What Hearts by Bruce Brooks

understand a great deal, really; at certain moments he knew he was in the presence of something big. It was true that much of the time this big, sweet force couldn’t be easily perceived beneath the shadows of Dave’s tyranny and his mother’s torment. But sometimes it did shine, even from Dave. Asa had watched Dave coax her, without a trace of impatience, out of several of the fits of despair to which she so often seemed doomed—fits that, left unchecked, took over her life in a matter of hours. Twice in the previous year she had spun so quickly into her own darkness that Dave had handed her over to the state hospital at Butner, for nearly a month each time. Coaxing her out early was work that required a strength and self-assurance Asa knew he could not approach—but he could readily admire it in Dave. At other times hehad watched Dave gently, teasingly build long, slow jokes from sly references to this and that old business from their life, as they drove along in the car for hours—jokes that accumulated power as they tickled deeper and deeper, drawing her up through perfectly paced stages of amusement and laughter until she reached a reckless, weeping hilarity that left her spread-eagled over the car seat shaking, sniffling, wailing. During these crescendos Dave simply watched the road and smiled.
    So now, filled with this urgent sympathy, Asa went on babbling to his mom about how difficult being a stepfather must be. And it wasn’t just difficult being a stepfather in general. It must be really tough being his stepfather—Asa’s. He was, he knew, a very weird kid. He said this lightly, with a wry shake of the head and a rueful smile, Oh, that Asa . It was an expression he had often inspired—with a less kindly humor to it—in his stepfather.
    His mother surprised him by wheeling around in a sudden fury. “What is this?” she sputtered. “What is supposed to be so weird about you , Asa?”
    Her flare burned off his pretense of light-heartedness. But he had started something, so he plugged on, without playacting now. “Well,” he said, “you know. I’m —different . I mean—here we are in the South and Dave has this big family and all the kids are normal Southern kids. They go to church all the time, they take it very easy, they don’t worry about much. Great sense of humor—tease a lot, but it’s because they like you, you know. That’s the way Dave was when he was a kid, I know, and that’s the way he likes kids. That’s what kids are , to him. But I’m different. I care too much about things they don’t even notice. Stupid things I know don’t really matter, really. Like, I mind that they crease my comic books. When they come over, they come in, all friendly, and I really like them, I like my cousins—I wish I was that friendly all the time—and they plop down and yank out a bunch of my comics. That’s okay. I can put them back in order. But they fold them, fold the covers back, sometimes they wad them up and put them in their back pockets to go down and eat. It’s dumb to care so much about it, Iknow, but—I try to keep them land of neat. I take care of them, is all. But I know it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are all cousins, we are all family. You’re not supposed to let junk like that—like stupid comic books—come in the way of your love of your family. But I can’t help it—before the love comes on, I start worrying about my comics, and I hate doing it, and Dave is right.”
    â€œRight? What does he say that is right?”
    Asa had not planned on this, but now he was nervous and upset and he couldn’t seem to stop. He tried to back off. “Oh, nothing. I mean, he’s right . He’s just trying to help me.”
    â€œWhat does he say?”
    â€œHe lets me know I’m being sort of a nervous finicky guy. Like maybe I like