The Heart Does Not Grow Back

by Fred Venturini

  “Reconsider,” he said. “The fiasco you have planned, while bold, is dangerous.”

  “But it can work?” I asked.

  “We can try.”

  “Hey, turn that frown upside down. I thought things happened for a reason, right?” I said, trying to look sly.

  “I guess I need to get busy, then,” he said. I clapped him on the shoulder, then sought out Tracy.

  “So you’re mad at me?” I asked.

  “I always knew this would happen. You aren’t fit for the gifts you have, you know. You’ve always whined about your overwhelming burden, as if you hate your life of success and admiration.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “About all of it.”

  “I just thank God I’m not you,” she said. “I’ll have a career and a family and friends long after you gleefully flame out and destroy the only good things in your life.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

  “Mack already told me. He thinks you’re going to burn the entire show to the ground today.”

  “You got that right,” I said. “For what it’s worth, I think you should take your glasses off when you have sex. You have pretty eyes.”

  * * *

  To Reynolds, who was seated in the front row, all dappered-up with his hair drenched in what looked to be 10W-30 motor oil and his teeth so white you really would want to choke the motherfucker, I said, “You’re fucking fired. Jam your journal articles up your ass.”

  I made sure Hayes saw me. He was in plainclothes, as he usually was when his surveillance of me forced him into the public eye, sitting in the middle of the studio audience. He even looked like he was purposely slackening his posture, trying to fit in, and though I can’t tell you with one hundred percent certainty, I’m pretty sure I saw the son of a bitch smiling.

  * * *

  The interviewer was not an esteemed journalist. Instead I got Elton Spruce, the host of the network’s number-two reality show—a blond, spiky-headed, all-smiles asshole whose sole job was to console talentless contestants after they shockingly learn from a panel of judges that they have no talent. Yes, quite the juggernaut for this interview, the hook of which was that it was live, unscripted, and I would answer any and all questions. People would be posting, e-mailing, Skyping, sending them in on messenger pigeons—anything to maintain the spectacle. I fully expected the hard-hitting “Are you still a nail biter?” to lead off the interview. The juicy shit would be saved for the last segment.

  But I didn’t intend on doing a fourth segment.

  Before we went live, I found Spruce backstage and shook his manicured, evenly tanned hand.

  “Pleasure to be working with you tonight,” he said.

  “With me?” I said with a laugh. “Just smile and try not to look uncomfortable.”

  “Wow,” he said. “You really are the asshole everyone says you are, huh? I’ve cracked tougher eggs than you on my radio show.”

  “If you count stoned teenage girls that can’t sing worth a shit as tough eggs, then yeah. You know what your problem is? You take this shit seriously. Really. You talk to Z-listers like they’re the president.”

  “It’s called professionalism. Maybe you wouldn’t be on here begging for public forgiveness if you had a little. Any other great advice before I watch you put your foot in your mouth?”

  “Yeah, Mr. Spruce. Wear Kevlar.”

  * * *

  In the lead-in to the interview, the talking heads yapped endlessly, predicting how I would rationalize my departure, reaching for possible motivations fueling my sudden decision. What they settled on was that I was doing damage control. When the show went live, they figured I would open by apologizing for my behavior. I would gain sympathy, explaining what it’s like going through what I went through for the greater good. I would apologize to Jonathan Randle’s family. I would explain that I was done. Some predicted I would be handing the reins over to a new Samaritan, and assure the public that I trusted the show’s team to carry on my spirit without my presence. Then I’d fade into obscurity, facing my misery and demons and emerging a new person down the road, ready for a primetime television comeback or a memoir or more interviews. Whatever I could do to make a lot of people an assload of money one more time.

  Some expected me to say that Carlton Franks was my spiritual adviser, that I’d thank God and say that the Lord has shown me that my behavior must match my gift. I’d give full credit to Carlton Franks for showing me that the gifts were not mine, but tools of the Lord, and I must do his bidding humbly. I was not a messiah, just a conduit for the truth—a truth that Carlton Franks brought you every Sunday from eight a.m. until ten a.m. Pacific time. I’d say I receive the letters that people send, the ones with prayers and money, the ones that call me messiah and lord, but I would confess that only Jesus is Lord and I am just a man with a gift from the heavens, sent here to do good, and inspire people to do likewise. Despite popular belief, all major religions endorse organ donation. Sign up today. Here is a word from our sponsors. Here is when you can expect the real season finale of The Samaritan. Here is my body. Here is my blood. Here is me, palms open, waiting for a hug, don’t think me bad, don’t misunderstand me, don’t cast me down into the realm of the melted down celebrity who has to say yes to Dancing with the Stars.

  For all I know, it might have gone down just like that—if not for the letter.

  Dear Dale, it began, I wrote this letter in case I couldn’t ask you to your face. I’m weak that way, but I’m getting stronger all the time. Strong enough to leave Harold.

  We went live. Elton Spruce welcomed me, and thanked me for agreeing to address America.

  “With all that you have done,” he asked, “do you think it’s fair for people to say some of the things they have said about you?” He read some quotes. I had heard it all before. There it was on a tee. Blast it out of the park. Save your show.

  I really don’t know what I’m asking of you, but it’s sort of your department. Harold is sick. He’s dying. I took a vow, Dale. I can’t leave a dying man. Even if his fists break the vows that we took, I just can’t break mine. Every time I’m sure I’m walking out the door for the last time, he can say that I left him in his darkest hour, that I left him to die alone and I wouldn’t be able to tell him any different.

  “Shut this clown’s microphone off,” I said. “I don’t say another word until he’s gone. Get Tracy in here. My producer, Tracy. Mike her up. I’ll talk to her.”

  Wham. Commercial. I could feel the murmur in the live studio audience.

  Tracy couldn’t even look at me as they miked her up. She sat down.

  “I’m not ready to interview you,” she said during commercial.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You really think I’m going to be at a loss for words this time?”

  We got cued back in.

  “This is Tracy. She works with me behind the scenes of The Samaritan. I brought her out here because she knows me. She’s for real. This is about being real, here tonight.”

  Tracy was a natural in front of the camera, looking interested, engaged. Inside, she must have been crackling and popping with anger—and a hint of fear.

  “Do you have a question for me, Tracy?”

  “Yes,” she said, without missing a beat. “It’s obvious you have an agenda here tonight, so my question is, why don’t you just get on with it?”

  I’ll just be short about it. Harold has a coronary heart disease and scar tissue from a heart attack. His heart is crap. It’s continued to get worse and now he’s on the transplant list.

  I looked at the people. All eyes on me. Not even a cough. Mack stood near the backstage entrance, watching, arms folded. Face hard, jaw with thick lines and tense muscle. No one looked away.

  “I’m hurting,” I said. “I’m still patching up properly, but slower. I can’t remember what it’s like to not heal from something. And there’s more than just pain brought about by my donations. I inflicted it all on Jon
athan Randle, and others. For that, I am sorry.”

  Deep breath. Sweat popping up everywhere, a wet patch growing on my lower back. “But I killed no one. And I’ve saved no one. I’ve given up nothing.”

  “Some say that you’re the greatest hero of this generation,” Tracy interrupted. “Organ donations are up, lives have been—”

  “This isn’t a debate,” I said.

  She leaned back, crossing her arms, insulating herself from me.

  “We’re no different than our ancestors,” I continued. “Kings would choose proxies to die in their place. They would assign them power. Responsibility. Fame. The people of the kingdom would kill them. Not out of hate, but out of honor, an attempt to make them immortal. And the king would sit back and smile when the knives came out. Ask me who the king is, Tracy.”

  She didn’t.

  “I’m not playing your games,” she said.

  “Lots of kings out there, folks, but one king is Carlton Franks. He illustrates my point exactly. Being a king is never enough. Men want to be kings, kings want to be gods. He offered me fifty grand to come on here and endorse him, to tell you that he’s my spiritual adviser.”

  No gasp. Maybe this didn’t come as a surprise from the sweating sermon-meister.

  “He would have you think he’s above my power, when of course in reality, he’s jealous of it. You’re lucky a man like Franks can’t do what I do. I have no interest in kingdoms. Love your God. Or your Buddha. Or your Allah. Or your magic dragon, or your Zeus, or your cell-phone provider. I don’t care. I worship nothing. But something I have learned is that sometimes, the universe is full of heavy things that drop on top of your life and stay put forever. Love is one of them. Pain is another. Sometimes they’re the same thing.”

  A glass of water was sweating on an end table. I took a long drink.

  He may get another transplant if we just wait. I say another because he got a heart already, but he rejected it. Graft-host issues. They don’t think he’s a good recipient. He’s even lower on the list now. It’s just a wait. But I’m tired of waiting. Every day, I pray for either a phone call or to find him dead in his bedroom. I can’t tell you how much that chips away at your soul, the way you look at yourself, hoping to find your husband dead.

  “Do you need to break?” Tracy asked. Not because she cared about me collecting myself, but because she cared about our sponsors getting their already-paid-for airtime. I shook my head.

  “Before we get any further,” she said, clever girl she was, diverting me from the reveal, heightening the drama. She smelled promotion, a jump out of the producer’s chair into these hot lights. And why not? She was cute, cutthroat, comfortable in her role as distributor of bullshit. “Tell me—tell us—about Regina, the friend you lost in high school.”

  Textbook interview strategy—delay the reveal by setting up backstory, the more tragic the better. I never considered talking about Regina during the interview. But hearing her name broke that fragile forgetfulness that people like to call ignorant bliss. Like waking up happy, then remembering you have some shitty appointment and the wet and heavy blanket of disappointment wraps you tight. Yet I had forgotten her. Rae was on my mind. Maybe it was then I realized that I loved Rae and it didn’t matter why. I had no business loving her. I didn’t know her favorite color or what restaurants she liked and even though I’d kissed every square inch of her body in our short time together, I wasn’t sure where she liked to be kissed, but I knew her handwriting, her smile, the way she could give me sweet chills when she said my name. Maybe I loved her because I needed to love her. But fuck the whys.

  “A girl died, and she didn’t have to. She was killed and…” I trailed off, finding words, breathing control back into my body. “It’s one of those dark slices of life, where you assign yourself blame, even if there isn’t much there. I wanted blame because it was all I had left to connect myself to her, something I did just to imagine I was more important to her than maybe I really was. And to let that go is to cut out a piece of me that doesn’t grow back A little scar tissue so I can remember I was there, for once.”

  Hearing myself say it drew me into the role of self-observer, like when you stare into the mirror for a very long time or hear your own voice played back on a recording. Familiar but starkly foreign. This isn’t me. I don’t sound like this. I don’t look like this, or know this, or feel this.

  But the words were out, and now I had to face that even the guilt I had so carefully tended to all those years was bullshit, another smokescreen.

  I’m not asking for your heart, Dale. Not in a literal sense. I just hoped that maybe, you being in that world that you’re in, you or one of your doctors could make sure he got a phone call about another heart. And when he’s all better, when he can’t hold his death over my head, I know I can just walk away. But in his condition, with the graft-host thing going on, maybe he doesn’t need just any heart. Maybe he needs the Samaritan.

  “I’m making one more donation,” I said, looking into the camera, but seeking Raeanna, the eye of black glass reminding me of that shiner she once hid behind a tuft of brown hair, the reason I was in the chair, putting The Samaritan to bed once and for all.

  “After this donation, The Samaritan will not exist as you now know it. My doctors and I don’t expect that I will survive this final surgery.”

  Finally, a bit of a gasp from the crowd, but not enough to break my momentum.

  And when I walk away, who knows where I’ll go? Who I’ll go to? I can’t promise it’ll be you, but when I’m honest with myself, I know it’s you. I hope you don’t hold this against me, this cowardly act of writing it all out. I don’t know where you’ll be or how we’ll feel when you read this. If you read this.

  “You may have noticed that I have never donated a heart on The Samaritan, even though it’s one of the most in-demand organs out there, one of the most common transplants. It’s because we have reason to believe my heart will not regenerate.”

  Here is my cell phone number. Let me know, one way or another. You’ve wanted to save me all these years, and now you can. Yours, Rae.

  And underneath it, written a different color, an addendum added in red ink bled from the pen that had sat on my own countertop—I’m yours, Dale, when I can finally be yours. What she didn’t know was the price of freeing her. She didn’t know the heart does not grow back.

  “There will be no cameras. No episode. No coverage. An old friend needs me to save her husband, and I’m going to do it. I’m going to give him my heart and a doctor is going to walk out and shake his head and tell everyone that I’m gone, but someone will be alive because of it. And that … that’s a Samaritan.”

  Tracy cleared her throat, testing the existence of noise in the world. Satisfied it still existed, she asked a question.

  “You can save a hundred more people. People might say you’re being selfish.”

  “I can’t even get bonus points for martyrdom?”

  A smattering of laughter.

  “It hurts, Tracy,” I said. “I’m sick of it. Sick of waiting. Hoping. Caring. Not caring. Who can tell the difference, really? I almost ate the barrel of a thirty-eight before I came out here for the show. I knew I had this gift inside of me but what I really wanted was simple, unremarkable—a job, a kiss, a girlfriend.”

  “But there’s always a chance,” she said. “There’s no proof that you won’t recover.”

  “You just keep hoping and waiting, darling. After a good while, you’ll know what I felt like before I went under the knife.”

  “We have to break, but we’ll be right—”

  “No, no break. No need to come back. I’m done.”

  I got up.

  “We should really—”

  “No,” I said again. “There’s nothing else to say. Well, maybe one more thing to say.” I looked into the camera again.

  “Good-bye.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  I brushed by Mack in the hallway. He stared me down
as I passed.

  None of the staffers knew what to make of me. They didn’t look at me as I walked by. What was there to say? Nice job, hope you don’t die too painfully? Wish you all the best, thanks for ruining the show and making me search for a new job?

  “Hey!” Mack chased me down. His meaty hand fell on my shoulder. “You shouldn’t have said anything about Franks, man.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “He’s got a lot of obsessed weirdos under his thumb. You just made some enemies.”

  “Good thing I won’t be around to deal with them.”

  “I knew you’d say yes to that stupid shit. Now do you understand why I kept the note from you? Jesus. So, when’s the surgery?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “The doctors are working out the particulars as we speak.” He turned away. I could have sworn he was chomping the inside of his cheek, distracting from tears that were getting fat on the assembly line, ready to drop.

  “All this because I wanted you to talk to a girl. All because of that stupid swing-for-the-fences shit. I don’t suppose I could talk you out of this?”

  “You don’t want to. Trust me.”

  “What if I offered him my heart instead?” he said.

  “Even if you were a match, he’s already rejected compatible donors. I’m his only shot.”

  “I’m just fucking with you anyway,” he said, spreading out his wolfish smile. “I’d rather eat the sideboards off a shit wagon than help that son of a bitch. Even if I could help him, I’d let him rot—and so should you.”

  “And that is precisely why I can’t let him rot,” I said, and he finally let me leave, alone.

  * * *

  When I got to my apartment building, I could have sworn there had been a fire or a shooting, something that would explain why the rubberneckers were out in full force. Then I saw a bearded man holding a sign that said SELFISH SAMARITAN! and some greasy-haired teenager waving one that said SAVE 1, OR 100? DO THE MATH! They were arguing with some pedestrians who were, from what I could tell, feebly defending my virtue—or maybe just bickering for the sake of it, as is so often the case. Either way, it became clear that my defenders were far outmatched by my critics in the realms of hostility and dedication, and they soon moved along. Funny how being in opposition to something tends to inspire tireless picketing and cleverly worded signs, while support rarely arouses that level of productivity.