A Hole in My Heart Read online

  for Bette

  Contents

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Author's Note

  The characters in this book are all fictional, with one exception. I refer briefly to a doctor named Robertson. Doctor Ross Robertson was indeed a surgical pioneer in cardiology in Vancouver. For a brief article on the history of heart surgery in Vancouver with reference to Dr. Robertson, see Lawrence Burr, “Some early history of cardiac surgery in British Columbia,” Surgical Times (the newsletter of the UBC Department of Surgery), Winter 2007.

  1

  Staring out my bedroom window, I can’t see beyond the waves of rain caught in the orange light of the streetlamp. I thought moving from Penticton to North Vancouver would make it better. But it’s worse. Way worse. When it’s not pouring, it’s raining. When it’s not raining, it’s drizzling. My stupid skirts always smell of wet wool. If I wasn’t already sodden and depressed, I’d get sodden and depressed just smelling them. And looking outside.

  I want to go home.

  I want things the way they used to be.

  The front door bangs open. Thuds and stomps of feet.

  “Hey, Bummer.” It’s my sister Dorothy. “How come your shoes were outside under the bushes?”

  “Don’t call me that, or I won’t answer.” My two sisters have blown in with suitcases and half the wet leaves of the neighbourhood. Plus my saddle shoes.

  “Well, you just did. So how come?” Dorothy’s holding my black and white leather shoes, muddy and wet, like they’re two dead fish.

  “Oh, bug off.”

  Dorothy is nineteen, blonde, and showy, and mainly can’t talk about anything except clothes and boys. She’s called Dot for short, but I call her Dotty in my head — usually — because that’s what she’s like. Dotty, as in crazy.

  My other sister, Jan, who’s the opposite of Dot, quiet and dark-haired, greets me with a hug, a “Hi, kiddliwinks,” and a bundle of mail. I missed picking up the letters because I came in the house by the back door. I search through and pull one out.

  “Oh good. It’s from Lizzie,” I say, and start up the stairs.

  Dad emerges from his study in the basement where he always has his nose in a book or two or three. He grabs me by the shoulder. “Oh no you don’t, girly. No disappearing into your room with that letter. You have to help with supper. And what’s this ruining your shoes business?” I curse inwardly. “Go stuff some newspaper into them, put them by the hot air vent, and be back upstairs to help your sisters with supper. Lickety-split.”

  I yank up the bottom edge of my old sweater and shove it out in front of me. “Here.” Dorothy, her pink-lipsticked mouth screwed into an upside down u, drops one shoe at a time onto my waiting sweater-tray. “How are you going to be a nurse if you don’t even like dirty shoes? What about wiping up sick?” I steal a glance at Jan. She smirks. “And wiping old men’s you-know-whatsits?”

  “Yeah, well, at least I’ll get to give needles and can practise by sticking them into you.”

  “Stop that bickering. Get a move on, all of you.” Dad’s voice is harsh. He’s more than irritated. “I’m hungry. We need to get supper started.” Somehow he’s only around when I don’t want him to be. “Nora, did you pick the carrots?”

  I shake my head, no. Now it’s Dorothy’s turn to smirk.

  During the weekdays, both Janet and Dorothy live in the student nurses’ residence at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. They only come home on the weekends. Last year, after grade twelve, Dorothy didn’t want to do thirteen so she worked in the office of a local motel for half the year and twiddled her thumbs the rest. But Mum and Dad said she had to have further education. The rest of us have to, too. I don’t know why Dot, though, because all she ever wants to do is go out with boys. Anyway, when Jan applied to St. Paul’s, so did Dorothy. Me, on the other hand, I’m stuck in North Vancouver going to Sutherland Junior High.

  I want a new life. Or, better still, my old one back.

  I can hear my silly sisters upstairs laughing and giggling. They come home so full of themselves. I scrunch up a double page of yesterday’s Vancouver Province and wedge it into the toe of my right shoe. There’s Dot carrying on — “Oooh, isn’t Dr. Wispinski gorgeous? And Dr. Graydon? Aaahh, would I love to go out with him.” What a bunch of malarkey.

  Last Saturday night, just to be mean, I locked the basement door so that when Jan and Dorothy came home, they had to come in the kitchen entrance and say good night to their dates under the bright outside light. Dot kissed a guy called Jerry McGibbon in full view of the neighbourhood. His Brylcreemed hair curled over his forehead like a horn. Dot thinks he’s so cool. Drool, cool, my eye. How come, Mum, you have three dumb daughters?

  I jam more scrunched-up newspaper into the shoes. It feels good — like punching or pounding. My anger jams down and scrunches up too. I drop my shoes onto the heating duct. Maybe, like Mum, I’ll get out of this life entirely.

  “Hurry up, Bummer,” Dorothy calls down the stairs. “Where’re the carrots?”

  I step wide around the girls’ suitcases on the landing, climb the remaining stairs two at a time, and burst into the kitchen. “In the garden, where they belong.”

  “Quit sassing me, you little brat.” Dorothy grates potatoes into a bowl. “Dad says you’re to pick the carrots, so go pick. And Jan, would you pulleeease” — emphasizing and stretching the word out as only Dot can do — “put away our suitcases or you-know-who will ruin them?”

  How come she gets a please and I don’t?

  Mean old witch.

  • • •

  “Here.” I toss a handful of muddy, scraggly carrots into the sink. Their green tails splat bits of black on the counter.

  “Hey, watch it. You’re getting dirt in the potatoes. You should’ve rinsed them outside.”

  “And here’s some more dirt.” I fling my socks at Dorothy, the ones I’d tramped around outside in after I kicked off my shoes. She ducks.

  “You drip. Dad,” her voices rises, “tell Nora to do something right.” Dorothy jams her hair behind her ears.

  “Whine to Daddy, eh?”

  Dorothy’s face flushes.

  “Oh, go do something useful — like put the sausages on.”

  “Why can’t Janet?”

  “Just go do it.” Jan is nowhere to be seen when Dot and I argue. “And while you’re at it, change that sweater. It’s filthy.”

  “You’re not my mother, so shut up.”

  Silence.

  Dad enters the kitchen. Of course. He’s always there when I do something mean, never when Dorothy does. His voice is low and cold. “You apologize to your sister and don’t use those words in this house again. Ever.” More silence. I’m trying to think of something not smart-alecky but I’m definitely having trouble with basic thinking. “Well?”

  “The you’re-not-my-mother part or the shut-up part?” Dad’s normally reddish face — from his freckles that cover almost everything — deepens to explosive red. His ears seem to stick out further too. This is a clear sign of a soon-to-happen blowup. Backtalking is not allowed.

  “Sorry, Dad. Yes, Dad.” I turn to my sister and put on the sweetest,
smarmiest smile so she knows I don’t mean it. But Dad can’t see. “Sorry, Dotty.” The room relaxes. Somewhat. I yank the cast-iron frying pan from under the stove, bang it down on the right back element, and plop the sausages on.

  “Don’t forget to prick them.”

  I hunch my shoulders, force them down with a sigh. Then, with vicious delight, I spear each sausage once, twice, three times. There are words I want to say but don’t. Even in my head. I pat the letter in my pocket and watch the sausages sizzle and spit.

  • • •

  Penticton

  September 6, 1959

  Dear Nora,

  I miss you. Jenny’s still away and I have no one to talk to at school.

  It must be a lot better going to a junior high than a straight high school. The big kids aren’t so big and you don’t have to wait for five or six years to be at the top of the totem pole like here at Pen High. Have you seen any totem poles yet, for real?

  So far Mrs. Cramer is nice. I sit smack in the middle of the middle row in homeroom. She put us in alpha-betical order, so Jenny will be right up at the front of the class near the window when she comes back. Vicki sits one over from me but she seems really cozy with a new girl with a fancy name — Melinda, the teacher called her, but, I thinks she wants to be called Linda. She wears frilly blouses with a sweater half open in front. She says it’s the latest 1959 fashion in Winnipeg, where she comes from.

  Who are your new friends? Your letter sounded a bit lonesome. I thought you were really looking forward to moving, getting away from here. The school is having a Halloween party. The grade twelves and the student council are putting it on. I don’t I want to go because I’ll have to sit on the sidelines. But I probably will because Jenny will insist.

  I had to go to the doctor’s again. You’d think I’d be used to it after all these years. I hate having to undress in front of him. I hate him putting his stethoscope all over my chest and back. My parents use the term blue baby for my condition but he says Tetralogy of Fallot, the fancy medical term which means the same thing, but just makes me feel sicker. Much worse than I think I am. My purple toes and lips and fingernails are just my purple toes and lips and fingernails. Nobody else’s. They’re me — but they do remind me of my breathing difficulties, my tiredness, a sign of what’s wrong inside.

  Apparently the doctor I see in Vancouver has been doing a new type of surgery for kids like me. That means going into hospital again sometime in the next few months, another operation, and another big scar on my chest, I guess. That I am not looking forward to, the hospital, the operation, or the scar. But I’ll get to see you so that’s good. And get fixed.

  My little brothers are bugging me. What’s new? They’re trying to snatch the paper from me as I write. They want me to quiz them from World Book again. I have to go before they rip this.

  Please write often.

  Your cousin,

  Lizzie

  PS I got Anne of the Island out of the library. Have you read it?

  2

  I figure I’d got through the shoe business without too much bother but Janet comes into my room the next evening, just before supper, peeling off her apron. I know something’s up. “Shove over.” She squeezes in beside me on the bed. “So how come your shoes were outside in the bushes?”

  I know I’ll cry if I tell her. No one cries in my family except me, and I know I’m not supposed to. It’s not the crying I mind, actually, but the wet and wilted feeling afterward. No strength. Nothing inside. Like a slobbery, squished balloon. Why is it just me who cries?

  Pushing myself up sideways on my left elbow, I crank up the corners of my mouth to meet my cheeks and reply to Jan with my own question. “What happened at nursing school this week? Anything neat?”

  “Yeah, we got to make beds.” She grins and seems to forget she asked me a question.

  “You call making beds neat?”

  “The class is called ‘Nursing Arts.’ We practise doing stuff we’ll have to do on wards.”

  “But you’ve made your own bed since you were little. What’s the point?”

  “Not the way they want them — with special tight corners and pulling the bottom sheet so hard your fingers almost break. Plus, we have to make the bed with someone in it.” She grabs the blankets and gives them a yank like she’s straightening my covers. I topple onto my back.

  “Hey, stop that.” I laugh a little bit.

  “Miss Mackie, our nursing instructor, pulls the bed apart if the corners aren’t just right. Then we have to start all over again.” She grimaces. “My bed was fine except I forgot to put the folded-in end of the pillowcase away from the door. Imagine. There’s even a right direction for pillows.” Jan tosses her balled-up apron at me. It unravels into long arms of cloth.

  “Did she make you do it again?”

  “No, thank heavens. But don’t tell, okay?

  “Don’t tell what?”

  “When you’ve promised not to say anything, I’ll tell you.” Even though I hate promising like that, this seems pretty safe.

  “I promise.” I cross my heart.

  “Dot had to do hers twice over.” Now we both laugh, for real. I pitch the apron back at Jan. She crams it down my shirt. And then, right when I think we’re far away from my shoes and school and me, she says, “So how come your shoes were outside?”

  I focus on her hair, as if I haven’t heard. “How do you like your new hairdo?” She got it cut really short to start nursing.

  “Easy to look after and great for when we get our nursing caps.” She sweeps her hands along the sides of her hair towards the ducktail at the back. In my opinion, she looks like a girl version of Elvis Presley. “I couldn’t fiddle with it and put it up every day the way Dot does.” She pokes me in the stomach. “You can’t avoid answering forever. How come your shoes were outside?”

  I take a deep breath. “I hate it here. No one likes me.” Darn. I feel the tears rising.

  “You’ve been at school one week. That’s all. Liking a new place takes time.”

  “But we’ve been in North Vancouver three weeks and you like nursing already, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but that’s different. I’m there with a purpose — to learn to be a nurse. The others all want to be nurses too. High school’s different.”

  “Not that different.”

  She can’t drop it. “Did something bad happen on Friday?”

  “My shoes.” I squinch up my eyes, forcing the tears back. “And not just then. They tease me about them all the time. That’s why I kicked them into the chrysanthemums.”

  “Your shoes? I thought you loved those shoes. I remember you and Mum getting them last spring.”

  Why does she have to remind me? As if I can forget. Mum and I went shopping together at that shoe store on Main Street. Mum told a corny elephant joke. Something about “How do you tell an elephant from an egg?” I hooted with laughter when she replied in a pretend snotty sort of voice, “Well, I’m not going to send you out for a dozen eggs.” She was all rosy and happy then.

  “A lot of the girls in Penticton wear oxfords and saddle shoes. At least they did last spring. Here they wear dainty slingbacks, pretty shoes made of patent leather, or penny loafers, not big, ugly, clumpy oxfords. And my shoes always look extra crappy because I get smudges of white polish all over the black patches. I told Dad but he says I can’t have new ones. I have to wear sensible shoes, not even penny loafers. No one here wears sensible shoes.” My tear squinching fails. I’m full-blown crying. I shift my cheek away from the wet-smeared patch on my pillowcase. “I don’t like being laughed at. They even tease me about my clothes. I want to go back to Penticton. I want things the way they were.”

  “Oh kiddliwinks. We all do. But Mum’s not coming back. Just try to be happy. Try to look on the bright side.”

  “Oh, you sound like Dad. Or old Mrs. Garnett. She patted me on the head at Mum’s funeral and said, ‘Things will be fine, dear. Your mother would want you to be
happy.’ Well, I’m not happy. And I’ll never be happy again. Nothing’s ever going to be the same.”

  “I didn’t say things were ever going to be the same.” Jan strokes my back. “It’s not the same for me either.”

  “Yeah, but you chose to leave Penticton. I didn’t.” I flip over. “Oh, Jan, don’t adults realize things are never going to be happy or nice or wonderful? When Mrs. Garnett said that with her gushy smile, I just wanted Mum to sit up in her coffin and tell her to go jump in the lake. That would have scared the pants off her.”

  I can see Jan trying not to smile, but she does. I sort of do too.

  “It’s not fair. You and Dot had Mum much longer than I did. Besides, you have each other. I have nobody.”

  “What do you mean nobody? You’ve got Dad.”

  “No I don’t. He’s always in his office or behind a newspaper or staring out the window.” I groan into my pillow. “If I had nice shoes at least, I’d have friends.” Jan takes a big breath, then lets it out long and slowly like a sigh.

  “Mum always used to say if kids tease you they like you, they want your attention.”

  “Yeah, when were you ever teased at school?”

  “You have to ignore them, try not to react. Make some smart-aleck comment like, You’re just jealous. Don’t know style when you see it. Something like that.”

  “Sure, Jan.” My blackboard glowers down at us.

  Why did you want to leave me, Mum?

  Why did you have to die?

  I want you back

  “And by the way, Mum didn’t want to die, Nor. She got sick and Dad couldn’t save her. What do you think it was like for her, having to leave her lovely youngest daughter who is only twelve years old?”

  I jump off the bed, rub out the chalk words and replace them with:

  I will never be happy and have friends here if I have to wear saddle shoes.

  So there!!!

  • • •

  It’s Sunday. I’m on my bed as usual. Janet and Dot have gone back to St. Paul’s. I stare at the ceiling or off into space, with Lizzie’s letter on my chest, arms curled under my head. A spider crawls along the crinkly crack that runs towards the window. It’s not fair. Vicki Matthews is my best friend. Or was. I wrote but she hasn’t written back. I even asked her to come for a visit. Now she has another best friend. I don’t. And here everybody’s snooty. So I’m snooty back.