The Law of Bound Hearts

by Anne Leclaire

  Libby looked down at the paper, at the words written more than twenty years ago. She began to turn the lines over in her mind, wondering why she had never finished the poem. That long-ago day was suddenly perfectly clear to her, clearer than anything that had happened in weeks. Once she’d had more important things to do than polish silver and launder sheets. Once she had been a girl who looked up and saw not larks but hands signing against the sky. Once, she thought, once she had been a girl daring enough to write poetry, a girl bold enough to break into the house of a cheating boy and glue shut the flies on his pants.

  A picture—as vivid as a scene from a video she and Richard had watched last weekend—flashed in her mind. A girl—herself—in a convertible, hair flying in the wind, foot propped on the dashboard, knee bent like the wing of a bird. There is a bottle of beer in her hand, held low so it is concealed from sight, and she is laughing, filled with the joy of summer, the exultation of being free.

  The image faded. Sorrow and loss weighed on her. When had she lost the girl she had once been? When had she lost herself?

  The pain hit then, knifing through her, erasing memory. It took her hard, robbed her of breath. She heard a sob—half scream—knew it was her own.

  As if from a distance, she heard Eleanor call for Kelly, but the nurse was already there, bending over her, talking to her, fiddling with the machine. One of the technicians was clearing the bay of visitors.

  Voices floated in from afar. She tried to brace herself against the pain, but it was immense, like nothing she had known, worse than childbirth. Her body was honeycombed with pain. She wondered if she was dying. Her legs contorted with spasm. Her fingers twisted, became crone’s hands.

  Dimly, she heard Kelly talking to her, telling her she would be okay, stroking her arm, telling her to breathe, telling her to hang on, hang in, promising her the pain would go away. Someone brought warm pads and laid them on her legs. Later they would explain to her how the cramps were caused by an imbalance, a too-quick shift of sodium and fluid in her body. But for now she knew only the pain.

  “It will ease up soon,” Kelly promised.

  “Happened to me once, too,” Eleanor said.

  “You just be like a Timex, honey,” Jesse was saying. “That’s what you got to do. You just take a licking and keep on ticking, that’s what you got to do.”

  Libby tuned them all out. She wondered again if she was dying, if this, this sweeping, paralyzing pain that made thought and breath impossible, if this was what death felt like.

  Then, suddenly, warmth brushed over her, flowed through her, surrounded her as if she had been submerged in a bath. She did not open her eyes but knew the source of the heat, felt it flow from the station opposite hers. Finally she managed to lift her eyelids. Hannah Rose was staring at her. Libby blocked out everything—Eleanor’s words, Jesse’s chattering, the weight of Kelly’s hand on her shoulder— everything but the girl’s eyes.

  I’m with you. The words floated silently across the space that separated them. And then again: I’m with you. You’re not alone.

  Libby closed her eyes, surrendered to the warmth, allowed the incandescence to enclose her. She concentrated on the soft syllables of the girl’s name. Han-nah.

  Slowly, the pain receded. The cramps eased and her legs straightened, relaxed. Libby could bear to return to her body.

  When Libby opened her eyes, she looked over at the girl in the opposite chaise. Then her gaze fell on her tray table, on the pink-edged card. Each day comes bearing a gift. Untie the ribbons.

  Hannah, she thought. She raised her eyes, looked again at the girl.

  Across the bay, the girl’s mouth curved in a gentle smile and she nodded.

  Sam

  Earlier a V of geese had flown over, called south by some instinct that defied imagination. Sam wondered what it would be like to live an existence governed solely by instincts.

  In the boatyard, the majority of the yachts were settled in cradles, like ghosts shrink-wrapped against the weather to come. A handful were still moored at their slips, kept there by sailors who prolonged the season as long as they could.

  There was a slight chop in the harbor and Sam’s fingers whitened on the gunwale. She was already regretting this. She’d been fourteen the last time she had tried sailing and had been intimidated by the instructor, a cool Dartmouth boy far more interested in flirting with Libby than he’d been in teaching an awkward high school freshman her way around a boat. He’d seen at once how nervous Sam was, but instead of reassuring her, he’d thrown directions and nautical terms at her so rapidly (windward, leeward, main sheet, jibe, tack, and center of effort) that she’d become completely rattled. Within minutes, while he’d yelled at her from the raft where Libby was sunbathing in a bikini, she had managed to capsize the dinghy. With no desire ever to repeat the humiliating experience, she had stayed away from sail-boats for years. Until today.

  Lee had been trying to talk her into this since their first date, and she had finally succumbed. They were in the smaller of his two boats, a Herreshoff 12½, a sixteen-foot gaff-rigged sloop. She focused on him, trying to draw a measure of confidence from his sure movements, his attunement with sea and boat. He looked as if he had been born to this.

  “The first step,” he said, “is to determine wind direction.”

  Her stomach began to knot.

  He pointed to the flagpole in the yard. “It’s blowing northwest,” he said.

  She nodded, as if that meant something to her. Okay, she told herself, a child can do this. She’d seen kids no more than ten ripping around the harbor in Optimist dinghies. In the distance she heard the clanging of halyards snapping against masts.

  Lee started letting out the sail. “It’s simple,” he told her. “Get on course, then let the sail out until it luffs, then pull it in a bit until the luffing stops.”

  She nodded again, her mouth drawn tight. Lu fs? She had told him she didn’t want to do this.

  “With this boat, because it was so well designed, we’re aiming to balance the sails so that you can let go of the tiller and still have the boat track in the same direction.”

  Track? Above her, the sail curved out, then tightened. The boat slipped through the harbor. It looked so easy when he did it.

  “Sailing is all a matter of balance.”

  She tightened her grip, braced her feet against the floorboards.

  “Here. You try it.”

  She froze. “I can’t.” She felt fourteen again, stupid and inept.

  “Sure you can.”

  She shook her head. Her fingers curled over the deck coaming.

  He gave her a steady look, then reached over and pulled her to his side. He placed her hand on the tiller and covered it with his own. “You can do this, Sam. I know you can.”

  She gripped the helm, felt the tension run up her forearm, through her biceps. She did not want to be doing this.

  “Relax,” Lee said. “The trick is, stay cool. Don’t oversteer.”

  “I’m not,” she said. Why had she let him talk her into this? She hated sailing.

  “Lean back against me,” he said. “And relax. I won’t let anything happen. Promise.”

  “Right,” she said, still mad.

  He laughed. “Come on, Sam. Don’t be stubborn.” They skimmed past Ram Island. “Give it half a chance. Trust me, you’re going to fall in love with sailing.”

  Fat chance. Her hand tightened on the tiller. “Which way do I tack?” She remembered that from the Dartmouth boy. You were supposed to tack.

  “Forget about all that for now,” Lee said. “Just try and feel what it’s like. Imagine being one with everything around you. The boat, the water, the wind.”

  One with everything. Right. “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Oh, God.” They were leaving Sippican Harbor, heading out beyond the jetty into Buzzards Bay.

  “Take a deep breath,” he said, drawing her tighter against him. “Close your ey
es.”

  “What?”

  “Come on. Just close your eyes.”

  Close her eyes? Was he crazy? “Not on your life.”

  “I’ve got the helm with you. Nothing will happen.”

  She scanned the horizon. There were no other boats in sight. “Why?”

  “Just try it.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Relax.”

  Right, she thought. But, surprisingly, it was easier with her eyes closed. It calmed her nerves. The boat did not capsize. Gradually her irritation and anxiety ratcheted down.

  He pressed his head to hers. “What we want to do,” he said, “is keep the boat steady. Feel the groove.”

  Her eyes popped open.

  “Eyes closed,” he said.

  “What’s the groove?” she asked after a minute, eyes again shut.

  “It’s hard to describe,” he said. “It’s like a slot you and the boat find together, heading upwind. Don’t think about it, just feel it.”

  She chewed at her lip. What exactly was she supposed to feel?

  “Listen to the wake slap against the chop, water against water. Smell the air. The salt of seaweed and salt and pine tar.” He laughed. “My brother used to say it smelled like watermelon.”

  “Watermelon doesn’t smell.”

  “That’s what most people think. But it does. And it’s close to this. A combo of salt air and must,” he said. “Do you feel the boat heel, the acceleration?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s it,” he said. “The sounds and smells and the feel of the boat and the water. Take it all in. That’s the groove.”

  She lifted her face to the wind, felt salt spray mist her cheeks. She felt, at her back, the heat of Lee’s body. Her grip—beneath his— eased.

  They picked up speed and the breeze lifted Sam’s hair away from her face. Beneath her feet, through the planks, she felt the rush of the sea. Adrenaline coursed through her. She surprised herself by laughing.

  “Attagirl,” he said. “Do you feel it?”

  “The groove?”

  “Freedom. Do you feel the freedom?”

  She smiled into the wind, laughed again. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.” She was beginning to understand. This was why he loved to sail. This was what he could teach her.

  Lee opened a couple of beers. Sam prepared lunch—westerns, although since he didn’t eat red meat she made them without the ham and so technically they were not westerns. She diced onions, added them to the eggs, and poured the mixture into the skillet. He came over and handed her a beer, kissed her cheek. She turned her face so the kiss slid to her lips.

  “We could get seriously derailed here,” he said minutes later.

  She laughed. “Lunch first,” she said.

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Your crew’s beyond hungry. Perishing.” She felt so alive, energized. They had sailed for more than an hour and by the time they returned to the harbor, she had actually been trimming the sails by herself. And once or twice, she had thought she felt the groove Lee spoke of. She adjusted the flame to low.

  “You’re telling me you want lunch before love?” He nuzzled her neck, cupped the small of her back, pulled her to him. “Bet I could make you change your mind.”

  “You’d lose.”

  “You’re tough.” His hand slid over her buttocks.

  She slipped her hands beneath his shirt and felt his flat belly. “Not so tough,” she said. “Just starving.” But it wasn’t that. Not at all. It was the idea of delaying that moment when they would go up to the bedroom. She loved the anticipation, the way it made her whole body ache for him, made the air hum with the intensity of their desire. The heat she was feeling now, they’d be lucky if they got to finish half a sandwich.

  He kissed her again, a long, deep kiss that held the passion and promise of what was to come. She could feel the heat of desire in the hollow of her ankle, the arch of her foot, the pulse point at her wrist. When he let her go, her legs nearly gave way.

  He crossed to the table, pulled out a chair. She gave him a wide grin. She loved being in love. Days like today, the dread that lay beneath—the fear that something would happen to destroy it— actually eased.

  “Will you do something for me?” Lee asked.

  “What do you have in mind?” She flipped the omelet. “Does it involve whips? High heels? Handcuffs?”

  “Seriously.”

  “What?” Anything, she thought. Just ask. She was madly in love with him, the scary kind of deep, nothing-held-back, for-a-lifetime love.

  He set the bottle down. “Will you tell me why it’s been six years since you talked to your sister?”

  She shivered, as if a sea breeze had suddenly swept through the kitchen. They hadn’t talked about Libby for a couple of days. She had hoped he wouldn’t bring it up again, but of course had known that he would. “What does it matter?”

  He rose, took the spatula from her, turned off the flame beneath the skillet, forced her to look at him. “It matters, Sam.”

  “Why?”

  He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Because I love you.”

  “And I love you.” Why couldn’t he let this alone?

  “And I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  She closed her eyes and took in his words.

  The rest of their lives. Forever. She wanted that, too, and for that moment, allowed herself to believe that such a thing was possible, believing it just as innocently as did the brides who came into her shop.

  “And I just can’t ignore the fact that you have a sister,” Lee said. “A sister you haven’t spoken to in six years. I need to know what happened.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with us,” she said. She wanted to return to the magic of that moment when he’d said he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. She didn’t want that ruined.

  “Of course it does.”

  “I don’t think so.” She wished he’d stop pushing, just let it go.

  “Don’t you see? It’s about trust. When you keep something like that from me, it feels like you don’t trust me.”

  “I trust you.” She thought back to the morning, when they were on the boat—how she’d closed her eyes, let him guide her. She had trusted him completely. Or as much as she had anyone in a long, long time, as much as she was capable of.

  “So why won’t you tell me what happened?”

  “You won’t understand. Can’t we just drop it? I’m sorry I ever told you that I have a sister.”

  “Sam,” he said. “Do you think something disappears just because you don’t talk about it?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He took her hands, forced her to look at him.

  “Try me,” he pressed. “Please.”

  “You want to know what happened?”

  “Yes.”

  It had always been easier for her to feel mad than sad and she swallowed against the anger that closed her throat. “Okay,” she said. “My sister stole everything from me. Satisfied? Now can you let it go?”

  “Stole what?”

  “Everything.”

  He considered that for a moment. “Whatever she took, Sam, it wasn’t everything.”

  She sighed. “It was close enough.”

  “And you can’t forgive her?”

  She pulled her hands from his. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I’m trying to, Sam. I want to. But you’re right. I don’t. It just doesn’t make sense. Whatever happened between you, how can you cut off love like it never happened?”

  Libby calls from the road, less than an hour away. Although the visit is completely unexpected, taking her by surprise, Sam doesn’t question it. Before she even hangs up the phone, she starts making plans. That afternoon they will head over to Tiverton and pick wild strawberries, just as they had when they were girls. On the way home, they will stop for ice cream. For dinner they will have the salad Libby lov
es: grilled bluefish and field greens tossed with the strawberries. They will drink white wine until they’re tipsy and then they’ll talk into the night.And maybe then Sam will share the things she has not dared tell anyone. If anyone can understand what she has to say, it is her sister.

  When Libby’s car finally pulls into the drive, Sam races to meet her, hugging her until they are both breathless. She fights tears. The missing has been marrow deep.

  Libby plans to stay for a week. Maybe two. Sam delights in the stretch of days they will have and does not stop to question the suddenness of the visit, or the length, although her sister has never before left the twins for more than a weekend. All she can think about is her own need for Libby. Two weeks. Two glorious weeks. Time to talk and laugh, to get caught up, to get advice. Sam is blinded by joy at having her sister there. Is that why at first she does not see the sorrow in Libby’s eyes?

  The third day, they have a small argument when Libby says she thinks Sam is wasting her talents by becoming a cook. The way she says it, it sounds like Sam plans to spend her life flipping burgers at a diner. Sam explains she’s studying to be a pastry chef. You can do better, Libby says. The moment passes. Soon they have found something to laugh at. But the small conflict unnerves Sam, and that night she turns around in the parking lot at Johnson & Wales and ducks out of her evening class. She imagines another night of conversation ahead, making popcorn. Maybe tonight she’ll confide in Libby, tell her some of the things that have been bothering her. She knows every couple hits rocky spots, marriage isn’t Eden, after all, everyone knows that, but it will feel good to talk to Libby about it. And maybe Libby will tell Sam her own problems, whatever it is that makes her stare off into space with sad eyes.

  Tonight, Sam thinks, she will ask Libby’s advice about the things she has been too proud to talk to anyone else about. She rushes into the house, calls out for Libby. (Later, she remembers those last moments of innocence and trust and how she stood in the front hall of the apartment and called out to her sister.) There is no answer, and then she hears voices. And music. Carly Simon. (To this day Sam cannot bear to hear the singer.) She runs up the stairs, toward the music. Toward the voices. Libby’s.And Jay’s. Even then, as she follows their voices to her bedroom, she is unprepared, does not suspect.