What Hearts Read online

  He ran home from school and arrived with his full wind. On the way up the steps of his house he considered taking a deep breath and blowing the door off its hinges; he actually saw it toppling through the foyer. He chose to open it quietly instead. Then, stepping in, he smelled Dave’s after-shave. He stopped. And he knew. It came to him in a heartbeat why Dave was home at such a weird time of the day. Asa allowed himself a quick, quiet sigh, then rubbed his eyes, stood up straight, got ready. By the time his mother’s voice came from the living room, asking him to come in, he was all set.

  He entered the room and glanced at them, sitting in the two chairs, facing the sofa. He saw only shapes. The lights were out, the blinds were down, the curtains were closed, the windows were shut, and the television was off. He dropped onto the sofa like a leaf falling into a dark pool somewhere in a forest.

  “Asa,” said his mother. Yes. Amazing: here it came. He almost smiled at the familiarity of it. He wanted to tell her she could stop speaking right there. But he let her go on, and the words sounded again: decision, difficult, respect, no love, divorce, best for all, moving away. He was surprised how well he remembered them, and how nearly they were repeated. There were some differences, of course: he and his mother were not leaving immediately with one suitcase, but tomorrow at noon; they were going not to the beach, but to an apartment Dave had kindly found for them in Raleigh; in fact, Dave—no end to his kindness—was driving them there, in what she clearly called his car.

  Another difference this time, of course, was that the man they were leaving was sitting right there, lumpy and still in the dark, listening, presumed to agree, ready to be helpful in delivering them out of his life. Asa looked at Dave and knew with a warm certainty that he and Dave, in silence, were feeling at least one thing the same: surely they were both relieved. There was more, of course—he knew that Dave, as a husband, as a boyfriend from olden times, was possessed by a mess of other feelings. But merely as a stepfather, surely Dave felt relieved, even blessed. Again Asa nearly smiled, tenderly, at the fact that here, at the end of their time together, they had a lot in common: the yearning for freedom from each other.

  Asa’s mother finished talking. This time she did not chatter and fret. She spoke with a commanding confidence, in a tone Asa had never heard before. He did not trust it entirely—he had been duped by her chipper bravado before—but at least she seemed to be taking wing this time with a certain forcefulness, and surely that was preferable to wincing and stumbling. In the darkness Asa saw her turn her head pertly toward Dave: it was his turn to say a few words now, if he liked.

  Dave cleared his throat. Asa waited, silently sending Dave a message: You don’t have to make a speech. Dave evidently got the message. After an awkward pause, all he said was, “Sorry, Sport.” Asa stood up and said, “Me too. I’d better go pack.”

  So he did. It took longer than he expected. He had to admit he had gotten soft: living in this house for nearly three years had taken the snap out of his reflexes. Once, a few years ago, it had seemed he was packing every other month, and he had refined packing to a crisp drill. Now he started slowly, holding things he had acquired in this place and savoring them a little before putting them into boxes. He reflected on the view from the windows, the light in the room, the smell of mothballs and cedar in the closet. Then he snapped out of it. His old drive returned with a rush of efficiency, the point was to pack, to get ready, to move. It was, to tell the truth, kind of exciting. Moving—what was wrong with it; as a word, as a concept? As a life? Everything had to move; you could not really grow without movement. Pity the people who had to stay stuck in one place. Put it in a box and take to the road.

  He finished just after dark. His mother looked in once, to bring him a plate of cold fried chicken and potato salad, while he was finishing with his comic-book collection. She said nothing, just left the plate and blew a kiss he did not look up to receive, nodding an acknowledgment instead: he was a busy guy. They both knew how this whole thing worked; they had shared it before, they were partners, really. His heart swelled with the closeness of it, this partnership, this resumption of the familiar adventure. He had a sense of orderliness now—a conviction that it was good to live the life you had established, especially if you had established it with someone. As he ate, hastily tearing the chicken, he was surrounded by the special bliss that came when someone gave him something. A sense of opportunity came, too—for strength, and no-nonsense action, and perhaps, pride. He was a boy who appreciated an opportunity to be strong, so a wave of gratitude followed his bliss.

  He went downstairs when he had finished. The public parts of the house looked much the same; he knew the furniture and stuff would be packed by movers. His mother was finishing in her bedroom. Dave was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was spending the night in a motel or something. That would be decorous of him. Asa went out through the screened porch, into the backyard, for a last look at the moonlight on the sycamore that grew in the middle. But as soon as he stepped onto the grass he smelled Dave’s after-shave again, and heard himself called by name from the darkness.

  He walked out toward the tree. There was no moon. In what would have been the tree’s shadow, Dave lay on a long beach chair. He seemed to be doing nothing. Asa realized that in fact he had nothing to do: everyone else was busy packing. He was staying out of their way. No doubt he would be moving, too; but for the moment the act of leaving belonged to Asa and his mother.

  Dave moved on the chair. “Sit down with me,” he said. His voice was not soft so much as watery. He did not sound like himself. He sounded injured. Asa, who was feeling so bouncy, wondered if they had so much in common right now after all—or if his own bounciness was all that true. He sat down, and Dave hugged him close.

  Asa let himself be hugged; he even tried to lean into it a little. There had been a time, in the first couple of years after Dave and his mother had married, when Asa had wished for the kind of comfortable, casual-hugging relationship he saw other boys have with their dads. He believed he had enjoyed such a relationship with his true father, but he couldn’t really remember. It was surprising that he couldn’t remember, really: he could remember almost everything in his life. Things about himself and his father, back in the days before he knew such things as divorce were possible had been wiped out, as if some hip skepticism looked on his innocence with scorn and obliterated its traces.

  Despite his hope, however, he and Dave could never quite get the hang of being offhand. It was not possible for one to touch the other, or say even a few words, with true ease. Everything meant something, to both of them. They were watchful, taut. No hugs.

  But now Asa settled in with his back against Dave’s chest, and they sat looking up into the black sky showing through the tree limbs. The sycamore smelled like brown sugar. Dave said, “I don’t know if you know this, but I want you to: I love you.”

  “Oh,” said Asa.

  Dave sighed. “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t believe it either. But it’s true. It’s true in spite of how hard I tried to love you.”

  Asa frowned. “What?”

  Dave shifted a little in the chair, sighed. “Well, see, that was the problem, for a long time. Trying, I mean. See—I knew I had to. I had to love you. It was…necessary. I was marrying your mother, and that meant I was taking you, too. So I just tried like heck. But I’m no good at that, Sport—I hate almost anything I have to try to do. I hate having to do anything.” He waited a moment. “I bet you can understand that part.”

  “Yes,” said Asa.

  “Right. You don’t like having to do something either. We’re alike in that way. We’re alike a lot of ways, really. That’s one reason we don’t get along better.”

  “Maybe so,” said Asa.

  Dave chuckled. “You don’t sound like you believe it.”

  Asa said, “I guess I see some ways’ we get at each other because we are both guys. There’s that. But I guess I don’t ever feel like we’re the same kind of guys.”
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  Dave thought about it for a while. He laughed a watery laugh. “I guess you’re right.” He sighed, and hugged Asa closer.

  Asa sat for a while, being hugged. He could leave it at that. He could sit quietly and in another twenty hours this guy would be out of his life. Certainly a year ago he could have exercised a strategic restraint, he could have skipped the last, few fine points. But something had changed. He said, “You don’t know who I am.”

  Dave said nothing. Asa went on. “You know who you’d like me to be, and I think that’s the kid you love.”

  He felt Dave tense a little, harden up in the chest, and start to speak. But then Dave relaxed again, and said only: “I guess I should say I’m sorry.”

  Asa smiled at the clever phrase. “Are you sorry, then?” he pressed.

  Dave struggled for a moment, then gave in. “No,” he said, forcefully. “No, by God, I’m not.”

  “Ah,” said Asa.

  “Because,” said Dave, warming up, “because maybe who I want you to be is better than who you are. And I’ll tell you one thing for sure—you can bet I only want it to help you, help you be a better person, have a better life.”

  “Even if it’s someone else’s life.”

  Dave laughed, shallow and bitter. “Fine, son. All righty. You go ahead and enjoy your own precious self and your own precious life. Have a ball. To me, though, the prospects don’t look all that hot. I hoped maybe you learned some things. You’re in for some surprises, see; the world isn’t just sitting out there waiting for Asa to be who he is in all his glory, so it can bestow it’s blessing. You have to meet the world halfway.”

  Asa waited a moment, then said, “Halfway doesn’t sound bad.”

  Dave snapped, “What do you mean by that?”

  Asa sighed. He was tired. “Just what I said. Halfway would be fine. You always came more than halfway. You came right up into my face. No room left. But never mind. I’m cold. I’m going in. I’m sorry about you and Mom. I know it’s been hard having me along, stuck into the whole thing. I’m sorry you had to try to love me and it didn’t work.”

  “But I told you,” said Dave with a kind of pleading, as Asa stood up. “I told you: I do love you, Asa. I don’t know why. There’s a lot of reasons I shouldn’t on the face of it”

  Asa laughed. “Thanks a lot.”

  Dave ignored him. “But you’ve got to believe me, son. And I’ll miss you. I know I’m going to miss you. Bad.”

  Asa faced him. In the darkness he could just see the outline of Dave’s head, the pale motion of his mouth. He looked at the man. It was incredible that this indistinct thing had been the source of so many excruciatingly exact requirements in his life. He sighed again, and shivered. Time to go.

  “Well,” he said, “good night.”

  “Good night, Asa.” Dave’s voice was watery again. Almost in a whisper, he added: “I love you.”

  Asa started to go, then hesitated. He looked at the dark outline. Politely, gently, with all the cheery-but-sober charm he could muster, he said, “Then I’d like to say: I love you too.”

  He turned away. But it wasn’t enough. From the chair Dave called for the certainty of clarification: “You do, Asa? Do you?”

  Asa stopped. He heard the pleading. It was almost soft. It was almost openhearted. It was almost, almost halfway.

  One more time, Dave asked: “Then you do, Asa? You love me?”

  Standing still in the dark, Asa said nothing. What was he waiting for? Why not just snap the obvious answer at Dave and leave him in pain? After all, Asa knew the answer, did he not? Well—that was where the hesitation took hold. Asa realized with a shiver that suddenly he was not so certain; it was not so easy after all to say “No.” The question hung in the dark air, Do you love me, too? and for the first time in his life Asa did not want to know an answer. If the heart could betray one’s good sense—if love could take such liberties as to fasten onto stepfathers—then what hope was there for a boy of intelligence and will? What justice? Asa did not want to know. He stood there with his eyes closed, trying to feel absolutely nothing, holding his breath in the hope that enlightenment, for once, would pass him by. Then, quietly, without a word, he began to walk back toward the house.

  FOUR

  The morning at school got away from him. Withdrawing required a lot of little official duties. He looked for Jean before homeroom, but she wasn’t with her usual friends on the grounds. She came into homeroom at the last minute, just before roll call; then Asa was called out, to go down to the office. He wanted to tell her himself, that he was moving away. He wanted to tell her things did not change because of this. He hoped this was actually true, in some wild way he couldn’t imagine. He wanted to say it, anyhow.

  Then, before first period, Jean’s friend Brenda rushed up to him outside the classroom doorway. She looked at him quickly as if he were something between a hero and a ferocious animal, and she pressed a balled-up paper napkin into his hand. “From Jean,” she said. “She means it.”

  Carrying the napkin, he took his seat, and stared over at Jean. She was looking down into her lap, at nothing.

  In the middle of class he was called down to the office again; as he left he zipped a glance at Jean. She wasn’t even watching him. In the hall, he stopped and unwadded the napkin.

  Inside were two small candy hearts, one pale purple, the other white. They were the kind kids gave out at Valentine’s Day, with pink letters printed on them; his heart sank as he remembered such messages as “Squeeze me!” and “Cute Guy!” Maybe she was still a kid. That would make leaving a little easier, perhaps.

  But then he straightened the hearts out on his palm and read them. On each of them, the letters said: I love you. Twice: I love you. I love you. Two. In other words, I love you, too. He read them again. It was a smart bit of wordplay. He believed the smartness, and the hearts. He believed Jean. Okay: she loved him, too. He straightened himself. His feelings balled up and dropped, right through the bottoms of his feet.

  He went to the office and signed whatever he had to sign, then came back to class. He nodded at Mrs. Halterman at the blackboard and made his way to his seat. He did not look at Jean, but he could see that her face was turned toward him. It stayed that way, throughout the class: her head was erect and her face shone at him like a spotlight. He could see it. He could feel it. Her attention pulled at him like a great, calm tide.

  It was clear: she knew now that he had read the hearts. She had hidden from him that morning like a child, until her message was delivered. Now, with her new power, she demanded that he meet her feelings, face to face. It was just the way he had felt when he told her he loved her. It was her turn now.

  With five minutes left in class, he could not resist. He looked over at her.

  She was waiting for him. Her face was clear—no hope or fear or adoration or humor. It was a naked face. It looked as if it had never been bared to the world before. Now it was bared only to him. Her eyes were bright and fixed, and at a glance someone might have said they looked almost fierce, hungry. But they were, not fierce; they were not hungry. They simply looked at what was outside—Asa—and showed what was inside—Jean. Showed, and gave: in her open, naked, brilliant gaze, Jean was giving herself to him, child, girl, and woman.

  He could not look away. He had no idea what his face showed—fear, like hers yesterday? Grief? A giving of his own?—because he had no idea what he was feeling. Things whirled before him, demanding consideration. There was Jean, right here; there was a call of mystery from the life he would start tomorrow, somewhere else, a life in which the spirit of adventure was ready to clear the heart of longings best left behind; there was his mother, spiraling close and familiar, spiraling strange and away.

  He was certain of only one thing: He knew he would always move, inside and out. But Jean’s face, more than anything, was still. It offered itself in silence and stillness: to explore, to accept what was being given, one would have to join the silence, find the stillness, s
top moving. He knew: his moving would never stop. And he knew, somehow; that this showed.

  In case it didn’t, Mrs. Halterman stopped the lesson a minute before the bell and began to speak. He heard his name. Without looking away, he listened; he could see Jean do the same. “We are very sorry,” Mrs. Halterman was saying, “that we are losing Asa. Today is his last day in our school, and we want to wish him luck and tell him that we will miss him.”

  Other faces turned his way, and a ripple of sound passed quickly over the class: disappointment, then curiosity. Asa had to look away from Jean to glance around, smile, nod. The bell rang. With a few more looks at him and a couple of waves, the kids left. That was it. One day he had stood outside their classroom door waiting to get in, and they had let him in. He had been completely in there for these years, hadn’t he? It really was the inside, wasn’t it? But now things had turned inside out again. He was to go. Good-bye, Ace, have a nice life.

  He heard a sound from Jean’s direction and turned. She was up, Brenda was glaring at him, together they were rushing out, Brenda’s arm around the smaller girl’s shoulders, which were down, sunk, moving. Brenda was hating him hard with her eyes; he could barely look past them to Jean, but he got a glimpse of her face, and with a shock he saw there was no sadness there. There was only fury. She shook with it; the tears that caught the overhead light on her cheeks were tears of rage. He rose in his desk, tried to say something, but Brenda had her out the door. He stayed halfway up, awkward, staring after them. The room was empty. Nobody came back. Furious! The heat of it prickled his face like sunburn. Well, what did he expect? Sadness, probably, was for kids.