Authors: Lurlene McDaniel
The bookcases were heavy with scrapbooks. Terri followed my line of vision. “I take the books apart and reconfigure them all the time. I thought it would make me sad, but it doesn’t. It comforts me to rearrange the photos.” Terri stroked the bindings of the upright books. “I have Christmas ones, her school days, vacation times. And just when I think I’ve finished, I come up with another idea, so I tear books apart and build new ones.”
A lump clogged my throat. I cleared it out. “You said you had something for me …?”
Terri snapped out of her reverie. “Of course.” She went to a large built-in desk strewn with ribbons and pieces of material and opened the top drawer. She removed a small box and handed it to me. “I found it when I was cleaning out her closet. She’d hidden it behind her sweaters.”
I took the blue box tied with a white bow. “How do you know it’s for me?”
“I peeked.” Terri smiled. “I’m sure it was for your birthday last year.”
I stared at the box.
TIFFANY & CO
. was written on the lid. Elowyn’s favorite store. I remembered the times we’d gone in the store at Phipps Plaza and walked
around gawking at the jewelry in gleaming glass cases. China was on the third floor and Elowyn had pointed out the crystal, china, and silver patterns she was going to request when she got married. “A little soon, don’t you think?” I’d teased.
“Never too early to figure out what you like,” she’d said.
“Maybe your tastes will change.”
“Unlikely. This looks so European and fancy. I love it.”
“What if your fiancé doesn’t like it?”
She flashed a dreamy smile. “Like that will happen. He’ll want me to be happy. And beautiful china will make me happy. We’ll have parties and friends over and I’ll light candles and our table will be gorgeous.”
I understand why dishes and silverware meant so much to her. The china and silver and beautiful crystal helped her dream of happily ever after and of her future, things I hadn’t thought too much about because Mom and I lived day to day with what we had—secondhand dishes and garage-sale finds. Terri had wonderful taste and Elowyn had inherited it from her mother. Both their dreams were gone now, vanished on a rainy road on a February night.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Terri’s voice pulled me into the present.
I untied the ribbon and lifted the lid of the box.
Inside lay a silver bracelet with a single round disk.
BFF
was engraved on one side; my name was on the other. Tears blurred my sight.
“Let me help you put it on,” Terri said. She draped the bracelet around my wrist and secured the clasp with trembling fingers. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
I sniffed. “I’ll never take it off,” I said. “Never.”
Terri stroked my hair. Tears brimmed in her eyes. My heart felt like it was breaking in two. “I miss her so much,” she said.
I held on to her and we cried together for a long time.
When I showed Wyatt the bracelet, he rolled the silver disk in his fingers and asked, “What do you want to do on the one-year anniversary?”
Of her death
. He hadn’t said the words, but we both knew what he meant. The anniversary of the day all our lives had changed was about a week away. I thought for a minute and said, “Something French.”
The February day came, cool but clear. No rain. When school was out, we found a small art theater showing a French movie with subtitles. Midway through, Wyatt leaned over and said, “My head hurts trying to follow this. Can we split? She’d understand.”
I didn’t need encouragement.
Outside it was dark, though it was only seven o’clock. “Any ideas?” he asked.
“Food,” I said. “French food.”
“We can’t afford some fancy French restaurant.”
So we went to a specialty grocery store and cruised the aisles, picking up products and reading the ingredients on the backs of boxes and cans looking for food from Elowyn’s favorite country. “Brie,” I said, holding up a wedge of imported cheese. “All the way from France.”
He sniffed it, shrugged. I put it into the cart.
“French bread,” he said, tossing a baguette into our cart.
I thought it was cheating because the bread was baked in Atlanta, but I didn’t argue. “Snails?” I picked up a long, skinny, see-through container stacked with snail shells.
We stared at the orderly pile of escargot, said “Eww” in unison, and put the package back on the shelf.
“Grapes,” Wyatt said. “Aren’t they French?”
“Sure … pressed into wine.”
“Don’t have my fake ID card with me,” he said.
“Don’t even go there,” I told him, and pushed toward the bakery section.
“How about these éclairs for dessert?” He pointed to the cooler cases.
The chocolate-covered éclairs looked yummy. “Get two.”
“I can eat more.”
“Two,” I told the woman behind the counter firmly.
In his car, I asked, “Where to?”
“I’ll surprise you.” He put the car into gear and drove on to I-85 and merged into the fast-moving traffic.
“You do have a plan, don’t you?”
“I have a plan.”
He got off thirty minutes later at the airport exit, found a few back access roads off the main drag, turned off his headlights, and drove along bumpy ground. He stopped along a deserted stretch of land in front of a high fence with razor wire at the top. Curiosity ate me up. “Is this legal?”
“Come on.” He opened his door.
“Where?”
“Paris.”
He pulled me out of the car along with the bag of food and an old blanket. He threw the blanket on the hood of the car, helped me up. The hood was still warm from the engine and the heat felt good through my clothes. He threw part of the blanket over our shoulders and started pulling food from the bag. He said, “Dig in.”
We ate cheese and bread, grapes and grape juice,
and the éclairs. He toasted Elowyn and we touched our plastic cups together. Just then, a huge jet came rumbling along the asphalt on the far side of the fence. I clapped my hands over my ears and watched it gather speed, then lift screaming off the runway and soar over our heads. We were close enough to see its silver belly and retracting wheels. I crouched, feeling the rumble of its engines shake the ground.
“It won’t hit us,” he shouted above the roar.
I followed the plane with my eyes until I lost in the night sky. Goose bumps broke out on my skin. “Is it really going to Paris?” I asked.
“I’ll bet so,” he said.
I turned to him. “How do you know about this place?”
“We used to come here. El and me. She loved to hear the planes and watch them fly over us. She always said she’d go to Paris.”
“The cops never stopped you from sitting here?”
“Never been caught. Besides, this runway is way far away from the actual airport. No one comes out here.”
“Except for you and Elowyn.”
“Not for a long time.”
I poured us each some more grape juice and raised my glass to my friend, trying hard not to cry. “To Elowyn. We miss you.”
I looked skyward, watching the blips of lights of
ascending and descending planes, mechanical fireflies filled with life, coming and going, high above the earth on the way to somewhere, someplace. Beside me, Wyatt put down his cup, turned my shoulders toward him. I stared into his dark eyes. Without warning, he cupped my face in his hands and he kissed me.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” Mom said.
I paused, toyed with the strings of my hoodie, then went back to pacing. “When will they get here?”
“When they get here,” she said. “Now sit down. I can’t afford a new wood floor.”
I plopped down on the couch, pulling the strings of my hoodie in a seesaw motion. “What if they don’t like me? What if they’re sorry they gave me their daughter’s heart?”
“Now stop that,” Mom chided. “They’re going to like you and you’re going to like them. So am I.”
It had taken almost a month for the arrangements
to be made for us to meet my donor’s parents. Mom and I had been surprised to learn that they lived so close by, just miles away in Alpharetta. I had imagined that my heart had been flown in dramatically via helicopter like I’d seen in TV shows, but that wasn’t the case. We’d picked this Saturday in April to meet because the weatherman had predicted a glorious sunny day and I wanted the day to be perfect. Outside, tulips dotted our flower beds and dogwood and lilac bloomed. I smelled the lilac blossoms through the open window.
I heard the crunch of tires on our gravel driveway and shot off the sofa. My hands shook. “Do I look okay?”
“You’re beautiful,” Mom said.
I stole a peek out the window. A blue SUV was parked in front of the porch and a short, stocky man with dark hair was walking around to the passenger-side door. He opened it and took the hand of a tiny blond woman, helping her slide out of the vehicle. She held a purse and a tote bag. My heart thudded hard as the two of them walked up on the porch, these strangers and parents of my donor. The doorbell rang and I jumped. “Get it, Mom,” I said.
Mom opened the screen door and the man and woman stepped inside. My heart was thumping like crazy. Mom introduced herself.
The man said, “Matt and Terri Eden.”
The woman—Terri—stared at me. “And you?” she asked.
“Arabeth,” I managed through wooden lips. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might fly out of my chest.
Terri stepped in front of me. Tears filled her eyes. “You have my daughter’s heart.” A statement, not a question.
“I do.”
Suddenly Mom was at my side. “Why don’t we all sit down.” She guided me to the armchair across from the sofa. The Edens sat on the sofa. They couldn’t take their eyes off me. I felt like a gawky kid, all elbows and knobby knees and sweaty palms—not one bit the poised teenager I wanted to be.
“Tea?” Mom said. “Cookies?”
She picked up her teapot handpainted with violets and a plate of homemade sugar cookies from the coffee table. Only Mom would think to serve food on such an extraordinary occasion.
Matt took a cookie, but didn’t eat it.
“You’re pretty,” Terri said.
I blushed because she was being nice and trying so hard. “Thank you,” I mumbled. “And I mean thank you for … for donating your daughter’s heart to me.”
“Random selection,” Matt said, to remove them
from the process. “Donor services made the choice. Based on need.”
“I needed it,” I told him. “I was dying.”
Mom poured tea for all of us. The sun caught the delicate bone china and shone through it, turning the cups creamy white. “We can never express our gratitude,” she said. “Your daughter—tell me about her.”
“Her name was Elowyn,” Terri said.
“Pretty name,” I said.
Encouraged, Terri pulled a large book from her tote bag. “This is a scrapbook I put together when I found out we were going to meet you. It’s all about her life.”
I took it, smoothed my hands over the cover. It looked handmade. I opened it and saw an eight-by-ten photo of a lovely blue-eyed blond girl. The dates of her birth and death were lettered in calligraphy below the picture. The date of her death coincided with my rebirth. A lump clogged my throat. Until now, the girl had no form or substance. Now I saw how real she had been. I thumbed through the book briefly, then closed it. “Could I keep it awhile? I want time to really look through it.”
“Of course,” Terri said. “Keep it as long as you like. Our address and phone number are on the inside back cover. You can call us to ask any questions you want.”
“This is kind of you,” Mom said. “I have pictures of Arabeth growing up, but I didn’t think to pull them together. Silly of me. I know you might want to know about us.”
“Yes,” Terri said. “We would.”
I was younger than Elowyn, and a whole lot less glamorous-looking. She would have been a junior in high school. She was probably popular and had a ton of friends, all of whom missed her horribly. I grew sadder by the minute.
I deferred to Mom to give the Edens a brief history of our lives. Terri’s eyes widened when she heard about my father’s death, but she never took her eyes off me while Mom talked. I felt squirmy and my heart never stopped thumping. The whole thing was harder than I’d thought it would be, this talking about the dead between us. My daddy had come home in a casket and we hadn’t been allowed to see him—he was too messed up, we were told. The Edens at least got to see Elowyn’s face before closing the lid of her casket.
I was so grateful for the gift they had given me—Elowyn’s heart, strong and young. It sustained me, gave me life. I startled when I suddenly realized that Terri had asked me a question. “Yes?”
“I asked if you liked any sports? Have you ever played anything?”
“Not for a long time. I stopped running when I
was eight. I would get too out of breath because of my heart. Did Elowyn play?”
“Volleyball. She was good.”
“I watched the Olympic beach volleyball games. The American team was awesome.”
Terri’s eyes filled with tears. Matt leaned over, took her hand. “We should go now, honey,” he said. “Arabeth can call us after she’s gone through your scrapbook.”
He looked to me for confirmation. I nodded vigorously. “I will call,” I said. “I know I’ll want to know more.”
They stood and so did Mom and I.
“You can call anytime,” Mom said. “We’re so grateful.”
At the door, Terri turned to me. “May I touch you?”
I held out my hands and she grasped them like a lifeline. I wondered if she could feel my blood pulsing through my fingers, pumped by Elowyn’s heart. I said, “Thanks for the book. I’ll be real careful with it.”
We went out onto the porch. On the top step, Matt turned and smiled at me. “You’ll never know how much this means to us, meeting you.”
“Good for me too, Sugar Plum.”
The words fell out of my mouth so fast, I had no control over them. I clamped my hand over my lips, stepped back. Matt’s face went white.
“What did you say?” he asked.
I kept my hand tight across my mouth and shook my head.
“Do you know why you said that? How did you know?”
“Know what?” Terri asked. She was still behind me at the door with Mom, but Matt’s reaction made her hurry to his side. “What’s wrong?”