Instructions for a Broken Heart

by Kim Culbertson

  Francesca snapped her phone shut. “Yes, yes—we are all here? Follow the frog!”

  ***

  Reason #3: Remember when we found that dead dog? Someone had hit it on your road, and Sean was all pissed that you wanted to wait until animal control got there. Told you we’d waited long enough, that we had to get going. I know you hate it when I bring up the dead-dog story. But it’s a solid reason. Had to bring it up.

  Jessa showed Tyler Reason #3 as they made their way toward the Roman Forum. She shivered. Every once in a while, she’d still dream about that dog. He wasn’t too old, no gray in his muzzle, black and mutt looking in a little crumple by the side of the road. At first, they thought he was sleeping there in the dirt shoulder, the sky above them aglow in sunset wash. But he wasn’t sleeping.

  Tyler popped open another bag of gummy bears he’d picked up at a kiosk and ate a handful. “I don’t know the dead-dog story.”

  “It’s so gross that you eat them all together. They’re different flavors.”

  “Grosser than a dead dog?” He shrugged, holding the bag out to her.

  Jessa frowned at him but selected a white gummy bear. She told him the story. They’d been walking to get ice cream from the market at the bottom of Jessa’s long road. Found the dog there. Carissa called animal control immediately. Bless the iPhone of all knowledge. Jessa stood there, tears wetting her face. Somehow, she couldn’t peel her eyes from his strange parenthesis of a body, its little arc, his head tucked beneath one leg. There wasn’t even any blood. Sean had kept tugging at her sleeve. “Let’s go,” he’d said. “The store closes at six. We’ve been here long enough.” But Jessa hadn’t wanted ice cream anymore.

  “Did you read the instruction?” Tyler asked.

  Instruction: “Long enough.” I personally think you put up with his crap for long enough. But what does “long enough” mean to you? Write a poem and read it out loud. Not just to Tyler.

  “She wants me to write about what it means?”

  “Like your interpretation of that phrase.” Tyler chewed another handful of bears.

  “Helpful.”

  “You know, that kind of self-reflection, self-aware stuff you’re always trying to avoid doing unless it’s for some scholarship you’re applying for.” He rattled the bag to dislodge the ones clinging for their lives to the sides.

  “I don’t try to avoid self-reflection.”

  “OK.”

  Jessa watched people hurrying by her on the street. She made her face all dreamy. “Long. Enough. What does it mean? See, this is me…reflecting.”

  “Impressive.”

  “What does it mean to me?” she mumbled again. But the landscape around her took over, invaded her mind. All the color and age of the place. What must it be like to have all this history around all the time? To wake up to a view of the Pantheon outside your apartment window each morning, to walk by St. Peter’s on the way to work? Jessa stared at the McDonald’s sign looming next to a crumbling column. Weird. Tyler stayed silent beside her.

  When they came to a stop outside the Forum, Francesca dove into a discussion about Julius Caesar, his orations, his betrayal, his cremation. Jessa couldn’t believe the crazy, open beauty of the Forum, its deteriorating sprawl—the columns shooting up from green ground, the crumbled stone, the way the remaining skeleton of the place stood out against the cloudy sky. Francesca walked them down into the ruins, and Jessa felt herself descending into history. They stood silently near the place where Mark Antony held Caesar before he was cremated.

  “Interestingly,” Francesca told them, her arms poised like a conductor, “the group of senators who assassinated Caesar on the Ides of March wanted to bring a sense of normalcy back to the republic, but their betrayal really lead to another Roman civil war.” She clucked her tongue and stared out at them, dropped her arms to her sides. “Any questions?”

  No one had questions. A girl from the other group in a Stanford sweatshirt yawned loudly.

  Holding back what appeared to be a sigh but could have been a yawn of her own, Francesca released them. The frog on a stick took a break, propped against stone and grass. The group spread out to wander the Forum, to run their hands over its ancient remains. Jessa pressed her face into a slab of white, breathing in the cold dirt smell of it. She pulled her earbuds out of her jacket and started to put them in her ears.

  “Et tu, Brute?” Mr. Campbell motioned at her ears.

  She stuffed them back in her pocket. “What?”

  “I’m just teasing you. It’s not like my generation’s any better with our constant need for a soundtrack.”

  Jessa felt her face grow hot. “I don’t need it.”

  “OK, I’m just teasing you.” Mr. Campbell motioned to the grounds. “So what do you think?”

  She hesitated, stuffing her iPod back into her pocket. “It’s pretty amazing.”

  “And?”

  “Old.”

  He laughed and put his hands in his pockets, his eyes sweeping the angles and shadows of the place. “Yeah. It’s amazing to think of all these people who walk around every day with their world grown from all these ruins, you know?”

  “Makes me feel small.” Jessa pulled her jacket closer. Across the Forum, Sean and Natalie groped each other with little notice of the couple trying to take a picture of the historic spot the two of them were currently disrespecting.

  Mr. Campbell nodded, still staring out over the grounds. He frowned as his eyes fell on the gropers. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow… Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

  “Is that from Julius Caesar?”

  “Macbeth.”

  “It’s kind of depressing.”

  “Yes it is.” He shook his head, as if trying to pop himself from a trance.

  “Can I ask you a question, Mr. Campbell?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Why didn’t Katie come?”

  His eyes grew sad. Jessa had never noticed before how dark they were. His eyes, all milk- and dark-chocolate swirls. He cleared his throat. “Katie and I broke up. Last month.”

  Jessa kicked at a small tuft of grass at her feet. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.” The first time Jessa met Katie had been at the dress rehearsal of The Breakfast Club. Jessa had been a freshman, co–stage managing the show with Tyler. Katie brought them pizza, taking a break from the dissertation research she had just started. She had been studying something with sociology, something about the way girls group themselves. She told Jessa about it over a slice of pepperoni pizza, her short, dark hair lifting with each passionate statement. She came to every play Mr. Campbell directed, and always brought him flowers and a metal thermos of coffee, but she usually left at intermission.

  A breeze picked up through the Forum. Jessa shuddered. Each breeze here seemed to carry spirits of the ancients prodding her with their wise, skeletal fingers. “Are you OK?”

  Mr. Campbell swallowed, his hesitation lowering like a curtain. Then his eyes settled on her. “Not really.”

  ***

  Waiting in line for the Sistine Chapel viewing, Jessa tried not to roll her eyes at the woman from the other group, but seriously, could one person really ask so many stupid questions in one hour? Earlier, they had climbed their way out of the Forum and headed to the Piazza Navona for lunch. Over cannelloni with spinach and ricotta, they watched a mime perform near Bernini’s sculpted fountain, where the light and water played like imps. The woman had wondered loudly, waving her arm for Francesca’s attention, why there was a clown. Why was he dressed like that? Why were there so many pigeons? Jessa had tried to tune her out, but her voice had that high, nasal quality, like her Aunt Sally’s, that could somehow break through all other sound to become the only noise in the room.

  At the café table next to Jessa, an Italian couple had shared a cigarette over tiny cups of e
spresso, kissing and laughing, their ankles laced together beneath the table. It pressed in on her senses, picked at her eyelids, stuffed itself in her ears—the whole damn country in love. She couldn’t look anywhere without seeing some couple kissing or groping or pressed in a desperate embrace. Even a huge straciatella gelato did nothing to help, and now she just had a stomachache.

  Finally, she’d written Carissa’s poem. Not because she thought it would help or because she had any idea what “long enough” could possibly mean, but because at least it would distract her from the love fest all around her. She’d written it quickly—without rereading, pressing the ink onto the pages—before burying the journal deep in the bottom of her bag.

  Now she forced her attention back to Francesca, her lecture on the history of St. Peter’s, and the absurd woman from the other group, who Jessa suddenly realized looked an awful lot like a trendy, modernized version of Cruella De Vil, without the white streak in her hair.

  “Why are they all so busy? Why are there so many people?” Cruella waved a manicured hand toward where the men reorganized palm fronds and candles.

  “It is Good Friday,” Francesca patiently explained. Again.

  Jessa leaned into Tyler. “That woman could provide all the content for your stupid-question book. Seriously, you need no other sources.”

  Tyler shook his head, his eyes never leaving Cruella. “Dubious. I mean, do you think she knows she sounds like that?”

  Shrugging, Jessa stifled a yawn, her eyes scanning the group. Everyone was starting to wilt around the edges, sag like flowers left too long without water. Christina and Rachel were texting on their phones. Maya’s head bobbed along to the unheard music on her iPod. Erika whispered to Blake quietly behind her hand, probably filling him in on all the details Francesca was leaving out, all the gory history details, probably secret beheadings and such. Erika was always grossing them all out with all her horror-history trivia. Jessa yawned again, resisting the urge to plug herself into Spring Awakening and drown out all else. Then she suddenly realized how inappropriate it would be to listen to Spring Awakening on sacred ground—she’d probably be struck by a bolt of lightning. She tuned back into the guide. Francesca was managing to work in some interesting stuff around all of Cruella’s stupid questions.

  One boy from the other group, dressed in a Tim Burton sweatshirt and standing a bit off by himself, caught Jessa’s eye and raised his eyebrows. He made a little talk-talk-talk sign with his hands, a little Cruella shadow puppet, and then pretended to strangle it. Jessa suppressed a giggle.

  Fifteen minutes later, they waited on the cusp of the chapel’s entrance. Ms. Jackson made sure the girls had their shoulders covered and that all hats were stashed in back pockets and bags.

  “No pictures, guys.” Ms. Jackson motioned at Devon and Tim. “That means your camera phones too. And no talking.” She shot a look at a giggling Rachel and Lizzie, and the girls clapped hands over their mouths. “This is a pretty special thing, to view this place on a holiday like this one. Act like it, please.”

  “Um, why can’t we take pictures?” Cruella again. Tyler widened his eyes and made a low gagging noise. Francesca explained about the delicate artwork, the respect for the space. Cruella adjusted the huge sunglasses atop her head, then parked her hands on her hips over the two twists of gold cord she wore wound around her waist. Belts? A noose should she need one? Jessa wasn’t sure.

  “They shouldn’t show it to us if we can’t take pictures of it.” Her voice rang out over their heads like a living, breathing thing of its own, a specter.

  Jessa felt her group shift, send out a bubble of space between them and the other school. Tim whispered something to Devon, who started to laugh.

  Cruella’s eyes swiveled his direction. “Is something funny?”

  Silence from Tim and Devon, eyes on the floor.

  Cruella’s eyes narrowed. She waited.

  Drop it. Drop it. Jessa waited for her teachers to say something. Mr. Campbell glanced at Ms. Jackson, who was chewing her lip. Jessa watched Cruella from under her lashes.

  “Ready, please.” Saved by the frog. Francesca waved the students one by one into the chapel, the frog giving a quick little nod on the end of the stick each time one passed. Mr. Campbell shook his head at Tim, who shrugged, sheepish, and then Jessa stepped inside.

  ***

  The flayed skin on the mural followed Jessa with its hollowed out eyes. The Sistine Chapel was actually much smaller than she’d thought it would be—dramatic and haunting but smaller. She couldn’t seem to escape that image of the flayed skin. Turning her back on it, she scanned the pages of her Italy book, tried to look somewhere else, at the South Wall with its crossing of the Red Sea, the ceiling arching with the events of man before Christ. The North Wall, the temptations of Christ in broad, rich colors. Michelangelo had painted his soul into these walls with each brushstroke; the emotion, the vision, seeped through them, permeated the air. The silence. Around her, coats rustled against each other; shoes shushed along the floor. Somewhere a guard said, “Shhh,” though Jessa hadn’t heard anyone say anything.

  She could feel the skin watching her. Her eyes slipped back to it.

  Behind the altar, Michelangelo had painted The Last Judgment. Francesca had said the work showcased his maturity, as he’d been in his sixties when he finished it. Jessa’s eyes fell on the powerful central figure of Christ, one hand allowing the rising figures to ascend, the other keeping those souls down who would not rise. Two times Michelangelo’s self-portrait appeared in the Sistine Chapel. Once in a small figure watching the souls try to rise from the grave, and the other in the flayed skin that St. Bartholomew held like a sack of dirty laundry, a screaming sack.

  Jessa felt suddenly cold, felt the grip of the saint at her neck, stripped of bone, peeled from ligament and tissue, left an empty, gaping thing. Sweat collected on her upper lip. There were too many people pressing in all around her. She hurried toward an exit.

  Outside, a breeze caught her, cooled her. The sky had gone gray with rain clouds, casting the world into a cool, blue light, and making the sweeping stone of St. Peter’s look like weathered bone.

  It had been raining the night of her first fight with Sean.

  One of those strange late-April rains that hit suddenly and soaked through your clothes. They had been waiting outside the movie theater, waiting for Carissa and her flavor-of-the-week boyfriend to show up so they could choose a movie.

  Sean had gotten mad at her because of the end of the year fund-raiser Scene and Be Seen. She and Carissa wanted to do a scene from The Women, but he wanted her to do a scene with him from A Streetcar Named Desire. She would suck as Blanche, and she didn’t want to do it, but he really, really wanted to play Stanley. Mostly, he wanted to scream a lot so people would think he was an amazing actor. Jessa said as much—huge fight.

  The poor guy in the box office hid behind a copy of The Hunt for Red October. By the time Carissa called and said they weren’t coming, Jessa was already heading off down the street, calling her mom for a ride home.

  When she turned at the corner, waiting for her mom to pick up, she had seen Sean duck under the shelter of the theater. He had seen the movie anyway.

  ***

  Tyler found her standing alone outside of the chapel in the looming shadow of St. Peter’s. “Where did you go?”

  She pulled her hair from her neck, her pulse returning to a steady rippled river through her body. “I was having a religious moment or something.”

  “Well, this is the place for it.” He looted his jacket pocket for a half empty bag of bears.

  Jessa wrinkled her nose. “More gummy bears? Isn’t this your third bag today?”

  “Enough stalling. Read your poem.” He chewed a huge gob of them. “I saw you writing it at lunch.”

  Jessa imagined all the little gummy-bear bodies colliding, all their colors mixing, churning in his teeth. She blinked in the strange light. Tyler picked a green fleck of bear from
his teeth. Jessa declined the open bag he held out to her.

  “You want me to read it here?” Jessa shivered a bit in her denim jacket, eyeing the spill of tourists from the chapel.

  “Why not? You going to offend the pope or something?” Two elderly Italian women passed by in their Good Friday fine dresses, their pinched faces frowning under their kerchiefs. Tyler lowered his voice. “Come on.” He shook the bag of bears at her. “Carissa said you would stall. Don’t let Carissa be right about anything. You know how she gets.”

  “OK.” Jessa pulled Tyler to a nearby bench, dug through her bag for her journal. She took a breath. “It’s called ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors.’”

  Tyler made a face. “Very funny. But I made you play that game for the audition description, not this one.”

  “I knew you’d appreciate the reference.” Jessa took a breath, then read her poem into the still, rain-scented air:

  With you, I am paper, wrapped around, folded, creased,

  left cut with your slices. You are rock and scissors—hard

  and sharp. You are the metal blades and blue plastic handles

  of my childhood craft bin scissors. You are the smooth river rock

  I’m collecting and losing in that same sunlit day where the sky split

  open, drenched our towels—and you, your pockets filled with stones,

  ankle deep in river water, you smiled at me with rain on your face.

  That day—the day after finding the dead dog, the day after my tears and our fight—that day I filled my pockets with the stones you found me,

  the stones you named for me—the black one “night,” the quartz-shot

  granite “love,” and the one I lost, the gray-flecked small one,

  you named “George.” Now, paper Me is pocked with rainwater, turning to pulp—and you are nowhere, no one to papier-mâché me

  whole, no one to reconstruct me.

  She snapped her journal shut and jammed it back in her bag. Tyler sat silently, his eyes blanketing her, seeking hers out, but she couldn’t meet them. She could only wipe at her eyes, unfold Carissa’s third instruction, press it into his hand, and say, “Long enough. What it means.”