The Law of Bound Hearts

by Anne Leclaire

  After he hung up, he poured the other glass of brandy. Sam waited.

  “That was a friend of ours,” he said as he handed her a glass. “Libby’s safe. I’ll get her in the morning.” He headed into the living room.

  Sam followed. “Not tonight?” she said.

  If he heard her, he gave no indication. He knelt before the sound system, pushed buttons, adjusted a knob. Music flowed into the room.

  Sam turned and walked away. She carried the brandy up to the room where Richard had left her bag. The sound of a string quartet floated up the stairs and she closed the door to shut it out. She thought about Lee and Alice and Stacy sitting in her kitchen, eating Chinese takeout and working on a wedding cake. She would have given anything to be back with them. It was a mistake to have come to Illinois.

  Libby

  By the time Libby arrived at Gabe’s, a light drizzle was falling. If the temperature dropped another ten degrees, there would be snow. A pickup truck occupied the narrow drive, so she parked on the street. The bungalow had a wide front porch with window boxes filled with frost-killed geraniums. A screen was still in the combination door; soon the weather would call for a storm insert. A bench fashioned of twigs and tree limbs occupied one side of the porch, and she knew without being told that Gabe had made it.

  Almost as soon as she rang the bell, the porch light flicked on and the door opened. On the way over, she had practiced what she was going to say, but now nothing seemed right.

  Gabe opened the door. A greyhound, so old her muzzle was nearly white, bounced over and pressed her head against Libby’s leg.

  “Don’t mind Lulu,” Gabe said. “She has to check out everyone.”

  Libby found her voice. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve got your own troubles, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. He didn’t ask for an explanation. She had the sense that if she’d showed up with an entire Girl Scout troop, he wouldn’t have been caught off balance. “Come on in.”

  The living room was large. It had once been two rooms; Libby could see where the wall had been knocked down and a supporting beam set in. The east-facing window was filled with spider plants and flowering hibiscus. Oversize oil paintings covered the walls. The largest of them depicted a forest with trees composed of human torsos. It might have been grotesque but was lyrical, lovely, powerful.

  The room was sparsely furnished. Futon couch, platform rocker, morris chair. Unpainted planks for a bookcase. Early-marriage decorating, Libby thought, a stage of skimping, of castoffs from parents and cheap casseroles, that she and Richard had never gone through. She wondered now if it would have made a difference if they’d had to struggle. Would it have made them closer, more prepared to weather hard times?

  She sank into the morris chair. Lulu plunked down at her feet, licked her hand.

  “She misses Hannah,” Gabe said. “She tolerates me, but she’s really Hannah’s. She’s a rescued greyhound. Hannah says as soon as she gets well, we’re getting another one.”

  “How is Hannah?”

  Gabe looked off, focusing for a moment on a place he alone could see. “They tell me things don’t look hopeful,” he said. “So much is going wrong at once.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. Sorry. A feeble, empty word in the face of such pain.

  “Her parents are with her now. We’ve been taking turns. They’ll call if there’s any change.” He drew a deep breath. “The nurses tell us she’s unresponsive, but this afternoon, when I was holding her hand and talking to her, I swear I felt her fingers tighten on mine. No one understands what a fighter she is. Hannah won’t give up.”

  There was so much hope on his face, Libby had to look away. She thought about hearing Hannah’s voice in the motel corridor and wondered if she should tell Gabe, then decided against it. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “No, I’m glad you did. Really. Hannah would be glad, too.”

  She sniffed the air. “I’m not sure but I think something’s burning,” she said.

  “Jesus,” he said, bounding from the room. “I was frying up some bacon and eggs when you came.”

  Alone in the room, Libby remained pinned in the chair by the weight of the greyhound, who now lay across her feet. From the kitchen she heard sounds of a window being opened, water running in a sink. She looked around the room, settled her gaze on a stack of books piled on the side table, saw they were poetry. Donald Hall. Sharon Olds. Richard Wilbur. Marianne Moore. Auden. Neruda. She remembered how Gabe had recited poetry the other day on the prairie.

  She picked up the Neruda. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. When she opened it she saw Gabe’s name written in firm script on the inside cover. She turned to the final poem; her eyes fell on a phrase: “Sadness stunned you.”

  The great poets always got it right. That was exactly what sadness did. It stupefied and stunned one.

  “You like Neruda?” Gabe said. He was holding a cup.

  “You’d have to be in a coma not to,” Libby said and could have slit her tongue.

  “He’s Hannah’s favorite.” He handed her the dish. “Applesauce,” he said. “That should be okay for you.”

  She swallowed, her throat suddenly tight, and took the cup.

  “How many have you missed?” he asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “How many treatments have you missed?”

  She wondered how he knew. “One,” she said. “This morning.”

  She hadn’t thought she was hungry but the applesauce was cool in her throat and she ate it all.

  Saying nothing, he watched her until she finished.

  “Does Richard know you’re here?”

  She shook her head.

  “You should let him know. I’m sure he’s worried.”

  “Do you want me to go?”

  He shook his head.

  She relaxed. The old greyhound pressed closer against her legs. She could feel the warmth through her pant leg.

  “You need to call Richard.”

  “Will you?” she said.

  She gave him the number and listened as he told Richard where she was, that she was all right.

  “He’s going to come and get you in the morning,” Gabe said after he hung up.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “He was relieved to know that you’re safe,” he said.

  Libby nodded. What had she expected of Richard? That he’d insist on coming over? That he’d fly to her rescue?

  “Oh,” Gabe continued. “He also wanted me to tell you that your sister’s here.”

  “Samantha?”

  “Yes. He said to tell you she’s here. At your house.”

  Libby was shocked into silence.

  Sam

  The guest room was at the far end of the upstairs hall and was considerably larger than Sam’s bedroom at home. It was decorated in lilac and white with accents of green—Libby’s favorite colors, Sam remembered suddenly—and held a king-size bed. Action beds, Lee called them. A wash of longing came over her and she would have called him right then, just for the comfort of hearing his voice, but she held back. If she phoned again she knew he would insist on flying out. It was ridiculous, this foreboding she had about Lee meeting Libby. This was Lee, for God’s sake, her Lee, but she couldn’t rationalize the fear away.

  She wandered into the guest bathroom, investigated the miniature mauve bottles amassed in a basket on the vanity. Shampoo, bath gel, conditioner, body lotion. There was a gray stone dish on a shelf by the sink holding an oval of soap tied in twine, a sprig of dried lavender caught in the knot. She could picture Libby picking the herb, tying the twine. There was a stack of towels, soft as velvet. So unlike the rough, line-dried towels of their childhood.

  Can’t you put them in the dryer? Libby begs. I should say not, their mother says. Do you know how much electricity a dryer uses? Well, I’ll always dry mine in a dryer when I grow up, Libby says.

  In the medicine cabinet Sam
found toothpaste and dental floss, a toothbrush still in cellophane, a small bottle of mouthwash, an aerosol container of shaving cream, and a new razor. Behind the door, there was an oversize terry robe hanging on a brass hook. Trust Libby to think of everything. There were tony hotels that weren’t this well appointed.

  Sam hadn’t planned for a long visit and it took her little time to unpack her one bag. Ordinarily on trips she lived out of her suitcase, but under the influence of Libby’s immaculate home, she put her things away in the closet and dresser, neatly, as if later there would be an inspection.

  She found the booklets in the second drawer of the dresser. “Your Kidney Transplant—Every Step of the Way” was the title of the first. The second, smaller one was “Kidney Transplantation: Information for Potential Living Donors.” Sam’s first reaction was anger. How like Libby, she thought, to put them where I was bound to find them. Cynthia’s words echoed: I hope she hasn’t guilt-tripped you into being tested. But then she realized she was being paranoid. Libby’d had no idea she was coming.

  Just the titles made Sam queasy. She shoved the booklets back in the drawer, out of sight, then stripped down for a shower. The shower-head was as big as a skillet and she turned her face up to the stream of water, letting the warmth of it relax her. The scent of the bath soap was familiar. Definitely herbal. Not lavender. Rosemary. That was it. Expensive, she was certain. Nothing but the best for Libby.

  Like the bed linens, she thought minutes later as she slipped between the sheets. Probably eight hundred count. Was there such a thing? She lay in the dark, enfolded by the luxury of her sister’s life. An old ember of anger glowed. Libby had everything, why hadn’t that been enough? Why had she needed to take the only thing Sam had?

  She took a deep breath—it was supposed to help but never did— and waited in the stillness for sleep. But it wasn’t really still, for silence never was, and sounds rose up, infiltrating the quiet. The creaking of a floorboard, the faint melody of Richard’s music floating up from the living room, and, in counterpoint to it, a distant train whistle and the rhythmic rolling of wheels on tracks. She remembered seeing the depot in the center of town, a picturesque station that looked like part of a children’s game. She listened to the wheels circling on and on in the distance, endlessly. She recalled Libby once saying that the train from Wisconsin to Chicago was one of the longest in the nation. She wondered if that was true.

  Once Sam had believed Libby’s every word was gospel, but that was another time, back when she trusted her sister, when she thought Libby would lie to anyone but never to her. She thought about the story Libby had made up to explain their estrangement to Richard, and a flush of anger heated her chest. Wouldn’t she like to just storm down the stairs and hand him the flat-out truth. Sleep now impossible, she sat up and flicked on the bedside lamp.

  It had been a huge mistake to come. She would leave in the morning. Or the afternoon, she decided. After she had seen Libby. She supposed she owed her at least that.

  Downstairs, the music shifted, grew louder, tempestuous, near violent. Sam listened for a moment, then, as if in some way propelled by the music and deprived of all will, she got up and crossed to the dresser, opened the second drawer. What are you doing? a voice in her head demanded. The booklets were glossy, in full color. “Now I know that dreams do come true,” declared a cover quote on “Your Kidney Transplant—Every Step of the Way.” She picked up the other booklet, the one intended for donors, and returned to the bed. She scanned the table of contents—“Effects of Kidney Donation,” “Initial Evaluation,” “Making the Decision,” “Hospitalization for Donation Surgery,” “Recovery”—then flipped to the introduction. She read the first paragraph:

  This book is intended to provide some answers for you as you consider donating one of your kidneys to a loved one who has lost their kidney function and is facing dialysis treatment. Presently, a kidney transplant is the best chance for rehabilitation and long-term survival.

  The print swam before her and she had to close her eyes. Long-term survival. Until that moment, reading those words, Sam had not allowed herself to believe Libby was seriously ill. It had not seemed real.

  She swallowed past the burning in her throat. The bedside extension rang and the booklet fell from her fingers. Libby? Mercedes? On the second ring, she reached over and lifted the receiver. She held her breath and listened. Richard’s voice. And a woman’s. The doctor getting back to him about Libby? She should hang up. She pressed the receiver to her ear.

  “Sorry I’m calling so late,” the woman said, “but I was concerned about Elizabeth. We were all so worried when she wasn’t at the center today. Is she all right?”

  “She’s fine,” Richard said.

  Fine? What planet was he from?

  “Well, no need to bother her if she’s sleeping,” the woman continued. “Just tell her Eleanor called. And tell her Jesse wanted her to know the prayer group put her in the circle tonight and that they’re praying for her.”

  Sam set the receiver back on the cradle. If the caller had said the tooth fairy was thinking of Libby, Sam couldn’t have been more astonished. Had illness made her sister turn to religion? Sam supposed that wasn’t unusual. But Libby? Libby the Irreverent? The religious renegade?

  A memory surfaced, sweeping her back.

  She is eleven, Libby thirteen.

  She waits while Libby tells their mother they are going to visit one of Libby’s friends—a brazen lie, told with a guileless face. Sam doesn’t know how her sister does this. Their mother always knows when Sam is fibbing.

  “Come on,” Libby calls over her shoulder once they are out of sight of the house. “We’re going to be late.”

  At St. Martin’s Cemetery they chain their bikes to the rail fence. While Sam waits, Libby slips off her backpack and takes out a pair of two-inch heels, so new the black soles are perfectly smooth. She removes her sneakers and puts on the new shoes, then hides the backpack behind a grave marker. On the next grave, a statue of Mary looms, sorrow on her face, as if she knows exactly what they are up to. Sam’s narrow shoulders slump with the weight of guilt and fear.

  In the short time it takes to reach the wide granite steps of the church, she begs Libby to change her mind. “What if we see someone we know?” she pleads, near tears. Her protests are useless, as they always are when Libby has her mind set. This is all the fault of that stupid, stupid Janice McKenney.

  The stone church is larger than the Congregational church they attend on occasional Sundays and on Christmas and Easter holidays, the front door so massive it takes both of them to open it. They step into a hollow of cold air and stand for a moment, as if waiting for instructions. Sam expects a hand to grip her shoulder. She would not be surprised to hear a disembodied voice demand that they leave.And she wants to go, truly she does, but Libby grabs her arm and marches them straight inside.

  “It smells funny,” Sam whispers, but Libby shushes her, tells her it’s only incense. Sam thinks her sister has said “incensed,” a word her mother uses when she is really angry, and her stomach gives a little jump. If Libby didn’t still have hold of her arm, she would bolt for sure.

  Midway down the aisle, Libby chooses a pew and slides in. An old woman, who smells like wet wool and bacon, moves over, making room for them. Libby nods her thanks, but the woman is now kneeling on a narrow wooden bench and Libby quickly kneels, too. But within minutes they are back sitting on the pew, and just as Sam is settling in, everyone stands. It is so confusing, it gives Sam a headache—standing, kneeling, sitting, making the sign of the cross. She thinks people are looking at them, but Libby pays no attention.

  At last comes the part of the service Libby has been waiting for. Pew by pew, people stand, slide out to the center aisle, and file to the front. Libby pushes Sam into the line and they take their place, inching forward toward the priest.

  Sam hates Janice McKenney. Stupid, know-it-all Janice McKenney who acts like she’s Boss of the World and is totall
y responsible for their being here.

  “The Communion wafer is the actual body of Christ,” Janice told Libby one day on the way home from school. “If you chew it, it’s as if you are biting into the flesh of Jesus.”

  “It’s just chunks of Wonder bread,” Libby had replied, but Sam could tell by the way Libby held her mouth that Janice’s superior attitude was getting to her sister.

  “That’s all you know,” Janice said. “Anyway, you can’t take Communion in our church because you aren’t Catholic.”

  “I can so,” Libby said.

  “It’s a sin,” Janice repeated firmly. “Everyone knows that.”

  Why didn’t Libby just laugh in her face? For a fact, Libby didn’t even like to go to church. She could have cared less about stupid things like Communion. But of course she wouldn’t walk away. She never did. Their mother said Libby was born with her fists raised.

  “I could if I wanted to,” Libby told Janice, “and you couldn’t stop me.”

  “That’s all you know,” Janice said. “It would be a sin.”

  “So what if I did?”

  “The nuns told us,” Janice said, her voice filled with importance. “Flames would shoot out of your shoes.”

  That was all Libby needed to hear.

  So here they stand, within a few feet of a stern-faced priest who is passing out wafers that are “the actual body of Christ,” a priest who will surely see immediately they are not Catholic. Sam hasn’t wet her pants in years, but she is afraid she will now. She wonders if the priest will call their parents. Or the police.

  Libby goes first. Sam can hardly bear to watch. Her sister raises her head. She pokes out her tongue, way out like when the doctor says to say aah. Her face is clear of guilt, just as it is when she tells her mother a lie. The priest places a wafer on Libby’s tongue.

  Sam drops her eyes to her sister’s feet. Flames would shoot out of your shoes. Libby is tapping her toe. Just by the tick-tick-ticking of the shoe tip against the floor, Sam can tell her sister is smiling.