Cross My Heart

I hesitated for a minute. Could I really talk to Hemi about this? I took another bite of beef and broccoli while I thought, and then followed it up with a swallow of wine that, once again, had clearly come from wherever they hid the good stuff.

I did tell him, in the end, precisely because he didn’t press me to. Instead, he sat with that stillness of his and waited. 

He wasn’t a patient man; I knew that by now. That wasn’t where the stillness came from. It came instead from his self-discipline, from a nearly iron self-control. But how would somebody like that judge me and my less than perfect life?

“I guess,” I began at last, “I don’t want to tell you because of what you said today. About the girls who don’t get enough care.” I looked at him squarely, needing to face this. The thought that woke me up in the middle of the night, that made me sweat. And the reminder that helped me fall asleep again. “I know I can’t give Karen everything she needs. But I can give her more than she’d have otherwise. I know my best isn’t enough, but it is my best, and it’s what we have.”

He shifted a little again on the couch, for once not looking quite so perfectly calm and focused. “I shouldn’t have said that. I was trying to convince you, and I don’t always…”

“You don’t play fair,” I finished. 

“No.” 

“Why don’t I believe that?” I asked. I smiled at him, and he looked startled. “Come on, Hemi. What have you done today? Let’s see.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “Taken Karen and me to look at roses, let Karen be incredibly rude to you, let me yell at you about fairy tales, taken care of us when Karen got sick, and paid the doctor’s bill instead of leaving me in disgust.” I held up my hand, palm facing him. “That’s five. And, hmm. You also let my little sister throw up on you, carried her up the stairs, which I know was exhausting, because I saw you, and bought me lunch. Plus, let me tell you, some pretty amazing wine. I believe you’re a ruthless businessman and the terror of the boardroom, but you’ll have to forgive me if I’m having trouble believing you’re a horrible person. Even if you wouldn’t let me slap you.”

“I didn’t let her throw up on me,” he pointed out. “I carefully held her over the grass.”

“Close enough,” I said, and he looked at me and waited.

“So.” I took another sip of wine for courage. Which helped, or maybe it just tasted delicious. Either way, I needed another sip. “Our story’s not that interesting, and not that uncommon, either. And anyway, everybody’s got a sad story, right?”

“They do. But only you have your sad story.”

“Oh. Well. Yeah. That would also be true.”

“Do you and Karen have the same parents?”

“No.” He was easing me into it, I realized. I didn’t know why he wanted to know, but I guessed I’d tell him, because this wasn’t the Hemi from the restaurant. This was the Hemi from the roof. This Hemi, I could talk to. “Same mom, different dads. Mine took off early, and hers took off later. He was a musician. My mom’s boyfriend. Here, oh, maybe half the time, then gone on gigs, you know. And very…volatile. Very moody. It was stormy, always, when he was around. I got used to taking Karen away, I suppose, because this apartment’s too small for fighting. Or too small for fighting when you have kids. Children shouldn’t have to be in the middle of that.”

“No,” he said. “Yet they so often are. How old were you when she was born?”

“Nine.” 

The problems had started right away, and by the time I’d been eleven or twelve, they’d gotten that much worse. Fights over money, over Guy’s dark silences and long absences, over my mother’s suspicions of other women, and over so much more that I tried not to listen to and couldn’t help hearing. Over everything that men and women fought about. My mother pushing, tearful, anxious, and Guy walking away again and again, his voice barbed, contemptuous, darker and darker as the minutes went on. The tension in the little apartment so sharp, it had cut Karen and me like knives. 

Karen’s face would get that pinched expression that meant she was going to cry, and once I got old enough to take her out of there, that’s what I would do. Carrying her at first. She was too heavy, but I couldn’t leave her behind. And once she was old enough, walking with her, holding her hand, her preschooler’s legs slow on the flights of stairs. We’d head to the park if it were still light, or to the corner store if it were dark, hanging around while Mrs. Kim frowned and clucked her tongue at us from behind the counter. 

Eventually, Mrs. Kim had put me to work stocking shelves on those nights. “To pay for magazine your sister is ruining,” she’d tell me with a scowl, destroying her image by pulling an orange juice off the shelf for Karen. And I’d been glad to do it, glad to be useful, not to feel unwelcome. Glad for anything, really. My expectations had been pretty low.

“So that’s how I started my glamorous assisting career,” I told Hemi. “And why Karen’s such a good reader.”

“What happened to them?” he asked. “Your mum, and Karen’s dad?”

“Well, Guy…one day, when Karen was nine and I was eighteen, he left for a gig and didn’t come back. Not even for his clothes. He always said he didn’t believe in ‘things.’ I guess he didn’t. Too bad he didn’t believe in people, either.”

The weight was there in my chest as I remembered. My mother getting quieter by the day, eating less and less, telling me she just “didn’t feel like it.” Almost visibly checking out. The night when she’d finally stuffed all Guy’s things into garbage bags, and I’d helped her haul them downstairs. I’d never forgotten the sight of those white plastic bags landing in the Dumpster with a soft thud, or the finality of the metal lid clanging shut. Or the look on my mother’s face.

She’d walked upstairs like an old woman, had gone into her bedroom and laid down, as she so often did when she got home from work. And once again, I’d made dinner with Karen, had helped her with her homework, and my mother hadn’t come out.

“I swore,” I told Hemi, “that I’d never let a man do that to me, that I’d never let myself care that much. It seemed to me like men only wanted you if you didn’t want them. Because the guys…they just left anyway, you know? It didn’t matter what she needed. They just…left.”

I had to stop a moment and get myself together. Karen was right. I hated to cry. I hated, especially, to cry here, where I’d seen my mother cry so often. Or to cry in front of Hemi. If you couldn’t show a man you wanted him without him losing interest, surely crying in front of him was the ultimate weakness. 

I’d already said too much, but all the same, I said more. Maybe it was the worry, or the day. “I told myself,” I said, “that I wouldn’t have that life. Because men can just leave. They can decide they’re done with all that and walk away like it’s nothing. Like it’s…disposable. Women don’t get to make that choice. Mothers don’t get to walk.”

“No,” he said. “Mothers walk, too.”

Something in his voice made me look at him more sharply. “Oh?” 

He waved a hand. “Never mind. Your mum didn’t, eh. Your mum stayed. But all the same, she’s not here.”

“No. She died. That’s the sad story part. The rest of that’s just normal life, and I know it. Hardly worth talking about, so why did I? Blame the wine. But my mom—it turned out that there was a reason she had to rest so much, that she stopped eating. She had colon cancer, and she went pretty fast.”

I had to shut my eyes a moment at that. Because, yes, that was the hard part. The very worst thing to remember. Those last days in the hospice, my mother’s skin nearly transparent, stretched so tightly over her cheekbones, her hand gripping mine so tightly. 

“Take care of your sister,” she’d said on that last day, her voice a rasp. “Please, baby. Please don’t let them take her away.”

“No.” The tears had threatened to rise and choke me, but I hadn’t let them. My mother had needed to see me strong, had needed to believe I could do it, that I would do it. She’d deserved to die in peace. “I won’t let them take her.”

“Promise me,” she’d said again.

I’d sketched the X over my chest with my free hand. “I cross my heart. I’ll take care of her. Always.”

She’d smiled, and I’d seen what it cost her. “And it’s such a good heart, baby. You’re such a good girl.”

I’d laid my cheek against her papery one, and then I had cried, because nothing in the world could have stopped me. 

“Say goodbye, baby,” she’d whispered. 

“Goodbye, Mom.” 

The words had barely been more than a breath, but she’d heard. Her other hand, the one with the tubes taped to it, had come up and stroked my hair, and finally, I’d sobbed. And for the last time, my mother had held me while I cried. 

I didn’t tell Hemi all that, though. I didn’t tell him any of that.

“So she died, and you were left with Karen,” he said. “When you were, what?”

“Nineteen. Five years ago. And you know what?” I smiled, tried to lighten it up. “You aren’t even the first guy to take me out with my sister. Because no choice, you know? A movie ticket’s cheaper than a babysitter. But none of them went out with me a second time. You think Karen was snarky today? Believe me, she can be so much worse.”

“Good thing I’ve got a bit of persistence,” Hemi said, with that slight softening around his eyes, his version of a smile, warming his normally stern expression. “Not so easily scared off, am I.”

“Not easily at all, I’d say. Considering that you’re still here.” I looked into those dark, liquid eyes, at the warmth in them, and something seemed to…connect. I could almost hear the ping as it happened.

“So,” he said, “want to come over here and sit with me for a moment?”

I went for one last feeble attempt at self-control. “You going to go for it, now that my little sister’s out of the picture?”

“You never know. I may lunge at you and…what was that? Oh, yeh. Stick my tongue down your throat and grope you. Or I may pour you a bit more wine and see if I can get you to curl up against me. I’d like to know that you were able to let go of everything for a little while today, because you were with me.”

And after that, how could I do anything else?