Heart of the Matter

by Emily Giffin

  Then, as the California sky showed its first streaks of muted pink, he reached over and took my hand, pulled me onto his lap and kissed me in a way I hadn’t been kissed in years. We said good night a few minutes later, then laughed, and said good morning.

  Within a few weeks, we were an established couple, even having the conversation about no longer wanting to see others. One evening, we were photographed dining together, our picture appearing with a blurb on Page Six with the caption: “Powerful Love Connection: TV Exec Peter Standish with Producer Marian Caldwell.” As the calls rolled in from friends and acquaintances who had seen the press, I pretended to be some combination of annoyed and amused, but I secretly loved it, saving the clipping for our future children. Things would have seemed too good to be true—if I hadn’t always believed I could—and would—find someone like him.

  Maybe they were too good to be true, I think now, squinting up at him as we turn the corner, hand in hand. Maybe we had stalled. Maybe this was as good as it was ever going to get. Maybe I was one of those girls, after all. Girls who wait or settle—or do some combination of both. Disappointment and muted anger well inside me. Anger at him, but more anger at myself for not facing the fact that when a person avoids a topic, it’s generally for a reason.

  “I think I’m going home,” I say after a long stretch of silence, hoping that my statement doesn’t come across as self-pitying or manipulative, the two cards that never work in relationships—especially with someone like Peter.

  “C’mon. Really?” Peter asks, a trace of surrender in his voice where I’d hoped to hear urgency. He was always so controlled, so measured, and although I usually loved the quality, it irritated me now. He abruptly stops, turns, and gazes down at me, taking both of my hands in his.

  “Yeah. I’m really tired,” I lie, pulling my hands free.

  “Marian. Don’t do this,” he meagerly protests.

  “I’m not doing anything, Peter,” I say. “I was just trying to have a conversation with you…”

  “Fine,” he says, exhaling, all but rolling his eyes. “Let’s have a conversation.”

  I swallow my dwindling pride and feeling very small, say, “Okay. Well…can you see yourself getting married again? Or having another child?”

  He sighs, starts to speak, stops, and tries again. “Nothing is missing in my life if that’s what you’re asking. I have Aidan. I have you. I have my work. Life is good. Really good. But I do love you, Marian. I adore you. You know that.”

  I wait for more, thinking how easy it would be for him to appease me with a non-specific promise: I don’t know what I see exactly, but I see you in my life. Or: I want to make you happy. Or even: I wouldn’t rule anything out. Something. Anything.

  Instead, he gives me a helpless look as two cabs materialize, one after the other, a coincidence to which I ascribe all sorts of symbolic meaning. I flag the first and force a tight-lipped smile. “Let’s just talk tomorrow. Okay?” I say, trying to salvage what’s left of my image as a strong, independent woman and wondering if it’s only an image.

  He nods as I accept a staccato kiss on the cheek. Then I slide in the cab and close my door, careful not to slam it, yet equally careful not to make eye contact with him as we pull away from the curb, headed toward my apartment on the Upper East Side.

  Thirty minutes later, I’m changed into my oldest, coziest pair of flannel pajamas, feeling completely sorry for myself, when my apartment intercom buzzes once.

  Peter.

  My heart leaps with shameful, giddy relief as I nearly run to my foyer. I take a deep breath and buzz him up, staring at the door like my namesake Champ waiting for the mailman. I imagine that we will make up, make love, maybe even make plans. I don’t need a ring or a promise of a baby, I will say, as long as I know that he feels the way I do. That he sees us sharing a life together. That he can’t imagine us apart. I tell myself it isn’t settling—it’s the opposite—it’s what you do for love.

  But a few seconds later, I round the corner to find not Peter at my door, but a young girl with angular features, a narrow face and small, pointed chin. She is slight, pale, and almost pretty—at least I think she will be in a few years when she finds her own style and fills out a bit. She is dressed like a typical teenager down to her oversized backpack and peace sign necklace, but has a composed air, something telling me that she is not a follower.

  “Hello,” I say, wondering if she is lost or has the wrong apartment or is peddling something. For some reason, it occurs to me that she could be a runaway, but she looks too smart for that. “Can I help you?”

  She clears her throat, shifts her weight from left to right, and asks in a small yet raspy voice, “Are you Marian Caldwell?”

  “Yes,” I say, waiting.

  She nervously tucks her long, dirty-blonde hair behind her ears, which are a little on the big side or at least at an unfortunate angle to her head, a trait I understand too well, then glances down at her scuffed black boots. When her eyes meet mine again, I notice their distinctive color—bluish-gray and banded by black—and in that instant, I know exactly who she is and why she has come here.

  “Are you?…” I try to finish my sentence, but can’t inhale or exhale, let alone speak.

  Her chin trembles as she nods the smallest of nods. “My name is Kirby Rose,” she says, wiping her palms on her jeans, threadbare at the left knee. “And…”

  I stand frozen, anticipating the words I have imagined and feared, dreaded and dreamt about for the last eighteen years. Then, just as I think my racing heart will explode, I finally hear her say them: I think you’re my mother.

  Two

  July 14, 1995

  It was the hottest day ever recorded in Chicago history, the mercury hitting 106 and the heat index topping out at 120 degrees, a record that still stands today, nearly two decades later. The heat wave was all anyone could talk about, eventually killing seven-hundred-fifty people, making bigger headlines than the Iran Disarmament Crisis, the Bosnian war and the Grateful Dead’s final performance at Soldier Field—at least on B96, my sole source of news at eighteen.

  That blistering morning, as I lounged by our pool in the white string bikini I had ordered from the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, I tuned into the Kevin and JoBo show, listening to their banter about how the heat makes people do crazy things: fall in love, commit crimes, run naked through the streets. They were obviously joking, the way DJs do, but looking back, I actually believe that the temperature was at least partly to blame for what happened later that night at my best friend Janie’s house. That it would have been a different story during any other season or even on an ordinarily hot summer’s day.

  There were other factors, too, of course, such as alcohol, everyone’s favorite culprit, specifically the four strawberry Boone’s Farm coolers I downed on an empty stomach. Throw in the intensity of emotions that come with that bittersweet summer sandwiched between high school graduation and the rest of your life, supreme hometown boredom, and a dash of bad luck—or good, depending on who you ask. And of course, the final ingredient: Conrad Knight himself.

  Conrad wasn’t my type up close and in reality, but he was pretty much everyone’s type from afar and in fantasy, and I certainly wasn’t immune to his seductive blue-gray eyes, just-long-enough dark hair, and cheekbones Janie called “epic” years before the word became overused. He seemed mysterious and a little dangerous, an image some kids tried to cultivate—but only Conrad seemed to achieve naturally or at least did not bother to refute. He had a tattoo on his forearm, rumored to be his mother’s initials and the date of the car crash that killed her, the details of which he would never discuss. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, drove an old black Mustang, and sang in a garage band downtown. A few girls with fake IDs who had gone to see him compared his voice to Eddie Vedder’s, swearing that he’d be famous someday. His father, who was actually a retired actor, having starred in a now-defunct soap opera and a still-running commercial for Tums, returned to LA i
ntermittently for auditions, taking Conrad with him for long stretches of time. Despite his absences from school and spotty academic record, he seemed smart and somehow worldly—or at least profoundly indifferent to the social order of high school, which gave him an aura of sophistication. In short, he was nothing like the affable jocks I had dated throughout high school—nothing like I was, for that matter—but not in a dramatic, cliques-at-war way, just in a way where our paths never really crossed. We occasionally said hello in the halls, but hadn’t really talked since elementary school.

  “Marian Caldwell,” Conrad declared when I ran into him in Janie’s backyard. At least half of our classmates at Glencoe High School had come to the party after word had spread that her parents were out of town. He was expressionless, yet something in his eyes told me that we were about to have a meaningful exchange.

  “Hey Conrad,” I said, self-consciously swaying to the swell of Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You” coming from the boom box in Janie’s upstairs bedroom window.

  He gave me a half smile, and then, as if continuing a long-running conversation, said those words I’d replay for years to come. “You can run, but you can’t hide.”

  As he took a sip from a can of Dr. Pepper, I surveyed the scruff on his face and inhaled the scent of his skin—a mix of cedar, salt and Calvin Klein’s Eternity cologne.

  “Who’s running?” I said. “And what are you doing at a party like this?”

  I still cringe when I think of the question. I might as well have said a party with the popular crowd, of which we both knew I was a sustaining benefactor.

  “Lookin’ for you,” he said, his eyes smoldering as much as light eyes can. I glanced around, assuming he was joking, expecting his fellow bandmates or his girlfriend to be returning from the bathroom. I had never seen her—she went to another school—but Janie had spotted them at the mall together once and said she was a dead ringer for Kate Moss, right down to her hippie Gypsy top, long, floral skirt, and Birkenstocks.

  “Well. Looks like you found me.” I laughed, feeling bolder than usual as I touched his forearm, right on the black ink numbers, like Braille on his skin, determining that he was not only alone, but completely sober, drinking a Dr. Pepper.

  “So how you been?” He glanced at his naked wrist where a watch would have been if he had worn one. “For the past six years?”

  “Six years?” I asked, then reminded him that we had gone to school together since the fourth grade.

  “Last time we talked,” he said, running his hand through his hair, wavier than usual from the humidity that was so thick I felt like we were treading water. “I mean, really talked. We were on the bus coming back from that field trip.”

  “From Shedd,” I said, nodding, remembering the trip to the aquarium in the sixth grade—and especially the bus ride back to school.

  Conrad smiled, and for one second, relinquished his cool posture. He looked twelve again, and I told him so.

  His smile grew wider as he said, “You gave me half of your Twix and told me you wanted to be a marine biologist.”

  I laughed and rolled my eyes, trying to look as cool as he did. “Yeah…I don’t want to be a marine biologist anymore.”

  “I know,” he said. “You’re going to Michigan, then film school, then L.A. or New York where you’re going to do great things and become huge. The next Nora Ephron or…well that’s about the only girl director I know.”

  I gave him a look of surprise that he knew so much about my plans until he divulged his obvious source. “The yearbook. Remember? Plans for the future?” He made quotes in the air around plans, clearly mocking the whole exercise.

  “Right,” I said, thinking that he must also be aware that I had been voted “most likely to succeed”—just as I was aware that he had won “best eyes.”

  “And what are your plans?” I asked, something telling me that he had left the yearbook questionnaire blank, until I remembered his three-word reply: Color me gone.

  I asked him what he meant by this and he told me, “Just get the hell out of here. That’s all.”

  “So nothing…more specific?” I asked, meaning of course, college. Which in my mind, and among my circle of friends, was simply a given.

  “Nope,” he said, draining his Dr. Pepper. He crushed the can with one hand and tossed it into a nearby waste-basket. “Except to kiss you tonight. And probably tomorrow night too. And if you’re not careful…maybe even the one after that.”

  I felt myself shiver, even as perspiration trickled down my back, and decided that I would let him. Or more accurately, I acknowledged to myself that I wouldn’t be able to say no. But I pretended to be in complete control, reaching up to adjust my long, blonde ponytail, the humidity having the reverse effect on my straight, now limp hair. “Now why would you do such a thing?” I asked, my heart pounding as I gave him a coy look.

  “Because I like you.”

  The word was juvenile, but he made it sound otherwise.

  “Since when?” I said, my voice stronger than my knees.

  “Since always. Since day one.” He said it matter-of-factly, as if he were telling me a trivial piece of information like the time of day or the temperature—which was likely still in triple digits, nightfall providing no relief from the stifling heat. He then rattled off a catalogue of memories, dispelling any lingering doubt about his sincerity, if not his motives: the location of my locker over the last four years; the scar on my left knee that he had studied whenever I wore skirts to school; the purple dress I wore to the Homecoming dance, silk pumps dyed to match.

  “I don’t remember you ever going to a dance,” I said, breathless.

  “I didn’t,” he said, holding my gaze. “I saw the snapshot in what’s his name’s locker.”

  I stare back at him, remembering how I had taped it in my boyfriend’s locker, right over an annoying photo of Rebecca Romijn and Angie Everhart lounging on the beach in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. “Todd,” I said.

  “Yeah. Him,” he said, rolling in eyes.

  “We broke up,” I said.

  “I know. About time.”

  “What about your girlfriend?”

  “We broke up too,” he said. “What a coincidence.”

  He took another step toward me and we began to slow dance to Sade, his hand on my back, and his breath in my ear, the distinct smell of pot wafting toward us. A few minutes later, amid many stares, we made our way inside, nestling into the corner of the tweed sectional in Janie’s family room, sweaty bodies gyrating all around us. For over an hour, we sat together, making light conversation that still felt heavy. There was an electricity between us, a sense of fresh discovery, but also a profound familiarity—the kind that comes when you grow up with someone, passing each other in the same halls, day after day. I found myself wondering why we had never talked like this before—and yet I knew exactly why.

  “Let’s find somewhere more quiet,” he said at one point, after the first lull in our conversation.

  I nodded, leading him to the foyer, then up the stairs, then down the hall to Janie’s parents’ bedroom, past the sign she had posted that said, “Do not enter!!!” We no longer spoke, both of us nervous yet intent, as we locked the door, kissing, peeling off our clothes, then crawling under the covers of the four-poster, king bed. At some point, he reached down on the floor, finding his jeans, pulling his wallet out of the back pocket. I knew what he was doing even before he ripped open the square, paper package, fumbling in the dark. I closed my eyes, letting it all unfold, waiting for him, wanting him.

  What happened next is predictable, except that it is never entirely predictable when it is happening to you, for the first time, after you’ve said no a hundred times before. I thought of all the times I had come close with Todd, trying to pinpoint what the difference was now, deciding that it all came down to a desire I had never felt before. A desire so intense that it felt like need.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, even though we w
ere nearly past the point of no return. I looked into his eyes, then up toward the ceiling, dizzy from my feelings and the fan whirring above us, trying to make a final decision as Conrad held himself steadily over me, breathing, waiting.

  My mind raced, my thoughts disjointed and blurry—yet remarkably clear, too. I told myself that there were risks, that I might regret it in the morning, if not sooner. I told myself he might only be pretending to like me—that he was really just using me to get laid, that surely I was only one of his many. I told myself that it wasn’t the kind of thing a girl like me did, especially with someone like him.

  But the answer was still yes. With every beat of my heart, I heard yes. And then I said it aloud, holding his gaze, so there would be no mistake about my decision. Heat, lust, and alcohol aside, I knew exactly what I was doing—that I was making an indelible, irrevocable choice.

  Yet in that still, salty aftermath, I never imagined what would follow. I never dreamed that it would be anything other than a moment in time. A story from my youth. A chapter from that summer. A heat wave with a beginning, middle, and definite end.

  Where We Belong

  July 2012

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