Beating Heart

by A. M. Jenkins

“What is it?” Evan asks. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that I haven’t seen you in a while, and, well…have you ever noticed that every time we see each other, we end up having sex?”

  Evan’s insides start to sink. Of course he’s not going to be allowed to stay in that floating daze. No, Carrie’s got to pick the moment apart, find something wrong, suck all the perfection out of it. “And that’s bad?” he asks.

  “No…” But she draws the word out, leaving it hanging in the air.

  “So what are you saying?” Evan says abruptly. “That you don’t want to have sex anymore?”

  “No. I guess I’m just starting to wonder if that’s the only reason we’re together. I mean, we haven’t seen each other in over a week and it’s the first thing you want to do. It’s why you asked me to come over here today, isn’t it?”

  “I asked you over because I wanted to be with you.”

  “But not till your mom was going to be gone.”

  Evan heaves a great, loud sigh. He doesn’t know what to say, or how to fix it. All he knows is, he used to feel good about himself when he was around her, and he doesn’t anymore.

  She always nags and clings now, turning all the good stuff sour. And he always has to find the right moment to ease away, a moment that doesn’t look too obviously as if he’s trying to escape all the sourness.

  But this time he’s stuck. This isn’t Carrie’s house. He can’t back out quietly, can’t wait for an opportunity to get up and leave. He’s trapped—this is his home and his room, and he has to stay until she gets up and leaves.

  “And you never say you love me,” Carrie complains, “unless I say it first.”

  That’s his cue, Evan knows. He’s supposed to say he loves her again. I love you, that’s what he’s supposed to say.

  He’s just tired of being pushed to say it.

  “See? Even right now, I have to pull it out of you. You never say it on your own.”

  Evan stares up at the ceiling. He’s thinking to himself, Just let it go. This once, will you drop it and let it go?

  “So. I’m almost afraid to ask. Do you love me, Evan?”

  lying together

  sweat cooling on his chest

  no whispers

  quiet and still

  Is anything wrong?

  No. I was just

  thinking we ought to

  be married soon, so I

  can go back to Pennsylvania with you

  in the fall.

  one arm behind his head

  We can’t get married

  I’m only seventeen

  But we love each

  other

  don’t we?

  he said

  nothing

  But I love you.

  Don’t you love me?

  Evan digs his heels in. He is not going to ease away or change the subject. And he’s not going to say it, either; just this once he’s not going to go along quietly and try to fit into Carrie’s mold. “Why does everything always have to be about love?” he asks, impatient. “Why can’t it ever just be about…about being together and enjoying each other’s company and having a good time?”

  Carrie’s shocked into silence. Of course. He’s always broken down and said what she needs to hear. Always.

  Just not today. He feels like she’s attached to him, glued to his side, and it’s all pressing in on him.

  “Is that all I am to you?” she asks in disbelief. “A good time?”

  “God,” Evan says, staring at the ceiling. “Sometimes it’s not even that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s all you ever say: ‘Do you love me Evan, do you love me Evan, do you love me Evan?”

  There’s that shocked silence again. And then he can’t believe it.

  She asks him again.

  “Well? Do you?”

  It all goes through his mind in a flash: how she used to be happy just being with him. How he used to look forward to seeing her, not dread it. How she always finds fault with him now, as if he’s not trying hard enough.

  Now he’s just tired. Tired of the whole conversation, of the whole thing. “I don’t know anymore,” he tells her, not bothering to pretty it up.

  “I never would have slept with you if I’d thought you didn’t love me.”

  Her voice trembles. But there’s no sympathy left in him; she drained the last bit of sympathy out of him when she asked it one too many times.

  “And I never would have thought I loved you,” he informs her, “if you hadn’t made it part of having sex.”

  It’s funny, this is one of those times that he doesn’t know what he feels until he says it out loud.

  “Have you ever loved me?” Carrie’s on the verge of tears—Carrie, who never cries.

  It stings Evan, makes him feel guilty. “How am I supposed to know? If you want somebody and you care about them and you like being around them and you’re used to being around them, how are you supposed to know if it’s love?”

  Carrie’s face is pale. “It’s a simple question. Did you ever love me?”

  “You’re always saying it’s love, so I thought it had to be.”

  She sucks in a deep, shaky breath. When she exhales, she’s able to look at him steadily. “One more time, Evan,” she says. “Did you ever love me?”

  his answer:

  one embarrassed

  laugh as if

  his heart had

  snapped shut

  and I knew it had

  never been open

  Evan rolls onto his side and props himself up on one elbow so he can look directly at Carrie. It occurs to him in a flash: Carrie says she loves him, but she doesn’t act like she does. Not anymore.

  She acts like she’s going to make him be the answer to her fill-in-the-blank question.

  He didn’t really understand till this moment that he’s been needing space, and he certainly didn’t know why. He didn’t realize that one or both of them had changed, or grown, or something.

  “No,” he tells her. “I don’t think I ever did.”

  Carrie’s face goes white. Weakly, she tries to slap his face, but he catches her hand, stopping it without any effort, and when she tries to pull it loose, he tightens his grip.

  “You asshole!” Her voice rises into a screech.

  Evan remembers Libby, who wouldn’t stay in her room, and he realizes that he’s naked, the sheets mostly on the floor, and that there’s no lock on the door. “Will you be quiet!” he hisses; he thinks he does hear his sister, the creak of small footsteps creeping tentatively up the stairs.

  “Don’t tell me to be quiet, you shithea—”

  He puts his hand over Carrie’s mouth. Carrie’s super-pissed at that—she’s clawing at his hand and maybe even trying to bite him so she can screech at him some more—but Evan thinks he hears another muffled step outside and presses harder to get her to shut up while he turns his head, listening, listening, for the sound of someone coming…

  his hand

  against my mouth

  my nose

  thrashed kicked bucked

  forehead wet with sweat

  his hand

  binding and

  burying the

  narrowest last

  bit of

  air

  I could not

  breathe

  And the air cracks.

  It’s a noise, something between a rifle shot and a high-pitched cry. It doesn’t come from Carrie. Carrie cannot speak; Evan glimpses her eyes, wild and panicked above his hand—his hand, which not only covers her mouth but presses up against her nose. He sees it all at once: his hand and her eyes at the same second that a noise like a cry is lost in the shatter of splintering glass.

  I

  could

  not

  breathe.

  He lets go. There’s a whooshing gasp as Carrie
sucks in air, but in the same second he’s off the bed, pulling on his jeans to run out the door, to the stair railing.

  One of the stained-glass windows on the landing has shattered. The last shards are falling to the ground like shining bits of tinsel or snow, and in the middle of them is Libby, frozen in mid-step, eyes squeezed shut, slivers sprinkled over her hair and hunched, frightened shoulders.

  I saw her under him.

  When he finally rolled off,

  she looked asleep.

  Her pale braid, undone,

  spilled across the crumpled sheet.

  I watched him try to wake her,

  give her shoulder a rough,

  impatient shake.

  But her head rolled, limp,

  and came to rest at an odd angle.

  I watched him lie there

  next to her, his eyes wide,

  his breath fast and frightened

  in the dark.

  The moon left a faint and

  silvery gleam across the floor

  as he padded to the doorway.

  He looked into the empty hall,

  then left the door open while

  he went back to scoop her up.

  Her arms flopped and dangled.

  He carried her across the hall

  to her own room.

  The covers of her bed were

  already pulled back.

  He placed her on the sheets,

  then tugged her nightgown down

  to cover her legs.

  Last of all,

  he pulled the covers up to her chin,

  as if she had been there all along

  and nothing had ever,

  ever happened.

  He did not kiss her on the cheek.

  He did not whisper any good-byes.

  He did not pause for one last look.

  He just eased himself

  out of the room,

  careful not to make a sound

  when he shut the door

  and

  left

  me

  behind.

  I

  once

  was flesh.

  I once

  had quick thoughts.

  I once

  had dreams.

  “Shit,” Evan says. The floor of the landing is covered with sparkling glass.

  Libby opens her eyes and looks up at him. “I didn’t do it,” she tells Evan in a tight, frightened voice. Then she shivers.

  “Don’t move. I’m going to get some shoes on.” He has to go into his room, where Carrie’s going through the motions of getting dressed, but he doesn’t speak to her—in seconds he’s back in the hall, pulling his shirt over his head. Sockless, shoelaces flopping, he moves around the railing and comes carefully down the stairs, his feet crunching glass. “Are you all right?”

  “I didn’t touch it!” Libby breaks into sobs. “I didn’t do anything! I wasn’t going to come up, but—I heard—I heard a noise!”

  “It’s all right. You’re not hurt?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Just hold still.” She doesn’t look hurt. He squats down beside her and carefully starts brushing off broken glass, inspecting her for cuts. At the top of the stairs, he sees the open bedroom door shut, but he continues until all the splinters are off. Then he hoists Libby up and carries her to the top step. After he sets her down, he stops, he can’t think what to do next: he’s got an angry girlfriend in his room, a hopeless mess below him, and a sniffling sister clutching at his leg.

  Carrie and the broken window are too overwhelming at the moment. He remembers the sound of her sucking in air—he didn’t know that she couldn’t breathe! And boy, she’s bound to be pissed about it. He imagines he can feel her sulking fury radiating through the closed bedroom door.

  He sinks down on the top step, next to Libby. And a moment later, Carrie opens the door.

  She comes out calmly, completely dressed, every button buttoned. Her back is straight. She is not crying. Her face reveals nothing as she pauses beside Evan at the top of the stairs. “Is Libby all right?” she asks in an odd, flat voice.

  “Yeah.” Evan can’t bring himself to meet her eyes. “I think so.”

  “Okay. Then I’m going to leave now. Good-bye, Evan,” she says, and starts down the stairs. She is careful not to touch the railing, and picks a hesitant path through the glass.

  He watches her, feeling that he should say something, that he has not behaved particularly well, but unable to think it out just now.

  She’s just past the landing when he speaks.

  “Carrie?”

  She pauses before looking up at him. Something in that pause makes Evan feel a little of what it costs her to maintain that level calm.

  He’s not angry at her anymore. All he feels is sad, and somewhat ashamed. They’ve been together a long time. And tonight—well, he knows he didn’t do things right.

  “I’m sorry.” The moment he says it, he wants to cringe—he’s really opened himself up now, she can let him have it for being a shithead and an asshole who dares to think that an apology even begins to make up for anything.

  But for the first time today—the first time in a long time—Carrie surprises him. “You know what I was saying the other day, Evan?” she says, peering up at him. “About how I didn’t know what I’d do without you?”

  Evan nods.

  “I guess it’s time to find out, huh?”

  And, with dignity, she makes her way down the glass-covered stairs and out of sight. Evan hears her footsteps across the wide, empty hall, and then the sound of the front door.

  She’s gone.

  the front door

  slams

  the air is stirred

  He is the one

  left

  behind.

  Libby is quieting down now, with only an occasional sniff. She still leans against Evan; he puts an arm around her.

  On the topmost step he sits,

  clear and stark

  his face is unfamiliar

  his eyes are dark, not light,

  his expression is

  tired,

  worried,

  sad.

  He pauses

  lifts a hand

  brushes one stray strand

  of hair like cotton

  from a small face.

  it’s not him

  It’s not.

  Evan puts his head in his hands. He does not like sitting in the silence that Carrie has left behind. For a second he feels the weight of the quiet house; to him it is full of blame, regrets, and guilt.

  He never meant to hurt anybody.

  He doesn’t realize that he’s sighed until he hears Libby’s voice, tentative and worried, at his shoulder.

  “Evan?”

  He raises his head. Below, on the landing, the fragments are beautiful, jagged and clear, amber and gold, orange and vermilion.

  Evening sun

  angles through the

  shattered panes

  flows down the steps

  like

  water

  over

  fall

  leaves

  faded light

  on

  old and broken glass:

  the end

  of

  a

  day.

  Telling Libby to stay where she is, Evan collects what he thinks is needed to clean up a large amount of glass: a broom, a dustpan, plastic bags, a trash can.

  With Libby seated on the top step, watching, he sweeps up the mess.

  Much later, after he has duct-taped black garbage bags into the window frame, Evan and Libby go into the TV room and he lets her pick the show. She wants to finish The Lion King. He’s glad it isn’t Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or one of those fairy-tale romances.

  On the couch, Libby leans against Evan’s arm. He doesn’t pull away, but lets her. She’s holding one of her stuffed animals.

  They’re watchi
ng the part where the Lion King’s father dies trying to rescue his son. Evan has always thought this part was pretty horrific for a kid, but Libby has never seemed to mind.

  But tonight, when Simba is looking around the ravine for his missing parent, Libby asks a question.

  “Evan,” she says, “why doesn’t Dad come see me?”

  It’s out of the blue. Evan has to think for a moment, to figure out how he can put it. “I think he’s just kind of busy right now,” he tells her. “Busy and mixed-up,” he adds.

  “What’s he mixed-up about?”

  “I don’t know.” Evan shifts uneasily on the couch. He wishes Libby had asked Mom about this, not him.

  But Mom’s not here. He’s here, and he’s the one who’s got to sort it out.

  “Sometimes,” he tells Libby, “when people get mixed-up, they accidentally hurt other people’s feelings.” He has never really thought about this before, but now that he’s said it, he feels he got it right, that what he said is real and true.

  “But what do they get mixed-up about?”

  He thinks again, picking his way carefully among the words. “About what they want,” he finally tells her with certainty. “And what other people want.”