The Constant Heart

by Craig Nova

  “I’m sorry, too,” I said.

  “Me too,” said Sara.

  “You want to tell me who did that to your eye?” said Judah. “You want me to take care of it for you?”

  “No,” said Sara. “Just go down to New York and talk about your script.”

  Judah took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and blew his nose and then put it away, looking straight ahead. “The only time someone put something over on my mother was when she died. Someone came into her apartment and took her TV. I figure it was a friend of hers. But it’s hard to tell. She liked that TV. We used to get tapes from Eastern Europe, demos, but now we do it with the Internet. We get AVIs, and you can look at a prospective stripper right away. My mother was always good at finding a place in the world where the women were desperate. But in the old days, it was just the TV and a VCR. Sometimes my mother and I would watch a ball game and sometimes we went to a baseball game. My mother was good about convincing women in Eastern Europe to come here, you know, tell them they were going to be a tennis coach or a personal trainer or something. That is, if they weren’t in someplace as bad as Estonia. That’s an argument in itself.

  “So that’s my problem. That’s what I was thinking about this afternoon. How the hell do I find out who took the TV?”

  “That might be hard,” I said.

  “You just have to think about it,” said Judah. “You got to go through it like a science. Then you get to the answer.”

  “How did you go about getting the answer?” my father said.

  “It was pretty obvious,” he said. “I had to establish some facts first. You got to have them. Everything becomes obvious.”

  “How is that?” I said.

  “Well, the first fact is that the guy who took the TV didn’t have any money, because if he did, he would have bought his own. Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s right,” said Sara.

  “And there’s something else, too,” said Judah, “which is that the guy who took the TV probably has been broke for a long time and has been thinking about the TV. So how do you catch a guy like that? I thought he would come to the funeral because he would be feeling bad, and the way to go about it is to offer money to everyone, you know, like I’d say, ‘Thanks for coming to my mother’s funeral. It would mean so much to her. And if you ever need anything, like money or anything, you’ve got a friend right here.’ You look for the one who takes you up on it.”

  “Well, anyway, I’m sorry,” said my father.

  “That’s the place right up there,” said Judah. “See the white sign with the black letters. Pull up.”

  The place had been built in the twenties, and originally it had been a private house, three stories with a porch all around. Like a big wedding cake. Something about the extravagance of the scale, the oversized windows and wide porch, suggested unstoppable hope that the boom would go on forever. A big awning came from the front of the place, with a drop in it where it went down the steps, and then out over the walk and up to the curb, where we pulled up and stopped. Judah got out and stood in front of the place: Was it worthy of a ceremony for a woman who trafficked in women from Eastern Europe? It was like one of those houses out on Long Island, built years ago, and even now the place still had an air of the ocean around it, a kind of resort-like quality. Maybe it was just the awnings.

  Judah turned to the car and looked in, his face straining a little to do so.

  “You want to come in?” he said. “All of you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s not a good idea.”

  “Maybe a lot of people aren’t going to come,” said Judah. “You see what I’m asking? Maybe she was a little tough sometimes, but I loved her. And I wouldn’t want the room empty. Or almost empty.”

  “OK,” said my father. He touched his back.

  “And I’m going to catch the guy who took the TV. You want to see?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said my father. “I do.”

  “You can park over there,” said Judah.

  Judah slammed the door and stood under the awning.

  My father parked and got out, into the dusty air, and he stretched a little, as though leaning back would stop the pain, but I think it didn‘t stop so much as change a little, which had a small, short-lived benefit. Sara’s skin had the scent of soap and powder.

  “So I guess we’re going to have to go to a funeral,” said Sara.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Is that going to be hard on, you know, you and your father?” she said.

  My father stretched.

  “Not to speak of,” I said.

  “You don’t fool me, Jake,” said Sara. “Don’t even try.”

  I swallowed.

  “You never asked me something,” I said. “You never asked me why I became an astronomer.”

  “I didn’t have to ask, Jake. Out there, in those pictures we used to look at, those places where the stars are made have no malice. They do no evil.”

  The sun came into the car in a flat sheet that lay over the dashboard, golden and hot.

  “Unlike here,” she said. “Unlike the shooting. Unlike MD and his defrocked doctor.”

  My lips touched her skin, next to her ear.

  “Oh, stop it,” said Sara. “Not here, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Are you coming or not?” said my father.

  “We’re coming,” I said.

  “Some things you just have to do,” said my father.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t that the truth?”

  THE LIGHT UNDER the green awning was tinted as though we were under a tree. Music came from inside the building, some sappy piece that had been played over and over until it was associated not with beauty but utility. Judah rubbed his chin in the last of that green tint. He took the first step when we were almost next to him so that he led the way and we were right behind him, not quite an entourage, but not as though we were close friends, either. Sara and I came last and she said, “Those guys who were watching my apartment? They were sitting out by the pool, sharing a bottle of Southern Comfort.”

  “And?” I said.

  “I didn’t stop when they tried to talk to me and so they . . . ” She turned her face to me. “But if they thought I was going to wait around for more of this.” She touched her face. “They were wrong. One of them fell in the pool when he tried to come after me. I’m sorry, Jake, I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “What did they want?” I said.

  “Oh, Jake,” she said. “They wanted me to take another step down. Into the dark . . . ”

  “What was that?” I said.

  “You aren’t going to like it,” she said.

  Judah pushed open the door and stood in the lobby. My father, sweating more than before, and I came in, too, both of us wiping our hands over our trousers and realizing that we weren’t really dressed for this. The lobby had a familiar scent to it, and after a while I realized it was just like what you smell in the morning in a nightclub after a long night when people have been sick and then have had someone clean up after them with Lysol or some other cleaner.

  We sat down where Judah pointed, which was in the row just behind him. Four women in the front row had blue hair and wore almost identical dresses, dark blue with gold buttons, which made them almost look as though in their sixties they had formed a singing group. They turned to look at Judah, all of them swinging around the same way. “There he is,” said one of them. “Yes,” said another. “That’s him.”

  Some younger women were in the room, too, Eastern Europeans. One of them, Judah said, leaning backward and whispering to us, didn’t work for him anymore, but now she was “a student at the Harvard Medical School,” as though he and his mother, while seeming to operate a strip joint, were in fact running a kind of scholarship program for women from Eastern Europe.

  Some people who looked like accountants, bookkeepers, and tax preparers sat along the aisle. Beyond them was a short man who really did look
like a lawyer: about five feet eight, bald, overweight, staring straight ahead. Opposite him was a man in a yellow leather coat who wore a lot of silver jewelry, the kind of thing you’d see in a gift shop in New Mexico. I have never met my mother’s boyfriend at the ashram, but I bet he looked like this guy with the silver and turquoise jewelry and a cowboy hat, which he had put on his knee. Next to him was a woman in a red silk dress who wore dark glasses, and then there were a couple of men and women who were in their early twenties but who looked gray and tired and close to forty.

  The minister had to look at a slip of paper with Judah’s mother’s name on it. He cleared his throat and began. Judah sat there with a patient contemplation, his eyes moving from one person to another. The minister described Judah’s mother as a “visionary, a businesswoman, a mother, and a woman who had made her own way in the world.” My father listened carefully. He nodded as though this must be true, and to prove that he wasn’t a snob or that he wouldn’t do anything but be polite, even with that hand on his back. That’s all he had left: behaving well.

  When it was over, the people got up and filed out, first one and then another stopping in front of Judah and leaning forward to speak, taking his hand, or just standing there, bent at the waist a little. He spoke to them for a moment and then they turned and filed out. The woman who Judah said was a student at the Harvard Medical School came up the aisle in her dark, beautiful dress, her hair short, her feet in small, medium-heeled shoes. I thought she was going to slap him, but she went right by and out the door. Judah made a face, a shrug of disinterest, and waited for the rest of the mourners who lined up to pay their respects.

  As each of them came up to him, he said, looking into the eyes of each one, “You know, it means a lot to me that you came. You were always a favorite of my mother’s. So I want you to know, you’ve got a friend. Here.” He put his hand on his chest. “Right here. If you ever need anything. I mean anything, you come to see me. You ever get into a jam, you know, the way people do, you got a friend.”

  They all went by, the women in the blue dresses, the man with the cowboy hat, each one of them saying they were sorry. They took Judah’s hand, but they didn’t do anything beyond that, each one of them turning into the door and then they walked under the awning. When Judah spoke, he looked up, into their eyes, trying to see something. Forty or fifty people must have been there all together, and we saw their faces in line, bobbing one way and then another.

  One of the women in the blue dresses said, “Judah, God forgives everything. It is the nature of the Infinite.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Judah. “I know that.”

  “Well, then your mother is probably happy now,” said the woman.

  “Good,” said Judah. “Thanks.”

  My father stared straight ahead. He trembled and for a moment I thought he was going to gag, and I went out to the car and dug around in my vest for the fentanyl, but when I came back and sat next to him, he looked at it and shook his head. Not yet. I hoped that he was thinking of Furnace Creek, or those long, cool stretches of it that looked like a long piece of green silk, at the head of which there is some silver, where the river flows into the head of a pool. Then he reached over and took the pill and swallowed it dry.

  A young man came up to Judah, and in the middle of Judah’s speech, he licked his lips. My father put his shoe against mine and gave me a tap. I looked up, too. The young man was in his middle twenties, had short hair, and he was trying to grow a mustache but he wasn’t making much progress. He licked his lips again.

  “I don’t think I know you,” said Judah.

  “I used to help out your mother. I live right upstairs from her. You know, she’d want a newspaper or some chocolate or a bottle and I’d run out and get it for her.”

  “Well, because I didn’t know you before doesn’t mean you haven’t got a friend. I mean, if you get behind or something.”

  The young man licked his lips again.

  “What’s your name?” said Judah.

  “Mike Brown,” said the young man. He looked around to see if anyone had heard him.

  “Well, Mike, you got to believe what I say. I’m not kidding.”

  “Your mother said you never kidded,” said the young man.

  “Did she?” said Judah. “Well, I guess she knew something. Are you having some trouble? You can tell me. What better time than now, when we are all thinking serious things.”

  “Sometimes,” said the young man. “I have a little trouble.”

  He looked around the room. He was the last one.

  “Well, is now one of them?” said Judah.

  “It’s been better for me than it is now,” said the young man.

  “Uh-huh,” said Judah.

  “I’m a little behind,” said the young man.

  “Sure. You come to see me tonight, late. Say around closing time at the Palm. You know where that is?”

  “Yeah,” said the young man.

  “You come to see me tonight,” said Judah. “Come to think of it, my mother used to mention you. Always talked about what a nice kid you were.”

  “She had a soft spot for me,” he said.

  “I can see that,” said Judah. “I’ve got a soft spot, too.”

  “Well, OK,” said the young man.

  He put out his hand. Judah looked at him and put out his hand, too.

  “Nice to meet you, Mike,” said Judah.

  “I just need a little help,” said the young man.

  “Come to see me.”

  The young man licked his lips and went out into the stale odor of the lobby. His footsteps died away, one a little fainter than the other, and finally the door sighed and he was gone. Judah stood up and turned toward the exit.

  “All right,” he said. “Can you drive me back?”

  “Isn’t there going to be a burial?” said my father.

  “No,” said Judah. “They take care of everything right here. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You get a little can.”

  “You hear that, Jake?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it,” said Judah.

  “Well,” said my father, to me. “I don’t think it makes much difference. Maybe just spread them along a stream.”

  “My mother didn’t like water,” said Judah. “Scared of it.”

  “I was just running my mouth,” said my father. “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” said Judah. “It’s a problem. It doesn’t go away by pretending it isn’t there.”

  The Palm sign was a silhouette on the top of the building against the glow of the sun, like gold foil, in the west. We pulled into the parking lot.

  “Come in for a drink,” said Judah.

  “I think we should get going,” I said. “But thanks. We’re going fishing.”

  “Her, too?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Sara. “I really have to go fishing.”

  My father sat at the wheel for a long time, then turned his head and looked at her. “You know, Sara, it’s been a long time. It’s good to see you.”

  “Is it?” she said.

  “Why, sure,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” said Judah. “Hey,” he said to Sara. “You want a Kleenex.”

  “I’m all right. My eye tears sometimes.”

  “Furnace Creek,” I said. And thought, Shit, why didn’t I keep my mouth shut?

  “Well, catch some fish,” said Judah. “I’m going to catch one. You sure you don’t want to wait around until closing? That big bass is going to go for it. What do you use to catch bass?”

  “A popping bug,” said my father.

  “A popping bug,” said Judah. “Well, well. The popping part is sure right. You don’t want to wait around?”

  “I don’t think so,” said my father.

  PART THREE

  THE BLACKTOP STRETCHED away from the car, and the oily shine of the asphalt turned purple in the headlamps. A starlike color. Or like some of the
debris in nebulae, which seem so blue. On the way to Furnace Creek, an outcropping of rock at the side of the road looks like the profile of a man, an American Indian, and it always reminded me of my father. Not the shape of the nose, which is like a bird of prey, but the pride, the refusal to give in to anything he has decided is not worth giving in to. Recently, some of the rocks have cracked and flaked away, a big piece in particular from the nose part of it, which now looks as though something had taken a bite out of it. Sara sat in the backseat.

  Outfitter’s North was open all night. People came from all over to go shopping there at three or four o’clock in the morning, as though buying a pair of wool pants or a chamois shirt or camouflage underwear is more exciting after midnight than at other times. When we pulled into the parking lot I began to think that maybe they were on to something after all, since a lot of things are more exciting at three or four in the morning than they are at seven or eight in the evening. Now, though, it was just after dusk. And I guessed we’d make it to the Furnace Creek trailhead at ten, then sleep in the car until dawn.

  “Maybe they’ve got a sale,” said my father as we pulled into the parking lot. They always kept enough lights on to make the parking lot look like noon. Sara climbed out and started shivering in her short skirt and her high thin shoes.

  The store had the scent of waders and cotton shirts and insect repellent that must have spilled out on the concrete floor. A long rack of fly rods, all strung up and ready to try, went along one wall. Fly cases that looked like trays for printer’s type stood in the middle of the room, the flies in them like small dandelions. The place had the same dangerous hope as an art supply store.

  We picked out a pair of waders, and when we helped Sara squirm into them in front of the mirror she giggled. The thing about the giggle was that it sounded as though she hadn’t made a sound like that in a long time.

  “They’re like rubber panty hose,” she said.

  We picked out a pair of shoes she could hike in, and a pair of blue jeans. Then a sleeping bag.

  My father looked through the fly case, and he picked out a couple of nymphs, some caddis flies, which he put into a little plastic box they had for people to put them in. At the back of the store they sold firearms.