Beating Heart Read online

  A. M. Jenkins

  Beating Heart

  Dedicated to the memory of

  Bill Morris, a man with a heart

  for both books and people

  Contents

  Begin Reading

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by A. M. Jenkins

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  I doze

  content

  this house

  is mine—

  beloved, familiar.

  I am

  this house

  the air is still

  an unopened present

  untouched

  safe

  wind rakes the roof tiles

  plucks at the eaves

  drops of rain

  break

  against the windowpane

  run

  formless

  down

  the

  glass

  scattered dreams

  of

  people

  scurrying

  about the house

  flecks of dust

  float in sunlight

  warm,

  silent

  light makes its way

  under

  the

  wide

  porch roof

  softened, blurred

  gentled

  by its journey

  the wide hall

  is flanked by rooms

  washed in silence

  voices

  turn to echoes,

  fading away

  before

  they can

  become

  words

  pleasant

  unpinned

  the rooms and I

  drifting

  we have no names

  This house

  is mine

  and

  I am

  its beating heart.

  Evan is not impressed when he first walks into the house. There is no electricity; the only light comes in through the open door, and through the windows in rooms on either side of the hall. The wallpaper has been eaten away in patches. The wooden floors are gritty underfoot. Ivy has actually curled its way over a windowsill into the house, through one unevenly fitted sash. At the end of the hall, a wide staircase rises and seems to disappear into gloom.

  Evan’s mother is brimming with quiet satisfaction, and Libby, who is five, prances with excitement. But Evan feels skeptical. “This is it?” he asks.

  Mom nods. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Libby skips toward the stairs, craning her neck to look up. She runs her fingers along the dusty scrolled banister. “It’s like a castle!”

  Mom smiles, then turns to Evan. “What do you think?” she asks him.

  Evan looks around at the dirt, the dust, the whole derelict, falling-apart thing. “You want me to be honest?”

  “Of course.”

  “I think it’s the biggest dump I’ve ever seen.”

  Mom shakes her head. “You’re not looking at the potential.”

  “Mom.” Evan can’t believe she’s oblivious to what this place looks like. “The walls are peeling off.”

  “Yes,” she says fondly. “You can see the original wallpaper. Very ornate, isn’t it? Doesn’t it make you feel like we’ve traveled back to the 1890s? We’re going to love living here.”

  Evan gives a snort of disbelief.

  “Whatever,” he says.

  a voice

  like a hand

  shaking me

  out of sleep

  deep

  raw

  young

  male

  Has he come back?

  the front

  door

  is

  open

  the air

  moves

  fresh

  aroused

  his voice has pricked

  the layers of my peace

  now bristles are

  popping the seams

  of my silence

  sawdust

  paint

  clatters

  metallic

  shoutings

  thuds

  thumps

  bangs

  screeches

  buzzes

  my walls,

  faded and friendly,

  are stripped

  ripped and gutted,

  worse than naked.

  I will not look.

  my floors, my rooms, my companions, are littered with boxes weighted with furniture

  I am unsettled

  shelves strain under books

  paintings like wounds on my walls

  frames like scars

  rugs smother my floors

  more and more boxes

  opening

  spreading their contents like a stain

  That voice again.

  He is back.

  Upstairs—

  he will come upstairs

  into his

  room.

  I will wait

  for him here

  where

  floorboards

  recall

  furniture and footsteps

  walls

  remember

  words and breath

  air

  retraces

  sweat

  and

  kisses

  he belongs here

  So do I.

  On official moving day the place still seems shabby to Evan, even though repairs have been going on for several months now and the house is supposedly ready. The air smells like paint, but underneath that is the musty odor of old wood, varnish, and neglect. Evan knows they don’t have nearly enough furniture to fill the house, and that many rooms will remain empty. He has a sneaking suspicion that Mom’s burned most of the divorce settlement getting this heap even halfway livable.

  The movers are bringing the last load. Mom, Evan, and Libby come in together. Evan, ever practical, is carrying a box of his own belongings. Mom and Libby, empty-handed, prefer to let the movers do all the work.

  Mom is the happiest Evan can remember. She stops in the hallway, hands on Libby’s shoulders. “Oh,” she says, “I can’t believe we’re finally here.”

  She has not been like this in a long time, light and smiling and excited about the future. Evan knows she’s living out her lifetime fantasy of owning a big romantic old house. And the move doesn’t really affect him much—same school, same friends. Besides, the apartment was crowded, with the three of them. So Evan has decided to at least try to keep his thoughts to himself.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous?” Mom asks Evan and Libby.

  “It’s big!” Libby agrees happily.

  Mom’s hand squeezes Libby’s shoulder. “It’s ours!” she says, the words soft and intense like a prayer. And then she grins. “Forget my bedroom,” she says. “I’m going to start on my office!”

  Libby heads for the stairs. “I’m going to explore.”

  Evan says nothing. Sometimes he thinks he’s the only adult in this family.

  Mom notices Evan’s silence. She glances at him; his feelings are written all over his face. “You know, Evan,” she says with a sudden, detached calm, “if you come into this with a negative attitude, it’s going to feel like a negative experience. Can’t you try to project some positive feelings here?”

  Evan’s used to counselor-speak. He’s grown up with it. He doesn’t want to crush his mother’s excitement. But he’s not going to pretend he’s in love with this place, either.

  He answers in his own version of counselor-speak. “Just because I’m not as excited as you are doesn’t mean I’m negative. Can’t I be neutral
?”

  “Of course.” Mom’s answer is automatic. “Feelings are always valid.” Normally she would pursue the conversation, try to unearth any of her son’s hidden emotions about this move. But her eyes are already traveling around the house again; she’s too happy to focus on anything else for long. “Oh, look!” she exclaims. “They’ve unboarded the windows on the landing! Isn’t that the most glorious stained glass you’ve ever seen? And it’s original to the house!”

  Evan looks. The three windows, halfway up the stairs, have no pictures in them; they’re geometric grids with loops and whorls in reds, oranges, yellows, and browns—nice, and they do let more light in, but nothing to get ecstatic about, as far as he can see. He agrees anyway: “Yeah, it’s great.” And he starts up the stairs with his box.

  his room

  is not right

  the walls, which should be

  lush with scrolls and leaves,

  are white

  plain

  the windows, which should be

  thick with shutters and drapes,

  are

  bare

  footsteps

  on the landing…

  up the stairs…

  at the door…

  Evan comes into the room, arms flexed, holding his cardboard box. He bends to put it down, straightens, stops to catch his breath and look around. The room is large enough to seem bare even with his bed and desk in it, as well as the boxes that the movers have already brought up. The walls are plain white, as he requested. The windows are empty, without shutters or curtains; he has not decided what he wants to do with them yet.

  He is pleased with the windows, though: two on each of two walls, because this is a corner room. They let in lots of sun. He goes to one of the windows, opens it, and looks out over the backyard, which is fairly small and drops down almost immediately to a steep wooded bank overlooking the river.

  Evan leans out farther, letting the breeze cool his face.

  his hair is too dark

  too oddly long

  Why doesn’t he push it out of his eyes?

  his shirt fits ill

  no collar

  no buttons

  his arms bare past the elbows

  his knees, his calves

  so bare

  shameless

  the windows

  let in clear light

  he stands there,

  a bright flicker

  that

  draws me

  skin touched by sun

  tiny golden hairs

  a drop of sweat

  brow, lashes

  curve of jaw

  so solid,

  so intense—

  muscles and bones

  like

  roots

  binding

  him to earth.

  his breath stirs the air

  pulls at me

  in

  out

  in

  again

  the back of his neck

  is warm

  smells like wind and sun

  tastes

  like

  salt

  he shivers,

  standing

  in his warm

  square of sunlight

  Evan turns to contemplate the sunny room. It feels strange and foreign to him; not like home—not yet.

  Well, he thinks, at least it’s big. No, what am I saying, it’s bigger than our whole apartment.

  He moves to the boxes piled in the center of the room and begins to unpack. The first box is his “stuff” his posters, personal belongings. He only has a few posters to put up: a video-game advertisement, a scantily clad Budweiser Girl, a football schedule from his high school. He spreads them out, but the walls are still very bare. He takes out an old framed photo of himself and his father at an amusement park; it’s always been a favorite of his, but now he’s not sure what to do with it.

  He and his father have had less and less contact since Dad left a year and a half ago. At first his father was SuperDad, coming every weekend and a couple of times during the week, taking Evan to ball games and movies and dinner. It took Dad a little longer than it took Evan to figure out that they didn’t really have a whole lot to talk about when the movies and ball games were over. And when the awkward pauses started outweighing the fun stuff, Dad just sort of ceased to come around.

  It hurts in a way—but it also feels right. That’s because of Libby. She was hardly ever included in the father-son outings. Evan knew she was too little, wouldn’t have enjoyed it once she got there, would have whined and made everybody miserable—but still, he hated hearing her ask to come along and hearing Dad say no. It wasn’t exactly Dad’s fault; he had only so much free time, and Evan fit better into his activities. But now it feels more like Libby and Evan are equal, as far as Dad is concerned.

  Evan puts the picture aside and pulls out the shoebox in which he keeps things of sentimental value; it contains ticket stubs; notes from girls; a poem he wrote for English that he worked hard on, for once—the teacher read it to the class; a picture of himself and his girlfriend, Carrie, at junior prom; a picture of his grandparents; and a baby toy that he doesn’t want anyone to know he kept.

  As he’s putting this shoebox in a drawer, Libby comes in without knocking. She does that a lot since Mom quit her job, but Evan says nothing; on another day he might be irritated, but today, for some reason, he almost likes the way she wants to be with him, the way she feels at home wherever he is.

  Libby walks over to the back windows and leans out, just as Evan did a moment before. “Ooh, you can see all the way down to the river from here.”

  Evan has decided that he likes this room, or rather, the size of it. He’s enjoying filling out his own space however he wants, and he’s in a better mood about the house. “Back in the old days, they didn’t have air-conditioning,” he tells her. “Rich people built their houses up here because it was cooler—see, the breeze comes up from the river.”

  “Are we rich?”

  “I wish.” He thinks how much it must be costing to get this hulk fixed up, and figures it’s a good thing Libby likes peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches better than steak. “What can you see from your window?” he asks Libby, opening another box.

  “The driveway.”

  “Come on,” he says, “you can see more than that.”

  She’s still leaning out the window, taken by the view. “Umm, the house next door.”

  “That’s not a house,” Evan informs her. “It’s a law office.” That’s another one of the things Evan doesn’t like about this place—it’s not a regular neighborhood, but the remnants of one that has been taken over by businesses. “Anyway, you can’t complain,” he tells Libby. “You had first choice of rooms.”

  “I like my room,” Libby says. “I just wish I could see the river.”

  Her voice is plaintive. Evan pauses to look at her; she’s always been a bouncy, upbeat kid, but ever since Dad left she seems to get sad sometimes. It makes him mad at Dad, although the truth is, he could see why Dad might not be as eager to take Libby to the playground as he was to go with Evan to a hockey game. Evan knows now, from relentless boring experience, that there’s nothing fun about sitting around watching a five-year-old swing on a swing set.