“I remember,” said Mom. “I wish your dad had stayed put with us the whole time instead of driving back and forth.”
“He never did.”
“No,” said Mom. “He didn’t like the beach much.”
“He liked the beach. He just had to work,” I said, taking Dad’s side in the old argument. I closed my eyes.
Let go, said my Dad heart. Say goodbye . . .
I smell pancakes.
Dad has come up to the Cape for the day from the city. The sky is gray. I wish the sun would come out. If it was sunny maybe he’d stay longer. He makes a big breakfast of blueberry pancakes with blueberry jam. Aaron is stuffing himself. I want Aaron to go outside and leave me alone with Dad. I hand Aaron a toy rake. Go play with seaweed, I say. Build a nest.
Seaweed is smelly, says Aaron.
Then go turn the washtub into an aquarium for hermit crabs, I say.
We did that yesterday, he says.
Okay, then catch some land snails, I say.
They squish.
I saw a giant toad in the tomato patch out back this morning. I bet it’s still there.
Aaron shakes his head. Dad sighs. He rubs his forehead. He looks tired. He runs his hand through his hair the way he does when he’s worried about something.
We could watch for whales with Grandpa Ben’s World War Two binoculars, I say. Or hunt for sea glass? Blue is the best kind.
Says who? says Aaron. He crosses his arms.
Or pan for gold by the drainpipe? Or build a sundial? I look to Dad for a smile, but he looks unhappy. Or we can get Ferdinand to come out of his hole near the sunken boat.
Ferdinand? asks Dad.
The Oldest Crab in the World, I say.
Dad laughs. He turns to Aaron. When your sister was born, the angel in charge of imagination was in a generous mood, he says.
How about when I was born? asks Aaron.
“Briana?” said Mom. “Open your eyes.”
“What?” I asked, keeping them closed. “I’m thinking about Dad.”
“I think about Dad all the time,” said Mom.
“He appreciated me,” I said. “He really loved me.”
“I love you,” said Mom.
“You don’t love me,” I said. “Not like Dad.” I waited for Mom to get angry.
She sighed. “No, not like Dad,” she said, “but I love you just as much. You know that, don’t you, sweetheart? I’m sorry it’s been so hard for you to see lately. I haven’t been myself. Losing Dad was so sudden. When I’m asleep . . . when I dream, he’s still here. I don’t quite believe, after all these months, that he’s gone. I’m sorry, I’ve been kind of . . . crazy.”
Mom was apologizing for being crazy. Did that mean she wasn’t going to be crazy anymore?
Find her, said my Dad heart.
STARRY BALL
Mom sat quietly beside me in the empty living room where we no longer lived, waiting for me to open my eyes. Why was Dad sad that day in the Cape? I hadn’t remembered he looked sad until now. Did his heart know something he didn’t know? Did it know it was going to stop soon?
Let go, said my Dad heart . . .
I smell seaweed. We’re making a mountain of it, Aaron and me. Dad is helping. Aaron is holding his nose with one hand and raking with the other. Smelly, smelly, he says, and giggles, crouching down. Suddenly, he drops the rake. Look! he cries.
A mutt with patchy black-and-white fur runs toward us. It sniffs and digs, then leaps at Aaron, knocking him over. Aaron screams. The sound is so shrill I smash my thumbs into my ears.
It’s okay, says Dad. It just wants to play.
The dog licks Aaron’s face. Aaron stops screaming.
Here, dog, he says softly. He pats its ears.
That’s the way, says Dad.
The dog wags its tail and looks soulfully into Aaron’s face. I pick up a driftwood stick and toss it toward the ocean. The dog leaps up and runs after the stick, snatches it, and brings it back to me.
You throw it now, I say to Aaron.
He takes the stick and raises it high. Before he can throw, the dog stands on its hind legs. It paws Aaron’s chest, scratching his arm. A thin trail of blood oozes out of the cut. Aaron squeals.
It’s just a scratch, says Dad. It’s nothing.
Wash it in the ocean, I say.
Aaron shakes his head. Salt stings, he says calmly, wiping the blood away with his finger.
You’re very brave, says Dad.
I used to be afraid of dogs, says Aaron. He smiles up at Dad.
The dog discovers a replacement for the stick. It noses the gift toward Aaron. It’s a treasure another child has lost: a beach ball, jet-black and silver, a rolling map of all the constellations in the night sky.
Let’s play catch, says Aaron, tossing me the black globe. I toss it to Dad. He throws it to Aaron. Aaron tries to return it, but the wind is so strong it blows the ball toward the ocean. Dad chases it, splashing into the waves. His shirt billows like a sail. He saves the ball. Tossing it back to Aaron, he sits down on the porch step. He’s out of breath. I run toward him, but before I can get there, Aaron pitches the ball to me in a wild throw. I miss. The wind catches the ball and carries it into the sea, where it bobs on the waves, moving swiftly away on the outgoing tide.
Go fetch! yells Aaron. The dog runs to the edge of the breaking waves and barks.
I stand, watching the starry ball float away. Dad gets up and stands beside me. He puts his hand on my hair, brushing a strand away from my eyes and tucking it behind my ear. He traces my eyebrows with his thumb, gazing at me as if he were memorizing my face. His eyes tell me how much he misses me when he’s in the city, how much he loves me. I touch his hand, and he folds me close in a hug. We stand together in the wind, my eyes half closed, my face pressed up against his chest. When I finally look back at the ball, it has turned into a bobbing black speck on the horizon.
Aaron comes and stands beside us. We’re so still, the dog loses interest and trots away. The three of us stand together, looking out to sea. It isn’t hope that makes me stand out there in the wind for so long. I know the ball isn’t coming back. It isn’t disappointment at losing something we’ve only just found. What is it?
Let’s go inside, says Dad. It’s getting cold.
Not yet, I beg. Not yet.
Maybe I want to keep Dad’s arm around me a little while longer. Or maybe I think that together, me and Dad and Aaron, if we try, can hold that ball steady in our line of sight forever.
I opened my eyes and looked straight into Mom’s green eye, the same color as my own.
“He’s left us now,” I said.
“He has,” said Mom softly.
“Sometimes I think he’s still floating out there, getting smaller and smaller like the Incredible Shrinking Man,” I said. “Maybe he’s becoming a dot in some orbit somewhere. I don’t know. Maybe”—I swallowed—“we can’t see him anymore, but he’s still there,” I said.
Let go, said my Dad heart.
“In my hearts,” I added.
“Your hearts?” asked Mom, smiling sadly. She wrapped her arms around me. “You don’t have two hearts, honey,” she said. “You have one very fine heart, and one is enough. Maybe you think you need the other one for now, but soon, very soon, you won’t need it anymore.”
“Maybe,” I said.
Say goodbye, said my Dad heart.
“Not yet, please not yet,” I whispered.
I was trying. I was trying to say goodbye. Mom held me. “You’ll see,” said Mom. “One heart is enough for anyone.” She sighed. “Sometimes, more than enough.”
Mom’s arms felt strong—not as strong as Dad’s, but warm and good. She held on.
Something was happening to my Dad heart. It was slowing down. The pauses between beats stretched my body in both directions. Like Alice in Wonderland when she grew too big, my head seemed a long way from my feet. It was a good thing I was sitting down or I might have lost my balance. Dizzy, I l
eaned my head against Mom’s shoulder. Mom stroked my hair. “I was my father’s girl, too,” she whispered.
“I won’t forget him,” I said. “Ever.”
“I know you won’t,” said Mom. “We won’t.”
“I’ll still think about him when I’m old, like Grandpa Ben thinks about Grandma.”
Holding me, Mom rocked back and forth. She had come out in the storm. She had found me. She was holding me now, and she would hold Dad forever in her green miracle eye.
I shrank back to my normal size.
My hearts slowed almost to a standstill, beating so weakly I hardly noticed they blended into one. With a shudder, I thought, Will it break?
“Let’s go home,” said Mom.
“Not yet,” I whispered.
In a shaky voice, I hummed the song I had heard Mom sing to Aaron in the playground, the one she used to sing to me when I was a baby. Mom joined in softly, and then we sang it together like a hymn, rocking back and forth, our voices rising in the empty spaces of the home that was no longer ours.
We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here; we’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here . . . We’re here . . .
It was a song that had no end. Soon, soon, I would let it end, I would go home with Mom, but not yet. Mom’s arms tightened around me.
I sang goodbye.
And the steady beat of my single heart kept time.
Acknowledgments
This book took me many years to write, and so I have many people to thank:
Thank you to my extraordinary editor, Tamar Brazis, without whom The Girl with More Than One Heart wouldn’t be a book. I’m so grateful to you for seeing the potential in my first struggling efforts and for patiently guiding me through all those many drafts to the story that finally emerged.
To my agent, Lucy Carson at the Friedrich Literary Agency, who had faith in my novel and sent it out into the world with confidence. And to Molly Friedrich, the gentle diva.
To the terrific team at Abrams, with a special callout to Courtney Code.
To Penelope Dullaghan, who gave the book its beautiful jacket art, and to designer Alyssa Nassner.
To my kind and brilliant mentor and friend, Lore Segal, who read my book chapter by chapter over time and generously offered her wisdom. To the readers and writers in Lore’s living room workshop whose critiques were so on the mark.
To the ever-insightful Myla Goldberg, who taught me so much about narrative structure, and to those in her workshop who thoughtfully read my pages and cheered me on.
To Matt Sharpe, for his detailed and inspired comments.
To my incandescently talented friend James Lecesne, who intuitively understood the story I was trying to tell and drew a diagram (on a napkin!) of what was missing.
To Philip Bromberg, who introduced me to the story of the silkworms, and to Sean Hartley, who gave me the “Pygmalion” song.
To Kyle Zimmer and her dedicated team at First Book— you make my life larger.
To my writing buddies, Claudia Burbank, Laura Levine, Peter Hassinger, Dorotea Mendoza, Ken Sandbank, David Bumke—you are always there when I most need you.
To my dear pal in work and in play, Joanna Cotler.
To Charlotte Zolotow, who published my first novel and gave me my start.
To friends and colleagues who read excerpts and early versions of these chapters over the years and encouraged me: Delia Ephron, Frances Foster, Priscilla Gilman, Gretchen Dow Simpson, Beth Kephart, Jenny Halper, Janis Hubschman, Martin Hason, Elizabeth Denlinger, Bob Perron, Lisa Maguire, Judith Lichtendorf, George Bear, Robert Macdonald, Marjorie Tesser, Lisa Sardinas, Kristen Lowman, Isabel Smith, Lisa Kristel, Lilly K. Christie, Alexandra Shelley, Roberta Altman, Sally Donaldson, Margaret Mitchell, Hazel Ipp, Joe Monti, Neil Swaab, Tammy Shannon, and Justin Rucker.
To Amy Kaiser and her terrific students at the Horace Greeley School in Chappaqua. And to the very first teens who read my book, Ruby Wolff and Anglory Morel.
To Samantha Mitchell, whose amazing drawings inspired the character of Daisy.
Finally, thank you to my family:
To my father, Benjamin Geringer, a storyteller. To him I owe the character of Grandpa Ben and the tale of the Golden Navel. This book began as a tribute to him.
To my mother and first editor, Ann Geringer. She was a poet at heart who, like the mom in my novel, saw the small miracles all around her and helped me to see them, too. To her passionate love of books, and to my parents’ eclectic home library, I attribute my desire to write.
To my brother, Dan Geringer, who gave me my first writing job and who taught me lots about asking questions and listening between the lines.
To my sons, Adam and Ethan, who give me such joy and from whom I learn so much.
To my husband, Tony, who heroically gives me his loving, steadfast support in everything I do. No thank-you can begin to say how much I love you.
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