Dear Hearts (7 page)

ELEVEN

Mitch

The church is up on a hill, and I
keep imagining it rolling down like a stone and pinning me and Aaron where we lay
naked in the unclaimed cemetery.  Not the one owned by St. Bonaventure
with the old outhouse at the side of it where the two rabbits fuck like rabbits
and everybody knows about it by
Spring
. 
But the one with a small cluster of headstones breaking the earth
like teeth.

"I've
always wanted to fuck in a church," Aaron says, his wine soaked lips
pressed to my ear.

"There's
still time."  I smile, I can feel it crawling and quaking through my
lips, but happiness isn't a threat.  Three weeks.  It’s been three
weeks since our first meeting at the Franklin Center, three weeks of avoiding
telling Aaron about AA, three weeks of going to bed hours after Elena and only
hitting the sheets when sleep begins to feel like a small and merciful death. 
Three weeks of knowing therapy bills will be added to our growing heap of
payments because Wren’s pediatrician has recently recommended a child
psychologist who specializes in “frequent elimination.”  Sure, my heart's
a mess, but my mind, my mind is the equivalent of a dog yacking up something it
just can't hold down.  

“I’m
in AA.”  Quiet.  Aaron disconnects his lips from my ear and turns
over onto his belly.  He brought a picnic blanket and it conceals our
bodies here in the small clearing.  I know about this place because it's
one of the stops during the church's annual Haunted Hayride and it's where
Wren, Elena and I stood still in the shadows last Halloween, a family of
vampires waiting for their next feast.

"Elena?"
he asks.  His eyes are on me now.  I'm a lake, and Aaron’s the
straw.  I imagine hovering high beyond the trees and spying our breathing
bodies, the two empty wine glasses at our heads

 “Elena
thought we were, I guess, unraveling.”

 
“At the seams.”

 
“Yes, there, at the seams.
 
Everywhere
really.
  It got to the point we couldn’t even sit outside on the
back porch without yelling at each other.”  I think of her naked feet
which is a stupid, stupid thing to do.  I hate that, when something comes
tearing out of you and blinds your eyes.  I blink hard and look at the
sun.

 “Yelling
about what?”  Aaron perches his head in his hand.  My fingers stroke
his bicep.  Glimpses of golden light filter through the space his arm
makes.  I want us, but I want us in a different time and place. 
There they are again, her toes, her arches... 

 
“The past.
  She thinks I cheated on her with another
woman.”  The woods are silent but they’re also not silent because twigs
crack under the weight of stalking deer.  Live it up, I think.  It’s
not your season. 

 “I
don’t think you’re the type,” Aaron says.

 “What
type am I?” 

 “Gay,”
Aaron says and laughs into my shoulder.  I laugh, too, but the word is a
steel blade between my teeth. 

 “It’s
not the worst thing in the world,” he whispers when met with the look on my
face.  He glances at two lone tombstones on the outer banks of the toothy
circle.  Alistar and Bonita Jenkins are the names of the man and woman
rotting in the ground a few feet from us, our blanket.  “Shit we can
breathe can’t we?  We can walk and talk, and take a shit like every other
man so here’s to fucking us!”  Aaron grabs me and we roll beneath plaid
and light and birds flapping through leaves.

To us.

~

Clothes
on, we're all business.  Aaron folds up the blanket and puts the empty
bottle of wine into the otherwise untouched picnic basket he brought.  I
glance at my cell and figure/pray Jimmy is still out picking up the
material.  St. Bonaventure's roof is leaking, water flooding through worn
holes around the steeple and Jimmy agreed to pick up the flashing grade while I
agreed to walk the roof, prepare the holes and not think about the edge butting
so perfectly close to the sky.  

 
“You first or me?”
Aaron asks.

 “Me. 
Jimmy should be heading back now if he hasn’t already.”

 “Don’t
get in trouble,” Aaron says and kisses me on the lips, but before he does he
takes off his glasses. 

"I
love you."  Aaron says.  I've had dreams before, these dreams
where I'm supposed to dance and there's this instructor who has my mother's
face and a switch in her hands.  She smacks it back and forth and the
thwacking sound is hard to handle so I try to move my feet like she tells me
to.  But I just can't.  And I feel the same way now.

 “I
hope so,” stumbles out of me and my shoulders shrug.  My eyes are boiled
from the sun as I walk through the cemetery, the one with the fucking rabbits,
to the blacktop that leads back to the church.  Aaron is behind me and
stares at me for a minute before getting into his car.  I think he's
waiting to say something.  I hope he says something, but his door shuts.

I've
hurt his heart.

I
eat the gasoline streaked air on my return to the church, to the ladder I made
a big show of propping up as Jimmy was leaving.  “Yup, I’ll just be up
here seeing what I see,” I said before Jimmy sped away, and I headed off in a
dead sprint to meet the man I love. 

And
it is love, on some blatant level.  Because in the night, or morning, when
3 a.m. reaches for me, I sit outside, back against the house with the phone in
my hands and I think about being the kind of man who calls and says, “I wish
everything were different” even though “different” is fear streaming beneath my
skin like veins pumping blood.

I
climb the ladder, and at the top, I skim out beyond the edge of the roof, a
foot loose in the air, but pull it back as Jimmy squeals through the gravel and
slams into a paved parking space next to the church.

 “Hope
you had a better time up there than I just had.  Nothing but a bunch of
goons who can’t tell their asses from their elbows,” Jimmy says, the tailgate
slamming down and buckets of material scrape across the truck’s metal bed.

 “Hardly,"
I say, only recognizing Jimmy as a glimmer of movement and light.  I
didn’t mean to fall in love.  I didn’t mean to do anything and now I do
nothing but feed on that fear.  I think maybe that’s what love is: fear
released and streaming like an open wound.  And up here, back on the roof,
mere seconds from the sky, it hits me: a warm pulse of love.

But
maybe it’s just the wine.

TWELVE

Elena

I’ve been avoiding Ronnie. 
Her little snotty-nosed daughter has been calling Wren out the past two weeks,
taunting her with “Daddy doesn’t love you!” and "Little baby
Wrennie!" because Wren made that vital mistake of trusting a shithead with
her fears.  The other day she comes home and she smells god awful, and I
know it's happened again.  I ask her why nobody called me, and she said
because she went to the bathroom and cleaned up herself.  She didn't want
to be a baby.

I
cried so hard that night that I threw up on my pillow and worried what Mitch
would think.  But he had left again when the crickets had stopped
chirping, and I only felt his body when he got up in the morning for work.

"Poor,
Wren.  I know it's not your thing Elena, but our women's group discusses
this kind of stuff.  I mean, Marjorie Hemphill - okay I know the group is
a trust circle and whatnot, but I know that God forgives me saying this if it
helps you - well, Marjorie recently found out she has an STD and the good Lord
knows that woman isn't the roaming type.  Good Christian, solid soul, that
one.  So she shares this and we all just hug her.  Just start hugging
the poor woman who's sobbing and then everyone starts sobbing, and it's just
this powerful moment of knowing we're not alone, you know?"  I look
at Jesus Loving Pam's wonky eyebrow, the one she penciled in a bit too much so
the question she asks me is permanently planted on her face.

"Mmm-hmm,"
I say and hope it stops there.  What's that word? 
Proselytizing.
 
I heard it on Dr. Phil once and thought, God damn it, that's what Jesus Loving
Pam does.

"Just
think about it.  I know you don't like the Jesus talk.
"
Yes
, Pam.  That's it.  I hate Jesus being a born and
raised Catholic and all
.     

"Will
do," I say.  I snap open the platter of cut veggies and pretend its
Pam's skull.  She invited me over to meet with her group because the power
of prayer can heal anything, even a "wayward womb."  She's
sincere, Pam.  She has short blonde hair that fringes near her ears and
her nostrils are always a light shade of pink during allergy season.  And
she's wearing this green smock dress with buttons down the front that looks
like she's about to take my order, but that doesn't make me want to stab her in
the throat any less.

"Pam. 
Pam, it hurts."  I look up from the sour cream I'm dumping into a
bowl of ranch dressing mix and there's flu infested Jimmy who has his hand on
his pecker.  See, this is why I really feel sorry for Pam.  We both
may be getting played by our husbands, but she's the one who's too stupid to
notice.    

"Here,
let me get the sink going again.  Hot water, Eucalyptus, God's own miracle
cure," Pam says and Jimmy and I watch as she scoots out of the kitchen and
to their bedroom.

Jimmy
tries to not look at me, and I know I make him nervous.  That power is
delicious, sexual kind of I guess.  One time when Mitch was going down on
me, I imagined it was Jimmy and came so hard I bit my tongue.  There's
something about a man who fears your power more than you even do.

He
squirms around for a minute and sticks his finger into the bowl of jello Pam
was about to dress with a heaping spoon of whip cream.  He sucks on it
like a blonde toddler then notices me staring at him.

"Is
he cheating on me?"  I look for Pam who's still humming to herself in
the back bathroom, and I know that Wren and the boys are upstairs.  With
each beat, I feel a rib crack and wouldn't be surprised if my heart plopped
into Pam's tainted jello.

"Who?
 
Now, what?"
Jimmy says, removing the finger.  I
study his face because it's something you can do in children, and really,
Jimmy's just an overgrown version of one, so I look hard to see that first
initial reaction and his face is clear as day.  Mitch may be keen on
cracking my ribs open, but Jimmy has no clue about it.

"All
ready for you, Mister," Pam says and playfully swats Jimmy on the
butt.  He grabs at his junk again but this time he's not whining about
it.  He's still looking at me funny.

"Watch
it there,” Pam says when Jimmy turns to leave and hits the door frame.

She
laughs a little, sticks a wooden spoon in the jello and says, "You know,
for all our problems Elena, it's nice to know we landed two good Christian men
to stand by us."

And
I nod because Pam is planted square in front of the knife drawer.

~

"Oh
it's a terrible thing.  Burns really, I mean when I, you know,
peepee."  I can't really look at Marjorie, the one with the chlamydia
because she has a tiny speck of ranch dip at her lip that no one's talking
about.  Which is weird really, because we're discussing burning urine and
have already tackled what a "g-spot" is.  I have to give it up
to Pam.  This Jesus thing ain't half bad.

"Okay, so Lynette, your turn."
  Pam bites
her lip when she says it, so I look to Lynette, shoulder length hair and a
stretch of brown bangs that hang too close to her eyes.  She's wearing a
turtleneck that's the same shade as her hair, and I'd imagine she's burning up
in that ugly thing except for the fact that her wrist bones pop through her
skin.  And she's shaking.

"Oh,
I don't know," Lynette says.  She takes a sip from her water glass
that's etched with marching
ducks,
the one that Pam
swears is a collector's item.  I can hear glass hit teeth.

"It's
okay.  We're all here for you."  I look around the small circle,
at Jesus loving Pam and her Jesus loving friends.  And I have a sharp stab
of guilt, that born and bred Catholic feeling that I can never shake loose from
my bones.  They have each other at least.

"It's
in me. 
Inside me?
  That's a weird way to
explain it."

"No,
it's not.  You're doing great," Pam says.  She's hunched over
and the material of her smock buckles and her right breast is there in its
blinding white bra and I almost want to laugh because the air is so
tight.  Lynette starts to cry.

"It's
inside of me, his eyes, I can see them. 
And his fear.
 
Oh God, Jesus, if I could have swallowed it for him, if I could have swallowed
it-" her body is its own earthquake, her limbs loose and she hunches over
in the recliner.  Her shoulder blades look dangerous stretched against her
turtleneck.

Pam
goes to hug Lynette and Lynette starts breathing again, a short breath, then
two long ones with her eyes closed.  She opens them again, and I'm close
enough to see the color. 
A light shade of violet.

"His friend.
  Um, they
were friends, you know.  And maybe there was more there, I don't
know.  But that doesn't mean he had to suffer." 
Another gasp, a hard rub at her nose.
  Her face is
inflamed, swollen with pain, and I'm so close I could touch her.

"I
know it's wrong.  Being gay, I know, in my mind. 
My
heart even.
  But how could I let something like that push me away
from him?  He was my son.  And then those bastards, oh God forgive
me.  Those kids, they think
it's
okay to take him
from me?  To beat him, oh, no, no, no..."  She whispers it and
my face is warm.  I place my fingertips to my cheek and stroke away
tears.  She's hunched completely now, and Pam is rocking her softly back
and forth.  One of the women whimpers.  Another blows her nose.

"I
loved him," is muffled by Pam's shoulder, but we all hear it. 
"And I always will." 

There's
quiet until Pam suggests a prayer.  She's sitting on the recliner's arm
rest, Lynette's broken body attached to her side and we all join hands to say
the Our Father.  I say the words and they link us, chain us to each
other's pain.  I think of Wren, her small face.  How big she'll be
one day and how that bigness will in no way protect her from this world.

After
the prayer and the quiet reemerges, Pam asks if I'll help her refresh
everyone's drinks.

"Sure,"
I say and take glasses from the other six women who are shelled versions of
their previous selves.

"What's
going on?" she asks and she's frantic about it.  I think she's
referring to Lynette but then she starts dumping red solo cups into the sink
with such force that two ice cubes pop out onto the counter.

"What
do you mean?"  I drop the ice down the garbage disposal, and that's
when I see she's clamped her fist around the cross at her neck.

"Jimmy
told me when I brought his soup to him earlier.  That you think
Mitch..." she trails off and her face is pained like she's the one with a
wounded child, a wounded gut,
a
secret job.  Like
she's the one who loves a man who's kissed her scars and who has now taken to
making them.

I
look around and I know I'm going to see the pig even though I hate that god
awful thing.  But there it is, dressed in its chef's get up, waving around
a whisk in one hand, spatula in the other.  Its mouth is so wide it gives
off a frenzied kind of happiness that could only be managed if you were ceramic
yard sale swine and nothing else was real.  But everything is real and
right now I'm too sober to deal with it.  Lynette has shattered me.

"I
have to go," I tell Pam.  She wants to ask more, prod with her fingers
and shake Jesus into my wounds, but now my own hands are shaking, and I hate
that this happens sometimes because it's like they're
saying
,
"Look at you, you fucked up mess.  Go get the whiskey. 
Go make this worse."

She
hugs and rubs her raw nose into my cheek until it's wet.  Pam calls for
Wren and she comes downstairs, her face shocked from her rough and tumble
cousins who were caught once trying to feed a lit firecracker to their next
door neighbor's cat.

"Ready?" 
Wren shakes her head “yes,” and I grab my purse that's hanging on the
banister.  "Tell them...something," I say to the group who’s
still nursing on quiet prayers.

"I
will," she says.  As we head out, I grab Wren's hand.  Feel her
pulse in my palm.