Joyce Carol Oates - Broke Heart Blues Read online

  after moving to Willowsville, countered by hiring the aggressive Buffalo firm i. of Trippe, Schwartz, McVitter and Cranker to defend it. Since, was acknowledged, Mrs.. Heart was already in residence in the late Colonel's house, with her father and three children, and since the Las Vegas will complete and duly executed, there was little the Edgihoffers could do. Public sentiment and a collective sense of justice were on their side, but the law, it seemed, was on the side of the blackjack woman. The case dragged-on for months and was finally settled out of court with an undisclosed amount of money going to the "rightful heirs." How much, in fact, did Dahlia Heart inherit from Colonel Edgihoffer?

  No one ever knew definitively. There was much speculation, ranged from a modest $50, 000 to $500, 000. The property at 8

  Place was worth approximately $250, 000 (thirty years later, of course, the identical property in the prestigious St.. Albans Hill neighborhood of the village would go on the market for not under $1. 5 million) but it looked shabby outside and in, if Mrs.. Heart wanted to sell it, as cynics expected, and hoped, she would have had to invest many thousands of dollars in it. But though she did make repairs on the house, to a modest degree, she no signs of wanting to sell. Instead, within days of moving into the house, she drove into the village in the salmon-colored Cadillac and, dazzling in a trim white silk suit with a bolero jacket and a short, scalloped skirt, a pert straw hat with a white silk band, in spike-heeled white leather shoes, she made inquiries at architects' and builders' offices about renovating the old Dutch Colonial. Everywhere she went, Mrs.. Heart drew stares.

  stares of startled admiration, some were stares of wonder and curiosity.

  Some were stares of hostility. (For already, in our close-knit village, "the blackjack woman" was known. ) Some she acknowledged with a smile,

  she coolly ignored. To Herman Skelton of Skelton Construction, her to a two-hour business lunch at the Old Eagle House Inn on Main Street, she was reported to have said, with modestly lowered eyelids, "The Colonel wished for me to dwell in his house. It's the closest I can offer you, Dahlia, to dwelling in my heart, he said. So I intend to stay Willowsville.

  And I intend to be happy here. I hope to make lots and lots of friends."

  lohn Reddy, eyes of icy blue.

  John Reddy, whoever knew you?

  John Reddy, tohn Reddy Heart.

  Tohn Reddy's eyes were unmistakably dark brown. Made in USA hadn't t) ever seen John Reddy face-to-face. ) Most of us at WHS, even guys who'd played varsity basketball with for two seasons, even the few girls who claimed to have gone out with him, would have to admit we'd never had an actual conversation with John Heart. It wasn't just that John Reddy wasn't the type to talk much, he wasn't the type to confide easily in others. At the Academy Street School he scared us in his navy blue or black T-shirts, jeans and battered boots, with his glowering looks that intimidated even our teachers. He was often absent school and, in eighth grade, he was mysteriously suspended for twelve days.

  Why? We never knew. ) He was the first to have pimples. The angry-looking kind, the genuine article, glaring-red, hot-to-the-touch pimples that looked hard as berries. (We stared, mesmerized. We were envious. ) And there was John Reddy's shadowy beard, yes, a beard--bluish like twilight, blades, against his olive-dark skin. (A boy of eleven, twelve, thirteen-was it normal for him to shave? ) And John Reddy's genitalia--"If you were a kid that age, a boy, undressing for gym the way we had to, stripping for the shower, you'd be terrified to glance at John Reddy, there were these sprouting bristly-black hairs at his groin, and a sausagelike appendage bobbing between his legs, you'd be stricken with panic, thinking Am I supposed to have one of those, too? But where will it come from?" Behind John Reddy's back, guys joked of

  "JOHN READY!" and brainy Chet Halloren came up with

  "ATTILA THE HUNG!" and we laughed till tears leaked from our eyes, we were scared shitless.

  It was a gas, our parents cautioning us, "Stay away from that Heart boy"-"That Heart boy doesn't belong in school with you children"--"That boy's a bad influence." As if it was a matter of our choice, not his, the distance between us!

  One Saturday morning a few of us encountered John Reddy in an isolated spot in the Glen Creek ravine, actually not far from Main Street but hidden away from paths, not far from the rear of the old red mill, we were in ninth grade, fourteen years old, and Art Lutz poked us and whispered, "Look! "--it was John Reddy in rumpled-looking clothes, alone, squatting on a rock smoking like a grown man sucking at the cigarette and smoke in that brooding unsmiling This is goddam serious way of our dads if glimpsed unawares, and you never wanted to call attention to yourself if you came upon your dad in such a pose, such a posture, eyes staring inward. John Reddy was frowning down toward the water--Glen Creek a narrow stream flowing across a sequence of shale outcroppings in this part of the ravine, splashing waterfalls, measuring maybe twelve feet across, and there was John Reddy staring at the white-sparkling water, we were seeing he'd been injured, both eyes bruised, his mouth swollen, scratches on his face (a woman's fingernails.7--his mom's? --our crazy goaded us), and Ken Fischer who'd always been a good guy, one of these upright honest wide-eyed good citizens, though in middle age a shark of a "troubleshooter" (as they're called) for Motorola, Inc. , us by stepping forward, asking sort of shyly, "John Reddy? You O. K. ?" and John Reddy jerked around, and said, "Yeah, I'm O. K. ," and after a moment added, "Thanks." His voice wasn't a boy's voice but deep, resonant, mournful and his bruised eyes on us (damp? had John Reddy been crying? ) beat us away, we retreated hastily, got out of earshot and began run celling to one another excitedly, "John Reddy was in a fight! A fight!

  the shit kicked out of him, in a hght!" A year or two later in high school, to be precise only a week or so before the shooting death of Melvin Riggs, Jr. , at the Heart residence, spoke of seeing John Reddy at his locker in the junior corridor, one of those mornings we'd see John Reddy in desperate haste scrawling homework on a sheet of paper torn from a notebook and pressed impracticably against the wall, sometimes against the uneven surface of lockers, that look fury, bafflement, and resignation in his face, and deep shadows beneath his eyes as if he hadn't slept all night, and his jaws unshaven as an adult, desperate man's, and his clothes rumpled, smelly (Verrie Myers who'd memorized John Reddy's entire wardrobe, and was capable of distinguishing between T-shirts of varying gradations of faded navy blue, black, yellowed white, and frayed and holey jeans, even socks, said it was "self-evident, and sad,that John Reddy frequently didn't undress for bed, probably didn't go to bed or sleep at all some nights, for he'd wear the same clothing two days in a row, or even more, an inimitable and unmistakable John Reddy-odor wafting in the girls would sniff after like alert, aroused cats)--that morning, Bo told us, there was a gouged-looking cut on John Reddy's left cheek, not a scratch but like something made with a knife, still bleeding a little, and weird it was, and scary, John Reddy seemed oblivious of the cut, geometrical figures without the aid of a compass or triangle so that his homework looked like something done by a five-year-old. Bo told us, whining, "I figure I'm a friend of John's from the team, right?

  There'd been a few times when I scored and John would tap me on the shoulder to me so't figure it's O. K. , it's cool, to say, Jesus, John!

  happened to your face? But John Reddy sort of turns to me like he didn't know I was there, he wies at the blood like he didn't know what it is, then sort of blushes, adid shrugs, like to say, Shit, no big deal, what business is it of yours? And goes back to his homework that I can see, over his shoulder, is gonna be D+ if he's lucky." Lots of us offered to help John Reddy with his homework lots of times, but he always said no thanks. Somehow, he managed to pull through without failing any course. And without cheating, either--"Hell, Reddy's got too much pride for that. ") Because of basketball and so much attention, and girls (and grown women) looking after him with lovesick eyes, John Reddy began to some his junior year at WHS. He was like a young wild horse beginning to be, not tamed exact
ly, because John Reddy never did get tamed, less distrustful and edgy than he'd been. You could call out, "H'lo!" to him and possibly he'd acknowledge you though he wouldn't call out "H'lo" or "Hi" in turn, that wasn't his style and we respected it. If you had the nerve and your legs were long enough you could maybe fall into stride with him in a school corridor, or on the stairs, or pushing out through the rear doors John Reddy only left school by the rear, where his Caddie was parked) and you could talk to him earnestly, breathlessly, maybe he'd reply and maybe he wouldn't but it was O. K. , it was cool. And you're smiling thinking Hey I'm walking with John Reddy Heart. Look at me! Monday after a Friday night basketball game, for instance after the Willowsville Wolverines beat the West Seneca

  47-25, when John Reddy scored a fantastic record-breaking thirty-one points of which nine were foul shots, you could walk with him hurrying to pace with his long-legged stride and breathlessly recount every move he'd made, every basket, every rebound, every foul shot, and even if John Reddy didn't mumble more than "yeah" and "right" and

  "O. K. , man" it a fully satisfying exchange. You would feel the glow of it for hours, days.

  Twenty, twenty-five, and at last thirty years after it happened, in a tension-filled playoff game with our rivals Amherst for the Erie County high school championship, which we'd win 58-49, Dwayne Hewson, another WHS jock, would tell of how he'd been fouled by an Amherst guard, got tangled in feet and fell and broke his ankle and had to be helped from the court, near bawling witlllpain and dismay, and John Reddy grabbed him around waist with his muscled arm slick with sweat and walked him from the cursing and livid with anger as if Dwayne's bad luck and misery-were his own, and at the sideline he'd squeezed Dwayne's hand like you wouldn't expect another guy to do and looked Dwayne in the eye--"Like John was saying to me, with all these other people screaming, he knew what I was feeling, how fucking shitty it was, I was out of the game, I was gonna have a lot of pain but I'd have to accept it, that's how things are."

  this, John Reddy communicated without a word. Then turned, and was back in game, to score the foul shot in Dwayne's place.

  If there were girls John Reddy confided in, they kept his secrets.

  If there were guys--Orrie Buhr, Clyde Meunzer, Dino Calvo, Jake Gervasio and others he'd hang out with back of school, talking cars, smoking, their laughter harsh and to our sensitive ears (we regarded these vocational arts majors from a distance, contemptuous of them as they were of us) derisive-John Reddy confided in, they too kept his secrets.

  At class reunions Trish Elders would recount for us the story of how, driving the salmon-colored Cadillac he'd inherited from his who'd moved on to a new silver-gray Mercedes, rumored to be a gift from one of her business associate friends--"Probably poor Herman"), John Reddy, at that time two years ahead of us in school, gave her a ride to the library, in pelting rain, and Trish, who'd sneered at other girls' crushes on John Reddy (whom she'd considered just a jock greaser and not especially goodlooking) fell powerfully and irrevocably under his spell during six-minute ride. Her heart began to pound so violently, the front seat of car vibrated and she was in terror that John Reddy would be aware of it, there was a roaring in her ears like Niagara Falls so that she could barely hear her own bright nervous idiot chatter--"Who did I sound like? Exactly like my mother, on one of her mood elevator' pills." John Reddy drove in silence.

  at ease he was, in his lanky muscular body, in a grungy black T-shirt missing both sleeves and oil-stained jeans and his usual biker boots, the wristwatch that resembled a Swiss Army watch on his left arm, the face terned inward.

  Breathless, clutching at her 18 x 24-inch sketch pad she'd wrapped in plastic to protect from the rain, Trish was overcome by emotion, embarrassment, self-consciousness, excitement. I am in tohn Reddy Heart's car. Alone with John Reddy in his car. Her eyes misted over. She saw, by moisture, the comically oversized dice, fuzzy, fleshy pink pronounced black dots, swinging from the rearview mirror. A Buffalo rock station beat out sound so loud you couldn't hear what was being played. Scattered on the front seat of the car, and on the floor, and in the backseat as well, were notes, some with bold lipstick-kisses on them, some with flashy red-inked hearts--love notes left in John Reddy's Cadillac by voracious senior girls.

  Trish forced herself to stare straight ahead, blindly, at the windshield streaming rain. I am in John Reddy Heart's car. The very place my parents would forbid me to be. If they knew. But they don't. No one knows. I, Trish Elders, am alone with John Reddy Heart in his car. She would marry young, babies, and divorce in heartbreak (though as for most of us, divorce would be her decision) and remarry, all along pursuing the elusive mirage of art into middle age and beyond, somehow knowing, that day in John Reddy's salmon-ored Caddie with the ridiculous swinging dice, littered notes, that her subject was seated just a few inches away--"But just the feeling of John Reddy. It would be futile to try to draw or paint him." She was thinking, gloating, that never had any other girl of the ridden in this car. Never had Trish's closest dearest friend, Verrie Myers, who confessed of dreaming of such rides with John Reddy, ridden in car. Wait till I tell Verrie, Verrie will die. Already Trish was rehearsing how she would tell her story, she'd been caught in the rain without an umbrella, carrying the awkward-sized sketch pad, her purse and books, about to cry she'd been so vexed stumbling along the sidewalk at the intersection of Main and Lane and a car braked to a stop at the curb and a voice, deep, gravelly, not familiar, called out, "Climb in," as if it was the most natural thing in the world and since this was the Village of Willowsville at a time of such innocence in our history that a girl like Trish Elders might unhesitatingly, trustingly climb into any car whose driver was thoughtful enough to offer her a ride in the rain, Trish climbed in. And saw the driver was John Reddy Heart.

  And so Trish Elders fell in love. Though John Reddy scarcely spoke her, or glanced at her. Trish was one of the popular girls in her class, a JV cheerleader, secretary of Hi-Y, accustomed to attention from boys and even, though it was unwanted, unsought, from men, but John Reddy didn't perceive her in such a way at all--"It was like he'd have given anyone, possibly even a dog, a ride in such rain. As a favor. Just to be nice."

  roaring in Trish's ears swelled. She couldn't wait to be alone in her room, her parents' half-timbered English Tudor house on Mill Race Lane, to try to sketch, with shaky fingers, the phantom John Reddy Heart, not yet knowing such an effort was doomed to failure, thinking I am alone with tohn Reddy Heart, a fact that means nothing to him though my life will never be the same again.

  And already the ride was over. Six swift minutes. It would've still, except for slow-moving Willowsville traffic. John Reddy didn't seem to know the exact location of the public library so Trish had to point it out to him, and gallantly he swung the Caddie into the library's drive so that Trish could get out beneath an overhang and run to the door. "T-thank you," Trish stammered, unable to call him by name, though in dreamy recapitulations of this scene she would murmur Thank you, tohn Reddy! and John Reddy the steering wheel said, smiling, "O. K. , honey. Shut the door hard, huh?" Trish shut the car door as hard as she could and stumbled blindly into the library, nearly fainting. It was fortunate that no one saw her--one of the librarians, or a friend of her mother's. For John Reddy had called her "honey"!

  "It wasn't until years afterward that I realized," Trish said, sighing, "--John Reddy obviously hadn't known my name." For that was the hurtful, humiliating fact. The knowledge we had to accept, that these intimate exchanges with John Reddy Heart were intimate on one side only--ours.

  For next time you encountered John Reddy, even if it was that same day, he'd be likely to ignore you, just not-see you. If, say, you out cheerfully, "Hi, John, how's it going?" he'd be likely not to hear.

  As Dwayne Hewson summed it up years later, in a tone unusually thoughtful for Dwayne, and not at all tinged with irony, "It wasn't out of cruelty or meanness that John Reddy ignored us. Nor even out of distraction or forgetfulness or because he smoked dope w
ith his buddies or exhaustion--you know, John Reddy never got enough sleep. But just because in some essential way, in his innermost world, the rest of us didn't exist."

  So we were never to know. So many things. Even after both John Reddy's trials. Because we couldn't ask John Reddy and there was no one else.

  For instance, this was a question that vexed our mothers more than it did us, why was Dahlia Heart always known as

  "Mrs.. Heart"? With a oldfashioned formality the woman persisted in signing her name Mrs..

  Heart. When you met her, she shook hands and, smiling emphatically, introduced herself as

  "Mrs.. Dahlia Heart." Yet she introduced her

  "Aaron Leander Heart"--evidently

  "Heart" was her maiden name?

  Unless, as Roger Zwaart's dad said, tongue-in-cheek, she'd married a man Heart in addition to having been born Heart. We puzzled over such possibilities. We were led to wonder if Dahlia Heart had ever been married at all.

  It was not an era in which women who were mothers were without designated as "fathers." It was not an era in which women who were husbands were comfortably designated as "mothers." We didn't want think that John Reddy was illegitimate. Yet it was an era in which, if you lacked a legal father, and your mom lacked a visible husband, it might well be murmured of you that you were illegitimate.