Through the Heart

by Kate Morgenroth

  I waited until the door of the apartment closed behind us. Then I practically leapt on her. She tried to push me away and take off her jacket, but I wouldn’t let her. “Leave it on,” I whispered.

  I made her sit down on the sofa. I pulled off her shoes. I rolled down her stockings, then I took off her underwear. And I made love to her in that silly jacket and that stunning dress. Halfway through, I let her take off the jacket. Then the dress. And it was just her body, white against the leather of the couch, and her hair. That hair spread out over her shoulders. It wasn’t just long; it was heavy and thick and it felt like strands of silk when it slid over my skin.

  I ran my fingers through it as she looked up at me.

  “I love you,” I told her.

  “I love you too.”

  I searched her eyes. I couldn’t see it.

  “I need you to prove it,” I told her.

  “What do you mean?”

  I stood up and held out my hand. She put her hand in mine, and I pulled her up and led her down the hall and into the bathroom. I opened up the bottom drawer and took out my electric razor and handed it to her.

  She held it for a moment, as if she didn’t know what I wanted.

  I took the cord and plugged it in.

  She just looked at me blankly.

  I reached out a lifted a lock of hair from her shoulder, and I said, “I want you to prove it. I want you to cut off your hair.”

  Her expression didn’t change, but her eyes were wide and dark. Her pupils seemed to have expanded to take up the whole iris, so they were just a well of black. She glanced at herself in the mirror. Then she looked back at me.

  “You’re really asking me to do this?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  I don’t know if you’ll understand, but the thrill I felt at that moment was like nothing I’d ever experienced. This was it—it was what I wanted. It was what I needed. I needed proof, and this would be it. This would give me what I’d been looking for. I would know for certain how she felt.

  “How much?” she asked me.

  “Everything,” I told her.

  I don’t know what I expected. Tears I suppose. Or protest. Or questions. I got none of it. She looked at me with no expression at all. At least none that I could read.

  She said, “I’d prefer to do it alone, if you don’t mind.”

  I did mind. I wanted to watch, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it. So I nodded and turned around and left the bathroom.

  She closed the door behind me, then I heard nothing for a long time.

  I lay down on the bed and waited. Eventually I heard the buzz of the razor when it was turned on, then the higher pitch of it as it was set to work. I lay there listening to the whine of it.

  I closed my eyes and I imagined the heavy strands of hair falling to the floor. I saw it as something sad and beautiful, like the autumn when the trees drop their leaves and cover the ground with a carpet of color.

  It went on much longer than I thought it would. But finally the noise stopped. And the silence afterward was almost a palpable thing.

  I opened my eyes. But a long time went by and nothing happened. Then, finally, the handle of the door turned. And she came out.

  Nora

  What Nora Thought of Coming

  to New York

  I admit it. I thought New York would be the answer to all my problems. I thought it would be a wonderful adventure. I thought I would feel like I was living for the first time.

  But from the moment I stepped out of the cab, I knew I didn’t fit in there. The airport was fine—maybe because in the airport I was surrounded by people who weren’t from New York. But the minute I got onto the streets, I knew I didn’t belong. Everyone seemed to have some sort of handbook on how to dress, how to walk, how to appear sophisticated and aloof.

  I never paid much attention to my clothes in Kansas. I mean, you might dress up when you were going out at night, but during the day it was really more about being comfortable. Here the way everyone else dressed made me feel like a lumberjack. I looked around and there were so many beautiful women in New York. I had no idea why Timothy had asked me to come. What was he doing with me? I couldn’t answer the question. He had invited me to live with him, but the thing that we never talked about, that was left unsaid, was what would happen if it didn’t work out.

  So in some ways that first weekend was an agony. Funny, right? I’d gotten everything I wanted, everything I’d been waiting for, and I was miserable. All my money worries—gone. I had met an amazing man. I had escaped my mother’s house and a dead-end job. I’d come to New York. And I was miserable.

  For the first two days, the thought that haunted me was that I wanted to go home. But that was also my greatest fear—that Timothy would send me back.

  What I wanted and what I feared were the same. It seems so obvious, but it took me two days to realize it. But when I finally saw it, it made me laugh. And when I did, everything was better.

  That’s also when I started actually doing something to change what had made me so uncomfortable. During that week on my own in New York, I discovered some things about myself. I found I always turned in the wrong direction when I came out of the subway. I found I loved walking around the city, even when it was bitterly cold. I found I liked shopping. I always assumed I hated it, but it was a bit different when you had money in the bank and you were in New York. I found my attitude had changed—I didn’t mind feeling out of place, and the looks other people gave me when I was out with Timothy just made me laugh.

  When I was feeling more secure, I started to see his insecurities. Aren’t relationships like that? It’s like being on a seesaw. There are those precious moments when you’re just even with each other, but you move through that, and then one person being down by definition means the other person is up. I knew he loved me, and I knew he was afraid. I discovered that, if you look, you can actually see everything. All you have to do is clear away your own fears. The things you think are so well hidden: we can all see them. That’s the secret. Everyone can see everything.

  But, even though I could see what he was feeling, I didn’t see what was coming. So I ended up standing in the bathroom with an electric razor in my hand.

  What can I say about the moment when I understood what he wanted from me? He wanted me to cut off my hair to prove I loved him.

  It wasn’t a fair test.

  The truth was, I had wanted to cut off my hair for as long as I could remember. I would have done it, but I was afraid no one would want me without my hair. My mother had taught me that it was my beauty. Without it, I would be nothing. I resented it, I wanted to be rid of it, but I felt like I needed it. And here was someone telling me they wanted me without it. He was standing there, thinking he was asking for the greatest sacrifice, but with that request, he was giving me the greatest gift.

  I also knew that if he didn’t think it was a sacrifice, he wouldn’t have his proof. And I wasn’t sure if I could convince him of it if he watched me. I didn’t ask him to leave the bathroom so he wouldn’t see how upset I was; I asked him to leave because I wasn’t sure I would be able to hide the opposite.

  After he left, I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself for a long time. Then I took the electric razor and I turned it on. I stood with it buzzing in my hand for a long time before I finally raised my arm and used it. The hair that had taken me thirty-three years to grow took me about three minutes to shave off. That’s how quickly it goes.

  What is the thing you think gives you value? What makes you feel most yourself? What is it that you identify with? What is it that you think makes you, you? Find out what that thing is, and then give it up. It is only then that you will be able to see what is left. And you won’t be the same. You will be irrevocably, irretrievably changed. I know I was. When I walked out of that bathroom, I was not the same girl who had walked in.

  He was lying on the bed, and when I came out, he sat up and stared at me. I wo
ndered what he saw. I had left an inch or so of hair. It was shorter than most boys’. The only people who had less hair were bald men and the military. It was a harsh haircut. Unforgiving. There was nowhere to hide, but for the first time, I didn’t feel like I needed to. I knew I was beautiful.

  “Come here,” he said—but the way he said it sounded more like a question than a command.

  I walked to the edge of the bed and stood there. He pulled me down next to him, then folded me into a fierce hug. He held me longer than usual, but finally he let go and pulled back to look at me again.

  He searched my face for something. I don’t know what he found.

  Then he said, “Nora, will you marry me?”

  I said yes.

  Two Months Later

  Timothy

  The Day Before the Wedding

  It was the day before our wedding, and everything was set. We had opted for something very simple—or, rather, I had, since Nora insisted she would be happy with whatever I wanted. So I decided to have a small ceremony and a dinner at my family’s house in the Hamptons, mainly because it seemed the fastest and easiest way to do it—fastest being the most important attribute.

  I wanted to be married to Nora as soon as possible. Well, that’s not exactly true. She would have gone down to city hall with me any day of the week, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to mark it. I wanted it to be important. I wanted it to be witnessed—not by a lot of people, just by the significant ones.

  My parents’ house was on the beach, and we planned to have the ceremony there, just before sunset. We were going to have dinner outside, on the deck looking over the ocean, if was warm enough, inside if it was chilly or raining. It was the time of spring when it could go either way. We hired a catering company to come in and do the dinner.

  The nearby town was small and quaint, and since it wasn’t summer, it was also relatively quiet. So, for accommodations, we rented out almost all the rooms in a good-sized bed-and-breakfast—one of those huge, sprawling old houses with a wraparound porch and four-poster beds in each room—and we invited our immediate family and a handful of friends. Nora’s mother and sister (neither of whom I had met) had been picked up at the airport and driven out that morning. Tammy and Neil were the only friends Nora had invited, and they were arriving right before the rehearsal dinner.

  My family was coming out as well: Andrew and his wife and two kids were going to stay at the house with my parents. Emily and Alejandro and Edward had opted to stay at the B&B. The only friends I invited were Marcus and Celia. Though I would have loved an excuse not to have invited them, I had been the best man at their wedding, so I couldn’t think of any way out of it.

  I wondered how most people felt the day before their wedding—though I doubted if one out of a hundred would give an honest answer. People like to report feeling the way they think they’re supposed to feel. They say they were excited, happy—most probably would admit to being nervous, because that’s acceptable—but would a bride, who has been looking forward to the day her whole life, admit it was a disappointment? Or would a groom admit to having a feeling in his gut that it’s really a huge mistake? I didn’t think so.

  Though I shouldn’t be so hard on people—they might not actually be able to tell the truth. Scientists have done studies on people’s abilities to predict what they will feel when they get something they want—and their ability to recall how it really was. It seems that people expect to feel elated when they get the thing they most wanted in the world, but when the event happens, they almost never feel as good as they hoped. The crazy twist is that, if asked long enough after the event, they remember feeling how they thought they would, rather than how they actually felt.

  So you keep running after the things you want, because you think they will satisfy you—and you truly do think that in the past they gave you satisfaction. But the satisfaction itself, the real feeling of it, somehow slips the net. It’s anticipated and remembered but almost never experienced.

  I was certain it was going to be different with Nora. My wedding day would be everything I imagined. I was sure of it.

  I don’t know how to describe how I felt about her. “Love” isn’t the right word. It sounds too peaceful. What I felt was more like a hurricane. I felt buffeted, blown apart by it. I wanted to reach the eye of the storm—the peaceful place in the center, the place of safety. When I felt that, I knew I would have what I wanted.

  I was sure that’s what the wedding day would give me.

  I had thought that shaving her hair off would do it. I thought it would give me what I was looking for. But that wasn’t what happened.

  This is what happened.

  She came out of the bathroom. At first I couldn’t see her. She was backlit, framed by the doorway. And it felt as if another person had come out of the bathroom, and it wasn’t that she looked different, because I couldn’t really see her. Rather, it was something harder to pin down. She stood differently. And when I asked her to come, she walked differently. When I was able to see her face, it was different too.

  I had had an image of what she would look like. I thought she would come out shorn and vulnerable. When I think of it, I always imagine that the shaving of someone’s head is a humbling—a stripping away of something.

  First of all, she didn’t shave it all off. She came close, but she gave herself a short and, I swear to God, almost chic haircut. The vulnerability simply wasn’t there. If anything, it was the opposite. All the neediness I had sensed in her, all the timidity, all the uncertainty—they were all gone.

  But the biggest problem? She came out of that bathroom looking more gorgeous than when she went in. Before, I thought her hair was what brought out her beauty. Maybe it was her hair, but I found it didn’t need to be long. It was the same amazing color and now, being so short, it emphasized her face. She had incredible cheekbones—I had never even noticed. And her eyes, which had just seemed normal before, now looked huge. Her chin came to a delicate point. She was even more a creature of fairy tales. I had thought it was the hair. Apparently, it was just her.

  I wanted a sacrifice, and it turned into a makeover. It would have been funny, if I could have laughed.

  But it wasn’t funny for me. It still left me in that awful place where I couldn’t feel her love. I still needed proof.

  I told myself that when we said our vows I would feel it. That’s the moment when the peace would come.

  Now it was the day before. It was almost here.

  And I will tell you the truth about how I felt the day before my wedding. I couldn’t wait.

  Nora

  The Day Before the Wedding

  I went in the car to pick up my mother and sister at the airport. But not because I wanted to. Lord knows, I was dreading being trapped in a car with the two of them. But if comparison makes people feel better, I could at least console myself that it was better than being trapped in a car with Timothy’s mother.

  I had met his mother a grand total of once. She invited me over for tea. I was met at the door by a butler. At first, I thought the butler was his father. When you’re not used to butlers, and a man opens the door, it’s just logical to assume that he lives there. If he’s the right age, he’s the man of the house.

  But when I held out my hand and said, “I’m Nora,” he just looked at me, then looked at my hand like I was presenting him with a dead fish. Then he said, “Mrs. Whitting is waiting in the salon.”

  He turned around, walked across the foyer, and opened a door.

  When I went through the doorway into the salon, I walked into a room so formal it looked like something out of a museum. All the chairs were stiff-backed brocade and they were lined up along the walls—not in a configuration that makes you think of people sitting and talking.

  There was a woman sitting in one of the chairs, next to a table with two teacups and a pot of tea. She looked tight. Not just the tightness of too much plastic surgery, though there was that. There was a deeper tightness
. I recognized it. It was unhappiness.

  She tried to hide it under a mask of disapproval. She watched me as I walked across the room, and I could see her nose wrinkle slightly.

  I might have felt self-conscious, but Timothy, though he hadn’t warned me about the butler, had told me plenty about his mother. He’d prepped me for what to expect from this visit, and he’d even gone shopping with me, picked out an outfit for me to wear, and told me that I shouldn’t worry about anything because whatever I did it would be wrong. I laughed, thinking he was making a joke. But he quickly let me know that he was being completely serious.

  It seems that, even after all he told me about his mother, I still didn’t quite understand. But, sitting there with her, I suddenly got it. And in that moment, I realized that the stories never quite captured it. It was almost certainly the same when I told my horror stories about growing up with my mother: someone else might hear and take them in and still not understand what it was like—how bad it really was.

  Now, sitting there in front of her, I saw that truly there was no “getting it right” with this woman. I have to say, it made me feel very relaxed. If you really believe that there’s no way to do it right, then you just don’t worry. And one look at Timothy’s mother and I could see he was right.

  I was going to hold out my hand, but when I thought of what the butler did, and also what that woman Celia, his best friend’s wife, did, I thought better of it. I wondered if I should wait until she invited me to sit down. But then I had the thought that she might never invite me to sit down, and I imagined just standing there awkwardly while she talked to me. So I looked for a place to sit. There was no way to sit facing her since there was no chair facing her. In fact, there wasn’t even any chair near her. I chose one on the other side of the table with the tea, but it was facing in the same direction, and it was far enough away that I would have to get up to get a cup of tea.