Reading Her Heart

by Ashlynn Kenzie

  "Whoa, hold on a minute," Nick said, halting their walk and pulling her around to face him. Andee's face had lost its humor in a heartbeat and she was suddenly pale, standing rigid with shoulders hunched. The transformation from moments before was startling and disturbing. "You've been listening to the story. You know that's not what happened. Where did this notion come from all of a sudden?"

  She shook her head and clamped her lips together.

  "Talk to me, Andee," he said softly. "I'm safe. I never share secrets and I am almost never shocked. I'm not sure what's going on, but I think this is not as much about Hamlet as it is about something a lot more important to you."

  He watched the muscles in her jaw and throat work and knew she was trying hard to hold back some terrible wave of emotion. Taking a chance that she would fight him, he swept her glasses and cap off in one quick motion and pulled her into his chest.

  She pushed against him with knotted fists, but it was a lackluster effort and only lasted a moment before she began to tremble in his arms and utter the odd little choked humming noise he knew meant she was trying to avoid tears.

  He resisted the urge to talk and simply held her.

  "Hamlet knows, and it's making him crazy," she whispered finally. "Just like me. Because we can't prove it. We can't do anything about it."

  Nick forced himself to show as little reaction as possible. His silence drew her on, eventually.

  "And he can't forgive his mother, but he can't stop loving her either, way down deep inside, even when he knows what she did."

  There was another long pause when he could hear nothing but the sound of the waves breaking just beyond them and the call of the sea birds. Then she spoke again, her mouth pressed so close to his chest he could feel it moving through his T-shirt. "I keep trying to hate my dad. But I can't, even though it was all his fault. I want to hate him. To hurt him like he hurt my mom. Hurt her so bad with his girlfriends she just gave up."

  She pulled back suddenly, turning her face up as though she could actually look into his eyes. "Isn't it just as terrible to make someone give up on living as it is to shoot them or stab them or poison them? Tell me! Isn't it just as bad?"

  "Andee, honey, I don't know how to answer that question. I don't understand what you're telling me."

  "I'm telling you my mom had cancer, but the doctors said she was going to make it, and I was taking care of her. The best care. I know she could have gotten well. But one day somebody sent a picture to her cell phone. It was my dad and my mom's best friend. He was hugging Mrs. Harding and she was laughing and reaching up to kiss him. They were on a boat somewhere with palm trees behind them, but he was supposed to be on a business trip to New York and that bi… witch was supposed to be in Chicago at a conference. My mom just gave up after that. She just quit trying to get well. I told my dad when he came home. He said it didn't mean a thing. They were just friends, too, and it was an old picture somebody had found, and then tried to use it to stir up trouble for him. To try to hurt my mom. Well, they succeeded. And my dad and Mrs. Harding succeeded. My mom died two months later. And you want to know the funny part? It really wasn't Mrs. Harding. At least not that time. It was somebody my mom didn't even know, somebody without a picture but with a lot of guilt on her soul, I bet. But it was still his fault. His fault. I could have helped my mom get well if he hadn't hurt her so bad she wanted to die."

  "How old were you, Andee?"

  She sighed. "Sixteen. So I should be over it by now. That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"

  "No. I was thinking how blessed your mom was to have you. And what a terrible, horrible burden you've been carrying all this time."

  She squared her shoulders. "I'm okay. I'm fine, as a matter of fact. Ignore me. I never should have said any of those things."

  "Andee, saying them doesn't make them more true or less true. But, it might release just a bit of the tension you keep knotted up inside you all the time. I can't change anything that's already happened for you. But I can listen, and I will, whenever you need me to."

  "Yeah, thanks, Mr. Benjamin. You're a good guy. Maybe you should have been a shrink instead of a reader. Or maybe a chef or a teacher. You're a man of many talents."

  He recognized her effort to change the subject and seal herself off again. Knowing there was little he could do to make her release more of the hurt at the moment, he slid her glasses back on carefully and perched the cap on her head.

  "Come on. I think you've had enough sun for one day. It's time to go home, little girl."

  *****

  Mr. Benjamin had come and gone. Leila had come and gone. Andee was alone with too many memories and too painful thoughts on a night that promised to last far too long.

  She sat at the kitchen table where she and Leila had dined on peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches with Cheetos and wondered why she had told Nick Benjamin about her parents. It was a secret no one else knew, although she was aware her mother's friends thought Richmond Carlisle had begun to appear in public with dates far too soon to show proper respect.

  Mrs. Harding had certainly had her two cents worth to put in about that. Andee wondered how long her mother's best friend would have waited to be seen about town with him if Sara Carlisle's widower had still been interested in her at the time. Apparently he had not been. She could count at least five honeys who had come and gone in the decade-long interval since her mother's death, and the blonde, who was about fifty pounds overweight now and using a truly awful shade of dye on her graying hair, was not one of them.

  It had been easy enough to ignore the women, once she started to college, just as she ignored her father until she needed something. So far, the plan had seemed to work well. She always managed to have commitments on holidays and school breaks and, while he made protesting noises, she felt certain her father was secretly relieved not to be seeing her. When he dropped by her campus haunts on occasional visits, she kept their time together very public and managed to smile her way through introductions to new girlfriends or conversations with used ones. Daddy always seemed grateful. He always expressed it with a large check. It made the charade almost bearable.

  But being blind made her see things she had avoided looking at before. What she saw was that she had lost two parents by the time her mother died. And while she had mourned her mom deeply over the past ten years, she had not let herself entertain any feeling for her father except anger. Until now. Until she had bumped right up against a whole spongy mass of emotions that were keeping her heart and mind in perpetual motion, bouncing from highs to lows to points in between she didn't even know how to identify.

  Except she was coming to the place where she could no longer deny the fact that, at twenty-six, she desperately missed her father. Not just the flesh and blood one she was so adept at avoiding, but the fantasy one she had never actually had, but had always needed, even before her mother's death. Not the one who pretended she was perfect so he did not have to waste time and energy dealing with her, but the one who would have made things right, because he would have made her right; would have made her a real good girl and not just one who played at it so successfully but always felt like such a fake.

  She knew now she had been looking for that for a very long time, but she had had no idea what she was searching for. It had taken something of overwhelming intensity in her life to show her what she needed. Even now she was reluctant to admit it, even to herself, because it seemed perverted somehow. Still, she could not deny that her blindness had somehow reduced her to the role of a helpless child—a child angry at her immediate situation and finding it difficult to keep a lid on the carefully stored away rage from years gone by, as well. A child who needed something Daddy's money could not buy.

  It was as though the journey of dependency was stripping away the hard shell she had built up around her deepest emotions, bit by bit. She just wasn't sure how to handle the needs that were suddenly becoming so overwhelming to her. For someone who had been forced to assume an
adult role too early on by her mother's illness and her father's infidelity, it was hard to admit she was incredibly weary of the role and wanted to be something else altogether.

  Perhaps, she thought, with a clarity she had never experienced before, that was the main reason she had dragged on her college experience for so long. It wasn't simply a way to punish Daddy by draining his bank account, it was a way to keep from facing any more of the adult world. Except time had run out on that little venture. And she still wasn't ready to be the grown up she had pretended so hard to be when her mother needed her and her father abdicated his own role.

  She sighed and pushed out of the chair, then reached back and picked up the recorder she had come to depend on to soothe her into sleep. Ten minutes later, with her clothing neatly disposed of and her oversized T-shirt skimming her thighs, she stretched out on the futon and pushed the button that would wrap her in the deep warmth of Mr. Benjamin's voice. It was, she thought, better than any soft blanky or cup of hot chocolate could possibly be in soothing her spirits and convincing her the world might not be a completely dreadful place.

  And maybe tomorrow, she thought, he would—

  She came upright on the futon with a small moan of despair. Tomorrow was Saturday. What if he didn't work weekends? What if he didn't come back until Monday? What if—

  She fumbled for her phone and then realized she had no idea how to contact him.

  The angry child in her took over instantly and she hurled the phone across the room, shouting a word she knew he would never have approved of and wishing, perversely, that he had been there to hear it.

  It had just registered with her that there had been no clash or clink, so the phone must have landed on something that was soft or cushioned. She was wearily debating the most efficient method of finding it again when she heard the opening notes of "Katmandu" and was suddenly able to track it down effortlessly.

  She tapped it on, expecting to hear Leila's voice, and was so surprised when she realized it was Nick Benjamin who spoke to her from both the phone and the recorder that she almost dropped the device.

  "Oh, wait, sorry," she shouted while she fumbled it back to her ear. "Hi, Mr. Benjamin. It's me. I mean… well, of course it is. I just wasn't expecting you to call."

  She heard him laugh. "Hello, Andee. I hope I didn't wake you. I'm tired after our great adventure, so I'm sure you are, too, but I realized that we sort of left tomorrow up in the air. We never talked about weekends, you know, so I wasn't sure if you were expecting me or not."

  "I was. Yes, I definitely was. But I wasn't sure you worked weekends, so I didn't know for absolutely positive. I was just thinking we really ought to, you know, since there's so much to learn and since I don't have anything else to do. I mean, it just makes sense, if you want to, of course, and you don't have anything else to do, or anyone else to see. You probably do, I bet, so don't feel bad if you can't come, but if you can, I really think—"

  This time his laughter was even warmer. "Yes, I think so, too, so why don't I come by right after lunch? Say, around 12:30. That way you can sleep in for a change."

  "Right. That would be great. Because I really need to dig in, you know. And I think I'll have some more questions about the play Hamlet put on and all. So, I'll see you then. And what about Sunday? Will you come then, too?" She waited with crossed fingers, holding her breath, as well.

  "Let's see how much progress we make tomorrow. Maybe you can enjoy a holiday Sunday."

  "Oh, but—" then she went quiet, realizing the future lay in her own hands, apparently, and entertaining a simple little plan for filling her weekend the way she wanted it filled.

  "Andee? Are you there?"

  "Yes, I am. Just thinking about things I might need to do Sunday. You're right. We should just wait and see how much progress we make tomorrow. I'll be expecting you at 12:30, then. Bye."

  She danced back to the futon, flopped down and, picking up the recorder, hugged it to her chest.

  Forget about Daddy, she thought. Mr. Benjamin's coming.

  Chapter Seven

  He had dealt with mercurial girls before, but it had been a while. And, he had to keep reminding himself, Andee Carlisle wasn't so much girl as woman, at least chronologically. Maybe it was her diminutive size, he thought, that kept him thinking of her as still a child. That, plus the fact that he couldn't see her eyes. He suspected the expression there might destroy the girlish illusion and fix her firmly in the world of adults—a woman who had already seen way too much grief and who was living with some major uncertainties in her own future.

  He fell asleep wondering what color those eyes were, and betting on green.

  Even without an alarm, he was wide-eyed at 5:45, his usual time.

  He grabbed an apple and headed outdoors, just in time to catch the world coming awake and indulging in stretching noises that sounded like dog barks and muffler grunts, accented by an occasional slamming door and the distant roar of monster trucks on the interstate.

  His hour-long walk carried him through a residential neighborhood in the process of change, with young families taking over homes vacated by those who had moved on to places with names like "Garden of Gethsemane". His own bungalow, at fifty years and aging, was one of the newer additions to the area. Still, she was due a face lift and he thought he might tackle the paint job himself in the fall.

  The last time the house had been spruced up, Lori had chosen the color. Then, she had chosen the painter, as well, although Nick reminded himself he hadn't realized it until the job was over. That was twelve—no, closer to fifteen—years ago now. He wondered where she was these days. But not for very long and not, he noted with relief, with any residual pain.

  With his exercise and breakfast over, he showered, dressed and added nine pages of solid, fan-pleasing, grammatically correct narrative to his latest book. With any luck, by the end of the next week, he should be finished with the tale and ready to deal with his agent. He was, he realized, a little weary of Emily's story. She had only actually earned one good spanking, although he had insisted Carson give her more, just to remind her who was in charge and to please his fans. He was ready to get her panties back in place permanently, put away the leather paddle with which she entertained a special love-hate relationship, and send her off to good girl land with her bottom a little firmer and larger than it used to be.

  Then he could begin the next story line that was always in the back of his brain, and now kept popping out in his dreams, it seemed.

  He finished a quick stir-fry for lunch, gathered his materials and headed for Miss Carlisle's apartment. He hoped to accomplish quite a bit on this Saturday afternoon so he could devote Sunday to a swim at the beach and a few household chores he would normally have stretched over the whole weekend.

  Nick couldn't recall the last time he had agreed to work as a reader on a Saturday. But they were at an exciting part of the story and he didn't want Andee to lose interest. Her exam was set for a week from Monday, and there was still so much he needed to cover to get her ready for the test.

  Plus, he admitted to himself, he was enjoying the job very much. Reading Hamlet was far more pleasant than vocally scanning a technical paper related to microdermabrasion or the effects of fracking on local water supplies for a client.

  Andee seemed chipper when she came to the door, welcoming him in gaily and heading for their work space. He settled himself and opened his own college textbook, from which he was reading, along with a copy of the notes from Leila's old boyfriend. Nick added his own jottings gleaned from the tape her professor had provided of his last class session. The latter two he tried to review and summarize for Andee as they went, having discovered the first day that her professor was given to straying from the topic and sometimes accomplishing little. He saw no point in making her wade through the teacher's political opinions or comments on his own studies abroad or discourse on the nation's economy. A discourse Nick thought quite naïve and patently absurd, to begin with.

/>   "Now," he said. "Questions from yesterday's lesson?"

  "No, I don't guess so," she said with a sigh.

  "Really? Are you sure? Because, before we move on, there were some esoteric comments in that section."

  "Eso-what?"

  "Esoteric. It means deep or profound. Or obscure. You weren't troubled by anything like that in the material we covered?"

  "No. At least I don't think so. I probably got it."

  "Probably? Perhaps my plan to study while we took a little break on the beach was not my best decision." His voice revealed a slight consternation, he knew, and he tried to bite back his concern.

  She ducked her head and picked at the fringe on her cut-off jeans, as though she could see what she was doing.

  "I was really tired last night, but I'm sure it'll be okay. Go ahead. I'm listening."

  "You did review the material, didn't you?" When he realized he had leaned toward her, as though willing his student to supply the appropriate answer, he forced himself to relax.

  "Oh, yeah. Sure. Just like always. You know I always prepare."

  He studied her masked face for a moment, wishing he could see her eyes.

  "Why am I not entirely confident I'm getting the whole story?" he asked quietly.

  She shrugged and turned a sunny smile in his direction. "Can't imagine. Can we get on with this? I have a hot date tonight."

  "Hmmm. Now that's interesting, especially for a young lady who hasn't wanted any of her friends to see her until the patches come off."

  "Well, you helped me adjust some. So I'm having pizza with my boyfriend and watching a—I mean listening—to a movie tonight."

  "Your boyfriend Tom?"

  She nodded.

  He watched her through half closed eyes until she began to fidget in the quiet. "I mean Rob," she said suddenly. "His name is Robert Thomas, so some people call him Rob and some people call him Tom. I just sort of switch. Back. And forth."