Lies of the Heart (8 page)

“Whenever you’re ready,” Richard says in the respectful tone he usually reserves for Judge Hwang. He walks over to the banister, and before Judge Hwang can object—he hasn’t asked to approach—he reaches over to Carly as if he will give her a hand an apologetic pat.

But it’s mistake number two.

Katie leans forward, holds her breath, watches his hand snake over to the banister—it happens in slow motion for Katie, who stays perfectly still and watches the distance disappear between the two hands, the anticipation rising. Richard’s hand finds its mark, lands confidently on top of Carly’s little one.

“Oh,
shit,
” Katie hears Dana say beside her, just before Carly jumps up and thrusts her finger at Richard.

“False touch, false
touch
!” Carly screams, and there is a sudden, almost inaudible popping sound, and the hair clip is flying up and over, and Carly’s curls are bouncing into life, springing out in every direction. Richard falters, both hands come up, and he takes a shocked step back.

“False touch!”
Carly screams again, pointing, her face flushing a deep red. She struggles for a moment—it looks like she’s trying to rip off the top half of her dress—but then she yanks a long string necklace out from underneath the top and inserts the end of it into her mouth.

The courtroom fills with the piercing sound of Carly blowing her emergency whistle, and then there is complete chaos. The bailiffs rush forward, the court reporter half rises out of her chair, and the entire courtroom erupts, Judge Hwang pounding her gavel and saying, “Miss,
miss
!” The court officer, a heavy, balding man, rushes back and forth, his hands bouncing up and down to signal quiet
.

Jerry is standing, too, his fleshy lower lip hanging in confusion, his body slanted forward over the defense table. Donna grabs at his arm, pulling, and other arms extend forward from the front row of the courtroom audience to rest on Jerry’s large shoulders. They are trying to get him to sit.

Carly points at Richard with both hands now, arms straight out in front of her and bouncing up and down as she jumps, still blowing her whistle. Richard looks at Judge Hwang and then at Carly, then back at Judge Hwang. The Warwick Center employees, and people with alarmed, serious faces—probably from the several advocacy groups that are monitoring this case—rise and move forward, offering advice.

“Why don’t we try to stay calm—”

“Maybe if we could just give her—”

“If everyone could please—”

Judge Hwang bangs the gavel even louder, but for once no one is looking at her.

For the first time since forever, Katie feels the laughter building inside, feels it starting deep in her belly and moving upward. She covers her face with both hands, pretends to go into a spasm of coughing.

“Oh, Katie,” she hears Dana say beside her in a sad voice, but Katie doesn’t care, just lets the luxurious bubbling of laughter rise up within her.

And then, just like that, as the laughter gains momentum in her body, she remembers that she has forgotten, and Nick returns.

Katie’s eyes slide around the room now: all of it, all this chaos, because of Nick. Because Nick is gone. She turns to Jerry, who is squinting in her direction, and then he is back, too, inside Katie and Nick’s story again, even before they met him.

But there is this one satisfaction, something small to hold on to in the midst of all the confused voices and the relentless banging of the gavel:
I didn’t give you all of us, Jerry. I kept most of this part of the story all for myself.

K
atie’s class that summer was an elective, a boring survey course of films from the sixties, taught by a short, stocky man who spoke in monotone, his sentences drifting off at the ends. His voice lulled Katie back to her weekends with Nick, and when her professor shut off the lights and turned on the projector, the effect was complete. In the darkness she felt Nick’s fingers on her again, pulling at her skin, caressing her neck, his tongue trailing slowly from her breasts to her pelvis. Sitting there in the back row, the hum of the projector in her ear, Katie could actually feel his elbows gently urging her legs apart, the heat of his breath on the inside of her thigh. Sometimes she hid her face in her arms, sure that even in the dim light another student would turn and see the telling glow on her cheeks; other times she had to squeeze her hands between her knees to keep them still, to keep her fingers from gingerly touching places where Nick’s hands or lips had traveled.

When the lights came up and the professor resumed his droning lecture, Katie would focus on a spot on the wall, and in only a few seconds Nick would reemerge: straining above her, eyes closed tightly as he moved inside her, his hands gripping her hips.
Katie,
he would say in a dissonant whisper, and each time Katie’s body seemed to expand, to fill up with the sound of Nick speaking her name.

Other times, when her professor scribbled on the board or sorted through his dusty collection of videotapes, other scenes pushed their way to the forefront, intruding into Katie’s blurry happiness: Nick, examining a callus on his hand, fingers splayed, and Katie’s own hand finding his—then waiting for his reaction, which always formed gradually, as if he needed time to remember how to assemble the smile that would eventually come. Or that humid Sunday afternoon when they were in the water at Potter’s Cove, Katie’s arms wrapped around Nick’s neck, ankles crossed around his middle. Blissful, the sun warming the tops of their heads, their limbs slippery and sliding while they looked into each other’s eyes. But then that diver surfaced a few yards away, pulling off his mask, walking to the beach: an old man, his white beard dripping into the water, a canvas sack roped around his torso and a heavy air tank in one hand.—Do you know him? Katie asked, but then instantly let go of Nick. The haunted look on his face scared her, made her turn back to the old man in an attempt to see what Nick saw in his grizzled, sun-worn features. She didn’t repeat her question or ask what he was thinking, afraid that she would be one of those girls who requested too much, who pushed away her lover with too many questions. But she collected those times, too, when Nick turned away from her, when he became quiet and distant, sequestering them to a corner of her mind for later inspection. And she watched him.

She watched Nick all the time, how his body moved when he was close to her, how he looked at her, and away from her and at the world, and then the need would come to Katie in heavy, rolling waves. Because she wanted all of him, wanted to crawl inside him and know every single piece of him, to hold those pieces in her hand and examine them, inch by inch—wanted the confirmation that he understood her, that he knew about loneliness, too. She needed to know that somewhere in those prolonged silences between them, when his eyes would wander away from her to places she felt uninvited, his love for her was growing, was real. That she was the only girl for him, the only and exactly right girl, and this was just Nick’s way. So like Katie’s, but unnecessary now,
finally,
because they had found each other.

One Thursday afternoon in class, Katie was dreaming of her escape to Rhode Island in just a few hours when her professor announced that they would review several short documentaries. Minutes later Katie was again startled out of her reverie by her professor, who spoke in an uncharacteristically animated voice.

—Here, he said to the class, slapping the screen.—What do you see here?

A black-and-white picture of a young soldier filled the screen, his face muddy and tired, the strap of his helmet hanging. Beside him, a man who could have been sleeping if the scene were different, if there weren’t the constant sounds of explosions and gunfire in the background. If he weren’t lying in a ditch, his gun sunk into the mud next to his body.

—War, the students said.—Death.

—But what does the camera capture? the professor asked impatiently.

The camera zoomed in on the soldier’s face—a disturbing look because of the combination of vacancy and concentrated sadness, a young-old face, its deep lines embedded with blood and grime.

Hands rose, hypotheses voiced.

—The meaningless of life? someone said.

—The acknowledgment of impending death?

Each time the professor shook his head, sighed, and waited.

The soldier patted his coat, and then an explosion only a few yards away rocked his body; he ducked down, sticks and clods of earth raining onto him and into the trench. He stood and scanned the scene before him, patted his coat again. A clump of dirt rested on the dead man’s chin, unnoticed.

Katie, suddenly interested, said in a voice louder than the rest:

—He’s thinking about love.

Heads turned to the back of the room where she sat. Her professor quickly closed the distance between them, pointing.

—Your name? he demanded.

—Katie, she whispered.

—Who?

—Katie, she said in a louder voice to the professor, who stood too close now.

—Love? the professor said.—But why, with a man dead or dying beside him?

It was only what Katie wanted the soldier to think about, what she
hoped
he was thinking about, despite everything around him. And now too many eyes were on her, so she turned back to the screen, watched the soldier pull out a small piece of rumpled cloth from inside his coat.

He lifted it to his nose briefly but didn’t inhale; instead he swiped it angrily across his cheek and then looked at it, eyes flashing at the patch of dirt left across the bottom. In the corner of the cloth, partially hidden by the dirt: the top half of a looping, monogrammed letter, a
B
or a
P.
The soldier stuffed the cloth back into his coat.

—You forget the camera is there, don’t you? the professor asked Katie quietly, and she nodded, realizing that there
was
a camera, that the young soldier didn’t seem to notice it hovering over his shoulder. Didn’t have time to hide the way he felt.

The professor addressed the class.

—Imagine, now, if this soldier turned to the camera, talked to us. Imagine what he would say with his eyes, with his body and limbs. He might talk about impending death, the meaningless of life, the professor said, shaking away the students’ words with his hand.—But we would know better, wouldn’t we? He turned back to Katie.—Yes?

A voice-over in the film reported how this soldier died a week later, how this same piece of cloth had to be pried from his hand.

—A little melodramatic, the professor said dryly.—But you get the point.

And then to Katie, before he popped the tape out for a new one: —You have an eye for reading people, Katie. Keep both of them open.

On the way home that afternoon, she held the excitement of her professor’s words close to her. Finally she had an eye for
something,
and her heart raced along with the car as she barreled toward Rhode Island, toward Nick. Just one simple sentence, and at last she understood: first Nick and now this, a hidden talent, a purpose—her life had begun in earnest. Not even the congested traffic on I-95 could take away her joy; she couldn’t wait to share her news with Nick and with her mother, to watch the cynical lines of doubt smooth away on her mother’s face.
I’m going to make documentaries,
she imagined telling her mother,
because I have an eye for it.

In Warwick she pulled in to the sandy parking lot at Sealark Marina, where Nick slipped his skiff. Before she reached the ramp to the dock, she saw him standing on the bow, hosing off the salt water. Three burlap bags overflowing with quahogs sat on the flaking wooden dock, and Katie giggled with happiness; Nick had waited for her before trading them in, knowing that she loved the sunburned old man at the shack, his gruff, bantering ways and how he tried to slip his hand underneath the scale to shortchange Nick. A simple, repetitive game just for Katie’s benefit. Nick waved, and she sprinted down the ramp, across the rickety dock.

—I have an eye! Katie shouted to him. Nick laughed at her, shaking his head.

He stuck his thumb over the spout of the hose, pointed it in her direction, and she ran straight into the mist, twirled underneath it on the dock until her clothes were drenched.

—Get up here, Nick said in a deep voice she understood, and pointed to the bow in front of his feet. Katie scrambled over the side of the skiff, clothes dripping, and fell into him.

—My professor said—she began, but Nick’s strong arms were crushing her, his mouth stopping her words.

His fingers teased up under her wet T-shirt, exploring, his tongue licking at the back of her teeth. And then everything else melted away, became distant and unimportant. Inside Nick’s arms it was always the same for Katie, dizzying, like flying in circles when she was standing still.

A prayer rose up on its own accord, selfish and urgent.
Please, God, please let it always be like this.

—Now, what did this professor say about your eyes? Nick said in mock jealousy.

But in his arms there was room for only this. Only Nick.

In bed that night, Nick worked on her with tongue and teeth and nails, until her hair matted against the sweat on her face, until her neck and back muscles started a slow, raw hum. And she watched him above her, behind her, all around her, straining to see his love.

—
Katie.

Her whispered name like a plea—and Katie’s body rose to meet his. She turned on her back, put her hands on each side of his face to hold him steady above—needing to see it, needing to see herself in him.
You have the eye,
she told herself
. Keep looking.

Nick, moving inside her, his eyes tracking her face so intently. She felt the lonely spaces within her leaving—finally, gloriously. Not a prayer any longer, not a fervent wish cast at the sky to God, but this: what could be, the hope of coming together in this world.