The Art Of The Heart (9 page)

I’d just walked out of Baileys with my bottle of Coke when I heard, “Hey. How’s it going?”

I had to squint through the white light to find the face. The one with bright brown eyes. Greg. He straddled his bike, staring at me. His face was speckled with sweat, a few straggling blond curls pasted to his forehead. His white, ribbed tank clung to his torso, a ribbon of wet down its center. He was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans.

My body lost capacity to breathe.

“You’re David, right? You’re in my class?”

I stared at his mouth as he smiled.
At the white teeth, two gently overlapping. The blood-rose lips. My heart beat as though it sought an escape route. Finding no voice, I nodded.

He introduced himself as if he were a complete stranger to me.
The first words acknowledging my existence in his world. All sensation of reality flew away from me.

“Could I get a sip of that from
ya?” he asked, pointing at my soda.

I handed it to him, wordlessly, and watched him drink,
then wipe his lips with the back of that beautiful hand. I have heard and read people use the term that “time stood still”, and they had seemed liked words a poet would conjure up for an imagined moment, for something that had no context with reality. But then, and now so many years later in the replayed moments…time stood still. That moment he sipped from my cold bottle of Coke in the shock of white sunlight is frozen. The time between now and then has no distance in my heart.

When I sipped from the bottle afterward it was like my first kiss. I could taste his mouth.

A soft wind blew between us. The first I ‘d felt the whole day. It cooled the sweat on my face, and I held the bottle out for him again. He thanked me with a smile. Between the two of us we finished the bottle in four sips.

“
D’ya wanna ride around?”

It’s funny
how after living for some fifty-odd years that retrospection makes your life seem like a string of scenes; some you forget quite easily in their mundanity, such as washing a car, and others quite memorable like learning to drive a car. Some we push away because of the pain like the death of someone close. But there are very few we visit with regularity because of their special quality; their meaning to our heart. I have visited that day every week of every month of every year of my life since it occurred. It couldn’t be more familiar to me than if it were a painting on my wall that I woke to see every morning.

When I close my eyes, I’m there again, starting the adventure from the corner of Keokuk and California in front of Bailey’s. Riding up the hill behind him in the middle of the street, our bikes bouncing beneath us on the brick streets. I can smell the freshly mowed lawns, rose bushes, and backyard barbeques. I can see each small avenue lined with sycamores and oaks. But most of all…I can see him.

Slowly beneath my excitement, my consciousness of the significance of this moment made me aware that I was beyond happy. I was joyous. I was riding inside one of my dreams. I can still feel that smile on my young face. It was a moment like this that made being alive so important. We rode for hours and hours, through our neighborhood and beyond into other neighborhoods and other school districts. We rode side by side. He talked incessantly about sports and teachers and how, when he grew up, he’d like to have a ranch and raise horses. I’d listen and pretend to know what he was talking about, and occasionally he’d ask me something and I’d answer. When I heard my own answer I wondered if he thought I was as dull as I sounded? But if I was, he didn’t show it. We just kept riding and I kept absorbing every moment.

We stopped in Marquette Park to get a sip from the fountain at the corner of the tennis courts. When I came up from the fountain he had pulled his shirt off and tucked it through a belt loop of his shorts. It was as if someone had slammed
their fist into my chest. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid my eyes on. I felt elated and hurt and frightened all at once, looking at him.

“Must be a hundred today,” he said, wiping his face with his shirt.

“You should get rid of that shirt.”

I couldn’t have felt more inferior than at that moment. “
Naw, I’m good.”

He laughed. “Okay. If you
wanna farmer’s tan. Your nose is already sunburned.”

I don’t think I’ve been more uncomfortable in my life as I was at the moment I pulled that shirt up and off and exposed my inferiority in the presence of perfection. He stood staring at me. I bunched the shirt up and held it in front of me as if it could block his appraisal.

“You’re built like a swimmer,” he said, finally. “Do you swim?”

I shook my head. “Don’t even know how.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No.”

“Wow.” He rubbed his chin with that flawless hand. “Do you know how to ride a bike without using handlebars?”

I told him I didn’t know how to do that either.

He put his arm around my shoulder and guided me back to the bikes. “Now, that I can teach you how to do.”

We spent the latter half of that hot summer day in the church parking lot behind his house with Greg teaching me how to ride a bike without holding on.
Three or four dozen spills, a scraped knee and scuffed palms, I could do it. I learned how to turn it shifting my balance with my knees to left and right. Soon I was riding in circles in the lot with my arms folded in front of me. I could feel the sun on my neck and shoulders and back. I always burned so easily. But it was worth it to learn how to do something I didn’t believe I could do. And to learn it with someone I never thought would even give me the time of day.

When I made my third successful loop without a fall, I saw Greg on the sidelines in the shade of a tree, clapping. Hearing the sound of someone applauding me for something I’d done was amazing.

I rode over to him with a sense of pride and accomplishment I’d not experienced before.

“Let’s get some water. I’m wiped out,” he nodded back toward his house. His family’s home was small but neat. Nice up-to-date furniture; clean floors.
Everything in its place. It smelled like lemon cleanser when we first walked in. I was taking it all in like I was being giving the tour of the royal palace. I was being honored to see the world that he lived in.

Each moment of that day has been painted and framed in my mind. I’ve walked the gallery a thousand times throughout my life.
The scene where he handed me the glass of water. Its first incarnation had been a Welch’s grape jelly jar covered with Flintstone characters. I had Fred and Wilma; he had Pebbles and Bam-Bam. We sat on the sofa in his living room across from a large box television and a wall mirror. I stared, transfixed at our reflection in the mirror, sitting there together.

“You don’t tan easily, do you?” he asked.

I finally noticed why he was smiling. In the reflection was one tan boy and one very, very vibrant red boy. I had been so consumed by the wonder of my situation I’d barely felt the sunburn.

“You’re
gonna need to put some Noxema on that, or you’ll be hurtin’ for sure tomorrow.”

“What’s
Noxema?” I asked. I had never heard the word before.

Their bathroom was small, tiled in blue. Blue terry cloth towels and washrags hung neatly on the racks. A yellow bar of Dial soap was in a tray, untouched. Another was in a small tray on the sink. Used.
One for company apparently. He opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out a deep blue jar. Noxema was written on its label.

“Here we go.” He unscrewed the lid. The scent of menthol filled the small tiny room. “Put a tiny bit on your finger and rub it into your face until it disappears.”

It was cold and stung for a moment. But I could feel the temperature in my face go down a little.

“Feels pretty good?”

I told him it did. My voice sounded shaky. I felt his breath on me and it made my knees weak. He didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ll get your back for you. Take some and start rubbing it on your chest and arms.”

He moved behind me but I could see him in the mirror. His eyes looking at my shoulders. He looked up and caught my eyes and smiled. “This will keep you from hurting too much tomorrow.”

I jumped at the sensation of the cold cream on my shoulders
; the touch of his hand. That hand on my flesh. He was gentle.

My heart lurched and I felt light-headed. I was certain he could feel it as he rubbed the white cream on my back. I was delirious. I wanted to cry and laugh at once.

His touch trailed from my shoulders to my back. It moved in circles. I was immobile beneath the sensation. And I was growing more aware of a compulsion inside me. I wanted to kiss him. Badly. And that terrified me.

“How’s that feel?”

I took a deep breath so as not to stutter. “Great. It feels great.”

Glancing down, I saw the rise in my shorts. The shock of it alarmed me. I couldn’t stop it. I was getting harder by the second. There was no way to miss seeing it. It sent my heart beating harder. If he saw it, he would know.

“Undo your pants. I can’t get to the edge,” he said. His voice was so matter-of-fact. As if it meant nothing to him.

It, however, struck me with pure panic. I stammered a non-answer.

He laughed. “Go on,” he insisted.

My fingers fumbled for the button. They could feel I was now standing at full attention. I couldn’t do this.

Both of his hands had moved to the small of my back. They moved in circles, pushing me slightly forward and into the sink.

It was at that moment the phone in the kitchen rang. Greg jumped at the noise, grabbing a towel and wiping his hands on it.

“I gotta get that,” he said.” Be right back.” He dashed from the bathroom and I was saved from my humiliation.

I left there exalted. I sat in the narrow walkway of shade between my apartment and the neighbors. I giggled. My soul soared. I was dreaming dreams. I couldn’t cram any more feelings into the small space that was
me. It was all too large for me. I knew fate had looked down on me and granted me a favor. But as it turned out, fate gave me that one solitary day.

I rode past his house every day of that summer, hoping to run into him again; catch a glimpse of him. It wouldn’t happen. My elation turned inside out. I grew despondent. As it turned out, it wouldn’t matter if I had established that friendship, that closeness I wanted with Greg. By the end of August my father who was an automotive mechanic for a small dealership got a new job at a larger company in the county. We moved twenty miles away to a middle-class community of houses named Greenwood.

It was a new chapter.