Through the Heart

by Kate Morgenroth

  I sensed rather than saw the change, but her tone was still light when she said, “Does she have a dog named Toto?”

  “I’m serious,” I said. “It’s serious.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m in love with her.”

  “You can’t possibly know that after a month.”

  I didn’t respond. I wasn’t going to argue with her about it.

  She sat up and turned around to look at me. The lights were off, but I had a wall of windows in my bedroom, and it faced the towers of the financial district, and there was so much light in the room that I had to lower the shades to sleep. I could see her face in the glow.

  “It won’t last,” she said. “What are you going to do? Go live in Kansas?”

  “No. I’ve asked her to come here.”

  “So of course she’s back home packing.” As I watched her, I thought for a beautiful woman she looked rather ugly in that moment.

  “Actually, she said no. But I’m hoping she’s going to change her mind.”

  “Do you see a pattern here?” she said. “You seem to fall for women who tell you no.”

  I saw my opportunity, and I took it. I slid the knife in and twisted it. “Yes, but in every other way, she’s as different from you as you could possibly get. And one way it’s definitely different this time is that it’s the real thing.”

  Celia stared at me for a moment. Then she got out of my bed and started getting dressed.

  “I didn’t realize you could be this cruel,” she said, pulling on her skirt.

  “Oh, come on. I know you didn’t think I was a paragon of virtue and consideration.”

  “You’re just trying to hurt me because I wouldn’t marry you,” she said, buttoning up her shirt. “You’re still upset about that.”

  “I’m not still upset about it. Quite the contrary.”

  She had sat down on the edge of the bed to put on her shoes. But when I said that, she stopped. She turned around and stared at me hard. Then she said, “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you want to believe,” I told her.

  I was telling her the truth. I didn’t care. You can’t fake that kind of indifference. She heard it in my voice.

  “So what about us?” she asked.

  “Us? Is there an us?”

  “Well, whatever it is we do. What’s going to happen to that?”

  “I suppose we could continue on, sometimes anyway. But we’ll have to meet in a hotel since Nora will be living here.”

  She snorted. “You think I’m going to put up with that?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “You’re in love with someone else,” she said, bending to put on her shoes.

  “You’ve been in love with someone else since we met,” I pointed out.

  She was quiet for a minute. Then she said softly, “No. I never said I was in love with Marcus.” She turned around and looked at me, and she looked like someone I’d never seen before.

  “I’m sorry for you both then.”

  I know how that sounds. But for once I actually didn’t mean to be cruel. In that moment I was truly sorry for both her and Marcus.

  “I’d better go,” she said.

  “Yes, Marcus will be waiting for you.”

  “No, he’s out of town.” She gave a little laugh. “I thought you’d be so pleased that I could stay the whole night.”

  “I suppose you could still stay.” But I made sure that I said it in such a way that she would know I didn’t want her to. Well, what can I say? I didn’t. It was Nora who I wanted in my bed the whole night. I wanted to see her hair spread out on the pillow next to me. I wanted to see the way her face looked when she woke up from a deep sleep. I wanted to stand behind her and put my arms around her while she was standing at the sink brushing her teeth.

  Celia was usually pretty sharp, but she didn’t seem to be picking up on things tonight. She said, slowly, “Maybe I will stay . . .” and she looked over at me.

  I shrugged. “Whatever you want. I’m just going to be sleeping. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re here or not.”

  That’s when Celia, who I always considered hard as nails, actually began to tear. I could see it. Her nose turned pink and her eyes got very bright, though she managed to keep them from spilling over. At least that was something. Part of the reason I liked her so much was that I never had to deal with this kind of crap.

  “I’m going to go,” she said again.

  I know she wanted me to argue with her. To tell her to stay, that it would be all right. But instead I said, “Yes, that’s probably best.”

  I didn’t even walk her to the door. I didn’t enjoy seeing a woman who had been so strong fall apart right in front of me. When I heard the door close behind her, I got up to pour myself another glass of wine, to celebrate the fact that I wasn’t going to marry someone I didn’t love. Now I could see that I’d been lucky to escape getting married to Celia, because that’s how I found Nora. And I was so sure Nora and I would be different from other couples.

  I could look back now and think that was foolish.

  But I don’t.

  No, I think you should celebrate whenever you can. Take that momentary feeling of being lucky, that feeling of being on the right track, and enjoy it. It won’t last.

  Nora

  What Happens When Nora Tells Her Mother

  and Tammy About Her Decision

  I was leaving Kansas.

  I had decided, and I wasn’t changing my mind. If my deciding to leave was a seed, it was as if it had been planted and had grown into a huge oak overnight. A seed can be blown away; an oak needs a hurricane to uproot it.

  My mother was the potential hurricane. I decided not to delay facing the storm. I waited a couple of days for her to recover from the effects of the chemo, and then Monday, after work, I took out the folder that Neil and Timothy had given me. It was my ammunition.

  My mother was in her room when I came home. I knocked; then through the door I asked her if she would come downstairs because there was something I needed to talk to her about.

  I half expected her not to come down, but about ten minutes later, she appeared.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table when she came in. She crossed to the fridge and got out the orange juice. As she was getting a glass down from the cabinet, she said, “So what’s this big thing you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “You know how I told you that I met someone?”

  “Mmm,” she said, seeming to pay more attention to pouring her glass of orange juice than to what I was saying.

  “I know I didn’t tell you much about him—”

  “Some slick businessman from New York,” my mother said casually, and picked up the glass and took a sip.

  “What?” I looked at her blankly.

  She licked her lips daintily and said, “Timothy Whitting. Isn’t that right? Quite good-looking from what I hear. Though, of course, I wouldn’t know since you never brought him here to meet me.”

  “Wait, how do you know all this?”

  “Honey, he’s been there every day at the awful place where you work. You think I don’t have friends who tell me things? You think I never leave the house?”

  That was actually what I thought—because that’s what she always said. She always complained to me that she’d been sitting around all day.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you knew?” I asked.

  “What was the point? He was just going to go back to New York. But now I imagine he’s invited you to go to New York with him; is that it?”

  This was not at all how I had imagined it going. I had planned out this whole elaborate scheme for how to tell her: I’d carefully explain everything before I told her about him asking me to go to New York. Now I didn’t know what to say. So I just said, “Yes, he did.”

  “And I imagine you’re going to do it. You’re going to go chase him back to New York.”

  “It’s not
like that,” I said. “He wants me there.”

  “Yes, but for how long? Right now you’re different from all the New York girls he’s known. You’re a shiny new toy. But what about when he gets you back to New York, and you don’t quite measure up? What happens when he gets bored? It’s not like he’s asked you to marry him.”

  “We barely know each other,” I protested.

  “You think it gets better? You think that’s what happens? You get to know each other and you fall more deeply in love?” My mother snorted. “You’re going there to live with him without requiring anything from him. Why on earth would he ever ask you to marry him when he doesn’t have to?”

  “But I don’t want someone to ask me to marry them because they have to.”

  “Which is why you’re not married,” my mother said. “I would like nothing better than to see you settled and happy with someone. But I have to tell you, I just don’t see it happening. Not when you act like this.”

  “It’s not like that. He cares about me.”

  She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, as if I’d just said the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard.

  “Look what he did for me.” I put the manila folder on the table.

  I don’t know why all of a sudden I had to prove it to her. No, wait. I do know. I had been so certain, and she made me doubt it. So I thought if I could convince her, it would take my own doubt away.

  She came over to the table, opened the folder, and looked through the papers. I watched her as she did it—and I swear to you, her face didn’t change. Not a muscle. Not for the mortgage or for my loan or for my student loans or for the money in the bank. Nothing.

  She closed the folder and looked at me. Then she said, “I’m ashamed of you.”

  I wasn’t expecting it. If she had punched me in the stomach, I think it would have felt better. She went on. “Do you realize what you let him do? You let him buy you. How are you any better than a prostitute now?”

  I picked up the folder. I noticed that my hands were shaking.

  She went on. “That’s pocket change for him. But he knew it would seem like a big deal to a small-town girl like you.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” I said—and I desperately wanted it to be true. “I’m going anyway.”

  “Who’s stopping you?” she said. “You think I want you here if you don’t want to be here? It’s not like I need you. I can get someone else to drive me to the hospital. And it’s not like you do a whole lot more than that for me.”

  This was the opposite of what she’d been saying for three years. I had been prepared for her to do everything she could think of to try to get me to stay. Never in a million years did I think it would be worse for her not to care—or even to pretend not to care.

  She said, “Go to New York. See how long it lasts. I bet he’s already on to some other girl. You think he’s going to sit around and wait for you? You think there aren’t a hundred girls, a thousand girls, back there in New York trying to catch him? He came out here, and you’re something a little different. But you think he’s still going to think you’re quaint when you get to New York and he sees you around those New York girls. You think you can hold your own against them? He’ll send you packing right back to Kansas. I guarantee you; you’ll be back here in under a month. But, please, don’t listen to me. Go ahead and see for yourself.”

  “I will,” I said. “Because I think you’re wrong.” Then I turned and left.

  But it was as if every word she said were burned into my brain. I tried to summon up the look on Timothy’s face when he’d been about to show me the folder—how excited he’d been. How much he’d just wanted to help me. I remember knowing it, but I couldn’t call up the image. It was as if my mother had erased it with her words and replaced it with her version of events.

  All I wanted was to get to the one person who I knew would be thrilled for me: Tammy. I had told her that Timothy had asked me to go to New York, and in the same breath I’d said of course I couldn’t. Tammy had shown amazing restraint and hadn’t said a word, but I knew she almost certainly was thinking I was an idiot for not going. So I was excited to tell her I’d changed my mind.

  I drove to Tammy’s apartment and knocked on her door. Actually, it wasn’t an apartment, it was a room over a garage—her parents’ garage. They let her live there for free, and she had her own kitchen, her own bathroom, everything, but she still spent most of her time over in what she called the “big house.”

  Tammy had a relationship with her parents that was like nothing I’d ever seen. I don’t know if it was really disturbing or really wonderful. They did things like smoke pot together, but they also made their own Christmas ornaments and had evenings where they popped popcorn over the fireplace and made hot cocoa and watched old movies on PBS.

  Tammy was over in the big house when I knocked on her door. She saw me from the kitchen window, and she opened up the window and said, “Hold on, I’ll be right over.”

  A second later she came out.

  “Why don’t you come in and have some fudge,” Tammy said.

  I guessed it was one of their wholesome days—unless they’d gotten high and were making fudge, which could very well have been the case.

  “I’m not really in a fudge mood.”

  “How is that possible?” Tammy said.

  “Well, you’re looking at the girl who can manage the impossible,” I told her.

  “Uh oh. Come on in,” and Tammy led the way into her living room. Her apartment was decorated in warm colors, red and brown, with pictures of her friends and family, and lots of pillows and always a couple of throw blankets to wrap yourself up in. Tammy swore up and down that she had furnished it, even though I suspected her mother was really behind it. Sometimes I wondered what it would have been like growing up with a mother like Tammy’s. Would I have turned out to be just like Tammy then? In my situation, would she have been me? It was strange to think about.

  “What happened this time?” Tammy asked me, curling up in her favorite corner of the couch. I took the opposite corner and the red fleece blanket.

  Suddenly I got an image of myself of someone who always came to Tammy with some drama. Always some complaint. It wasn’t how I usually saw myself, so the sudden flash was disorienting.

  As I opened my mouth to tell her what was going on, I got an echo of what I was about to say, and I have to tell you, my problem seemed ridiculous.

  “I told my mother that I’m moving to New York, and she said she doesn’t care. Or she pretended not to care to hurt me. I don’t know which.”

  Why did that seem like such an awful thing? My mother said she didn’t care, and I was free. Whether or not she was right about all the rest of it, wasn’t that enough? Free from debt, with money in the bank, and leaving my mother’s house. Suddenly I felt buoyant. Unlimited. For a moment. For a split second.

  Until Tammy said, “Nora, you can’t go.”

  I felt like my world was turning inside out. Upside down. Nothing was the way I expected it to be.

  “What do you mean, I can’t go? I thought you’d be ecstatic. I thought you’d be even more excited than I am.”

  “Nora, did you forget?”

  “What?”

  “Remember when I made the prediction that you would be leaving.”

  I laughed. “Oh, I totally forgot about that. You’re right. Then again, you’re always right.”

  “Then you have to remember that I said you couldn’t go.”

  “That’s a contradiction. If I’m going, I’m going. You can’t tell me I’m going and I can’t go at the same time.”

  “Okay, then just let me tell you this. When I held your hand that time, I felt . . . Nora, all I can say is that it’s not safe. You’ve got to listen to me. It’s not safe.”

  “You keep saying that, but you don’t tell me anything.”

  “Okay, how about this? It’s the worst feeling I think I’ve ever felt. It’s something that’s masquerading
as love, but it’s not. It’s jealousy and resentment and fear, and if you don’t act exactly the way it wants you to, I don’t know what it will do.”

  “Why don’t you just say it? You mean you don’t know what he will do.”

  “Whatever that feeling will do,” she said.

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “This isn’t about liking him. Though honestly, Nora, I might like him, but I can’t say I exactly trust him. He’s not really the trustworthy type, is he?”

  “I thought Dan was the trustworthy type. Look how far appearances take you.”

  “Nora, I’m just afraid you’re not going into this with your eyes open. You’ve got to see who this guy really is.”

  “Why are you starting to sound like my mother now?”

  “God knows, I don’t think your mother and I have ever agreed on anything before. But you might want to listen for a change.”

  “What do you mean, listen for a change?”

  “You pretend to listen, and then you just go do whatever it was that you were planning to do,” Tammy said. “I’m just worried you don’t take into consideration all the facts.”

  “Or maybe I’m just thinking about different facts. This danger you’re describing to me, honestly I can’t say that it scares me. Not like staying here forever scares me.”

  “That’s because you don’t feel what I felt,” Tammy said.

  “Maybe something has changed,” I suggested. “Why don’t you try again?”

  I held my hand out. Tammy hesitated, then took it as if it were a dead fish. She closed her eyes for all of three seconds, then she practically threw my hand away.

  “Okay, guess I know the answer to that question,” I said.

  “Nora, if you could feel what I feel . . .”

  “I’d probably still go. Maybe this time you’ll be wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong,” she assured me.

  “Well, at least my life will be exciting,” I said. “Aren’t tragedies always the best stories?”

  The problem is, even when you think you can see the future, and you’re willing to accept the consequences, it’s never quite like you think.