My Heart Can't Tell You No

by M. K. Heffner

  “Yeah. I’ve seen it a few times.” Jack had introduced it to him when he was younger.

  “Then I guess you don’t want to watch it again,” Felicia said somberly, getting off the couch and heading toward the television.

  “Keep it on. I don’t mind watching it again,” he told her, taking a sip of his coffee and watching the smile she had on her face as she returned to the couch. “So, Ollie, you want to tell me what your little joke was all about a few minutes ago?”

  “What joke?” He sat on the floor, sharing the chips with his sister.

  “Maddie is sick and needs me?”

  “Oh. That joke,” he smiled.

  “She isn’t sick, Dad,” Felicia told him. “He just wanted you to get up.”

  “And what makes you think that remark in particular would do the trick?” he asked, his hand rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “Oh, Dad.” Felicia glanced over at him with a knowing smile before looking back at the movie she was enjoying. “We’re not stupid.”

  Joe didn’t know what to say to her. He certainly didn’t think they were stupid. That’s why he and Maddie had tried to be discreet. Other than stopping at her house to pick up the children after work, they had only seen each other twice; once at his home with the rest of the family and once up at Mom’s when they had both visited her at the same time.

  “Well, just how intelligent are you?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Don’t worry, Dad. You can tell us anything. We’re mature enough to handle it,” Ollie told him, reaching behind him for a handful of chips.

  “I’m not going to tell you anything yet. I want you two to tell me.”

  “Tell you what?” asked Ollie.

  “What you’re mature enough to handle.”

  “Dad, I can’t hear the movie,” Felicia complained.

  “Then turn it up and listen between your words.”

  “Turn it up, Ollie,” Felicia told him. “We knew you had been living with Maddie for some time now. Robby told us the first day we met him.”

  “Anyone would have figured it out anyway, even if he hadn’t told us,” Ollie agreed, taking his place against the couch again after turning up the volume.

  “We were just wondering why you tried to keep it a secret,” Felicia told him.

  “It wasn’t a secret—exactly.” Joe felt like the child, trying to explain himself. “We just thought it would be better if you got to know her first.”

  “We know her now. And I’ll bet you still weren’t going to tell us.”

  “It’s kind of complicated. It has to do with the two other ladies who lived with me after I divorced your mother.”

  “You’re not going to leave Maddie—are you, Dad?” Felicia’s frightened eyes flew over to him. “Not like you did them?”

  “I didn’t really think it mattered when the others moved out of my apartment.”

  “It didn’t. They didn’t like us,” Felicia told him.

  “You didn’t give them much of a chance, if I remember correctly.”

  “So? You didn’t care,” said Ollie.

  “They didn’t give us a chance either. We didn’t like them—they were—daffy,” Felicia remarked, a hint of fright still in her green eyes. “You aren’t going to leave Maddie, are you, Dad?”

  “I take it that would upset you.”

  “She likes Maddie, because Maddie tells her she’s boo-ti-ful,” Ollie teased. “She keeps looking at that picture of Grandmother McNier she put on the wall over there, then she runs into the bathroom to see if she looks any more like her today than she did yesterday.”

  “Shut up, Ollie!” Felicia snapped.

  Eight days ago Felicia would never have imagined herself stooping so low as to actually mope.

  “What about you, Champ? You like her?”

  “She can catch a fly ball bare-handed. And Pap Baker said she used to play baseball with the toughest gang of kids in town. Over on the Southside.”

  “And when did you start calling Jack, Pap Baker?”

  “Well, Felicia calls Mrs. Baker, Gram.”

  “You call her Gram?” His brows were raised as he stared with disbelief at his children. They had been strictly trained to call their maternal grandparents Grandmother and Grandfather, and anyone else was to be called Mr, Mrs, or Miss.

  “You call her Mom. Aren’t we allowed to call her Gram?” Felicia said, her expression the same as his.

  “Of course you’re allowed to. It’s just unexpected. You call your grandparents by very proper, almost cold names, that’s all.”

  “Well, that’s because they are Grandmother and Grandfather and Mrs. Baker is Gram.”

  Now that he thought about it, they were certainly correct. He watched them get involved in the movie he had interrupted, feeling as if everything was coming together for him. They were his kids and finally they treated him like their dad.

  “Did you two eat yet?” He rose and went back to the kitchen for more coffee.

  “We had cereal. We wanted eggs but Pap wouldn’t make them for us. He says they’re disgusting, and, he wasn’t going to make us eat anything that looks like it’s staring back at us,” Ollie told him.

  “I can make some for you, if you want some,” Joe called over his shoulder as he stood at the refrigerator, their suggestion sounding pretty good.

  “No,” Felicia laughed. “We don’t want to eat anything that will be staring back at us.”

  “Damn disgustin’ things,” Ollie said in a lowered voice as he tried to mimic Jack Baker. “Looks like somethin’ someone had stuck in their throat and hawked out on a plate.”

  Joe’s hand froze. He closed the door and picked up his coffee, heading back into the room to the bowl of potato chips. “So much for eggs,” he mumbled.

  Joe spent the morning tossing the football for Ollie. Ever since Maddie had told the boy that Joe had been a talented athlete, baseball seemed forgotten and football had taken its place. It surprised Joe to find that the only thing necessary for his son to communicate with him was the knowledge that they shared the same interest in sports. Throughout the week, Joe had watched his children’s curiosity change to friendly warmth. What it would take to change that friendliness into the closeness he wanted, he wasn’t sure, but he was willing to work at it.

  “Where’s Felicia?” Joe had taken a shower. He found Ollie in the kitchen, eating a sandwich.

  “She went up to help Maddie and Gram.”

  He tore off a piece of the boy’s sandwich and popped it into his mouth. “Peanut butter?! There’s meat in there, ya know.”

  “I like peanut butter,” Ollie told him.

  “What’s she helping Maddie and Mom with?”

  “Pickles. They’re putting them in cans or something.”

  “What?” He looked closely at the boy then smiled. “You mean they’re canning them.”

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  “You want to go up and see Jack? I hear he’s tearing John’s old car apart. You want to go help?”

  “Are you going to help?”

  “Yep.” Joe started through the living room and toward the front door.

  “Yeah—I’ll help.” Ollie was quick to his feet as he hurried to catch up to his father’s longer strides. “I can get really greasy. I can’t wait to take these clothes home to Grandmother—she’s gonna have a fit!”

  They found Jack, Jackie, Robby and John in the Baker driveway working at taking a car apart, piece by piece. The fenders and roof already lay to the side on a pile. The interior of the car was coming off quickly, the older men loosening bolts and nuts then leaving them for Jackie and Robby to finish.

  “What can I do?” Ollie asked as he ran ahead of his father.

  “Grab that ratchet wrench. I’ve got some nuts over here to come off,” Jack told him, moving to the engine. “Climb up here so you can reach it.”

  Joe watched as Ollie sat on the inside fender and went about removing nuts Jack loosened for him. His expres
sion was complete concentration as he went about his work. Joe couldn’t help smiling when he saw Ollie’s hands go to his shirt to wipe off some grease.

  “You just come up to watch, Irish?” John asked.

  “Sounds okay to me,” he smiled. “But no. I was going up to talk to Maddie a minute before I started in.”

  “While you’re up there get me a coffee,” Jack told him.

  “Get me a coffee too,” John agreed.

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” he told them, then turned and started for the house.

  He stepped quietly onto the porch, hearing his daughter and Sarah in conversation about how much sugar they should put into a pot, as the acid smell of vinegar hit him full force and almost took his breath away. He went to the doorway, seeing their backs were to him. Maddie was nowhere in sight.

  “How many cups do you have in so far?” Sarah asked.

  “Seven. Five and a half more, right?” Felicia verified.

  “Pretty soon I won’t have to help at all. You’ll be able to do it all by yourself.”

  “Where’s Maddie?” Joe moved next to his daughter, peering into the pot containing hot vinegar, water and three spices.

  “Down in the cellar. She went to get jars—or so she said. I think the smell was getting to her,” said Sarah.

  “I don’t blame her. Are you sure you should be in here breathing this stuff?”

  “It’s okay. If it gets too strong, I’ll go outside or down to see Beth. Anyway, you hardly notice it after you’ve been in here for a while. Right, Lisa?”

  “Right,” Felicia agreed, then turned to her father, shriveled up her nose and stuck out her tongue, indicating she didn’t like the smell either.

  “Lisa?” He asked.

  “Robby can’t say Felicia, so Gram and I decided it would be easier just as Lisa.”

  Joe opened the cellar door, feeling the coolness drifting up toward him as he went down the steps and found Maddie carefully placing empty Mason jars in a box. She heard him coming and watched as he walked toward her, an expression in her eyes he was beginning to recognize and revel in. He stopped and leaned back against some shelves to look at her, positive his own eyes held the same expression.

  “I was just thinking about you,” she said softly, stopping her chore and leaning back against the wall directly behind her. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot today.”

  His smile was gentle as he watched her. He knew it wouldn’t take much coaxing to make him forget about the people upstairs. He moved toward her, allowing her to reach out and tuck her fingers through his belt loops as she pulled him along with her toward the back of the cellar, behind some other shelving and a worktable. His eyes moved around them quickly, double-checking to see they were indeed alone, then without a word, his hands moved to her clothing, almost yanking her shorts down as she unzipped his pants. Her hands were on his shoulders as she raised her leg for him to hold onto before he reached to lift the other leg around him also, leaning her back against the wall.

  “Miss me?” he asked in a whisper as he positioned himself and slowly pressed inside her.

  “Oh, God, yes,” she moaned, bringing a smile to his face as his mouth found hers.

  Their mating started slow and very sensual until their urgency overtook them and it became hurried, yet very satisfying and complete, but as they leaned against the wall afterward to catch their breath, they finally heard the bedlam behind them.

  “Jesus Christ!” Tom’s voice was somewhere between a boom and a squeal. This was followed immediately by the sound of empty jars toppling over and smashing onto the floor as the man made his escape back up the stairs he had evidently just come down.

  Maddie and Joe rearranged their disheveled clothing and were back up the stairs in an instant to find Tom sitting at the table with his head in his hand looking very frazzled, rambling more to himself, than to his mother and Felicia.

  “Why don’t you go down and help Joe and Maddie,” Tom mimicked sarcastically. “I don’t have to help Joe. Hell, he just goes down and helps himself, doesn’t he? I mean a person doesn’t have to see things like that. That is definitely a sight I could have done without.”

  “What is the matter with you?” Sarah said with frustration at her son’s rants.

  “Oh, nothing. Not a thing.” He stood up and looked at his sister and Joe, and started to walk past them, giving a huge shudder. “Well, that’s an unwanted picture branded in my brain. Thank you very much. I need to go sit down and watch television or something. Maybe go scour my eyeballs.”

  “What is he talking about?” Sarah asked. “What did he see?”

  “I think he saw a mouse,” Joe said calmly as he moved toward the coffee pot. “Coffee. Jack and John wanted coffee.”

  When the men quit for the day it was almost nine o’clock and the sun had hidden behind the hills. Tom had joined them a half hour after Joe had come down with the coffee, his occasional glances in Joe’s direction always brought a disgusted shudder before he went back to work, usually with a mumbled, “Didn’t need to see that. Nope.”

  Joe brought up the end of the line of men as they entered the house, each grimy, sweaty and very tired and hungry. He expected to find the women in the same condition, since they had spent the afternoon and early evening smelling the strange vinegar concoction and working in the heat of the stove. But when he entered the house, he found three freshly showered, cool women sitting at the kitchen table playing Parcheesi. Sarah rose immediately and took a bowel of soup and a sandwich in the room where Jack had gone, scolding him the whole time for not coming up earlier to eat.

  “You know you’re supposed to eat regular meals! Look at you. You look ready to fall over!”

  “I do feel kind of dizzy and a little queasy,” he said quietly.

  Joe couldn’t hide his smile—it was amazing how—once Sarah Baker opened her mouth and barked back at that man—he would change from the normal bulldog he always presented himself as, to the gentle puppy his wife knew he could be.

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. If I could only get my sugar to go too low. But no, I have a time just keeping mine close to normal before it jumps anywhere from one hundred to two hundred points too high. Come out here before you eat. I want to check your blood.”

  Jack sighed heavily, looking at his food with longing, but rising and following his wife to the kitchen where she found a large canister containing her insulin needles and blood-testing equipment. Joe watched as Jack obediently held his hand out for Sarah to go to work on, letting her clean his finger then puncture it and drop his blood onto a white strip.

  “Now can I go eat?”

  “Go,” she told him, setting the strip on a smaller canister for the time necessary to complete the test.

  “Do they go through this often?” Joe whispered as he leaned next to Maddie.

  “About once a month,” she said, moving her Parcheesi piece, then nodding at the strip with Jack’s blood smeared on it. “Wait, you’ll see. It’s probably down.”

  “Well,” John commented after finishing off a cool glass of water and starting for the door. “I’d love to stick around to see how this is going to turn out, but I’ve got supper and a bath waiting at home for me.”

  “Are you hungry, Joey?” Sarah asked as she continued with her husband’s blood work.

  “Very,” Joe agreed.

  “Well—if you guys had come up when we called you, instead of just sending the boys up to eat, you wouldn’t have to worry about supper,” Maddie told him, turning until her face was only an inch from his.

  “Are you saying you won’t make me something to eat after I spent almost six hours working my fingers raw?” he asked pathetically.

  “So did we,” she told him. “Well, we didn’t exactly work our fingers raw, but we burnt them enough to qualify as being injured. If you want to eat—there’s some pickles in the room.”

  “Maddie,” he said softly. “I love you.”

  “Hmph,” she sno
rted then reached over and wiped a smudge of grease from the bridge of his nose. “Look in the oven. Were you rooting around in the grease down there?”

  “You see the boys? They’re black.” He went to the oven, noticing that there were still two large pots boiling on the stove, but this time there were no signs of the strong acid smell. He figured they were now in the process of sealing the jars. When he opened the oven door, he saw a plate of food kept back for him.

  “I knew it. It’s down below seventy.” Sarah remarked as she read the strip.

  “You hungry, big guy?” Joe asked as Robby climbed up on his mother’s lap and leaned his head back against her. The boy yawned and shook his head no, but continued to watch Joe as he began to eat.

  The loud click in the room lit up Felicia’s eyes as she looked toward a table covered with at least ten dozen quart-size Mason jars filled with sliced cucumbers. She turned and smiled at Sarah.

  “Was that it?”

  “Yes,” Sarah answered.

  “What was it?” Joe asked.

  “The jars sealing,” Maddie told him, then turned her attention to Felicia and the game they were playing. “If you don’t get her, Lisa, she’s going to go in home and win.”

  “Mom always wins,” Joe commented as he continued to eat. “She’s got a special talent with that game. She can’t lose.”

  “Lisa has been telling me the most interesting things while you were working on the car,” Maddie told him. “It seems you were discussing our living arrangement with her this morning.”

  “No, she was discussing it with me.” He took another bite of food and smiled at her.

  “Well, I guess we weren’t as discreet as we thought.” Maddie moved her piece on the game board.

  “You can say that again,” Tom called from the room, turning Maddie’s face crimson and making Joe smile down at his plate.

  “You know, I’m going to find out what he’s talking about,” Sarah said quietly as she shook the dice and went about moving her piece.

  “When will you be done with this?” Joe changed the subject.

  “Not for another hour or two. Why?” Sarah asked.

  “You aren’t planning on staying up until they’re done, are you?” he asked Felicia.