The Bleeding Heart Read Free Page A

knew. Something terribly female about that. But men did it too, didn’t they? She’d read some survey recently: men in huge numbers watch the soaps. But did they cry? The surveyor hadn’t asked that.
    She had tears even for success. Sydney had called her the other night all the way from New Hampshire, had paid for it herself. (Of course, you can’t call transatlantic collect.) Crying, saying Mommy the way she had when she was a little girl. Devastated by her latest affair: can I come to England and stay with you for a little while? Sydney’s latest lover had done so-and-so, what was she to think about that? What was she to think about herself, why did she drown with every hurt, every failure? It must be that she lacked character. Why did life hurt so much? Was there something wrong with her? There must be. Life wasn’t supposed to hurt so much. She must be weak, or selfish, or insane.
    I took her pain and shaped it, I turned it into an obstacle course, a clear run with victory at its end. I listened, and slowly, as she spoke, I kneaded her words in my hands, giving them form, and since form is finite, an end. I made pain linear by giving it a purpose, like some king in legend, assigning tasks: when these are accomplished, you will be a knight of the Round Table Holy Grail Valhalla Elysian fields. You must live through this to learn and grow.
    Sydney felt better with every sentence. I could hear her voice lightening, laughter and confidence seeping back, courage firming. I transformed an insane agony that was agony and insanity because she saw no end into a sane linear process with a knowable goal: when you grow up, you will be an adult. Read, invulnerable. Or calloused. The suffering of z added to knowledge z equals strength, harmony, and wisdom: z. Oh, my child felt better, stronger: she felt full of heart.
    I felt like the mother of lies.
    Dolores gazed blankly at the train platform. Well, what was I supposed to do? Tell her, sorry, kid, that’s life, might as well get used to it? Twenty-one and just embarking. After such a past. She needs all the lies she can get.
    A shadow darkened the window in the compartment door. Dolores turned away towards the outside window, hoping the presence would move on. The door opened, however. She heard it and turned her head slightly and saw out of the corner of her eye a man with a suitcase. She turned away again. Fuck. Maybe her coldness would repel him. It happened sometimes. People could feel what you feel—electricity, sound waves, fields of force? We pick up so much more than we can process with what we arrogantly exalt as intellect—little things, things we know without knowing we know them. She had pulled people towards her when she needed them, pushed them away when she did not: by what invisible wires, what imperceptible magnetism? She exerted it now, sending out cold waves.
    But the man came in anyhow. Dense or aggressive, she decided. His back to her, he lifted his suitcase to the overhead rack, removed his raincoat, then sat down holding a newspaper. She glared at him, but he barely glanced at her. He opened his newspaper.
    Dolores looked out the window. She felt tremulous, as if she were going to cry. Her whole lovely trip ruined by someone too dense to know he wasn’t wanted. It wasn’t as if the train were crowded. Now the whole time would be spoiled by a pair of eyes to be avoided; movements and breathing to be blanked out, perfunctory eye-meetings leading to perfunctory and uncomfortable facial expressions—a smile? a leer?
    The train started up. She reached in her purse and pulled out her cigar case. She would light up without even asking if he minded. That’s all he deserved, the bastard. And if he looked at her full face, damn it, she’d glare at him!
    And glancing at him as she prepared to light her cigar, she found he was, the fucker, was looking at her, straight at her. She looked back coldly and puffed the cigar to life. Still, the cigar was half-ruined