Hearts In Atlantis

“You act as though it’s funny,” she said.

“It’s not funny,” I said. No, it wasn’t funny.

“Then why don’t you quit it?”

Now I was the one starting to feel angry. She had pushed me away and clapped her knees shut, had told me she was going away just when I was starting to not only want her around but need her around, she had left me with what was soon going to be a world-class case of blue balls . . . and now it was all about me. Now it was all about cards.

“I don’t know why I don’t quit it,” I said. “Why don’t you find someone else to take care of your mother? Why doesn’t this friend of hers, Rawanda—”

“Ri-on-da.”

“—take care of her? I mean, is it your fault your mother’s a lush?”

“My mother is not a lush! Don’t you call her that!”

“Well, she’s sure something, if you’re going to drop out of college on her account. If it’s that serious, Carol, it’s sure something.”

“Rionda has a job and a mother of her own to worry about,” Carol said. The anger had gone out of her. She sounded deflated, dispirited. I could remember the laughing girl who had stood beside me, watch-ing the shreds of Goldwater bumper sticker blow away across the macadam, but this didn’t seem like the same one. “My mother is my mother. There’s only Ian and me to take care of her, and Ian’s barely making it in high school. Besides, there’s always UConn.”

“You want some information?” I asked her. My voice was trem-bling, thickening. “I’ll give you some whether you want it or not. Okay? You’re breaking my heart here. That’s the information. You’re breaking my goddam heart.”

“I’m not, though,” she said. “Hearts are tough, Pete. Most times they don’t break. Most times they only bend.”

Yeah, yeah, and Confucius say woman who fly upside down have crackup. I began to cry. Not a lot, but they were tears, all right. Mostly I think it was being caught so utterly unprepared. And okay, maybe I was crying for myself, as well. Because I was scared. I was now flunking or in danger of flunking all but a single subject, one of my friends was planning to push the EJECT button, and I couldn’t seem to stop playing cards. Nothing was going the way I had expected it would once I got to college, and I was terrified.

“I don’t want you to go,” I said. “I love you.” Then I tried to smile. “Just a little more information, okay?”

She looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read, then cranked down her window and tossed out her cigarette. She rolled the win-dow back up and held out her arms to me. “Come here.”

I put out my own cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and slipped across to her side of the seat. Into her arms. She kissed me, then looked into my eyes. “Maybe you love me and maybe you don’t. I’d never try to talk anyone out of loving me, I can tell you that much, because there’s never enough loving to go around. But you’re con-fused, Pete. About school, about Hearts, about Annmarie, and about me, too.”

I started to say I wasn’t, but of course I was.

“I can go to UConn,” she said. “If my mother shapes up, I will go to UConn. If that doesn’t work out, I can take courses part-time at Pennington in Bridgeport, or even CED courses at night in Stratford or Harwich. I can do those things, I have the luxury of doing those things, because I’m a girl. This is a good time to be a girl, believe me. Lyndon Johnson has seen to that.”

“Carol—”

She put her hand gently against my mouth. “If you flunk out this December, you’re apt to be in the jungle next December. You need to think about that, Pete. It’s one thing for Sully. He thinks it’s right and he wants to go. You don’t know what you want or what you think, and you won’t as long as you keep running those cards.”

“Hey, I took the Goldwater sticker off my car, didn’t I?” It sounded foolish to my own ears.

She said nothing.

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. I have a ticket on the four o’clock Trailways bus to New York. The Harwich stop isn’t more than three blocks from my front door.”

“Are you leaving from Derry?”

“Yes.”

“Can I drive you to the depot? I could pick you up at your dorm around three.”

She considered it, then nodded . . . but I saw a shaded look in her eyes. It was hard to miss, because those eyes were usually so wide and guileless. “That would be good,” she said. “Thank you. And I didn’t lie to you, did I? I told you we might be temporary.”

I sighed. “Yeah.” Only this was a lot more temporary than I had been expecting.

“Now, Number Six: We want . . . information.”

“You won’t get it.” It was hard to sound as tough as Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner when you still felt like crying, but I did my best.

“Even if I ask pretty please?” She took my hand, slipped it inside her sweater, placed it on her left breast. The part of me which had begun to swoon snapped immediately back to attention.

“Well . . .”

“Have you ever done it before? I mean, all the way? That’s the information I want.”