Chapter One #2
“I’m going to tell you. If you feel you have to gasp or are gasping, you know, like when you run too fast, and if during the day you feel very, very tired or you get dizzy, and if you feel a pain here,” she said, pressing her right hand over her heart, “we want to know right away. Stop whatever you are doing and tell us or get someone to tell us, understand?”
“Who?”
“Well, when you start school, we want you to tell your teacher and have him or her call us. Don’t ever be too shy or embarrassed to do that, Lisa. Will you promise to do that?”
“Yes,” I said. My voice sounded so tiny and thin.
“If you close your eyes and think about it, you can feel your heart beat, can’t you?” Mommy asked.
I could, and nodded.
“Good. If you ever feel it isn’t beating the way it always does when you’re not running or playing, especially if it sounds like it’s skipping, you tell either me or your father or, again, your teacher. Tell someone to call us, wherever you are.”
“What happens then, Mommy?”
“We’ll take you back to the hospital in Bar Harbor, and the doctor will fix your valve.”
“Why can’t he do that now?” I asked.
“Well, right now it’s okay.”
“And you don’t fix it if it ain’t broke,” Daddy said.
“Your father finally said something good,” Mommy said.
“You’re a wicked woman, Theresa,” Daddy said, and walked away to go to work.
Mommy shook her head and put the pages back in her folder.
“Why did Daddy say you were wicked, Mommy?” I asked.
“Because he has a limited, Maine vocabulary,” she said. I didn’t understand, but before I could ask another question, she said, “You can go out now, Lisa. And play like always. Just remember all that I told you. When you get older, you’ll understand it even more.”
She stood up, and I slipped off the captain’s chair, but I didn’t have to get older to know that I would never think about myself the same way again, and I wouldn’t play like always.
After the captain’s chair morning, there were so many things I would hesitate to do that other children my age would do without a second thought.
Sometimes I felt I should jump into the cold sea to shock myself into thinking less about my heart.
And sometimes I would do things in defiance, angry that I had to be more careful than any other girl my age—or boy, for that matter. Maybe that, more than anything, was what drove me to go up to the Birdlane Crow’s Nest that autumn morning.
Mommy never said I shouldn’t tell anyone about my heart, so I told Jamie. I didn’t tell anyone else until I was much older. I had never seen Jamie look so serious and even a little frightened as he did after I blurted what was in my mother’s special folder.
“Don’t you worry, Lisa,” he had said, pulling his shoulders back and standing straighter and firmer.
Jamie could look very grown-up sometimes.
Despite his age, his father made him do a man’s load.
He often went out with his father’s lobster-fishing boat even though he was younger than my father was when he went out with Grandfather Charlie.
“I’ll look after you, too, and make sure your parents know anything they have to know. ”
He looked so serious. It was then that I thought Jamie was going to be more than a friend.
Sometimes I was sorry I had told him, because he would stop whatever we were doing, even stop walking, and ask me how I was.
When I wanted to avoid thinking of my captain’s chair time, Jamie would remind me. It got so I snapped back at him.
“I’m fine, Jamie. Stop asking!”
I knew that hurt him, but it never stopped him.
Even after he graduated from high school and went to work full-time on his father’s lobster boat, he would always ask me how I was almost the moment he saw me.
It was never a simple “How are you?” like people asked each other when they met.
Jamie’s question was most often “How do you feel? Have you had any of the symptoms your mother described to you and your doctors told you to watch for?” Or “Did you get very, very tired today?”
I never had, and that seemed to please him more than it did me.
One good thing was he never asked me in front of my friends—or anyone else, for that matter.
For most of my young life, few people, least of all my classmates, ever knew my heart had made that whooshing sound when I was born.
Jamie could keep the secret in his closed lips as tightly as an oyster could keep a pearl in its shell.
Eventually, though, they would all know and look at me differently.
But even if Jamie hadn’t asked his questions, I couldn’t have kept the secret of the yellow folder from hovering in my mind like a storm cloud. I was annoyed at the way Jamie studied me sometimes, but also grateful that he was watching over me, especially because we spent so much time together.
Often at night I would listen to my heartbeat after I had gone to bed.
I never asked Mommy what would happen if one of those symptoms occurred while I was asleep.
Would I wake, or would I die before I had a chance to wake?
Actually, I was afraid to ask the question, because the answer might force me to fight sleep and I might get sick or hurt my heart.
Sometimes, when I was growing up, I thought I caught my mother watching me more closely.
Had I done something that frightened her?
I sat thinking about every little move I had made, wondering if I had missed a symptom.
I supposed it was only natural that there would come a time when I would panic.
To this day, I blamed myself for what happened.
Maybe I had gotten overconfident because I really hadn’t had any of the symptoms Mommy had warned me to report.
More than once Daddy had said, always when Mommy wasn’t nearby, “Don’t think about it.
You’ve outgrown the problem. You’ve mended yourself. ”
Mommy never really answered me if I asked her if that was possible. “We’ll see” was her standard response. When would I see? How long would it be before I would see? Doctor visits now were far more frightening events.
My latest physical exam earlier in the following summer was good, but I had gone only to Dr. Bush and not the Mount Desert Island Hospital clinic. I had heard Mommy tell Daddy that maybe it was time to return to the specialist and get a more intensive exam.
“What for?” Daddy had said. “She’s doin’ fine. Chout, Theresa. You’ll make her so nervous that she’ll just sit and worry all the time. She’ll miss out on doin’ things kids her age do.”
Mommy didn’t answer, but her silence was not reassuring.
Besides, there were many more silences between them by the time I was fifteen.
I wondered, of course, who was right: Mommy, who always wanted me to think about it and be careful?
Or Daddy, who wanted me to forget about it and be more like any normal child?
He did blame Mommy for my not wanting to do more sports at school.
Instead, I chose to be in art club, where I could sit in the classroom for hours if I wanted and work on the details of a picture I was drawing and preparing to paint.
Mr. Angelo was my art teacher. He had returned from college and years working in Europe to teach art in our small school.
His parents, descendants of a Birdlane Island family, had left him their home so he could live in a beautiful place at little or no cost like a fortunate starving artist and keep trying to become a famous artist. As soon as I first began with him, he told me he had given up on that idea.
“When I was about your age,” he said, “and I was obsessed with my artwork, other kids would make fun of me.”
“Why? How?”
“My parents thought it was amusing maybe to name me Michael.”
For a moment, I didn’t understand.
“Michael Angelo,” he said, and my eyes widened.
He laughed. “My friends would tease me and say, ‘You’re not Michelangelo. Change your name.’ Instead, I decided I would teach art and become famous for discovering another real Michelangelo.
Maybe it’s you,” he said. “You have an extraordinary ability to capture perspective, and I think there is a kind of maturity in what you choose to draw and paint. Don’t give up on it as quickly as I did.
Sometimes success takes most of your life. ”
“But isn’t everything harder for a woman to do?” I asked. Daddy had certainly said or implied that many times, which was why he was always suggesting I work toward being a secretary or, like Mommy, a bookkeeper.
Mr. Angelo smiled. “Well, there’s a ways to go to make things easier for women, at least as easy as anything is for men.
But look at what happened last July: a woman was nominated for vice president…
Geraldine Ferraro. It’s not 1684. It’s 1984.
If you have the will, I think there’s a way,” he said, “whether you’re a woman or a man. ”
His words excited me. I wished I could get Daddy to understand that I wasn’t doing art to avoid being too physical and bringing about one of the warning symptoms. I really enjoyed it.
“The more you act nervous about yourself, the weaker you’ll become,” Daddy had told me a little angrily one day because I had spent so much after-school time in art class.
“If you were a boy, I’d have you on one of my lobster-fishing boats by now. ”
“Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t work on a boat,” I had told him. Lately I was thinking I might go out with Jamie one day just to prove it to him. I certainly would feel safe with Jamie. “I’ve seen fishermen’s wives on boats.”
“Some of those wives have mustaches,” he said.
“What?”
“Forget about bein’ a fisherman or fisherwoman. Just join the girls’ volleyball club or somethin’ to work those muscles, and don’t spend all that time indoors doodlin’. Act more like a Baxter.” Long ago I had lost count of how many times he had told me that.
“I love my artwork, Daddy,” I said. “It’s not doodling. You don’t know that much about art. I won’t give that up. If you took away all my artist’s equipment, I’d draw pictures on the walls. You’ll have to accept that’s who I am.”
“How many people make a good livin’ bein’ artists?” he snapped back.
“There is more to life than just making money. Even Grandfather says that.”
“He’ll say whatever it takes to please you,” he replied.
For a moment I paused. His words sounded more full of jealousy than anger. I thought he realized it and immediately relaxed his shoulders and softened his tightened lips.
“Maybe that’s true for women. But if you end up marryin’ a fisherman’s son, you’ll have to do somethin’ more than diddle in art to survive.”
I always knew what he believed. Girls couldn’t make important decisions, especially for themselves.
All of those who had important jobs, the bosses, even the managers of stores selling women’s clothing, were men on Birdlane Island.
It was different on the mainland, in Bar Harbor.
I had seen many women in charge of businesses there.
Crossing the bay was like crossing to another world where there was more fashion and excitement.
The busy streets and larger stores made me feel like Columbus discovering a new world.
And it was there that I could see other people’s art, some famous art that included female artists, too.
“That doesn’t frighten me, Daddy.”
“Well, it should,” he said. He always thought it was important for him to have the last word in an argument. Before I could respond, he walked away.
Early in my life I learned not to go running to Mommy to complain about Daddy.
First, I clearly understood how he would react.
He wouldn’t stop to reconsider what he had done or said.
He’d have his back up and double down on whatever he had said or done.
I didn’t want to feel that helpless, either.
Despite my health issue, I always wanted to be strong enough to take care of my own problems. Much of what went on between Daddy and me went unheard.
The only one who managed to get some of it out of me was my grandfather.
It had become almost a ritual of ours for me to spend Saturday lunch at his mansion.
He had asked me to come one day when I was twelve, and I had been doing it often since then.
I certainly didn’t want to go running to him to complain about something Daddy had said or done, but Grandfather had always assumed something would happen, not only between Daddy and me but between Aunt Frances and me or Mommy.
She could be quite bitter and sharp with her remarks.
Mommy never let her get away with her sarcasm or disdain, and although I knew it was impolite to snap back at an adult, I made sure she knew I wasn’t going to just stand silently and take any of her bitterness, either.
Daddy was right: Grandfather would defend me.
On this particular Saturday, Grandfather had a surprise for me at the Crest, his mansion. It would make Mommy nervous and for some reason infuriate Daddy. Perhaps he could sense what was going to follow.