Only Love Can Break Your Heart

by Ed Tarkington

  Each day I tried to find something to say to her—some clever quip or non sequitur—or at least to exchange eye rolls as we simultaneously suffered through the indignities of Introduction to Theater Arts with Mr. LaPage.

  I wasn’t friendless, mind you. Old acquaintances were renewed and new ones made. Regardless of why it had happened, my having been kicked out of Macon gave me a modicum of what passed for street cred in a small-town public high school. By the end of the first week, I didn’t have to sit alone at lunch. Still, I always made a habit of drifting out to the old dead tree where Cinnamon lurked—sometimes with a gaggle of girls or Marcus Vaughan, the curly-haired boy with the cable-knit sweater from drama class, but more often alone.

  After a few weeks, I worked up the courage to make the ultimate adolescent male overture: a mix tape, assembled from my burgeoning collection of cassettes, using a dubbing deck I’d acquired to record vinyl records. I plotted the tape out judiciously, blending a variety of familiar hits with offbeat tracks usually hidden on the bottom half of a B side. There were girl-friendly rockers and melancholy acoustic ballads and obscure gems from lesser known acts like Big Star and Badfinger. I debated giving the mix tape a title—“Cinnamon Songs” or “Songs for a Cinnamon Girl.” In the end I concluded that Paul would just act like he happened to be carrying it around. I wrapped it all up with my old friend Neil—not the obvious “Cinnamon Girl” but instead, from After the Gold Rush, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart.”

  Heading out to the bus after seventh period, I saw Cinnamon smoking on the loading dock outside the theater, waiting for her ride.

  “Hey, Macon,” she said as I approached her.

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” I said.

  “Sorry,” she answered. “I guess you need another nickname, now that you’re working class and all.”

  “My brother and his friends used to call me Rocky,” I said.

  “Rocky?” she asked. “Is that a joke?”

  “They thought I looked like a little Stallone,” I said.

  “Not really seeing it,” she said. “But whatever. Rocky it is.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “How’d you get yours?”

  “Mine? Oh, that’s my real name.”

  “On your birth certificate?”

  “I don’t have one,” she said. “I wasn’t born in a hospital, and my parents never bothered. I do have a Social Security card though. So yeah, on my Social Security card, that’s my name—Cinnamon Saffron Soma Kintz.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  By then the buses were pulling away.

  “Look,” Cinnamon said. “You’re missing your bus.”

  “I’ve got a ride,” I lied.

  She lit another cigarette. I pulled the cassette out of my pocket.

  “Hey,” I said. “Maybe you could listen to this while you’re drawing your pictures.”

  She held the tape and examined the track list, which I had written neatly on the case insert.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “No problem,” I replied. “I have another copy at home.”

  “You make more than one copy of a mix tape?”

  Was it stupid to make more than one copy of a mix tape? I wondered.

  “I mean, I have another copy of all the songs,” I said.

  “Right,” she said. “Well, I’ll give it a try.”

  We sat on the loading dock, waiting. I was too content in her company to be especially worried about how I was going to get home.

  A white Toyota Celica pulled up in front of us, driven by another tall, rangy, long-haired man-boy I didn’t recognize. Cinnamon hopped down and ambled toward the car at the curb.

  “Thanks again for the tape,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” I replied.

  When I was sure they were gone, I walked out to the street to wait for the city bus.

  15

  WHEN I GOT HOME, Miss Anita’s blue Buick was parked in our driveway. The door to the living room was shut. From the other side came the sound of fervent prayer.

  Walking back to the Royal Chamber, I heard another familiar voice. On the couch in front of the Old Man’s armchair sat Leigh Bowman, a book open on her lap. William sat backward on a side chair, balancing his chin over his arms, observing.

  “Where you been at?” he asked.

  “I missed the bus,” I said. “Thanks for noticing.”

  “You look cold,” Leigh said.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “I called the house. No one answered.”

  “Must have been outside,” William said. “Your moms and Miss Anita be doing they thing.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What are y’all up to?”

  “I’m reading to your father,” Leigh said.

  “You never read to me,” the Old Man said. “You never read shit. You just sit up there listening to that garbage.”

  “Come now, Mr. Askew,” Leigh said soothingly. “Let’s get back to the story.”

  The tension in the Old Man’s face relaxed. He crossed his hands in his lap and waited for her to continue.

  “Have a seat, Rocky,” she said.

  “What are we reading?” I asked.

  “It’s called This Present Darkness,” Leigh said.

  She held up the cover so I could see it: a painting of a ghostly pair of claws descending from the sky upon a tranquil town surrounded by soft, rolling green hills.

  “What’s it about?” I asked.

  “Spiritual warfare,” Leigh said matter-of-factly.

  “It’s good, man,” said William. “Angels and demons and shit.”

  I took a seat on the couch next to Leigh as she resumed her reading. William was right: it was good—a genuine page-turner. Gleaming blond angels with swollen chests and biceps do battle with scaly, horned, and leather-winged demons in the spirit world, while the devout mortal Christians of Ashton work to expose a so-called New Age organization that, unbeknownst to the townspeople, is actually an underground satanic cult making ready for the rise of the Antichrist.

  Within minutes, the Old Man was asleep in his familiar posture: head thrown back, mouth agape. Leigh continued reading, however. William and I sat rapt. She might have gone on like that for an hour or more had she not been interrupted by the Old Man’s snoring. Leigh smiled queerly and closed the book.

  We tiptoed from the room, slipped on our coats, and stepped out the side door. William offered Leigh a Kool. The two of them puffed away while I collected the basketball from beneath the boxwoods.

  “That’s some book,” William said.

  “You can keep it if you like,” Leigh said. “I have another copy.”

  “I like listening to you read it,” William said.

  I stood under the goal to collect rebounds as William shot baskets, cigarette perched in the corner of his mouth. Leigh stood off to the side, casting occasional glances back at the house as if afraid of being seen with a cigarette in her hand. Once, I thought I caught her eyes drift across the bleached winter grass up the hill toward Twin Oaks. But she might just as well have been staring at nothing.

  “So is this what you’re doing now?” I asked her.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Reading,” I said. “Is that what you’re doing these days?”

  “Oh. Yes,” she said.

  William dropped back to three-point range. The ball clanged off the rim. I took two quick steps, snagged it on the first bounce, and tossed it back out to him.

  “I tried working at the preschool for a while,” Leigh said.

  “You were always great with kids,” I offered.

  “I liked it,” she said. “But some of the parents were uncomfortable.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Oh, Rocky,” Leigh said with a dry chuckle. “I know what people think of me.”

  Her words were blunt and unaffected, without any hint of anger or bitterness. She seemed completely at ease with herself—or perhaps, too heavily medicated to be self-c
onscious. William continued with his jump shots, as if he knew the whole story already or simply didn’t care.

  “Daddy didn’t like me working there anyway,” she said. “He didn’t think it was healthy for me to be at the church every day.”

  William launched again from three-point range. The shot swished through the net and fell into my waiting hands. I passed the ball back to him. We were in a flow.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Oh, he says he’s worried I’ll walk by the sanctuary and have some sort of relapse,” she said. “That’s why we don’t go to Sunday services there anymore—or so he says. I think he’s just too proud to walk in there and be stared at along with me.”

  I silently agreed with her.

  “I tried to explain to him that I have so many good memories of Holy Comforter to outweigh the one bad time,” she said. “I hardly remember it anyway.”

  “I remember it,” I said.

  “I’m sure you do,” she said. “Your father remembers it, in great detail. Doesn’t he, William?”

  “Uh-huh,” William said.

  “Anyway,” Leigh continued, “I understand why the parents weren’t happy about my being around the children. But I still wanted to do something to contribute to the church community. So Miss Anita suggested that I spend time visiting with people like your father.”

  “That’s a kind thing to do,” I said.

  “Old people really appreciate just a little attention,” she said. “They’re all very lonely. Even the ones who get regular visits. They just want to see a new face every once in a while.”

  “I can see that,” I said.

  “It’s very fulfilling,” Leigh answered.

  “Here,” William said, bouncing the ball to Leigh. “Take a shot.”

  Leigh dropped the dying butt of her cigarette to catch the ball.

  She cocked her arms and shifted her feet into a nimble stance. As she took aim, the glazed eyes seemed to narrow into focus. The addled waif was again the young athlete. She held the pose for a moment, her bare, exposed calf tensed as she crouched. Her front leg straightened when she sprang up, her wrists flipping forward powerfully as she flicked the ball toward the goal in a perfect, spinning arc. It caught the edge of the rim, rolling in and out and careening off toward the bushes.

  We went inside and took off our coats. William slipped off to the Royal Chamber to check on the Old Man. I followed Leigh out to the living room. We could hear the muffled voices of my mother and Miss Anita behind the closed door.

  “I should go in and join them,” Leigh said.

  Again, her mouth formed that queer, unnerving smile. My heart welled with longing and remorse. Had she always been like this, and had I just been too callow and young to notice? Was she going to end up this way regardless? Was Paul to blame? Was I?

  “Say,” Leigh asked, “are you in contact with Patricia?”

  “No,” I said. “Not since she left.”

  “I hope you weren’t hurt too badly,” she said.

  That Leigh would even think of whether I had been hurt by what Patricia had done made my chest ache.

  “What about Charles?” I asked.

  “Oh, Charles,” Leigh said wistfully. “He wrote to me while I was away. Since I’ve been home, I get the occasional call, but it’s hard for him with the time zones. Daddy and Mr. Culver aren’t speaking these days.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Mr. Culver accused Daddy of trying to sell Charles a bill of goods.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means I would have ended up costing more than I’m worth,” she said.

  I stared at the floor between us, trying to think of the right thing to say.

  “We haven’t officially broken it off, you know,” she said. “I still have the ring. It doesn’t fit anymore since I lost some weight.”

  She should sell it, I thought, before Charles or his parents asked for it back. But Leigh never needed money. Maybe she could sell it and give the cash to my mother, I thought. That would serve Brad Culver right, the son of a bitch, as the Old Man would say.

  “She’ll be coming back soon, I suppose,” Leigh said. “From Florida.”

  The thought of Patricia gave me a sharp pang that reminded me what it meant to feel like your heart was breaking. Was that what Leigh wanted? I knew that I deserved no less.

  “It was me, you know,” I said. “I told her everything.”

  She took my hand in hers and leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek with her cold, dry lips. I was reminded of Judas and Christ in the garden at Gethsemane—only there, it was the traitor who kissed the martyr, and not the other way around.

  16

  LEIGH BEGAN MAKING her rounds to read in nursing homes and the houses of shut-ins on an old Schwinn five-speed bike with a basket on the front, a bell on the handlebars, and one of those wide granny seats. Anita begged Leigh not to ride around like that, warning her that she’d “catch her death of cold.” But, enthralled by the relative freedom after so many weeks and months of confinement in sterile hospital rooms and somnambulistic “rest” facilities, Leigh insisted. We soon became accustomed to the sight of Leigh merrily riding that old bike down Bonny Lane and all around Boone’s Ferry with a stack of books in her basket, cheeks pink from the frigid cold, the tail of her coat flapping in the wind behind her. Before long she was a fixture—another eccentric institution, like the town drunk.

  Gradually I stopped thinking of Leigh in terms of who she used to be or might have been if she had never told me her story, or if she’d been properly medicated on her wedding day, or if she hadn’t run off with Paul or had never even fallen in love with him to begin with. Her presence ceased to be a rebuke and instead became a source of comfort.

  Something about the shamelessness with which Leigh met the condescending scrutiny of Spencerville made her seem almost heroic. However we may have pitied her, the Old Man and William and I still looked forward to her visits. Thanks to Leigh, we all became experts on popular titles for the evangelical set. At times I even felt myself nearing some sort of spiritual enlightenment—until the end of the day’s reading, when the sight of Leigh tooling off down the driveway on her bicycle reminded me that she was, in fact, insane.

  FEBRUARY CAME, AND with it a half foot of snow and a long night of freezing rain that formed a hard crust almost thick enough to walk on without breaking the surface. The sky stayed gray for days, as if the sun had tired of trying to shine. We lost almost a week of school waiting for the roads to be made safe enough for the buses. I spent the days with the Old Man and William, watching reruns and continuing my education in living with dementia.

  The delusions were not always angry or cruel. Sometimes, William and I became Annie Bet and Paul. In the Old Man’s eyes, we were small and adoring, present and alive. It was all routine for William—part of the job, no different from ignoring the casual racism or eruptions of rage, which sometimes resulted in teacups flung against walls or glancing blows to the head or shoulders of whoever happened to be nearest to him. For me, however, these moments were like séances, where the disappeared and the dead whom I had never known were conjured and almost tangible.

  When the Old Man would draw back into the past, the dementia was almost a gift. I came to know a sallow, shoeless child, raised on scant harvests and poor prospects through the blight of the Depression years. I followed that boy across the Pacific to the killing fields of Bataan and Corregidor and the 39th parallel. I saw him come home and, in a decade’s time, turn a sales job taken on a whim into a thriving business that built him a new house bigger than any he’d ever set foot in as a boy. I saw him leveled by the unfathomable loss of a child, with her Shirley Temple ringlets and a well of hope and courage in the face of certain death. I saw him torn between the joy of a new family and the lingering remorse for the one he’d failed to save, made ever present by an impossible son he could neither control nor abandon. I saw every victory and every fail
ure, all up to the final, crushing blow that had left him bound to the prison of his ruined mind. What I saw—what I sensed but could not yet comprehend—was the arc of a life that was not just the rise and fall of a small, forgettable man, but the story of the American Century: its booms and busts, its catastrophes and regenerations, its fortunes built up from sweat and moxie only to be dashed by bad luck and bad choices, its false hopes and promises broken by the plain fact that we are all mere antic clay, bedeviled by the mystery that animates us.

  But these moments were rare. Mostly there was snoring, and reruns, and hobbling to the toilet, and cigarettes and basketball in the ice-covered snow.

  IT WAS TUESDAY and Leigh was late. The Old Man was asleep.

  William was shooting well that day. Again and again the ball rasped through the stiff, half-frozen webbing of the net. My breath spewed out in sharp bursts of white, almost indistinguishable from William’s cigarette smoke.

  “You don’t think she out on that bike today, do you?”

  “God, I hope not,” I said.

  “I be spinnin’ tires all the way up that hill,” he said. “Even with the chains.”

  “She’d get off and walk, I guess,” I said.

  “Too cold to walk that far.”

  “It’s not that far from her house,” I said. “Maybe a mile.”

  The ball slipped through my fingers and rolled across the snow toward the hedges.

  “Maybe we should go look for her,” I said.

  “Can’t leave your pops.”

  I stood under the basket catching my breath, the sweat running cool down my bundled torso.

  “I’m worried,” I said.

  “She just ain’t coming today, that’s all,” William said.

  William lit another Kool. He stamped his feet and smoked his cigarette with his hands in his pockets.

  “Maybe you ought to read to your daddy for a change,” he said.