Change of Heart

by Sally Mandel

  Jim shrugged. “All part of the job. Better’n pumping gas in Queens.”

  “You got a talent for this,” Brian said, feeling the rhythm of his speech slip into synchronization with Jim’s. He’d been unaware of the habit until Barbara Kaye pointed out that he did it with everybody. He’d felt like a chameleon and was embarrassed, until Barbara assured him it was a gift many attorneys worked years to acquire—an effective technique for gaining the confidence of clients and witnesses. Speak the same language—no condescension, no mockery, just a slight shift in style.

  Jim went off to serve the businessmen, who were discussing the attributes of their secretaries in ever more intimate, ever more boisterous terms. Commuters, all of them, checking their watches to make sure they’d make the next train to Stamford.

  Couldn’t do it, Brian thought. New York streets, magnets on my feets. Terminal urbanitis, that’s what I’ve got. And his mind leaped back to Sharlie. He’d never given any thought to the word terminal, not really, and here was somebody younger than he was, getting ready to terminate her life. His mother had died, but that was different. Quick. She was here, she was dead. There’d been no time to think it over.

  Brian felt the impulse to call Jim over and say, “Hey, I’ve met this girl …”

  Maybe it was just that after spending all day with legal briefs and people who think and talk in syllogisms, whereas’s, and heretofore’s, a dying woman was a nice change. He would just spend tonight thinking about her, trying to get her into some kind of sensible perspective so that he could put her to rest in his head and go on about his business.

  Okay, he thought, I won’t see her again anyway, and I’ll just sit upstairs with a bottle of Scotch and figure the whole thing out. And that will be that.

  Chapter 7

  Sharlie stood in front of Goldberg’s marine supply store on West Forty-sixth Street. She had set her packages down on the sidewalk, waiting for a cab. But she stood still, her coat open, relishing the damp smell of February and the pale-blue sky. It was warm enough to go out bare-headed, and the clean wind brushed her hair back from her face. A few empty cabs passed, and still she lingered, grateful for such a perfect first day out. She smiled, thinking of the brass clock she’d bought for her father’s birthday. He’d be annoyed if he knew it came from Goldberg’s. Whoever heard of a Jewish sailor? She’d read somewhere that Columbus had been Jewish. Now, there was a real navigator for you, she thought, not some navy desk-job landlubber like Daddy. She liked the idea of her gift sitting, triumphant and gleaming, in the center office of Converse & Mackin, bulwark of Waspiness, especially since Walter’s anti-Semitism had been particularly rampant lately. A graduate student from Yeshiva University had won the squash racquet championship at the club last week, and Walter was outraged.

  “Jesus Christ,” he’d raved, gesturing menacingly with a martini. “It just encourages the rest of them. Next thing you know, we’ll have Juan Gonzalez and Rufus Washington blasting their transistor radios in the locker room.”

  As he spoke, Sharlie remembered several years ago when Ned Wiederman first sauntered into New York’s exclusive gentile squash clubs and walked off the winner in every tournament. Walter had been apoplectic, not only because Wiederman was a Jew, but because his sneakers didn’t match. She must have smiled at the memory, because suddenly Walter had turned to her and asked her what he’d just said. She had shaken her head. He’d set down the martini, reached for the newspaper, rustling it crisply, righteous indignation radiating from his body like sparks. Sharlie had looked down at her blanketed knees, picking up her fantasy again. Against the blue folds she had visualized a squash court where, inside the frame of heavy glass walls, Ned Wiederman toyed ruthlessly with her father. Walter was dressed in what was once impeccable white, but now his shirt was stained dark with sweat. Wiederman wore a pair of cutoffs, a yellow T-shirt (half tucked in), and unmatched sneakers, one blue, one white. His socks weren’t mates, the stripes along the top rims clashing. And he wasn’t sweating one drop, just standing cool and relaxed at the line, stretching and leaning while her father ran back and forth, puffing, desperate to put his racquet on just one shot.

  “Charlotte.”

  Her head snapped around toward the voice, and there in the February sunshine stood Brian Morgan, grinning at her.

  “I was worried for a second,” he said. “Thought I might have to scrape you up off the sidewalk. But you look wonderful.”

  Sharlie gave him what she called her Howdy Doody smile, the submoronic one. Her feet told her she was in extreme conflict—one moved back and forth, trying to escape, while the other felt implanted in the cement. The effect was an awkward shift in balance. Brian reached for her elbow to steady her.

  “Come have lunch with me.”

  She stared at him, flushed with pleasure and confusion. He leaned down and picked up her carton, still holding onto her as if he were afraid she might try to get away.

  “Are you a sailor, too?”

  Now she flashed him her remote-control smile, all mouth and no eyes—considered by Sharlie to be one small rung above the Howdy Doody—and nodded numbly as Brian steered her down toward Forty-second Street.

  “We’ll go to the Graduate Center cafeteria. So you’ll think I’m very academic.”

  Sharlie was analyzing what was happening inside her chest. Panic, or elation, or both? Just this morning as she opened her eyes and looked out her window at the pale sky, she had decided she was finally beginning to erase the sight of Brian staring down at her as she lay in her hospital bed—warm face, so full of compassion and yet not pitying. He had liked her. He had scared her out of her wits and left her consumed with ardent adolescent longing. Still, the last few days she had thought she was gaining the upper hand in her censorship campaign against the memory of him. And now here she was, traipsing along after him like a groupie after a rock star.

  He settled her at one of the quiet tables in the carpeted section of the dining room.

  “I’ll get you something healthy,” he said, then looked at the package on the extra chair.

  “Maybe I ought to haul that thing with me as collateral. You’re not going to run off, are you?”

  Sharlie shook her head again. Goddammit, she thought, I am struck mute by this man. If I try to say anything now, it’ll only come out a croak.

  Brian put his hands on her shoulders and pressed down lightly.

  “Stay here.”

  Between mouthfuls Brian managed to tell her about his family back in Pennsylvania, the disconnected feeling of Christmas at home—as if he’d been cut loose from his childhood. His relationship with his brothers, Robert and Marcus, had evolved into one of wary respect. Worse, his father viewed Brian’s renunciation of farming as a betrayal. Robert and Marcus, if uncomfortable, were at least friendly, but his father regarded him with sorrow and disappointment. Over Christmas dinner there had been an awkward discussion of Brian’s life in the fleshpots of the big city. Marcus brought up the subject of his bachelorhood, and something in his father’s face told Brian that John Morgan doubted his son’s sexual preference.

  His mother was dead, and Sharlie sensed, in his eagerness to get past the subject, that her departure had been very painful. But then he began talking about Barbara Kaye, and his face relaxed.

  “She’s going to retire early and write books on criminal procedure. And maybe a few pornographic novels to keep her in Lucky Strikes.”

  “She’s an … older woman, then?” Sharlie asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  “Not old enough,” Brian answered through a mouthful of tomato salad. “She’s promised her job to me when she quits, but I think I’ll have to hire an army of guerrillas to get her out of there.” Even muffled by the tomatoes, his voice was unmistakably affectionate. He smiled at Sharlie. “Barbara and I do not always see eye to eye.” Sharlie was about to ask him what she looked like when he set his fork down emphatically. “I don’t go on like this.
Really.”

  Sharlie smiled at him.

  “Your turn.” He sat looking at her expectantly.

  Finally Sharlie said, “You ate your cherry pie, and then my salad, and now another dessert I never saw anybody do that before. Doesn’t it clash?”

  “You’re cheating,” he said, mouth full of chocolate mousse. He reached out and squeezed her hand briefly. “Try eating and talking at the same time. It’s easier than you think. Come on. I’ve left you a few scraps.”

  She shook her head, and he scrutinized her pale face.

  “You know, I appreciate a cheap date, but you’re not going to get healthy on that diet”

  Sharlie’s chest ached, but not with the usual throbbing constriction. She felt as if she were swelling inside, the space under her breasts expanding with warm, unrelenting pressure, and that she must ventilate the volcano or explode into tiny pieces, making a mess of the quiet dining room. She started to talk, hesitating at first, but as she spoke, the feeling of imminent explosion dissipated and was replaced with a sensation of flying. It was scary but exhilarating. She seemed to be watching herself from the far corner of the room, recording her emotions on mental videotape so that she could replay them later when she was alone again. Now and then her eyes threatened to tear, but she was able to blink the mist away. Mainly, she felt free, dizzily and terrifyingly free. And once she got started, there didn’t seem to be any way to stop.

  She talked about her medical history, explaining it to Brian in minute detail because he asked her a thousand questions and seemed to need to have it all clearly visualized. She even made him a diagram of the human heart on a paper napkin.

  She told him about the food supplements that compensated for her lack of appetite, about the precarious balance of chemicals in her bloodstream. He asked about pills and drugs. Sharlie smiled, opened her handbag, and showed him a dozen bottles crammed inside. His eyes widened, but then he grinned at her and told her to shut her bag, or they’d be arrested for making an illegal transaction over lunch.

  “This is just the emergency stuff. There’s lots more at home.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to get a transplant and the hell with it?”

  “That’s not so easy,” she replied slowly. He looked curious so she went on, still amazed at how the words kept brimming over and how powerless she was to stop them.

  “After my last attack—not this one, the one before—Daddy took me to Houston, and I was there for six weeks waiting for a donor. Nobody ever turned up, and I finally got well enough to come home again. Thank goodness.”

  She played with the wrapper from her straw, making it into an accordion.

  “I don’t want it. I have really bad feelings about it. The whole idea gives me the creeps.”

  “But if it could help … Aren’t there people who’ve been completely cured?”

  “There were eighty-four alive last I knew.”

  Brain said, “So?” and waited, but Sharlie only shook her head and looked at him with haunted eyes. He sat quietly for a moment, thoughtful.

  “Then what are the alternatives?”

  “Nothing … at the moment.”

  Brian was startled at the flicker of fury in her eyes.

  “See, I had this specialist who was a friend of Daddy’s—my father’s,” Sharlie said, embarrassed at the childish epithet. “And he was the best.” The last words sounded faintly ironic, but Brian couldn’t be sure. “Dr. Nash convinced my parents that fixing me up wasn’t surgically sensible. After he retired, I had another attack, and his successor told us I could have been helped. But by then there wasn’t enough healthy tissue left to attach a prosthetic device to, and I needed at least two new valves, probably three.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, as if she were reading him a moderately interesting newspaper article.

  “How old were you then?” he asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  “And did you sue this Nash character?”

  She shook her head.

  “He died shortly after he retired. Heart attack.” She allowed herself a tiny smile at this and went on. “It turned out he wasn’t much different from a lot of other prestigious surgeons. They don’t want to operate on anybody risky for fear they’ll mess up their track records.”

  “Jesus,” Brian muttered, thinking he’d go kill somebody suitable right now and give her the heart in a hatbox. “I think I might have murdered the bastard.”

  Sharlie smiled at him and said, “I’m not supposed to get mad. It isn’t good for me.”

  He shook his head. All our enlightened theories about self-expression—let it all hang out, open up, be straight, up front, rant and rage and let fly the great agonizing primal scream. And here was this frail creature with the ashen face and enormous burning eyes—silken butterfly impaled alive, with the specter of an early death to keep her company. For her, the release of rage forbidden. No such luxury as a hefty, piercing Why me?!

  Brian had the sudden image of Sharlie as a young girl in a white dress, sitting on a wooden chair, hands folded primly in her lap, all the passions so exuberantly expressed in normal adolescence emerging from her in a quiet, ghostly smile—wings of the butterfly trembling, pinned—beautiful and crippled and doomed.

  Then he looked at her across the table as she was now, a woman with flushed cheeks and eyes that looked at him with curiosity and hunger, whose breasts were outlined through the soft sweater, small nipples evident despite the restriction of underwear. The ethereal images of her faded in the presence of this warm, breathing woman, and he found himself blurting out, “But what about sex?”

  Well, here it is, thought Sharlie, the heart of the matter, if you’ll excuse the expression.

  “Contraindicated,” she replied.

  “Have you ever been … involved?” he asked, the urgency to know overwhelming the reticence in her face.

  “I had a crush on somebody once,” she said, giving him a rueful smile. “He was a friend of Dad … my father’s … and he kind of liked me, I guess. But he was so much older, and I figured we couldn’t ever let things go too far for fear one of us would have a coronary … or maybe both of us, and there’d be nobody left to call the ambulance.”

  Brian reached out for her hand and held it between both of his.

  “You know I’m attracted to you.”

  She nodded, struggling to hear his words through the sound of her heart pounding in her head.

  “I want to see you again,” he went on, and as she opened her mouth to object, he talked over her. “No. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not going to let you get away from me. Forget it.”

  Sharlie’s eyes were wide, but she didn’t speak. Brian smiled at her.

  “I’m going to quit cleaning your plate, and I’m going to take care of you and make you fat.”

  Sharlie felt the strange sensation of something light bubbling up her throat, and suddenly she was laughing—no ironic chuckle, no good-sport self-mockery, but delighted, joyful laughter.

  “Wow,” she said softly, and laughed some more.

  Brian took her hand and pressed it to his mouth.

  Well, she thought, maybe I’m going to die happy.

  Chapter 8

  Sex. Now there’s a subject worthy of a girl’s attention. Sharlie squirmed restlessly on her bed as the light from her window softened from white to pale gray. Tonight was her first actual date with Brian Morgan. Yesterday he had tucked her into a cab with Walter’s clock, then poked his head through the door to pronounce, “Tomorrow we’ll go to the movies.” When she woke up this morning, the entire encounter seemed like last night’s dream, but then the telephone rang, and Brian’s voice said he was taking her to a revival of Swept Away.

  Sharlie had informed her mother in a careful voice. At the mention of the film’s title, Margaret’s head shot up from her needlepoint. Have to give her credit, thought Sharlie, smiling up at the ceiling. Not one word.

  Marg
aret disapproved of explicit sexuality. Sometimes during one of her speeches on the evils of pornography, Sharlie imagined her mother striding across Forty-second Street in flowing Victorian skirts, slashing with blue pencil at the piles of lewd literature.

  Still, Sharlie had struggled over the years to maintain an attitude of reserved curiosity toward sex. Her experiments with her own body had been of necessity abortive. As soon as her heart-beat sped up, she would force her fingers to some neutral location above the blankets and her thoughts to cooler topics. She’d lie in bed at night, her young body aching to be touched, and she’d think, Well, let’s examine the plot structure of the nineteenth-century English novel. Safe enough.

  But before she knew it, Darcy would be chasing a stark-naked, giggling Elizabeth Bennett across the immaculately groomed grounds of his estate, and Jane Eyre would stand in the firelight before Edward Rochester and, with smoldering eyes, slowly unbutton her shabby gray dress.

  So she’d switch to nature. Think about trees, flowers, oogenesis—though that could get tricky, too. She had often wished she could adopt the attitude that there are worse ways to die than in midorgasm. It might be worth the risk to find out what orgasms were like. A heart attack making love to someone else seemed acceptable, but to die masturbating … She would shudder and try to concentrate on nuclear physics.

  She could barely lie still in the quiet room, thinking about tonight. Perhaps the sight of naked flesh on the screen would send him into a frenzy. He’d rape her in the aisle, or maybe between the rows of seats on top of all the discarded chewing gum and used Kleenex. Just to be on the safe side, she’d better wear her old coat The upholstery at the local Loew’s was surely oozing with ejaculate and drool.

  But there was no wild beast about Brian. She remembered the gentle pressure of his fingers on her arms and sighed. She was twenty-six years old, and except for several hundred members of the medical profession, she’d never felt the hands of a man on her naked body. The proximity of Brian Morgan made her flesh scream, “Hey! It’s time already!”