Second Hand Heart

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  Then she came back and sat with me again.

  “I guess he doesn’t want to be talked to,” she said.

  “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “So, I’m a little older. So help me understand. In modern language, when you’re young, does ‘he’s not my boyfriend’ mean that you’re having sex with him but there’s no real commitment? I know it’s really not any of my business. I was just curious to know.”

  “Richard,” she said. The way you say a kid’s name when he’s being so silly it strains your patience. “I’m not having sex with anybody. I never had sex with anybody.”

  “Never?”

  “When would I have? How? With my mother watching?”

  “She hasn’t been watching for weeks.”

  “But there’s nobody I want to have sex with. I mean, you. Just you. Nobody else.”

  I had no idea how to react to that. So we said nothing more for a long time. But I had a growing sense of blinders falling away from my eyes. Maybe there was only one way this could end. Maybe the path into it led only one direction, to only one conclusion, and I had been racing down that path for some time, only half oblivious. And maybe the fact that I had not consciously accepted what would happen next would in no way prevent it from happening.

  So I stood up, and reached down for her hand, and she gave it to me. And I picked up the rose — not the cup or the water, just the rose — and handed it to her.

  And then we went off and found my cabin.

  I looked around for her non-boyfriend along the way, but fortunately he was nowhere around.

  CHAPTER 13: VIDA

  On Richard Trembling

  Richard was so scared.

  I swear to God if I didn’t know better I would think he was a virgin and I wasn’t. He actually shook.

  It was incredibly sweet. Heartbreakingly sweet, actually. It made my heart hurt to see a big grown-up man be that vulnerable and that fragile and that right on the edge of breaking apart.

  Especially this man.

  I felt like I had to hold him with just the lightest touch possible. Like when you hold one of those really fine Christmas ornaments or that hand-blown crystal glass that’s so incredibly thin. Otherwise he might fly into a thousand pieces, and then not only would he be broken, but I’d cut myself trying to hold him in my hands.

  And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

  You don’t just go around writing down in a book a bunch of private things that somebody wouldn’t want you to say.

  CHAPTER 14: RICHARD

  What To Be Sorry For, and What Not To Be

  I think I might have dozed briefly. When I woke, Vida’s back was pressed up against my chest, and the barest hint of light glowed through the window. Could have been the moon, or the first phase of morning. I really had no way to know.

  In my sleep, I’d been allowing the contact with another human being to feel familiar. After all, I’d shared my bed with a woman every night for nine years. And when my eyes flickered open again, the feeling lingered for just a fraction of a second. And then the truth fell on me like the debris of a wall that’s been shattered from the outside.

  It was her sharp shoulder blades, and the fact that I could feel every knob of her spine against my skin.

  I started to cry. All at once. It was outside my jurisdiction. There was nothing I could do to pull it back or rein it in. I didn’t sob. It was just a matter of my eyes, and water. They let go like a faucet when you turn the handle from off to all the way on. Part of me knew I should have done this months ago. Another part of me didn’t want to do it even now, and would have stopped the process if I could. But it was too late for all that. It was too late.

  I thought Vida was asleep until she said, “Why are you crying?”

  “How did you even know I was?”

  “I can hear the drops hitting the pillow.” She rolled over and handed me a tissue.

  “I just miss her so much,” I said.

  And she tucked her head in close to my chest and held me as tight as she could, and then the tears fell on her instead.

  “I think I did a really bad thing,” I said after a while.

  “What did you do?”

  “I should have told you. When I brought you here. Before … Before. I should have told you that I don’t see this as being … well, you know. Ongoing.”

  She took a deep breath, and blew it out in an audible sigh. Like an oddly contented baby before sleep.

  “You didn’t have to tell me that. I already knew.”

  “You did? How did you know? I didn’t even know.”

  “Because I know who this is really about. And I know I’m not her.”

  I cried some more, and she let me, and held me. And handed me another tissue.

  “I’m sorry I’m not her.”

  “I don’t think you need to be sorry for that,” I said.

  “OK,” she said. “But I am.”

  To my surprise, she got out of bed and began to dress.

  By now there was enough more light coming through the window to signal morning, or what would be morning soon enough.

  “I have to go back and talk to Victor,” she said. “See if he’s OK.”

  “Are you going to go back home with him?”

  “Yeah. I think I should.”

  By now she was dressed, and I was afraid she’d slip out before I could stop her, so I held out my hand, and she came close and took it, even though I could tell she didn’t know why.

  “Could you sit just a second?” I asked. She did, silently. Waiting.

  “This might sound odd, but I’m going to say it anyway. I’m going to try something. I’m going to try to give you the heart again, but maybe better than I did the first time. I kept acting like it was half-mine, which isn’t fair. So this time I’m giving it to you the right way, and I’m going to go put my life back together if I can, and I’m going to stay out of yours.”

  She smiled at me as though she were the only grown-up in the room, and I were a child. She brushed a bit of stray hair back off my forehead.

  “You know,” she said, “it’s funny. It’s just now starting to feel like my heart to me, too. I never told anybody this. They’d think I was crazy. But I think the reason I didn’t reject the new heart as much as most patients do is because I let it still be Lorrie’s heart. Sounds like it would be the other way around, but I think most people feel like they have to fight something in their body that isn’t theirs. But I just accepted that it wasn’t mine, and we got along OK.”

  “It’ll be more yours as time goes by.”

  “Think so?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  She kissed me on the forehead, and got up to leave. I didn’t feel any pull of sentimentality coming from her. I didn’t feel like it was hard for her to go. She just seemed done. It stung me a little. No, actually it stung me a lot.

  “You might want to go see your mother. I think she might be in therapy.”

  “Seriously? My mother? In therapy?”

  “She said she’d think about it, and she sounded serious.”

  “You think she’s in therapy to figure out how to fix me?”

  “No. I think to figure out how to let go.”

  “Wow. Now there’s a concept.”

  She made it almost to the door, then turned back suddenly.

  “Oh. The rose. I almost forgot the rose.” She fetched it from the bathroom, where she had set the base of its stem in a sink partly full of water. “You did mean for me to take this, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  She opened the door and then stood a moment, allowing me to feel the cool breeze of morning and see it glow behind her head.

  “We’ll still talk, or see each other or something, right?”

  “Right. We will.”

  “OK, good.”

  Then she raced over again, opened my hand and folded something into it. I felt the warm, familiar weight of the worry stone
in my palm, and a quick press of her lips on my cheek.

  “Here,” she said. “I think you need this worse than I do.”

  Then she let herself out.

  I checked out of the lodge just minutes later. I couldn’t get away fast enough.

  There wasn’t much of anyone around at that hour. The clerk behind the desk was a young woman I had not met before. She looked at me with some slight surprise, and only then did I realize that anyone could see I’d been crying. It was too late to fix that, so I didn’t try.

  She informed me that my credit card had already been charged, but that the unused nights would be credited back to me. But that it might take as long as three weeks.

  I told her I didn’t care how long it took.

  I walked halfway to the front doors before I remembered, then walked back to the desk.

  “I almost forgot. I have reservations for October. I need to cancel them now.”

  She pulled it up on the computer while she said, “Right. Of course. Because you were here now.”

  “No. That’s not why. Actually. It’s because … It was supposed to be for my wedding anniversary. But my wife passed away.”

  She looked up at me suddenly. I could see her putting two and two together about what she had already observed in me.

  “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is. It’s terrible. And do you know what else I just found out about it? I just found out it’s the goddamn truth, whether I like it or not. And that I can’t do a damned thing to change it. Nearly three months later, and I’m just now getting that I have to accept it. How sick is that?”

  “It’s not sick,” she said. “We’re made that way.”

  “Think so?”

  “Yeah. I do. We take things on a little at a time because all at once they’d kill us. Anyway, I’ll cancel this.”

  “No. You know what? Never mind. I changed my mind. Just leave it. Maybe in October I’ll come back here all by myself.”

  She looked at my face for another minute. I had no idea what she was thinking.

  “We only need twenty-four hours’ notice if you change your mind.”

  “I don’t think I will,” I said.

  Then I drove home.

  CHAPTER 15: VIDA

  About What Comes Next

  I walked from Richard’s little cabin back to the rim. It was just barely light. There was no one around. I guess I beat them all awake.

  I could feel all kinds of things I don’t think I would have felt before. Not big, dramatic things. Just little ones. The breeze on my face. The bottom of my feet touching my sandals whenever my sandals touched the ground. The stem of the rose in my fingers.

  I thought there would be somebody out on the patio, but just for that moment I had it all to myself. Which was nice. Because then I could do this out loud.

  Only, you know what? I think I would have done it out loud anyway. But it was nice how there was nobody there to hear me and think I was some kind of loon.

  I stood all the way at the edge, near the low stone wall. Looked over the side. It wasn’t a straight, sheer drop. I mean, there were some rocks that stuck out a little farther than the patio.

  Then I looked up and out. And I cocked my hand back, winding up to throw the rose as high and as far as I could. But I didn’t throw it yet.

  “I don’t think he meant to give this to me,” I said out loud. “I think he really meant to give this to you. Here. Are you ready? Catch.”

  And I let it fly. It sailed up and flew end over end for a couple of turns, but then it looked like it was going to stall. It was so light, I thought maybe it wouldn’t go much of anywhere at all. But then a gust of wind came along and took it farther out. It came down on some rocks, but I watched it, and it half-rolled, half-bounced off the edge, and then the wind caught it again, and lofted it farther out into the canyon. And then it fell, and I couldn’t see where it went after that.

  I’ll never know how far down in the canyon it ended up. As far as it needed to go, I guess.

  Just before I walked away I said, “OK, ’bye.” And then I walked a step or two, and then I turned around and said, also, “Thank you.”

  I didn’t say specifically for what. I figured she would know.

  • • •

  It was just getting all the way light when I let myself back into the tent with Victor.

  I knew he was awake because he quickly rolled over the other way, so his back was to me. Jax licked me all over my face, like he hadn’t seen me for months. It was nice. At least somebody in the tent was still speaking to me.

  I lay down on the sleeping bag close behind Victor’s back.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You slept with him, didn’t you?” He sounded like he was crying. Like he was trying really hard not to cry, but pretty much doing it anyway.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was just apologizing for.”

  “Well, don’t apologize. Why should you care? We’re just friends, right? I’m nothing to you. You don’t care anything about me. Right?”

  “Victor,” I said. “That’s so stupid I’m not even going to answer it. I’m going to tell you something else instead.”

  I waited. In case he didn’t want to hear anything at all from me. In that case, he would have time to tell me so.

  “OK, what?”

  “It’s not going to happen any more anyway.”

  Silence. “You and him?”

  “Right.”

  “Why? Did he dump you? Did he break your heart? Because if he broke your heart, I’ll go kill him. I mean it. I’ll go right now.”

  “Victor. Relax. He didn’t break my heart.”

  “So why is it over?”

  “Because it wasn’t ever really about me. It was always about the heart.”

  Nobody said anything for a long time, and then after a while he rolled over, and his eyes were all puffy and red. I thought that was really cool, that he would let me see he’d been crying. I mean, being a guy and all.

  I’ve been hitting the jackpot with that today, haven’t I?

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “The heart.”

  “What about it?”

  “Oh, my God. I didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “He’s the guy who gave me the heart. It used to belong to his wife, but then she died. Did I really not tell you that?”

  “You really did not tell me that.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I guess I thought I did.”

  “So … Wow! I think I get it now.” He sounded amazed and sort of … reverent. I don’t use that word a lot, but it seems to fit here. “So it was really more about how he feels about his dead wife, and not so much about you.”

  “Right. And also how she felt about him.”

  “You mean, you sort of remember that, too?”

  “Right.”

  “Wow. That’s weird. I mean … I don’t mean weird. Just … That must be really intense. So, that’s it? It’s just over now?”

  “Kind of. I guess. I mean, we sort of figure the more time goes on the more it’ll be really my heart, sort of all the way mine, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think so.”

  He rolled over on to his back and put his hands behind his head, and looked up at the trees through the open mesh on the top of the tent. He didn’t have the rain skirt over the tent because it was so warm and nice.

  I put my head down on his chest, and then he put one arm around me.

  “I’m sorry you had a bad night,” I said.

  “So … what about us?”

  “What about us?”

  “What do we do now?”

  “I want to go home and see my mom.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I think she might be in therapy. So I have to give that a shot. Besides, I promised her. I mean, she is my mother and all. She just kind of got stuck in a cy
cle, I think. I changed so fast she got dizzy trying to keep up. Oh, and I have to pick up Esther’s ashes.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we could travel some more.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  We both looked at the trees for a while, and then Victor said, “Just friends?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll find out, I guess.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Well, at some point we have to stop and see Eddie again. And then maybe I’d like to go to Germany.”

  “Germany? That’s an awful long way.”

  “Afraid your car’ll break down?”

  “You’re kidding. Right?”

  I sat up and punched him hard on the shoulder. And he said, “Ow! What was that for?”

  “Of course I’m kidding. How stupid do you think I am?”

  “Well. You’ve been shut in a lot.”

  “Sick kids study geography too, you know.”

  “OK, OK. Sorry.” He rubbed his sore shoulder a little. “I’d have to get somebody to take care of Jax. But we could go to Germany. I guess. I mean, I don’t know how. Hell, I don’t even know how we’re supposed to get home. But we’ll figure it out. Somehow. So, how does your heart feel now?”

  “Tired,” I said. “And sad. But it feels like it’s just a tiny bit more mine than it was before.”

  I put my head back down on his shoulder, and after a while I think we both fell asleep.

  I know I did.

  • • •

  Just as we were driving out of the campground, I grabbed Victor’s sleeve.

  “Ooh,” I said. “Go that way. OK? Please. Go back to the lodge, OK?”

  He’d been just about to turn away from the canyon. You know. Toward home.

  “Why? Did you forget something?”

  “I have to get a postcard.”

  I watched his face fall. “Vida …”

  “No, Victor. It’s not what you’re thinking. It’s not for Richard. I have to get a postcard for my mother.”

  “Oh. OK.”

  He sounded a little confused. Maybe wondering why it was so urgent all of a sudden. But he didn’t argue.