THE HEART OF LIFE
On New Year’s Day, when Will picked me up for his hockey tournament, the sun was high and shining against the snow. Aside from the time we’d driven out to the farm, I’d only ever been in his truck at night, and the light that brightened the cab this afternoon seemed almost strange. Colors were sharp, and suddenly I worried how I looked, so exposed in the glare. I pulled the seat belt across my body and turned to him. “It’s good to see you,” I said, and smiled, happy we were back in familiar territory.
But he seemed nervous and fidgety, in a black wool coat with the collar high around his neck as if he wanted to hide. “You, too,” he said.
“Are you ready for this game or what?”
“Sure. Um.” He wouldn’t look at me. “My mother is going to invite you to dinner tonight,” he said, and abruptly shifted into first, stepping on the gas. The truck lurched forward as we headed out of my neighborhood.
I waited for him to elaborate, the cab feeling smaller than usual with the two of us so close together yet unsure how to act. “And?”
“I wanted to give you a heads-up, that’s all,” he said.
House after house went by, Santa Claus statues, giant candy canes, and other assorted Christmas decorations still scattered across lawns. A few people were outside taking down lights from trees and bushes and dismantling their displays. “You only give someone a heads-up if you think there will be a problem, so when your mother asks, what do you want my answer to be?”
“Whatever you want,” he said, and pulled onto the highway.
“Will, come on.” I needed more direction. “Seriously, yes or no?”
We merged onto the interstate and picked up speed, passing two exits before he responded. “Yes. Tell her yes and come to dinner,” he said, but still refused to look at me.
The heat was making me feel stifled and prickly all over so I shut the vent on my side and loosened my scarf. “Okay, so it’s settled,” I said. “I’ll go to your house.”
He nodded, his face front, staring at the road.
Neither of us spoke the rest of the ride and I hoped it was simply because we had an entire night ahead of us and for once could have our conversation elsewhere. When we arrived at the rink and I got out into the cold, snowy air, I couldn’t help but wonder where elsewhere might take us.
Lewis won both of their games easily and by early evening Will and I were at his house. He went upstairs to change and his
younger sisters, Emily and Jennifer, claimed one hand each and led me into the family room toward the tall sparkling tree by the windows, taking it upon themselves to entertain me. There was a doll-strewn place on the floor next to it, and the two girls began proudly showing off their spoils from Christmas.
“This is the Barbie Santa brought me,” Emily explained.
Before I could respond, Jennifer was shoving Emily aside to show me her Barbie, which she assured me was better than her sister’s. “Don’t let Emily fool you. She doesn’t believe in Santa anymore,” she said, plopping down on my other side after Emily presented me with yet another doll courtesy of Santa. “In fact, she’s known that for, like, three years, but she keeps pretending because she’s afraid she won’t get presents anymore if she admits she knows the truth.” Jennifer crossed her arms, confident that she’d had the final word.
“That’s not true. Dad said—”
“It doesn’t matter anymore what Dad said—” Jennifer’s mouth mimicked Emily’s, and with the mention of their father suddenly we were in tricky territory.
“Mom!” Emily yelled.
“Rose,” Mrs. Doniger appeared in the doorway. “Why don’t you come spend some time with me in the kitchen?”
“Sure,” I said, grateful to extricate myself from what looked to be a painful fight brewing between the sisters. Mrs. Doniger crouched down next to them and began to whisper, her voice too low for me to overhear what advice she was giving her daughters on such a touchy subject. This gave me a chance to peruse the
shelves of family photos in the foyer near the kitchen. Unlike at our house, there was no dust clinging to the portraits. A number of them were of Will’s mom, dad, and the kids from year to year, a few were old wedding pictures; there were photographs of Emily and Jennifer—separate ones—posed in various dance costumes, some of Will on the ice, and Will and his dad in a hockey rink, Will still in uniform, his mask off so you could see his face. I was interested to see how much Will looked like his father and that he was smiling in all of them. I studied that smile for a while—I’d never seen this version. It was big and broad and almost cocky, revealing genuine happiness and ease, the kind that’s only possible when you’ve never known heartache or loss. I remembered what it was like to smile like that, and I wondered if Will noticed there was a difference between his before and after smiles.
“Rose, can I get you something to drink?” Mrs. Doniger asked, brushing by me into the kitchen. She opened the fridge, studying the contents inside the door. “We have just about anything you might want: water, juice, seltzer, soda—”
“Just soda, thanks.”
She pulled a bottle from the shelf and reached for a glass from the cabinet. “Sorry about that with the girls. Their father’s death is tied up in the holidays—it’s so complicated. Emily has been hanging on to her belief in Santa ever since. Jennifer has done the opposite of Emily, of course, and wishes Christmas didn’t exist at all.” She sighed, handing me the glass, the soda
fizzing as tiny bubbles rose to the top and burst. “How was your Christmas?”
“As good as it could be, I guess,” I said, and could tell from the look in Mrs. Doniger’s eyes that she understood. “It’s been nice to have my brother home from college, and my grandmother has been staying with us since Thanksgiving, though she can get pretty difficult.” I laughed and took a sip of my Coke. “To be honest, the weirdest part was getting through New Year’s Eve. We all stayed home and went to bed early, like maybe we could just ignore it. But waking up this morning, I realized I can finally say that my mom died
last
year. Somehow it helps. It makes it feel further away.” I gulped down more soda, surprised that I would reveal so much to her.
“I remember that very same moment,” she said. “It’s strange, isn’t it? How a change of one day on the calendar can make such a difference in how we feel.”
I nodded. “The seven-month anniversary is coming up on January fourth. Seven months
sounds
like a long time and I think it should
feel
like a long time, but it might as well be yesterday.”
“Don’t push yourself. Seven months is barely a blink, take my word for it.” Mrs. Doniger opened and shut drawers, taking out cooking utensils. “It must have been hard to share your mom with so many people in our town. I bet everyone has some special memory of her they want to tell you about.”
“Yes. It felt as though the entire world showed up at her
wake. I almost don’t even remember that day.” An image of the long, endless line snaking out the door at the funeral home flashed through my mind. “Let’s change the subject. I’m sorry to bring up this stuff. It’s so depressing—”
“Rose,” she interrupted. “Don’t worry. It’s fine. It’s more than fine actually. You need to talk about it. It’s part of how you move through the grief.”
“Thanks. Really. I appreciate it,” I said. She stirred a pot on the stove and set a cutting board onto the counter. “Can I help?”
“That’s all right, I’ve got everything under control. You relax. Besides, I’m sure my son will come down soon to steal you away until dinner’s ready.” She glanced behind me into the hall. “Speaking of Will.”
“Hey,” he said, and I turned around.
“Hey.”
“Why don’t you kids go upstairs—”
“Kids?” Will interrupted. “Mom, seriously?” he protested.
“Sorry, sweetie.” She smiled and shrugged. “Why don’t you and Rose go upstairs since Jennifer and Emily will drive you crazy if you stay down here. I’ll yell when it’s time for dinner.”
“Okay,” he said, and started back up to the second floor. “Are you coming?” he asked, turning to me.
“Ah, sure I am,” I said, following him upstairs, my hand gripping the banister as if at any moment I might lose my balance. “It kind of smells like a locker room in here,” Will warned when we reached the door to his room.
“Nah,” I said once I was inside. I was used to Jim’s room, which was filled with his football stuff. No matter how much you scrubbed everything it still had the odor of sweat. But Will’s smelled like his soap, a scent I’d grown to like.
“It’s the hockey gear,” he explained, gesturing to his bag in the corner.
“Don’t worry about it.”
He looked at me with skepticism.
“Hey, if you were so worried about your room, then why’d you invite me up here?” He shrugged but didn’t say anything else, so I took this as an invitation to look around and see if anything would give me further insight into what made Will,
Will
. The walls were painted blue and there were a few sports posters scattered across them. A calendar with baby animals hung in a corner, almost hidden from view, and the second my eyes landed on it, he quickly explained. “My sisters.”
“I never would have guessed,” I said, laughing.
The top of his dresser was packed with hockey trophies, and the plaque inscriptions said things like
Most Valuable Player, Youth Hockey Association
and
Most Goals Scored, Division A, Lewis Junior Hockey
, and on the biggest one,
All State Team, Will Doniger
, for the season when he was a freshman at Lewis. A hook next to the dresser was heavy with medals and looked as though the slightest nudge would send them crashing to the floor. “Pretty impressive,” I said, after discovering yet another MVP award, the honor etched into a medal hanging from thick blue and white ribbon.
“Not really,” he said.
The light in the room made it difficult to tell if Will was actually blushing. “You can’t really expect to be modest with all this on display.”
He put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t normally have guests.”
“Oh,” I said. For a moment I let this sink in, that Will was giving me access to a part of himself he didn’t usually share. Not sure what else to do, I returned to studying the trophies and medals, and noticed they all stopped after Will’s first year of high school. “So what happened?” I asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you stop playing? I heard you were injured.”
“Yeah. I was,” he said, running a hand through his hair.
“Well, what did you do? Get in a fight? Knock your head too hard into the boards and get a concussion?”
“No, nothing that simple.”
“A concussion is simple?”
“Well, the truth is complicated.”
“I’ve got time,” I said, sitting down on the bed. I felt the crystal heart bounce against my chest, underneath my shirt. I’d worn it every day since Christmas. “So?”
“The short answer is, it was bad enough that I stopped playing for a long time.”
“And the long answer?”
Will stood by the window and stared outside. The Donigers’
holiday lights were on, the trees outside his room woven throughout with tiny white twinkling strands. I waited for him to say something more but he didn’t.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said.
“I know.” After a while he came over and sat down next to me, leaving about a foot of space between us, and I was suddenly aware that we were hanging out
on his bed
. I had never been near a boy’s bed that wasn’t Chris’s or my brother’s. Will took a long breath before he started to speak. “I guess you could say my mind was injured and that’s why I didn’t play.”
This was not what I had expected. “What do you mean?”
He fell back against the bed and covered his eyes, his legs dangling off the sides. “The reason I stopped playing hockey was because of my dad—I was too sad.” He crossed his arms and stared up at the ceiling. “I couldn’t handle being on the ice anymore.”
This was a reaction I understood. I waited for him to go on.
“Before my father got sick he never missed a game. He was always telling me I was good enough to go pro someday, and how playing varsity at Lewis was like a stepping-stone to a college scholarship and then the NHL. He believed in me like nobody else ever has.” Will stopped and the only sound left in the room was from our breathing. “It never occurred to me that my father wouldn’t get better, that the last game he’d gone to of mine was his last ever. And then he got sicker and sicker and then—” Will stopped. “And then he died.”
Silence gathered around us again, like the wind swirling the cold air. Slowly, I lay back against the bed, until Will and I were side by side. “So that game in November, was that the first time you’d played since, you know, your dad?”
“No. I tried once before at the beginning of sophomore year.”
“What happened?”
“I got kicked off the ice and ejected from the game for fighting within two minutes of the ref dropping the puck. I had my gloves off and the guy’s jersey pulled halfway over his head and everything.”