Free The Law of Bound Hearts by Anne Leclaire Page A

had been a time when she was not invisible to men, when they would have smiled, nodded, their eyes lingering, acknowledging her looks. Well,
men.
She had read recently about a survey where ballplayers were asked at what age women were at their absolute peak. Thirty-five, she had thought they’d say. Or maybe twenty-eight. The majority of men had said seventeen.
Seventeen.
She was a long way from that. Now she might as well be a clothes hanger, a construct of sexual insignificance.
    She skirted their table and wandered over to the glass cases that lined the walls, shelves filled with space memorabilia. The owner of the restaurant had once been an astronaut, a part of the Apollo 13 mission. Or
was
an astronaut, she corrected herself. Once you did something like that, she supposed, it was part of you forever. Wherever you went, it was a component of your identity. You were a Man Who Had Been in Space. She scanned the exhibit. There were letters from presidents (Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson) and celebrities (Princess Grace, Tom Hanks). She looked at the exhibits and read the bold banner headlines of newspapers, each trumpeting words of man’s conquest of space. A cover photo from
Time
showed the astronauts after splashdown. Praying. So they had been religious. Was that important? Could you do something like that and remain an atheist? How did it feel to them to orbit the moon, to look down on their planet? These men—this fraternity of the moon-bound brothers (of course, it had been all men back then)—had they caught a glimpse of some great organizing principle, had they seen a part of some divine harmony? Or had it been only ideals and science and a sense of adventure that had lured them and given them the courage to be locked in a capsule and hurled from the earth. She looked again at the photo of the praying astronauts. Whatever it had been, she could use some. All she felt was fear.
    Feeling sorry for yourself, are you?
Her father’s voice stopped her. It had been months and months since he had come to her, but now she heard him clearly; he’d been summoned perhaps by the aura of cigar smoke that had kindled her memory of him. She swallowed against the sweetness of it. Behind her, one of the men laughed. The others joined in. She shut her ears to them, focused on hearing her father. She longed for him, his strength, his advice, his comfort. What could he tell her now? How could he console her?
    He wouldn’t condone self-pity, she knew. You deal with the cards that were handed you, he would say. Play the hand and hope for better next time.
    Hope. The word tasted ashy in her mouth. Maybe that was what people lived on, what led them forward. Hope. Not faith.
    â€œLibby?”
    Richard’s brow was creased with concern. He took her hand. “I was worried. Are you all right?”
    She was conscious of the men, of their curious stares. They had stopped talking.
    â€œI’m fine.”
    â€œThey’ve brought our dinner.”
    â€œI was just coming.”
    He moved his hand to her elbow. She allowed him to guide her from the room as if she were a child, permitted him to lead her up the stairs, to their table. She sat, allowed the waiter to grind pepper over her chicken, pretended everything was perfectly all right, pretended tomorrow would be like any other day. Pretended there would be no dialysis.
    Then she heard her father again, telling her what she had known all along she must do. Call Sam.
    She wanted to. She looked around at the other diners, at her husband, busy carving a bite-size piece of meat, and what she wanted above all was Sam, wanted this with a hunger that shocked her. She wanted everything to be the way it once had been between them, before she destroyed everything.
    Call Sam,
her father whispered.
    I can’t, she said to his ghost. No one understood. It had taken all her nerve to phone once. She couldn’t try again. Long ago, she had lost the right to ask