Through the Heart Read online

  “Of course you’re going to get up. I need you to look after the twins for me while I go run some errands.”

  “Not today,” and I rolled over and turned my back to her.

  “Come on, I’m serious,” she said, poking me in the shoulder.

  “I’m serious too.”

  There was a little pause. I wondered if that might do it. But she was just taking a little breather before the real attack.

  “I drove all the way down here, and now you’re not even going to help me?”

  “If you wanted help, you should have called me and asked.”

  “What, because you’ve got so many other better things to do? I have to book you ahead of time now? Now you’ve got a boyfriend, or whatever, and your family means nothing?”

  My sister hadn’t been down in the last month since Timothy came back. So my mother must have told her what little I had said. And at that moment, Deirdre sounded exactly like our mother. Usually guilt worked like a charm with me, but it was as if some magic cloak had descended upon me, and I felt no guilt whatsoever.

  “All I know is that I’m not getting out of bed, and I’m not watching the twins today, and if you want me to watch them for you in the future, you’re going to have to call and ask me.”

  “I don’t think I like what having a boyfriend is doing to you,” my sister said.

  “That’s funny. I was just thinking I like what it’s done very much.”

  “Okay, come on now. Get up and come take care of the twins.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Nora, I’m warning you.”

  I wondered what she was warning me about?

  “I can’t believe this. You’re seriously not going to help me out here?” she demanded.

  “That’s right. I’m seriously not going to help you out here,” I said, my eyes still closed. I felt so peaceful. I was waiting to see if anything she said changed my mind and made me want to get up. So far, not even close.

  “I think you must be the most selfish person I know.”

  Nope, I thought. Colder. Waaay colder.

  “You do all this stuff for Mom, and you won’t do this one little thing for me?” she tried again.

  “I’m rethinking the stuff for Mom,” I said.

  “What is that supposed to mean? Don’t tell me you’re thinking of doing something stupid.”

  “Depends on your definition of ‘stupid.’ ”

  “As long as you don’t leave her. Mom depends on you for everything.”

  I had to open my eyes and look to make sure it was still my sister standing there. It was the exact opposite of what she had been saying for years. And I decided to point that out to her.

  “That’s a bit different from what you’ve been saying for three years. You’ve said the whole time that I don’t need to be here and I’m just playing the martyr.”

  “Well, I’ve changed my mind. I think you were right.”

  “And I’ve changed mine, and now I think you were right.”

  “You can’t leave. Do you hear me, Nora? Fine, don’t help me with the twins, but you have to stay here with Mom.”

  “I’m not going to do anything right now except go back to sleep. So unless you want to stand there and watch me sleep . . .” And I closed my eyes again.

  I guess she didn’t, because she left. And I did go back to sleep, minutes after she left the room. I slept most of the day. I got up to use the bathroom, drink some water, and then I just went back to sleep. I slept right through the night, without a single dream.

  Nora

  Monday Morning

  You’d think after all that sleep, I would have woken up easily, but I was deep in sleep when the alarm went off, and I was still groggy when I got into work. I felt like I could have slept another week. I had just made myself a cup of coffee, and I was taking the chairs down off the tables, when Neil came in. I hadn’t seen him since the last time I’d seen Timothy—would probably ever see Timothy, I realized.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “What happened to the ‘good’ part?” Neil asked.

  “Just trying to be honest.”

  He looked more closely at me. “You look terrible.”

  “Gee, thanks, Neil.”

  “No, what I mean is you look tired.”

  “I am tired,” I said. And that was the truth. I wasn’t just tired; I was exhausted. I had slept for thirty-six hours, but I felt like I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for weeks.

  “Why don’t you leave the chairs for a second and sit down?” he suggested.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine. And we need to finish setting up to open.” I pulled down another chair and centered it under the table just the way Neil liked. I was amazed he had done so well with letting people come in and actually use the chairs, and not having to push them back into perfect alignment. At first whenever someone left the store, he had gone over to the table and pushed in the chair and aligned it—and he’d taught me to do the same—until Timothy pointed out that it might make customers a little uncomfortable and less likely to come in and stay next time. And, miracle of miracles, Neil listened to him.

  Now Neil pulled out the chair I had just perfectly centered and pointed for me to sit down.

  I sat.

  He took the other chair off the table, and he sat down next to me.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” he said.

  “Timothy’s gone.”

  “Timothy’s not gone.”

  “Yes, he is,” I insisted. “He’s gone. I went by the motel on Saturday, and he’s checked out. He didn’t even say good-bye.”

  “Did you ever think that maybe he didn’t say good-bye because he was coming back?”

  “No. He’s gone,” I repeated.

  “You’re really optimistic today,” Neil observed ironically.

  “I’m just being realistic. I didn’t tell him the whole truth, he got upset, and he left. I would have thought he’d at least say good-bye, but maybe I deserved it. I don’t know.”

  “And maybe he’s not gone,” Neil said again.

  “Why do you keep saying that? I told you he checked out.”

  I couldn’t keep the edge from my voice, but it only seemed to amuse Neil. He said, “Well, I guess I’m saying that because I can see him parking the car out front, that’s why.”

  I jerked around and looked through the window, and Neil was right. Timothy had just pulled into a space in front.

  I turned back to Neil. “You knew,” I accused him.

  “Not only did I know, I told him to take off for a few days to give you a chance to think about things and see what life might be like without him.”

  I felt breathless and shaky and angry and relieved all at the same time. “Neil!” I said, but I didn’t get a chance to yell at him because Timothy pushed the door open and came into the store at that moment.

  Timothy looked—different. It took me a minute to figure it out; he looked happy. Really happy. His face was open and he was smiling in a way I don’t think I’d ever seen him smile before.

  I stood up and he came over and kissed me as if it hadn’t been days since he’d seen me. Then he sat down at the table as well, and I saw him look at Neil, and his smile got bigger. I looked over at Neil, and Neil was grinning back at Timothy.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  “Sit down for a second; there’s something we want to show you,” Neil said.

  “What?”

  “Sit down and we’ll show you,” Neil repeated.

  I looked suspiciously over at Timothy. He was sitting there, still grinning.

  I sat down.

  “Okay, now tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Timothy bent down and pulled a manila folder out of his bag. He put it on the table and pushed it across to me.

  I looked at it, and suddenly I felt very strange.

  “Open it,” Neil instructed me.

  Timothy didn’t say a word. I realized he hadn’t said a wor
d since he’d come into the café.

  I opened it. There was a legal-looking document inside. I saw it was from the bank where my mother had worked and where we had our accounts and our mortgage. I looked a little more closely. As far as I could tell, it was saying that the mortgage was paid off.

  “What is this? I don’t—”

  “Just keep going,” Neil said.

  I turned over that page. The next one was more familiar. It was a record of my loan, the interest accumulated, how much I had due—but at the bottom of the page, for amount due, that read zero as well.

  I had almost a sick feeling. I know that sounds strange. But when things that have been weighing you down for so long suddenly vanish, it gives you a strange feeling of being weightless in a way that’s completely disorienting. I’ve heard that the astronauts usually throw up before they get used to no gravity. I think I know what they feel.

  I turned the page. It was my student loan.

  The next page, my credit card, which I had gotten through the bank.

  The next page. It was my bank account. The week before I’d had two hundred dollars in it. Now there were fifty thousand.

  “It was Neil’s idea,” Timothy said, speaking for the first time.

  “Not exactly,” Neil said modestly. “Timothy asked me if I could think of any way he could help you, and I just suggested that maybe if some of the financial pressure was off you—”

  Timothy picked up the thread, “And I thought it was a great idea, but I didn’t see a way to do it without asking you first, and I knew you’d say no—”

  And then Neil took on the next part, “But since we set up the direct payment into your account, and you approved me for that, I said I thought I could help. We had to talk to the bank manager as well, and he took some convincing, but he eventually saw things our way.”

  “So that’s where we were last week,” Timothy finished.

  They were so pleased with themselves, but, looking at them, all I could feel was a rising anger that I couldn’t fight off. All the time I’d been worried sick, they’d been running around concocting schemes of how to fix my life—without even asking me.

  “What on earth were you thinking?” I demanded.

  The tone of my voice instantly wiped the smiles off their faces.

  Timothy looked down at the table and didn’t answer. It was Neil who replied. “We were thinking that with this you could go to New York and not have to worry so much about your mother. We were thinking she’d be taken care of, and that with your bills paid, you could hire someone to drive her on the weekend, and you could come back and see her as much as you wanted without having to ask for money. You know, we kind of thought we were solving all your problems. Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to say thank you.”

  Listening to him just made me angrier. “That’s good, because you’d have to wait a long time. Why didn’t you ask me about this before you did it? Because you knew I’d say no, right? But you did it anyway. And what exactly does this solve? Will you tell me that? You think you can throw some money at me, and I’ll just say that’s great—now I can leave my dying mother and run off to New York?”

  I couldn’t hold it back, but even as I said it, I could see the damage I was doing on Timothy’s face. The open, excited grin was gone, and now it was like my every word was a blow. He managed to look up at me, but I could see the effort it cost him.

  “Nora, I’m sorry,” he said simply. “I thought I might be able to help. It wasn’t just about you coming to New York. I thought it might make things a little easier. I didn’t mean . . .” He trailed off. “I messed up. I’m sorry.”

  And then he smiled, but it was such a different smile from the one he’d come in with that it just about broke my heart.

  Then he went on. “I booked a flight back to New York this afternoon. I’ve got to head to the airport now. But if you change your mind, and you decide you might want to come to New York, well . . . you know how to reach me.”

  He waited for a minute, but I felt like I was frozen. I wanted to say something, but I swear I couldn’t have gotten a word out if my life depended on it.

  He smiled that awful, sad smile again and stood up. He held out his hand to Neil. Neil stood and shook it. Then he picked up his bag and turned around and walked out.

  As the door closed, I felt a little gust of cold air against my face.

  I didn’t want to even look at Neil. I knew what was coming, and I knew I deserved it.

  When I finally got up the courage to look over, Neil was frowning at me. But what he said was not what I was expecting.

  He said, “You are so selfish.”

  “Selfish?” I echoed.

  “Yes, selfish,” he retorted.

  “I thought you were always going on about how I did too much,” I defended myself.

  It hadn’t touched me when my sister called me selfish, but for some reason when Neil said it, it stung. When he spoke again, I knew why. It’s because when my sister said it, it wasn’t true. But when Neil said it, it was.

  “You of all people should know how good it feels to give to others. And if you keep that all to yourself, and don’t let the people who care about you give to you, then, yes, I call that selfish. Timothy just wanted to help you. This was the only way he could think of doing it. The money was nothing to him. It’s a drop in the bucket. And you should have seen how much fun he had doing it. He was like a different person. And he was so excited to see your face when he showed you . . .”

  “You can’t put this all on me. That’s not fair,” I protested.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Neil, I can’t take money from him. Especially not this kind of money. Tell me, how do I give it back?”

  I didn’t realize Neil had mischief in him, but there was no mistaking it when he looked at me, smiled, and said, “I really don’t know. I guess if you really feel like you have to give it back, you’ll have to go hunt him down in New York and try to figure that out.”

  Nora

  Timothy Leaves the Second Time

  It was not a good week after Timothy left for the second time. I knew there would be no walking back in again. This time it was up to me.

  I tried to talk to Neil about whether I should go to New York, but he was too smart for me. I think he knew I wanted him to convince me that it would be okay for me to go—and he also knew an impossible task when he saw one. So whenever I tried to bring it up, he’d say, “Nora, you know what I think, but it’s your decision. I don’t want to fight with you about it.”

  That left me to decide. Before, when I’d been asking myself if I could possibly go, the money question was always the deciding factor; it just wasn’t logistically possible. Now, all of a sudden, that obstacle had been removed. I knew I couldn’t give the money back. Even if I did all the complicated steps I would need to recoup it, and I was able to convince Timothy to take it back, I knew it would be like a slap in the face for him. It would be like throwing a gift back in his face. I’d hurt him enough already. It was just my pride that didn’t want to accept it, and after I’d calmed down a bit, I could see that, though it was still a bitter pill to swallow. If someone had told me before that all my money problems were going to be solved, I would have thought I would be so relieved. But it didn’t feel like that.

  Because even though the money problem was solved, I was left with the much tougher question of what was the right thing to do. And I had no idea how to answer that question.

  It turned out that it was answered for me that weekend when my mother and I made the weekly drive down to the hospital.

  My mother and I always left the house by around seven, but every week the sun was lower in the sky when we left. That Saturday, as I opened the door, the first rays streaming over the horizon flooded the doorway with light. I paused a moment on the stoop. In the distance the wheat fields stretched as far as the eye could see. There were no clouds, just the huge expanse of sky, so pale it didn’t even have a color, an
d the tiniest sliver of light, shooting out rays so bright I couldn’t look straight at it. The sun lit up the harvested stubble. On most days a wind blew across the open fields, but this morning it was completely still and breathtakingly quiet—in the way you only find very early when everyone else is sound asleep, and you feel like you’re the only person alive.

  The door opened behind me, and my mother came out and stood beside me for a moment in silence. Then she said, “ ‘I stood upon the hills, when heaven’s wide arch was glorious with the sun’s returning march.’ ”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Longfellow. It was the poem I memorized for my elementary school graduation. And I still remember every word. Isn’t that strange?” Then she went on, as if to prove it: “ ‘If thou art worn and hard beset with sorrows that thou wouldst forget, if thou wouldst read a lesson that will keep thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep, go to the woods and hills! No tears . . .’ ”

  Then she added, with barely a pause, “I guess we’re out of luck. No woods or hills here. So are we ready?”

  My mother was just being literal. She meant that there were no woods or hills in this part of Kansas. I didn’t think she had ever said a truer thing in her whole life. If I wanted to keep my heart from fainting and my soul from sleep, I would have to go somewhere else.

  I went down the steps and cut across the lawn to the driveway. The grass was coated with a sparkling layer of white and crunched as I stepped on it. It was one of my favorite sensations: the delicate resistance under my feet.

  “Why don’t you ever use the walkway?” my mother called over from where she was picking her way along the flagstone path. “You’re going to wear away the lawn right down into the dirt.”

  I silently crossed over to the path.

  I remembered that when my mother first got sick, three years ago, and I put my life on hold to move home to take care of her, I had made a vow that I would stop arguing with her. I should have known I was in trouble when I told Tammy about my plan, and she just about bust a gut laughing. “Do you think you’re suddenly going to turn into Jesus or something?” she said. “Because that’s the only person I can think of who might be able to keep from arguing with your mother. And honestly, put your mother and Jesus in a room together, and I think even he would break eventually. She’s like frigging water torture.”