Hungry Hearts

by Elsie Chapman

  “Where were you?” he presses.

  I shrug, still not looking. “You know. School.”

  “But not today?”

  I shrug again. No, not today. Today, I needed the deli. The humming lights. The customers. The whitefish.

  “Listen,” the boy says, like school or not, it doesn’t matter, “I want to take you out.”

  Me. Out. I eye him. I am not the girl boys “take out.” I am not a creature with a body, with feelings. And those are things boys like, right? Except this boy. This boy likes James Joyce.

  “Don’t look so offended,” he says, letting out a small, nervous laugh. I like that laugh. It’s like his rib cage is opening up right in front of me, his beautiful pink guts spilling out.

  “I’m not offended!” I say, too loud. “I’m just surprised.”

  “You shouldn’t be. I know this place that makes great Persian food. It’s called Manijeh’s. C’mon. Please?” There’s a longing in his face, sad and a little intense, and normally—like if I were at school and saw a boy looking at a girl like that—I’d roll my eyes. But I’m just blushing, wondering, Has he been thinking about me like I’ve been thinking about him?

  “Um,” I say, “I have to ask Pop.”

  That’s a lie. I don’t have to ask Pop anything. We don’t really have rules in my house. My older brother Ethan was nearly eighteen when we moved in and only stayed that one summer. And I’m a pretty boring human being. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke and I’ve never dated before. But it feels right to check in with him, to ask him, in a way, Do you see what’s happening here too?

  I glance over my shoulder to find that Pop’s been watching us, paused in cleaning the counter. Both of his bushy white eyebrows are raised, and he glances at Mr. Schneider and Mr. Walton at their table, and both seem to let out silent chuckles before going back to their newspapers.

  “Go,” Pop says. “Be young. Have fun for once.”

  If I were a different girl, I’d go and kiss my grandfather on the cheek. But that’s not who I am, who he is. So I turn back to the boy.

  “Okay. Okay, then. I’m Naomi, by the way. But I guess you know that.” I take off my name tag, my apron, leave them both at the counter. The boy is watching me, looking amused.

  “Simon,” he says, finally breaking out into a grin.

  * * *

  We walk to the restaurant, our knuckles brushing, but not exactly touching. There’s a little buzz in the back of my head: I’m on a date I’m on a date I’m on a date. I’m not sure if I’m thrilled or terrified, but either way, it makes it hard to keep up with the conversation.

  “So Pop is, like, literally your pop?” Simon asks.

  On a date I’m on a date . . . It takes me a little too long to answer. “Yeah, my grandfather. Everyone calls him Pop, though. Forever. He was raised by his aunt and uncle, and they said that he was a little old man even at like nine years old.”

  “I can get behind that,” Simon tells me, pausing to straighten the lapels of his trench coat as if for effect. I laugh.

  “What’s with the old-man getup, anyway?” Maybe I asked a little too boldly. He frowns, but doesn’t look all that upset.

  “I often feel like I was born in another era. Back in the time of your pop, maybe.”

  I stuff my hands down in my pockets.

  “I’m glad I wasn’t.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, you know. There’s the fucking Holocaust. And ’Nam. Separate water fountains. Rampant sexism. No birth control.”

  I don’t realize that I’ve said it until I do, and I blush worse than ever, bright, bright red, like a rash all over my neck and ears and face. Simon’s looking at me. But he only nods.

  “I guess you’re right. I’ve never thought of it that way before.” It’s as if for Simon, life has always been the same privileged pleasure for everyone. He holds the door open for me. I feel myself blush even worse than before.

  “Ah, sorry,” I say. But I’m not sure why I’m apologizing.

  * * *

  I’m so nervous that I hardly eat and speak even less. Simon seems comfortable enough talking for both of us, though he’s nervous too. He never even bothers to take off his coat, and he keeps talking with his mouth full and then apologizing.

  “. . . so my mom and dad wanted me to major in something useful, like accounting. Sorry. But I said that there’s nothing more useful than literature and—excuse me—philosophy. My mom got my dad on board.”

  “That’s good,” I say as I swirl my food around my plate. I try to imagine what it’s like to be Simon, majoring in philosophy and literature, taking night classes, drinking black coffee, and scrawling notes longhand in his Moleskine. It feels like a world away.

  “Sorry. I’m talking too much.” I smile a little bit more to hear him admit it. He smiles back. “How about you, Naomi? What are your thoughts on college?”

  I shrug, pushing my collards back and forth on my plate. I remember my fantasies, what I told Ethan. I’m working on it. But I haven’t really done anything. Just fantasized. Even those fantasies feel far away—almost impossible. “I like to read. Not just James Joyce. Everything, I guess.”

  “Do you think you’ll join me in the army of unhirable English majors?”

  I grin. But then the corners of my mouth twitch a little. The other night I stayed up late, googling colleges like other kids might google porn. Nothing fancy. State, or the reach schools I’ve heard the other students talking about in the cafeteria. The entrance requirements made my lungs feel like they were collapsing. “I don’t know. My grades are pretty bad right now. They’ve been for . . . a long time, really.”

  “High school sucks,” Simon says with all the wisdom of a college freshman. “It’s not just you. It sucks for everybody.”

  I look at him, and for a second, I swear I see a flash. Simon, getting his head slammed into a locker in the hallway. Simon, reading all the wrong books under his desk in tenth-grade English class. Simon, in a wrinkled suit and suspenders that are stylish but stylish in the wrong way, getting called into the principal’s office over a letter he wrote to the high school paper.

  “No,” I say. “It’s not like that for me.” Actually, sometimes it is like that. But quieter, and with more internal screaming.

  “What then?” he asks, and for the first time in a long time I have the sense that someone is really listening to me.

  “School used to be really easy,” I say, tearing my eyes away from him, because it hurts to talk about it, which is why I never talk about it. “I was in TAG—talented and gifted, you know? All through elementary school. And then my parents . . . well, they croaked. When I was in middle school. A car accident. I sort of started to wonder what the point was.”

  “I’m sorry,” Simon says. “I can’t imagine.”

  I don’t say anything. I guess I’m supposed to say thanks or it’s okay, but I can’t. Because he can’t imagine. And I don’t have to. I lived it—the long, crushing days before and after.

  “My parents are pretty great,” he admits, almost like it’s another apology. “I’m . . . really, really lucky.”

  “You are,” I agree. I look at him and can feel the tears in my eyes, even though I don’t want them. Fuck. Crying is worse than blushing, isn’t it? I’m not supposed to be like this, but something about Simon has everything on the surface, breaking through.

  “Let’s talk about happier things,” he says gently. I feel myself exhale. I am distilled relief. “Tell me. What was the last book you read and hated?”

  This is easy. This I can talk about. I tell him about Nine Stories, and he looks like I’ve just committed sacrilege, but it’s okay—I can tell.

  And that’s when I decide Simon is okay too.

  * * *

  We’re together after that. We don’t discuss it, but we just are. My days are more or less the same as they always were, school, or not school. The deli, or not. But my nights—my nights are full of Simon.

 
; His hands, broad and cool, and his body, which is nearly hairless, and his hair, which is straight and dark and he is always pushing out of his eyes, until I learn to push it out of the way for him. Until I learn he doesn’t mind. He leans his cheek into my hand, his lips on my palm. We kiss and I’m rattled and I feel something. I feel a lot.

  We move fast, and maybe it’s scary, but maybe it’s the only way it can go for me. I was never going to slowly open like a flower. All or nothing, that’s how it has to be. I needed someone to pull me into the light.

  When I come home late, Pop smiles at me over his newspaper and television but doesn’t ask where I’ve been or what I’ve been up to. He doesn’t pry. Pop’s that kind of guy.

  But my brother Ethan gives me a hard time on the phone. “Pop says you’re hooking up with some boy.”

  “He’s not just some boy,” I tell him. “His name is Simon.”

  “Pop says he’s in college? Is he some kind of perv?”

  “He’s only a year older than me, Ethan. How old was Cadence when you started dating?”

  My brother doesn’t answer. We all know he dated a fourteen-year-old for a while right after Mom and Dad died. It was probably just a grief thing, but it freaked everybody out. Even though Pop gives me a wide berth, you can bet he had something to say about that.

  “Anyway,” Ethan says. “You need to be working on your college applications.”

  Back to business. That’s how Ethan’s always gotten through it. He’s an accountant now, and I think he’d love me to have a future that looks like his: eight thirty to six, suit and tie, changing his network password every four months, respectable.

  “I’m thinking about college!” I protest. Which is absolutely true. When I spend the night at Simon’s, it’s in his dorm bed. The two of us are pressed together, his roommate snoring only a few feet away. I go with him to his philosophy class one night and sit next to him as he argues about dualism versus materialism, and the professor looks proud when Simon steamrolls some other freshman with his argument.

  “If you could objectively prove that we’re more than just meat machines, then sure. I guess that argument would make sense. But realistically we’re nothing more than a series of impulses—”

  “But there have been studies,” the other student objects meekly. Simon rolls his eyes.

  “Where they weighed the soul after death? Yeah. Total bunk.”

  Simon is so sure of himself, in a way I never could be. Even though I don’t agree with him, there’s something so forceful about the way that he speaks that I feel myself wavering. I imagine what it’s like to live with that much assurance, that much moxie. But I know I never will. If Simon’s fire, then I’m a stone. I’ve had to be to survive.

  I’ve enjoyed imagining myself in Simon’s shoes, in Simon’s life. Even though it feels like a fever dream, distant and impossible.

  “Okay, where are you applying?” my brother snaps after a long silence. He really doesn’t believe that I know how to take care of myself. Maybe he’s right that I don’t. I chew my lip.

  “Um. State.” I know that State will be a reach, but it’s where Simon goes. It feels like a possibility, at least.

  “You need to apply to a minimum of six schools. Eight to ten would be ideal. What are your safeties?”

  “I don’t have any,” I tell him. I’m losing interest in this conversation. I know I’m saying the wrong things. I don’t want Ethan’s advice, anyway. He’s not my dad, not my mom. I had parents once. I don’t now. He might be my brother, and he might be older than me. But he hardly knows me, not really. Pop is watching Wheel of Fortune in the next room, and I can hear Vanna’s polite smattering of applause. I listen to that instead of listening to Ethan.

  “Naomi—” my brother begins, but I don’t let him finish.

  “Ethan, I’m fine. I’ll talk to you next week.”

  And I hang up before he can protest further.

  * * *

  Simon’s parents love him. Simon’s parents send him money. He says he’s eligible for work-study, but his parents don’t want him to be distracted. That’s how we can afford to go out to eat as much as we do. Simon tries everything. Soul food and fusion food and little Mexican pastries that taste like magic and lard. He tells me about music while we eat at all the best restaurants on Hungry Heart Row. He tells me about books. He tells me about Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst who I don’t understand, and don’t really care to. Sometimes I look at Simon and think, I’m objectifying you. Because I’m not really listening to him. I’m watching his eyes flutter under his thick, girlish lashes, watching his sweet mouth move, thinking of kissing him, not really thinking about the words coming out.

  He wants me to talk more. In his dorm, when the sky is red as minestrone overhead, he wakes me up with the pressure of his mouth on my freckled shoulders.

  “I know you think about things, Naomi. Brilliant things. Amazing things. I know your feelings are deeper than mine. Why can’t you share with me? You’re safe with me.”

  I kiss him back and say nothing. My body is vibrating. I think, My body can speak for me. I don’t feel safe with him, but that’s not unique to Simon. I never really feel safe with anyone except Pop. Other people might leave at any moment like my parents did. Except for him.

  Maybe one day I’ll feel safe with Simon, though. Maybe one day our lives will fit together in a way that makes sense. I imagine myself in my own dorm room, posters taped to the walls, eating takeout with him. I imagine highlighting my own textbooks and reading the best quotes to him. In my imagination, I laugh easily. Like I never do in real life.

  It hasn’t happened yet, though. In the morning, I set up the deli case with my grandfather. Working in silence, our hands shrouded in an onion skin of latex. The sound of the slicer moving up and down the saran wrap. Pop hums faintly. In the deli, almost alone except for Pop, nothing hurts.

  * * *

  One night Simon comes over for dinner. I don’t know what he’s expecting—bagels and liver? Pop hasn’t had a real home-cooked dinner since my bubbe died, a year before my parents. And even that wasn’t exactly haute cuisine. Her meals were delicious, but strange. Spaghetti with canned tomatoes and cottage cheese on top, that kind of thing. Anyway, when the oven timer goes off, Pop pulls out three foil-wrapped TV dinners with a dish towel and sets them on our kitchen table.

  “I’ll let you have the chicken,” he says to Simon, thumping him gently on the shoulder. This is unusual generosity from Pop. I’m not sure Simon understands that. I wonder if he’s second-guessing his dinner choices, wishing he’d just eaten in the cafeteria tonight.

  But Simon’s a polite boy, so he says, “Thank you, sir,” and digs in. Pop looks pleased as he sits down over his Hungry-Man.

  “Call me Pop,” my grandfather says.

  “So, Pop,” Simon begins, eyeing my grandfather. “How did you come to own a deli?”

  My grandfather shrugs. He’s not much for stories. “My uncle owned a deli, and I grew up behind the counter.”

  “Like Naomi?”

  Pop looks at me. Shrugs again. “So when my uncle retired, he said, ‘Arthur, do you want to own a deli?’ Different now, though. With the Served and the blobbing—”

  “Blogging, Pop,” I say, and even though he’s probably just teasing us, I feel myself blush. Which is funny, because Pop doesn’t usually embarrass me much at all. But having Simon talk to him this way is almost as bad as being looked at. All of my family’s strangeness, laid out to see.

  “You must have had other dreams,” Simon says suddenly, like he’s been mulling over this question. He might consider himself a gourmand, might love to consume the fruits of our bagels, but I don’t think it really makes any sense to him, why anyone would want to actually live a life so small.

  “Dreams?” Pop says, slathering mustard on his gray slab of steak. “Eh. As a boy, I thought maybe I’d be a pharmacist. I thought a pharmacist was really someone.”

  Simon is frowning
. I chew silently, waiting for Pop to go on, dreading what he might say. I’m not ashamed of Pop, but I know that he’s not exactly what Simon expected.

  “But deli, pharmacy. It’s all the same.”

  “Is it?” Simon asks. Pop doesn’t answer. He points his fork at Simon.

  “And what do you dream about being, my boy?” Simon smiles faintly. This, he can handle talking about. His answer makes me feel warm and happy to hear it. He’s ambitious. Sometimes I wonder if his ambition will rub off on me. Sometimes I hope it will.

  “I’d like to be a professor,” he says. “And a writer. Both, I guess.”

  “What do you write?” Pop asks. Simon’s eyelashes flutter.

  “I’ve started a few short stories.” The implication thuds between our plastic dinner trays in the middle of the table. He’s started a few. He hasn’t finished any.

  “I figure when I’m older I’ll finish them,” he says. “I don’t have a lot of life experience.”

  Pop looks at him, his jaw tight. Then he nods.

  “Hmm” is all he says.

  * * *

  After Simon leaves, Pop and I sit in front of the television. Usually, this time of night is a relief. Long boring quiet and the evening news. Pop shouting the wrong answers at Alex Trebek while I dog-ear pages in my latest book. But tonight I’m looking at Pop, my stomach all knotted.

  “Go ahead, Naomi,” my grandfather says, not looking up from the television. “Ask.”

  I smile grimly. “You hated him, didn’t you?”

  Pop laughs. A dry laugh. “No, I don’t hate anyone.”

  “But you don’t like him?”

  “He’s fine,” Pop says. Like that’s the end of it. He’s not going to say anything else, because Pop never really talks about how he’s feeling. Everything meaningful goes into the gaps, the silences. And there’s a lot of silence here.

  Fine. Fine, I think, all that night and through the next work day. Funny how being fine feels suddenly all wrong.

  * * *

  “Your test scores are excellent,” Mrs. O’Keefe, the guidance counselor, says. She’s sitting on one side of her desk. I’m sitting on the other. I’m trying to look like the weight of her gaze doesn’t make me wither inside.