Irregular Heartbeat

by Chris Zett

  Diana grabbed her overnight bag and found the bathroom without a problem. She first took care of her urgent needs, then washed her face and brushed her teeth at the tiny sink. Her hair was plastered to one side. She needed a shower to make it presentable, but a comb and a hairband would have to do until she could find the time. She chuckled. This wasn’t the first night she had woken up unplanned in unusual places. She had thought those days were long behind her.

  On her way back she had a quick look around the house. Everything but the living room was pristine, like a hotel room. No clutter or personal stuff left clues about the owner. Had it always been like this, or had Emily done this yesterday? Was there something that had triggered Emily’s obvious aversion to going back in, or was it just the general grief of seeing her childhood beach house without her parents? The scattered pictures from several albums all over the floor caught her eye. She carefully picked her way through the mess but hesitated to touch any of the photos. Nothing jumped out at her as unusual.

  When she came back outside, Emily had a suitcase open on the porch. Had she gotten it from the car? She had changed into new clothes, a pair of jeans and a hoodie, and bound her hair in a low ponytail. It was the most casual style Diana had ever seen on her.

  “Let’s go to a diner and grab something to eat. Maybe take a walk afterward.” Emily didn’t wait for Diana’s answer, closed her suitcase, and carried it down the stairs. “Leave the house open. There is nothing valuable in there.”

  Diana shrugged and followed Emily to her car. She was here to support her. Ignoring the problem would work for a while. “A walk would be great. I’m still stiff after the long drive and the sleeping on the floor. I guess that’s what getting old feels like.” Her comment earned her a smile.

  Emily had gladly accepted Diana’s offer to drive. She was stiff and wrung out, but she assumed that was more due to the emotional strain of the last few days than because of her night outside. Slowly, the memory of waking several times during the night returned. She had felt warm, safe, and serene. Not that she would admit it out loud, but the presence of a warm body to snuggle with had helped her get the best sleep she’d had in ages. Not just any body. Diana.

  “Where to?” Diana stopped at an intersection.

  Emily quickly gave her directions. Focusing on the once-familiar roads helped her snap out of her musings. The drive into town didn’t take long, and the café was empty except for a few older people who appeared to be regulars. Most tourists were probably still sleeping.

  Eating in silence, Emily struggled with what to say. She owed Diana an explanation for having her drive here, but she didn’t want to have that conversation at a public place. She had the same problem with the other topics such as Diana’s past career and Jen’s discovery of it. And the kiss. She didn’t even want to think of the kiss, let alone talk about it.

  She excused herself to visit the restroom. Washing her hands, she stared at herself in the mirror. Most of her makeup was gone, and only dark smudges remained beneath her eyes, enhancing her paleness. She shook her head. She looked like a drug addict. What did Diana see in her? Was this some kind of charity, like her work for the Rainbow Home? She washed her face in the cold water, scrubbing until it glowed with a pink that made her look too childlike. Why hadn’t she brought any makeup with her?

  Do you really want to go out like this? Her mother’s voice cut into her thoughts.

  Shut up! She balled up the paper towels she had used and fired them into the wastebasket. I’m thirty-six and shouldn’t care what my mother thinks. My dead mother.

  Emily squared her shoulders and marched out of the restroom without another glance at the mirror. She stopped at the counter to pay the bill. As she walked over to Diana, she had calmed enough that her voice wouldn’t betray her. “I need to get out of here. Would you mind going to the beach for a walk?”

  “Not at all.” Diana rose and grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair.

  Emily pointed out familiar landmarks from her youth until they reached the parking lot at North Beach. A couple of other cars were parked there, but they couldn’t see any of the owners as they walked to the water. The tide was out, and the sand and gravel stretched for miles along the coast.

  Heading east, Emily had to keep her eyes to the ground to avoid looking at the rays of the early-morning sun, but the warmth that spread slowly through her was welcome.

  Every few steps Diana picked up something. Sea glass, shells, or small pieces of driftwood. “You must have had a big collection as a child.”

  Emily snorted. “No, not really. After every summer my mother made me bring it all back to the beach. ‘Real memories need no sentimental knickknacks’ was her motto. We had no souvenirs at our home. I wonder why she kept the albums.” Great, jump right in.

  “I saw the pictures.” Diana hesitated. Did she want Emily to go on? “I guess it was difficult to look at your family pictures.”

  Difficult was an understatement. “Yes and no.” Hurt, anger, and disappointment resided in a tight knot in the depths of her stomach, coated with a generous amount of self-disdain. Why do I care about the stupid albums? Emily kicked a piece of driftwood, and it flew a short distance until it got stuck in the sand again. “I have almost no memories connected to those pictures. Most are from a time long before I was born. One album is about me. Two pictures each year, one on Christmas, one on my birthday. That’s it. Nothing else.” Emily tried to keep her tone neutral.

  Diana didn’t say anything until she reached Emily’s piece of driftwood, picked it up, and turned it around in her hands. “So they weren’t into pictures. I’m sure they had other ways to remember. Stories, for example.”

  “Maybe.” They walked for nearly half a mile as Emily considered this. She had never thought about her life as anything but ordinary. She’d had two parents, a roof, warm clothing, and regular meals. Nothing remarkable had happened in her years growing up, so why should they document it? And the most important question was why did it hurt that they hadn’t? Diana mentioned stories as an alternative, but they had lacked as well. How could she explain her family to Diana? “You probably have a lot of these embarrassing stories about you growing up that are repeated at all family gatherings and that annoy you, but secretly you enjoy them.”

  “Sure, with five brothers… Don’t we all have them?” Diana looked at her with genuine interest.

  Emily kicked at another piece of driftwood, but this time it stayed stuck in the sand, and she nearly fell.

  Diana reached out to steady her.

  “Thanks.” Emily sent her a short smile, but then she looked back down and frowned as she noted the rising heat in her cheeks. Her ears tingled. She had to get it out before the embarrassment melted her skin. “I have nearly no stories like this. One of my father’s colleagues always told me about an incident when I was four. I cried through the speech my father made at the party for his sixtieth birthday because I had to wear an uncomfortable dress, but I can’t remember the dress, nor do I have a picture of it. My father used to tell me stories about the books he read to me and what my first reactions to them were. My mother never told me anything like that. She never talked about her past with my father either.” She tried to gauge Diana’s reaction from the corner of her eye.

  “It must have been difficult growing up. Where you ever close to your mother?” Diana’s tone was merely curious, not judgmental as Emily had feared.

  “No. Not really. She wasn’t the affectionate type. Not even with my father. I just wonder…” Emily picked up a piece of sea glass. It was pale green, with an uneven, rough surface, factually nothing more than junk that polluted nature. But it caught the sunlight, and the warm glow revealed its beauty.

  “What do you wonder?” Diana prompted.

  Emily clenched her fist around it and concentrated on the hard sphere biting in her palm. The pain was real, tangible, not like t
he churning pit of emotions her abdomen had turned into. She forced herself to say it. “I don’t know if she loved me, and I won’t ever find out.”

  Diana stopped and turned to her, reaching for her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  Emily kept walking, away from the temptation of Diana’s touch. She didn’t deserve Diana’s compassion. “Don’t be.”

  With a few long strides, Diana caught up to her. She didn’t say or do anything but walk beside her, so close that their arms touched lightly.

  Overflowing emotions seeped through cracks in Emily’s defensive walls. Diana’s silent support helped to plug the leaks, but it wouldn’t be enough. Maybe if she let some of it out, only a little bit, the pressure would fall to a manageable level. “My problem is that I don’t really care. I don’t miss her because we never had a meaningful relationship at all. She was just the woman I lived with until I went to college. I didn’t love her; I didn’t hate her; I didn’t really notice or care if she was home or not. I didn’t need her.” Her throat was dry, and she had to swallow. Had she screamed?

  She stopped and turned to Diana. She hadn’t meant to say all of that, but now that she’d started, she couldn’t seem to stop. “What’s wrong with me? What kind of daughter am I? Why can’t I love?” Tears misted her sight, and she wiped them away with sharp movements. She took a deep breath to stuff the rising emotions back where they belonged. But for the first time in her life, she failed to contain them as they burst through a rift in the dam.

  Suddenly, Diana was there and hugged her, whispering into Emily’s hair. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  Emily shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut more tightly to keep the tears at bay. “I’m a terrible person. Cold. Uncaring. Aloof. And now I’m only crying because I’m sorry for myself. How selfish is that!”

  She tried to escape from the embrace, but Diana held her tighter.

  “You do care. Or you wouldn’t ask yourself these questions. You do care.” Diana repeated the last sentence over and over.

  The explosion that ripped apart the last barrier to her feelings caused Emily to stumble. Only Diana’s arms kept her standing as she cried.

  The warmth of Diana’s embrace slowly thawed the chill around her heart, and her steadiness grounded Emily.

  Emily had lost all sense of time when her body called for attention. Her legs cramped from the stiff posture, and the sun had burned across her right arm and face. She extricated herself from Diana, who patiently waited until Emily wiped her face and blew her nose with a napkin she found in her pockets. She noticed that she still clutched the sea glass in her hand and slipped it into her jeans.

  Diana lifted her hand and slowly stroked Emily’s sunburned face. Without talking, she took her hand, turned, and led them back toward the car.

  Emily followed without comment. Diana taking the lead was what she needed right now. A new tranquility flooded her, and she wanted to bask in the feeling without thinking or making any decisions. She gingerly touched her cheek. It was hot, but the pain was bearable. “I think this is my first sunburn ever.”

  Emily stuffed the last of the three boxes into the trunk of her car. It was tight, but it fit. Three cardboard boxes full of albums, a small painting, and some books were all that was left of her parents. She carefully placed two old quilts over the boxes. They looked handmade, but she had no idea who had made them. A relative who had died long before she was born, her mother, or had they just bought them somewhere? But they reminded her of summer nights spent reading on the porch, huddled in a quilt to ward off the chill. She closed the trunk with more force than necessary. The large bag with old towels and clothes they had collected from her mother’s retirement home went on the back seat. She planned on dropping it off at the Rainbow Home; maybe someone would want them. What was old-fashioned today could be retro or vintage tomorrow.

  Who was she kidding? It was junk. But something stopped her from just ditching her mother’s clothes.

  Diana had been a great help in keeping her focused. Anger, frustration, and embarrassment had threatened to overwhelm Emily. She still didn’t miss her mother; she missed the idea of a mother. She needed to accept that it was something she had never had and wouldn’t get in this life. She had molded herself to fit her mother’s ideals of paleness and silence but had never received an acknowledgment that she’d succeeded in satisfying her. She wasn’t sure if her mother had been indifferent or just hadn’t been able to express her feelings. She was rapidly vacillating between contempt and compassion for her mother’s emotional state and self-disgust and self-pity for her own.

  All day Diana had run errands with her and subtly prompted her to share stories of her youth. The more she talked about her mother, the more she had realized how similar her life today was. She planned every detail of her day and liked to control things so that everything went according to plan. Devoting nearly every minute to work, she had no real hobbies, no close friends, no attachments. Nobody wanted to be friends with the control freak, and like her mother, she never left the role of the supervisor at work.

  Except for Jen. Did Jen really count? Jen did most of the work in their friendship, and Emily sometimes wondered what Jen saw in her. Emily didn’t contact her that often or suggest outings. If Jen hadn’t persisted, they wouldn’t have become friends in college or stayed in touch afterward, but would be a distant memory the day after graduation.

  And now Diana. Diana was different. Yesterday, Emily had asked for her company. She knew she wanted more than friendship, but she was afraid to ask for it. What could she possibly offer Diana in return? She had no experience sustaining a relationship, not even with her own family. All the rational reasons she shouldn’t pursue this lingered in her mind all day. Whenever Diana smiled at her, Emily’s heartbeat accelerated, and every time she managed to make Diana laugh, she was proud. She was rapidly losing the will to fight against her attraction. So what did it matter that she was an attending and Diana a resident? It wasn’t as if she would treat her differently at work. Or would she? She was still in control of her actions, even if her feelings had slipped from the tight reins in the last days.

  Emily sighed and closed the door of her car. She had taken too much time to stow her things, and Diana would wonder what she was doing. She had to go back inside and talk to her. About the kiss at the club. And what it all meant. She’d been wrong; she wasn’t ready for a relationship. She had no clue what she was doing. Especially with the complication of working together.

  Her knees were suddenly too weak to support her, and she leaned against the side of the car to steady herself. Her breath came fast and fogged the window from the outside. Her fingers tingled and hurt as if she had pricked them with a thousand needles. A detached part of her seemed to watch her from afar and stated the diagnosis: hyperventilation and panic attack. She needed to slow her breathing. Her clinical knowledge didn’t help her, though. How the fuck can I control my breathing? I can’t even control my thoughts or my life. Black spots appeared in her line of sight, and a warm feeling spread from her stomach to her limbs, like cuddling in a downy bed. She closed her eyes. She was falling. Falling through clouds. Soft, soft clouds.

  “Emily! Emily, don’t faint!” The yelling ripped her from the soft clouds back to earth. “Emily, look at me!”

  Diana. Diana was calling her, holding her up against the car from behind.

  Opening her eyes, Emily tried to turn in Diana’s arms.

  She gave her a little room to move but stayed close enough that her arms could still support Emily.

  Heat burned in her cheeks as she thought about her weakness. She’d nearly fainted. That had never happened to her before. Wasn’t that something only silly girls did? She hastily stepped out of Diana’s embrace. “I’m fine.” That had come out harsher than planned.

  Diana looked at her. Her brow was creased in concentration as her
gaze wandered all over Emily.

  She forced herself not to squirm.

  Apparently satisfied with whatever she found, Diana nodded and her frown disappeared. “Okay, if you’re sure.” Stepping back, Diana softly squeezed her arm and let go.

  “I just need some food. We haven’t eaten since breakfast.” Not that she ate more on a regular workday.

  Diana nodded as though that made sense. “Just let me grab my wallet and lock the house.” She pointed to the car. “Sit down. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  When she reappeared only moments later, Emily hadn’t yet found the will to move.

  Diana opened the door and invited her into the passenger seat with a gesture. “Just give me your keys, and I’ll deliver you to the food.”

  Emily thought she should protest. Nobody drove her car. Not another part of her life should be controlled by someone else. She opened her mouth and found she didn’t really want to argue. She wanted to let someone else do the driving for now. Even it was only her car.

  Emily asked Diana to drive to the same café. Had that been a favorite place for her in her youth, or was the proximity to the house the deciding factor?

  During the ride, Emily closed her eyes, but the hard lines around her mouth and eyes showed she was awake.

  While they had dinner, Diana waited for Emily to bring up the near collapse. As expected, she didn’t. Halfway through their sandwiches, she decided to tackle the topic herself. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine.” Emily accompanied the statement with a smile that was as fake as the plastic flowers decorating the table.

  Diana raised her eyebrows and waited. Did Emily really think she’d believe that?

  “Okay, I’m not fine.” Emily folded her paper napkin into a neat square, then a series of decreasing triangles. “But I’m getting there. The food helped.”