0804177996 by Julia Heaberlin

Author:Julia Heaberlin [Heaberlin, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405921299
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2015-08-12T23:00:00+00:00

Tessie, 1995

The doctor is telling me a story about when he was twelve.

I’m sure there’s going to be a point, but I wish he’d get to it. Lately, he’s been a little all over the place.

I’m annoyed by that smudge on his glasses, by Lydia flushing all of my Benadryl down the toilet last night. I’m sorry, she said, but it seemed to be about much more than swirling away those pink pills. Something is going on with Lydia. For the last two weeks, she’s been late instead of exactly on time and sometimes cancels on me altogether. She makes vague excuses, her cheeks flush and she rakes her teeth across the pink lip gloss on her bottom lip. She is a terrible liar. Eventually, Lydia will tell me what is wrong, so I don’t bug her.

Of course, two sentences into the doctor’s tale, I’m wondering if he’s lying. He says he was a chubby boy and yet he’s got all that wiry muscle under the shirt with the collar that stands like a pinned white butterfly. I bumped up against his arm once. It was immovable, concrete, a runner’s leg extending from his shoulder.

“I’d come home every day after school to an empty house,” he is saying.

I’m suddenly scared for the boy in an empty house even though he’s sitting across from me alive and well with no visible scars.

“Tessie, do you want me to continue? Is this story bothering you?”

“Um, no. Go ahead.”

“In the winter, the house was always dark and cold. So the first thing I did after I unlocked the door, before I put down my books or took off my coat, was walk to the thermostat and turn up the heat. To this day, the thump of the furnace, the smell of heat coming on … is the smell of loneliness. Tessie, are you listening?”

“Yes. I’m just trying to figure out your lesson here. I thought you were about to tell me something terrible happened to you.” I’m disappointed. Relieved. Vaguely intrigued.

It occurs to me that I love all of the smells associated with heat. Fireplace smoke drifting my way on a chilly night run, barbecue coals declaring it Saturday afternoon. Sizzling pork chop grease, Banana Boat sunscreen, hot towels tumbled in our old Kenmore dryer. Especially after Mama died, I couldn’t get hot enough. I flipped my electric blanket on high so much that it streaked a black scorch mark on the blue fabric and Daddy took it away. I still stretch out by the heating vent in the floor of Mama’s walk-in closet and read. I’m not sure I would have survived the last year if I couldn’t slam the screen door behind me, sprawl on the back porch lounger, and let the brutal sun fry every black thought to ashes.

“Smell is the sense that is most instantly connected with memory. Do you know anything about Marcel Proust?”

“Am I failing this test if I say no?” I can’t wait to tell Lydia that the doctor is pulling a depressed French philosopher with a handlebar mustache out of his bag.

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