Heart Like Mine: A Novel

I wanted this to be like any other Saturday morning at my dad’s house, knowing I’d go home the next day and see my mother. But it wasn’t like any other day. Max and I had woken up in our Dad’s bed, his long body in between us, and I felt the crackle of dried tears on my cheeks. Mama, I thought, and started to cry. It didn’t feel real. I kept looking at Dad’s front door, thinking she might come walking through it. My body ached with a strange pain—my muscles were tingly and tight beneath my skin. It was a feeling I’d never had before, a sensation I didn’t know how to name. It almost was like I was floating just outside my body, tethered to it somehow but likely to drift off if I found a way to let go.

I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a mother. A few kids at school were adopted and didn’t know the mothers who’d given birth to them, but none of them didn’t have a mother at all. Mama was who I went to for almost everything. When Bree made me mad or I felt like a teacher was being unfair. Who would I go to now? I closed my eyes and tried to hear her voice in my head—to remember what it felt like to have her thin arms around me and what she looked like when she laughed. All I could see was the image of her crying. All I could feel was the emptiness surrounding me now.

I thought about how she used to take me to the library every Saturday, letting me run my fingers over the spines of books, as though I could feel which stories needed a good home. She always checked out a stack of books, too, with titles like The Price of Love or Forbidden Fruit and with half-naked people on the covers. She didn’t allow me to read them, but lately, when she wasn’t home, I’d sneak into her bedroom and flip through the pages, blushing as I read the steamier chapters. Mama believed in love. She had loved our dad so much and I knew she wished he’d never left. I wished he’d never left, too. If he hadn’t, maybe Mama would still be alive.

I sat on the couch with my brother, staring at the TV. It felt weird to just sit there watching cartoons, but we didn’t know what else to do. Grace left to go pick up some of our stuff from Mama’s house and my dad came into the den and turned the television off. When Dad sat down next to us, Max started crying almost right away, a quiet but blubbery noise. I reached over and took his hand in mine.

“I love you guys, you know that, right?” Dad said. He looked like he’d grown more lines on his face overnight and he hadn’t showered or shaved. I wasn’t used to seeing him with so many whiskers on his face. There were a lot of white ones; it made him look old. For some reason, that made me afraid.

Max and I both nodded. We had both cried so much last night, I couldn’t believe it when more tears came now. My stomach hurt and my eyes were so swollen, it was almost hard to see out of them. Crying made it worse.

“I miss Mama,” Max said. His voice crackled. “I don’t want her to be dead.”

“Me neither, buddy,” Dad said. “I wish I could change it, but I can’t. We’ll just have to stick together and find a way through, okay? I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here for you.”

You left before, I thought. You left and Mama couldn’t handle it. You got a new life and a new girlfriend and now she’s dead. Panic suddenly gripped me. What if he died, too? What if he didn’t want us to live there? What if Grace didn’t want us? I felt wobbly inside, balancing atop the thinnest of threads, terrified I might make a wrong move and lose my father, too. Letting go of his hand, I wrapped my arm around my brother and he leaned against me, still crying softly.

“Ava?” Dad reached over and wiped my cheek with his fingers. “Do you remember anything from yesterday morning?”

I sniffled. “Like what?” Everything seemed blurry in my head, like a movie set on fast-forward. I wanted to press pause and then rewind so we could go back to yesterday, when Mama was still here.

“I don’t know.” He paused. “I guess if something happened that seemed out of the ordinary. If your mom acted differently than she normally would.”

The moment she threw her palm flat against the wall flashed in my mind. “She got dizzy,” I said. “She said it was because she had too much coffee, but I thought it was because she hasn’t been sleeping. Or eating.” I searched my dad’s face. “Can that make you dizzy?”

He nodded. “Sometimes.”

“What did the doctors say happened?” I asked, the muscles in my stomach twisting tighter with every breath I took. More tears swelled in my chest, trying to fight their way out.

Dad looked at Max and then back and me. “They’re not really sure. All we know is that she lay down in her bed and then . . . her heart stopped.”

“Did she have a heart ’ttack?” Max asked, sounding much younger than seven. He only talked like a baby when he was really upset.

“I don’t know, Maximilian. I wish I did.”

We were quiet a moment, then Max spoke again in a tiny voice. “What’s going to happen to us now? Where will we go?”

Dad visibly tensed for a second, then relaxed. “You’ll stay here, of course. I’ll take care of everything, I promise.”

“What about the rest of my stuff?” Max asked.

“Who cares about your stuff, dummy,” I snapped, pulling away from him, and my dad put his hand on my forearm, squeezing lightly. “Ava,” he said.

I wouldn’t look at him. If I did, I might cry again. I didn’t want to be like her. I didn’t want to cry too much. I gave him what I knew he wanted. “Sorry, Max. I didn’t mean it.” My dad offered me a grateful look, then turned to my brother.

“We’ll get the rest of your stuff, kiddo. Maybe not all of it at once, but the important things, okay?”

“Okay,” Max said, easily satisfied.

I swallowed. “What about Mom’s stuff?”

Dad paused again, considering this. “I’ll probably box most of it up and keep it in storage for you two, when you’re older. Does that sound like a good idea?”

Both Max and I nodded, even though I couldn’t imagine putting away all of Mama’s things in a cold, dark storage room. I wanted to have them with me. I wanted to smell her perfume and wear her clothes; I wanted to wrap myself in the blanket she used to cuddle with me under on the living room couch. I want her not to be dead.

Dad smiled. “Okay then. That’s what we’ll do.”

I stood up. “I’m going to my room.” My dad stood up, too, and Max turned the TV back on and picked up the controller for the Xbox. Dad and I walked together through the kitchen, where he pulled me into a long hug and kissed the top of my head, just like Mama used to. I felt my body tensing, wanting to pull away, but I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t sure of anything.

In my bedroom, I picked up my cell phone and checked the text messages. There were six from Bree, asking why I had to leave class. I didn’t know how I could say the words out loud. My mother is dead. I tried it once, whispering the words, and immediately felt like I was going to throw up, even though I hadn’t eaten anything since the candy bar I’d sneaked from my closet yesterday afternoon.

I thought about what Dad had said—about how she might have died. There was no way she had a heart attack. She was only thirty-three. She didn’t smoke cigarettes or eat too much fat, which is what our health teacher, Mrs. Goldberg, said were two of the big reasons people’s hearts stopped working. She didn’t go to the gym, but she said she ran around at the restaurant so much and didn’t need to. She was skinny, but she always told us she was healthy.

But she was sad. She cried almost every day. She was losing too much weight. Last month Mrs. Goldberg had talked with us about how to look out for signs of depression in our friends and when to tell an adult if we thought that person might be in serious trouble. Who do we tell when it’s an adult who’s in trouble? I longed to ask. Who do we tell when it’s our mother? I should have found someone. I should have done something to help her. I thought if I just did everything to keep her happy—if I helped clean the house and take care of Max and write out the checks for the bills—she would be okay. I didn’t know there was something really wrong with her. Something bad enough to take her away.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand and my breath caught in my throat. I grabbed it and saw Bree’s name on the caller ID. I let it ring two more times, almost letting it go to voice mail, before I decided to answer.

“Where the h-e-double-hockey-sticks have you been?” Bree demanded. “Why didn’t you answer my texts?” My mouth was so dry, I had to swallow a couple of times to see if I could speak. “Ava? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“My mom . . .” I began, and then the tears came again. I only used the name “Mama” at home; it was what she liked us to call her. I called her “Mom” to everyone else. Unlike Max, I wasn’t a baby. I swallowed, sniffed, and spoke again, barely a whisper. “My mom died.”

“What?!” Bree said. “You’re kidding, right?” I didn’t say anything. “Oh, shit,” she continued. “Oh shit, shit, shit. Of course you’re not kidding. I’m sorry. That’s like, the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” She paused. “What happened?”

“I don’t really know,” I said, my voice tight as I tried not to lose it completely. “And my dad is acting all weird, like he isn’t telling us something, and Grace is here and I hate her!” I let loose a shuddering sob and Bree remained silent until I spoke again. “I can’t believe she’s dead. I don’t want her to be dead.” Maybe if I kept saying the word, the fact that it was true would sink in.

“What do you think your dad isn’t telling you?” Bree asked. Her voice was quiet, and for some reason, because she was calm, I felt the tiniest bit calmer, too.

I sniffled. “I’m not sure. I just feel it, you know?” It was funny how sometimes, when people talked, you could still hear all the words not being said. Sometimes they were louder than the ones that came out of their mouths.

Bree sighed. “Yeah, I know. Like when my dad was going to leave right after Christmas, and he and my mom pretended to be all in love in front of me when we opened our presents.” She snorted softly. “Like we couldn’t tell it was a big, stupid act.”

“Right,” I said. But I didn’t feel like hearing about Bree and her family. I reached for a tissue from the box next to my bed so I could blow my nose. I sat on the edge of my bed, concentrating on the dark purple stitching of my comforter, staring at it until the pattern became wavy and I had to blink. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Ava?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry about your mom.”

“Thanks,” I said, and hung up the phone.