care. Or she pretended not to care to hurt me. I don’t know which.”

Why did that seem like such an awful thing? My mother said she didn’t care, and I was free. Whether or not she was right about all the rest of it, wasn’t that enough? Free from debt, with money in the bank, and leaving my mother’s house. Suddenly I felt buoyant. Unlimited. For a moment. For a split second.

Until Tammy said, “Nora, you can’t go.”

I felt like my world was turning inside out. Upside down. Nothing was the way I expected it to be.

“What do you mean, I can’t go? I thought you’d be ecstatic. I thought you’d be even more excited than I am.”

“Nora, did you forget?”

“What?”

“Remember when I made the prediction that you would be leaving.”

I laughed. “Oh, I totally forgot about that. You’re right. Then again, you’re always right.”

“Then you have to remember that I said you couldn’t go.”

“That’s a contradiction. If I’m going, I’m going. You can’t tell me I’m going and I can’t go at the same time.”

“Okay, then just let me tell you this. When I held your hand that time, I felt . . . Nora, all I can say is that it’s not safe. You’ve got to listen to me. It’s not safe.”

“You keep saying that, but you don’t tell me anything.”

“Okay, how about this? It’s the worst feeling I think I’ve ever felt. It’s something that’s masquerading as love, but it’s not. It’s jealousy and resentment and fear, and if you don’t act exactly the way it wants you to, I don’t know what it will do.”

“Why don’t you just say it? You mean you don’t know what he will do.”

“Whatever that feeling will do,” she said.

“I thought you liked him.”

“This isn’t about liking him. Though honestly, Nora, I might like him, but I can’t say I exactly trust him. He’s not really the trustworthy type, is he?”

“I thought Dan was the trustworthy type. Look how far appearances take you.”

“Nora, I’m just afraid you’re not going into this with your eyes open. You’ve got to see who this guy really is.”

“Why are you starting to sound like my mother now?”

“God knows, I don’t think your mother and I have ever agreed on anything before. But you might want to listen for a change.”

“What do you mean, listen for a change?”

“You pretend to listen, and then you just go do whatever it was that you were planning to do,” Tammy said. “I’m just worried you don’t take into consideration all the facts.”

“Or maybe I’m just thinking about different facts. This danger you’re describing to me, honestly I can’t say that it scares me. Not like staying here forever scares me.”

“That’s because you don’t feel what I felt,” Tammy said.

“Maybe something has changed,” I suggested. “Why don’t you try again?”

I held my hand out. Tammy hesitated, then took it as if it were a dead fish. She closed her eyes for all of three seconds, then she practically threw my hand away.

“Okay, guess I know the answer to that question,” I said.

“Nora, if you could feel what I feel . . .”

“I’d probably still go. Maybe this time you’ll be wrong.”

“I’m not wrong,” she assured me.

“Well, at least my life will be exciting,” I said. “Aren’t tragedies always the best stories?”

The problem is, even when you think you can see the future, and you’re willing to accept the consequences, it’s never quite like you think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got back to New York on a Monday, and all that week there was no word from Nora. Every day I thought she might call—and nothing.

How do you stop waiting for something? My answer was to get busy with something else. I might have watched a movie or done some work. I would have found something. But it turned out I didn’t need to, because Celia showed up at my door a couple of days after her last disastrous visit.

The doorman didn’t buzz me. I’m sure she told him not to, and she’d been there often enough that he did what she asked. As a result, I was unprepared when there was a knock on my door. When I opened it, there was Celia. I certainly hadn’t been expecting her after the way I’d let her leave on Monday. But it wasn’t the Celia I had seen on Monday that showed up at my door—it was the Celia who was so self-sufficient she gave the impression that even if the world’s population were wiped out, she would be just fine. It was the Celia I preferred. It was the Celia who, truthfully, I admired.

But I didn’t know that right away. I saw her, and I wasn’t happy about it. I’m sure she could tell, but she just smiled in that way she always used to smile—as if nothing I said or did or felt could move her in the slightest. She made no apologies; she just stepped forward as if there was no question of whether I was going to let her in. And when she did that, she was right: there wasn’t any question.

Within minutes we were in the bedroom, and, I have to admit, I didn’t think of Nora even once during the next few hours. You might be thinking, what kind of love is that? After Celia got dressed and left, I know I asked myself that question. I didn’t have an answer.

Celia was over every night that week. Don’t ask me how she managed it with Marcus. I didn’t question it. I needed the distraction. And that’s one thing I can say about Celia—she made for a very good distraction. I asked her to spend the weekend with me, and, to my surprise, she said yes.

I felt myself slipping back into my old life. If I could manage to keep my mind from thoughts of Nora, I could almost pretend that whole thing had never happened.

And then she called.

Nora called me Monday morning from work. I could picture her there, in her uniform, behind the counter, picking at a muffin with her fingers. Sometimes she didn’t even eat it. I had stood there often enough and watched her just pick one apart.

“It’s Nora,” she said. Then, almost abruptly, “I want to come to New York if that’s still okay.”

“When?” I asked her.

“Whenever you want me,” she said.

“This week,” I said. I was afraid to wait longer. I didn’t trust my love to last. I know there had been a long time between the first visit to Kansas and the second, but it still felt so fragile, as if it could disappear at any second. Maybe it already had. When she told me she was coming, I didn’t feel the surge of happiness I had anticipated. I felt nothing. No excitement, no dread. It was like dropping a stone into a well, waiting for a splash, and getting just silence.

She said, “I’ll book a flight today and let you know.”

And she did.

I went to pick her up at the airport on Friday. It was below freezing in the city, with a wind that sliced right through whatever you were wearing. Some people broke out their furs, which was somewhat unusual for New York. The rest of the city shivered in their fashionable and not very warm jackets.

Nora came off the plane in jeans, a big knit sweater, and a parka. Of course she’d worn the same things in Kansas, but in New York they made her look out of place. Provincial. A little awkward and dumpy, though in reality she was anything but.