Harvesting the Heart Read Online Free Page A

herringbone-brick terminal drive. I
thought of my father's Rube Goldberg contraptions, the inventions
he'd made just to entertain me: a faucet that sent water down a
gully, which released a spinning fan, which in turn blew a paddle
that connected a pulley that opened the cereal box and poured out my
serving of Cheerios. My father could make the best out of anything
he was given. "Don't worry about me," I said confidently.
"After all, I'm your daughter."
    "Aye,"
my father said, "but it seems you've got a bit of your mother in
you too."

    After
I'd worked two weeks at Mercy, Lionel trusted me enough to lock up.
During the down times, like three in the afternoon, he'd sit me down
at the counter and ask me to draw pictures of people. Of course I did
the workers on my shift—Marvela and Doris and Leroy—and
then I did the President and the mayor and Marilyn Monroe. In some of
these portraits were the things I didn't understand. For
example, Marvela's eyes showed a man dark with passion, being
swallowed by the living sea. In the curl of Doris's neck I'd drawn
hundreds of cats, each looking more and more like a human, until the
last one had Doris's own face. In the fleshy swell of Marilyn
Monroe's peach arm were not the lovers you'd expect but rolling
farmland, rippled wheat, and the sad, liquid eyes of a pet beagle.
Sometimes people in the diner noticed these things, and sometimes
they didn't—the images were always small and subtle. But I kept
drawing, and each time I finished, Lionel would tape the portrait
over the cash register. It got so that the pictures stretched halfway
across the diner, and with each one I felt a little more as though I
truly belonged.
    I
had been sleeping on Doris's couch, because she felt sorry for me.
The story I had given was that my stepfather had been making moves on
me and so the minute I turned eighteen I had taken my baby-sitting
money and left. I liked that story, because it was nearly half
true—the eighteen and the leaving part. And I didn't mind a
little sympathy; at this point, I was taking whatever I could get.
    It
was Doris's idea that we do some kind of blue-plate special—
tack two bucks onto the price of a turkey club, and you'd get a free
portrait with it. "She's good enough," Doris said, watching
me sketch the frizzy lines of Barbra Streisand's hair. "These
Joe Shmoes would be Celebrity for a Day."
    I
felt a little weird about the whole thing, kind of like being a
circus sideshow, but there was an overwhelming response to the notice
we stuck in the menu, and I got bigger tips drawing than I did
waiting tables. I drew most of the regulars on the first day, and it
was Lionel's idea to make those original sketches free and hang them
up with my others for publicity. Truth be told, I could have drawn
most of the diner's patrons without their posing for me. I had been
watching them carefully anyway, picking up the outlines of their
lives, which I would fill in in my spare time with my imagination.
    For
example, there was Rose, the blond woman who came for lunch on
Fridays after having her hair done. She wore expensive linen suits
and classic shoes and a diamond wedding band. She carried a Gucci
pocketbook and she kept her money in order: ones, fives, tens,
twenties. Once, she brought in a balding man, who held her hand tight
throughout the meal and spoke in Italian. I pretended this was her
lover, because everything else in her life seemed so picture perfect.
    Marco
was a blind student at the Kennedy School of Government, who wore a
long black overcoat even on the hottest days in July. He had shaved
his head and wore a bandanna around it, and he'd play games with us. What
color is it? he'd
ask. Give
me a clue. And
I'd say something like "McCarthy," and he'd laugh and say Red. He
came in late at night and smoked cigarette after cigarette, until a
gray cloud hovered at the edge of the ceiling like an artificial sky.
    But
the one I watched most was Nicholas, whose