Anxious Hearts

by Tucker Shaw

I don’t have to wait long. Outside the sliding glass doors, a police car screeches to a halt, lights flashing. Seconds later, an ambulance arrives. The driver and passenger jump out of the cab and race around to the back doors, which they open to reveal what appears to be an extremely old man lying on a gurney, an oxygen mask attached to his face. The cop helps the ambulance drivers unload the gurney and wheel it into the emergency room. “Cardiac arrest!” one of them shouts to the nurse before they race through the swinging doors and disappear into the same cave where Gabe is.

  I look back at the ambulance, and see inside it a very old woman sitting on the bench next to where the gurney was. She’s surrounded by a wall full of medical equipment—a blood-pressure monitor, an oxygen tank, a pair of defibrillator paddles. She is strapped in with seat belts over both shoulders, but she’s making no attempt to unbuckle herself or get up.

  I approach the ambulance. “Ma’am?” I say.

  But the woman, who is at least as old as Ada was, does not answer. She is crying. She’s wrapped in a fuzzy red and blue plaid robe, and she’s wearing woolen socks with no shoes.

  “Where are you?” she is mumbling. “Where have you gone?”

  I climb into the ambulance and sit down next to her. “Ma’am?” I say.

  She looks at me, her tiny, birdlike face splotched with the blue-black of sleeplessness. Her clear, tearful eyes glisten. “Where has he gone?” she asks, as if there is no other question in the world.

  I take her hand. “What is your name?” I say.

  “Mrs. Gage,” she says. “Mrs. Henry C. Gage. Of Biddeford.”

  “Come with me, Mrs. Gage,” I say. “We will find him. I will help you.” I unbuckle her seat belts and carefully help her down from the ambulance. She is very light. Leaning on my arm, she shuffles into the emergency room. It is empty; everyone has disappeared into the back to help with the woman’s husband, who is apparently having a heart attack. I grab a wheelchair. “Here,” I say, locking the wheelchair’s breaks with my foot. “Sit here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Please, Mrs. Gage.” I point at the wheelchair’s seat. She sits down in the wheelchair and I wheel it through the swinging doors, into the brightly lit intake room.

  There is a commotion behind one of the curtains, where the doctors are working on Mr. Gage, working to restart his stalled heart. “Clear!” shouts one voice. An electric surge pulses through the room as the paddles come down with a clack. I jump, but Mrs. Gage does not move.

  I wheel her over to one corner of the room next to a short bench. I sit with her for a moment. I take hold of her hand while we listen to the doctors talking behind the curtain. “Clear!” one shouts, and there’s another surge. I jump again.

  I look over at Mrs. Gage. She is asleep.

  I put Mrs. Gage’s hand back in her lap and stand up. She’ll be fine now. She’s in a room full of doctors, and Da’ always says that if someone’s asleep, you shouldn’t wake them. A soul has enough trouble finding rest in this world, he says.

  So I let her sleep. I know that all she really wants is to be with him anyway. Whatever happens, whether he lives or dies, she just wants to be with him. I’ve helped her as much as I can.

  Besides, I’m behind the swinging doors now, that much closer to Gabe.

  Gabriel

  THE LAST THING GABRIEL SAW WAS EVANGELINE’S softly smiling face, illuminated with the blissful aura of their youth. Her expression of devotion enveloped him in her warmth.

  Gabriel closed his tired eyes, and Evangeline laid herself next to him in the mud, under the gray-black skies of Vieux Manan. She kissed his lips, her arms wrapping him in restfulness and certainty.

  “My beloved,” she whispered.

  eva

  It takes under a minute to find Gabe’s room, and even less than that to slip in and close the door behind me.

  He is lying in a bed, tilted partway up. His head falls to one side. His right forearm is turned outward and bent slightly back on a raised pillow to reveal his pale white inner elbow, punctured by two tubes and spotted with green and black bruises. His breathing is awkward, haphazard, and I can tell that Gabe is in pain.

  My heart stings.

  There is a lamp next to his bed, with a hospital gown draped over the shade to soften its intense fluorescent light. I sit down on one of the padded chairs next to the window and wait.

  The night outside the window is dark, and windy, and wet. This rain will turn to sleet by morning.

  “You are here,” Gabe says softly, without turning his head upright, without even opening his eyes. “Evangeline.”

  I am silent for a moment before I answer. “Yes,” I say. “I am here.”

  He opens his eyes and gives a slight smile.

  And in an instant, I am awash in unexpected anger.

  For as many times as I’d rehearsed what I’d say when I saw him again, I am stuck without words. I never pictured it this way. But here, now, in a hospital room where the only person I’ll ever be able to love lies ill, maybe dying, I am furious.

  I want to yell at him. I want to hit him. But I don’t have the words or the strength for either, so I simply turn away from him. “I’m leaving.” I walk toward the door.

  “Please,” he says. “Evangeline.” I know he is in pain. I hear it.

  I stop at the door, close my eyes, and inhale. “Where were you?” I say. I insist.

  “Nowhere far,” he says. “I was never far. I was always nearby. In Franktown, in Brewster, in Portland. I’ve been waiting.”

  “For what?” I demand, steely and stiff-necked. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “I memorized those woods looking for you. I could have died on that cliff you disappeared over.”

  He is still silent.

  “Louise told me to give up on you. I even told myself to give up on you!”

  “I thought you would understand,” he says, interrupting. “I was lost.”

  “Lost?” I say. “You weren’t lost. You knew exactly how to get home.”

  “Home?” he says. “Where is that?”

  I don’t say anything.

  “My brother is dead,” he says. “My father is gone. My mother was never here.” He sighs. “Where is my home?”

  I know the answer before he even asks the question, but at first I don’t say it. I am afraid to. Then I think about that day under the dock, when I didn’t tell him how I really felt, that I’d follow him anywhere, forever, and if only I’d said so then, maybe we would have found a way to grow up together instead of apart.

  “With me,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Your home is with me,” I say. “You belong with me.”

  I wait for Gabe to say that I am right, to say that he is sorry. That he will never disappear again. I want him to ask me to stay with him, forever.

  But Gabe doesn’t say a word.

  I carry the notebook over to him and toss it on his chest. “This is yours.” I turn toward the door, hoping I make it out of the room before my tears, now transforming from angry to desperately, desperately sad, take over. I fear this is the end, now, that all my searching, waiting, loving has been for nothing.

  Gabriel

  AS THE OUTGOING TIDE OF VIEUX MANAN receded to its lowest ebb, Evangeline inhaled Gabriel’s final breath. It filled her with peace.

  And Gabriel’s anxious heart fell quiet at last.

  eva

  He dies in the end, you know,” Gabe says before I can reach the door to leave his hospital room. I stop and turn to look at him. His eyes are still closed, his head resting off to the side, but his hand is now holding his notebook to his chest, pressing it against his heart.

  I nod. “I know.”

  And then the tears come again. Tears of exhaustion, of shared pain, of separation, of togetherness. Tears that belong to Gabe and me. I don’t want Gabe to die, too. Not like Ada. Not like Paul. Not like Gabriel. Not now. Not ever. I stand and star
e through my tears at Gabe.

  Gabe lifts his head at last and looks at me, ocean-blue eyes soft and weary. But alive. He opens the notebook. He flips to the final page. And then he rips out the page, holds it up for me to see, crumples it into a ball, and tosses it onto the floor. “It doesn’t have to happen that way, Evangeline.”

  I don’t answer.

  “Come home,” he says, holding up his arms. “Please, come home.”

  I decide, then and there, that Ada was right. My search for Gabe was never in vain, because we are now, both, finally home. Whatever the future holds for us, whatever threatening ships sail into the harbor and threaten to split us apart, our story is still being written.

  It’s not over.

  I crawl into Gabe’s bed and curl up under his blanket, pressing my ear to his chest. I listen to his steady, even heart.

  “My beloved,” I say.

  Epilogue

  LOOK AROUND.

  You are alone at the top of the bluff. The distant dawn creeps up over the edge of the cliff, illuminating the meadow in a misty morning haze. The low, thorny bramble bushes and swaying sea grasses of green and gold are draped in a many-hued glow. The sun lifts over the sea, slowly but certainly, sharpening the light and revealing layers of emerald and amber and fiery scarlet as every season, every story converges on this place.

  You’ve slept here, on this rock-altar, coddled by the far-off rumble of the waves, insistent and crashing at twilight as the tide pressed forward, but meeker now as morning takes hold and the waters recede.

  A twig snaps in a glade of birch trees. You turn. Is that a shadow concealed in the wood? A deer? A man? A ghost?

  The sea breeze, salty and pure and whispering, fills your lungs and mind with memories you haven’t formed yet. You inhale deeply. The yellow wood lilies at the edge of the forest beckon you back to the path in the woods, back through the pines, back to your old life.

  You wonder how long you’ve been here, and worry how you’ll get home.

  Another breath, deeper now, and your anxious heart slows again. You are not alone. Many have disappeared down this path, struggled, and found their way home again. Many stories surround you.

  Perhaps you will linger here atop the bec awhile longer, lying on your back and tracing the sun’s path against the sky, and waiting, watching, listening, hoping for the return of the distant tide.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This we know for sure: In 1755 the French-speaking Acadian community in and around Nova Scotia was, under long-standing orders from the British crown, forcibly removed from their lands and dispersed across the Atlantic, from Maine to Argentina. Many were sent to France. The largest group of displaced Acadians settled in Louisiana. Their descendants—the Cajuns—still live there.

  A hundred years later, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow heard a story from his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne about a young Acadian couple separated during the expulsion. According to the story, this couple searched for years before finally finding each other—just in time for one of them to die. It’s unclear whether the story was true or invented—what’s certain is that it was compelling.

  Longfellow spent ten years turning the tale into his epic poem “Evangeline,” a bestseller in its day. It became so popular that for many, “Evangeline” is seen as history rather than romance, something Longfellow surely never intended. But while scholars and history enthusiasts argue over the authenticity of Longfellow’s interpretation, the story remains strong. Because in the end, it’s not a story about Acadians, it’s a story about people—about separation and reunion, about the search for what’s disappeared, about devotion and hope and love.

  “Evangeline” remains an unbeatable inspiration—both for me and for Gabe Lejeune, the scribbling, floppy-haired boy from Franktown who disappears, the boy Eva refuses to give up on.

  The poem recounted by the notary Leblanc on pages 71–74 is excerpted from Part 1 of “Evangeline.”

  The words Gabe sings on page 59 are from “Vincent,” by Don McLean.

  The song on the car radio on page 51 is “Over the Hills and Far Away,” by Led Zeppelin.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks are due to gentle, brilliant, beautiful Tamar Brazis, who is much smarter than I am, just as editors should be. To Maria Middleton and Chad Beckerman, who attend so carefully to every design they create. Jonathan Beckerman, for his beautiful photographs. Scott Auerbach, for his clarity and helpfulness. Jason Wells, for unyielding energy. Susan Van Metre and the team at Amulet, for believing that a centuries-old love story was worth telling again. To Dan Mandel, for helping with the p’s and q’s. To my friends for graciously allowing me to insert Longfellow quotations into conversation, even when they didn’t belong. To A, for patience. And to Gabriel and Evangeline, for never giving up.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TUCKER SHAW, who has been featured on The Today Show, is the author of Everything I Ate and many popular books for teens, including Confessions of a Backup Dancer and The Girls. He lives in Denver, where he is a food editor for the Denver Post.

  This book was designed by Maria T. Middleton and art directed by Chad W. Beckerman. The text is set in 12-point Adobe Garamond, a typeface originally drawn by the sixteenth-century French engraver and punch cutter Claude Garamond. The display font used for Gabriel is P22 Roanoke Script, and the display font used for Eva is Filosofia Unicase. The title typography is hand-drawn, based on the letter forms of Adobe Garamond.

  TUCKER SHAW, who has been featured on the Today Show, is the author of Everything I Ate and many popular books for teens, including Confessions of a Backup Dancer and The Girls. He lives in Denver, Colorado, where he is a food editor for the Denver Post.

  JACKET PHOTOGRAPHY COPYRIGHT

  © 2010 JONATHAN BECKERMAN

  JACKET DESIGN BY MARIA T. MIDDLETON

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