The Queen of Hearts

by Kimmery Martin

  If you followed the road from the town for a mile or two, you’d come to the entrance of the coal mines. In my granddaddy’s day, they mined underground in shafts and tunnels, and while the company made it terrible for the men, it left the mountaintops intact. If you mined in those days, the company owned you: the only homes you could live in were rented out by the company, and the only food you could buy came from the company store, which gave you “credit” against a payday that never quite arrived. My granddaddy worked all his life to pay back the company for the cost of living.

  My dad was a miner too, but by the 1970s, the company had figured out it was cheaper and easier to blow the tops off the mountains rather than tunnel through them. Nobody made them replant the trees back then: they just disintegrated all the green and moved on when the only thing remaining was a sky-sized heap of dirt. My dad moved on too, in a manner of speaking: he died from lung cancer when I was five. We lived two hours from the nearest hospital.

  Logically, I should not be ashamed that once I was poor. I knew this, and I detested myself for my own snobbery toward the naive little ghost-girl of my past. She could not help it if she’d grown up without an indoor bathroom, but I resented her for embodying this ridiculous cliché of the Appalachians. She could not help it if it had been difficult to be clean. She could not help it if her mother had accepted government assistance in a town virtually without well-paying jobs.

  It left me so vulnerable, this perception of myself as an impostor. I was brittle and rude sometimes, trying to overcome the ache of pretending. The only people who knew were Wyatt, who had his own hard-earned knowledge of the need to blend, and Zadie, the only friend who had visited my childhood home.

  As if on cue, the door to my call room banged open and Zadie burst in. She’d always been prone to noisy entrances, but I could tell she’d been running hard: her cheeks glowed and her breath sounded like it was coming from a small steam engine. I blinked at the vitality of her movements as she crossed the small room in one bound, landing on the bed next to me.

  “Em, what’s wrong?” she wailed. “Are you okay?”

  “All I said was I needed to see you.”

  “Which you would never say in the middle of a workday. Is— Do you have cancer?”

  “No!”

  “Does Wyatt? Oh!” She sucked in her breath. “Is it Henry?”

  “My family is okay, Zadie. I’m okay. I’m not sick. But.” I stopped, unable to find words. Or—that’s inaccurate—I knew the words. I could hear them pulsing in my mind, but I could not say them out loud.

  Zadie nodded, recognizing the problem. She cocked her head, thinking, and then nodded again. “You lost a patient, and it was bad,” she said.

  I nodded back, staring at the rough weave of the white blanket on the bed.

  All her vitality suddenly dimmed down. “Is— Was it Eleanor?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I croaked. A bubble rose in my chest.

  “Oh, Em,” said Zadie. To my surprise, she didn’t start crying. “I am so, so sorry. I know you must have fought like crazy to save her. You can’t blame yourself—you know that.”

  “I—” I tried. I stopped and shook my head. All at once I was furious with myself for wallowing in speechless grief. I steeled myself and I said it.

  “It shouldn’t have happened.”

  Zadie didn’t say anything.

  I waited a beat, and then I started talking. I told her the story, and I didn’t spare any of it. I couldn’t know for sure at this point, but it was easy enough to surmise: I must have hit the tail of the child’s pancreas, causing an enzymatic leak that ate her from the inside out, its corrosive fluid burning a hole in her stomach, sending bacteria through her bloodstream. Or maybe it was something else, given the short time frame. The pressure in her abdomen could have grown after the surgery, straining against the incision I’d insisted on closing, until her organs began to fail. Then a series of miscues and mistakes ensued during the chaos of call, when everything blew up at once. I didn’t get to her in time.

  I could have saved her. I should have saved her. The realization that I hadn’t saved her kept hitting me with a gale-force punch: first, disbelief—this could not be happening—and then a cataclysmic rush of horror.

  Zadie listened with intense absorption, not flinching at the worst parts, which surprised me again. In general, Zadie could be described as a sappy, tenderhearted mess, especially when it came to anyone she cared about. But I recognized now a facet of her I didn’t often see: her game face. This was her professional side kicking in, the part that allowed her to function when she had to tell parents their son needed a heart transplant, or had to explain to them their newborn daughter would not be likely to live past the age of one.

  “You will endure this, and you’ll be better for it,” she said.

  Shame upon shame. I said, “No, I won’t.” Adding: “The Packards.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll help with Boyd and Betsy,” she said. “Give them time. Boyd can be vindictive, but Betsy will listen. And she’s a kind person—she’ll understand that only lawyers would benefit from a lawsuit. The Packards don’t need money from you, and piling hatred on top of heartbreak would only consume the strength they’ll need to heal.”

  A flicker of something stirred in my memory. “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”

  “Yes!” she said. “Who said that?”

  “I think it was Nelson Mandela.”

  “That’s perfect.”

  I shrugged listlessly. “Somehow, I don’t think Boyd Packard is a scholar of South African antiapartheid revolutionaries. And if I were him, I wouldn’t forgive me either.”

  “Okay, then how about this one: how often shall my sister cause me harm, and I forgive her? As many as seven times?”

  “Is that Mandela too?”

  “That one,” she said, “was Jesus Christ. I’m paraphrasing, but you get the drift. And his answer, in case you’re wondering, was not seven times, but seventy times seven.” She placed her hands on my shoulders. “You’re allowed forgiveness for one mistake.”

  If there was anything in the world I longed for more than forgiveness, I couldn’t have named it, but wishing for it was useless. The enormity of my error racked me; I couldn’t respond any longer to Zadie’s loyal efforts to bolster my spirits.

  She picked up my hand and gripped it between hers. In an affectless, almost dreamy tone, she said, “Look at me.”

  I looked.

  Her eyes, round and clear and lovely, bored into mine. “You are not alone,” she said. “You carried me when it happened to me, and I’ll carry you too.”

  I blinked hard, certain that if I let myself cry, I’d never stop.

  PART

  TWO

  Autumn

  Chapter Twenty-two

  THE EXPLOSIVE METHOD OF INTERMITTENT CONTROL

  Zadie, Present Day

  It had been a hard few months. Not a day went by that I didn’t ache for Betsy and ache for Emma, who had both withdrawn into shellacked cocoons of misery, albeit for very different reasons. It made me feel guilty to admit, but I was longing to think of something happy.

  The Arts Ball, the biggest social event of the year, was coming up this October, and Drew and I were invited for the first time. We’d made it onto the list because of Drew; the cochair of the ball this year was Hattie McGuire. Hattie was married to Reginald, Drew’s managing partner, and she was presumably well equipped to deal with the complexities of organizing an intimate dinner-dance for five hundred couples, since she had endured a twenty-year barrage of ol’ Reg. Everything else probably seemed like a walk in the park.

  Drew was heading out this morning for another overseas work trip, so if I wanted to discuss a shopping spree for a new dress, now was the time. I could hear him in the shower, warbling along to
something on the bathroom TV. The home’s AV system was one of the very few things on which Drew had been willing to splurge. We’d bought the house from a builder who’d been in the process of renovating it a few years back, and he customized it for us. I’d presented a wish list consisting of a few nice items: upgraded tiles (vetoed by Drew after a silent, incredulous trip to a posh tile distributor), a fantastic vintage chandelier for the foyer (also vetoed), and myriad smaller-ticket items, a few of which were grudgingly agreed upon. But when we met with the AV guys, he suddenly started throwing money around like the Sun King. As a result, we now had six televisions scattered throughout the house, including a smallish plasma screen in the playroom (very bad parenting) and this one here in the master bathroom, which was embedded into the huge vanity mirror, invisible unless it was turned on, and which Drew claimed to need so he could watch the ticker on CNBC while shaving. All of these TVs had basically become obsolete at the moment of their purchase, since now you could view downloaded and live-streaming content at any moment on your tablet, or implanted brain chip, or whatever.

  “Hello, handsome,” I said to Drew as he exited the shower. I glanced quickly at the mirror TV, which was set not to CNBC, but to something featuring small primary-colored singing pigs. He winked at me and said, “Brace yourself.” Sure enough, the shower door swung open again, and out popped Delaney, butt-naked and sopping.

  “Hi, honey dear. I getted in the shower! With Daddy! Now I’m all wet.” She beamed, strutting around. Drew raised his hands above his head, bearlike, and pretended to chase Delaney around the bathroom as she shrieked in delight. “Aaah! Daddy-Bear! Daddy-Bear! Hiii-yah!” This last exclamation was accompanied by an enthusiastic flail of Delaney’s elbow, which struck Drew squarely in the groin. He yelped in pain and doubled over.

  I rushed over to check on him. “I’m fine,” he said weakly, waving me off. “I just hope she remembers that move when she starts dating.”

  Delaney considered this. “What’s dating?”

  “It’s when two people like each other, and they, ah, talk a lot.”

  “Am I dating Henry?”

  I took this one. “No. You and Henry are just friends. Dating is a kind of love.”

  “Was I dating Eleanor?”

  Drew and I met each other’s eyes in the mirror. It had been several months since Eleanor’s death, and Delaney had stopped asking to play with her some time ago. We’d thought she had forgotten.

  “Eleanor died,” Delaney announced. “And now she is very dead.”

  “Honey,” I said, kneeling down and gathering Delaney in my arms, acutely aware of her warmth and her firm, wiggly little body. “Do you miss Eleanor?”

  “Not really, Mom.”

  I blinked, surprised. “Why not, baby?”

  “Because I am going to see her tomorrow, when she comes back alive.”

  Drew knelt down too. He’d started to apply shaving cream, and a strip of foamy white ran down one side of his face. Delaney poked her finger into it, delighted. “Ellie’s not coming back alive, lovebug,” he said. “It’s okay to miss her.”

  “Daddy! She is.” Delaney wriggled out of our grasp. “We are going to play mermaids.”

  Drew and I rose together. “You’re the child expert.” His eyes were sad. “What do we say?”

  “I think we don’t push it,” I whispered. “Children this age view death through a filter of magical thinking; they can’t process that kind of finality. Let her process it however it comforts her.”

  “Whisper secrets are not nice,” Delaney said, popping back up between us.

  “That’s true, Lainie,” I acknowledged, attempting to corner her to wrap her in a towel. “Why don’t we put some clothes on before you get too cold?”

  Delaney clamped her hands over her eyes and sank to the floor.

  “Lainiebug.” I smiled. “I can still see you.”

  Delaney removed her hands from her eyes but kept them squeezed shut. “No, I’m hiding!”

  “Clothes on,” I commanded.

  “Nope,” said Delaney, opening her eyes and wiggling her tiny, perfect bottom at us. “I love me like this.” I lunged at her, but she shrieked, “Scatter!” and ran off.

  I looked in the mirror. For a brief moment my face looked completely foreign, before it rearranged itself back into its familiar countenance: small, rounded nose; wide, rounded greenish eyes under arched eyebrows; slightly parted full lips. My resting expression was one of mild surprise, which, over the years, had led to a lot of people overexplaining things to me. But for a moment I hadn’t recognized myself, as, for the thousandth time, I’d wondered what it must be like to lose a child.

  I looked at the small heap of Delaney’s pajamas puddled in front of the shower. Best not to dwell on this. “I need to buy something,” I said.

  Leaping on the chance to lighten the mood, Drew dropped his towel and swatted me with it. “I’m sensing some defensiveness here,” he said.

  Defensively: “What makes you think I’m defensive?”

  “Because,” said Drew, replacing his towel and fumbling around the counter for his razor, “you just got that stubborn, sort-of-sly look that you always get when you’re about to say something outrageous.” He assessed me. “There, that one.”

  I started to protest, but unfortunately I was still facing the mirror. Hastily, I rearranged my face to simpering sweetness. “Is this better?”

  “Much,” he said, grinning at me. “Out with it.”

  “It’s a dress crisis. Dire. I was thinking I might get another one, right away, for the Arts Ball.”

  “What happens if you don’t?” he asked pleasantly over the hum of his electric shaver.

  “Social doom.”

  Drew finished with the shaver and reached for his toothbrush. “Well, you’d better do it, then. I can’t have a socially crippled wife. Do I have to get a new monkey suit?”

  “No, darling, you’re fine,” I said, pleased that he hadn’t whipped out his laptop on the spot and recalculated the monthly budget. Maybe he was loosening up a little.

  I met his eyes in the mirror. His face transformed from blandly handsome into fully gorgeous when he smiled, despite a mouthful of toothpaste. “You know whazeben more essciting thandisippy soshellebent?” he asked.

  “Can you try that again, maybe without the toothpaste?”

  He spat into the sink and grinned again. “I said, do you know what’s even more exciting than your dippy social event?”

  “Um, no. I didn’t think there was anything you like more than formal wear.”

  “Very funny. I was referring to the weekend after the Arts Ball. You know what it is?”

  I racked my brain, which had not yet been activated by morning coffee. Nothing came to mind, except the virtual certainty that at least one of our offspring would have an early Saturday morning sports event. That didn’t seem worth mentioning as a special thing, though.

  “I give up. What is it?”

  He gave me a superior look. “Well, I don’t mean to brag, but at least one of us remembers what happened ten years ago on November seventh. Ring any bells?”

  Our ten-year anniversary! “Right, of course. I knew that,” I said lamely.

  Drew winked at me, then turned around and rustled through his top bathroom drawer. He handed me a large envelope.

  “Here you go,” he said. “I heart you.”

  Ever since my cardiology fellowship, Drew has adorned every gift to me with a quotation about the heart. You’d think he’d have run out of them by now, but no. Is there any anatomical entity subject to more literary devotion than the human heart? This one was short but instantly recognizable, from Bob Marley: “One Love, One Heart.”

  I opened it. There were two smaller envelopes inside. I unsealed the first one, which contained two tickets to the Panthers-Falcons game and a gift c
ertificate to the Ritz-Carlton downtown. I smiled and started to thank Drew, but he interrupted me.

  “That brings back happy memories, yeah?” He crossed the few feet between us and wrapped me up in his arms, whispering in my ear, “That’s for the eighth. My mom will keep the kids, and we’ll sneak downtown for the weekend. You like?”

  “Of course. I love—”

  He let me go and held up a hand. “Open the other one,” he said.

  I did. Inside were two first-class tickets to Paris and a handwritten confirmation for a reservation at the Four Seasons Hotel George V. I looked at Drew.

  “I’m finally taking you on one of my business trips,” he said. “Only this time, it’ll be a lot more classy than usual. And I’ll take a few days off. It will be like a second honeymoon.”

  “Oh my gosh!” I yelled. “Je suis très excitée!”

  I hadn’t spoken a lick of French since college, unlike Drew, who traveled to France at least five or six weeks a year. He started laughing.

  “Zadie,” he said, “I think you just told me that you’re feeling lustful.”

  “Oh,” I said, chagrined. Then I brightened and pulled off his towel. “Well, hell yeah!” I said. “I definitely am.”

  —

  After Drew left, I thudded back to earth. Time to wake up the hellions. I bundled my hair up into a messy bun, selected an outfit for work, and did a quick visual assessment of my appearance before beginning the morning ritual of preparing breakfast. Ugh, there was an enormous disfiguring wrinkle in the squint spot next to my left eye. Why hadn’t I gone into dermatology? Well, never mind; character wrinkle. I was just a very smiley person.