Heart with Joy

by Steve Cushman

We ate our pizza in silence, atop the gentle sway of her swing.

  She didn’t lean her head on my shoulders again, but we were close enough.

  40

  I was nervous the next time Dad and I went grocery shopping. I could no longer pretend Tia was just some cashier at the grocery store. I’d been in her house, had cooked beside her three times and swung on her porch swing, our legs resting against one another.

  “How about this one,” Dad said, as he tossed a bag of pretzel rods into the cart. “Life without you is like an empty bag of pretzels.”

  “I like it,” I said. Pretzels were a staple of my father’s diet, so I was sure my mother would get the meaning of that one.

  Tia smiled when she saw us walking toward her. She was wearing lipstick. I couldn’t remember her ever wearing lipstick before. I would have liked to be on that swing of hers again, rocking gently. “Hey,” she said.

  “You doing okay?” I asked.

  “Sort of slow for a Saturday. Do you want to come over tomorrow?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “You don’t have to bring anything, and eat before you come. I want to surprise you.”

  “Are you going to make some sort of fancy dessert?”

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  As we pulled into our driveway, Simon was carrying boxes out to the dumpster and tossing them in. A couple men, different from the workers I’d seen all week, were in Mrs. Peters’ backyard, taking down her fence. They stacked the fence sections against the side of her house but left the posts in the ground. They had also ripped out her brick path and replaced it with sod.

  “Looks like we’re getting a new fence,” Dad said.

  “Great,” I said, in the most sarcastic tone I could muster.

  After we’d unloaded all the groceries, Dad asked if I was ready to go for our run.

  “The house might be gone before we get back,” I said.

  He laughed. “You’d better take a picture now.”

  “Do you think it will take a while to sell it?”

  “Hard to say. Sometimes houses sell in days and other times it take years. But something tells me that Simon is going to fix it up pretty nice and sell it cheap. I’m sure it’s paid for, so anything he sells it for would be a profit for him.”

  We started down the street. I told myself to stop thinking about what was going on at Mrs. Peters’ house, to stay beside my father here and watch the road for traffic. While I was able to stop thinking about the disappearance of Mrs. Peters’ house, I couldn’t help but think about Tia Brogan. She wore lipstick for me. I wanted to stand next to her again, cooking.

  I thought about what Tia said about her mom’s job offer: how she wasn’t kidding. I’d like to work with her, over the summer. That way I would get to spend time with Tia and experience cooking with her mother, a professional chef. But I was getting ahead of myself. I was due to head to my mother’s in a couple weeks.

  I ran into the curb and the next thing you know I was flying over the steering wheel, landing in the grass. Dad stood over me, breathing heavy. “You okay?”

  I started laughing. “I’m fine.”

  “You sure? Don’t move.” His voice was calm enough but direct and I figured this was probably how he talked to his patients. He was feeling my head for any blood or bumps.

  “Dad, I’m fine. Really.”

  “People die in bike wrecks.”

  “Dad, people die going to the bathroom.”

  And then we were both sitting in the grass, laughing. “I’ve got one,” I said. “Life without you is like a bike with a flat tire.”

  He nodded. “How about this? Without you every curb is risky to me.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that listening to his poetry was painful. “How far are we from the house?” I asked.

  “Only about three miles.” We’d planned on seven miles today.

  I picked the bike up. The front tire was practically bent in half.

  “Leave it. We’ll jog home, drive back here and get it,” he said.

  I’d never actually run with my father before. While he was no great athlete, he had become a confident and competent runner, and I doubted I could keep up with him.

  “You’ll be able to keep up,” he said.

  I wanted to hug my father right then. Not because he knew what I was thinking but because he was smart enough to say it in a way that made me feel like he wanted to run with me.

  He set the bike under a set of shrubs. It was so badly damaged I doubted anyone would take it. Three miles sounded like a marathon to me. But Dad did as promised. He let me set the pace and never made me feel rushed. Of course, jogging was much harder than riding the bike. On the bike you could count on hills and forward momentum, but running was all legs and feet and heart battling the pavement.

  By the time we reached our street, I was covered in sweat. Mrs. Peters’ car was being loaded on a truck. Simon, who was speaking to the man from the towing company, turned to us and shook his head, as if to say look at those two, sweaty fools.

  “Let’s go get your bike,” Dad said. “We’ll swing by the store and get a new tire while we’re out.”

  “Can we buy that birdbath we saw at Lowe’s?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  That night, as I waited for Mom to call, I looked out the front window and saw Simon carry a box to the dumpster and toss it in. Something black and rectangular fell out and landed in the grass. Simon either didn’t notice or didn’t care because he walked over and locked the front door, then left.

  I walked outside and headed toward the dumpster. As I got closer, I realized it was a VCR tape. When I picked it up, I saw it wasn’t labeled. My first thought was that it might be a video of her wedding, but she was married forty plus years ago. Maybe it was Simon’s college graduation. Maybe it was an episode of Golden Girls.

  Whatever it was, I felt compelled to watch it, so I picked it up, along with a handful of those multi-colored stones in her driveway, and headed home.

  Climbing my front porch steps, I heard the telephone start to ring. Dad yelled out my name but after it rang two more times he answered. I could see him through the window say something to Mom and laugh. I wondered how many of those silly postcard poems she’d received. I knew if I walked in there he would give me the phone. And while I wanted to talk to my mother, it seemed more important that the two of them spoke.

  I headed around back to the porch and dropped the stones into that pot with the hyacinth and splintered bird egg. After Dad hung up, I walked in the back door.

  “You missed your Mom’s call.”

  “Oops,” I said.

  “Oops, my foot,” he said and winked at me.

  An hour later, after I was sure he was asleep, I slid the tape into the VCR. I heard the music first. It was The Price is Right. There was no date on it, but this was obviously an old episode. From the clothes, I’d say at least twenty or thirty years, maybe the seventies or early eighties. Bob Barker looked young.

  I realized then this was a tape of her appearance on The Price is Right. I lay back on the couch and watched. Fifteen minutes passed and thirty and then Bob Barker said, “Evelyn Peters, come on down, you are the next contestant on The Price is Right.”

  Mrs. Peters ran down the aisle with her arms in the air. Her hair was long and blonde. She wore a yellow T-shirt with a picture of a hummingbird on the front.

  “Welcome to the show, Evelyn Peters. Says here you are a teacher.”

  “Third grade at Lindley Elementary in Greensboro, North Carolina.”

  “Welcome to the show. Let’s play.”

  I smiled. It was good to see her, even if it was a version of Mrs. Peters I hadn’t known. She was on the show for twenty minutes and while she never was the closest bidder and got to walk up on the stage and stand next to Bob, she smiled the whole time she was there.

  And then the episode was over and the tape rolled black and gray. I let it continue to run th
at way for another ten or fifteen minutes, hoping, thinking maybe something else would be there. But that was all. I closed my eyes and leaned against the couch. The room was dark. I wondered what my mother was doing and wished I’d talked to her earlier when I had the chance. I hit play and watched the episode two more times, surprised each time to see this young version of Mrs. Peters.

  41

  I woke the next morning to the sounds of hammering. I walked out onto the back porch. A couple men were installing Mrs. Peters’ new fence. Dad was standing by the door of the shed, looking around. I wondered if he noticed what I’d thrown away, how half the shed was empty now, if he was able to imagine a potter’s wheel in there.

  A dozen birds—sparrows and grackles and mourning doves—were at the feeders and new birdbath in our backyard. Dad pulled the lawnmower out of the shed. He turned and looked up at me, waved. “Did you clean this out?”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything.

  He walked up the stairs and sat across from me. “I appreciate you cleaning out the shed, Julian, but why?”

  “I thought if I cleaned it out and you had a place to work then you could set up a potter’s wheel.”

  “I already told you I wasn’t interested in that anymore. That was a lifetime ago.”

  “It meant a lot to you and you gave it up for me.”

  “Julian, we all make sacrifices in life. It wasn’t just you. I did it so we could eat and live a decent life. And eventually, I discovered I didn’t hate being a nurse.”

  “But Mrs. Peters said everyone has something that fills their heart with joy, so I wanted you to have the opportunity to work on your pottery.” I stopped for a second but knew I would never have a better chance to confess. “And Dad, I destroyed your pot. That white one.”

  He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, just stared over my shoulder. “I wondered when you were going to tell me.”

  “You knew?”

  “Of course. I knew the day it happened.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I thought you had enough problems with your mother leaving.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “It’s just a damn pot, Julian. There’s a million of them in the world.”

  “But that was your last one,” I said.

  “Who cares?” For the first time since Mom left, I saw my father’s eyes water. “It’s nothing compared to coming home one day and discovering your wife has left you and now you’ve got to take care of the son you don’t even know anymore.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “It was nice of you to clean this out for me,” he said, nodding toward the shed.

  “At least you have the space if you want it.”

  He stood up, walked over, and hugged me. I felt like a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders. “You want to help me mow the yard?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Weedwhacker or mower?”

  “Mower,” I said.

  “Good,” he said and that was the last time either of us mentioned that white pot.

  By the time we left for Tia’s at 6:30, they had finished Mrs. Peters’ fence and a truck had come and removed the dumpster.

  Tia answered the door in a yellow sun dress. Her dark hair across her shoulders. She looked good.

  “So what’s the big surprise?” I asked.

  “I thought we’d make a big pot of popcorn, smother it in butter and watch a movie.”

  “What’s that got to do with cooking?” I asked, joking.

  “Don’t be dense, Buster,” she said.

  And while I know I should have said something back to that, for a few moments, I seemed to have lost the ability to speak.

  “Don’t get all weird on me now,” she said, punching my right arm.

  “Don’t you get weird on me,” I said. “Let’s see how you make popcorn.”

  I had only made microwave popcorn but had seen Rachael Ray make it in a big ceramic pot. I was curious to see if Tia made it the same way. She did. Basically, she just put a little vegetable oil in the bottom of the pot, heated it up and then tossed in the kernels of corn and set the cover back on top. In a couple minutes, they started popping.

  As we sat down on the couch, with a big bowl of popcorn between us, I thought about how she’d set this night up as a sort of date. But I’d be in Florida soon with my mother. I told myself to stop thinking about this, to enjoy this girl beside me, our hands bumping against each other in the bowl, her head on my shoulder. I don’t have a clue what movie we saw or what it was about. While we did nothing more than hold hands, being alone with Tia seemed like more than enough.

  42

  A week later, Dad drove me over to Tia’s at three o’clock in the afternoon. The plan was that Tia and I would make dinner for our parents. She’d suggested it on Thursday night as we made lasagna together, and it sounded like a good idea to me. That night, we hadn’t sat out on her swing or held hands and she hadn’t leaned her head on my shoulder but we had cooked together, side by side, and I’d enjoyed just being with her.

  Over the last week, Simon had completed the transformation of his mother’s house into something that looked new. When I got home from school on Monday, Mrs. Peters’ stone driveway was gone, paved over with black asphalt. On Tuesday, four men started painting the house and finished on Friday afternoon. And just yesterday, when Dad and I made it back from our run, Simon was pushing the House for Sale by Owner sign into the ground, a smile on his face.

  “Do I need to bring anything?” Dad asked as we pulled into her driveway.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “See you at six o’clock.”

  It was sort of strange to be going to Tia’s in the afternoon like this. Every time we’d cooked together was in the evening. As I looked around the neighborhood, I spotted a couple kids, running down the street, throwing a football back and forth.

  “About time,” Tia said, when she opened the door.

  “Am I late?”

  “You’re always late. Let’s go for a walk.”

  Although we only lived about five miles apart, the houses in her neighborhood were bigger than mine. The lawns were also larger and greener, the trees older and taller.

  “So what we’ll make is chicken and shrimp with pasta, a Caesar salad too.”

  She’d told me all of this before, but I let her tell me again. A pair of robins ran along the sidewalk in front of us. A woodpecker thumped away at a tree. I found him easily, a little downy, in one of the oak trees in front of us. Under my breath, I said their names: robin, woodpecker, wren.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  I told her about Mrs. Peters and the birds and how she would name them as she walked down the sidewalk with a pocketful of birdseed.

  “I wish I could have met her,” Tia said.

  “Me too.”

  “Let’s sit here.”

  We stopped at a bench, facing a slow-flowing creek.

  “Dad used to take me here,” she said.

  “It’s nice.” I could hear cardinals, mockingbirds, a blue jay and some doves.

  “We would just sit out here, the two of us. He told me that this park bench was the reason he bought the house. He said when he and Mom were driving around looking for a house, and she was pregnant with me, he spotted this bench and imagined sitting here, reading me stories.”

  I remembered cooking with my mother, how most of the time we wouldn’t talk as we worked, just moved around each other and eventually she would bump into me on purpose and laugh. I wondered if all kids had those types of memories of their parents.

  “Well,” she said, standing. “This isn’t getting any dinner made.”

  When we got back to the house, I mixed up a marinade of olive oil, chopped parsley and garlic salt. Then I peeled and de-veined the shrimp, sat them in the marinade. They’d only take about five, six minutes to cook. As Tia made up her own batch of marinade for the chicken, I went ahead
and cut the romaine lettuce and set it in a large bowl and placed it in the fridge.

  She cut up an old loaf of bread into small squares and put them in the oven to make croutons. I turned to her at one point when I knew her father was about to start singing, to see if she reacted somehow to his voice. She didn’t, but kept her head down, working on what was in front of her.

  Her mother walked in and kissed Tia. She looked tired and I could see green and red food stains on the front of her shirt. She smelled like onions. “What are you two cooking up?”

  “Pasta with grilled chicken and shrimp,” Tia said in her best bored-waitress-reading-the-day’s-special voice. “Remember Julian’s dad is coming over.”

  Mrs. Brogan smiled, but it was obvious she’d forgotten. “I’d better go clean up then,” she said as she walked by me.

  Tia shook her head. “She works so much she walks around in a fog sometime.”

  My father showed up on time with a bottle of red wine. He was dressed nice enough: khaki pants and a red and white checkered, button-up shirt. In these clothes, it was easy to tell he’d lost some weight since he’d started running.

  Tia’s mother came downstairs when she heard the door bell, wearing linen pants and a lime green blouse. She looked like a completely different person than I’d seen a half hour earlier. She stuck her hand out to shake and I introduced them: “Jim, this is Maria. Maria, Jim.”

  I left them in the living room. Tia was serving up the Caesar salad in large white bowls and grating Parmesan cheese on top. “Take the chicken and shrimp off the heat.” She liked being in charge, which didn’t bother me.

  When we walked out into the dining room with the salads, Dad and Mrs. Brogan were sitting at the table, sipping wine and looking through an old photo album. Tia turned to me and raised her eyebrows. I shrugged.

  Mrs. Brogan said, “I was showing Jim some of your baby pictures.”

  “Oh God,” Tia said. “Not that.”

  “Let me see,” I said.

  Tia ran to her mother, took the photo album from her and tossed it in a drawer.

  As we started on our salads, Mrs. Brogan turned to me and said,