Heartbalm

by Malachi Stone

  Her first words were, “Let’s open her up and see what this jalopy can do.” To pass the time on the trip north and take my mind off her three-digit speed I asked Heart about husbands number one and two.

  “I quit school and married Robin at sixteen,” she said. “I guess, looking back, the name Robin should have tipped me off. I mean, a guy named Robin, right? Anyway, he had long hair and was trying for a beard and mustache and he had this deep voice and all, but he was like a newborn infant.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What kinds of things do you have to do for a newborn?”

  I shrugged.

  “Give him titty whenever he cries and wipe his ass every so often.”

  “Not much of a marriage, then?”

  “We were both way too young, for one thing. For another, he was totally tied to Mommy’s apron strings. When I called him on it, he tried to prove he was a man. All he proved was that he wasn’t very good at it.”

  “At what?”

  “Robbin’. He tried to hold up a convenience store, even used a toy gun, just like the baby he was.”

  “Still armed robbery. The gun looked real enough to the victim.”

  “Class X. He got fifteen years. Last I heard he was working on his GED in there.”

  “So what’d you do after?”

  “Moved back in with my mother, tail between my legs. Listened to a lot of nagging sermonettes and ‘I told you so’s’ around the kitchen table. One of her favorite ones was ‘good thing no kids.’ Before long I found out I was pregnant and made her eat those words. Stayed home nights and studied. In between pregnancy and delivery I managed to skip a year of high school and graduate with my class. Started community college right on schedule. That’s where I met Clark.”

  “Clark?”

  “Clark Killarney. English literature instructor, age forty-nine. By the time that particular black cat crossed my path he’d racked up three divorces and four DUI’s. A tweedy and balding leprechaun of a man, charming as all hell. I had him figured for the polar opposite of Robin. When Clark read To His Coy Mistress in class it was like he wrote it himself and meant it for me and me alone. We started meeting after class, at his place. What can I say? My mother was home watching the kid. I was an eighteen-year-old young mother swept away with college life and the fall colors.”

  “Now you’re twenty-two and worldly wise?”

  “Twenty-three,” she corrected me. “Plus, before midterms I missed my period. Clark offered to do the honorable thing.”

  “What happened with Clark?”

  “I only agreed to marry him because he promised to quit drinking. And because my mother hated him.”

  “Sounds like an auspicious beginning.”

  “Now see? There you go again, tossing off big words like auspicious.”

  “Did Clark use big words?”

  “Clark had written fourteen novels.”

  “I like to read fiction now and then, but I never heard of Clark Killarney. Did he write under a pseudonym?”

  “He wrote under the influence. None of his novels was ever published.”

  “I see. And what does a frustrated novelist do?”

  “If he’s Clark Killarney, he drinks. A lot. He drinks and mutters to himself while he bangs away on his laptop. He wrote one while we were married—it was around six hundred pages long or so—about this English professor who sleeps with his student—a ‘comely coed’ he called her—with ‘capacious breasts.’”

  “Sounds autobiographical.”

  “Doesn’t it? He’d get pissed if you’d tell him that. Clark sent emails to more than seven hundred literary agents pitching that book. Most of them ignored him but he did get quite a few responses. Rejections. Clark saved every last one of them to his documents file. All the little envelope icons lined up row after row looked like gravestones in Arlington cemetery after a while. That’s the way he described it—Arlington cemetery. Night after night he’d sit and stare at those rows and rows of rejections while he hit the bottle. Eventually it got to him so bad he started hitting me.”

  “Why’d you stay with him?”

  “I wanted to keep him, strange as that may sound. Then one night I’d had enough. I told Clark I was leaving him. He flew into a rage and tried to beat me but he was so blind drunk his punches kept missing, even though at seven months pregnant I must have offered him a big target. I made the mistake of laughing. To stop me from taking the SUV and leaving he grabbed the keys himself and drove off mad. A mile out of town he ran a red light, t-boned a minivan and belted out a family of four. Drunk as he was, Clark walked away with scratches.”

  “Omigod! I think I remember that accident.”

  “Everybody does. Clark threw himself on the mercy of the court and drew a stiff sentence for involuntary manslaughter. I was there for the sentencing, about ready to pop by that time; the bailiffs wouldn’t even let me get close enough to him to kiss him goodbye. I walked out into the corridor, took the elevator down to the first floor and there was Snug standing in the metal detector line for traffic court.”

  “Not much of a break.”

  “Worst break of my life. We got to talking; he took me for a ride on his Harley and my water broke. I served Clark the papers in Menard.”

  “Ever hear from Clark?”

  “He writes me all the time from Big Muddy, where they transferred him. Long, literary letters with Catholic school penmanship. He’s keeping busy working on another novel, this one about a wrongfully convicted prisoner who’s seduced by his hunky blond cellmate.”

  “Sounds like Clark’s moved on in life.”

  “Wanna hear something funny? This time he’s got three agents interested, and the book’s not even finished yet.”

  “I can’t wait ‘til it comes out in paperback.”

  Heart blew by a line of semis like they were standing still. In the process she morphed into Toots.

  “How about you, Johnny? What’s your story?”

  I tried to match her B-movie patois. “Not much to tell. Thought I’d give law school a whirl and, Whaddaya know, it turned out to be a cinch. After they gave me my sheepskin and turned me loose I tried making some dough in the personal injury racket. I made plenty, all right—only for some other mug, not me.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Once I decided to blow out of there, the choice was easy.”

  “I’ll bet you make scads of money now, Johnny.”

  “You’d lose that bet, Toots. Why is it every dame and every mug I run into figures I’m well-heeled?”

  “Beats me, Johnny. Stands to reason a lawyer’d be rolling in dough, don’t it?”

  I turned and looked Heart over, head to toe, treating myself to a frank lust-filled debauch of the eyes. Even though it was late November she had on a sheer white blouse that shimmered like a Christmas ornament—a Christmas ornament with a low-cut scooped neckline—and dark purple slacks that looked painted on to match her toenail polish. Whatever devilishly engineered bra she had selected for the occasion offered up what seemed like yards of cleavage.

  “You look like a million bucks in those glad rags, Toots,” I said when she glanced over and caught me staring.

  “This old thing? Had it for years.”

  “Bring along a change of clothes?”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “A change of clothes? Say, what’s the big idea? What kind of shindig you got cooking, Johnny?”

  Going out of character I said, “Come on, Heart. You know how it is at home for me now.”

  “I figured you and Di Di were jake.” She wasn’t having any, so I tried it as Johnny.

  “Not by a long shot. See, I thought you and me might stop off for a cozy little dinner, just the two of us after I wrap things up at the prison, then find a nice quiet out of the way joint where we can cut a rug, maybe top off the night horsing around at a motel before we head back in the morning. What do you say to that, Toots?”

  “I’d say you’re a wolf,
Johnny. A real wolf. You don’t miss a trick, do you? I didn’t know you cared.”

  “I got eyes, ain’t I? I’m dizzy for you, Toots.”

  “You talking a fancy restaurant and a nice motel? I don’t want to eat in a beanery or stay in a fleabag.”

  I glanced at the speedometer. One hundred five in the right lane. Midway through a construction zone Heart swerved to pass a caravan of school buses on a field trip. They made a yellow blur. As she crested a rise, the radar detector began sounding an insistent peeping that steadily gained intensity and frequency.

  “She he it,” Heart said through clenched teeth. “Hope you have insurance on this old crate.” She slowed to fifty-five, then forty-five; it seemed like we could have gotten out and walked. In the side mirror I caught sight of the revolving red lights.

  “Never the luck,” Heart said. “Leave this to me, Johnny. I don’t mean to brag but the copper ain’t been born who won’t tumble for a sob story from a good-lookin’ dame. Unless you want to make a run for it?”

  “In a ten-year-old Chevy Astro?”

  Heart unplugged the radar detector and ditched it in her purse. Then, tugging with both hands, she coaxed the neckline of her blouse down as far as it would go.

  “Permit me to introduce my shelf,” she muttered.

  The state cop sauntered up to the driver’s side window and made a bored roll-down motion with his index finger. Heart offered a helpless gesture in return before opening the door a crack. He stepped back warily; his right hand edged toward his sidearm.

  “Window roller thing’s busted, officer,” Heart said. “I apologize.”

  “License and registration.”

  “I’m sorry if I was driving a teensy bit fast, officer. You see, I’m taking this poor man to the hospital.”

  “A teensy bit fast? Didn’t you see the signs back there?”

  “What signs, officer?”

  “The signs that say Hit a Worker Go to Jail. Ten Thousand Dollar Fine, Fourteen Years in Prison. Those signs.”

  “Oh, those signs. Well, I wouldn’t think of hitting a worker. As a matter of fact, my husband works highway construction.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Or at least he did before he became disabled.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you, officer. So you see I have the greatest respect for highway workers. Highway workers and men in law enforcement.” Heart slipped him her driver’s license and the registration papers I had retrieved for her from the glove compartment. She let her fingertips linger in his palm, looking him directly in the eye.

  “I’ll have to run these. There’s a three-hundred seventy-five dollar minimum fine for speeding in a construction zone.”

  “That much? Oh, my!”

  “It’s a serious offense, Ma’am.”

  “I’m twenty-three years old, officer. Nobody ever calls me Ma’am. Ma’am is for my mother.”

  “It’s a term of respect.”

  “Why, thank you, officer. May I ask your first name? I hate to keep calling you officer.”

  “Promise not to laugh?”

  Heart held up the sign for the Girl Scout oath. “Hope to die.”

  “It’s Henry. After my grandfather.”

  “Henry. Why would I laugh? Henry’s a fantastic name. May I call you Hank?”

  “Sure, if you like. Just don’t call me late to supper.”

  “That’s the funniest thing I ever heard,” Heart laughed. Serious again, she added, “Here’s the thing, Hank: my husband would kill me if I were to get a speeding ticket. Especially one that expensive. You see, things are already tough for us. Did I mention my husband is disabled? Work comp is fighting his case and holding back his benefits. I’d do anything to avoid putting him through any more stress, Hank. I’m sure we can find some other way to work this out. You know what they say: two heads are better than one.”

  Hank must have read something in her expression, because he began furtively looking around. He handed the license and registration back to her and said, “There’s a rest area about a mile up ahead. What say you and me take a little ride up there in the cruiser, just the two of us? Your boyfriend here won’t mind waiting.”

  “Sounds intriguing, Hank. Anything you say.”

  “We’ll find us a nice quiet spot and talk this over.”

  “Ask anybody. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for the men of law enforcement.”

  She was gone no more than ten minutes. Hank dropped her off and sped away in his cruiser. She waved goodbye like a sailor’s wife standing at the dock, with her right arm extended over her head, until he disappeared over a hill and she flipped him the bird, jabbing her middle finger in the air for emphasis.

  We were passing the rest stop when I asked her, “What went down?”

  “Not me, if that’s what’s eating you, Johnny.”

  “What, then?”

  “I gave Hank a yank, if you must know.” She shook her head with disbelief. “Three seventy-five. High price of dry hand jobs on the road these days.”

  “Sorry you had to do that, Heart.”

  “Don’t sweat it. Girl on her own can’t turn up her nose at taking off her gloves and getting her mitts dirty every now and then when duty calls.”

  “Were you ever married to a construction worker?”

  “How dumb are you, Johnny?”

  She held it at a mere eighty-five for the next few miles, coasting. “So you were getting ready to tell me about your kids,” I said.

  “Was I, Johnny?”

  “Unless you’d rather not.”

  “I don’t mind, seeing as how you’re the one doing the asking. For most fellas, nothing queers romance like having a sprout or two in the picture.”

  “I’m not most fellas.”

  She sized me up appreciatively. “You said it. Well, my two kids. Ernie is the man of the family. Scotty is the little squirt.”

  “Let me guess: Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “Give that man a cigar. Clark’s influence.”

  “But Scotty was born after you were with Snug.”

  “Clark and me had the name already picked out. Snug didn’t care. I could have named him Aloysius as long as I kept him out of Snug’s way. Which I did by dropping him off at Mom’s place every chance that came along. Same thing with Ernie. Mom raised them, not me. Get the picture?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Do you think I’m a tramp, Johnny? Give it to me straight. I can take it.”

  “Not a tramp in my book. Just a nice girl in over her head, is all.”

  “Gosh you’re swell, Johnny. Why for two cents I’d fuck the living daylights out of you right this minute.” Her speed edged up to around a hundred.

  “I’m flattered, but you remember my problem in that department.”

  “Those croakers’re talking a lot of hooey. You were just nervous, Johnny. Nervous from the service. Them dirty Japs.”

  I changed the subject. “Do your kids still live with Ruth?”

  “With Ruth and now Little Eve, yeah.”

  “Why does everybody call her Little Eve?”

  “On account of her name’s Eve and she’s little, I guess. What do you want us to call her, Big Bertha?”

  “How is Little Eve taking all this? Both her parents being in prison and all?”

  You couldn’t blast Heart out of the Toots role with dynamite. “Say listen: the kid’s a real trooper,” she said. “She’s crazy about her two little boy cousins, too. And she’s the apple of their eye. You should take a gander at them all playing together. Why, it’s like something right off the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.”

  “How do you fit in the picture?”

  “What kind of dirty crack is that? I’m no floozie, ya know.”

  “Well, don’t get sore.”

  “You got a lot of nerve.” One hundred five.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Toots.”

  “You can drop the Toots.
And if you’re gonna question my motherly devotion you can shove off.” One hundred ten.

  “I’m sure you’re a swell mother.”

  Heart’s expression relaxed. “Get a load of us, huh Johnny? Ain’t we a pair? Two minutes ago I was ready to fuck you silly and then before you could say Jack Robinson why I coulda scratched your eyes out. You know I was this close to telling you to shove off and mean it?”

  “You’re good at this. Real good.”

  “Good at what, Johnny?”

  “You know what I mean. The second-feature thing.”

  “What second-feature thing?”

  “Have it your way, Toots.”

  “What a pal.”

  She drove in silence for the time it takes to microwave a burrito. Finally she said, “Your kids are cute. Especially the little guy, Wolf. How’d you land on that screwy moniker? Di Di says it was your idea.”

  “She did, did she? Tell me something: how did you and she, you know?”

  “How’d we what?”

  “Get together, I guess. I’m curious how these things get started.”

  “You tell me and we’ll both know. It was the farthest thing from my mind, that’s for sure. Your wife knows how to make a play for a gal without seeming to. That day at the hospital she asked me over to the house after. I couldn’t turn down a polite invitation from the boss’s wife, now could I?”

  “Depends whether it’s for coffee or cunnilingus.”

  “I’m no pushover; we bumped gums for a while over a coupla cups a joe, then went on to a little innocent smooching and, wouldn’t you know it, one thing led to another. You’re a fine one to talk, neglecting her needs like you’ve been doing.”

  “Neglecting her? Is that what she told you?”

  “She said the two of you hadn’t made whoopee in months. That it would be our little secret, hers and mine. That it would be a whole new thrill for both of us, and that nobody’d ever catch on.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “Don’t look at me: she’s your better half. Di Di can be one very convincing doll. She sure can pitch the old woo.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Aw, pin your diapers back on, Johnny; nobody tried to make a chump out of you. If you hadn’t come home early why you’d never have been the wiser. And you didn’t seem too shy about joining in on the fun. You jumped into bed pronto, like a regular wolf. Holy smokes! Here’s our exit already.”