Issue 11.2 Spring 2016

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Show the Bones

 

Andrea Berns


My heart is hollow.


It has been hollow for as long as memory tells me.


I see other hearts. And they are not empty like mine is. I see hearts that are frozen solid like a fist-sized ice cube. I see hearts full of stones, of glass, of fire. And then I see hearts plump with a gentle glow of light so that it floats to the top of the ribcage like a balloon and radiates like the sun reflecting off a mirror. And the owners of these warm hearts stretch their mouths to show the bones in them and laugh and laugh. Warm hearts are common in children. It seems as they grow older, their hearts change. They freeze or burn or harden or shatter. And sometimes it makes their eyes rain. When I see these terrible things I can cope with the fact that there is nothing in my heart. But sometimes the warm hearts give some of their sunshine to the suffering hearts and then they’re able to smile and laugh again. And then I wish that I could show the bones in my own mouth and exhale that lovely emittance of sun breath, and so I ask them if I could just have a little bit of their sunshine? But they give me sidelong glances and whisper to each other because that’s how they treat someone with a hollow heart. And they walk away and I’m left alone and just as empty as I was before.


So I go to the doctor because maybe there’s something wrong with me. And he asks me like he asks everyone else, “How do you feel, son?” And I look at him and say, “Sir, if I knew how to feel, I wouldn’t be here right now.” And this concerns him and he suggests that I come back next week and the week after and the week after that. And I say thanks, Doc. Whatever you say, Doc. And I leave feeling no better than I did when I went in.


There is a man who walks around town with a heart full of grime and pus that has mixed together and crusted over as time passed and now resembles stringy black tar. I see him around sometimes, and he’s mean and gruff and always has rain in his eyes.


He’s sitting on the curb as I head home from Doc’s office. And he says, “Hey, you, come here.”


And I do.


“What’s your name?”


“Neil.”


“I’m Tristin. And I need a place to stay tonight. Give me a hand?”


Maybe if my heart weren’t so empty I would feel uneasiness and fear that a stranger wants to stay in my home. But I don’t feel that. I have never felt that. I don’t even know what it’s like to feel that. So I find myself leading him to my house, making him a cup of tea, and sitting with him in my living room.


And after an hour of mediocre conversation, Tristin says, “So, not to be blunt, but I’ve noticed your heart. The emptiness of it.”


“Yes.”


“How empty is it?”


“As empty as that teacup you hold in your hand.”


He glances into the cup as if unaware that he had drunk any of it and then sets it aside.


“I would love to not feel anything.” He leans forward. “To not feel this...agony...all day, day after day.”


“Being empty is not as ideal as you’re making it out to be.”


“You don’t think so?” he says with desperation. “To be too numb to feel the pain, to feel anything, to—” he stops abruptly. Then he holds up his hands. “No, you’re right. Being empty probably isn’t all that great. You’re not able to feel the highs and lows that come with...being.”


“No. I’m not.”


“Would you,” he says, “Like to feel something? Today?”


“Very much so.”


He gives a vague gesture to his grime-infested heart. “Because, see, I’ve been carrying this weight around, and I just need to rest for a day or two. Would you mind holding onto it just for a little while?”


Maybe if I had known what an infested heart felt like, I would have thought differently. I would have been more cautious. But I don’t know what it feels like. So I say, “Sure, Tristin. Whatever you need.”


And so he reaches into his heart and pulls out the oily black tar. And he puts it into mine. And I kind of stumble because it’s a lot heavier than I thought it was going to be. And with the heaviness comes an emotion so jarring, so terrible, that it handicaps me. I suddenly have a peculiar thought that I don’t know what I’m doing in this world. I suddenly don’t know why I woke up this morning or why I should wake up tomorrow or the day after or the day after that. I want to say something to him, that no, maybe I don’t want his tar and I change my mind please take this back but he says hold on, there’s more. And he digs deeper into his heart, pulling out the black stringy gunk like pumpkin guts and dumps it into my own empty pumpkin heart. And the weight grows heavier and so do the peculiar thoughts and I wonder how the gunk in my heart got into my brain and when Tristin takes it all back will he be able to take it back from my brain too?


He scrapes the bottom of his heart with his fingernails and I realize that he’s determined to remove every last ounce but does he realize that it’s removing every last ounce of me?


And now he is the empty heart and I’m the infested heart, and he inhales deeply and exhales while my heart is so heavy that I can barely take a breath.


“Ah. How light, how free!” he sighs. “I will sleep well tonight.”


And that night, he sleeps while I stare at my ceiling all night because the pain is so overwhelming that I can’t close my eyes.


#


When the sun shines golden through my window, I feel as an old grave. Getting out of bed sends a surge of dread through me. So I don’t.


#


It is not until the sun is on the opposite side of the horizon that I finally get up. A shadowy hand encapsulates my heart, and now my eyes are raining. And I wonder why anyone would want to feel anything when it brings such agony.


Tristin is sprawled on my living room couch, his foot propped on his knee, his arms behind his head. One of my records is playing softly in the background.


“I love this song,” he sighs. “I used to not be able to listen to it. Too painful. But now I can listen all I want and not feel a thing.”


I listen, a pretty melody that now haunts me so that I need to clutch my heart in case it swelled right out of my chest.


“Feeling okay there, Neil?” Tristin asks.


I say nothing. I just sit in the chair across from him, rub the rain from my eyes.


“I know it hurts. I remember. And I just want to say thank you for being a good sport.”


“Can you take it back?” is all I can say.


He takes a deep breath. “You know, I need you to hold onto it just for a little longer. You’ve only held onto it for a day. It’s been building in me for much, much longer. One more day. All right?”


I nod, feeling the dread of holding onto it for another day creep over me slowly as if the tar in my heart shaped into fingers, asphyxiating it.


One more day, I tell myself. Just one. Then I’ll be numb again.


#


Three days pass. I ask if he’s ready to take back the tar. He says he will be. He doesn’t specify when.


#


A week passes. Time for my appointment with Doc. I can’t make myself get out of the house. My heart is a bowling ball sunk into a hammock. Sagging.


#


Two weeks pass. I’m impaled by icicles.


#


A month passes. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to not be in agony.


#


Two months pass and I’m wondering if Tristin was ever planning on taking it back.


#


Three months pass. I can’t take it any longer.


#


Four months pass. I am dying.


#


Half a year. I’ve given up on speaking to Tristin. There is nothing more to say.


#


“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Doc says in wonder as he peers at my heart, more infested and crusted over than before. Some of it is overflowing with stringy black pus, staining my ribcage, and in my center, building a nest of black vines.


“Can you get rid of it?” My voice is gravelly and dry.


He says it’s built-up residue. A lot has dried into the walls of my heart. Even if he tries to remove it, some may be too dry to scrape out. I should have come as soon as it happened.


I leave his office with heavy steps.


As I trudge back home, I see a woman reading on a park bench. She has a heart that glows. A warm heart.


I make my way to her, pushing down the thought that warm hearts ignored me when mine was hollow; I can only imagine how she will react now.


She looks up when I shade her from the sun. Then, at the sight of my heart’s current state, she inhales a sharp intake of breath. “Oh—!” She puts a hand to her own heart as if I were going to take it away, then composes herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...well.”


“It’s all right. It’s gruesome. I know.”


She stares at my heart, and it’s like she’s staring at my naked body. “I never imagined that it could get that bad,” she murmurs.


“I can’t imagine anything else,” I admit.


Her expression melts like my words broke her. “What’s your name?” she asks.


“Neil. Yours?”


“Bea. Beatrice. So, can you tell me, Neil, what happened to your heart?”


I tell her. I tell Bea about my empty heart, and how Tristin like an excavator machine dropped hundreds of pounds of tar in my chest. And how I watched my life disappear as it piled higher and higher.


When I fall silent, she continues staring. “Why would you let him do that?”


“He’s a friend,” I say. “He needed to rest.”


“Some friend,” she scoffs. “He’s using you, you know that?"


“Yes.”


“So, why are you putting up with it?”


“Because he doesn’t want it back."


“But he’s ruining your life.”


“Maybe so,” I say. “But he’s living his.”


“Neil,” she says. “No, he’s not.”


“But he doesn’t feel the pain anymore.”


“That means nothing.” Her eyes are wide with concern. “You can’t substitute pain with numbness and call it happiness. He doesn’t know what happiness is.”


I open my mouth, but the words disappear before I can find them.


Her eyebrows crease as she watches me. “You don’t know what happiness is either, do you?”


I shake my head.


A muscle in her throat pulses, and for a second I thought she might cry. “Here,” she says, and with a slim hand, coaxes the warm sunlight out of her heart. She conjures it into my own heart, but the black grime swallows the light, leaving not even a gentle glow.


She does nothing but stare. The abyss in my center. She’s dumbstruck.


“Where is he?” she asks.


And then once again I lead a stranger to my home, and I open the door to find Tristin sprawled on the couch, reading a book from my shelf, and in his hand, an apple from my fridge.


“A traumatic betrayal,” he reflects, “a loss of innocence. Unrequited love. Death of an innocent. And I feel nothing.” He snaps the book closed and stands, first looking to me and then to my guest.


“Who is this?” he flatly asks.


“This is Bea,” I say. “Bea, this is Tristin.”


“Her heart,” Tristin says with neutral observation. “It’s illuminated.”


“Yes,” Bea says. “And it’s wonderful.”


“Hmm. Neil, is she staying for dinner? If you’re going to be too depressed to cook, I need to plan accordingly.” He gestures to the half-eaten apple in his hand.


“Tristin, Bea wants to do us a favor,” I say.


“Well, is she making dinner?”


“Not quite.” Bea smiles. “Tristin, how would you like to feel happiness? Genuine happiness?”


“Happiness?” Tristin repeats, his lips shaping the consonants and vowels as if tasting the word. “I’m not exactly sure what you mean.”


“Bea wants to give you some of her glow,” I say in the only way I genuinely understand it. “It’s called happiness.”


Tristin stares blankly. “Will it...” he whispers. “Will it hurt me?”


I open my mouth to answer, but then realize that I’m not exactly sure. I look to Bea.


Her mouth stretches to show the bones in it like I’ve only seen people with warm hearts do. “No. It will do anything except that.”


“But...what’s it like?”


Bea’s eyes glaze over as she ponders. “Let’s see. What does happiness feel like. It’s like...carrying a warm orb in your chest everywhere you go.”


Tristin’s eyebrows crease, and I know that he can’t imagine it, because I can’t either.


“It’s like coming home from the cold rain and putting on soft pajamas still warm from the dryer,” Bea revises helpfully.


“I don’t put my clothes in a dryer,” Tristin says. “What if it explodes?”


“Well, then, it’s like taking a bite of a homemade chocolate chip cookie fresh from the oven.”


“I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. Cavities.”


“You really have no idea what any of this feels like?” Bea is in awe. She looks at me. “Either of you?”


I don’t meet her eyes. I’m too ashamed to answer.


“Well, what if you started using a dryer?” she suggested. “The fear of it exploding is absurd. And what if you indulged in a piece of dessert? One bite of a cookie isn’t going to give you—”


“You see, that’s the thing about you lot,” Tristin says, his voice suddenly sharp. “You and your silly glow. You have no idea what it’s like to be in relentless agony. You just assume that they’re not trying hard enough. That anyone can be like you if they just change their thought process or their manner of living. Just look at Neil!” he gestures to me, and I avert my eyes. “His heart is so fucked up that it’s growing tentacles. Do you think a fucking cookie is going to make it just disappear?”


The silence is deafening. Bea and Tristin’s eyes are locked in each other’s.


“He’s right,” I murmur to Bea, though it hurts to admit. “You don’t know what it feels like.”


She holds her gaze on me, though I refuse to look at her. “Neil,” she says, “Give all the emotion you have to me.”


“What? No,” I say, startled. “Bea, it’ll destroy every drop of you.”


“Just trust me.”


I look to Tristin for encouragement. He shows indifference. And then I reach into my heart and pull the grime from the walls of my ribcage like black weeds from the damp earth. And I dig my fingernails into the bottom, making sure I have every last bit of it until I’m a pumpkin scraped clean once again. And then I dispense it all into Bea’s glowing heart.


But it doesn’t destroy it like I thought it would. Instead, the warm glow swallows the grime right up. Not a trace of it is left, and the glow grows even stronger and brighter to the extent that it’s nearly blinding. She gives me a small smile of encouragement as I stare dumbfounded, both by the strength of her heart and by the relief of the numbness once again in mine.


Her heart glowing radiantly, she marches up to Tristin and looks directly in his eyes.


“I’m offering to help you,” she says firmly. “I may not know what the agony of that emotion feels like. But I’m offering to give you a taste of what mine does. If you’ll let me.”


Tristin stares with indifference. “Why would I want to be ignorant like you?”


“Happiness isn’t ignorance,” Bea says. “Happiness is the ability to see all the shit in your life and still think it’s worth it to wake up every morning just to see a glimpse of good.”


There is silence again as this thought marinates. Then Tristin nods. “All right. Do what you need to do.”


Bea puts a hand on her heart. Then, once again, she conjures a small orb of light and transfers it into Tristin’s empty heart.


At first, his eyes glaze over, immersing himself into the full experience of the peculiar emotion. And then his face melts into an expression I had never seen of him before. A look of awe and wonder and curiosity and life. “Oh, this...yes, this is something,” he whispers.


“What?” I whisper back. “What is it?”


He shakes his head, unable to put it into words. “I can’t quite place it. But it’s...powerful. It’s...oh.” And then he does something that catches me off guard. He buries his face in his hands and cries.


“Take it back,” I say to Bea, frightened by Tristin’s reaction to this strange and powerful emotion. “It’s hurting him. Get it out of—”


“No, no,” Tristin sobs, removing a hand from his face to signal me to stop. “This is...good. Yes, it’s very good. Oh.” He passes a hand over his face, overcome with the emotion. “Oh, this is the most beautiful thing.”


I wait. But Tristin says nothing more.


“What does it feel like?” I ask, hoping to, at last, receive the answer I’ve been searching for.


Through his tears, Tristin smiles for, quite possibly, the first time in his life. “Infinity.”


…


It is dusk when Bea departs. She and Tristin have become close friends. She has become my close friend too. I just wish I could feel the goodness of it the same way they do.


Bea and I are alone on the lawn outside my front door. Tristin is inside. I thank Bea once again for all she has done.


“It’s my pleasure.” She smiles with an unworldly radiance. Then her smile grows serious. “Neil, after all this...how are you feeling?”


I want so much to tell her. I want to ask her if she could do the same for me that she has done for Tristin. I, too, want to experience this peculiar infinity. But I fear that this is very selfish. And that it asks too much of her.


“I just witnessed the wonder of a man experiencing happiness for the first time,” I say instead. “I couldn’t be better.”


She stares purposefully into my eyes. “So, there is nothing else I can do for you?”


Let me feel happiness.


“No,” I say. “There isn’t.”


She waits, almost as if she’s expecting something, but I don’t say anything more. “You’re a good man, Neil,” she says. “Let’s not have this be the last time we see each other. Don’t be a stranger.”


“Never,” I agree.


She gives me a faint smile, tells me good night, Neil, and walks away. Before she gets too far, she turns and says, “I think you should check up on Tristin. See if he’s still doing well.” And then she leaves, until I see nothing but the small glow of her heart radiating in the darkness in the distance.


I return to the house to see that Tristin is waiting for me, suitcase at his side.


“What are you doing?” I ask, startled.


“Heading out,” he says in reply. “I believe I’ve well overstayed my welcome. And I’m ready now, you know. To get back on my feet. Get a job. See the world. And I’d like to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Your hospitality, your food, your kindness.”


“Don’t worry about that,” I say. “Thanks for being here. I’ve enjoyed having you.”


“Neil, don’t be absurd,” he scoffs lightheartedly. “I’ve used you, burdened you, and abused you. I am the root of all your suffering, yet you thank me. What the hell is wrong with you?” But he’s laughing, which contents me.


“It’s nice to see you so happy,” I say truthfully.


“And that,” he says, “is why I thank you. I wouldn’t have this if it weren’t for you. For having a hollow heart, Neil,” he says, “Your heart is of the truest gold. I mean that. Take care, sport.” And he brushes past me and out my front door, and halfway onto the lawn he turns back and says, “Oh, by the way. Bea wanted to make sure I gave you this. Here.” And he reaches into his glowing heart, pulls out a bulb of light, and releases it into my own heart. A jolt of electricity knocks my bones against each other, shocking me to the core. And my heart glows like a kindled flame, warming my insides like carrying an orb of sunshine within me.


“To match your inner heart of gold,” Tristin says. And he gives me a finger salute and walks into the night.


And there it is. The overwhelming sensation of that peculiar emotion. And yes, it is beautiful. And my mouth stretches wide to show the bones in it, and I close my eyes and let the sunshine flow through my breath.


Infinity.

 

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