Broke Heart Blues

by Joyce Carol Oates

  loved him but not enough. You couldn't blame her of course--she'd been a mother before she'd become John Heart's lover. Still, he was stunned. Had to admit, stunned. Like he'd taken several hammer blows to the head. A new teaching job? A town called Bolivar? A friend, a school principal?

  Leavey who'd confided in him so much of her personal life had never him any of this, nor even hinted at it, she'd told him repeatedly how much she loved Iroquois Point, what a good decision it had been to move as far from her former home as she could--"To break those depressing connections." And how often, how sincerely, she'd told him she loved the wood-frame house she'd bought on impulse, especially now that MR. FIXIT had reshingled, reshuttered, rewired, repainted most of it no fee except meals, kisses, etc. I won't make the same mistake twice.

  Nola was saying, "I was awake most of Thursday night trying to work a way through this maze. I've never been such a wreck. I'm so ashamed--I must have left twenty messages on your machine. realize I'm a little lightheaded now, it hasn't sunk in yet, but it feels right. Morally, in my heart--it feels right. Adults have to compromise. Settle. Judge Whitfield, I'd resented her so, was right all along. see that now. Oh, John." She began to cry again. She'd been nervously twining her fingers through his and she lifted his hand to kiss the knuckles, her mouth was surprisingly cold.

  "Forgive me, forgive me, I love you." John disengaged his hand hers.

  "O. K. , Nola. It does feel right, guess. We'll keep in touch.

  " He shoved out of the booth and grabbed his jacket. Apparently he was leaving.

  Nola stared up at him startled as if he'd slapped her. Her forehead was finely creased and there were thin white lines at the corners of her eyes. "You're leaving--so soon? It's so early. I thought we were going to have dinner, John?" "Some other time," John said, backing off. He had the look of a man who's with a conversation, a man who's hung up a phone.

  John paid the bright-brassy cashier for their drinks with a twenty-dollar bill and told her to keep the change. The woman called after him a way meant to be cheery, jocular--"Thanks and g'night, MR. FIX-IT. real soon." Outside in the drizzly dusk he was hurrying to climb into his pickup when a burly man in a sheepskin jacket passed, face almost-familiar-" FIX-IT, huh? "--and John said, "Right now, friend, no." It was always a surprise to see the first of the signs-THE GLASS ARK!

  World-Renowned Spectacle!

  SHAWMOUTH5 Ml. AHEAD Open to the Public The signs, designed by Aaron Leander Heart himself, were bottle-shaped, a vivid glossy green, with glow-in-the-dark white letters. They were of various sizes, the largest at least six feet high, set at a short distance from the highway. As you neared the home of THE GLASS ARK, the signs came decreasing intervals, I Ml. AHEAD, 500FEET AHEAD(TURN RIGHT). At last, at the bumpy end of the Shore Road, a bottle-sign Lying on its side to point you into the parking lot, THE GLASSARK ) Visitor Parking Free.

  John had to smile. His grandfather had certainly been optimistic, enterprising, in the last decade of his life.

  He'd told John that The Glass Ark, upon which he'd worked for twenty years, had begun as a vision ordained by God for no purpose than itself, but, as time passed, and he, the creator of the Ark, deepened into wisdom, he understood that it was "a way of redeeming my sins, the sins of anyone who glances upon it. But a way, son, of beauty, not repentance." Well, good. John Heart thought there wasn't much point in repentance, this far along in history.

  When Grandpa Heart was living, John made the seventy-mile trip up Shawmouth on the lake at least twice a year. (Aaron Leander Heart left Shawmouth--"On principle. ") After his death, and his burial

  nearby nondenominational cemetery, the previous fall, John hadn't back, though he'd promised Nola Leavey to take her and the for a visit when the weather turned warm. (As now it had, finally, in late April.

  But John Heart wasn't seeing the Leaveys any longer. ) He hadn't wanted to think about The Glass Ark, as he hadn't wanted to think the checks from HARTSSOFT accumulating in his file drawer. But he now the legal owner as well as the executor of Aaron Leander's estate. The last time he'd seen Grandpa Heart alive, this past October, the elderly man, IIOW in his mid-nineties, had walked with difficulty, leaning on ivory handled cane (a gift from an admirer of the Ark) and on John's arm, leading him through the shimmering radiance of the Glass Ark, reassuring him that, though he'd made the bequest in his will to

  "John R. Heart, my grandson," it was a bequest made in love, not obligation.

  "Johnny, you do what you do. For your grandpa, that's enough." But was it, really? Was any human effort ever enough?

  It made him resentful to contemplate a responsibility he didn't equal to, and one he'd never requested. And since Aaron Leander's death, the HARTSSOFT checks made out to his grandfather were continuing, flowing into an account established in an Oswego bank for the of The Glass Ark. MR. FIX-IT was being stuck with finances, IRS forms, hiring an accountant. At the same time he was restless in Point, preparing to move several hundred miles east and north to Rouses Point on Lake Champlain, close by the Quebec border, he needed freedom like needed oxygen to breathe!

  "Damn." As soon as he turned his motorcycle in to the parking lot the entrance to the Ark, he saw that the asphalt pavement had crack and the first tough weeds were poking through. In a few months they'd make cobweb cracks everywhere. The twelve-foot plank fence, a flat oyster-white, with a sheen to make it glow in the dark, would need repainting. (Aaron Leander had never wanted a fence around property but his assistant Tildie Manchester, fearing trespassers and vandals after the Life feature made such a local fuss, had insisted. MR. FIX-IT liked idea of fences, and he liked most fences, especially if he put them up himself, but this one, a tall picket fence, was impractical for Shawmouth weather, so close beside Lake Ontario. ) And the local tree service Tildie hired, to repair winter storm damage, had pruned the row of poplars above the lake cliff so brutally it looked as if a giant child had hacked at them with a cleaver. John felt his hcart sink--he was being drawn into the folly of the Ark.

  It was 10,10, a weekday morning. He'd made the trip from Iroquois in less than an hour. There were three vehicles in the parking lot, a Winnebago camper with Ontario, Canada, license plates, a burgundy-colored Lexus with New York plates, and Aaron Leander's decade-old Buick he'd left to Tildie Manchester. The asphalt was still wet from last night's rainstorm.

  Sunshine reflected in puddles. There was a dizzying mirror effect.

  parked his Honda beside the Buick and went to the front entrance of the little house, which had been hardly more than a shanty for most of the time X Grandpa Heart had lived in it, and rang the clapper-bell, and Tildie Mant chester opened the door for him, breathless and anticipatory.

  She must have been waiting just inside. "John Heart! Welcome! Come in!"

  hadn't known what his grandfather had told the woman about him. Long he'd become her employer she'd gazed at him with a peculiar sort of intensity and seemed confused when he asked the mildest questions of her- "How're you doing, Tildie?" and

  "How's business these days?

  " MR. Flx-IT's manner was frank and outgoing and friendly and he wondered if Tildie Manchester expected something more exotic from him. She was a plump, embarrassed woman in her late fifties with a girl's face, tight-permed hair tinted a hopeful russet-brown. She was a recent widow, her husband been the Shawmouth postmaster, and both Manchesters had been and admirers of Aaron Leander Heart whom they'd believed to be, as said, an "amazing" man, a man "not like any you'd see around here," a "prophet." It was John's vague recollection that, when his grandfather first came to Shawmouth to construct his Glass Ark beside the Glass Lake, on one-third of an acre behind an uninsulated old house, local residents had believed him crazy, probably there were some who were convinced he was, and The Glass Ark, though a tourist attraction on a par in the AAA Guide with historic sites, small museums and flea markets, and something of a moneymaker, was a monument to craziness. But, years, most Shawmouth residents had come around to being pr
oud of it.

  Aaron Leander had been moved by the fact that some of them, schoolchildren and friends like the Manchesters, had supplied him with bottles and other items for the Ark after he'd become too crippled by arthritis, and deteriorating vision, to continue scavenging for himself.

  He'd Tildie Manchester as his assistant after she'd volunteered to work for him for nothing, when, after his death, John Heart kept her on in a position he called permanent manager, she'd burst into tears with gratitude.

  Not that Tildie Manchester was so very efficient a manager, or smart.

  Probably, if John had tried, he might've found someone better.

  was trustworthy, devoted. Grandpa Heart had liked her. ("Anyway, she's the best we can get in Shawmouth. ") She was saying, excitedly, following after John, "Your grandfather never wished to believe that the Ark might need to be protected from the elements, but I'm afraid he was mistaken.

  I hadn't put a canopy over it this winter, don't want to think what kind of damage we'd have right now. Hail the size of baseballs. But we were spared. Now, tourist season is starting. Last week, Easter, we had more than we'd had all winter. One family had eight children! They were from Quebec. And there was a sixth-grade class from Oswego, they came in a school bus. Your grandfather never wished to police' visitors but I think it's best to hire this nice reliable young man I know, my neighbor's son, to help out weekends and busy days. With these schoolchildren, for instance, there were two teachers and they assured me they'd keep watch over the children but I didn't let any of them out of my sight, of course. And there's hunters. Senior citizens are the worst! It's such a temptation to pry off some little glass jar, some tiny little thing you're sure nobody will miss, and suddenly it's gone. And with your grandfather no longer around to with construction--" Overcome by emotion Tildie broke off and John didn't pursue the subject.

  No matter how many times John had seen The Glass Ark, he was never prepared for its strange glittering beauty.

  The Ark was a shock to the eye. Then it was a shock, or at least a puzzle, to the mind, what did it mean? why did it exist.7--not a single ark, in fact, for Aaron Leander had added to his original vision, but five arks of approximately the same size. Why had an aging man with no prior in art, or in craftsmanship, devoted so many years to piecing these fantastical structures together out of discarded bottles, glassware, strips of shiny metal, tinfoil, "gilt," stones collected from the beach? How did Aaron Leander Heart, who'd been a problem drinker until the last decade of his life, have the skill to create such elaborate, intricate designs? Had his vision come from God.7--but what was

  "God"? When they'd all lived in Vegas, John's cowboy-styled grandpa had applied himself to poker playing and schemes that rarely worked out. He'd been something of a ladies' man. He'd had an Old Testament temperament (as he liked to boast) but no religion- "Belief is for suckers, kid. The game is, to be what the suckers believe." Tildie said, "The Ark is very beautiful this morning, isn't it?

  After rain it always sparkles in the sun." It was one thing to have a vision, John thought, but The Glass work. His grandfather had collected as many as fifty thousand bottles and other objects, according to printed estimates, he'd carefully assembled them with mortar and wire into stylized arklike structures that rose to twelve feet at their highest peaks and were arranged in geometric figures, over a third of an acre. Each ark was predominately a single color--shades of greens, reds, blues. There were mosaic patterns of transparent glass inset in colored glass. Bottles of all sizes and shapes, jars, vases, chinaware were placed vertically, horizontally and at precisely ruled angles.

  Within these boundaries there were crazy-quilt patterns. A trash heap come to life. Castoff broken and repudiated things. Scorned things--cheap faces, picture frames lacking pictures, dime-store mirrors, two-thirds of a grotesque ceramic turtle that might have once been a soup tureen.

  The arks X were soaring and magical, as in a children's storybook. Their prows were t elaborately ornamented. Elsewhere were archways, columns, spires, towers.

  There were tunnels no more than six inches in diameter and of mirror positioned in them as to reflect one another as in a labyrinth.

  Where the arks' prows came together there was, built up from large bottles whisky, bourbon, cheap wine), an elaborate throne with a high back and armrests, decorated in gold. The throne was on a foot-high pedestal and rose to a height of six feet. When John walked with his grandfather here back in October, the old man nudged him, pointing to the throne--"You have a place in the Ark, Johnny. Your sacrifice is enshrined here." John felt his face flush in dread of what his grandfather might mean. He couldn't think of a reply and so stood silent for a long time, gnawing at his lower lip.

  He'd been pissed at the old man, but by the time he left that he'd forgotten, they were saying good-bye in the parking lot and he had an impulse to hug Grandpa Heart but it didn't quite happen. Aaron and John Heart had never been sentimental with each other and weren't about to start now. The old man regarded his grandson with crinkled, cloudy eyes. He was smiling, brooding. John recalled their target practice in the desert, how many years ago. He wondered if Grandpa Heart was remembering, too--what they'd hoped might happen between them, whatever it supposed to be, that hadn't happened. Johnny hadn't liked his grandpa's gun, and he had no special talent for target shooting. All he'd shot was a tiny hummingbird. A hummingbird!

  He was preparing for the rough, windy drive back to Iroquois Point on his motorcycle. Strapping on his crash helmet which he never failed to wear-MR. FIX-IT was one for safety precautions. The sky was a mass of dirty, broken concrete oddly floating in pale blue vapor. Wind churned the lake's surface to a boil. Maybe I won't see him again. Maybe this is it.

  Heart had had only a single shot of whisky since John arrived, and he'd been short of breath as they walked through the Ark. But now, as John onto the Honda, he broke their somber mood by slapping him on the shoulder. "Better to whistle in the wind, son, than piss in it.

  A head wind, I mean" Grandpa Heart uttered this remark as if it was ancient though John had never heard it before and doubted his grandfather had either. He laughed. "I bet."

  "That's a crown he has floating there, hanging from that wire. I mean-the idea of a crown. See it? Above the throne. thought it be a bird, a seagull, the shape of the wings, you know your grandfather used stand on the cliff and watch seagulls for hours, so I told him, I said, thought that was a bird, and he said, Make it a bird, then, Tildie. And laughed. But it was meant to be a crown so I suppose that's what it is." Tildie had taken a tissue from the pocket of her slacks and was dabbing surreptitiously at her nose. John said, "Hell, it looks like a broken piece of ceramic. He'd meant to be funny but Tildie sniffed, "It's the idea of what it is, it is. Not what it's made of." John walked on, alone. He didn't like the way he was feeling.

  Nothimself. A tall lanky guy in biker's gear, greasy biker's boots, dark-tinted glasses, a day's growth of beard. But feeling shaky, sad as a kid.

  This was the first time he'd visited Shawmouth without his grandfather close beside him, keeping up a running commentary like John's own subterranean thoughts, and touching him. In his old age, Aaron Leander had taken to touching people more, his eyesight had deteriorated. John didn't want to imagine how the world, even The Glass Ark he must've memorized, looked to him.

  seemed wrong that the Ark should outlive Aaron Leander who'd been only human being in history inspired enough to create it. "Yet it's so. Has to be." John wasn't aware of speaking aloud.

  More visitors were arriving. A middle-aged couple fussing with a camera. A young mother with two children. John felt trapped. He trapped! When Grandpa Heart first envisioned The Glass Ark he hadn't envisioned a site, an actual place, winding paths, staring strangers with cameras. He hadn't envisioned paying customers--$3 adult, 1. 50 children & senior citizens. (In fact, Aaron Leander hadn't wanted to charge at all. It was Dahlia, on her single visit to Shawmouth, when Ark had been open to the public for a few months, w
ho insisted. "If Americans don't think something is worth paying money for, they won't think it's worth a moment's glance. And maybe it isn't. ") But this was what the Ark had become, and this was what John R. Heart had inherited. MR. FIX-IT was trapped. For he couldn't help but see that the paths required regraveling.

  Pink limestone was attractive, Grandpa Heart's stubborn preference, but it was impractical. MR. FIX-IT might as well do the job, instead of Tildie hiring some local contractor probably a relative of hers.

  And the parking lot-the damned asphalt needed resurfacing. That messy job, MR. FIX-IT couldn't do himself. "Shit!" A thin young woman in a rumpled olive-green trench coat was taking photographs nearby, and may have heard this. Though she'd been in her intricate-looking camera, using a light meter like a professional photographer, John had the impression that she'd been watching him sidelong, too. He hoped she hadn't overheard his conversation with Tildie hadn't deduced that, somehow, he was connected with the Ark and not just a casual visitor about to drift away. She turned to him, smiling nervously.

  What was there about the Ark that provoked strangers to speak to strangers? --but John couldn't be rude on his own premises. The spirit of The Glass Ark was supposed to be happy, uplifting. The woman photographer caught John's eye and said, with a strange breathlessness, "This is my first at the Ark.