My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays

by Davy Rothbart

  Inside, over hot wings, I chatted up Sarah’s mom and Ivy, while Sarah disappeared into the bathroom and a piano with no piano player clattered a tune from the corner, its black and white keys dancing up and down as though tickled by a ghost. Sarah’s mom had the gaunt, wrinkled look of a woman who’d lived a hard life in the desert and had disappointment on speed-dial. She was cordial but strangely uninquisitive—she didn’t seem too concerned with who I was or the fact that her daughter was heading across state lines with a guy she’d met for the first time in person forty-five minutes before. Sarah had warned me that her mom would be preoccupied—her mom’s boyfriend had moved out earlier in the week and hauled his stuff to a friend’s house; this had happened plenty of times before, apparently, but each time her mom took it as hard as a permanent breakup. The fact that she leaned so hard on Sarah when she took her lumps at work and in relationships had only made Sarah seem more Shade-like to me over the phone, but in Gas, Food, Lodging, everything eventually works out for Shade’s mom and she finds a good man—Sarah’s mom, sagging and deflated, seemed to inspire less hope.

  Just to make conversation, perhaps, Ivy—nose-ringed, willowy-limbed, and about forty-four percent hotter than Sarah—pointed to a quarter-sheet flyer in the plastic stand at the center of the table. “Look,” she said idly, “Bubba Sparxxx is playing a show here tonight.” A few times a month, I’d been told, the small rodeo arena at the back end of Old Tucson hosted local and national acts. She gave me a coquettish smile. “Hilarious. We should go!”

  “Bubba who?” asked Sarah’s mom.

  I explained that Bubba Sparxxx was a white rapper from Georgia, kind of a southern-fried, XXXL-sized version of Eminem, but Sarah’s mom had no idea what I was talking about. Then two things happened right around the same moment: Sarah emerged from the bathroom, looking a bit haggard, like maybe she’d just thrown up, and then a second later, surreally, as if cued by Ivy, Bubba Sparxxx himself—draped in a massive, shiny white sweatsuit and trailed by a crew of managers, bodyguards, and lesser-known rappers—blammed through the red swinging saloon doors and took a seat at a table in back, about thirty feet from us.

  Sarah came back over and took a seat, and for the rest of the meal the four of us said little and mostly just watched Bubba and his friends, while at the same time pretending to be having our own conversation and not be watching them. Bubba had a natural boisterousness, and his voice boomed above the fray of voices at his table; we could make out the details of what food he ordered, how badly he wanted to give the Old Tucson shooting gallery a whirl, and which hot girls he half-knew in L.A. and was hoping to get on the guest list for their show there the following night.

  “God, his music sucks!” Ivy whispered fiercely, and I jumped in to defend the guy, admitting that I had bought his first album and liked it, with the tacked-on justification that I always pulled for any small-town rapper who’d made it big. “Well, watch this,” she said, swiping the laminated Bubba Sparxxx postcard from its table display and getting to her feet.

  “Don’t!” cried Sarah, but Ivy was already heading over to Bubba’s table. She went right up to him and asked for an autograph, and the hulking bodyguard-looking dude standing behind him produced a Sharpie, which Bubba nimbly took and used to quickly scrawl his name, all without ever looking at her. Then Ivy took a tiny glance our way, and for an instant before she looked back toward Bubba, her eyes met mine and flashed. She leaned in close and started murmuring in his ear. Bubba listened, nodded a few times, looked up at her for the first time and smiled conspiratorially, and then gestured, Godfather-like, to the bodyguard who’d passed him the Sharpie. He said something softly to the guy, and before I knew what was happening, Bubba had stood and was headed our way, flanked by the bodyguard and two others. They crowded close to our table, as though Bubba Sparxxx was our waiter and the others were trainees.

  “Are you Sarah?” he said, looking at her.

  She turned bright red and made a squeaking noise, surprised and embarrassed.

  “Well, your friend told me the story, and I just wanted to say hi and let you know how much we appreciate you making the trip down. Kansas City, that’s like, what, a few days’ fuckin’ drive?” He glanced at Sarah’s mom. “Pardon the language, ma’am.” Back to Sarah: “Our fans mean everything, you know, so this is … well it’s the least we can do. Fellas?” With that, Bubba and two of the others launched into a half-baked and off-tune but enthusiastic version of “Happy Birthday to You” while the third answered a call on his cellie, saying, “Hold on a sec, we’re singin’ ‘Happy Birthday’ to some random chick,” and then watched the others warble to the end, shaking his head and laughing, without joining in.

  Then they were gone, and Ivy was grinning around the table triumphantly while Sarah buried her head in her hands. I looked back and forth between them, and had a snap series of speculative insights about their relationship: Ivy was the more attractive and more outgoing one, but also more insecure. Again and again, over the years, whenever Sarah had a big crush on a boy, Ivy would flirt, charm, and dazzle her way in, until the guy took notice of Ivy and made a play for her, which, most of the time, she would deflect. If Sarah got upset with her, Ivy would plead innocence: “I can’t help it if he likes me, and besides, I know you like him, I would never hook up with him!” It didn’t mean Ivy was shady, and it didn’t mean Sarah was weak—it was just the nature of certain friendships and the way of the world. I’d been in Sarah’s position all through high school with Mike Kozura as Ivy. Hanging around Mike meant I’d have a chance to be around plenty of girls and take a charge at his leftovers. Any gentle rank-pulling on his part was just part of the deal.

  This made me feel even worse about the fact that I was now hot for Ivy and whatever physical attraction I’d tried to fire up for Sarah was tailing away. But I couldn’t help myself, and I bantered with Ivy while Sarah watched us through slit eyes, unimpressed. It was so fucked up—what about all those spiritual, late-night conversations with Sarah, and the potency of our love? Wasn’t she supposed to be Shade? Only a soulless asshole would fly to Arizona so full of promises, then mack on a girl’s best friend. I tried to beat back, or at least conceal, my traitorous impulses by resting an arm over Sarah’s shoulders, but the move felt forced and awkward, and she stiffened under its weight. A minute later, she cut Ivy off mid-sentence and said to her tersely, “Hey, let’s go have a smoke.”

  “No thanks, I’m cool.” Ivy smiled back.

  Sarah wordlessly snatched up her purse and headed for the saloon doors, and I felt a bit of evil relief that she seemed to blame Ivy, not me, for the direction things had taken.

  The waiter came around and I ordered a Maker’s on the rocks, even though it was barely five o’clock and Sarah’s mom was sitting right there across from me with a scowl on her face. But Sarah’s mom said, “I’ll have one, too,” and Ivy smiled and said, “Hell, make it three.”

  The drinks came, and I took a long sip, admiring Ivy’s neck like a vampire. Then I turned to look out the front windows, and in the orange light of early evening I saw Sarah with her cigarette, leaning close to the skinny pony tied to its post and nuzzling it gently. There was something so sad and beautiful and lonely and Shade-like about her in that moment, I felt my heart swoop low. She also seemed to have purposefully placed herself in sight of us, and I knew that she was still sulking, but that all could be redeemed if I just went out there and talked to her for a couple of minutes about anything at all. Later, thinking back on it all, the fact that I didn’t go to her then, that I kept sipping my drink—slouched, boiling, in my chair, half-listening to the end of a story one of Bubba’s friends was telling about wrestling hogs—felt, strangely, like a greater betrayal than any of the larger betrayals to come. I watched Sarah as she teased her fingers through the pony’s tangled mane, and had the thought, Nobody can save anyone, which was crushing, since all I wanted myself was to be saved. From Bubba’s table behind me came a sudden explosion of thunderous laught
er as his friend’s story reached its payoff. The sound broke the spell over me and I jumped up, ready to rush out to Sarah and rescue her from the sadness of the world, but before I could take a step, she mashed her cigarette out against a Frontiertown Gazette newspaper box, flicked it away, rubbed her face for a second, and turned and headed back in.

  *

  Two hours later the sun had gone down and the last traces of daylight filled the sky to the west as me and Sarah rolled in our rental Ford Focus through the dead edges of town toward the I-10 entrance ramp. Our elaborate plan had already been set into motion, and there was no reason to call everything to a halt just because her friend had flirted with me and I was having a few doubts. Really, I was excited to hit the road. We’d dropped her mom off at home, and I’d had a chance to briefly meet her mom’s boyfriend, Ray, who was sitting on their front porch when we got back from Old Tucson. He was wearing a nice suit but his face was sunburnt and dirty, giving him the vibe of a homeless guy at a job interview. I sat and talked with him about minor-league baseball while Sarah grabbed a few things from inside the house, and when we pulled away, I told her how he seemed like a good guy and she said, “I think he punched my mom last week and that’s why she threw him out.”

  Sarah suggested we pick up some snacks before we got on the highway, so we bailed into a strip mall off Speedway Avenue with a liquor store and a Subway.

  Inside Subway, the glaring overhead fluorescents gave Sarah’s face a drab shine, and I watched her order her sandwich: “Lettuce. Tomato. Spinach. Pickles. A little bit of mustard. That’s good.” I had a biographer’s knowledge of the details of her life, but still couldn’t get used to her physical self and the idea that this girl in front of me in line was now my new girlfriend. I wished that the Mexican girl behind the counter—green eyes and high, thin brows, maybe three years out of high school—was my girlfriend instead. She had a kind of sweet and gentle gloom, and as I absorbed her, a queasying stab of nervousness daggered my insides. I kept a distance from Sarah, trying to convey that although we’d come in together, we weren’t, like, together.

  I pulled out a twenty to pay for our subs and the condoms Mike Kozura had given me a few hours before flapped from my pocket and tumbled to the floor. “Oh, it’s like that?” Sarah said, laughing, as I hurried to retrieve them. “Hot to trot? I thought you wanted to drive straight through the night, but I guess we should get a motel.”

  “That might be necessary,” I said brightly, playing along, glad that the girl behind the counter had been distracted by the ding of the bread oven and hadn’t noticed, while fully aware of how appallingly thin my loyalty to Sarah had become.

  Me and Sarah went next door and grabbed a pint of Dewar’s and two thirty-two-ounce bottles of Sol. Whatever treachery she’d sensed in me at dinner in Old Tucson had been forgiven, and now, with her clothes and toiletries stuffed in a pink backpack in the trunk of the Ford, the gas tank topped off, and some decent liquor clanking inside the black plastic bag in her arms, she seemed a bit giddy and loosened, ready for a romantic vacation. Back in the car, I started the engine up, flipped on the radio, and found Sarah’s hand squeezing my leg like a strange little crab. I looked up at her and saw her face coming closer to mine, and then we were kissing for the first time. Her lips were soft, and her tongue poked wetly into my mouth. It felt like kissing a total stranger, and there was something gross about it that at the same time turned me on. I cheated my eyes open and saw how full of feeling she was, and I remembered how important a kiss this was supposed to be—our first kiss, after two months of falling in love over the phone. I closed my eyes again, reached around her and pulled her into me, continuing the kiss, willing myself to love her as I’d loved her just hours earlier, on the flight out. But all I could think about were the odd mechanics of the kiss, her tongue flopping in my mouth like a minnow, the taste of cinnamon gum. On the radio, a guy from the BBC News was talking about the recent surprising advances in China’s space program and whether or not this was a valid cause for concern. “Wait, hold on,” I said, drifting back from the kiss and bumping up the volume, “I want to hear this for a second.” I looked down and added, as though to further explain, “My friend’s dad is writing a book on quasars”—a random lie which wouldn’t have made any sense even if it had been true. We sat there for thirty more seconds, both listening carefully to the end of the report, and then I leaned in and kissed her for another five or ten seconds, to sort of wrap things up after the interruption.

  Sarah smiled. “To be continued?”

  “Count on it,” I said, coasting forward across the lot.

  Inside Subway, the Mexican girl who’d dressed our subs was wiping down the counter with a blue sponge and singing to herself, draped in a kind of brave and naked mournfulness. My heart felt bent in half. I loved that girl more in that moment than I’d loved any girl ever.

  *

  We zoomed eastward on I-10 through the wasteland towns of Benson, Johnson, and Dragoon, Arizona. The road snaked up into low mountain forests, and then, once we’d pulled free of Willcox, dropped straight down to the desert floor. I cradled my beer in my lap, taking long sips and watching the mile markers tick down as we neared the New Mexico border. In the hot darkness, talking to Sarah, it was like we were on the phone again, and her tiny voice and sweet laugh summoned up an ounce of the excitement and swooning tenderness I’d felt for her over the past couple of months. But despite these dim-wattage currents—and as much as I genuinely liked her—it was as though a switch had been thrown the second she’d greeted me at baggage claim, and no matter how mightily I fought with the controls, I couldn’t crank the switch back on.

  I tried to fathom how my longing for her could so swiftly evaporate. It wasn’t that her looks turned me off—true, she was no model or movie star, but she had a pleasant face and a likable smile. And her personality was essentially the same as it had been on the phone, if maybe a bit mopier and less confident. The frenzied, infatuated state I’d been in since the night of our first conversation was simply gone, and in its hangover wake I felt a sense of growing, anxious dread, which my beer eased a little but not enough.

  Sarah had begun to explain an aspect of literary theory that she was studying, and I said “Yeah?” and “Really?” at the right times and asked follow-up questions with persuasive tones of engagement, though in truth I couldn’t really give less of a fuck and was so caught up in the mystery of our troubling disconnection, I barely heard a word of what she was saying. Then she asked a question that broke through and got my full attention: “Davy, do you think we’ll get married? Like, eventually?”

  I paused, and then a strange, ambiguous croaking sound came out of me, like a bullfrog tuning its pipes.

  She took hold of my arm with both hands and went on. “I mean, of course this probably sounds crazy, but here’s the thing. You know how sick my grandma’s been getting. I’ve always had such a special connection to her, and I know how much it would mean to her to see me get married.” She shrugged apologetically. “I figure, you know, if me and you are gonna get married anyway, maybe we should do it in six months, while she’s still alive, instead of in three years. Like next spring, after my graduation. It would make her so happy, and her being that happy, that’d make me so happy, too.” When I responded with silence, she retreated a step or two. “If you think it’s too soon, or too crazy, I totally understand. I don’t want to put any pressure on you, I just … I don’t know, part of me’s like, what the hell, why not? Like, we might as well, you know?” I stared ahead at the ghostly silver twinkle of passing reflectors on the side of the road. “I really hope you can meet her soon,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, me too,” I said finally. I felt drugged, and a little buzzed from the beer, which was weird because I usually never felt any buzz from beer alone. “Maybe we can visit her at the end of the trip, when we get back to Tucson.”

  “That’d be awesome!” she said happily, popping her seat belt off and launching herself cl
ose to kiss me on the ear. “I was afraid you’d think I was insane or something.”

  I waved my hand and sagged away. By saying nothing, I knew I was only encouraging her mislaid faith in me, but how could I be honest and let her down so completely? Our trip had only just begun, and there was still a chance, perhaps, that the spark would return. It even occurred to me that maybe all of Sarah’s marriage talk was her own way of pushing past any disenchantment she might’ve been feeling herself. The uneasiness boiling in my stomach was now a rising panic, but my body’s response to panic was always to induce a sense of severe drowsiness and disorientation.

  Sarah sat back, refastened her seat belt, clutched my hand in hers, and closed her eyes for a nap; she’d gotten up early that morning to give her mom a ride to work. “You need anything before I hit the hay?” she asked.

  “No, I’m good. Actually, pass me the Dewar’s, please.”

  “You sure you should be drinking and driving?”

  “I’m not gonna get wasted, I just need to touch it to my lips for a second and wake the fuck up.”

  She cracked the bottle open and handed it to me for a couple of sips, then took a sip herself and slid it away under the seat. She leaned her seat back. “I love you,” she said, beginning to drift off.

  I squeezed her hand.

  Dreamily, she said, “This is maybe—no, definitely—the happiest day of my life. It almost seems too good to be true.” And then she was asleep.

  *

  We passed an exit for San Simon, which put us about fifteen miles from New Mexico and just over an hour from Deming and the Desert Sky Café. As Sarah dozed, and I edged the Ford from eighty to eighty-five and then up to ninety miles an hour, I puzzled over how I might possibly escape this whole sad mess of my own design. Sarah wasn’t crazy for bringing up marriage and saying “I love you”—I’d been the one to instigate that kind of talk over the phone, and had painted a beautiful, appealing fantasy that both of us had utterly bought into. But the fact that I’d believed as fully as Sarah in the shimmering vision of what was to come didn’t let me off the hook. In the end, I was as much of a charlatan as any hustler peddling swampland to naïve retirees, and when things came crashing down, as they were bound to very soon, Sarah was going to feel suckered and swindled, damaged and scraped clean.