Our Fragile Hearts Read online

  Claire shook her head. “No, I just want to keep it. No one’s ever given me a smile on a plate before.”

  That morning, Claire had refused to eat her eggs and bacon so I shared mine with her. It was the last time Miss Evelyn arranged Claire’s food in a smiley face. Instead, she bought Claire a smiley face pin. Claire never took it off, even when she went to bed. She still wears it today. Usually it’s pinned to her bra next to her heart.

  “Piper! Your food is ready.”

  Piper ran into the kitchen and sat down. She looked up at me and smiled. “Two eyes and a mouth!”

  “Do you like it?”

  She nodded. “Thanks, Rachel.”

  I was glad Piper’s reaction wasn’t like Claire’s. Piper gobbled down her food and I took her to the park afterward. I sat on the bench while she swung.

  “Look how high I can go!” Piper pumped her legs and went higher and higher.

  “Be careful!” As soon as I yelled it she jumped off the swing midair. My heart flipped unexpectedly and I jumped up and ran over to her. “Are you okay?”

  She stood up and grinned. “I think that’s my best jump yet!”

  A part of me was angry she’d done something so dangerous and a part of me was relieved she wasn’t hurt. But she could’ve been. She could’ve broken a leg or badly twisted her ankle when she landed. What would I do then?

  That night, after putting Piper to bed, I went through the photos on my phone. There was Claire and me at last year’s Halloween party at the bar. You were supposed to come as a drink. I came as champagne. I found a cheap sparkly dress at the thrift store and blew bubbles. Claire was a bloody Mary. She dressed as the Virgin Mary using a sheet and covered herself in fake blood. We had so much fun that night.

  There were photos from the New Year’s Eve party and the long weekend at the beach with Claire. I looked so much younger in the photos, but it was only a few months ago, before I got The Call. I remember it as if it were an hour ago. I had just returned from shopping for a pair of sandals because the strap on mine broke while we were at the beach. Judy, a friend of Mom’s I didn’t know, called and told me Mom had passed away suddenly. An aneurysm. Poof! She was gone. Two passersby saw her slumped over in her car in the mall parking lot. When they didn’t get a response, they called 911. Turned out she’d been dead a couple of hours and missed picking up Piper at daycare. Judy was the emergency contact and the daycare called her.

  A lot happened quickly. An autopsy confirmed the cause of death. I met Piper and moved in with her, making Mom’s bedroom my own. I would’ve preferred staying in the apartment I shared with Claire, but there wasn’t enough room. Besides, that would’ve meant uprooting Piper, and her world had already been turned upside down. She’d just lost her mother. I didn’t have the heart to take away the only home she knew, too.

  But I hated being surrounded by things that were not my own. Even though I went through Mom’s stuff and donated what was in decent shape to charity and threw the rest out, the bedroom still didn’t feel like my own. Some nights, I felt like the pale pink walls were closing in on me. This was not the life I imagined, not the life I wanted.

  When I learned about Piper, there was a part of me that was jealous. Piper had the kind of childhood I’d always longed for. I guess Piper was one last chance for Mom to get things right. Sometimes it amazed me that something so sweet could come out of something so damaged.

  Judy said she met Mom at an AA meeting, where Judy was the leader. Mom started going after I left her. I had begged Mom to go to AA over the years, but she insisted she didn’t have a problem, that she could stop drinking anytime she wanted. Judy said it took me leaving to make Mom realize what a mess her life had become. If I had known that, I might’ve run away sooner. Believe me, I’d thought about it often.

  I guess Mom met someone at AA and they hit it off. It was okay for a while. That’s when Mom got pregnant with Piper. But Jason loved the bottle more than he loved Piper and Mom. When he starting hitting the vodka, Judy said Mom kicked him out. Piper was just a baby and she doesn’t remember her dad. I’m glad Mom got the help she needed, and it sounds like she had finally pulled her life together. Piper and I see Judy once in a while. Still, sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve been like if Mom had gone to AA when I’d asked her to. She obviously loved Piper enough to stay sober. Why didn’t she love me?

  I checked my newsfeed on Facebook. There were photos of my friends having a great time doing everything that I wanted to do but couldn’t. I clicked off Facebook and set my alarm instead. Maybe things would look better tomorrow. One thing I knew for sure, I was going to paint my bedroom. Something cheerful and bold. Something that was me. Maybe fuchsia or purple. Or a bright sunny yellow. I needed to make the space feel like my own, not as if I was borrowing it temporarily. I didn’t think there was anything temporary about it.

  The next morning, I opened Piper’s backpack and stuffed in the questionnaire the teacher had sent home. She asked the parents… er, guardians… to answer questions, such as what’s your child’s favorite activity. I did the best I could, but I was still learning these things about Piper. Actually, answering the questions made me realize how little I did know about my half-sister. “Remember to give these to your teacher.”

  Piper looked up from eating her cereal. “And you’ll be at the bus stop when I come home like you were yesterday?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Just like yesterday.” I wondered if Piper would ask me this question every day or if at some point she’d trust that I’d be there.

  We waited at the bus stop in the car because it was raining. The bus was late.

  Piper chewed on her nails. “Maybe the bus driver forgot us this morning. If he doesn’t come, can I stay home with you?”

  I sighed and turned toward Piper. “No. If he doesn’t come, I’ll take you to school. And quit biting your nails. Girls should have pretty nails. Why don’t we paint yours tonight?”

  Piper held out her hands. “Mommy bit her nails.”

  I wanted to say that I hoped she wasn’t like Mom, but I stopped myself before the words flew out of my mouth. I was trying to get better at thinking about things before I blurted them out, especially when it came to Piper and Mom. “Still, hands look much prettier when your nails are longer and painted.”

  I heard the bus screech before I saw it. I turned toward Piper. “Have a good day. I’ll see you when you get home.”

  “And you’ll paint my nails tonight, right?”

  “Right.”

  I watched Piper run to the bus and board. As it pulled away, I wondered if I was doing the right thing for Piper. Would she have been better off with someone else, living with a family who might have been able to provide her with more than I could?

  As soon as I started the car, my cellphone rang. It was the agency.

  I coughed. “What? Howard’s dead? Omigod! I was just there and he seemed his normal ornery self.”

  “Margaret just called,” Annie said. “Said he passed away in his sleep. She stopped in to check on him and found him in bed.”

  “How awful for her.”

  “Yeah, she sounded pretty upset.” Annie was a friend of Margaret. “Well, I wanted you to know.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I called Claire as soon as I hung up and told her about Howard. Actually, I needed her to tell me I wasn’t a bad person for feeling relieved I wouldn’t have to navigate his mess of a house ever again.

  “It sounds like he went peacefully,” Claire said. “That’s the way I’d want to go.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. I pity his daughter, though. She’s the one who has to get rid of all his junk. He’ll probably be the King Hoarder in heaven.”

  Claire laughed. “What would he hoard?”

  “I don’t know. There has to be something up there to hoard if for no other reason than to make hoarders like Howard feel at home.”

  That comment launched us into playful banter over what Howard could hoard.
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br />   “Broken hearts,” I said.

  “That’s too sad,” Claire said. “Maybe white feathers from wings. Or, I got it! Thongs.”

  I laughed. “Thongs? Seriously? They probably don’t wear underwear in heaven. They’re probably underwearless.”

  Claire coughed. “Not underwear, dummy! Sandals! The kind you wear on your feet!”

  By the time I got off the phone with Claire I was feeling much better. She’s one of the few people who can lighten my mood even when it seems impossible.

  I headed to my next cleaning job and met Kenny as I parked in front of his condo. He was pulling out of his driveway and stopped.

  “Hi, Rachel,” Kenny said. “Can you do me a favor and throw the laundry into the dryer when it’s done?”

  “Sure. Anything else?”

  “No, just the usual. And thanks. You’re the best!”

  Kenny left for his office and I headed inside. I loved Kenny’s place. It was ultra-contemporary and he had a flair for color. His entry and hallways were a pebble gray with tan undertones that popped with the white wooden trim. And his dining room was the color of an iris.

  Kenny’s house was my easiest to clean. The guy was a neat freak. Nothing was out of place. Even the books he kept on his nightstand (all management books) were neatly stacked as if they’d never been read. He was the complete opposite of Howard.

  As I cleaned I thought about Howard’s daughter and the mountain of stuff she’d have to go through. Maybe she’d call a junk dealer to remove it. Or rent a giant dumpster that’s dropped off and later picked up when it’s filled. It was sad to think Howard’s life would be defined by the junk he kept. To him, I’m sure it was treasure.

  Funny how two people can see the same thing differently. Like the pile of travel magazines that had sprouted beneath Howard’s kitchen table. To me, it was another stack of worthless magazines to clean around. To Howard, it was a window on the world, providing a glimpse of life beyond the quarter acre he inhabited beside a corn field in the rolling countryside of southcentral Pennsylvania.

  Did he dream of going to the places he read about? I wondered. Maybe it was his way of seeing places he could never afford to visit. And when I thought about the stack of travel magazines in this way, cleaning around it wasn’t nearly as big of a deal. There was hope and comfort in that stack and for Howard, maybe it was as close to the real thing as he’d ever get.

  When I picked Piper up at the bus stop, she was happier than she’d been when I dropped her off. She bounced off the bus and over to me.

  “So how was your day?”

  “Fun!” She skipped over to the car and I opened the back door so she could crawl in.

  “Fun?”

  She smiled. “Yeah. Mrs. Baker gave each of us a paper bag with a letter written on it and we had to find items in the room that started with that letter.”

  “What was your letter?”

  “A, which was easy because I saw an apple on Mrs. Baker’s desk. Jacy had X and she couldn’t find anything, but then I helped her.”

  “So what did you find?”

  “A xylophone. I saw it on the toy shelf and it looked just like the one in the alphabet book Mommy bought me. It was different colors, like a rainbow.”

  “Sounds like a fun game.”

  I pulled into the parking space in front of our apartment building and turned off the car. Piper continued talking about the alphabet scavenger hunt. “And tomorrow is letter A day,” she said, opening her backpack and pulling out a piece of light-blue paper. “Mrs. Baker said we’re supposed to bring in an item that starts with the letter A.”

  I smiled. “Why don’t you look for something while I take care of some things?”

  Piper went to her room and I went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. I remember when I was in kindergarten. We had alphabet days and most of the time I couldn’t find anything to take. Mom thought it was stupid and never helped me. I will always remember letter V day. I was so proud of myself. I found the letter V on a bottle sitting on the counter. When it was my turn to share what I’d found, Mrs. Marshal’s eyes popped and she grabbed the nearly empty bottle. When I got home, Mom screamed and called me names.

  I cowered in the corner. “Please, Mommy. Don’t hit me. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

  Mom held up a bottle of vodka and pointed at me. “Don’t you ever take a bottle of my booze to school ever again. Do you hear me? I don’t need them coming around here nosing in our business.”

  “But it was letter V day,” I had explained. “And we were supposed to bring something with the letter V on it for show and tell. I didn’t know it was bad.”

  “It’s not bad.” Mommy collapsed on the couch. “You’re bad. Now go to your room and stay there. And don’t come out until I tell you to.”

  I ran to my room and closed my door. It was the third time that week I’d come home to find Mom drunk. She was a mean drunk, too. She hit me and said things that no parent should ever say to a child.

  Later that night, when I was sure she’d fallen asleep, I sneaked into the kitchen. I was hungry and ended up eating some carrots and a banana that was mostly black. The next morning, Mom was still asleep on the couch so I ate some more carrots and another black banana and walked to the bus stop.

  Dana, who was a year older than me and lived in the same apartment building, was there. She pointed to my clothes. “You wore that yesterday. And you stink.”

  I sniffed. I didn’t think I smelled funny. I smelled like I always smelled. I looked down at my red shirt and black leggings. Dana was right. I hadn’t changed my clothes since putting them on the morning before. But that’s because I didn’t have clean clothes. Mom hadn’t done the laundry in days.

  When I got to school, my teacher took me down to the nurse’s office.

  “Hi, Rachel,” Mrs. Bee said. “Let’s see if I can find you some nice clothes to wear for the day.”

  “But I have clothes.”

  “Yes, you do. And they’re very pretty clothes. But aren’t those the clothes you wore yesterday?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, why don’t we find you clean clothes?”

  I could feel my heart beat faster. “But you’ll give back my clothes, right? Because Mommy will hit me if I don’t bring my clothes home.”

  “Hit you?”

  “Yes. She hits me and then she sends me to my room and doesn’t feed me so I have to sneak out when she falls asleep on the couch.”

  Mrs. Bee knelt in front of me so she was looking straight into my face. “And does this happen a lot?”

  I nodded. “When she drinks the water in the bottle that begins with the letter V she gets mean and doesn’t like me.”

  Mrs. Bee looked like she was going to cry. Her face turned red and her eyes looked watery.

  “Did I make you sad?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “You could never make me sad, Rachel. You’re a good girl. Now, let me find something for you to wear.”

  Mrs. Bee opened her closet and pulled out a pair of purple sweatpants and a purple glittery shirt. “How’s this?”

  “I love purple!”

  “Well, then, I think we’ve found the perfect clothes for you.”

  Mrs. Bee helped me change. “Do you mind if I brush your hair?”

  I shook my head. “As long as you don’t hurt me.”

  “I’ll never hurt you, Rachel.”

  She combed my hair and put it in two pigtails. “So, what do you think?”

  I smiled. I’d wished Mrs. Bee was my mommy.

  I blinked back tears remembering that day. It was the day I came home to find a strange woman and two policemen in the apartment. The day Miss Helen took me to live with Miss Evelyn. So I suppose it wasn’t all that bad.

  I opened the refrigerator and put the leftover spaghetti in a baking dish, sprinkled mozzarella cheese on top and slid it into the oven. I was getting better at turning leftovers into new dishes.

  I sipped my
coffee while I opened the mail. Bills, bills and more bills. I’d hoped to take a college class online. I figured I could continue my education that way, doing it after I put Piper to bed. But with the bills I faced, it didn’t seem like that was going to happen.

  Buying Piper back-to-school clothes and supplies had put a huge dent in my meager savings. I’d even had to dip into my rainy day stash, which had steadily dwindled over the last few months. I’d been saving for a long weekend at the beach with Claire. We had planned a fall trip but I’d obviously had to back out. I jumped up to retrieve the tea canister in the cabinet next to the spices. I pried open the lid and pulled out two twenties and a five. It was all I had left after squirreling away a dollar or two at a time for something special. I put twenty-five in my purse and stuffed the other twenty inside the canister before putting it back in the cabinet. Twenty would be enough to buy a few cans of soup and some cereal for Piper. I can’t believe how expensive cereal is. I bought the generic kind and it still cost way more than it should.

  Piper charged into the kitchen. “I found something, Rachel.”

  I closed the cabinet door and turned around. Piper hugged her embroidered angel doll. It was a gift from Mom and the angel’s white dress was personalized. It said: My lil’ angel Piper. Piper held out the doll for me to see. “Linda says she wants to go to school.”

  I furrowed my brows. “Linda? I thought your doll’s name was Joy.”

  Piper shook her head, making her pigtails swing to and fro. “I changed her name. I like Linda better.”

  I bit my lip, trying to stop myself from blurting out that I thought Joy was a much better name for an angel. As far as I was concerned, Linda was a great name for a devil. “Great job finding something that starts with the letter A, Piper,” I managed to say. “Are you hungry?”

  She nodded and jumped up on the stool next to me. “Linda says she’s hungry, too.”

  I rubbed Piper’s head before slipping off the stool to take the casserole out of the oven. “Would you like a piece of buttered bread to eat with your baked spaghetti?”

  Piper nodded. “Can you cut it in triangles like Mommy?”