Hearts

by Hilma Wolitzer

  He didn’t seem disappointed, or even annoyed with her for taking up his time for nothing. “Thank you,” he said. “Come see us again.”

  She found Robin going through a pile of comic books nearby. Linda picked up a deep blue jar from a box of jars on the same table, and held it up so the sunlight intensified its color. “Look at this,” she said. “Beautifully simple, but simply beautiful.” There was a $1.50 price tag glued to the bottom of the jar.

  “It’s from Vicks,” Robin said.

  “What?”

  “It’s a Vicks Vaporub jar. You could probably buy it filled with Vicks for a lot less than that.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s what it is,” Linda said.

  “Yes, it is. Daddy used to buy it all the time when I was little. I used to get lots of colds.” She sounded as if she was bragging. “Smell it,” she told Linda. “I’ll bet it still smells.”

  Linda raised the jar to her nostrils and sniffed delicately. It was faintly medicinal. She smiled falsely. “Not really,” she said. She replaced the jar in the box and wandered away.

  I’m not going to let Robin spoil everything, she decided, fingering the engraved flower on a tiny gilt frame, and then opening the clasp on a jet-beaded evening bag. That smelled, too, like silver polish, and it reminded her instantly of kitchens. She didn’t feel homesick or unhappy, though; no past home had been that good, and a better future one was always possible.

  Linda went to another table, where she opened a huge album filled with old picture postcards set into transparent sleeves. At first she turned the pages quickly, glancing at the faded views of lakes and mountains, but then she began to read some of the messages on the backs, and was excited by the glimpse they allowed into small personal histories. Please remember your devoted friend Alice Newman. We are having a nice visit with Mama and Uncle Robert. I will come to see you next Sunday. I must say goodbye now the doorbell is ringing. The baby has been sick all winter. Linda looked at postmarks. The baby would be seventy-five by now, or dead. Did it even survive the winter? The card came from Montana, where the winters were still hard. Who was ringing the doorbell? She believed she could rummage forever through these extraordinary artifacts of ordinary life.

  But, in spite of her intentions, she began to feel weary after a while, and even a little bored. She couldn’t work up the energy to sift through another album of postcards with their spidery accounts, or through another tray of monogrammed railroad spikes. The first few batches had seemed wonderful. She’d even thought of buying one with an R on it for Robin, as a memento of their journey, as a truly historical souvenir. This whole nation had flourished with the growth of its railroads. Kansas alone seemed to have a million miles of track, with hardly a train in motion on them. But Linda couldn’t face the prospect of Robin’s disdain at such a gift. She would never appreciate it, never see its modest beauty.

  If everything had a quantity of beauty, it also seemed as if nothing was without monetary value, at least to somebody. In Newark you would have had to pay a private trash collector to cart away big ugly ruined things like that pink sofa with the feathers flying out of it, and the hanging springs. And there was a woman in a sun hat that said Olé! Olé! Olé! all around its brim, trying to plump up the sofa’s dead pillows, stroking the scarred wooden arms as if that would revive it.

  And the little things on some of the tables: bottle caps and old keys, fountain pens that didn’t work any more, tarnished spoons with teeth marks in them, ordinary seashells you could pick up free in Atlantic City or Coney Island. There were headless dolls and disembodied china heads, lying around like victims of a train wreck, boxes of flattened dusty hats and curled shoes, and even empty soft-drink cans. Why, Robin had probably thrown out a fortune in those already! People used to throw a lot of this stuff away without a second thought. And now other people were bargaining to buy it. How was it possible to own someone else’s nostalgia?

  Linda thought she could just pull the Maverick over into this row of sellers, open the trunk, and take out some of the things they’d been dragging across the country: the flowered buttons she had been saving from an old discarded sweater, photographs of her mother, her own underwear and Robin’s, combs, toothbrushes …

  Finally, in this inventory, she came to Wright’s ashes. She thought with wonder that there was probably a buyer for them, too, somewhere in the world. Everything else was negotiable, wasn’t it? Empty Vicks jars, old barbed wire, RC Cola cans. There had even been one table where little mystery sacks containing “Trash or Treasure” were being sold for twenty-five cents each. Was this the place to leave Wright’s ashes, among all the other lives’ leavings? And how should it be done? She imagined dumping them surreptitiously, the way some people dumped loaded ashtrays in the parking lots of shopping centers, and was horrified. She would sooner keep them forever than abandon them with so little regard or ceremony. Linda had read once that if you owned someone’s hair or nail clippings, you had uncanny control over him. Did possession of Wright’s ashes include his history and the future of his freed soul? If so, she did not want the responsibility or the burden of such property. But this wasn’t the right place to dispose of it.

  Linda had a sudden desire to get away. She’d had enough, more than enough, of the survival of things. And she wanted to stay mobile, anyway, to keep moving toward her destination before California broke away from America and drifted off, before the other states followed, one by one, and Kansas became part of the new coastline, and those distant grazing beasts found themselves staring out to sea.

  22 They laid out the few things they would need for the night. The room at Applegate Arms was small, but clean, and with the kind of shabbiness Linda found appealing. The discreet white patches on the white bedspreads, for instance, and the dark streaks in the bureau mirror where the silver had worn away.

  The bathroom was halfway down the hall, and there was evidence of other guests: a yellow, chewed toothbrush tilted in a cloudy glass, a flowered shower cap, still shedding water, and footprints in a trail of dusting powder.

  Linda looked through the tiny window while Robin spit blue toothpaste into the basin. There was a funeral home next door with floodlights directed at its sign. John J. Keneally and Sons. This proximity of mortuaries to inns and smaller hotels was not unusual, nor did Linda believe it was an ironic statement on the nature of human rest. The zoning laws probably lumped them together. And there were many large houses fallen to small or disintegrating families. Funeral homes needed the space; it was simply a matter of supply and demand. She did not feel morbid about the people she could see visiting in their dark cars as she brushed her hair. That place was as much a part of things as this one. But she was grateful for the bed she would soon climb into, for the kind of sleep she was about to enter, its temporary darkness. “Isn’t this nice?” Linda said. “And we’re paying less than half what we did at the Marriott.”

  She had been worried about staying in a rooming house, afraid that once inside she would feel as if she were back at Mrs. Piner’s, trapped again in her own childhood. There were definite similarities. This, too, was an older, rambling house with a circular porch. A front-yard pin oak cut off the late-afternoon sun, and a dog barked eagerly when they rang the bell.

  But the woman who came to the door was young and energetic. And a few small children in pajamas peered at Linda and Robin shyly from the doorway of the kitchen.

  Upstairs, Robin soon grew restless. She kept opening the bureau drawers and the closet door and closing them again. She peeked into a shallow curtained alcove in the corner, where she found a tall electric floor fan and a sealed carton marked Lucy’s Snowsuit, Carriage Blankets, Quilts. “What’s this?” Robin asked.

  “That looks like hand-me-downs from the last baby.”

  Robin sat on the carton and pushed the fan back and forth with her feet. Its wheels screeched.

  “They’re probably saving them for the next one,” Linda said. “Don’t do that, Robin, please.
”

  “Well, why are they keeping this stuff here?”

  “Because they have no other place for it, probably. And it doesn’t really matter; we’re only going to be here one night. It’s not in our way.”

  “There’s no air conditioner,” Robin said.

  “No, thank God. We’ll be able to hear ourselves think for once. And it’s actually pretty cool in here, because of that big tree out there. It blocks the sun.”

  “It blocks the air,” Robin said. She sniffed. “It stinks in here.”

  “That’s your imagination. It’s only a little damp.”

  Robin opened the closet door again. Its hinges needed oiling.

  “What are you looking for, Robin?”

  “There’s no TV set, is there?”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  “It’s Sunday. My best shows are on.”

  “You can do without television for one night, can’t you?”

  “What will I do?”

  “Do? Why—why, you could read a book, couldn’t you?” Linda pointed to a few matched brown volumes on a shelf near the closet, thinking that she had not read a book herself for a long time. It was certainly something she intended to do, once she got to California.

  Robin picked up one of the brown books and opened it. “It’s not in English,” she said, triumphant.

  “Let me see that. Oh, I guess you’re right. It looks like German, doesn’t it? The paper is so thin. I wonder who these belonged to.” She read haltingly, “ ‘Man kann nicht … wissen wie es … ausfallen wird.’ I wonder what it says.”

  Robin was pacing again, losing interest. “Could we go to the movies tonight, Linda?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Bowling?”

  “Robin, I’ve been driving all day. I’m really looking forward to a long hot bath and just getting into bed and relaxing. That’s why we stopped to eat dinner before we even looked for this place. So we wouldn’t have to go out any more tonight. You know that. And I thought we were economizing.”

  “But what will I do? It’s not even eight o’clock yet.”

  Linda considered the question. “We could always talk,” she said.

  Robin’s eyes narrowed. “About what?”

  “About … anything. We could tell each other things we remember from before we met. I mean, we’ve been together all this time and we hardly know each other.” Robin continued to look sullen and suspicious, so Linda went on. “For instance,” she said, “I grew up in a house very much like this one. I’ll bet you didn’t know that, did you?”

  Robin shrugged.

  “And my mother was a nurse.”

  There was a faint glimmer of interest. “Where is she?” Robin asked.

  “She’s dead. She died five years ago. She was a baby nurse. Sometimes she had to go away for a few weeks at a time to take care of a new baby in somebody’s house. When I was little I used to go clomping around in her old shoes. The landlady always said I gave her a headache, and she made me stop. When my mother came home, we’d take a bath together.” Linda remembered the bobbing motion, a lulling mist of steam.

  “Who took care of you when she wasn’t there? The landlady?”

  “My father.” He was reading a newspaper in the morning and rubbing his naked feet. He sat near the back window because the light was better there. Overnight, his face had darkened with new growth. Linda came up behind him and looked at the enormous black letters. There were pictures underneath, of two men shaking hands near a flag, of a smiling woman wearing a crown and waving. Linda leaned into him to see, her shadow crossing the page. He moved her aside with his elbow. “You’re breathing on me,” he said. “You’re standing in my light.”

  “Tell me about him,” Robin said.

  “Uh-uh. Now it’s your turn,” Linda told her.

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  “Sure you can, if you try. Just think about it for a minute.”

  “I don’t want to do this, anyway. It’s dumb.”

  “It’s not dumb, Robin,” Linda said. “And you can’t keep saying that everything you don’t like is dumb. That’s dumb.” She took her nightgown and bathrobe and went to the door. “I’m going to get ready for bed,” she said.

  The claw-footed tub was enormous. There was really room for two. Linda kept sliding forward, her chin going underwater. Her hair floated around her like seaweed. Her other hair curled the way her mother’s used to, and gathered a nest of tiny bubbles. Every time the water began to cool, she opened the tap and let in a churning rush that was too hot at first and made her draw her feet away. Then gradually the water became only warm again, ideally so, and she stretched out, loosening, dreaming.

  There was a sharp rapping at the door. Linda slid up, gripping the sides of the tub. “Robin?” she asked. “Is that you?”

  A man’s hoarse voice spoke. “You going to be out of there soon?”

  Linda bounded from the tub, almost slipping, and dried herself quickly and haphazardly on a thin towel. Her hair was still dripping, and there were wet patches on her back when she left the bathroom. There was no sign of anyone in the hall. But as soon as she opened the bedroom door, she heard another one slam, nearby.

  As she entered the room, her wet hair was whipped backward and her robe was blown open by a blast of air. The fan was in the center of the room, going full speed. It sounded like the engine of a small plane. Robin stood directly in front of it, her arms wide, her hair flying.

  “Shut that thing off, for heaven’s sake!” Linda cried. Robin either didn’t hear her or pretended not to, and Linda had to walk further into the fan’s hurricane to push the switch herself. “There!” she said, when the noise had died down and the blades became visible, turning slower and slower.

  “It’s hot in here,” Robin said.

  “No, it’s not,” Linda answered. “Once you’ve taken a nice cooling bath, you’ll feel perfectly refreshed.”

  She thought she heard Robin repeat the word “refreshed,” softly, between her teeth.

  “Pardon?” Linda said.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I thought you did.”

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “All right, you didn’t. Now why don’t you see if the bathroom is free. You’ll really feel much better once you’ve lowered your body temperature,” Linda said, getting into bed.

  After Robin left, she lay back, trying to recapture the drowsy peacefulness she’d felt in the bath. The overhead light was still on and she was too lazy to get out of bed and turn it off. She stared into the yellow circle until a spectrum of yellow circles grew from its center and moved across the ceiling. Linda shut her eyes. Outside, voices called good night to one another, and then car doors slammed. The visiting hours at John J. Keneally’s were probably over.

  Linda’s mother had lain in a place like that for three days, until her brother in Florida could be located and brought up to Pennsylvania for the funeral. Linda had only seen this uncle twice before. He was a couple of years younger than her mother, who had referred to him as a drifter.

  The Piners and a few other guests had come to the chapel and were gone. Linda and her Uncle William were the only ones there. He was thin and hard-looking, like those beaten farmers in photographs from the Depression. His suit didn’t fit him and Linda guessed that it had been borrowed for the occasion. “Thanks for coming, Uncle William,” she said, wondering if he had ever been called Bill, or Will, or Billy when he was a child. She had never had a nickname, either, and it occurred to her that it was a kind of deprivation.

  “Alma looks real nice,” he said, cracking his knuckles in the stillness of the room.

  The undertaker had done the best job possible, with makeup and something stuffed into the cheeks to disguise the distortion the strokes had left. Still, there was a stubborn pull to one side of her mother’s face, as if she had a splitting headache. It would not allow Linda to think in terms of eternal peace.

  And h
er mother was wearing a blue dress. When the undertaker’s office had called, asking for suitable clothing for the viewing, Linda had hesitated, thinking only her mother’s uniforms were truly suitable. She pictured her in the quilted coffin that way, the black satchel against her feet, her shoes polished to a dazzling contrast of whiteness. Then Linda had brought them the blue dress, and the dark, moderate-heeled pumps her mother would have taken off before lying down anywhere.

  Uncle William asked if his sister had had a good death. Linda still wasn’t sure what that expression meant. Her mother had been in the hospital, recently returned from a coma, and was propped in bed, being given oral nourishment for the first time in weeks. The nurse spooned food in and it quickly dribbled out again. Linda looked questioningly at the nurse, who closed her eyes and shook her head, as if she were delivering a verdict. “Daughter’s come to visit, Mother,” she said. “Laura’s here.”

  “Linda,” Linda said, but the nurse was noisily gathering dishes and leaving.

  Linda walked around the room, touching things, looking everywhere but at that odd and anguished face. She said, “It’s still raining outside.” The doctor had assured her that her mother could hear even if she was unable to respond. And there was another listener, Linda remembered, a neighboring patient behind her drawn curtain. Mrs. Palchik, the woman’s name was. She was in and out of the hospital all the time because her lungs kept filling up with water. She often looked even worse than Linda’s mother, but when Linda asked how she was feeling, she invariably answered, “Fine, honey, just fine,” in a thin and watery voice. Her side of the room was always colorful with flowers and greeting cards, was usually busy with loud and cheerful guests insisting on life. The day before, Mrs. Palchik had offered Linda’s mother a wilting bunch of roses.

  Linda stood at the drawn curtain, her hand foolishly raised, as if she planned to knock. “Hello?” she called in through the fabric. There was no answer, so she tiptoed around and looked in. The bed was empty, stripped. And everything else—flowers, cards—was gone.