Hearts

by Hilma Wolitzer

  “Mrs. Palchik’s gone home again, I see,” Linda said. “Maybe you will soon, too.”

  She thought her mother made a sound, some kind of reply. Linda looked up, hopeful, and noticed that the nurse had pulled back the sparse dry hair with a pink ribbon. A speck of food was still clinging to the corner of her mother’s mouth. Linda took a Kleenex from the table and rubbed gently at the place until it was clean. “Did you say something, Ma?” she asked. Would you say something?

  The first major stroke had made it difficult to name familiar objects. Wanting a mirror, her mother had drawled, “White flash,” and then, not understood, had grown angry. “Ohhh, face box!” she cried. Linda ran around the room bringing the wrong things: comb, magazines, handkerchief, water, becoming as frantic as her mother, who was losing the names of the things in the world.

  The second stroke had impaired her speech even further, and had paralyzed the entire right side of her body. Linda was relieved when she understood anything her mother said in that thick garble. She liked to imagine it was a foreign language in which her mother was fluent and Linda had only a few words.

  That last day, no one kicked her out at the end of visiting hours. After the nurse lowered her mother’s bed for sleep, Linda pulled up a chair and took her mother’s hand. It was inanimate, unresponsive, and she put it back gently, hoping its new placement was not uncomfortable. The hand looked rejected and helpless, so she picked it up once again. It was winter and by late afternoon the room had darkened. The rain was steady against the window. It was stuffy in there, a sealed place with too much heat rising from the radiator. The closeness made Linda groggy.

  She woke to a definite sound, someone gargling. Mr. Botts? Her father? Was it a school day?

  “Ma?” she said, coming to in instant recognition and terror.

  “Yes,” Linda told her Uncle William. “I guess you could say it was a good death.”

  After the funeral she accompanied him to the airport. He was going back to Florida, used to doing his drifting in a more compatible climate. Linda had paid for his air fare. On the way to the boarding gate, she bought a red carnation from an impeccably dressed teenaged Moonie, for two dollars. “Could you make it three?” he asked. “Come on, you can help us more if you want to. Can you make it two seventy-five?” He peered inside her purse. “You’ve got some loose change in there. Make it two and a quarter.” Linda edged away and tucked the carnation into her uncle’s lapel.

  Is it a good death if someone else is watching? The worst thoughts always sneaked around at bedtime. Robin had been gone for ages. Linda was about to get up and see what had happened to her when she heard the bedroom door open.

  “Linda?” The name was whispered, urgent.

  She sat up and whispered back. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. There’s this old lady down the hall. She wants to tell my fortune.”

  “What?”

  “She’s a palm reader. She told me to come to her room when I was finished with my bath.”

  “Did you go?”

  “I wanted to ask you.”

  “Well, she’ll probably expect to be paid for it, Robin. And you don’t believe in that kind of thing, do you?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “Just think about it for a minute. What could those lines in your hand, that you were probably born with, have to do with some drunk that comes down the street one day and runs you over?” After she said it, she knew it wasn’t the best example.

  Robin was thoughtful. “Maybe it could have to do with the lines in his hand,” she said.

  “I guess you want to try it out, don’t you?”

  Robin shrugged.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Linda asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Linda reached for her robe. “I’ll be ready in a minute,” she said.

  The woman was old, and as small as a child. She was perched on the edge of a wicker chair and her feet did not quite touch the floor. She welcomed them both in a high, piping voice and said that her name was Effie Borden.

  Linda looked around. The room seemed ordinary, as ordinary as the name, and not like the gypsy’s den she had anticipated. No beaded curtains. No enormous poster of a sectioned palm, like the ones she used to see in downtown Newark, where the readers were always called Madame Esmeralda, or something like that. The curtains here were white and simple. A Big Ben alarm clock ticked loudly on the nightstand, next to a glass of water and a vial of blue capsules. There was a crowd of framed photographs on the bureau top. Effie Borden was probably a permanent guest.

  After the introductions were over, Linda confessed that they were really quite closely budgeted and couldn’t afford a reading for Robin, as much as they would dearly love to have one.

  Effie waved her little hand. It would be a gift, she said. She didn’t get that many opportunities to practice her science on people who still believed there was a future. She invited Robin and Linda to sit on the edge of her bed and she moved the wicker chair around to face them. “Linda,” she said, “I said the word ‘science’ just now, and I experienced your unspoken skepticism.” Before Linda could protest, she went on. “Chiromancy and chirognomy are very ancient practices. They were not unknown to the early Chinese. Assyrians and Hebrews, the Greeks and the Romans paid them great respect.”

  Linda cocked her head and nodded, hoping she looked pleasant and receptive.

  Then Effie Borden asked to see Robin’s left hand. It curled in her own, hiding its ragged, close-bitten nails. Effie smoothed it open. “You’re right-handed, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Robin nodded.

  “This is the one you started with,” Effie said. “And this is the one you’ve developed. Just look at the difference between them.”

  Linda stared into Robin’s pink palms. It was true; they weren’t identical. The lines were different. But what did that mean?

  “So,” Effie Borden continued, “don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t alter your own fate. You have already begun to do so.”

  Robin flashed a pleased, sly look at Linda, who made an effort to smile back.

  “Now regard the thumb,” Effie said. “The single digit that keeps man supreme among beasts in the universe. Notice the well-developed phalange. That indicates the presence of powerful will and determination.”

  “Oh, yes,” Linda murmured.

  Effie Borden went on, explaining the little padded mounts that were named for the planets. She called them out—“Jupiter! Venus! Mars!”—as if this were a planetarium and she were the guide. She traced the four great lines of Life, Head, Heart, and Fortune. She said that longevity was clearly indicated in Robin’s hand. “Look at that line!” she commanded. “You’ll live to be a hundred and twenty!”

  Linda looked down at her own hand that was resting opened on her knee. The lifeline ended abruptly in the middle of the palm. Quickly, she closed her fingers over it.

  “There is a predisposition for adventure,” Effie was saying. “Travel, perhaps? In the recent past, and in the near future?”

  Again, Robin glanced at Linda.

  Linda wondered if the Maverick with its Jersey plates was visible from Effie’s windows. It didn’t really matter, though. The old woman was telling Robin the usual harmless things, the ones people most wanted to hear, about good health and love, about long voyages. She mentioned a light-haired man and a dark one. Then she said, “There’s been a death. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Robin answered, almost inaudibly.

  “And long ago, a mystery, a disappearance! You are still concerned with its solution …” She hesitated. “There is a possibility of violence here. I see a shining weapon. Turmoil. Confusion. But …” And now she paused dramatically. “But it will all end well.”

  Linda was reminded of the Nancy Drew books she’d read and loved when she was Robin’s age. Someone was always talking about mysterious disappearances, about impending danger. And of course it always ended well. Linda w
as getting sleepy at last, and had difficulty suppressing a yawn.

  Robin looked more awake than ever, truly animated. She leaned forward and breathed raspily through her mouth.

  “I see water in your future, vast and blue. I see mountains.”

  That could be almost anywhere, except Kansas maybe, Linda thought. But she couldn’t help being moved by Robin’s intensity. She was only a little kid, really. Linda tended to lose sight of that. And thank goodness, Effie was winding up. There was the usual again: health, friendship, romance, family happiness, finis.

  Effie Borden went to the nightstand. She took one of the capsules with some water and threw back her head to swallow it, like a bird.

  Robin thanked her. Linda stood up and added her thanks, not without sincerity. It had certainly been a distraction, a nice little evening’s entertainment. And the tension that had been strung between Robin and herself all day was eased.

  Back in their own room, Linda considered what would be an appropriate response to the whole business, a kind of summing up, to give Robin the right perspective. The girl seemed to have taken it all very seriously. It wouldn’t be fair to just smash that innocent faith. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be very responsible of Linda to encourage it. “That was fun, wasn’t it?” she said, turning off the light.

  “Some of the things she said were true,” Robin answered from her bed.

  “Well,” Linda said. “You know that stuff could be true about almost everybody.”

  “No, it couldn’t,” Robin said.

  Linda didn’t want to quarrel. She wanted to sleep, was almost there. But a sudden flow of logic came into her head and she needed to share it. “About the death, for instance,” she said. “That could be about me, too, couldn’t it? And the travel?”

  Robin was silent.

  “You sleeping?” Linda asked.

  In response, Robin turned sharply in her bed, making it creak.

  “And the dark man and the light man,” Linda said. “They always say that. I mean, what other kinds are there?” She decided to end the matter there. She had made her point and there was no sense in arguing. Besides, all this chatter was waking her up.

  Robin said, “That’s dumb, and so are you. You don’t know anything.”

  Linda sat up. “Now you’re being rude, Robin. And I wish you wouldn’t whine like that. You’ve been doing it all day.”

  “I have not.”

  “There! You just did it again.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Robin, you did. You do quite a lot of it, and it is very nerve-racking. You are always whining and arguing.”

  “It’s better than what you do,” Robin muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “Pardon?” Robin mimicked.

  “Did I hear correctly?” Linda said.

  “Did I hear correctly?” Her tone, her inflection were remarkably like Linda’s.

  “Stop that!” Linda demanded, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

  “Stop that!” Robin echoed.

  “What are you doing!”

  “I’m showing you how you sound. Always talking and talking at me, like a … like a machine!”

  “Like a what?”

  “Like a machine,” Robin said, but her defiance was softening.

  Linda had an instant image of expressionless robots moving across the room. Then she thought of all the vending machines Robin had punched to release Milky Ways and Mounds bars, Yodels and Orange Crush, and how, after the coins dropped into the slot, there was that mechanical whirring and then the dull thud of delivery. “How do you mean?” Linda asked in a hushed, serious voice.

  Robin hesitated.

  “No, go ahead,” Linda urged. “I really want to know.”

  “You sound like you’re always saying proverbs, or something,” Robin said.

  Linda groped for her slippers, and put on the light. “You mean, basically, that I’m not … spontaneous, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I guess so. Shut off the light. I don’t know what I mean. I was just mad before. And this is dumb.”

  Linda shut off the light. “It’s not,” she said. “Don’t be embarrassed, Robin. Criticism can be extremely constructive, you know. Helpful.” She swallowed deeply, and lay down again. “And there shouldn’t be any hard feelings between us about things blurted out in the heat of anger. So let’s forget everything we said to each other tonight, okay? And start all over again with a fresh new day tomorrow, okay?”

  Robin mumbled something.

  “Good night to you, too,” Linda said. “And pleasant dreams.”

  Of course it would be some job to get to sleep now. Robin was quickly gone; Linda could hear that faint snoring, the grinding teeth. Wright was able to go off like that, too. It was a gift.

  The dog was walking around above them, his toenails clicking on a bare floor. Somewhere else in the house, a man struggled to clear his throat. Then bedsprings moved and moved. Linda tried to concentrate on water, on floating, and it almost worked. She dozed off and then came back with a jolt, as if she’d been falling and had barely saved herself. She’d been dreaming about blood, she realized, something bloody. That was probably only natural. She had not bled at all after that first day, though, and had not suffered a sense of loss. She’d expected to and had braced herself for it.

  She folded her pillow in half, and moved from her side to her back. If she could only relax, she would be able to go right back to sleep. Her quarrel with Robin wasn’t keeping her awake anymore. What Robin had said could have come largely from hurt, from anger, or even fatigue. And it wasn’t anything Linda didn’t know about herself in the first place. It was just that confirmation from others always made things worse. But it was possible to change, to alter your life at any time. Effie Borden had said so, the one thing she’d said that was sensible and true.

  Linda crossed her hands and cupped her breasts. In the bathtub this evening, they had seemed exceptionally white and full, really beautiful, with their pale tracing of veins. Now she brushed her nipples lightly with her fingertips. The nipples rose in idiot response. These were only her own fingers. She remembered married nights and lying against Wright’s breathing. But it wasn’t marriage she missed, or even Wright. She knew that the mindless body itself could experience loneliness, without memory, without thought. Even when she was a child, it had this same blind desire for touch. What if it never went away?

  23 In the morning, Linda propped one of Wright’s landscapes against Effie Borden’s door, and tiptoed away. She and Robin were going to make an early start, before anyone else at Applegate Arms was up.

  Linda had awakened with Robin’s words of ridicule inside her head and the previous night’s unhappiness was instantly revived. It was very disturbing to be told you were like a machine, an automatic dispenser of boring and useless words. She could not stop thinking about it, as they packed the car, as they drove away.

  In an effort to become more interesting, she found herself pushed further and further into silence. Everything she intended to say seemed wrong before she said it, seemed self-conscious or silly. And how could you become a spontaneous person if you reviewed every thought and idea before you expressed it?

  When they drove close to the airport in Emporia, and a low-flying plane threatened to skim off the roof of the Maverick, Linda ducked and her hand moved from the wheel to point out the window, and then lowered again, slowly. She realized she was always primed to indicate the obvious on the road. A sudden field of yellow flowers was hardly a private vision. And a vapor of skywriting to advertise cutworm killer could be seen for miles and miles. Even the cutworms probably saw it.

  To make things more difficult, Robin had chosen to lie in the back again, a real regression in their shaky relationship. Now, once more, she was merely a passenger being sped to her destination; well, maybe not sped exactly, but getting there nonetheless. With all the windows open like this, Linda believed her voice would be carried right out and sail,
unheard by anyone, over the flat landscape.

  Still, she tried to think of something funny or original or necessary to say. Hey, Robin, did you hear the one about the midget and the new Pope?

  Her own silence troubled Linda, not only because it stressed her inadequacy as a social being, but because human exchange was so essential to survival. That lovely volley of words across pillows, and into sleep. The first man she ever slept with had taken her to his room at his married brother’s house and had held one hand over her mouth throughout the act, in case she cried out in pain and happiness and woke his niece and nephew. Later she learned that other people were often boisterous in bed, and even shouted, like storm-tossed sailors sighting land.

  Robin understood that she had hurt Linda’s feelings by what she’d said the night before. And now Linda was getting even by not speaking to her at all. If Robin spoke first, it would be a kind of apology, and she could not bring herself to do it. Anyway, Linda had started the whole thing, had picked on her first, said that about Robin whining. And then hadn’t she made fun of everything important and serious that Effie Borden said? She was a real fortune-teller. She knew things she couldn’t possibly know without secret and special powers. The light man and the dark man. About Robin’s father. About traveling and a mysterious disappearance. She even knew about the fork and did not betray Robin to Linda by being more specific. And that was one of the things Linda had criticized, that Effie Borden was vague, that what she said could mean anything.

  Robin was lying on the backseat again, looking at some old comic books she’d read a million times. Reading in motion always made her feel sick, so she just looked at the pictures and watched the colors jump whenever the car hit a rut in the road. Archie and Jughead and Veronica and Betty, their words vibrating in blurred balloons.

  Linda’s big purse had been on the front passenger seat this morning when Robin got to the car. Well, she could take a hint. She didn’t have to go where she wasn’t wanted. And if Linda thought she could be broken down by silence, she picked the wrong person to break. Robin could go a thousand miles without speaking, a million miles. She would not speak to anyone, something Linda was unable to manage. “Fill it with regular, please. Am I close enough to the pump? I think we’re in for another scorcher. Could I please have the key to the rest room?” She’d said all that already to the man at the gas station, her voice peculiar at first from disuse. If it had been Robin driving, she’d have stopped at a self-service island, and when the man came out and said, “Check your oil, lady?” or “Have a nice day,” she would have simply stepped on the gas and zoomed away.