Hearts

by Hilma Wolitzer

  She told him about Robin, about the small, ongoing war that was their relationship, about finding her grandfather’s address and the private detective’s report, and how they had been received in Iowa, and had fled. As she spoke, she thought about the pregnancy, and the abortion-clinic bombing, and her recent rediscovery, in their chronological sequence. Without fully understanding why, she withheld all of that from him. By the time she got to her plans to look for Robin’s mother in Glendale and go on to California alone, they had passed the glass back and forth several times, and Linda had stopped shivering.

  “You’ve had a very rough time, haven’t you?” Wolfie said.

  “It feels better, just talking about it,” Linda told him. “Thank you for listening.”

  “I like listening to you,” Wolfie said. “You have such a sweet voice, Linda. It’s like being read to.”

  “You do? It is? I always worry. Robin says I’m not, you know … spontaneous. Maybe the wine helped. I feel kind of … light.”

  “It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Do you know, before? I did sleep a little and I dreamed you knocked on my door.” Linda was dazzled by her own boldness and poise.

  Then Wolfie stood up and she felt a rush of despair. Was he going to dismiss her now? Maybe she had gone too far, had been too spontaneous.

  She stood up, too, trying to look as if it had been her idea as well to call it a night. She even managed a queer little yawn. “Well!” she exclaimed, leaving herself breathless.

  “I wanted to knock,” Wolfie said slowly, and Linda started trembling again. It’s only the wine, she thought, or the fatigue. Or longing. Or lust.

  “But I couldn’t take that chance,” he continued. “Miss Teenage America might have been waiting right behind the door with her putting iron. Instead of you.” He unstrapped his watch and laid it on the table next to one of the beds.

  “Oh, no,” Linda said, and she had to lean against the wall. “She’s a very good sleeper. Her father was like th …”

  Wolfie turned back the covers on the bed.

  So this was it, the excitement before touching that was better than any touching she had known so far. “I mean she could sleep through anything, once she’s out. Through an earthquake, even.”

  He came toward her across the room and there was a splendid spasm in her chest and belly. “Oh, babe. Oh, babe, come on,” he said. His voice was gruffly, gravely sweet.

  “And other natural disasters,” Linda whispered, going into his arms. They reached the bed and lay down on it still in the violence of that first embrace, still clothed. The struggle to release themselves from their clothing was like some mad competition in which they had to do so without ever letting go of one another. At last they were victors, skin to burning skin, and when he entered her she became a vessel, a room, a house!—in which all the lights came on at once.

  They slept, woke, talked, and made love again, a few times. Five times, to be exact. Why should she deny she kept this exultant mental record? She remembered a woman she’d known who carried around a written diary of all her sexual statistics: duration of orgasm, partner’s birthstone, color of sheets, time of day, phase of moon.

  When they were awake, she lay with her ear to Wolfie’s chest, and listened to the impressive drumbeat of his heart. When he fell asleep before her, she was forlorn, and when they woke and moved together again, she was rowdy with happiness.

  Someone had once told Linda that there are still primitive cultures in which the men assure their pregnant women that lovemaking is what nourishes the fetus. Oh, that’s what they all say, she thought, realizing immediately that she had made a spontaneous, if silent, joke. She laughed out loud and Wolfie said, sleepily, “Hey, what’s so funny?”

  “Me,” Linda answered. She acknowledged, not without wonder, that it was possible to be articulate with passion. It was as if she had finally been released from some long and terrible enchantment.

  Just before dawn she said she’d better get back to her room before Robin woke up. Wolfie staggered into his jeans while Linda watched from the nest of blankets and pillows. “I’ll walk you home, babe,” he said, and they went lockstepped to her door.

  They lingered there, draped against one another, kissing, kissing. It was like a prelude to the evening rather than its conclusion. “I have to go,” Linda whispered, without real conviction. “Good night.” “Good night,” Wolfie answered, and then they kissed some more before they let their arms drop, their bodies fall away.

  Wolfie went to his door. “Good night,” he called again.

  “Good night,” Linda said, and went inside. As advertised, Robin had slept through everything. Linda covered her and then collapsed into bed. She had decided not to sleep, though, not to allow this to become one of those transient ecstatic moments she’d thought about earlier, in the shopping center. If she reviewed and replayed what had happened as if it were a filmed historical event, she could prevent its untimely passing.

  The physical memory was easy; her body still hoarded every nuance of touch. She tried to remember some of the things they had said to each other. He had been concerned at the last minute about birth control, and asked, “Is it all right?” Linda had said, “Oh, yes, it’s fine, it’s wonderful,” her answer layered with meaning. The word “love” had come up, but only in the worshipful naming of parts, of acts. During one period of rest there had been a short exchange of history. His father was dead; his mother now lived in Oregon. What was it he’d said? You’d like my mother? You’ll like my mother? Something. And hadn’t he rerouted her trip himself, and then shown up on that very route? The effort at recollection was making her drowsy against her will. But it didn’t matter. She had kept the resonance of experience, if not every detail, and could afford to rest her guard now and sleep.

  When she woke, she was alone in the room. The pink shortie pajamas were on the floor between the beds. From the bathroom window she looked out onto the miniature golf course. Robin and Wolfie were just teeing off.

  27 Robin didn’t make a hole-in-one, but she beat Wolfie by two points, anyway. That was close enough to make his loss legitimate, and she didn’t suspect him of throwing the game, the way her father always did. It took her years to figure it out, to understand why she consistently won, no matter what they played (miniature golf, Go Fish, Ghost, Monopoly), why her pile of play money seemed to increase mysteriously whenever she went to the bathroom. He must have dealt himself bad cards from the bottom of the deck, must have kept Boardwalk and Park Place as undeveloped property on purpose. She guessed now that he’d probably done those things to help build up her self-confidence, to make the small areas of her life within his control pleasant and even victorious. But she felt cheated by the deception and knew that because of it she had never learned to be a cheerful loser.

  When she made the fifth hole in two under par, Wolfie whistled appreciatively. “Did you stay up all night to practice?” he asked. But he was the one who kept yawning.

  It was a beautiful day; some of the cool night air still lingered, and there was real dew on the artificial grass at their feet. Robin thought it was especially nice to have Wolfie all to herself for once. Maybe after she was completely on her own she would get in touch with him. Maybe the two of them could travel somewhere together, taking turns driving, the way he did with Linda. If Linda didn’t screw everything up first by acting so wimpy he’d never want to see either of them again. As if on cue, she appeared in the doorway of their room, waving and smiling, as Robin and Wolfie walked back from the golf course.

  They drove slowly on side roads, stopping from time to time to examine something more closely, a cluster of wildflowers or a herd of cows. Robin wouldn’t admit this to anyone, but she was actually afraid of cows. Seen close up, with only a few strands of wire separating her from them, they were enormous, and truly exotic, with their cartoon eyes and shivering flesh. Those udders, as pink and stretched as bubble gum, seemed like remarkable sexual baggage,
and she glanced around nervously, wondering if there were any bulls in the neighborhood, too. Robin had always been afraid of animals, but it was a fear she had been able to dismiss or disguise pretty easily in Newark, except for an occasional encounter with a stray dog. Now she tried to appear casual, even indifferent. She stood back from the barbed wire with her hands in her pockets. “Moo, yourself,” she said.

  When they’d first stepped out of the car at the edge of the meadow, Linda brushed away the flies that dive-bombed them, then inhaled deeply. “Smell this air!” she shouted. “Will you tell me why people live in crowded, polluted cities when there’s all this glorious air to breathe?”

  It was another one of those million dumb questions she was always asking that didn’t require an answer. When Robin looked at Wolfie, he winked at her, and she felt the thrill of collusion.

  But soon he and Linda were off to one side, sitting in the sparse grass, and whispering together the way Ginger and Ray sometimes did, shutting Robin out. Wolfie and Linda were pulling up pieces of grass and tossing them at each other. They acted as dumb as the dumb cows, who stared mindlessly while they chewed and made deep lowing sounds in their throats. Robin felt she had been rudely excluded from all levels of society. “Are we going to hang around here all day?” she demanded.

  Linda looked up as if she was startled to see Robin there, and then she stood, brushing the grass from her skirt, pulling a whole handful of it from the neck of her blouse. Wolfie made her stand still while he picked a few more blades from her hair. Well, at least Linda wasn’t bugging him yet.

  They drove a few miles to a general store, like the one on The Waltons. It was jam-packed with every kind of item: food, tools, cigarettes, magazines, patent medicines, and even a few articles of clothing. Linda tried on a couple of sun hats, bending to look at her skewed reflection in a giant-sized cracker tin. Dolly Parton was singing “Here You Come Again” on a radio behind the counter and a man wearing a cowboy hat and a string tie waited on them. Wolfie said he was starving, and they bought bread and cheese and peanut butter and ham and fruit and beer. As they were paying for everything, there was a booming sound nearby, and Linda jumped.

  “What was that, a gun?” Robin asked.

  “Don’t you know what today is?” Wolfie said. “It’s the Fourth of July. Somebody’s just celebrating early in the day, that’s all.” He asked the man in the cowboy hat if he had any fireworks for sale, and added half a dozen sparklers to their package.

  They took their picnic to a wooded spot near a stream. As soon as they parked, two huge dogs came bounding out from somewhere, barking furiously and circling the car. Robin quickly rolled up her window and shut her eyes. She felt herself grow rigid, the way she used to when her father would drag some reluctant dog up to her and say, “Look, he likes you, he wants to make friends. He wants to lick your hand, Bobolink. Daddy wouldn’t let him hurt you. Feel how soft his fur is.”

  Now she heard the car doors slam and Wolfie said, “Hello, boys. You the welcoming committee?” And Linda cooed, “Good doggies. You’re so glad to see us, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

  Robin was almost afraid to look, but when she did, she saw Linda and Wolfie heading in the direction of the stream, carrying their supplies and a blanket, and the two dogs walking courteously behind them, their heads down. Linda stopped to pet one of them, and she looked like what’s-his-name, that saint in Robin’s old Bible picture book, who was always hanging around with animals, and had birds and squirrels sitting on his shoulders and on top of his head.

  Robin opened her door and stepped out, too. Immediately the dogs turned and approached her. She stood completely still while they sniffed around her legs, their tags jangling and their tails churning. She was faint with terror and yet she had a mad impulse to touch their large silvery heads. But she listened to their frantic panting, observed the fangs set into the dark jagged gums, and dismissed the impulse. Her ankles glistened with saliva. How was she ever going to get past them?

  “You okay, Robin?” Linda called.

  “Sure,” she said, hoarsely.

  “Well, then come on!” Wolfie yelled.

  The dogs must have thought he meant them, because they leaped away toward Wolfie, and then past him, into the woods, liberating Robin.

  Linda had spread the blanket in a cleared space and she and Wolfie laid out the food. They all ate piggishly, as if they were breaking a long fast. Over Linda’s protests, Wolfie let Robin sip some of his beer. “I’m only giving her a little,” he said. “It’s a holiday. And nobody’s going to card her out here.”

  The beer was deliriously cold and a little bitter, but it tasted nicer than gin. She took a deep swig, then another, and Wolfie said, “Hey!” and took the can back. Robin wanted to light the sparklers, but he said they had to wait until dark.

  After lunch they lay three abreast on the blanket to take a nap. Robin kept sitting up, thinking she’d heard something, the dogs returning maybe, or other animals, but finally she lay back and slept, too.

  Later they got onto a major highway and drove steadily until sundown. The towers of oil wells were black against the rosy sky. They stopped at a motel called The Western Star, and took the last two available rooms, at opposite ends of the place.

  When it was dark, Robin reminded Wolfie about the sparklers. He brought them from the car and gave one to each of them. A little boy, barefoot and wearing pajamas, came to the door of his room and watched them with shy interest. Wolfie handed him a sparkler, too, and then he set a match to all of them. They hissed and flared, illuminating each face in turn. Linda said, “Ooooh!” and held hers solemnly at arm’s length. Robin ran around the parking lot, waving hers over her head, so that brief sparks rained down and disappeared in her hair.

  Someone took the little boy back inside his room. Wolfie and Robin lit the two remaining sparklers, joining them for maximum effect, and after those went out they heard the boom! boom! of fireworks somewhere else, and then the answering yelps of dogs at a safe distance.

  28 With Wolfie driving again, they would probably reach Albuquerque by late morning, one day before his friend’s wedding. That was where she and Robin would leave him before going on to Glendale. Linda tried frantically not to think ahead to their separation. Riding next to him in the flying landscape, she distracted herself with silly and secret games. Predicted red cars or white ones. While they were still in farm and ranch country, she made God-bargains that would change the inevitable outcome of events if a barn would appear next instead of a silo. Realizing that barns usually outnumbered silos, and that she wasn’t sure she believed in God.

  The changes in the landscape were gradual and then dramatic. The vegetation in New Mexico was sparser than it had been a little further east, in Texas. And what did grow was tougher-looking, spiky and aggressive, defiant of the dry, penetrating heat. Linda pulled down the sun visor and looked at herself in the little mirror to see if she, too, was toughening to accommodate the altering climate of her life.

  Last night she had gone again, shy and audacious, to his room. As they began to make love, she fleetingly considered the risks. They were awesome, but that didn’t stop her, or make her cautiously decline in ardor or in daring. “I love you!” she cried once, regretful to be first in declaration, and maybe last as well.

  “Ah,” Wolfie said. “You don’t even know me. This is only my good side.” Afterward he added, “You bring out the good in me. It’s your special gift, I think. I’m a moody guy sometimes, Linda. And a little selfish.”

  She would not abandon him to the isolation of guilt. “Oh, me, too!” she said. “Who isn’t?”

  No one had spoken for several miles. As he drove, Wolfie would remove one hand from the wheel, absently it seemed, and touch it to some part of Linda that was out of Robin’s sight. Earlier, when Linda drove, she was so conscious of his closeness that her steering regressed. Horns bawled, larger cars bullied her into line. “What’s everyone’s hurry?” Linda asked. “Where are th
ey all going?”

  Wolfie said, “Listen, you must be tired, babe. Let me drive for a while.” He paid for the gas when they stopped.

  Robin, contributing to the silence, had apparently given up both her roles. She was neither difficult adolescent nor transformed charmer. Linda believed that Robin’s quietude was like her own, was contemplative and sad.

  After a sign indicating they were only fifty miles from Albuquerque, Wolfie said he had an idea. How would they like to go to his friend’s wedding with him?

  “I would,” Robin said immediately. “I never went to a wedding.”

  Linda was astounded. “Why, Robin Reismann,” she said. “How can you say that? You went to mine!”

  Robin blinked and tossed her hair back and Linda didn’t pursue the argument. What was the use? It was more of Robin’s magical thinking at work. Without her approval or consent, Wright and Linda’s wedding had never taken place. Even the groom, that staple of wedding evidence, was gone. She certainly managed to work up enthusiasm for the union of two complete strangers. And what had happened to her imperative need to get to her mother’s?

  “So, can we?” Robin persisted.

  Linda didn’t answer right away. She knew she had been indulging her own magical thinking. Because she had not acknowledged her pregnancy to Wolfie, she was able to put it aside for a few days. The logistics were fine. Dr. Lamb had said abortions were legal and safe until the twenty-fourth week. She had time. Except that the changes in her body continued with the dogged obstinancy of nature. She was blooming, or was her notice of it exaggerated? Wolfie hadn’t remarked on it. Robin didn’t either, not since the time in Buddy’s Siesta when she said that Linda was getting fat. And she was probably inspired then by defensiveness and malice.

  If Linda went with Wolfie now, it would only be a delaying tactic against the certainty of leaving him later. But so what? Wasn’t living only a delaying tactic against death? Look what’s happening, she marveled. Jokes! Philosophy!