Peace of Her Heart

by Lyndie Strawbridge

  After another long silence, Maddie crumbled. “Truthfully, Nick, I have only been dating the guy for a couple of weeks. I was just bluffing when I said it was a serious relationship.” She felt so deflated. She knew that somewhere inside of her chest her heart must be aching, but right now she was too embarrassed to pay it any mind.

  Nick waved for the check. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Maddie nodded her head a little and put her hand across her eyes. “I feel queasy,” she muttered.

  “I hope it wasn’t the food,” he answered absently as they made their way out of the restaurant and toward the parking lot. “I’m pretty sure that’s not what you’re saying, though,” he added, glancing over at her as she buckled herself into the BMW.

  “No, it’s not the food.” Maddie gave a rueful little laugh. “It’s really not,” she said, staring out of the window, watching the cars and trees and buildings whoosh by. Buildings that all had electricity and running water.

  Chapter 9

  The next evening, Maddie and Karla got in the car and drove around the block to Grantille street. They did this instead of passing through the hole in the fence. Once there, the two of them ascended the stairs in the dark to the little white house with the blue door, and Maddie looked under the potted geranium for the house key. She opened the door and they both went in.

  “Do it,” Karla commanded. Maddie looked at her and then over at the light switch. She reached out and flipped it. Nothing happened. Karla went around the corner into the kitchen and flipped that one. Nothing happened. Maddie went back out to the car and came back with the two flashlights that they’d decided to bring just in case they proved necessary, which they had.

  With flashlights in hand, the two girls crossed the kitchen to the refrigerator. It was unplugged, and even had it been plugged in, it would have been useless with the electricity being shut off. Maddie opened a cabinet and shone the flashlight on the few foodstuffs Raff had left behind. She pulled down a box of saltines and turned it this way and that until she found an expiration date. They were old, old crackers. “Where do you buy things this old?” she asked Karla.

  “I don’t know. Do you buy things that old? Or do you find things that old in dumpsters?” she replied, with a pointed look and eyebrows raised high.

  Maddie stuck the crackers back in the cabinet, and a thin film of disgust lowered itself daintily onto her skin. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe they’re the only thing this old. Let me check the peanut butter.” She palmed the jar and shuffled it in her hand until she could see the expiration date. Then she put the jar back in the cabinet and simply said, “No.”

  Karla lifted the lever for the sink. No water emerged. The pipes didn’t even make a chugging sound. She responded in kind to Maddie, simply saying, “No.”

  The feeling of repulsion that was rising in Maddie’s gut was equaled by the sense of despair she was fighting down inside her head. How clean can you be if you don’t have running water? How revolting must his mouth be? Why didn’t I notice? He might as well be living in an abandoned building.

  Karla reached out and took Maddie’s arm, leading her the five feet across the kitchen to the bathroom door. Karla’s little brown hand reached out and gave it a shove. It swung open. To Maddie, it was like standing in a horror movie, the kind where the heroine believes she’s been living in a castle only to discover that really she’s actually in a psych ward and after she starts taking her meds the bejeweled and golden castle walls reveal themselves to be nothing more than a hallucination.

  Karla leaned over and opened the toilet lid, shining the flashlight into the bowl. There was no water inside, but there was the stench of urine. “Ugh,” she coughed, as she pulled away, shutting the lid immediately.

  “It never stank when I was here,” Maddie said, defending herself against the sickened look that Karla flashed at her. “I don’t know,” she said, lowering her head and grasping her temples. “He must have swished it with cleanser before I came over, or something. And we were only here for like 45 minutes at a time, ever.”

  Karla took a moment, and then nodded in acceptance of the explanation. But then she reached across the sink and turned the faucet knobs. No water came out. “Maddie!” she exclaimed, whipping her head around. “You said you guys had sex here. How in the hell did you not discover the lack of water? You don’t clean yourself up after you have sex?” She looked incredulous. Maddie and Karla had shared lots of details with each other over the course of their friendship, but nitty-gritty details like this had never been discussed.

  “Not if he’s using a condom!” Maddie retorted, stung. “There’s no mess, really, if there’s a condom. I always just came home a little later and used our nice bathroom!” She folded her arms across her chest and furrowed her brow. The negative emotions inside of her were surging; she wanted really to tear into Karla, really give her a piece of her mind. But a calmer part of her soul knew she wasn’t really angry at Karla, and that if she could just control herself for a few moments, the feeling would pass.

  “Well, don’t you at least wash your hands after you pee?” Karla asked, still incredulous and obviously somewhat grossed out.

  Maddie stamped her foot and bleated, “Yes, Karla! But after that first encounter with this bathroom I just avoided peeing here. Can you cut me a break, for crying out loud?”

  Karla was bobbing her head up and down in assent. “I get it, I get it,” she said, taking Maddie in her arms as Maddie’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry I was acting like the Queen of Hygiene, okay? Don’t feel bad. Look, I pick my nose and then peel bananas for the smoothies at work.” She squeezed Maddie tight then held her away and peered into her eyes. “Just stop crying, all right?”

  Maddie eagerly took in Karla’s apology and the two of them made their way back to the front door, Maddie sniffling and swiping at her eyes. As they exited onto the front porch, Maddie remembered something Nick had said: that there was a garden hose stuck through the bathroom window so that Raff could have some water. She let go of Karla’s hand and spun around, running back through the tiny den to the bathroom, flashing her light angrily at the bathroom window.

  It was there. A green garden hose with a sprayer nozzle on the end. She heard Karla’s footsteps on the floor behind her as she reached for the sprayer nozzle, took it in her hand, and pointed it into the dark cavern of the shower. She squeezed the trigger. Water sprayed forth.

  She let it spray for a moment, staring at the silvery gleaming beads as they disappeared into the darkness. Then she released the spray and hung the garden hose back on the little hook next to the window where she’d found it.

  She turned around and looked at Karla. Their eyes met, and then Maddie quietly walked past Karla, through the house, and out into the night air.

  ♥♥♥

  The two of them didn’t speak until they were back in their own comfortable home, drinking smoothies that Karla had put in the fridge earlier that day. Maddie thought briefly of boogers but decided that Karla hadn’t been serious. And even if she was, she wouldn’t have peeled the bananas for her own smoothie with snotty hands.

  Karla nestled into the welcoming black chair across from the sofa and said, “I can’t be quiet and wait anymore. You had some kind of thought explosion back there in the bathroom, and I want to know what it was.”

  Maddie nodded slowly. Then, with an air of some confidence, she set her glass down on the end table and said, “The garden hose, I think, might have saved our relationship.”

  Karla brushed her hair back from her forehead, gathering it up into a ponytail holder. “You’ll have to elaborate on that.”

  “Okay, well, it means that he’s not filthy,” said Maddie. “That hose could easily reach to the shower. He must shower with that hose, brush his teeth with it, et cetera,” she said, squinting her eyes and trying to picture it all in her head. “I don’t know about the toilet, though,” she said thoughtfully.

  “If you fill a bucke
t and pour it into the toilet, it activates the flushing mechanism. The tank just doesn’t fill afterward. Maybe he does that,” Karla volunteered. Maddie was glad to hear it. The two of them spent a few moments discussing how Karla had come to have that information, and after a brief side-track into a tale about a hurricane and the camp house, they refocused on Maddie’s relationship.

  “I know we’ve only been together for a few weeks and that for four days of that he’s been out of town,” Maddie said, sniffling a little and fingering her smoothie glass as if it were a religious artifact. “But I think he is the kind of guy I could fall in love with, Karla,” she said. “Sure, he’s got this crazy off-the-grid lifestyle. But people make bigger sacrifices for each other, right? I can sacrifice having running water at his place if he can sacrifice…having it at my place,” she said, pretty sure that the statement was absurd but deciding to push forward with it anyway.

  “Well, my mom is from India, you know,” said Karla. “Well, I mean, not my mom. My grandmother was from India, and my mom was born here. But the point is, my dad is just this white guy.” She readjusted herself in the chair, leaning over to untie her shoes and toss them to the side. “They have their differences and make it work; you guys could, too.”

  “And that’s another thing,” Maddie said excitedly. “I’m not even talking about marrying this guy. I’m only 20; I’m not getting married anytime soon.” She followed Karla down the hall to the bathroom, where Karla changed into a pair of blue pajamas with fluffy white sheep printed on them. “I’m just talking about being boyfriend-girlfriend with him.”

  “Right,” said Karla. “You’re not going to get married for like, three years or something. And chances of you being with him when the time comes are slim.” She buttered her toothbrush with Aquafresh. “That’s not to sound cold or anything,” she continued, “but in the meanwhile, someone better will come along.”

  “Right,” affirmed Maddie as Karla brushed and spat. “Raff is just a practice love. And yeah, it might sound callous, but come on! Do we really believe, at the end of romance movies when the happy couple waltzes off into the sunset, that they don’t break up three months later? They do.” She leaned across the countertop and examined a zit in the mirror. It was near her earlobe, where nobody had noticed it until this moment. “It’s just that my summer of love isn’t over yet. In about five days he’s going to come home and sweep me off my feet again.”

  “Yeah,” said Karla, drying her mouth with a beach towel emblazoned with Mickey Mouse, “and who knows what kind of mind-blowing romantic stuff he is thinking up while he’s on Neo-Dead tour. I can’t wait to see how he will surprise you!”

  “You think he’s dreaming up surprises for me?” asked Maddie.

  “I don’t know,” said Karla. “But in a way, yeah! It seems like he’s probably going to do something dramatic when he gets back. He has done every other romantic maneuver perfectly. Why would this be any different?”

  “You’ve got a point,” Maddie said faintly as she watched Karla disappear down the hall, into her bedroom. She turned to her own room, and to her own thoughts.

  ♥♥♥

  When the phone rang the next evening around 7:00, Maddie was relieved. She’d been waiting for Raff to call; he had called her each day that he’d been gone, even though each phone call was only three or four minutes long. She was due to meet Nick at the library to work on her paper for the last time, and although she could have talked to Raff on the phone while Nick was sitting there next to her, she felt a little too self-conscious to do that. He’d made his opinions of Raffie pretty clear, and she didn’t want to coo on the phone while Nick rolled his eyes from across the table.

  “Maddie, hey,” Raff said, and his voice sounded sweet against her ears. “Jamison’s letting me use his phone.” Maddie didn’t know who Jamison was. “I only have a minute to talk, and I have something I just have to say, something that’s been weighing on my soul, and I can’t keep it a secret anymore.”

  Maddie was intrigued; it was obviously a preface to a confession. She wanted so badly for his confession to be that he wasn’t really on the road anymore, but rather just around the corner at the coffee shop, calling her to come meet him. She slid to the floor in her room and began inspecting her pedicure while listening.

  Raff took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s what I have to say. You know that girl Clover that we’ve been travelling with?”

  “Yes,” Maddie answered, visions of a coffee shop reunion fading from her mind. They were replaced with visions of beautiful, braless hippie girls, and she didn’t like that at all. Her toes were no longer so interesting.

  “Well, she and I shared a kiss, Maddie. We actually shared a bunch of kisses. And it’s been so heavy on my soul—”

  “You said that part already,” Maddie interrupted, angry. The skin of her face felt like it had been set aflame. “What do you mean, you shared a kiss? A bunch of kisses?”

  “Maddie, things are so different out here. There’s love everywhere, in the air, it settles on you like sunshine. It’s hard not to act on it. But I knew you wouldn’t like that, so I wanted to tell you now, so that you have plenty of time to think it over and process it before I get back.” His voice was both wheedling and disingenuous, and Maddie was baffled that this could possibly be the same man who had left Redwine a week earlier. Her Raffie wouldn’t have done something like this.

  Would he have?

  “What the hell, Raff?” she spluttered. “You’ve been gone for five days. You couldn’t stay faithful to me for five days? Is that it, essentially?” Maddie said, her voice booming. Her hand clasped her toes and crunched them hard in her palm.

  There was a pause. “Well, yeah, I guess,” Raffie answered. “I wish you’d understand, Maddie. If only you were here, then you would know what I mean. You’d know. You should have come along, baby,” he said.

  “You left knowing I couldn’t go with you because of summer classes! You didn’t even ask me to go. You could have asked, even though you knew I’d have to say no!” Maddie’s booming voice had grown strident, and she was nearing a screech. She felt hurt and angry. In a way, she felt inconvenienced. Why was he forcing her to deal with this? How could he be out there kissing other girls when he’d only been gone five days? It wasn’t like he’d gone five months without a kiss.

  “Stop yelling at me,” Raffie said, and Maddie detected real annoyance in his tone.

  “Are you kidding?” Maddie yelled, getting to her feet in the empty room, her eyes scanning the white wicker furniture, looking for anything that would help her regain her composure. “You call me up and announce that you’ve cheated on me, and you think I shouldn’t be yelling? What I should be doing is breaking up with you. You’re lucky that all I’m doing is yelling,” she yelled, as she crossed to the dresser and began tidying up stacks of magazines, angrily slapping one on top of another.

  “All right, all right Maddie,” he said, his voice pregnant with condescension.

  “Wait a minute,” Maddie said, sudden suspicion overwhelming her. “You didn’t just kiss that girl. You slept with her, didn’t you?” She was immediately and entirely positive about it. It was as plain a fact to her as the fact that the sun would rise in the morning.

  “Maddie, I’m done with this conversation,” Raffie said with an air of arrogant finality. “You’ll feel better about this after you’ve had a day or two to think about it—”

  “Doubtful,” Maddie interrupted.

  “You know you don’t think I had sex with that girl,” Raffie said, attempting to sound soothing.

  “I absolutely think you did,” Maddie asserted.

  “Then you hurt me, Maddie. You’ve hurt me by saying that,” he said, and his voice seemed confusingly genuine again. Maddie heard him take a deep breath on the other end of the phone. She felt a little bit of doubt. Maybe he wasn’t a complete snake in the grass? Maybe it had really been only a kiss. Her eyes fell to the magazines. One featured a famous co
uple with a headline splashed across them: “Did He Stray?” She took a deep breath.

  “Well, Raff. You have my heart. Be careful with it,” she said after a moment.

  “I miss you, Maddie,” he said, and after a few shy goodbyes, they hung up. She slipped the magazine into the middle of the stack, so that she wouldn’t see the headline again.

  Chapter 10

  Maddie rushed through the library parking lot with her heavy bag. She was glad she’d worn running shoes instead of some sort of flats or heels, because she was late. She speed-walked past the check-out counter and through the doors to the stairwell, where she began to tramp up to the 3rd floor as fast as she could. She knew Nick wouldn’t leave, but she had wanted to be on time and she was irritated with herself.

  She burst through the 3rd floor doors and whacked her funny bone against the sharp corner of her laptop bag as she came around a corner and found Nick seated at a table, sifting through a stack of papers.

  “Oh, my god, ow, ow,” she moaned in a loud whisper as she slung her bag onto the table next to him. “I’m sorry I’m late. Oh, ow. I hit my funny bone,” she said, rubbing it with her palm.

  “I’ve heard a lot of explanations for being late,” said Nick, with a smile. “But that’s a new one.” He twinkled his eyes at her. Maddie hadn’t yet figured out how he did it, but she was convinced that he could make his eyes twinkle on purpose.

  “No, you dork. I’m apologizing and then explaining that I hit my funny bone,” she said, sinking into the chair next to him. “They’re two separate incidents.”

  “Ah, of course,” he answered. “Well, you’re only a little late.”