Only Love Can Break Your Heart

by Ed Tarkington

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Thirty-five, maybe?”

  “Good guess, Askew,” Stevie said. “Did you happen to know that a woman reaches her sexual peak around thirty-five?”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means,” Stevie drawled, “that at thirty-five, a woman’s body is perfectly ripe. She’s nearing the end of her child-bearing years. Her body is screaming for one more chance to procreate. All her hormones are exploding.”

  “Exploding?”

  “Exploding,” Stevie said. “When a woman is thirty-five, she’s insatiable.”

  Insatiable, I thought. Patricia wasn’t quite thirty-five, but she was close. She had seemed fairly insatiable to me. Maybe it was just hormones.

  Pondering the image of demure Mrs. Carswell in a state of orgasmic frenzy, I had an epiphany. As an artist, I was ready for a new motif. It was the beginning, you might say, of my Blue Period.

  The sketches didn’t require much imagination. At lunch, Mrs. Carswell often sat with Dr. Giffen, the headmaster, who was newly single that year. Everyone knew the embarrassing story behind the end of poor Old Giff’s marriage. A student who had gone back to the wrestling room to collect a forgotten textbook had walked in on Old Giff’s wife with Coach Cranmer on top of her, performing a move the wrestlers referred to as the Saturday night ride. The word filtered up to Old Giff and the board, and a few days later, Coach Cranmer and Mrs. Giffen were both gone. There were numerous other faculty members whose sex lives were frequent topics of discussion in the dorms and around the lunch tables. Mr. Dewerson, the chemistry teacher, was not yet thirty but already had five kids crammed into his little dorm apartment with his blowsy, buxom young wife. Plenty of jokes about the Dewersons involving minks and rabbits proliferated around the halls of Macon. Then there was Miss Sunday, one of the guidance counselors—a hopeless flirt who was rumored to annually select a second-semester senior for “initiation.” Most of us thought this was pure fantasy, but after what I’d been through with Patricia, I had no problem believing it to be true. It didn’t matter anyway; I wasn’t looking for facts—just inspiration. With my remaining study halls and a little extra time logged in the afternoons, I managed to complete a series of panels I knew would be more than enough to get myself booted, effective immediately. The last step was to ensure that it saw the light of day, sooner rather than later.

  On the morning of my history exam, I crept into the library alone. The place was empty; everyone else was in a classroom, including Mrs. Carswell, who was proctoring my own American History exam. One by one, I placed the volumes of the World Book around the library tables, covers open, making sure all the drawings from my new series were—ahem—exposed.

  I needed only one added flourish for insurance purposes. With my favorite black Sharpie, beneath the drawing I’d made of Dr. Giffen mounting Mrs. Carswell from behind atop the library checkout desk, I drew my initials—not just RA, but RVA Jr. As far as I knew, I was the only person in school with a middle name that began with the letter V. I’d always hated my middle name—Vernon—but in this case, such a distinct initial came in handy.

  I thought it wisest not to show up at the scene of the crime; hence I didn’t witness the look on Mrs. Carswell’s face when she saw her image defiled alongside that of Dr. Giffen, or her reaction to the pictures I’d drawn of Mr. and Mrs. Dewerson, Miss Sunday, and several more of their colleagues, depicted in flagrante delicto with students, fellow teachers, and the school mascot, the Red Devil. I winced when I heard she was found with tears streaming down her face as she struggled vainly to hide my work behind her desk while a chorus of guffaws echoed through the library and down the hallways. Stevie Lanier was seen running from the building, cursing my name under his breath.

  Within the hour, Mr. McMahan, the dean of students, found me waiting on a bench in the quad outside my classroom building and escorted me to the inquisition. He deposited me in a holding room in Leggett Hall, where I was left to stew for what seemed like a very long time. Eventually, Dean MacMahan opened the door.

  “Let’s go, Picasso,” he said.

  The headmaster’s office was a warm den of polished wood and leather. When we entered, Dr. Giffen was slumped in his chair, his fingers laced atop his chest. His face was gray and his eyes bleary, like he was fighting off a nasty cold. On the desk before him was the complete set of the World Book Encyclopedia. He did not stand when I entered the room.

  “Have a seat, Richard,” he said.

  His voice seemed tired and jaded. I thought of the picture I’d drawn of his ex-wife entangled on the wrestling mat with Coach Cranmer. Old Giff was having a rough year. Only when I was sitting before him did I begin to think of him not as a remote, indomitable embodiment of authority but rather as a human being, with feelings and emotions just like anyone else—just like me. I wished I could apologize, or make it up to him somehow, or even take it back. But it was too late for that. I swallowed hard and silently vowed to finish what I’d started.

  Giffen removed his rimless eyeglasses and began wiping the lenses with a paisley-patterned silk handkerchief.

  “I’m very sorry about your father, Richard,” Dr. Giffen began. “That’s a difficult thing for a boy your age to go through. It probably explains a lot.”

  He replaced his glasses and rose and walked around to take a seat on the edge of his desk in front of me. He took the volume from the top of the stack nearest to him and opened its front cover. There I saw the image I’d drawn of him behind Mrs. Carswell—both clearly identifiable, he by his bow tie and rimless glasses, she by the hairstyle and the string of pearls and the tweed dress bunched up around her hips. Beneath the image were my initials.

  “Is this your work, Richard?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mrs. Carswell is humiliated, young man,” Old Giff said.

  “I know, sir,” I said.

  I glanced up at Old Giff. Rather than anger, his expression suggested a sort of calm bewilderment. I think I’d have been less frightened if he’d been red-faced and bellowing, or if he’d gone back to his desk drawer, pulled out a paddle like Mr. Powell’s Swift Justice, and ordered me to assume the position.

  “So these are your drawings, Richard?” Old Giff asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “How many?” Giffen said.

  “All of them,” I replied.

  “And you did this all alone?”

  “Yes, sir,” I croaked.

  “You’re quite sure Stevie Lanier had nothing to do with this?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “It was all me.”

  “That’s what he told us,” Dr. Giffen said, “though given the trouble he’s had in the past, I’m not inclined to believe him.”

  So Stevie had already been brought in and had thrown the full blame onto me! The bastard! I thought. It was what I wanted, but still—what a little shit!

  “It seems far more likely,” Giff continued, “that you were drawn into this whole business, and that Mr. Lanier put your initials on this . . . work of art . . . in order to ensure it would be you and not he who bore the brunt of the punishment.”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “No, sir,” I said. “It was all me.”

  Giffen turned the book around and studied the picture.

  “Not a bad likeness,” he said. “It’s a pity you haven’t made use of those talents on more appropriate subjects.”

  Despite the circumstances, I felt a smile begin to creep up at the corners of my mouth. What the hell, I thought.

  “I’m only good at drawing one thing, sir,” I said.

  “Richard,” Old Giff said sharply, “this is no laughing matter.”

  The momentary sense of mirth evaporated.

  “I know, sir,” I said.

  “What do you suppose I’m to do about it, then?”

  I tried not to seem too eager.

  “If I were you,” I said, “I’d expel me.”

  Old Giff
was no fool.

  “You’ve never been in any trouble here, of any kind,” he said. “Why would you do such a thing now, of all times?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  It was mostly an honest answer.

  “Could it have anything to do with worries about things at home, son?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “I’ve already spoken to your mother,” he said. “She’s on her way here now.”

  Back when I was plotting my own demise, I hadn’t completely overlooked the possibility—nay, the certainty—that my plan, once enacted, would cause my mother considerable pain. It hadn’t seemed quite so unpleasant, however, when it was only an idea. With the announcement of her imminent arrival, I felt a powerful roiling of remorse and the first glimmering of the tears I had promised myself not to shed.

  “I know you know about the money, Richard,” Old Giff said. “Is this because of that?”

  I didn’t answer. Old Giff sighed.

  “I think it is, son,” he said. “I think you got a damned-fool idea in your head, and now it’s come to this.”

  He held his arms out in the air for a moment—a gesture to the magnitude of my predicament.

  “How well do you know Mrs. Carswell, son?”

  “Not at all, sir,” I said.

  “She’s a very kind and decent young woman who is trying to move forward with her life in the wake of a painful divorce,” Old Giff said. “Did you know that, son?”

  I shook my head.

  “Would you like to know something else about Mrs. Carswell, Richard?”

  I didn’t, but I knew he was going to tell me anyway.

  “Her father is a very close friend of mine. Mr. Wells Basten,” Old Giff said. “Do you know Mr. Wells Basten, son?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You should. He’s the chairman of our board of trustees.”

  My eyes widened. Wells Basten, I thought, as in the Basten Tennis Center and the Basten Alumni House.

  “Mr. Basten and his family have long been important supporters of this institution,” he said. “In addition to substantial sums to our annual fund and dedicated gifts to development projects, he likes to provide up-to-date reference books to our library’s collection. Can you see where this is going, Richard?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “I have to hand it to you, boy. You’ve got a knack for self-destruction.”

  I had to agree with him.

  “If it was anything else,” Old Giff muttered, “or anyone else . . .”

  His voice trailed off into a long sigh.

  For a moment we sat together in silence. Miserable as I was, I felt a welling up of sympathy for Dr. Giffen. Even after what I’d done to him, he still wanted to spare me. But I’d left him with only one course of action.

  “It’s all right, Dr. Giffen,” I said. “I deserve it.”

  He walked back around his desk and slumped into his chair.

  “What do you think this is going to do to your mother, boy?”

  At last the tears came.

  “Please, Dr. Giffen,” I said, my voice quivering with desperation. “You don’t have to talk to her. Just kick me out already.”

  Old Giff removed his glasses again and set them on the desk in front of him. He rubbed his eyes and let out another long sigh. He must have been thinking what I needed was therapy, or a good ass kicking, or maybe just an arm around my shoulder from someone like him. But it didn’t matter. I had insulted the headmaster and traumatized the daughter of the chairman of the board of trustees. My fate was sealed before I walked through the door.

  A light flashed on Old Giff’s phone. He lifted the receiver to his ear.

  “Yes?” he said. “All right. Thank you, Marilyn.”

  He gently set the receiver back in its cradle.

  “Your mother’s here,” Old Giff said.

  I could never have prepared for the depth of self-loathing I felt as I watched my mother wilt while Dr. Giffen explained to her why I was being dismissed. It would be utterly foolish, then or now, to suppose that there was any glimmer of relief beneath the shock and the distress. Nevertheless, I held on to the conviction that I had spared her a small part of her burden. Besides, she wouldn’t worry about it for long, I thought; we had bigger problems.

  “Well then,” Dr. Giffen said.

  And so it ended for me at Macon Prep. I followed my mother out of Old Giff’s office and down the stairs of Leggett Hall for the last time as a student. As we drove in silence under the gates and on toward our uncertain future, I was overcome by an odd sense of euphoria. At last, I felt at least partially purged. And for a while anyway, I was free. I wouldn’t have to start at Randolph High until January.

  13

  MY MOTHER TOOK MY expulsion from Macon rather well, all things considered. She was finding herself suited to the role of martyr. The Bible study women again rallied around her, as they had since the Old Man’s stroke. My return to the public school system was the subject of many prayers.

  Christmas came and went. My mother made the best of it, doing her usual bit with the decorations: garlands of pine needles wrapping the banisters, tied off with red velvet bows; white Christmas lights in the boxwoods and the dogwood trees lining the driveway; a tasteful tree and an heirloom crèche set on the mantel.

  With the Old Man no longer able to work, my mother had to find some kind of employment. She ended up taking a job behind a desk at the furniture company that belonged to Miss Anita Holt’s family. Something was better than nothing. The accountant, Mosby Watts, put my mother in touch with a private car dealer, and within a week the Mercedes was gone, the sum of its sale already spent on bills. I was surprised at how sorry I was to see it go.

  The Old Man had a regular aide during the daytime—a young black man named William. William wore hospital whites and a pair of Air Jordans. They spent a lot of time watching sports on TV. When dementia made the Old Man forget himself and start referring to him as “boy” or “the nigger,” William just ignored him, as if they were an old married couple who had lived with each other’s careless words for too long to be bothered by them.

  William started inviting me out onto the back porch to keep him company during his smoke breaks. He was full of questions about what it was like to grow up rich.

  “I’m sorry he says those things to you,” I said.

  We were out on the side porch. William smoked one of his Kools, huddling against the cold in his suede jacket.

  “Dag, man,” he said. “Cold out here. Where your rock at?”

  “My rock?”

  “Your ball, homes.”

  He pointed at the basketball hoop on the gable of the garage.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Just thought we might shoot a little to stay warm.”

  “I’m not sure we still have one.”

  We stamped around a bit, hands stuffed in pockets, William’s cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “He’s not a racist, you know,” I said. “He’s just old.”

  William lifted his cigarette and pointed the smoking end of it out toward Twin Oaks.

  “Who lives up there?” he asked.

  “The Culvers,” I said.

  “Ah. ‘That son of a bitch Brad Culver,’ ” William said, imitating the Old Man’s angry-codger voice.

  “That’s the one,” I said.

  I told William about Twin Oaks and Frank Cherry and Paul’s run-in with Culver. William absorbed it all thoughtfully, sucking his cheeks in when he puffed on his Kool.

  “It’s a nice house,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  It was an abnormally cold winter. The house was always drafty, with its high ceilings and stone and wood floors. To save money, my mother kept the thermostat below sixty. Every morning, I built great, heaping, roaring fires to quiet the Old Man’s shivering under his blanket in the armchair in front of the daytime reruns.

  One morning, before William arriv
ed, I left the Old Man and, bundled up in gloves, a stocking cap, and a flannel-lined parka, went out into the frosty cold to restock the woodpile next to the fireplace. Grabbing the garden cart from where I had left it a few days before, I trudged out to the big stack of split logs behind a small hedge in the side yard. Off in the distance, I could see the smoke rising from the Culvers’ chimneys. Since they had returned, Brad Culver hadn’t even bothered to call.

  Culver was not the only one of Dad’s former business associates or so-called friends who had made little to no effort to comfort him in his decline. I understood this neglect better as I grew older. These men were all over sixty; many of them, like the Old Man, on into their seventies. They had all lived through at least one of three wars, smoked heavily in their younger days, drank hard liquor, and ate plenty of red meat. They exercised little beyond a weekly round of golf and maybe a few minutes a week standing in one of those old belly-fat vibrating machines. None of them wanted to be confronted with what they might themselves soon be facing.

  Brad Culver was no different, yet his neglect struck me as unforgivable. As I loaded the garden cart with wood, I visualized Culver in a much warmer room in front of a cheerier fire. I imagined myself clubbing him over the head or whacking him at the knees or, as Paul had instructed me so long ago, right in the balls and then in the nose. I indulged this brutal daydream until I was heaving, the sweat running across my stomach beneath the parka, my breath firing out in white bursts of steam.

  I pulled the cart behind me back up to the house, quieting my breath as I went, feeling the sweat go cool beneath my coat. As I reached the side door and opened it, I heard the muffled sound of the Old Man calling to me, his voice high pitched and desperate.

  I found him in the bathroom, standing with his back to me, his slippered feet spread awkwardly on the white tile floor. One white-knuckled hand gripped his aluminum walker, while the other splayed out flat against the wall. His pants fly was open, and his flaccid member dangled out, dribbling urine down his leg. Without thinking, I stepped under his outstretched arm so that he could lean on me, grabbed his flank with my right hand to hold him up, pinched his pecker with my left, and aimed it at the toilet bowl.