You Are My Heart and Other Stories by Jay Neugeboren

he said to leave him be—?”
    â€œYou were supposed to do something . You were supposed to use that famous daredevil imagination of yours. You were supposed to not take no for an answer.” She took a deep breath, put her face close to mine, and spoke in a whisper, enunciating each word very clearly. “ You-were-supposed-to-be-his-friend .”
    Then she pushed by me, and walked away. I followed and stayed by her side all the way to her block, but no matter what I said—no matter how I pleaded for her to give me a chance to show her I could do better—she just kept telling me to leave her be, to stop following her, and to get on home. And when we got
to her house, she told me we were finished and warned me not to telephone her or to dare to try to see her ever again.
    By this time I’d had it, and I let go of the frustration that was boiling up inside me and told her that she was being as stupid as her brother, and to hell with both of them—that it was fine with me if we never saw each other again and if she ever came crawling back asking me to forgive her, it would be too late for her and me the way it was going to be too late for Olen and college.
    Karen’s grandmother came out on the porch then, along with two of Karen’s little brothers, Edgar and Joel, and started yelling at me to leave her granddaughter alone or she’d call the police, and I told her to go ahead and call the police, and then for some reason I started in singing as loud as I could the first song that came into my head—“Oh Happy Day”—and asking her and Karen to join in with me, and when her grandmother went back inside and I kept singing, Karen told me I was truly nuts and that her grandmother meant what she said and that I’d better get out of there.
    I thanked Karen for being concerned for my safety, and walked down the street—the Tompkins twins came out onto their porch and made circles at the sides of their heads with their index fingers, which they then pointed at me to show that they agreed with Karen about me being nuts—and I just waved to them and kept singing at the top of my lungs—“ Oh happy day… Oh happy day… ”—but with, I hoped Karen would notice, the best voice control I’d ever had.
    By the time I got home I was feeling pretty low, and I telephoned Karen at least a half-dozen times before supper, but each time when I said “Is Karen there?” the person on the other end hung up on me. I walked from room to room of my apartment, then picked up the model of the house we’d been working on and in a sudden fit of frustration almost threw it against the wall, but instead I set it down gently on my desk and caressed it as if it were a puppy, and spoke to it, telling it that everything
was going to be all right. All I really wanted was to erase everything that had been happening, and for things to be okay between me and Karen the way they’d been before I’d shot my mouth off at Mr. Ordover. All I really wanted, I knew, was for somebody to tell me everything would be all right—to talk to me with some tenderness.
    I lay down on my bed then and, imagining Karen was there with me, I closed my eyes and unzipped my fly. The next thing I knew, the phone rang but I was in such a deep sleep that at first I didn’t know where I was or what time it was. I stumbled into the foyer, where our telephone was.
    â€œHi. This is Marcia, from Belle Harbor,” the voice said. “Your old flame.”
    I said something back about being glad to hear from her, and she said she was only calling because she wanted me to know that she hadn’t put her mother up to calling my mother. In fact, she had no idea how her mother even got my phone number.
    â€œAnd I’m not calling to get you to go to the prom with me,” she added. “I just wanted you to know that I didn’t put my mother up to calling. God!