The Law of Bound Hearts

by Anne Leclaire

  “Lee met you?” Libby said.

  “Indeed. With balloons, flowers, and a ring.”

  “Tell him I send my love. And I’ll see you in a couple of days.” Libby paused. “Sam? If you change your mind about this, I understand. If you change your mind at any time, I’ll understand.”

  “I won’t change my mind.” Sam reached over and laid her hand on Lee’s thigh. He covered it with his.

  “Just so you know,” Libby said.

  “I know.”

  “And you’ll call me with your arrival time and the flight number?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Richard will meet you at O’Hare.”

  “Okay.” Sam heard the rattle of dog tags. “How’s Lulu?”

  “She misses Hannah. Every time someone walks in the door, she looks up, then she kind of sighs and drops her head.”

  “The service is this afternoon?”

  “At four.”

  “I’ll be thinking of you.”

  “Thanks. Me you, too.”

  After she clicked off, Sam turned to Lee. “Hannah’s memorial service is this afternoon. It’s going to be hard on Libby.”

  The notice had requested that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to Greyhound Rescue or to the scholarship fund set up in Hannah’s name, but even so, the front of the funeral parlor was filled with floral arrangements. The room was oversweet with their scent and windows had been opened to let in fresh air. People had been filing in steadily for the past forty minutes. The staff had had to set up additional folding chairs.

  There was a guest book in the entry and Richard signed for them both, then guided Libby into the room, past a table with framed photos. Hannah as a child. Hannah at Halloween, dressed as a fairy with gossamer wings as big as she was, waving a flyswatter wand. Hannah with Lulu. Hannah with Gabe. After one glance, Libby turned away. She could not bear to look at them. She kept seeing Hannah as she had been in the dialysis center, smiling with a calm knowingness. Richard found two seats. Libby recognized people from town and the staff from the center. Jesse and Eleanor sat two rows in front of her. They had seen her come in and now shifted in their seats to smile at her. Gabe sat in front, Lulu resting at his feet. Hannah’s parents, shrunken with grief, sat next to him.

  Libby held Richard’s hand so tight, her knuckles were white. The service began. The minister rose and said the usual thing about everyone gathering not to mourn but to celebrate Hannah’s life. There was a click as the sound system went on, and then the first notes, the low call of the tuba, then trumpet and trombone. A low-down, bluesy rendition of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” There was poetry, read by Hannah’s closest friends. Auden and Dickinson and Neruda. Someone from the local greyhound rescue chapter spoke. Libby’s mind drifted. Her gaze kept returning to Gabe and to Hannah’s parents. She wondered how they could bear the loss of a daughter. She didn’t know how they managed to breathe. The thought of anything happening to Mercedes made her feel faint. Tomorrow, she thought. Mercy will be home tomorrow. She needed her daughter, wanted to hold her. She floated away from the unbearable poignancy of the funeral, replayed Mercy’s phone call in her mind.

  “Mom?” Mercy had said.

  “Hello, dear.” Libby had resolved to stay calm, no matter what Mercy had to tell her.

  “Matt told me he called you last night,” her daughter said.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No.”

  “Is Dad?”

  “Neither of us is angry with you. We’re just wondering, if you have a problem, why you couldn’t come to us.” A note of reproof had crept into her tone.

  Through the connection, Libby heard Mercy draw in a breath. “I knew you’d be upset.”

  “I’m not upset, Mercy. I’m concerned.” Libby marshaled her thoughts.

  “I know you’re really going to be mad,” Mercy said.

  “Mercy. Listen to me. I won’t be angry. I promise. Whatever you have to tell me, I won’t get mad.” Libby looked across the kitchen. Lulu looked up from her bed and flapped her tail several times against the floor. Whatever Mercy tells me, Libby thought, whatever it is, I’ll stay calm.

  “Mom,” Mercy said.

  “I’m here.”

  “I’m quitting school.”

  Libby sat down. Jesus, she thought. I can’t take this. I can’t take one more thing.

  “Mom?”

  “It’s okay,” she said. But it was not okay. At that moment, she wanted to kill Mercy.

  “Mom?” Mercy said again.

  She steadied her mind, tried to find the right thing to say. The greyhound got up and came to her, put her narrow muzzle on Libby’s lap, rolled her eyes up. Libby stroked the soft coat.

  “Just come home,” she said. “Come home and we’ll talk about it. Okay?”

  “Will you tell Dad? Oh, God, I’m so scared of what he’ll say.”

  “He’ll be fine, Mercy. He loves you. We both do. Just come home. Do you want to fly? I can get a reservation.”

  “I’ll drive. Matt said he’d come with me.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will. Oh, God, I feel terrible—I haven’t even asked how you are. How are the treatments?”

  Libby started to say that she was fine and then remembered Matt telling her they did not need protecting, that they needed to know the truth. She took a deep breath and said, “Well, dialysis has its good days and bad.” Like life, she thought. “My doctor thinks the sooner I get a transplant, the better it will be.”

  “That’s what I’ve been reading, too,” Mercy said. Her voice was steady. “Matt got all this stuff about it off the Net.”

  “Your Aunt Sam wants to be the donor,” Libby said.

  “She does?”

  “Yes. She’s already had the preliminary tests.”

  “When would it happen?”

  “Soon.”

  “I’m glad I’ll be there.”

  “Me, too.”

  I can’t handle this, Libby thought after she hung up. But of course she would. She knew that somehow one always handled what life doled out. Even the things that leveled you. A lump in the breast. A midnight phone call. Betrayal of love. Positive test results. A daughter dropping out of school. Death.

  Now Hannah’s father was walking to the podium, a tall man shriveled by grief, his steps slowed by the weight of sorrow. He gripped the edges of the podium and looked straight out. He did not read from notes.

  “Hannah’s mother and I and Gabriel thank you for coming.” He stopped, looked down, gathered himself. Libby could not imagine the courage it took for him to speak.

  “I guess I could stand up here all day and talk about Hannah,” he went on. “But it wouldn’t be enough.” He paused. His eyes clouded, looked off somewhere none of them could see, and the air seemed to go out of him. Then his gaze cleared. Even from where she sat, Libby could see the visible effort this cost him, this coming back.

  “Bear with me while I tell you a story,” he said.

  A man to her left sighed. Libby gave him a dirty look.

  “When I was five,” the father began, “my grandmother died.”

  Libby liked the way he said “died” straight out, dispensing with euphemisms. Around her, people sat up a little straighter, leaned forward, listening.

  “She was Welsh. After some discussion, it was decided that my mother and I would fly to Wales for the funeral. It was December,” he said, and then he smiled. “A child’s Christmas in Wales.

  “My grandmother lived in a village near Cardiff. We arrived the day before the service. I couldn’t understand anyone and so was mostly frightened, but what really unnerved me was my grandmother’s coffin that had been set on a table in her living room. The first night, the house was filled with people. At one point, there was a knock on the door. Everyone fell silent, then the oldest woman I’d ever seen came in. She was so tiny, I could have looked her in the eye, had I dared, which I didn’t. Sh
e looked exactly like the witch in my illustrated book of fairy tales.”

  Around Libby, people were leaning forward, intent on his story. At some point, Richard had put his arm around her.

  “No one said anything to her, not a word, they just parted and made way for her to reach the coffin. A saucer had been placed on top of the casket, and the old lady reached up and grasped it. She brought it to her lips and ate what it held. And then, as quickly and as wordlessly as she had arrived, she disappeared.”

  He stopped and looked down at the row where his wife sat. She nodded at him, a slight bend of her head. He took a breath and continued.

  “Years later my mother told me it was a Welsh custom. The old lady was a professional sin-eater. The saucer held salt, and the belief was that all the sins of the dead were contained in that dish of salt. When the sin-eater ate the salt, it absolved the dead woman of her sins.”

  He turned toward the coffin. For the first time, his voice failed. He looked down, took a breath, then continued. “We wouldn’t need a bowl of salt or a sin-eater for Hannah, because she never sinned.”

  Libby brushed away tears. Richard slipped his handkerchief into her hand.

  “I know what you must be thinking,” Hannah’s father continued. “You must be thinking, oh, that’s a father talking. But if you think for a moment about Hannah, you’ll know it’s true. She never sinned. Not the big ones like lying or stealing or hate. Or the small, mean ones like gossiping or envy. Or withholding love. She was filled with such goodness and sweetness.” He looked over at Hannah’s casket. Every eye in the room followed. “If there were a saucer on her coffin,” he said, “it would surely hold sugar, not salt.

  “In her last weeks with us, she told her beloved Gabriel that they didn’t have time to feel sorry for themselves. They only had time for the good thoughts. She said that every day must be one of the good ones.”

  He walked to his daughter’s coffin and laid a hand on it, bowed his head. His wife rose. She held a hand out to Gabe. Together, with the greyhound, they joined her husband to stand beside Hannah’s coffin.

  Hannah’s father turned to face the people who had come to mourn her death and to celebrate her life. “That’s what she would want you to remember,” he said. “Every day must be one of the good ones.”

  And then the service was over.

  Libby and Sam

  How do you feel about it?” Sam asked Libby. They were in the outer office, waiting for the nurse to call Sam’s name. She had returned to Illinois, having decided to have the tests performed there after all, rather than in Boston. During the past week, she had completed the final round and met with the members of her transplant team. Today, after Dr. Forest gave her the final okay, they would set the date for the surgery.

  “How do you think I feel?” Libby said. “I mean Mercy’s only eighteen.” She breathed a long sigh. “What will she do? Work at Starbucks? God, this would have killed Mother.”

  “If she weren’t already dead,” Sam said. They both started to laugh. An older patient, overhearing, glared at them and muttered the words “no respect” just loud enough for them to hear. Libby snorted, which made Sam laugh harder. As children, she and Libby would occasionally start laughing over some silly thing—uncontrollable laughter, the kind that one of them could set off in the other by just giggling, the kind that always ended with their mother sending them to their room. Until they could behave, she said. Until they could control themselves.

  Sam felt that hysteria coming on. “Be right back,” she gasped, and fled to the hall to regain her composure. She found a water dispenser and drank two cups. As she swallowed, she thought as she often did these days of the everyday miracle of functioning kidneys.

  “So will Mercy come back home and stay with you?” she asked Libby when she returned.

  “I guess so. I’m hoping she will.”

  “Really?” Sam arched an eyebrow.

  Libby gave her a rueful smile. “Mostly. Ninety percent of me.”

  Sam nodded.

  “Mercy says she’ll have to think about it,” Libby continued. “She’s struggling between wanting to be independent and needing us. I’m trying to give her room to make the decision—what is it psychologists say? Give her space. But I don’t see that she really has any choice. She can’t touch the trust fund her grandparents set up until she’s twenty-five. She’ll have to find a job.” She sighed again at her daughter’s impulsive decision.

  “How’s Richard doing?”

  “Probably better than I am, which surprises me. I thought he’d get all professorial and heavy-handed, but he’s been really good.”

  “He’s changed,” Sam said.

  “I know. He’s more present than he’s ever been. More like I remember him from when we were young.”

  “They say age doesn’t change people, that they stay themselves, only more so. I think that’s true of grief, too.”

  Libby stared at her. “Do you think so?”

  “Absolutely. Like elements fired in a crucible. Grief refines us to our essential self.”

  “Samantha?” The nurse approached.

  Sam stood. She turned to Libby. “Are you coming?” she asked.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Of course I do. We’re in this together.”

  Before Libby could rise, the nurse intervened. “Dr. Forest prefers to see you alone,” she said to Sam in an officious tone.

  Sam started to protest.

  “That’s okay,” Libby said. “I’ll wait here.” She winked at Sam and shrugged, as if to say, Rules, go figure.

  “Don’t run off with any sailors while I’m gone,” Sam said.

  When she entered his office, Dr. Forest rose. He was stocky, with silver-streaked black hair and hands with capable, blunt-tipped fingers. From their first meeting he had reminded Sam of her father.

  “Please,” he said. “Sit down.” He indicated the leather chair by his desk.

  Carlotta Hayes had recommended three doctors. Sam had picked Dr. Forest simply because of his name. She thought of the trees Lee converted into boats, the way he spoke of uniting elements when a boat slid into water. It seemed an auspicious name. It had turned out to be a good choice.

  “My sister Elizabeth is in the waiting room,” Sam said. “Can she be here, too?” He had not yet met Libby. “She’s the one who’ll be getting my kidney.” Our kidney, they now called it.

  Dr. Forest’s gaze flickered, dropped, and then he lifted his eyes and looked straight at her, but that momentary hesitation was all that was needed.

  “What is it?” Sam said. “What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t sidestep the question or equivocate. “I’m sorry, Samantha. I wish there was an easier way to tell you this. You can’t be your sister’s donor.”

  Sam stared at him, stunned by words that didn’t compute. She and Libby were a six-point match. They had told her she was the textbook donor for her sister. A perfect match, they’d said. She had done everything right. She had exercised. She’d stopped drinking alcohol, had even lost five pounds. There had to be a mistake. She remembered suddenly that Libby had told her that when she’d first learned about her disease, that had been her initial thought: There had to be a mistake.

  “Why?” she asked. “Oh, God. Do I have the same disease?”

  Dr. Forest shook his head. “No. In fact, you’re in extremely good health.”

  “I don’t understand, then. What’s the problem?”

  He opened her folder, pulled out the sonogram, and pushed it across the desk to her with the hands she had once thought she could trust.

  “You can’t be a donor for your sister because you only have one kidney.”

  She did not touch the printout. She blanked for a split second. “What?”

  “You only have one kidney,” he said.

  “How can that be?” she said.

  He leaned forward slightly. “It’s more common than you might think. Some people live their entire lives w
ithout discovering it. It turns up in the autopsy.”

  She twisted the ring on her finger, pressed the stone in against her palm. The doctor’s words echoed in her brain. She tried to make sense of them. “What does this mean?” she asked.

  “Nothing about your life has to change,” he said. “Your kidney has served you well for thirty-eight years. There’s no reason to think it won’t continue. You’re in good health.” His voice turned reassuring. “You can still get pregnant, have children.”

  Sam remembered that during their first meeting, she’d asked him if there would be any problem getting pregnant after she gave Libby her kidney. He was thinking of that now.

  “I still don’t understand. How could I never know this?” She thought of the physicals she had had each year since childhood.

  “You’ve never had surgery or given birth,” he said, “so there was never any reason for a sonogram. As I said, basically nothing has changed.”

  He was so wrong.

  Everything had changed.

  Sam could no longer donate a kidney, could no longer save her sister.

  “Can I get you something?” he asked. He was a kind man. “Water?”

  She shook her head and, after a moment, rose. Now she had to go out and tell Libby.

  “I’m fine,” Libby said. “Really. I just need to be alone for a little bit.” She and Sam had returned to the house and were standing in the kitchen. Libby saw the hurt in her sister’s eyes, knew she felt rejected, knew this was hard for her, too. Sam’s face had been so ashen when she’d told her about the sonogram results that Libby had been afraid she might faint. “I’m so sorry,” Sam kept saying, as if it were her fault, but Libby couldn’t take care of her sister now. She could barely take care of herself.

  She picked up Lulu’s leash. After the funeral, Gabe had asked them if they would keep the greyhound for a while. He’d tried taking Lulu home, but she had whined and cried, refused to eat. At least at Libby’s she ate, although she was listless. She didn’t beg to go for a walk or give anyone her doggy smile. For a while, in the days after Mercy returned home and until she left for Brown to formally withdraw from school, the greyhound had shadowed Mercy, following her everywhere, even sleeping on her bed. Although the comforter on her daughter’s bed had cost close to three hundred dollars, Libby didn’t say anything. What did it matter?