Dear Hearts (6 page)

     
And Ms. Snarly Nose keeps staring the same way and I start sweating because
Hattie makes us wear pants to work even though it's hotter than a billy goat's
ass in a pepper patch.  And I don't know why I think of that saying, of my
mother's face wiping sweat off her doughy forehead on our old front
porch.  In my head she's dressed for church, that ridiculous hat with the
fake petunia stuffed under the ribbon.  There's pain in my palms because
I'm digging my nails into them, two fists now, and when I look at Ms. Snarly
Nose's "I feel sorry for you" face, I step forward to end my misery,
but a car pulls up to the curb.

    
"Hey there!" comes a voice from the driver's seat.  It's a man
with dark hair and he waves at Ms. Snarly Nose, one of those puny waves you
give a child.  And in the back through the window I see a baby.

"Hey,
sweetie," Ms. Snarly Nose says, her eyes still on me.  But her trance
is broken when the baby's wail sounds through the passenger side window and she
begins to say, "
It's
okay, Teddy.  Mommy's
here." 
Mommy.

She
gets in the car and they drive away and I watch the shadowy back of her head,
her arms orchestrating the conversation she must be having about "the
drunk
crazy lady."

I stumble-walk to my car that's parked
over near the food court.
  I melt in my pants, in my stupid
pea green ballet flats, another glorious Wal-Mart purchase and hope to God I
get hit by a car before I form a puddle on the side walk.

I
find the GrandAm and drive to St. Bonaventure, windows down, slamming my head
to Metallica.  I hate Metallica, but I hate the quiet even more.  I
hate the soul crushing smell of old French fries.  I hate my mother. 
That stupid hat.

I
play sober driver to the best of my ability and only skim the walkway a tiny
bit with my front tire in the pickup line, but by the way the kid in the Buzz
Light Year backpack reacts, you'd think I was trying to gun down him and his
whole family.

I
put the car in park, music now shut down to a soft hiss and I try staring at
the sun until Wren pummels the car door with her hand, trying to wrench it
open.

"Mommy!"
she says when she gets into our oil fried car.

Mommy,
I think and try not to cry.

NINE

Mitch

She finds one that meets Wednesday
nights which means a stony silent truck drive into Little Rock.  We can’t
join White Smoke’s AA because Elena’s convinced the town already knows the
color of our underwear, and truth be told, I really can’t argue with that
logic.

“She’ll
be okay, right?” she asks and the quiet
crumbles,
her
voice chipping inside the cave of my ear.  I eat the blast of cold coming
through the A/C because she’s always too hot.

“She’ll
be just fine.”  Pam and Jimmy are watching Wren while Elena and I are at
“the Spaghetti Factory.”  They’ve been given the comprehensive guide on
evening urine clean up which will most likely be Pam’s jurisdiction considering
Jimmy doesn’t “deal with piss.”

But
Wren likes Uncle Jimmy, smiles at him a lot because he acts like he was dropped
on his head one too many times as a baby.  I caught myself studying him
earlier when Jimmy came into the house smelling of Dial soap and something
stronger.  I watched him take a coin from his pocket and place the dirty piece
of metal behind Wren’s ear, and she
laughed,
a happy
little clam.  How easy it looked.

When
we pull up to the Franklin Center, I cut the engine and take a look at the
other cars owned by the miserable lot inside - the jokers I'm supposed to open
my heart to.  There’s an El Camino parked in front of us with a Jesus fish
that’s grown feet stickered to the bumper.  I imagine its sloped little
head turning at me, saying, “Mitchie, you can’t do this.”

“You
can,” Elena says, doing that mind reading thing again.  We've dressed up
in our “church clothes,” but this time Elena doesn’t say a word about my
missing jacket, and I'm glad because I have a feeling we’re already
overdressed. 

Healing
Haven - the place where the group meets - is in the Franklin Center strip
mall.  The “H” in “Haven” is going bad, blinking fresh light against
Elena’s worry lines, and I get out of the car just so I don’t have to stare at
them anymore.      

Taking
her hand, our shoes travel over dead cigarettes and dried up gum.  There’s
a restaurant a few window fronts down, an Italian restaurant, and people are
outside stinging the night with their chuckling. 
Assholes
, I think
for no good reason as I pull open Healing Haven’s glass door.  A bell
rings over our heads.

“New
member gets their wings!” a woman with rose colored clown cheeks calls at us
and lifts a
styrofoam
cup in the air.  Elena and
I move in, guilt at our backs pushing us forward, and coming closer, I can see
a name tag, “Peg.”  I can also see this woman’s face is not normal because
her lipstick, her eyeshadow is permanently tattooed onto her face.  We saw
a special awhile back on 20/20 about make up tattooing and drunkenly mused over
the amount of clown whores this new fad is encouraging.  It's odd meeting
one in the flesh.  It's also odd thinking how I’ll never drunkenly do
anything again. 

“Names,
names, names,” the woman says, blinking in rhythm with her words.  For a
moment Elena blinks back, probably trying
digest
this
woman’s face.

“Elena
Reynolds, my husband, Mitch.”  Elena extends her hand but Peg is busy with
a
styrofoam
cup and a ridiculously big chocolate chip
cookie so she curtsies and bobs her head.  She smells like food.

“Sorry
about that.  Blame it on Georgie and his delicious cookies,” Peg chirps,
the last line so intolerably high pitched, I'm sure even a deaf dog could hear
it.  A man in a fishing hat with a full on Jerry Garcia beard tickles his
fingers at us.  “Elena, Mitch, welcome to the circus!” Peg says.

“I
prefer ‘jungle,’” Georgie muses handing Elena and me our own cookie, these two
with the letter “N” marked on the tops in blue icing.  “For ‘newbie,’”
Georgie says.  “My theory is that anyone who takes a bite of my famous
homemade Death by Choco-chips will ditch the newbie status and come on back
next week.”  I take a bite of it and try to smile even though I'm pretty
sure it’s store bought.

“Mmm,
so good,” Elena says, and I can tell she thinks it tastes like chalk.

We’re
ushered to the front row, “Reserved for newbies,” Peg’s tattooed mouth whispers
behind her cookie-crumbed hand, and the only other people sitting in this row
are a young guy and girl with rings in their noses and their lips attached to
each other.

“No
PDA,” Peg barks and the couple breaks apart which is fortunate, then spots us
at their periphery, which is not so fortunate. 

“I’m
Rommy,” the male one says.  He gives me his hand and it’s punctured
swollen with holes in the wrists.  The fingernails are dirty.

“Jessamine,”
the girl says.  She’s young, straddling somewhere between teen and young
adult.  She’s blonde, white, but Rommy isn’t.  I can feel Georgie and
his tray of cookies giving Rommy the evil eye from over near the snack table.

“Mitch,”
I say.  “So what made you guys come here today?”  Elena looks at me
and her face muffles her surprise.  I'm point proving talking to these
burn outs, I know that, but I'm sure as hell not going to be lumped in with
people who think face tattooing and store bought cookies are good ideas.

Rommy
laughs, “The cookies.”

“Starving,
man,” Jessamine says, and I look at the plate in her lap stacked high with the
letter, “N.”

“We
hit the big ones, but this is our first time at this place.  I just say
shit like my father beat me as a child and they shake their heads and then
afterwards we fill our plates back up.”

I
have to admit it’s not a bad idea, but I don’t say it out loud because Elena’s
here and this is our ticket to normalcy. 
Hopefully.

She's
been acting strange lately, and at first I started to panic that she found out
about me and Aaron, but it's more of a good kind of strange.  She won't
sit out on the patio with me anymore.  And she made these packets for
Wren, thickly stapled sheets she printed off the Internet that list activities
to do with a seven-year-old.  She's changing, and it's a good change, but
it also feels like watching your boat drift away while you're still standing on
the shore.

“They
like knowing you’re as fucked up as they are,” Rommy says and steals one of
Jessamine’s cookies, crams it into his open mouth.

I
consider this information.  There’s a podium in front of us, and I imagine
myself standing there, talking at a room full of fuck ups about having an
affair with a man and raising a daughter with a disgruntled bladder. 
About loving people to the point of it seeming like I love nobody at all. 
I imagine talking about the wooden spoon, my mother's fear.  I imagine I’d
get a standing ovation, maybe even a crown.  Mitch Reynolds, King of the
Fuck Ups.

“Don’t
listen to them,” Elena says.  Her breath is silk on my neck.  I
glance over at the drugged up duo next to us, Rommy’s hand sneaking around
Jessamine's thigh.  I mirror the movement, grab for Elena to see how that
feels but her eyes dart around and her mouth whispers “Stop.”  And I know
the inside of me feels nothing at all the way Rommy does. 

Others
come and the air is noisy.  Metal chairs scraping against floors, sneakers
squeaking against the linoleum.  There are eyes on us, a silent game of
“Who’s a Newbie?” and I try to keep the agitation from quaking my nerves. 
Elena is sitting as close to the edge of her chair as she can.

Finally,
Peg and her tattooed face stands up on the mini-stage, her permanently mulberry
lips leading the meeting with a fervor rivaling the one she has for Georgie’s cookies.

When
it’s time to introduce myself I say, “Hi, I’m Mitch, and I’m an
alcoholic.” 

My
liar’s heart begins to beat because I'm so much more.

TEN

Elena

I had a dream last night that a tattooed
clown was chasing me through a courthouse where I was supposed to show up for
jury duty.  I think it had something to do with that dreadful woman's
face, Peg I think, who decided a needle was a better idea than replacing a tube
of lipstick.

It’s
been over a week, and I still want to shower it all off.  Those two bridge
dwelling individuals who stole nearly all the cookies, that man in the fishing
hat with the name of a four-year-old boy, and my husband, Mr. Popular, owning
the place with his crybaby face.  God, I sound like a bitch but really,
here the man is sharing his soul with a room full of strangers, and they eat up
that shit like that greasy street urchin in the chair next to us said they
would.  But of course, Mitch leaves out the most important part: he’s
cheating on me.  He’s breaking our family.

When
we came home he wanted to make love.  He called it that, too. 
Love
.
  I refused and stayed up, eyes open all
night, staring at the fan that adjusted into a twirling shadow in the
dark.  And he got up around one, didn’t even bother to check to see if I
was asleep and left the house for an hour.  I didn’t hear the car, so I
think he hoofed it.  Next time I’m going to follow him.

“Stand
still for crying out loud,” Ronnie says and shoves a polka dotted jumper
against Trudy while the kid has another lucky finger jammed up her nose. 
There’s something that’s pleasing to think about: money can’t force your kid
into cuteness.

We’re
in Dillard’s and my stomach’s a little funky about it. 
Doesn’t
help that I took the liberty to pour myself a secret double serving of Schnapps
before we left for the mall.
  They talked a lot about personal
responsibility in that meeting, how the alcohol skews your understanding of
right and wrong.  But I can’t do the mall sober because I never do the
mall sober, and you just can’t reason with habit.

Trudy
is cut free from her mother’s badgering and she and Wren take turns sitting
Indian style in front of a mirrored pillar in the children’s section, making
funny faces.  Wren copies whatever face Trudy makes which starts to itch
at the back of my neck.

“Make
your own face,” I say, but “face” comes out as “space,” and I’ve scratched the
back of my neck so hard, I’m afraid it's going to bleed.

“What?”
Ronnie asks, but she doesn’t wait for my answer because she’s holding up the
blue and white polka dotted jumper with the red and white one.

“I
like both,” I lie and Ronnie says, “Me, too,” so she drapes both over her
bangled arm.  Her dress isn’t nearly as ugly today and her feet are shoved
into a pair of slingback flats so at least I don’t have to look at them. 
She drove us all in the new Beamer because Luke was working from his home
office.  I sniff at my wrist to see if I can pick up the hint of new car
smell.

“Are
you okay?” she asks.  It’s the type of thing usually tipsy people ask when
they’re sober, as if their on-a-whim sobriety makes them better than you. 
She didn’t make herself a “special” drink this morning but left the stuff out
for me.  And that irked me, the fact that she thinks I need to drink even
if she doesn’t.

“Just
fine, sweet cheeks,” I say and muffle a burp behind my hand.

“Uh,
okay.  Listen, I need to tell you something.”  We move away from the
girls who are playing one of those handclapping games and Trudy keeps jerking
Wren’s hands in the right position because she’s supposedly doing it
wrong.  I’ve never wanted to deck a kid harder in my life.

I
look at Ronnie and her face is drowning in smile.  She takes my hands in
hers and bounces them a little and the bangles attack my arms like a steel
drum.

 “Okay,”
she says and sighs.  “I’m pregnant!”  She squeals, a fucking pot
belly pig.  Trudy snaps her head around and behind her bug eyed lenses are
a watery set of eyes.

 “No,”
she says, quietly like a tiny serial killer.  Then “No
,no,no,no,no
!”
until it punctures like my nails against my neck.  She gets up and lunges
at her mother's stomach, and Ronnie tackles her into a half-hug.  The
jumpers fall to the ground and Wren runs to me, grabs my hand.  I squeeze
it a little.

 “Great
news,” I say, but my voice is somewhere lingering near the flowery headband
display.  I blink in time with Trudy’s clawing, Ronnie’s frustrated
gasps. 
Bloodied toilet.
 
Blink-blink.
 
Wounded gut.
 
Blink-blink.
 
Cheating husband.
 
Blink-blink.
   

I’m
walking backwards, gently tugging Wren along.  “We’ll see you soon!” I
say, like we’ve agreed to meet up for tea and biscuits at a later time.

 “But
I drove you here!” Ronnie says, and I keep fluttering my fingers at her and
turn with Wren toward the open cavity of the mall.

 “What
happened?” Wren whispers.  She looks up, dwarfed in her Minnie Mouse
t-shirt my mother sent her that’s two sizes too big.

 
“Nothing.
  She’s just a crazy lady,” I say, catching my
reflection in a mirror on the Clinique counter.

~

We’re
stranded so I buy us lunch in the food court.  I call Mitch on his cell,
but he doesn’t answer, and I do that thing where I picture his mistress, the
color of her hair. 
Horrible word, mistress.
 
Let’s go with “skanky assed homewrecker.” 
Much better.

Wren
is sulking in her chair and won’t touch the sub I bought her. 
Can’t blame her.
  The gyro I ordered is a slaughtered
mess on a bun.

“Are
you going to divorce, Daddy?” she asks, and I feel like I’ve swigged down
another shot.  My head is light, and my stomach is in full on queasy mode.

“Why. 
Why would you ask
that.
” 
Declarative,
right?
 
A sentence with no question mark.
 
I bore my eyes into her Mickey with his ridiculously white hands and concentrate
the vomit back down.

“Because
the yelling.” 
The yelling?
  Oh.  At
night, outside, she can hear that. 
Funny how whiskey
blurs those edges down into a dream-like state where no one but you exists.

“I’m
sorry,” I say.  The vomit’s settled but the tears have stirred, and I
smother them all in my tzatziki covered napkin.  I kept calling that sauce
“mayonnaise” at the Little Rock Greek festival and you would have thought I was
threatening to gut Mitch’s entire family alive. 
‘Tzatziki
for godsakes, Elena.
  It’s called tzatziki.”

I
wait for Wren’s “
It’s
okay,” but it never comes. 
My phone buzzes near my Dr. Pepper, and I answer it without looking at who it
is.

“We
need help,” I say.

"What
happened?"  His words are soft, but then I think of his mouth. 
Where it's been.

"We
just need you to pick us up, okay? 
The White Smoke
Mall.
  I strain my ears through the phone and it sounds like he's
at a restaurant.  The call came in this morning. They got the St.
Bonaventure job, sixteen grand,
the
largest job we've
gotten in the past two years.  They're supposed to be at a meeting with
Father John, so I ask him about it, measure his response.

"It's
going well.  Just hashing out the details," he says.

"I
bet."

"Are
you okay?  What's wrong with the
car-
"

"Ronnie
drove us.  She's pregnant," I say.  His "Oh, Elena,"
tastes like love even if it's a tiny crumb in my mouth.  But I savor
it.  We've been weaving something since childhood, this understanding of
each other's pain, and sometimes that's what I think I'm going to miss the
most.  There’s no one on this planet, in this universe, more willing to
kiss my scabbed up soul.  

"I'm
coming.  I'm leaving now," he says.

"Sorry. 
I didn't mean to screw up your meeting."  He doesn't say anything for
a second and then I know.  "Can I talk to Jimmy for a second?" I
say to make sure.

"Oh,
uh, he's in the bathroom.  I'm leaving now."  I finger my soul,
pick a scab.  "I love you," he says and hangs up before I can.

~

The
seats in the truck are stained with dried caulking that has broken apart so it
roughs up my skin when I twist in my seat.

"You all right?"
Mitch asks, and
I nod.  I glance behind me and Wren is wiped out.  Seeing her friend
melt down like a psychopath must have taken it out of her.  There's no
booster seat in the truck so she's slumped over in a position that's almost
painful.   I touch her knee, watch her nostrils slightly flare. 
Kids need booster seats, and it's like a check mark in my mind.  I'm
failing. 
Again.

"So, sibling rivalry already?"
Mitch says, and
I nod, thinking of Trudy.

"Little
brat doesn't like the idea of not having Mommy and Daddy's full attention, I
guess.  She likes an audience when she's jamming that finger up her
nose."

"I
bet.  She
creeps
me out that kid.  She's not
like Wren."  It starts to sprinkle a little, one of those odd sun
showers that freak me out because to me, sun and rain don't mesh.  Mitch
puts on the windshield wipers and it feels like a pulse beating through the
cab.  The details in this moment start to add up: the quiet, Wren's slight
snoring,
the
fact that we're together and whiskey
isn't stealing the show.  But I can't say it.  I can't tell him how
my fear tastes.  That if he leaves me, I'll be left with empty bottles and
an unused TV.  That I don't know how to do anything without the boy who
used to trace our future in the palm of my hand: two kids, one house and us,
forever and ever.

But
forever's a pipe dream.

"So
she doesn't know," he says.

"Know
what?  Oh and let's throw in a 'who' for good measure."

"Ronnie. 
You haven't told her...about us trying?"

"Oh
yeah, she knows.  But she doesn't know about-"

"The miscarriages."

"I
hate that word.  Let's go with deaths. 
Or
disappointments.
 
Or tiny little stepping stones
to hell..."

He's
quiet.  I've done that thing where I've pushed too hard and he doesn't
know what to do with me, which is a scary proposition since I hardly know what
to do with myself.

"We'll
figure it out.  We have the appointment," he says.  I suck on it
like a lozenge. 
The appointment, the "maybe."
 
It claws a little and then harder and then I start to say it, "Are you
ch-"

"Here
we are," he says, pulling into the Gibson's drive behind my GrandAm. 
"I can go ahead and take Wren home so she doesn't wake up," he says.

"Yeah, alright."
  I'm half
out of the truck, half in it and I linger there.  Just say it Elena. 
Just say what you want to say and stop being such a scared little girl. 
But then I think of me at seven when the cutting first started, and I see
Wren's face, clean of worry.  And so I don't say the thing that's weighing
on my every organ because if I do say it, her worry will become an animal that
follows her everywhere, and it will be something far worse than pissing herself
in public.

"I
love you," I say and suck until I taste the truth in it.