My Heart Can't Tell You No

by M. K. Heffner

  “But he was your father!”

  “I know. I’ll miss knowing he’ll be at home. But . . . .” He dropped his eyes, then looked toward the nurse’s station. “I have to go sign some papers. I’ll be right back. Will you be okay?” After receiving another affirmative nod, he walked several feet to the desk. He signed several documents and indicated the appropriate funeral home before returning to Maddie several minutes later. “Do you want to go back in with him for a minute?”

  Maddie stood slowly and started back toward the room. Joe stayed in the doorway and watched as she went back to Dan’s side. All the equipment had been removed and he looked a little more like the father Joe had known, but not much. As he watched Maddie gently stroking the man’s face he heard voices from the past.

  “Mommy’s not coming home Joe. Your little brother went on a trip with her. They’re in Heaven waiting for us to join them someday.”

  Joe jerked with surprise—Christ, how could he have remembered that? He was barely two years old when his mother had died! Maddie came back and he took her hand and started for the exit. He would stop at the funeral home that had buried Jackie Baker six years earlier. They would take care of everything, including the newspaper obituary. He would give them all the information they needed. His father wouldn’t have wanted a big write-up anyway. The only other living relative was a nephew living in town. Dan’s older brother had died almost ten years ago. The obituary was mainly for Dan’s friends at work who might like to attend the funeral.

  By seven o’clock that night he and Maddie were on their way back to the Baker house. He would drop her off, pick up a suit of his father’s, take it to the funeral home, then drive back home. Communication between them was practically nil during their rides to the funeral home and then back home; she only nodded to confirm any information she might have to add to the obituary.

  “Will you be staying down at your father’s until the funeral?” Maddie asked quietly as she sat in Joe’s car and watched her own father carrying into the house a small motor he planned to work on.

  “Probably. I’m going home first though. I have to get some things done up there.” His gaze stayed focused through the windshield.

  “If you need any help with anything, I’ll be here. Mom will be here on and off, but Aunt Mae isn’t doing very well either. Sometimes Mom spends the whole night in the hospital with her. I’ll stop in at the viewing, but I don’t think I’ll make it to the funeral.”

  Joe glanced over at her. He knew she hadn’t forgiven him since the football game the previous fall when he made it clear to her that he was married. “I understand.”

  “I’d better get up to the house now. Dad’s probably hungry.” And with that she opened the door and went up the lane to her house, leaving him to his trip forty miles north.

  “Where were you?!” Lena looked frazzled when Joe returned at ten o’clock. “You just up and leave me here with these two. Christ, they’ve been bawling ever since you left!”

  “I was down home.” He looked at the children, now twenty-four months and twelve months. “Come here Ollie.”

  “Down home?! Down at the Bakers you mean?”

  “Yes,” he said simply as he picked up a diaper and started drying Oliver.

  “Well that’s great! You just hop in your car and go off joy riding and leave me saddled down with these two.”

  “Lena, shut up.” He was tired and didn’t want to put up with her.

  “What?” He couldn’t have stunned her more if he had struck her. “Where do you get off telling me to . . . .”

  “LENA!” His roar sent both children off into screaming seizures. “WOULD YOU KNOCK IT OFF! LEAVE ME ALONE! I watched a man die today—now just leave me alone!”

  “Jack Baker died today?” she asked, confused.

  “No.” She seemed absurd to him.

  “Then who?”

  “My dad.”

  “Oh. Well. The way you were carrying on I thought it was someone you cared about.” She picked up a nail file and sat down. “Are you having a funeral?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not leaving these two here with me again, are you?”

  “Does that mean you’re not going?” He knew Lena didn’t care for his father, but the fact she wouldn’t accompany him to the funeral irritated him.

  “What for? I hardly knew him.”

  “I’ll have to be away for a few days. I have to clear out the house and do something about it.” He put Ollie on the floor as he sat on the couch.

  “We could . . . .” Excitement filled her eyes then turned to disgust. Joe knew she was struck with the thought of inheriting a house, but, realized who their neighbors would be. “Never mind. Go ahead. I’ll get a sitter in if I need one.”

  “You do that. Can you manage to put these two in bed, or do I have to?”

  “How long will you be away?” Her pleasant tone annoyed him.

  “Probably until Monday.”

  “No, go to bed. I’ll see to them.”

  The funeral home wasn’t busy so Joe managed to have the viewing the next night and the funeral on Friday afternoon. Maddie was true to her word and came the night of the viewing, but stayed out of his way. He couldn’t see it that way. His eyes searched for her at the funeral home. He needed to see her. He hadn’t seen her all day Thursday, until nearly five o’clock when he saw her walking from her home to John’s house. She didn’t make any attempt to acknowledge him as he watched her from his father’s lawn, barely looking in his direction as she mounted the steps that led inside the small structure. At his father’s viewing he saw why. She looked exhausted; much too tired for a girl who had just turned seventeen.

  “What’s wrong with Maddie? Is she sick again?” Joe pulled Bob aside.

  “Not yet. She’s tired. She’s been going to school, then coming home to fix supper and clean house for the past week and a half. Since last Monday she’s been fitting your father into her schedule as well.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with Sarah?” Joe looked at the woman who hadn’t been seen around the Baker home either. She looked as exhausted as her daughter.

  “She’s been going to work at five in the morning and staying with her sister until ten at night when Lew takes over. Then she comes home and gets her things ready for work again before she can get some sleep. Her sister’s dying.”

  “That’s right, you mentioned it.”

  “Maddie’s been taking care of their house after sitting with your dad until nearly nine every night. She hasn’t been getting much sleep.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me?” Joe asked.

  “Would Mom have complained?”

  “No.” Joe knew Sarah would work until she nearly dropped dead and still try to comfort the ones who needed it.

  “Well, Maddie wouldn’t either.”

  Neither Maddie nor Sarah came to the funeral the next day and Joe could now understand why. It was nearly nine that evening when Lew, John and Tom finally called it a night and decided Joe could be on his own. They had stayed with him at his house, watching television and just passing time with him, but, after they had gone, the house felt empty and cold. He didn’t like the idea of staying there either. He found a few bottles of beer in the refrigerator, then went to his father’s bedroom to busy himself until he would be tired enough for sleep to find him. The job of boxing up his father’s clothes went quickly. They would be taken to charity that weekend. He came across a scrapbook and opened it to find the front page had a tiny article pasted to it reading “A son was born today to Daniel and Kathleen McNier . . . .” Moving out of the bedroom with a bottle of beer in one hand and the old scrapbook in the other, he opened the front door to relieve some of the unnatural heat of April before going to a chair in the living room and turning on a lamp.

  He had finished three more bottles of beer by the time he closed the book. It was a book about Joe McNier’s life. Scraps of
paper from his birth to his mother’s death. More clippings on his high school football career, with all his final report cards in between, and finally his enlistment announcement and a notice that he was one of the heroes accompanying the body of Corp. Jonas Baker home.

  He leaned his head back on the seat. He wished he could grieve for this man who had cared enough about him to keep a record of his life. If only once he had shown Joe a little of what he kept hidden in this book, maybe Joe could have felt something more than simply having been associated with him. If he could have just once laughed with him, or cried with him. But he never did. Joe knew there were only two men who ever treated him with love and friendship, and they were Jack Baker and Lew Cressinger. But between the two, Jack was the father he always yearned for, whereas Lew was the older brother and friend rolled into one. Thank God Jack was only approaching fifty-one and Lew was only forty. Joe would have them to rely on for many years.

  He woke with a start when he felt the bottle of beer slipping from his hand, but when he opened his eyes he saw it wasn’t slipping at all; someone was pulling it. He looked at the hand that surrounded the neck of the bottle; familiar, long-fingered, delicate, yet strong hands. His gaze slowly moved up the soft flesh of her arm. God, how many nights had he awakened in a sweat, having dreamt of those arms clinging to him as he plunged into the warmth of her body? His eyes moved to the front of the oversized shirt as she bent slightly to retrieve the bottle. In this position he could see the white satiny material that clung to the breasts he had tasted the autumn before. The memory of it sent a jolt through him, bringing a tightness to his groin that was electric. She would have straightened, not having noticed he was watching her, but his hand encircled her wrist, holding her prisoner.

  “Maddie.” His voice was thick from sleep and a slightly drunken buzz, as well as the yearning that was surging through his body.

  Her eyes moved up to meet his. Were they the same eyes he had forced himself to avoid for nearly seven months? He couldn’t recognize them. She had changed again. He could see she was no longer a child. She was developing quickly. Her mind possessed an age beyond her years. She turned her eyes away from his deep, searching gaze and looked to the book still on his lap.

  “May I?” She knelt before him and opened a few pages before closing it and looking up at him. “He loved you, Joe.”

  “Did he?” Damn it, didn’t she know what she was doing, kneeling between his legs as she was. “He never showed me. So I guess I wouldn’t know.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t.” She put the book and bottle on the coffee table, then turned back to him. Her position between his knees did not change as she rested her arms on his thighs. “But I know he loved you. When you were overseas, and I would visit him, we would sit and talk about you. Sometimes I’d come down and catch him staring at your picture. You were never far from his thoughts.”

  He didn’t want to hear how much his father had cared. If he were to dwell on something he never felt, he would only feel worse. As it was, the odd numbness was bad enough.

  “How long have you been here, Maddie?”

  “About forty-five minutes. I’ve done your dishes and cleaned up a bit in the kitchen. Everyone was in bed up home, and I couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you came down here. Why?”

  “To help you.” She looked away, to the kitchen doorway and then back to him.

  “To help me,” he said flatly as his hand moved to the dark strands of hair that flowed over her shoulder, taking pleasure in its thick silkiness as it slid over his fingers. “Do you know how to help a man, Maddie? Do you know how to take a man’s mind off his problems and make him feel alive again?”

  “I think maybe you’re a little drunk and a lot tired.” She dropped her gaze from his face.

  “Maybe a little drunk, but not very tired at the moment.” He spread his legs slightly to ease the pressure building in his jeans. “What would you do if I asked you to help me right now? Help me right here? Would you turn around and run back to your parents? What if I told you there was only one way you could help me tonight? Would you slap me in the face like you did last year? Or hope Lew shows up to save you like he did the two years before that?” He looked into her eyes, eyes that watched him like a doe caught in someone’s headlights, mesmerized, a little frightened, not knowing which way to go. “Help me, Maddie,” he whispered.

  His hand came up to her face, his thumb gently stroking her jaw line as he looked down at her. This was his Maddie. This was what he had been waiting seventeen years for, maybe even longer. His hands went under her arms, lifting her and bringing her against him, wanting to crush her inside of himself. He was trembling as his lips claimed hers, tasting what they had to give as her hands moved to his upper arms for support. He felt short of breath, as if he were drowning in her very essence.

  As he stood he brought her up with him, his hands sliding over her, moving down her back to meet the denim cut-offs she was wearing, over her small rounded buttocks to where the frayed denim met the silkiness of her thighs. In one swift movement he parted her legs and lifted her until she was resting on him, her legs instinctively wrapping around his waist as he carried her to his father’s bedroom. His kiss moved across her face as he stood her on the floor at the side of the double bed, his fingers hastily opening the buttons of his shirt before tossing it to the chair in the corner. He looked at her standing before him, looking so frightened he half expected her to run away, and he was immediately drawn back to her mouth, tasting its sweetness as she opened it and answered his tongue’s caresses with her own. He didn’t remember opening her blouse or pushing it off her shoulders, but he remembered the sensuous feeling of her silky white bra as his palm moved over it, its texture familiar to his touch from the previous autumn. The bra came off in an instant, and he felt that if he didn’t sit down soon he would fall from the dizzying heights where she was sending him.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her against him as his attention moved back to her breasts. His lips hungrily devoured one peak, his tongue rolling first gently then with a fiercer demand and bringing a moan from her as she swayed toward him, holding onto his shoulders for support. He held her against him with one hand as he unsnapped her shorts and pulled down her zipper then pushed the worn denim and satin panties over her hips. The slight twist of her hips to assist him sent a jolt through him, innocently arousing him as no other woman could. He moved his hand up the back of her leg, over her perfectly formed calf, savoring its silkiness before moving on to her thigh and then on to meet the firm softness of her bottom. It felt good in his hand, fitting it well. His mouth moved to her other breast, repeating what it had done before as his hand slid back to her leg, moving to the front of her this time and feeling the silky muscle of her thigh before moving to the skin as soft as a baby’s on the inside. The upward motion of his hand tightened Maddie’s grip on his shoulders as she sucked in her breath. The first contact with her ultra-sensitive skin released her pent-up sigh with a rush.

  “Joe,” she moaned when his fingers slid through the soft curls and touched her.

  “It’s all right Maddie. I’ll try not to hurt you,” he whispered hoarsely against the sensitive area between her breasts, his lips and tongue tasting her honeyed sweetness.

  His gentle stroking was making her legs weak as her arms encircled his neck, pulling his head against her. She was leaning most of her weight against him as her hips began moving rhythmically with his hand, searching for something he knew she didn’t have the logic right now to think of.

  “Joe,” she breathed. “I can’t—I can’t . . . .”

  “You are. We are.”

  “But I can’t—not much longer. Please, Joe, I can’t.”

  “You can’t what?” His hand never stopped its rhythm as his eyes lazily moved up her body until he was looking at her lovely face.

  “I can’t stand here like this. Let me down before I fall,” she breathed.

  He almost laughed as
he pulled her down on the bed, then moved up next to her where she was reaching for him. The innocence of her gaze was unnerving as his hand moved to her once again, her face flushing slightly when his eyes moved to hers. She moved her hand up his right arm, over his shoulders toward the area she was staring at. Just what it was, he wasn’t sure until her fingers finally stopped at the stubble on his upper lip, making him smile as she stroked it until, with a quick lift of his head, he bit her fingers. He looked down at the sheen of sweat covering her body as it moved beneath his hand. She was so beautiful. He was drowning in the very sight of her. He watched as she lifted her hips against his hand, still searching for something to fill the emptiness that ached through her. Finally he moved from the area that was controlling her, her eyes widening when first one finger and then another slid deeply inside of her. Her warmth hugged his fingers, exciting him beyond belief at the thought of embedding himself within that tightness. Slowly he started moving in her, his fingers sliding in her deeply and just as slowly withdrawing. She grasped his shoulders when her pleasure began building again as he watched her moving next to him, increasing his rhythmic movements until he felt her shudder, arching against him again and again before practically going limp.

  Slowly, her eyes moved up to meet his, her lazy, timid smile charmed him completely as she turned against him shyly. He gently pulled his hand from her and wiped the sweat from his face on his forearm. The sight of the blood on his hand worried him; he hadn’t even broken through yet, but it confirmed what he already believed. He was her first, and, as far as he was concerned, he intended to be her only; for life.

  He looked back to her and never before had he seen her so totally content. It excited him to know it was the result of his touch. When her gaze moved to the red stain on his fingers her eyes widened again, but he quickly leaned over and kissed her tenderly.