A Heart Divided

by Cherie Bennett

  I sat there, feeling inadequate, exposed by questions I couldn’t answer. Finally I blurted out the only thing I could think of. “I’m only sixteen.”

  “Yeah. I guess you are, at that.” He dropped the money on the table and started to edge out of the booth. He was disappointed in me. I knew that, but I didn’t know how to fix it. Before he left, he wished me luck. And then he added, “Remember, Kate: Wherever you go, there you are.”

  My dad, who’d come down a few weeks earlier to find us a house and start his job, met us at the way-too-clean Nashville airport. He wore a broad grin, excruciatingly new jeans, and cowboy boots. Yes. Cowboy boots. He hugged us all and kissed my mom. I don’t think I’d ever seen his face shine quite that way before.

  New York City summers, however oppressive, are the Ice Age compared to August in middle Tennessee. We stepped out of the main terminal into air so thick you could chew the heat and wash it down with the humidity. By the time Dad led us to a new Saturn—no shocker there—I was drenched.

  Back in New Jersey, my father had made fun of country music. But now, as we headed down Interstate 65 to our new home, the radio was set to a yeehaw station. He sang along. Meaning he’d already learned the words. Okay, so my dad was having fun with his new environment. That’s just the kind of guy he was. Immediately, Portia proceeded to prove the power of genetics by joining in on the repetitive, hooky chorus.

  Seven heartbreak ditties later, we’d passed the Nashville city limits, skirted the community of Brentwood, and taken the exit for Redford. We’d almost rented a house in Brentwood, a town that looked pretty much like Englecliff, only with hills and more open space. In fact, my mother had flown down to approve the new place. But after she had returned to Englecliff, the owner reneged on the deal. So my father had found us a home in nearby Redford that he assured us was absolutely gorgeous.

  After a short stretch of fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and car dealerships, we turned onto a wide, tree-lined boulevard. Welcome to Redford, Tennessee. Population 18,451. My new home.

  As Dad negotiated Redford’s negligible traffic, he launched into a history lesson. Clearly he’d been studying. He seemed to know every obscure detail about the place, especially about the Civil War’s bloody Battle of Redford. We passed the municipal golf course, which Dad informed us was the old battlefield. The travelog continued as we rolled down sleepy-looking streets lined with quaint-looking shops and leafy-looking trees. Not many people were out, which was sensible considering the blast-furnace conditions. “Here we are,” Dad proclaimed as he pulled into a brick-paved roundabout. “Redford courthouse square. There’s the monument.”

  Hard to miss. A gray granite obelisk jutted skyward fifty feet from a grassy area in the center of the roundabout. I learned later that etched into the granite were the names of 3,000 Confederates and 1,800 Union men who had died in the Battle of Redford. Flanking the monument, flying high and proud, were two flags: one American, one Confederate.

  “Pete. At the risk of stating the obvious, that’s a Confederate flag,” my mother said, obviously disgusted.

  I shaded my eyes to peer up at it. “We’re actually going to live in a town that flies the Confederate flag? It may as well be a swastika!”

  “I didn’t raise it, ladies,” my father said good-naturedly.

  “The South lost, right?” Portia asked.

  “Shhh, not so loud,” my father joked. “Some folks around here still call it the War Between the States.”

  No one laughed. He pulled off the square and onto a side street, where we rolled past more quaintness on parade. I couldn’t believe the flag didn’t bother him. Clearly, the heat had fried my liberal Democrat father’s brain.

  Ten minutes later, we were turning into the long driveway of a stately old home. “This is it!” my dad announced. He was grinning but also looking anxiously at my mother for her approval.

  It came fast. She got out of the car and took in our new home, which was, in a picturesque Southern sort of way, beautiful. There was a long white porch with four rocking chairs and a swing that faced the road. Blue shutters framed each window; delicate lace curtains hung behind the glass. Between the lawn and the house was a lush profusion of flowers—rosebushes, pansies, and morning glories. To one side of the detached garage, there was a patch of climbing vines, heavy with ripe tomatoes.

  “Wow,” my mother declared.

  “You like it?” he asked.

  “I love it.”

  “Fourteen hundred Beauregard Lane,” my dad marveled. “Who’d ever think that Pete Pride would live on Beauregard Lane?”

  Portia was already dancing around the porch. “It’s fantastic, Daddy! It’s like out of a movie or something.”

  I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she was right. And impressive as the exterior was, the interior was even better. Downstairs was a huge kitchen with every possible convenience, a formal living room, and dining room, and a sitting room with its original fireplace. One flight up was a pair of enormous bedrooms, each with its own bathroom.

  Portia followed me up the next flight of stairs, to my new room. It was a converted attic with sloping beams, cool from its own air conditioner. Along the far wall was a pile of boxes marked with my name. There was a cozy padded window seat under the eaves, and someone—Dad?—had already made my bed. Against my pillows rested the one my mom had cross-stitched for me so many years ago: THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS A LIFE OF PURPOSE.

  “Look!” Portia cried, flinging open a door. “You have your own bathroom. We won’t have to share anymore!”

  Okay. The place was nice. My room was nice. Having my own bathroom was nicer than nice. That still didn’t mean I wanted to be there. I eyed the boxes. Unpacking would declare a permanence I wasn’t ready to embrace. So instead, I went out for a walk, to see what life looked like in a town that proudly flew a racist flag.

  4

  strolling through downtown Redford, which made sense, since the temperature was still in the mid-nineties. At first blush, the place reminded me of a 1950s movie set. The sidewalks and streets were red brick, as were most of the buildings. There was so little traffic that I could hear the grommets on the flags by the monument clang against their poles. As I waited to cross the street, an approaching car stopped even before I set foot in the crosswalk. The driver waited patiently and tipped his baseball cap to me as I crossed.

  Like that would ever happen in Manhattan.

  On closer scrutiny, though, I saw that the wholesomeness of the square wasn’t all Norman Rockwell. Sure, there was your basic town hall and courthouse, old-fashioned barbershop, five-and-dime, hardware store, small-town savings and loan, et cetera. But flanking Grover’s Hardware were a skateboard shop called Outrage and a used-CD place called Coda.

  Next to Redford Savings and Loan was the Pink Teacup, a cozy dessert café whose plateglass window announced that it had been in business since 1928. Tinkling bells greeted me as I pushed through the door. Everything inside was pink, including the lipstick and hair ribbon on the fifty-something lady behind the counter (“My name’s Roberta, honey, but call me Birdie, everyone does”).

  Birdie urged me to try some “fruit tea.” One sip and I was hooked—icy cold, it tasted of strawberries, peaches, and spring flowers. When Birdie learned I was new in town, she made me a present of two fresh-baked butterscotch chocolate chip cookies. “I’m famous for ′em, and you can’t get ′em up north,” she told me. “You come on back soon, honey, and welcome to Redford!”

  Like that would ever happen in Manhattan.

  I continued my exploration on a sugar high, passing the Revco drugstore, Jimmy Mack’s meat-and-three restaurant (Yankee translation: you choose a meat or chicken and three side dishes), and the one-screen Redford Cinema. Catty-corner from the cinema was an empty storefront whose whitewash announced the opening of a new Starbucks. So, mass consumer culture was invading even this corner of America. Which meant that soon people would be able to sit on the sidewalk and sip Iced Ca
ffè Latte while enjoying the Confederate flag snapping proudly in the breeze.

  I saw a sign for the Redford library and decided to have a look inside. You can tell a lot about a place by the books—and the plays—it keeps. A block off the square, the library was housed in what looked like an old mansion. Inside, it was cool and calm. A few people read newspapers. In the children’s room, the walls featured giant murals of Winnie the Pooh and the Velveteen Rabbit. Kids on little chairs were listening to a librarian read aloud. That was nice.

  I went to the front desk, where an elderly, white-haired woman with porcelain skin raised friendly blue eyes to mine. “Can I help you, dear?”

  “I was wondering where I would find plays.”

  “Theatrical plays?”

  I nodded. “Shakespeare, Chekhov, Arthur Miller?”

  “Well, Shakespeare, Chekhov, and such, you’ll find in the third aisle. Your more modern plays—I’m afraid we don’t have too many, we don’t get much call for that, but I’ve collected some fairly recently—you’ll find up those stairs and to the right, in Patricia Farrior’s bedroom.”

  “Pardon me?”

  She smiled. “Daughter of Colonel James Farrior, Army of Tennessee. This used to be the colonel’s home. It’s a miracle it survived the battle. Do hold tight to the handrail on your way up, dear.” She pointed to a narrow, circular iron staircase.

  Colonel Farrior’s daughter had not lived large. In a space a quarter of the size of my new bedroom, with a similarly sloped ceiling, there was one lonely, dusty bookshelf. It held a few rows of lonely, dusty plays. Near the wall was a single wooden table, with two ancient chairs. The air conditioning didn’t work as well up here; it was easily ten degrees warmer than downstairs.

  I went to the bookshelf and scanned the play titles, plucking out one of my favorites, When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? Still stung by Marcus’s parting comments, I reminded myself that while Red Ryder was a serious play, it was often laugh-out-loud funny. So why couldn’t I be, too? I slid into a chair and started to read.

  “Ouch! Damn!” This came from under the table.

  I pushed away from the table and jumped just as a guy crawled out and stood up. Objective truth of his physical self: my age. Tall, loose-limbed, athletic-looking. Golden tan, ditto hair; swimming pool-blue eyes. Subjective truth of his physical self: Oh. My. Gawd.

  “You startled me, and I banged my…” He touched his forehead.

  “I startled you?”

  His grin could have melted the polar ice caps. “Sorry about that.”

  “Is hanging out under tables a little quirk of yours?”

  He looked sheepish. “I was looking for something.” He dropped his “g”s on “looking” and “something” with the slightest, sweetest of drawls.

  “Lose your pen?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What if I’d had a skirt on? A short skirt?”

  He looked stymied for a nanosecond, then rallied. “If I picked this room to look up girls’ skirts, I’d be one sorry Peeping Tom. No one ever comes up here.”

  Okay, that was funny. “I did,” I pointed out.

  He chuckled. “Yeah. I guess you did.”

  Heat radiated between us. Or maybe it was just the crappy air conditioning. Or both. Red Ryder had fallen to the floor when I’d jerked away from the table; he picked it up for me and checked out the title. “You know this play?”

  “Yeah. Reminds me a little of Bus Stop.”

  “William Inge,” he said as he handed me back the play-book. “Red Ryder’s better, though.” He actually knew Red Ryder and Bus Stop? Who was this boy?

  He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “How do you like Redford so far?” What he meant was, if you lived in Redford, I’d already know you.

  “Hard to say. I’ve been here”—I checked my watch— “three hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

  “How long are you staying?”

  “We moved here. From New Jersey.”

  “Welcome to Redford. Name’s Jack.”

  “Kate.”

  “Hey, Kate from New Jersey.” He held his hand out to me. I took it. I didn’t let go. Neither did he. We just stood there. It was ridiculous and at the same time perfect.

  “How do you know those plays?” I asked.

  His eyes held mine. “How do you?”

  “Jackson?”

  The voice startled both of us. We let go of each other’s hand and backed off a half step. A pretty girl in a red-and-white cheerleading outfit with a bare midriff and world-class red hair stood at the top of the staircase. Jack—which I now understood to be short for Jackson—looked at her blankly for a second, almost as if he’d forgotten who she was. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part, the way I wanted it to be.

  “Hey, Sara,” he finally said. “I was talking to Kate. She just moved here.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kate.” Sara’s voice was all sweetness and light. Her eyes, however, held what Marcus called an oppositional subtext. In other words, she already hated my guts. She twirled in a circle, her little skirt swishing around her trim thighs. “What do you think, Jackson? We just got the new outfits.”

  “Great,” he assured her.

  “Everybody’s waiting on you at Jimmy Mack’s,” she said. “After that I’ve got a whole list of stuff we need to get done today, so chop-chop, baby.”

  Chop-chop, baby?

  Even as she tugged him toward the stairs, his eyes were still on me. “I’ll see you soon, Kate,” he said.

  They were gone before I realized I still didn’t know what he’d been looking for under the table. But maybe, in some cosmic way (which under ordinary circumstances I so don’t believe in, but it was already clear to me that this was not ordinary), what he was looking for was me.

  5

  mom’s let’s-find-out-if-Kate-is-Rodin phase, she enrolled me in a sculpture class at the North Jersey YMCA. Other kids sculpted flowers, a human hand, a ballet dancer. I made a snake. If you took that clay-gray snake, made it a gazillion times larger, and gave it square edges, it would look just like Redford High School.

  On the first day, I parked my very used Saturn (my parents felt guilty enough about the move to buy me a car) in the jammed parking lot of this giant, clay-gray snake of a school and headed toward my fate.

  Two Civil War-era cannons guarded the main entrance.

  Overhead, an American flag hung limp in the stillness of the late-August morning. At the base of the flagpole, about fifty kids were huddled together, holding hands. It took me a moment to figure out that they were praying. The only thing kids at Englecliff High ever prayed for was a fire drill in the middle of a math test.

  Following my school map and a printout of my schedule, I reached room 114 for my first class, advanced drama. If I said I wasn’t hoping to run into Jack, I’d be lying. Inside the classroom, kids milled around, noisily reconnecting after the summer. It seemed as if everyone knew everyone except me. No Jack. I slid into an empty seat near the windows. Took out a pencil just for something to do. Pushed some hair behind one ear. Fiddled with the post on one earring.

  I looked around. Everyone was white except for two black kids, a girl and a guy. She had high cheekbones and the carriage of a dancer. He was all sharp angles and baggy clothes. They stood near the door, arguing. And then, almost as if I had willed it, Jack walked in. My skin tingled as he slid into an empty seat and started to chat with friends. Then, as if drawn by some magnetic force, he looked right at me. A moment later, he excused himself from his friends to cross the room.

  “Hey.” He squatted by my seat. “We meet again.”

  “Hi.”

  “Redford looking any better to you yet?”

  Oh, yeah. “Not really.”

  He playfully put his hand to his heart as if wounded.

  “You know, you never did tell me what you were doing under the table,” I reminded him. “In the library, I mean.”

  The bell cut him off bef
ore he could answer. He gave me a what-can-you-do shrug and headed back to his seat as our teacher, a bony woman in her forties, shut the door. She introduced herself as Miss-not-Ms. Bright, then laughed with the class because everyone but me already knew her.

  Miss Bright had very expressive hands; if you didn’t know better, you’d think she’d invented a new kind of sign language. As her hands flew around, she reminded the class—and informed me—that to fulfill the requirements for advanced drama, we each had to do a minimum of fifty hours of work on the school play. “I like to think that y’all would work your little hearts out anyway,” she said. “Copies of the script will be available in the library as of tomorrow.” Then she went on to tell us that we’d begin by doing some sharing exercises designed to build trust in the other members of our “drama family.”

  All righty, then. She told us to buddy up with someone we didn’t know very well. I swung toward Jack, but a short girl in a shorter skirt had already corralled him. The black girl stepped over to me. She stuck her hand out. “Nikki Roberts.”

  I shook it. “Kate Pride.”

  Miss Bright continued her instructions. We had two minutes to find out as much as we could about the other person.

  Nikki laughed. “She made us do the same exercise last year. So, you transferred here from someplace in New Jersey, right?” She knew this, she explained, because she worked part-time in the office and had put in an hour before school. I was the new student from the farthest away, except one guy from Mexico City.

  I told Nikki about my family, why we’d moved to Red-ford, and about my playwriting. She told me Nikki was short for Nicolette (a name she loathed). The black guy in the class was her twin brother, Luke, named for their father, pastor at Columbia Pike Baptist Church. And her boyfriend, Michael, had graduated from Redford High last year; he was now a freshman at the University of Louisville.

  “One minute left, people!” Miss Bright called over the buzz.

  “Okay, one more thing about you and one about me,” Nikki said quickly. “She’ll make us stand and deliver, so be prepared.”