“Heart-Shaped” by Lauren Barbato

Heart-Shaped

You were too middle class, too prideful. A JCPenney girl in cashmere-cotton blends. He wanted those girls to like him, those heart-shaped rich bitches swinging around distressed military parkas in Angeleno heat. He kissed you on Catalina in front of the statue of Wrigley, the millionaire. The former owner of the island you wanted to rent. He held you all the way up the hill. He said he wanted to know what it feels like, like those hack articles you write for your desk job: Here’s what it really feels like to__________.  In the botanical garden of dusty cacti, you trembled in that strange island breeze. He never brought any of those rich bitches here. You started planning the wedding you swore would be at the courthouse downtown, anywhere. He was a man your mother’s mother would approve of. Here’s what it feels like. He wrapped his legs around yours in the Pacific, one hundred feet below the house you would rent, two hundred feet below the millionaire. You told him kids were around, but he didn’t let go. Here’s what it feels like, being at sea level. On the way back to the mainland, the tremors in his hands began acting up again, and you used your thumbs as restraints. You wanted to hold them back, those funny pulses beneath his WASP skin. Here’s what it feels like, he said, before falling asleep on your brown shoulder. On his balcony, you kissed for Mount Washington, in a nightgown, boxers, and bare feet. You took him to the high desert, to the dive around the bend. A real kind of place with peanut shells for floorboards and drunks for a house band. Those rich bitches would not like it here. You danced between the alleyways of a ghost town. Here’s what it feels like, a stillness where you can hear a crow flapping its wings. He pulled you to the ground—a c’mere, c’mon—and while entangled in the dirt you imagined snow in California, wet fat flakes instead of dust. You reminded him of those plans made years ago, when you pressed your palms into his and talked of Alaska, Maine. Wyoming, but only Jackson Hole. Why would you want to? He remembered and did not remember. He chased you and did not chase you. Here’s what it feels like, to get what you never wanted. He said: Listen. He would bring the rich bitches to see Wrigley and he would kiss them if they let him. He said: Listen, you asked too much. You drove down the PCH until everything ran dry in Costa Mesa and you could not tell the beach from the bar. He would wrap his legs around theirs, the rich bitches. He would wrap his legs around your borrowed time. You pointed your headlights to the ocean but didn’t leave the front seat. No one likes to imagine nights in California. Why would you want to? He said he wanted to know what it feels like, those rich bitches, to hold and not have. You walked out to the water, but you could not see the shoreline. He was not a man your mother’s mother would approve of. The moon in California was never enough. You listened for the crow, but there were too many heartbeats. You listened. He wanted to know. You showed him the ultrasound, and he was the first to grieve.

Lauren Barbato

Lauren Barbato is a writer based in Philadelphia. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Blackbird, North American Review, Hobart, Pacifica Literary Review, Cosmopolitan, XRAY Literary, among others, and she has received residencies and scholarships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Lauren is currently a Ph.D. student in Religion at Temple University and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers-Newark and a BFA in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California.

Headshot: Lauren Barbato

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