Sweeping Up the Heart

by Kevin Henkes

  The heart had dots pressed into the clay around the edges forming a border. In the middle, it said C + G.

  “The C and the G are for Charlie and Gwen,” Casey explained. “My parents.”

  “I remember,” said Amelia.

  “I didn’t want you to think the C was for Casey.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Because then you would have wondered who the G stood for.”

  “Hmmm,” Amelia murmured. She lowered her eyes.

  Casey’s shirt was lime green with the words DIVORCE SUCKS written across it in black blocky capital letters. When Amelia noticed it, she said, “I bet your mom loves that one.” She nodded at the shirt.

  “When she saw it, she said, ‘I hate that word.’ And so I said, ‘Oh, good, I’m glad we agree on that. I hate the word divorce, too.’ Then she gave me one of those looks only a mother knows how to give. You know.” Casey paused. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them as if to clear away his last comment. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Casey opened his mouth to speak again, and Amelia sensed that he was on the verge of saying something about Epiphany when there was the sudden noise of Louise banging up the stairs.

  Louise entered the workroom. “Oh, good, you’re here,” she said to Amelia. “I just opened the kiln. Your rabbits are too hot to glaze, but they look great.”

  Amelia smiled.

  “Make more,” said Louise.

  “I will.”

  Amelia got some clay and started right away. At first she watched Casey out of the corner of her eye. He poked and scraped and stared at his heart; he sprayed it with water from time to time to keep it moist. But soon she became more and more aware of the rabbits she was forming and less aware of anything else. When it was time to leave she had four new rabbits ready to be fired.

  “Will you come tomorrow?” Casey asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I promise.”

  Suddenly they seemed shy with each other.

  “We can do lunch,” Casey said. “Make up names and stories for people again. Look for Epiphany.”

  Amelia smiled what she knew was a forced, grimace-like smile. She felt completely out of sorts because of Epiphany, imprisoned by the uncertainty. What’s really happening? she wondered. I just want to be normal, she thought. Right now, everything’s weird.

  “Yes,” she said, and as she squeezed past him to leave she noticed that the initials on the heart had been changed. Now they were C and A.

  20 • Real

  Walking home, Amelia felt lonelier than ever. Which was strange, and she knew it. Strange, because Casey had written C + A inside his heart. She wondered if the A was for Amelia. Normally this would have surprised and excited her. But today, at this moment, she felt cut loose from the world, as if she were separate from herself, watching life happen to a twelve-year-old motherless girl whose mother may or may not have come back from god-knows-where to reclaim her daughter. How could that possibility not cast its shadow—or spread its blinding light—on every single thing?

  Amelia opened her hand and traced C + A on her palm with her finger. Then she made a tight fist as if to make the connection permanent.

  She took the long way, always on the lookout for Epiphany—either on foot, or driving the silver car. As she roamed the streets, weaving through the neighborhood, she thought that when she got home she might write a letter to her friend Natalie. She would tell her everything that was happening—from Casey and the initials carved into the heart to Epiphany and the silver car. It would be a kind of relief to tell. Wouldn’t it?

  Or would Natalie think the letter was a joke, or worse, that she, Amelia, was a complete idiot and never write or speak to her again?

  Maybe she wouldn’t write the letter. She wondered if writing about Epiphany would make her seem more real or less so. Casey is real, she thought. Focus on that.

  She clenched her fist again and continued down the street into the unknown future.

  21 • Tree

  Minutes later, the future presented itself.

  Amelia saw the cantaloupe jacket first, a smear of bright color on the porch in the gathering dusk. She had just crossed the street and was at the corner of her block, three houses away from her own.

  Amelia’s heart skipped a beat. She moved slowly, barely. It was hard to breathe. And then her father came out onto the porch.

  Without thinking, Amelia stepped behind the nearest tree, a big one, watching secretly. She ran her hand along the rough bark, then gripped it. She closed one eye first, then the other. Blinked. Squinted. She hadn’t been imagining things. Epiphany and her father were still there.

  The Professor seemed almost frantic, his arms and elbows raised and jutting. He twisted and turned, looking up and down the block. Epiphany lifted her shoulders and let them fall. Then Amelia’s father leaned into Epiphany as if he were whispering to her. He placed his arm across Epiphany’s back and led her down the porch steps to the silver car. They moved as one unit, covering the distance quickly. Epiphany dashed around the car and got in on the driver’s side. Amelia’s father slipped in on the passenger side. The doors slammed at nearly the same second, and the silver car drove away.

  Amelia stood behind the tree, unmoving, like the tree itself. She let it all sink in for a moment, trying to reconstruct and process what she’d just seen, every gesture. Watching Epiphany and the Professor together added a piece of truth, a whole new layer to the story and made it more plausible. Oddly, the fact that her father hadn’t been wearing a jacket or coat was what struck her, what was so unlike him, what she’d remember most clearly of the scene.

  She rose up on her toes. Something had just happened. Something out of the ordinary. She knew that. The knowing was like an electric charge that shot through her body and made her tremble. And then, with great urgency, she ran up to the house and went inside looking for Mrs. O’Brien.

  22 • The Mystery of the Situation

  “I saw her! I saw her!” said Amelia. “Now I know she’s real. I saw them together.”

  Mrs. O’Brien’s smile was kind, as always, but it was stretched too wide, as if it could hide the obvious truth that she was thinking hard about what to say, how to respond properly. That moment of thinking was long and it contained the stillness of the room (the kitchen) and the suspension of time and the mystery of the situation and the keenness of Amelia’s attention.

  “What do you know?” asked Mrs. O’Brien softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did your father talk to you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Now Mrs. O’Brien’s hands got busy. They seemed to be in flight, weightless, unable to stop moving. They smoothed Amelia’s hair and squeezed her shoulders and brushed aside something from her shirt and touched her cheek. “Poor thing,” she said.

  “What’s happening?” asked Amelia. “I saw them on the porch. I saw them drive off together.” And then she asked the question she’d been circling in her head. “Who was the woman with my dad?”

  The expression on Mrs. O’Brien’s face changed quickly, as though she were running through every possibility in search of the appropriate one. She looked out the window, and when she turned back her face was clouded, unreadable.

  Amelia’s confusion and powerlessness weighed her down, but she fastened her eyes onto Mrs. O’Brien’s and was determined to keep them locked firmly in place until she got a response.

  Mrs. O’Brien looked out the window again, shaping her lips. “I don’t know what to say,” she announced gently and carefully, tossing the statement out into the world like a beach ball lobbed to a toddler.

  Amelia kept her gaze steady.

  Mrs. O’Brien inhaled and exhaled, a sigh big enough to rearrange the furniture. “It’s not my place,” she began, her voice crimped with worry and concern. “This is between you and your father. You and your father and—” She stopped herself and looked away once more.

 
“And?” said Amelia. “And who? My mother?”

  “Your mother?” Now Mrs. O’Brien looked utterly confused, her deeply lined face a portrait of bewilderment.

  There was silence.

  Finally Mrs. O’Brien said, “I might be overstepping. . . .” She licked a finger and rubbed at something on Amelia’s cheek. “Hannah Barnes may be a lovely woman, but she is not your mother.”

  Hannah Barnes? Who, Amelia wondered, is Hannah Barnes?

  Mrs. O’Brien studied Amelia. “Honey,” she said, “I have no idea what is going on in your head; I haven’t the slightest notion what it is you’re thinking. But you must talk to your father as soon as he gets back.” She paused. “And I haven’t a clue where he went.”

  All at once Amelia felt a rush of longing, a deep hollow ache. Fighting tears, she said, as if she were thinking aloud, “So, she’s not my mother.” And she let herself fall into Mrs. O’Brien’s embrace.

  An awareness was dawning that her fantasy was not going to happen no matter how much she wanted it to, and for a brief, piercing moment she understood, in a new way, that the most important things in her father’s world did not always, if ever, include her.

  23 • Sidestepping

  “I don’t understand something,” said Mrs. O’Brien.

  “I don’t understand anything,” said Amelia.

  “Then let’s sit down and figure this out,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “As best we can,” she added. “Seeing as it really should be your father doing this.”

  As soon as they sat at the kitchen table, the phone rang.

  “You get it,” said Amelia. “Please.” She didn’t think she could talk to anyone.

  Mrs. O’Brien rose, grabbed the receiver of the old-fashioned wall phone with the long, twisty cord, said hello, and then slipped into the pantry and closed the door.

  Amelia sensed that it was her father. She could hear Mrs. O’Brien’s muffled voice—rising, rising, then dropping—but she couldn’t understand a single word. When Mrs. O’Brien finally emerged from the pantry, her shoulders were squared and her lips were compressed.

  “It was him, wasn’t it?” asked Amelia.

  “If you mean your father, yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said to eat without him. He said he’d be home later. He said he’d talk to you then.”

  “Is that all?” Amelia asked timidly.

  Apparently Mrs. O’Brien didn’t hear Amelia. Or was she avoiding the question? She looked at Amelia with gentleness and patience. Then she crossed the kitchen to the stove in quick, neat steps. “This sauce is ready,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s make pasta and a salad. We’ll have a nice dinner.”

  “Okay,” said Amelia. It was good to have something to focus on, because thinking about talking to her father later made her slightly dizzy.

  In fact, her thoughts and feelings were dizzy, contrary, running wildly in all directions. She could feel anger at her father rise up inside her, but then she felt pity for him, too. Pity for a man who, when she saw him on the porch in her mind’s eye, seemed old and confused and who was without his jacket.

  But her self-pity grew stronger. Strongest. She hated feeling sorry for herself, but she couldn’t help it. Why do we get the life we’re given? she wondered.

  At Mrs. O’Brien’s request, Amelia stirred the pot of sauce with a wooden spoon. Would she and Mrs. O’Brien figure things out? It seemed that after the phone call Mrs. O’Brien was withdrawing a bit, sidestepping the issues.

  Except for the cooking sounds—stirring, chopping, running water—the kitchen was quiet. From time to time Mrs. O’Brien hummed—little, broken pieces of melody—which Amelia found disheartening, since Mrs. O’Brien always seemed to hum when she was worried about something.

  “Well, now . . . Oh well, then . . .” Amelia said with a casual hollowness, trying to sound mature. Her comment filled the silence for a few seconds, but it did nothing to fill the hollowness inside her.

  24 • White Horse

  The Professor didn’t come home.

  And he didn’t call.

  And he didn’t come home.

  And he didn’t call.

  Dinner was over. The dishes were done. The kitchen was clean.

  For the most part, the dinner conversation had centered on the clay studio. Amelia had told Mrs. O’Brien about Louise’s idea for a show. She shared a little more information about Casey, and she asked Mrs. O’Brien if she was worried about Y2K. (She wasn’t.) But the elephant in the room had remained the elephant in the room. There was no mention of the Professor, no mention of Hannah Barnes. There was no figuring anything out.

  Then a shift occurred. “I’m not waiting any longer,” said Mrs. O’Brien suddenly. She drew in a sharp, ragged breath. Her pitch changed. “When your father called, he told me to tell you whatever I thought you needed to know. He said that he thought I’d be better at telling you about . . . about what was going on than he would.”

  “He did?”

  “He did.” Mrs. O’Brien’s cheeks and forehead were glowing, bright pink. The corners of her mouth turned down, as if she were judging the Professor.

  “So, in a nutshell, your father—” Mrs. O’Brien stopped for a beat. “Your father was interested in a woman in his department at the university. Another English professor. From what I understand, they went out for a while, and then your father wanted to break it off because he was worried about how you might feel about the situation.”

  “How could I feel anything about something I didn’t know anything about?”

  Mrs. O’Brien nodded. “Good question.”

  “Did you meet her? Is she nice?”

  “I did meet her. They came here for lunch one day when you were at school. And, yes, she seems nice. But I can’t say that I know much about her.”

  Mrs. O’Brien continued, “From what I understand . . . she, Hannah Barnes, didn’t—doesn’t—want the relationship to end.”

  Amelia could tell by the hesitation and pauses that Mrs. O’Brien was thinking carefully about each piece of information, each word, and was, most likely, holding back certain things, speaking as vaguely as possible.

  “He broke it off, he says, for your sake. He . . . he thought it would be . . . too much for you to deal with. Or at least he’s trying to. Break it off.”

  For Amelia, the world had stopped. It was strange to think of her father in this new way. He’d never had a girlfriend before. At least not that she knew of. None that she’d met. She fixed her gaze on the painting next to the refrigerator. It was a painting of a white horse standing in tall grass. She stared at the white horse. She stared without seeing.

  Amelia blinked. “Do you think she looks like my mother?” she asked.

  Long pause. The seconds seemed separate, widely spaced, strung out like beads on a cord.

  “Yes. Yes, I think she does.”

  “Do you think she looks like me?”

  Another pause. “Yes. You know, it’s not uncommon for people to . . . find people who look like . . . the person who . . . oh, you know what I mean, honey.”

  Amelia yawned. It was getting late. “Do you think he got in an accident?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he and his girlfriend took off on a trip?”

  Mrs. O’Brien laughed. “Given how much your father loves to travel—no.”

  Mrs. O’Brien rose from the table. She walked over to Amelia and gave her an awkward hug from behind. “I don’t know where he is,” she said. “I don’t know why he hasn’t come home yet.”

  Because he’s a coward, thought Amelia.

  “Why don’t you sleep over at my house tonight?” said Mrs. O’Brien. “It’ll be just like old times, when you were little. I’ll write him a note.”

  There was an understanding between them that was bigger than words. Deeper. Ultimately, Mrs. O’Brien knew what to say and when to say it. She knew what to do and how to get it done.

  Amelia’s throat had
begun to close. She turned toward Mrs. O’Brien. She smiled through tight lips and she nodded.

  25 • Sleepover

  Mrs. O’Brien’s house was familiar and strange at the same time. It was right across the street, and yet it seemed a world away, a house in a foreign land. Amelia had slept over at Mrs. O’Brien’s several times when she was little, but she hadn’t in years. In fact, she hadn’t set foot in the house in quite a while. But the smell when she entered it met her like an invisible curtain and she felt a jolt of recognition.

  Like Mrs. O’Brien, the house smelled clean and soapy—not too perfumy, not too citrusy, not spicy. If clear water had a smell, thought Amelia, this would be it. Amelia drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she followed Mrs. O’Brien down the narrow hallway lined with old photographs to the guest room.

  The room was painted periwinkle blue and was decorated with four framed paintings Amelia had done when she was probably four or five. A cat formed of circles and triangles. A purple and pink rainbow. A sun above a row of flowers that looked like little suns. A butterfly. The big bed that took up most of the room was covered with a patchwork quilt.

  “Here’s an extra blanket,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “Just in case.”

  “Thank you,” said Amelia. She took the blanket and placed it at the foot of the bed. She already had her pajamas on. Dr. Cotton was tucked into her backpack in case she needed him.

  Mrs. O’Brien stood in the open doorway. She leaned back into the room. “I left him a note. Just get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  “Good night,” said Amelia.

  “Good night.” Mrs. O’Brien didn’t leave. Her fingers fluttered up and down the doorframe. “I still don’t understand something,” she said. “Why, earlier, did you say ‘So, she’s not my mother’? How could she be your mother? I feel like I’m missing something.”

  Amelia shrugged. She did not want to explain her fantasy about Epiphany. “It was nothing, really. I was just thinking out loud. Weird. I’m weird.”