Sweeping Up the Heart

by Kevin Henkes

  “Hurry,” called Casey.

  “Coming.” She didn’t know if this following business was a good idea.

  Casey was walking so fast she had to quicken her pace to keep up with him. Boldly, she grabbed his arm to slow him down, startling herself. And him, too, it seemed. They froze for a second, then moved on. Their arms were linked for several strides before dropping.

  Amelia welled up with confusion. She didn’t know what she wanted to happen. If they caught up to Epiphany, what would they say to her? What would they do? The whole thing—the strangeness of it—was too much. Her poor brain was twisted up like a pretzel.

  They turned the same corner Epiphany had, but she’d disappeared. And then when they reached the next corner, they looked in every direction. Epiphany was nowhere to be seen.

  After a moment of complete stillness, Casey said, “Gone.”

  Amelia nibbled on the inside of her cheek.

  “Maybe,” said Casey, “she really is a ghost. She vanished.”

  “Maybe she’s just a woman,” said Amelia. “Some woman who has nothing to do with me.”

  “No,” said Casey. “Absolutely not.”

  They wandered around the neighborhood, turning their heads, looking here and there, but it seemed to Amelia that the chase was over, which made her glad somehow. Several times Amelia thought she heard someone plaintively say her name. But it wasn’t Epiphany calling for her daughter; it was the brakes of a passing truck and a squeaky garage door and the wind playing tricks, messing with her head.

  The first time she’d heard her name, she’d said, “Did you hear that?” Her voice was both shy and urgent.

  “What?” Casey was excited by the prospect. “What?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I thought I heard someone calling me. I’m wrong. It’s nothing.”

  Casey shrugged. “I didn’t hear anything. But keep your ears open.”

  When she’d heard her name again and then again, she felt a mild sadness pressing down on her shoulders, taking hold, but she said nothing.

  In fact, neither one of them said much as they meandered, hands shoved into their pockets. After one particularly long silence, dense with thoughts of Epiphany, Amelia announced, “Oh, hey, that’s my house.” She tipped her head.

  “That one?” said Casey, jutting his chin.

  “Yeah. Do you want to come inside? There’s a good chance there’ll be homemade cookies.” She waited, shifting uneasily in and out of a pool of deep shadow. For a second she regretted the invitation, thinking he’d respond by saying something about her mother baking the cookies.

  But he didn’t. He said, “Sure.” And they walked through the back door into the kitchen, drawn by the warm golden light.

  15 • Lucky Penny

  “These cookies are exquisite,” said Casey.

  “Well, thank you,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “I’m glad you like them.”

  “Oh, I do. Thank you.”

  “And you’re very polite,” added Mrs. O’Brien.

  The two of them seemed encased within a circle of mutual appreciation. Amelia watched them, feeling—feeling what? Feeling that seated before her were the two people currently in her daily life she was most comfortable with. Her heart rose up, and she let out a joyful sound—a short, piercing eeep.

  “What was that?” asked Casey, laughing.

  “Just a happy, I-love-this-cookie noise,” said Amelia, downplaying her happiness.

  “As I said: exquisite.” Casey reached for another cookie.

  “You two are going to make my head swell,” joked Mrs. O’Brien.

  “That,” said Amelia, “would never happen.”

  “Exquisite,” said Casey again, holding up his cookie, admiring it from every angle before taking a big bite.

  If any other boy their age had used the word exquisite, it would have sounded phony, but Amelia thought that Casey was as sincere as could be. And, he was so different from any boy she knew at school. Not that she knew any of them well.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Amelia wished this moment would last and last, that this scene would grow and unspool and carry her away. She saw the kitchen as if she’d never seen it before. A hundred thousand things were going on in her head.

  Her life tended toward the narrow, the limited, and today, right now, it was leaning toward something different, something more, toward what she imagined most people had every day.

  Casey pulled a penny from his pocket and spun it on the tabletop. “I found this today,” he said. “A lucky penny. So, I guess it’s my lucky day.” He stared at the penny as it wobbled and fell flat. “It would have been more lucky if we would have found, you know . . .” His eyes drifted up to Amelia’s.

  Amelia’s heart pounded. She flashed Casey an expression—both disapproving and searching. She was not ready to talk about Epiphany. “Mrs. O’Brien, do you remember when we would plant pennies?” Amelia asked. A diversion.

  “Of course I do.”

  “We haven’t done that in a long time,” said Amelia.

  “What’s that?” asked Casey. “How do you plant pennies? And why?”

  “It’s fun,” said Amelia. “It’s when you put a penny someplace where you think someone will find it. Like on a railing or a park bench or a windowsill or a shelf in a grocery store.”

  Mrs. O’Brien smiled. “You used to love to hide and wait and watch to see what would happen.”

  “Having little kids find them was the best,” said Amelia. “Sometimes they’d get so excited.”

  “That’s funny,” said Mrs. O’Brien, “because you were little yourself.” She paused. “But you’ve always seemed old. An old soul, you are.”

  “Here,” said Casey. “Yours to plant.” He slid the penny across the table to Amelia.

  “Oh!” said Amelia, sharply, rising quickly from her chair with a jerk, nearly falling.

  “What?” said Casey.

  “You’re jumpy,” said Mrs. O’Brien calmly. “Poor thing, what is it? What’s the matter?”

  “I heard a car door,” said Amelia. “I’ll see if it’s the Professor.”

  A look of understanding passed between Amelia and Mrs. O’Brien.

  “Who’s the Professor?” asked Casey.

  “Mrs. O’Brien will fill you in,” said Amelia. As she left the kitchen, Amelia purposely brushed against Mrs. O’Brien. Just to have the contact, the touch. “I’ll be right back.”

  16 • Scenario

  The driveway was empty. And so was the street directly in front of their house. From the porch, Amelia glanced left and right. She saw two things. She gasped.

  One: Her father’s car was approaching from down the block, on the left.

  Two: A small silver car was parked at the corner, on the right. Standing beside the car on the driver’s side was Epiphany. The cantaloupe jacket was like an exotic bird in a bleak landscape. Epiphany seemed to be looking right at Amelia and when she saw the Professor’s car pull into the driveway, she hesitated, then quickly slipped back into the silver car and drove away.

  Seeing what Amelia saw was like eating ice cream too fast. Her head ached. And then her heart.

  It was a moment of breathless suspension.

  Her father slammed the car door—a jolt that brought her back. Back to the porch, watching her father move against the wind under the pewter sky, toward her, smiling tightly.

  She moved and acted as expected—greeting her father, introducing him to Casey, filling a few awkward minutes with small talk until her father fled to the privacy of his study. But she did so on liquid legs, as if in a fog, her composure paper-thin.

  She hoped no one sensed her remove.

  Epiphany had taken hold of her imagination. Amelia’s thoughts lit up with possible scenarios.

  The scenario that blazed brightest was this: Amelia’s mother hadn’t died. For some reason, long ago, she needed to leave her husband and two-year-old daughter. And, now, after ten years, she’d returned. Becaus
e she couldn’t bear to live without her daughter.

  The details of the story, the explanation, might be surprising, even painful to hear, but it would be worth it. The tearful reunion. The ongoing life. The future.

  Amelia, Casey, and Mrs. O’Brien were still in the kitchen. Amelia was working hard to hide her tumultuous feelings. Her stomach rumbled and she said, “I guess I’m getting hungry again,” but she wasn’t hungry at all.

  When Casey excused himself to use the bathroom, Mrs. O’Brien offered a suggestion. “You could ask him to stay for dinner,” she said quietly.

  But Amelia wanted him to leave. She didn’t want to discuss Epiphany, this new development, but she was too preoccupied because of it to act normally. “Thanks, but no,” said Amelia. She shrugged. “You know, the Professor might be weird.” She shrugged again and shook her head.

  “If you change your mind . . .” Mrs. O’Brien’s voice trailed off.

  When Casey returned to the kitchen, Amelia told him there was something she needed to do and that he should go. She played with her hands as she spoke, pressing her fingertips together, then forming a bowl with her hands in midair.

  “Well, see you tomorrow then,” said Casey, a touch of disappointment in his voice. “Come to the studio early,” he added, hopeful.

  “Okay,” replied Amelia.

  But she knew Casey would understand if she didn’t show up because Epiphany had come back for good. In her cantaloupe jacket. In the silver car. The long-lost mother. Home.

  17 • Too Big

  Amelia looked for the silver car from the living room window several times throughout the rest of the day. The car was nowhere to be seen. Although she was ready to burst, Amelia kept the earlier Epiphany sighting to herself, hoarding it, the biggest secret she’d ever held.

  When Mrs. O’Brien spotted Amelia at the window, she said, “Honey, I don’t think he’s coming back. You asked him to leave.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Amelia. “Just checking the weather.”

  Dinner was a quiet affair, equal parts Mrs. O’Brien’s even regularity and the Professor’s expressions of irritated disappointment. During the silences, Amelia thought about Epiphany. The scenario she’d been creating deepened. Among the swirl of possibilities were travels to faraway places and important jobs, but no other children. Just one mother and one daughter. Amelia knew Epiphany was the mother and that she, Amelia, was the daughter. She knew it in her bones, her teeth.

  If she were more brave, Amelia would have pulled Mrs. O’Brien from the table into the pantry off the kitchen and begged her to answer the questions that filled her head:

  What do you think about my mother?

  What really happened to her?

  Is she alive?

  Tell me everything, she wanted to implore. But, of course, she couldn’t. And didn’t.

  But she made it through. Through dinner. And through the long, lonely hours before bed.

  At one point, when she heard her father go into the bathroom, Amelia sneaked into his study.

  Quickly, she looked at the small photograph of her mother. It was in a gold frame on his desk.

  Was it a photo of Epiphany? Amelia didn’t know. Her mother was so young in the picture. It could be her, she thought. She heard the toilet flush down the hall and fled.

  In bed, in the dark nothingness of her room, she talked to Dr. Cotton; it was like a little play. She imagined his reassuring voice, his firm questions.

  Amelia: I guess I’m afraid.

  Dr. Cotton: Of what?

  Amelia: Life.

  Dr. Cotton: What about it?

  Amelia: It’s too big.

  Dr. Cotton: How so?

  Amelia (after a long pause): It’s so big that I don’t know what will happen.

  The next thing Amelia knew it was morning. Dr. Cotton sat on his shelf, mute and lifeless. Same as always. It seemed nothing in the world had changed. But then she remembered Epiphany and she sensed that the world would never be the same.

  18 • Nothing

  According to Mrs. O’Brien’s breakfast report, the day promised to be a gentler one, with a delicate blue sky, a warming sun, and only a slight breeze. It was still chilly, she’d said, but Amelia took the weather as a sign—a good sign—that today would be an important day.

  Amelia bent the shape of her morning to accommodate Epiphany, forgoing the clay studio and Casey. She wanted to be home in case Epiphany came back. Amelia’s waking dream, her fantasy, involved a reunion scene in the front yard that caused her skin to tingle when she considered it.

  Amelia waited, but nothing happened. Epiphany didn’t ring the doorbell. She didn’t telephone. There was no silver car out front. Nothing.

  Amelia ended up spending a good part of the morning in the yard. Maybe the silver car would drive by; even a glimpse of it would sustain her. The dingy lawn was littered with twigs and branches from the previous day’s wind. Amelia drifted about, hunched over, picking up sticks and piling them by the curb, something she’d seen her father do.

  She was marking time. And time had slowed. Drip, drip, drip.

  “Looking for spring?” It was Mrs. O’Brien. She came down the porch steps and approached Amelia. She was wearing an oatmeal-colored sweater with big wooden buttons over her pastel shirt. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest.

  Amelia started. She’d been staring at a twig, rubbing the little nub at the tip, but her mind had been spinning with a detail from her waking dream. “I realized how much I needed you,” Epiphany said in the dream. Amelia had replayed the line several times, drawing out the word needed and pumping it full of emotion until she felt purely exulted.

  “Oh, hi,” said Amelia, turning. She rose and dropped the twig onto the pile. She knew she was blushing.

  “Honey, I think I know what you’re doing,” said Mrs. O’Brien. Her fierce gray eyes were watery from the sharp air. Her smile was a bemused smile.

  “You do?”

  Mrs. O’Brien nodded.

  Amelia balled her hands, then opened them, spreading her fingers like the points of a star. Again. Again. “What am I doing?” she whispered. She thought she was tilting.

  Mrs. O’Brien grabbed her hands. “Your fingers are freezing!” she said. She pressed Amelia’s hands—first one, then the other—between hers, rubbing them gently. “Listen, it’s hard to believe, but I know how you feel.” She raised her eyebrows as if inviting Amelia to share her tightly held secret.

  Was it possible? Did Mrs. O’Brien know what Amelia was feeling?

  “Boys are funny creatures,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “And I wouldn’t wait around for anyone. You. You’re the one. People should be waiting for you.”

  “Oh,” said Amelia.

  “And you’ve got a lifetime ahead of you to worry about those kinds of things.”

  Mrs. O’Brien’s misunderstanding became suddenly clear to Amelia, but she didn’t know quite what to do. “Oh,” Amelia said again. “Yeah. Well . . .”

  “And, just so you know, he’s thinking about you.” Mrs. O’Brien nodded. “That’s right. Two times since you’ve been out here the phone rang. Both times, when I answered, whoever it was—him, I’m sure—hung up.”

  “The phone rang?” Amelia’s voice jumped. And so did she, just a little.

  “Yes, sweetie. Calm down.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “No, but I knew it was him. I know the way you just know these things.”

  Amelia was already moving toward the porch, staring ahead, unblinking. The grass, the bushes, the house—the world—suddenly seemed muted. And her understanding that Epiphany had been calling was vivid, oh-so-real. Mrs. O’Brien was half a step behind her.

  “Maybe she’ll call again,” said Amelia. “He’ll. He’ll call again.”

  The simplicity of what was happening, the reassurance, the affirmation, was pulling her inside—through the hallway to the telephone in the kitchen.

  About five minutes later, the phone
rang.

  “Hello?” said Amelia, breathlessly.

  “Oh, good, it’s you. Finally. Hi.”

  Casey’s voice was like a black shape coming at her, wiping out her hope.

  Amelia was silent.

  “Aren’t you coming to the studio?” asked Casey.

  Silence.

  “Hey, Amelia, are you there?”

  “Did you call before?” asked Amelia in a quavery voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “Twice?”

  “I guess.”

  “Why did you hang up?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I was hoping you’d answer. So, are you coming?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And then she hung up.

  “It was him, wasn’t it?” asked Mrs. O’Brien with outstretched arms.

  Amelia nodded. “You’re always right,” she said, letting her disappointed self melt into Mrs. O’Brien.

  “Not always.”

  “Just about,” said Amelia.

  19 • Heart

  After lunch Amelia rushed off to the studio because she needed to get her hands back into some clay. She thought if she stayed home waiting for Epiphany any longer, she might explode. She also felt badly about the way she’d treated Casey. Without explaining anything, she wanted him to know that everything between them was fine.

  “Are you mad at me?” asked Casey the second he saw her. He was sitting in his usual place. A heart-shaped slab of clay lay before him on the worktable. He was carving into it with a sharp tool.

  “No.”

  “You hung up on me.”

  “I know,” said Amelia.

  He looked at her with narrowed, searching eyes.

  She gave a tiny shrug. “It’s hard to explain.”

  He kept looking at her, looking through her, waiting.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and then she changed the subject. “What are you working on?”

  Now it was Casey’s turn to shrug. “Another dumb idea. A heart for my parents.” He extended his hands and waved them, as if presenting it.