The Law of Bound Hearts

by Anne Leclaire

  “She’ll be fine,” Eleanor said. She turned to Libby. “I tried to call you,” she said. “Monday afternoon.”

  “You tried to call me?”

  “To see how you were doing,” Eleanor said. “I know it was pretty rough on you last time. I wanted to check and see that you were all right.”

  “We put you in our prayer circle,” Jesse said. “The one I told you about.”

  Disconcerted by this show of concern, Libby fell silent.

  “I remembered your husband said you lived in Lake Forest,” Eleanor continued, “but I couldn’t remember your last name. I called the office here but they won’t give out that information. A privacy policy, they said. If you can imagine.”

  “Yes.”

  “As if any of us had any privacy here.”

  That, at least, Libby agreed with.

  Eleanor reached for a small notebook and pencil. “So what is it?”

  “What?”

  “Your last name.”

  Short of being rude, there was no way out of it. “Barnett,” Libby said. “Elizabeth Barnett.”

  “You might as well give me the number, too,” Eleanor said. “That’ll save me the trouble of having to look it up.”

  Libby recited her number. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jesse jotting it down as well. She could just imagine what she was letting herself in for. The next thing she knew, Jesse’d be showing up at her door trailing her entire prayer circle.

  Kelly returned and checked Libby’s monitor. “Looking good,” she said and then rushed off again.

  “She’s mad.” Libby surprised herself by confiding this to Eleanor.

  “Who?”

  “Kelly. I guess because I showed up late.”

  “She’s not mad,” Jesse said. “She’s just upset.”

  “I guess everyone is,” Eleanor said.

  Libby could not believe it. “I can just imagine what happens if you miss an appointment. You probably have to make a confession.”

  “Oh, they’re not upset about you,” Jesse said. “It’s Harold.”

  “Who’s Harold?”

  “Mr. Lenehy,” Eleanor said.

  “You know,” Jesse said. “The wheelchair. Deaf as a brick.”

  “What about him?”

  Eleanor pointed to the empty chaise on the other side of the bay.

  No wonder the television was turned so low.

  “The poor man’s in the hospital,” Jesse said.

  “Oh, no,” Libby said. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Eleanor said.

  “They know,” Jesse said, tilting her head toward the nurses’ station, “but of course they won’t say a word to us.”

  “I heard it was a heart attack,” Eleanor said.

  “Heart attack?”

  “It’s not that unusual,” Eleanor said. “Half the people in here are at cardiovascular risk. It goes with the territory.”

  This was news to Libby and she made a mental note to ask Carlotta about that. “Will he be all right?”

  Eleanor shrugged. “My guess is, it isn’t good.”

  “Here you go, dear,” Jesse said. She handed a tissue to Libby. It was only then that Libby realized she was weeping. Ridiculous. Weeping over a man who had done nothing but irritate her with his insistence on having the TV volume high, a man she barely knew.

  When she came out of the center, the air had turned heavy, forewarning of a storm. The dense atmosphere matched Libby’s mood. She couldn’t believe how sad she felt. It was ridiculous, really, how disturbed she was about Harold Lenehy. It was the cruelty of it that got to her. First he lost the use of his kidneys, then he lost a leg. Now, after all he’d gone through, to have a heart attack. It made existence seem so pointless, a mean joke, as if life were no more than a series of wrong turns and disappointments, more than one could bear. It was so unfair.

  Of course, it was foolish to rail against the injustice of it. If she knew anything it was that the universe didn’t concern itself with being fair. Good people died every day. Parents were plucked from the sky, pulled from one’s life with no warning, dashed to earth in an eruption of fiery steel. Lumps appeared in breasts. Organs stopped functioning. Husbands walked away from wives they’d loved for twenty years, or betrayed them. The only surprise was that she could still be astounded—taken out at the knees—by the capriciousness of life. People like Jesse—those who believed in some power or god, people who had faith—were lucky. Libby supposed it was easier to have an answer for unanswerable questions.

  She switched on the car ignition, but sat a moment before shifting into gear. She couldn’t face the idea of going home, of spending the afternoon alone. She considered driving to the college and finding Richard, but she was almost positive he had a class. Then, too, it was an unspoken rule that she would never bother him at work. She thought about calling someone on her cell phone. Sally Cummings or Jenny Cartwright. But she hadn’t spoken with either of them in weeks. She wasn’t ready to face the explanations required of her.

  When she pulled off the highway and onto North Green Bay, she thought about returning to the lakeshore, but changed direction at the last minute. For the second time that fall, she drove to the nature preserve, following an impulse she couldn’t explain any more this time than before.

  The parking lot was half full and she edged past a school bus and a handful of cars. She parked and opened the car door, inhaled deeply the slightly acrid air of dead leaves. The maples at the perimeter of the lot were in their last collapse of color.

  It felt good to be outside. She crossed the meadow, circling a towering pile of brush and tree limbs, preparations for the annual bonfire. She and Richard always attended this autumn event, along with half the populace of Lake Forest. In the past she had enjoyed the ritual, weaving her way in darkness with Richard’s flashlight, standing with him in the dark, waiting for the pile to be torched. And then the hungry roar, the leap of flames stretching up into the night sky, and in the distance the sound of the bagpipes. Julia Plumb’s husband was one of the pipers.

  You have to pay the piper.

  She quickened her step, as if she could outrun her past, outdistance a history she would give anything to be able to change. She hurried past woolly mats of prairie catsfoot and dried stalks of coreopsis and loosestrife. She settled onto a bench. “Let Nature Be Your Teacher,” the brass plaque on the back instructed her. Honestly, why couldn’t someone just give a memorial bench without attaching some preachy sentiment? She sat, placed her tote by her side.

  You have to pay the piper. Her mother’s voice again.

  Well, she didn’t need any maternal echo to engage her sense of guilt. Guilt, anger, and fear were pretty much the extent of her emotional range lately. And remorse, she thought, let’s not forget remorse. At that, she reached into her bag for the book of poetry. She flipped to the back and read the list she had written by the lake. Had it been only that morning?

  Northern lights

  Learn Latin

  Swim with the dolphins

  Italy

  Portugal

  Attend a concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields

  Hold my first grandchild

  Write a book of poetry

  She studied these items, these delayed dreams, her goals of a lifetime. Only hours before, they had seemed so consequential, significant enough to write down, to mourn the thought of their loss. But now? Harold Lenehy’s attack had disturbed her. She stared out over the prairie for long minutes. Say she was given one week. One day. Say she could be granted anything. What really held significance? She looked out over the champagne-colored land, watched a wood-cock swoop by. What did she desire with all her heart? The answers came swiftly. She dug a pen out from the depths of her tote and added two more items to her list.

  Forgive Richard

  Reconcile with Sam

  “Hello, Elizabeth.”

  The greeting startled her.

  “Sorry,” Gabe said.
“I thought you saw me coming.”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t.” She thought at once of Hannah, wondered how Gabriel Rose was coping with his wife’s illness. Not too well, she thought, judging by how he had aged since she’d last seen him.

  She and Richard had met Gabe about two years ago. He had been collecting seeds from the prairie grasses, part of his job at the Open Lands Association. Richard had struck up a conversation with him, and soon they were deep in the middle of a discussion about ecology and the history of the prairie. Gabe had told them that this acreage was virgin land, never plowed or tilled for crops. She remembered how she had watched his hands, moved by how gently he shook seeds from the stalks of grass into the pockets of his canvas apron. She had seen him around town occasionally after that and he always called her by name, although they’d been introduced only that once.

  She wanted to tell him how Hannah’s presence at the center eased her sessions, helped in some nearly mystical way, but then decided to let him bring up the subject if he wanted. “Collecting seeds again?” she asked. She slid the volume of poetry back into her bag.

  He nodded. He was dressed in his orangy-tan Carhartt overalls, double cloth at the knees. He cupped a handful from the pocket of his apron. “Big bluestem,” he said.

  She nodded, as if she actually knew the difference between big bluestem and Kentucky blue.

  He sifted the seeds from palm to palm. “The poetry of reproduction,” he said.

  She looked up at him, surprised. “What a lovely phrase.”

  “But not mine,” he said. “Jean Giraudoux. He was talking about flowers. ‘The flower is the poetry of reproduction. . . . an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.’ ”

  “Lovely,” she said again.

  “It’s from The Enchanted.” He dumped the seeds back into his apron pocket. “Have you read it?”

  “No.” Gabe reciting poetry? Wasn’t the world a hotbed of surprise? She nodded toward his hand. “What do you do with the seeds?”

  “Use them to restore other preserves.” He pushed back his hat and wiped his shirtsleeve across his brow. “Mind if I join you?”

  She scooted over on the bench. When he sat down, the muscles of his thighs bunched. She looked away, stared out at the grasses. The wind had come up and the blades bent and heaved in waves. He took an apple out of the apron, produced a pocketknife. He bisected the fruit and handed her half. She nibbled at hers. He ate his half with relish, swallowing even the seeds and core, wasting nothing.

  “Willa Cather had a line about the prairie,” he said. “About times when the winds come up like this. She wrote: ‘The whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.’ ”

  His hands looked rough with calluses and he could have used a decent haircut. When she was twenty, Libby wouldn’t have bothered to speak to him, never mind share an apple, but now she could understand why a girl like Hannah would go for him. He was exactly the kind of man Libby would wish for Mercedes. Of course, Mercy wouldn’t give him a second look, would dismiss him as not her type. Not edgy enough. The last boy she’d brought home had red spiked hair and a stud in his tongue. Richard could barely eat dinner at the table with him. Libby wondered if it was age that made one recognize goodness. Appreciate kindness. And she wondered how someone like Hannah had recognized it so young. She hoped to hell Mercedes would outgrow the “edgy” stage quickly.

  “Are you and Richard coming Sunday?” Gabe asked.

  She pulled her mind back from thoughts of Mercedes. “Sunday?”

  “The bonfire.”

  “Oh. That’s on Sunday? I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”

  Gabe leaned back, lifted his face to the sun. “The Indians used to call prairie fire the Red Buffalo,” he said.

  She remembered hearing this.

  “Whatever it’s called,” he said, “fire is essential for the prairie.”

  Richard had told her this, but she nodded, letting him continue, lulled by his voice.

  “The upper parts of the grasses are tinder dry. A hundred years ago, lightning strikes used to kindle them, set off fires.”

  She shuddered, just a brief shiver, but he noticed.

  “Cold?”

  “No.” Then, “It’s just the mention of lightning. My mother was struck by lightning once.”

  He turned toward her. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. When I was ten. Right in our backyard. She was taking in a load of laundry. Trying to get it all in before the rains came. She said the first thing was she smelled a peculiar odor—just a hint of something that was vaguely familiar, ozone, she thought after—and then she was hit.”

  “So was my father.”

  “What?”

  “Hit by lightning.”

  She stared at him. “You’re not serious?”

  He raised his palm as if taking an oath. “God’s honest truth. One minute he was talking on the phone and the next he was laid flat on the floor on the opposite side of the room. He couldn’t hear right for weeks.”

  “God, your father and my mother. I mean, what’re the chances of that?”

  “Pretty damn slim, I’d say.”

  “Very.” She shook her head. “I’ve never met anyone else who actually knew someone who’d been hit.”

  “After your mother was struck,” Gabe asked, “could she wear a watch?”

  Her eyes widened. “No. Never. Any watch she wore couldn’t keep correct time. It would gain or lose hours overnight. Your father, too?”

  “Not even a pocket watch.”

  She finished her apple. “Amazing,” she said.

  “Amazing,” he agreed.

  They sat in silence, neither in a hurry to talk. It was funny, Libby thought, that Gabe possessed the same deep, soul calm that Hannah had.

  “Do you know about the bonesetters?” he asked.

  “Bonesetters? No.”

  “There’s this tribe out in Santa Fe,” he said. “And there are healers in it called bonesetters. They lay a hand on wherever a bone is broken, and just by their touch, the bone is knit.”

  “I’ve never heard of that. Do you believe it? That they can really heal by touch?”

  “I don’t disbelieve it. The thing is, the bonesetters are those who have been hit by lightning and survive.”

  He lifted a finger, pointed to the shunt on her forearm. “Hannah told me she’s seen you at the center.”

  “Yes.”

  “Diabetes?” His voice was clear, his expression devoid of the pity she had expected and feared.

  “No. I’ve got something else.” She told him about her disease and what Carlotta had said about the three causes of disease.

  “Bad genes, bad habits, and bad luck,” he repeated. “That about covers it all.”

  “Yes.”

  They sat for a moment staring out at the prairie. Gabe broke the silence.

  “It took Hannah a while to get used to the treatments,” he said. “How’re you doing with it?”

  “It’s not my favorite part of the day.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Actually, I hate it.” She blurted it out, relieved to be honest.

  He surprised her by laughing. “Tell it like it is,” he said.

  She laughed, felt her shoulders relax. “How’s Hannah doing?” she asked.

  “Some days are better than others. She’s trying to get well enough to be considered for a transplant. She’s had one already and it’s harder to get a second one.”

  “Did she know the donor?”

  Gabe nodded. “I gave her one of mine. I swear I’d give her the other one if they’d let me.” A spasm of pain crossed his face, so pure Libby had to look away. “She refuses to let me get down. She says we don’t have that luxury. She says every day must be one of the good ones. The hardest thing for me is knowing that she’s had to let go of some of her dreams.”

  Libby knew about lost dreams.

  “She always wanted children,” Gabe said. “I swear
if any woman was born to be a mother and raise kids it’s Hannah. It about breaks my heart, but you know what she says?”

  “What?” Libby tried to envision what it would be like not to have Matthew or Mercedes, to be robbed of the riches they brought to her life.

  “She says she’ll just help other mothers with their kids. As soon as she can, she’s going back to school. She wants to get certified so she can open a nursery.”

  Libby fell silent. She pictured Hannah—so thin and worn, skeletal, really—holding on to her dream, refusing to let it go.

  “If anyone can do it,” Gabe went on, “it’s Hannah. She’s my miracle.”

  Libby felt something stir in her breast, beneath the rise of the catheter, a sensation it took a moment to recognize as hope. She willed it away. Hope was as much a phantom as faith and she knew better than to trust it. She raised a hand to her chest, let her fingers brush over the catheter.

  “Look,” Gabe said, his voice so hushed she barely heard.

  “What?”

  “Over there.” He nodded toward the edge of the prairie, beyond a clutch of hawthorns, to the opening by a stand of sycamores.

  A buck stood just free of the trees. If Gabe hadn’t pointed him out, Libby would have missed him. She caught her breath at the majesty of the deer.

  “Six point,” Gabe whispered. Then, as if he knew what was coming, “Watch.”

  The animal turned his head back toward the sycamores. A doe emerged from the shadow of the trees.

  “Beautiful,” Libby said. The word seemed insignificant. This was more than beauty. It was power and grace beyond language.

  “It’s their mating season,” Gabe said.

  She stared, transfixed.

  “You know what hunters say?” Gabe asked.

  She shook her head.

  “They say for every deer you see, a hundred have seen you.”

  The buck lifted his head, turned toward them.

  “We’re upwind,” Gabe said. “He’s caught our scent.”

  Libby longed to freeze this moment, to capture it. Then, in the distance, a dog yapped. In one fluid motion, the buck and his doe were gone, swallowed by the sycamores.