Flying Leap. Judy Budnitz

Aunt Nina says. “It’s so bad for the heart. You should have thought of that when you started.”

      “But what about me?” I blurt out finally.

      “That’s what we’re talking about—we’re talking about your heart,” Nina says.

      “But what happens to me?” I say again.

      “I can’t believe he’s thinking of himself at a time like this.” Aunt Fran sniffs.

      “I need my heart! You want me to die so my mother can live?”

      “Of course we don’t want that,” says Aunt Fran. “Sylvie loves you so much, she’d want to die herself if you died.”

      “We can’t both have my heart,” I say.

      “Of course not,” says Nina. “You could get one of those monkey hearts, or that artificial heart they made such a fuss about on the news awhile back.”

      “Why can’t Mother get one of those? Or a transplant from someone else?”

      “Do you want your mother should have a stranger’s heart? Or a monkey’s heart? Your poor mother? Do you remember how she never used to take you to the zoo because she couldn’t stand to see the filthy monkeys? And you want her to have a monkey’s heart? It would kill her!” Fran cries.

      “She’s so weak, she needs a heart that will agree with her,” Aunt Nina adds. “Any heart but yours just wouldn’t, wouldn’t do. But you—you can handle anything. You’re young. You’re strong. You—”

      “Have a college education,” I finish for her.

      Aunt Nina glares and says, “Your mother worked herself to the bone for you, so you could go to college. She nearly killed herself so you could go and study and make something of yourself. And now what do you do? Out of college four years already, and all you do is sit in front of a typewriter all day, call yourself a writer, smoke those cigarettes, never get a haircut—”

      “And the first time your mother needs you, you turn your back on her!” Aunt Fran finishes. They both tighten their grips on my arms.

      I don’t remember ever wanting to go to college; it had seemed like my mother’s idea all along. I went because I thought it would make her happy.

      “I do things for Mother all the time—” I begin.

      “Only half the things any normal son would do. And I thought you were raised to be better than an average son!” Aunt Fran huffs.

      “Oh, Isaac must be just turning over in his grave right now,” her sister moans. Isaac is my father. I never knew him.

      “You’re so lucky. I wish I’d had the chance to save my poor mother,” Aunt Fran says.

      One of the doctors appears at the end of the hall. As he approaches, my aunts rise, pulling me with them. “Is she all right?” demands Fran when he is still twenty feet away.

      “We’ve found a donor!” Nina announces.

      The doctor greets us. He is a small man, completely bald. The eyes, behind thick glasses, are sad. He strokes his scalp as he talks, savoring the feel of it.

      “She’s all right. She’s being monitored,” he said. “We will look for a donor, but there’s a long waiting list.”

      “We’ve got a donor. Sylvie’s son. He’s in the prime of health,” Aunt Nina says.

      “This is Arnie,” Fran explains.

      The doctor studies me carefully.

      “Surely you don’t do that sort of thing?” I say incredulously.

      He gazes at me. “It’s very rare, very rare indeed that a son will be so good as to donate his heart. In a few cases it has been done. But it’s so rare to find such a son. A rare and beautiful thing.” He takes off his glasses and polishes them on his sleeve. Without them, his eyes are small, piggish.

      He puts them back on and his eyes are sad and soulful once more. “You must love your mother very much,” he says, gripping my shoulder with a firm hand.

      “Oh, he does,” Fran says. I shift my feet and knock over the cup of coffee and it spills on the floor, a sudden ugly brownness spreading over the empty white.

      A nurse leads us to the intensive care unit, where my mother is lying attached to machines and bags of fluid. The room has no outside windows. There is an inner window, through which I can see a nurses’ station, where they are watching our every move.

      Aunt Fran rushes to one side of the bed, Aunt Nina the other. I shuffle awkwardly at the foot of the bed. I touch my mother’s feet.

      “Sylvie!” “Are you all right?” the aunts cry. They are afraid to touch her because of the tubes snaking into her arms, the needles held by strips of tape.

      My mother opens her eyes. There are purple circles around them. She looks pale, but not so different from usual. Hardly on the verge of death. “I’m fine,” she says, gazing at them.

      I look at them, the three sisters. To me, the aunts are just variations on my mother. Fran, the oldest, is like my mother, only stretched—tall, hair strained tightly back, thin drawn-on eyebrows, cheekbones jutting up under the skin, long front teeth resting on the lower lip. And Nina is my mother plus some extra—her cheeks are full, her chin sags, and her eyes are heavy-lidded.

      My mother is just my mother. Not a young woman, but not an old one. Gray hair spread on the pillow. She’s young for a heart attack, I suppose; she’s still got many years to go. She smiles dully at her sisters. “Oh, Sylvie, you look wonderful! Just the same!” they say. Then she raises her eyes to me.

      “Oh, Arnie, you look terrible,” she says. “That jacket—I told you to throw it away. I’ll find you another. There’s no reason to go around looking like a mess.”

      “Arnie has some good news,” Nina says.

      “Then why does he look like a thundercloud?” says my mother. “Arnie, is something bothering you?”

      Fran says, “Arnie wants to give you his heart.”

      “I never said that—” I cry.

      There is a pause.

      “Of course, Arnie, you shouldn’t. You don’t need to do that for me. Really you don’t,” my mother says. She looks terribly sad. The aunts’ faces have gone stony.

      “You have your whole life ahead of you, after all,” my mother says. She looks down at her arms, at the branching veins that creep up them like tendrils of a vine. “I never expected anything from you, you know,” she says. “Of course nothing like this.”

      I look down at her feet, two motionless humps under the blanket. “I’m considering it, Mother. Really, I am. I want to find out more about it before I decide, that’s all. It’s not as simple as changing a car battery or something.” I force out a laugh.

      No one else laughs, but the aunts’ faces melt a little. My heart is pounding. My mother closes her eyes. “You’re a good boy, Arnie,” she says. “Your father would be proud.”

      A nurse comes in and tells us we should let my mother rest for a while. Aunt Fran and Aunt Nina head back to the waiting room. They sit down in the same seats and look up expectantly, waiting for me to sit between them.

      “I think I’m going to take a little walk. I need to stretch my legs,” I say.

      “He probably wants to go call one of those tarty women he runs around with,” Nina whispers loudly. “Tart” and “run around” are as close as she gets to profanity.

      I walk up and down halls of dull white where patients shuffle in slow motion, wheeling their IV’s along