Heart Troubles Read online

  Heart Troubles

  Stephen Birmingham

  For Adele Tillson

  a happy birthday

  CONTENTS

  The Young in Heart

  “SHE ATE GRASS?”

  CALL BEFORE DINNER

  “DO YOU BELIEVE IN CHANGE?”

  BETWEEN THE MAPLES

  The Partly Joined

  THE BACKGAMMON TABLE

  RACE DAY

  WE LUCKY GENIUSES

  BRIGHT, YOUNG FACES

  BLIGHTED CEDAR

  The Partly Parted

  DOROTHY, DOROTHY!

  LYDIA

  THE SNOWS OF YOUTH

  WATER WON’T QUENCH FIRE

  STORM

  The Young in Heart

  “SHE ATE GRASS?”

  The boy with the somber face walked into the Island Market and began turning out his pockets. He pulled out the two side pockets of his white duck pants and then fished in the breast pocket of his white shirt, which was unbuttoned, the tails knotted about his waist. “Now where the hell’d I put it?” he said.

  “Put what?” his friend Angie, in dungarees and barefoot, asked him.

  “Here it is,” he said, and pulled the slip of paper out of his hip pocket. “Look,” he said to Angie, “you go over and order the booze, I’m going to look in Gourmet Foods.”

  “Gourmet foods?” Angie said.

  “Yeah. Get three bottles of bourbon. Make it four bottles of bourbon.” He walked toward the aisle marked “Gourmet Foods,” and Angie walked over to the liquor department.

  Two ladies, both in shorts and squashed-looking sneakers, and both on the critical list at Weight Watchers, were in a hypnotic trance over the items of Gourmet Foods, lifting cans from the shelves, shaking them, inspecting labels, and putting the cans back. The boy hovered behind them for a moment or two, peering over their shoulders, making a humming, buzzing noise between his teeth.

  “You want to get in here?” one woman asked, turning to him.

  “No, thanks.” He scooted down the aisle toward Bakery Items.

  When he rejoined Angie at the liquor counter he had a box of cookies and two frozen candy bars. “Here,” he said to the clerk, “add these in.”

  He looked at what Angie had ordered. “Hell, man. She doesn’t like that cheap stuff. Is that what you buy? She likes that good stuff. Over there. Four bottles,” he said to the clerk, who removed the bottles and replaced them.

  “That be all?”

  The boy nodded.

  The clerk ran up the total on the tape, added in the cookies and the candy bars, and presented the tape to the somber-faced boy, who inspected it, humming buzzingly. Then he took the folded check out of his pocket, flattened it, and picked up the black ball-point pen that lay on the counter. The check was printed with his mother’s name, Alice C. Amis, and she had already signed it, dated it and made it payable to “Island Market, Inc.” The boy filled in the amount from the tape—$25.90—and gave the check to the clerk, who examined it, made a cryptic scribble on the back, and put it into his cash drawer.

  Angie picked up the heavy paper bag, and the two boys walked out of the store. It was afternoon. Opening the car door, the dark-faced boy slid into the driver’s seat, and Angie got in beside him, placing the paper bag between them. The dark boy reached into the bag, took out the candy bars and gave one to Angie. Then hitching himself forward in the seat he dug his hands into the side pockets of his trousers and pulled out two more frozen candy bars. He winked and handed one of these to Angie too. “Played a little five-finger grab,” he said, poking Angie in the shoulder.

  “Hey, man!” Angie said, and laughed, and poked him back. For a moment the boys threw soft punches at each other in the front seat. Then the dark boy started the car.

  He drove well and cautiously. After all, he would not be sixteen for two months, and the cops on the island were known to be rough about this sort of thing if they caught you. He stuck carefully to the speed limit; in fact, kept a little under it to be on the safe side.

  “You going to the beach party tonight?” Angie asked him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you come, bring a bottle of booze,” Angie said.

  “How can I do that?”

  Angie patted the paper bag. “Bring a bottle of this stuff.”

  “How can I do that?”

  “You mean she’d notice?”

  “Hell, yes, she’d notice. What do you think? I mean, she notices.”

  Angie was silent for a moment, and then he said, “But what I mean is—well, if she’s having a cocktail party and all—I mean, she’s having the cocktail party now, isn’t she? And, well, by nine or ten o’clock, if she’s had a few drinks and all, do you think she’d notice if you snuck a bottle out? I mean—well, you know how it is. I don’t think she’d even notice.”

  “Hell!” the boy said. “What do you think she is, anyway? I tell you she’d notice.”

  “Don’t get mad. I just meant it might be worth a try; that’s all. No need to get mad about it.”

  “I don’t even know if I’m going to go to the damn beach party.”

  “Anyway, Simmons says he’s going to try to bring some booze,” Angie said.

  The boy said nothing. They drove in silence for a while, the boy’s hands resting on the top of the steering wheel.

  “Hey, where’d you get the neat ID bracelet?” Angie asked.

  He showed Angie the silver bracelet on his tanned wrist. “This? My dad sent it to me. Like it?”

  “Neat,” Angie said. He fingered the heavy silver tag, flipped it over. “It’s got no name on it. How come you don’t have your name on it?”

  The boy pulled his wrist away. “Hey! Don’t grab my arm while I’m driving, you idiot! You want me to have an accident?”

  “Sorry. I just meant—”

  “I guess my dad didn’t get around to getting it engraved,” he said. “I mean, I guess engraving takes like a couple of weeks, and I guess he wanted me to have it right away. It’s sterling silver. I guess I’d better get it engraved one of these days—have my name put on it, you know. And maybe my blood type? If I can find out what the hell my blood type is, I guess maybe I ought to have that put on it too; don’t you think? I mean, like if something happens. A thing like that makes sense, and you never can tell. Know what I mean?”

  Angie nodded. “Sure,” he said.

  “I’ve really been meaning to have that done,” the boy said.

  “It’s a neat bracelet.”

  “Sterling silver. I guess—oh, I guess it probably set my dad back twenty or thirty bucks; don’t you think? At least.”

  “Too bad it doesn’t have your name on it.”

  “Hell, I just told you I’m going to have my name put on it. I’ve been meaning to, in fact.”

  “Are your folks really going to get a divorce?” Angie asked him.

  He nodded. “Uh-huh.” He drove with one hand on the wheel now, and with his free hand he was unwrapping one of the candy bars.

  “Well,” Angie said, “I suppose they have to do it. My mother and dad did it, you know. They’ve been divorced—I don’t know how long. It works out pretty well.”

  “Yes,” the other boy said, nodding again. “It works out. It really does. I mean, right now, you see, my brother David is with my dad, and that works out. I mean, he and my dad get along pretty well. And I’m with Mom. And then when David comes to see Mom, then I’ll go to see Dad, and it all works out. Yes,” he said, his face grave, “it’s the only answer, I guess. It makes sense. In the long run,” he said, nodding soberly, “it’s best.”

  He bit hard into the frozen candy bar, guiding the car expertly with his other hand, and said, “But—if only—” And then
a queer thing happened. Two obstinate and totally unexplained tears sprang into his eyes, and for a moment the road before him blurred and he heard his right front tire spit angrily into the sand of the shoulder.

  “Hey, watch it!” Angie said. “To hell with the one-arm driving, man. Cop’ll give you a ticket for that.”

  “Sorry. My hand slipped.”

  Angie began a long account of an accident that had occurred two nights before, on the North Road, when a girl they both knew, driving a borrowed Thunderbird, had struck a stone wall, causing considerable damage to the front end of the car but no injuries to anyone. Angie had been one of the people in the car, and he described the accident in full detail—what had occurred immediately before, what had caused the girl to turn her head to say something to someone in the back seat, how the car had reacted, the kind of skid marks that had been left on the pavement, and what the girl’s behavior had been like afterward. The dark-faced boy listened.

  “She ate grass?” he asked suddenly.

  “Man, she was hysterical. I mean, you can’t blame her. It wasn’t her T-bird. It belonged to the people she was sitting for, and the man had let her borrow it. But she wasn’t supposed to be taking anybody for rides in it. She sort of went crazy! Hysterical. Got down on her hands and knees by the side of the road and started stuffing grass in her mouth! We kept saying to her, ‘Look, you’ll only have to pay for the fifty-dollar deductible. The insurance’ll pay for the rest.’ But she sat there screaming, ‘Kill me! Kill me!’ and stuffing grass in her mouth. I mean the things some people do are crazy.”

  The dark boy nodded, agreeing.

  As he came to Angie’s driveway, he slowed the car and pulled it off the road. “Well, be seeing you around, Ange,” he said.

  “See you at the beach party tonight maybe?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know.”

  “Well,” Angie said, opening the door, “be seeing you.”

  “Take it easy.” Angie started to get out and his friend said quickly, “Ange—when your parents got their divorce—”

  “Yeah?” Angie said. “What about it?”

  “Never mind. Skip it. So long, Ange.” Angie got out, and the dark boy started the car again and drove toward home.

  He turned slowly into his own driveway, drove up the hill, and parked in the circle before the house. He sat behind the wheel for a moment, finishing his second candy bar, and licked his fingers. Then he got out of the car in an unusual way—unusual, that is, for most people, but not unusual for him; it was his customary way of disgorging himself from an automobile when he was alone. He went out the window, head first, sliding his body out, across the window’s edge, feet braced against the ceiling of the car, until his hands touched the ground outside. Then he performed a handstand in the air, flipped backward onto his feet and stood up. When he was home, in the apartment in New York, he liked to ride up the elevator standing on his hands when he was alone. There was something about being alone in elevators and in cars that made you want to do unlikely things, but since there was never anyone to see you, these feats were always performed in a kind of void.

  He reached back into the front seat of the car, lifted out the bag of liquor and walked up to the house.

  The living room was filled with smoke and people, some reasonably famous faces, all of them reasonably familiar, his mother’s friends.

  “Ah, young Ganymede returns!” a woman’s voice cried out to him. “Ganymede returns, come to replenish our empty cups! Quick, quick, we’re dying of thirst.”

  His mother was in pale-blue silk slacks and silver shoes with wide, flat silver bows, and her face was flushed and smiling, and her dark, pretty eyes were misted from laughter. “Take the liquor into the kitchen, darling, will you?” she said.

  As he crossed the living room toward the kitchen, a woman whose name he could not remember said to him, “Are you David or are you John? You boys look so much alike I never can keep you straight!”

  He stopped and smiled at her. “I’m David,” John said.

  “How you’ve grown!”

  His mother followed him into the kitchen. “Thank you, darling,” she said. “I take it you had no trouble at the store.”

  “Trouble? Why should I have trouble, Mom?”

  “Because of your age, silly. Anyway, I phoned them and told them you’d be coming in for liquor.” The boy placed the bag on the countertop, and his mother lifted the bottles out one by one and set them on the little bar. “You got nothing but bourbon!”

  “It’s the kind you like, isn’t it, Mom?”

  “Yes, but we have a few Scotch drinkers. But it doesn’t matter. They won’t notice the difference at this point.”

  She moved quickly and breathlessly back and forth across the kitchen, her silver heels clicking on the black-and-white tile squares that were laid out like a checkerboard. She returned to the living room, and her son stood in front of the kitchen sink. Thoughtfully he turned on the faucet, gazed for a moment at the thin silver icicle of water that poured out, then shut it off.

  His mother appeared behind him, carrying a tray of empty glasses. “Mom,” he said, “did you ever hear of anybody getting so upset about something that they got down on their hands and knees and ate grass?”

  “Never,” she said. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, darling. Your father called while you were out.”

  “What does he want?”

  “How should I know? I didn’t talk to him. The call was for you.”

  “But, gosh, Mom! Couldn’t you at least have asked him what he wanted? I mean, after all! It might have been something important!”

  “If you’re curious, dear, I’d suggest you call him back,” she said.

  He went to the telephone on the kitchen wall while his mother moved about, mixing drinks. He lifted the receiver and dialed Operator and gave her the New York number. Leaning against the wall he held the receiver to his ear with one hand and plugged his other ear with the other hand to block out the party noises from the living room. With the smooth tag of his identification bracelet he rubbed his cheek.

  “Alice?” he heard someone call to his mother. “What are you going to do about August? Are you going to stay here?”

  “Heavens!” he heard her answer. “I’m so pleased to have July worked out! Don’t ask me where I’ll be in August.”

  The boy listened intently to the operator’s report. “There are a couple of other numbers where you might be able to reach him,” he said. He gave her the other numbers and waited. “Let that number ring a long time, please,” he said after a while. “He might be taking a nap, or something.”

  “I am ringing your number,” the operator said.

  “Would I like Acapulco?” he heard his mother ask. She was in the living room.

  When his mother came back into the kitchen, he had hung up the phone and was just standing there. She said, “Did you get him, dear?”

  “He’s left the office, he’s not at the club, and there’s no answer at the apartment,” he said.

  “Well, perhaps you can try him later.”

  He reached inside the pocket of his shirt. “Here’s the slip for the liquor, Mom.”

  “Oh, thank you, dear.”

  She opened the refrigerator door and removed a tray of ice cubes. She carried it to the sink and said, “Darling, will you take out these ice cubes for me?”

  When there was no answer she turned and discovered that he was gone, evaporated into air.

  So Alice Amis cracked open the ice tray herself and, using her fingers, dropped cubes into several glasses. From behind her a man’s arms circled her waist, and she pushed him off with a laugh, saying, “Oh, behave yourself!”

  “Where’s your good-looking son?” he asked.

  “Vanished!” she laughed. “He’s always vanishing.”

  “How’s he taking the divorce thing?”

  “Seriously, I think both boys want me to be happy,” she said.

  The man wandered back into the
living room, and she finished mixing the drinks and arranged the glasses on the tray. When the tray was ready, she started to lift it, hesitated, and put it down. She looked toward the living room where the party was, lifted the tray again, and once more set it down.

  Alice Amis stood on tiptoe at the kitchen door as if balanced on the edge of something, as though the saddle of wood between the kitchen and the living room marked the top of a cliff, and her choice was whether to step forward, down into the clear possibilities that the living room contained, or return to the puzzle pattern of the kitchen tile. Her hand touched the doorjamb briefly. Then she turned. She felt herself walking back across the kitchen to the door of her son’s room. It was meant to be a maid’s room, but it was the room he had for some reason chosen in this rented summer house. The smallest bedroom in the place, he had insisted on making it his.

  She heard her soft voice call, “John? John?” And then, a little louder, “Johnnie? Johnnie?” She played a little rhythm on the panel of the door with her well-polished fingernails. Finally she tried the knob. But he had locked it from the other side, and was in there, and would not answer her.

  CALL BEFORE DINNER

  When the telephone rang in the hotel room the young man who was lying, fully dressed, on one of the twin beds next to it, reached over and picked up the receiver in the middle of the first ring. “Hello?” he said.

  “Mr. Edward Martin?”

  “Yes.”

  “One moment, please, for Long Distance.”

  He waited, attempting to light a cigarette, cradling the phone between his ear and shoulder with difficulty, digging into the pocket of his gray slacks for matches.

  “Hello?” he heard his mother’s voice say. “Teddy? Is that you, Teddy?”

  “Hi,” he said. “How’re you, Mom?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Have you had your dinner yet, Teddy?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Well,” his mother said, “don’t let me keep you from your dinner.”