A PIECE OF MY HEART

Copyright © 2025

All Rights Reserved

I know you don’t mess with the plumbing, Russell said. You just don’t. If you do, all kinds of bad things can happen. Sewage, backup, clogged drains, rotten eggs. You know?

It’s my body, love, Gwendolyn said. It’s not a sewer.

It’s just a couple of tubes, Russell said. Snip-snip. You’re in, you’re out. It’s no big deal.

If you do it, it’s no big deal, Gwendolyn said. If a man does it it’s like getting a cavity filled, yeah? If I do it, they’re going to have to wheel me in and knock me out.

It’s your call, Russell said.

But what if there are complications? Gwendolyn said. What if something goes horribly wrong?

I love you, Russell said. What could go wrong?

Brilliant, Gwendolyn said.

***

Gwendolyn had given up on love by the time she took the singing class with Russell. What was the point?

Russell was still married to his third wife, and he was that much older, with a funny little sleeve the color of skin you could see around his calf when he hopped up on the desk. Gwendolyn never thought of him as a lover, not even when he told the class his wife had gone to the old Yugoslavia on a research trip about native cultures. In case you’re interested, he said to the class, but he was looking at Gwendolyn the whole time, his eyes twinkling like a movie star’s. When he asked to see her in his office over spring break, Gwendolyn had never seen a man so excited. Russell was hard as a rock when he pushed her back on top of his desk—and big, too. He started to say all kinds of nothing things, the kind of things people say in that situation just to say something—and she loved it, she was dripping—and Russell loved every move she made.

He called her Gwen then because he was big and hard and in a hurry, but what did she care? For the first time in her life she could do no wrong.

Gwendolyn felt so good she started to sing right after, and the first few times they would sing together, softly, Russell’s baritone beneath her high and flighty soprano. At first the whole thing—Russell so big and hard, the nice singing after, being that close to somebody—all of that together almost felt like love to Gwendolyn. Russell, for his part, knew it was love from the start: sure enough he had to say so, over and over and over, and so Gwendolyn had to say it, too, just as many times as he did, just to keep up with him.

Sometimes she had to say it first just so he would not suspect.

***

Gwendolyn was finally starting to live inside her own skin when Russell started in with his business.

The States had always been a stretch for her—for a poor city girl from Liverpool with no money, with no nothing except for those looks and that voice. Gwendolyn knew she was never going back to Merseyside, but that meant she had to find a husband first thing, and that turned out to be Arlo and then their baby Cyn. She never loved Arlo—it was not about that—but she liked him more than any man she had ever met, before or since, including Russell. She always wondered why liking a man like that was not enough for a woman: no: you had to love him and he had to love you, and you had to actually say I love you to each other over and over and over whether you felt it or not. Everybody said so, even though love was the thing that tore you up inside because it never felt the way you wanted it to. Love was hell. Gwendolyn knew when love came you always knew, in your gut, that it was a matter of time before it went. But you could like somebody forever without having to say it once, and Gwendolyn liked to call Arlo any time, at all hours, not just to talk about Cyn, but to hear him say every sound in her name. Gwen-do-lyn. To hear Arlo say it like that the first time was enough for Gwendolyn when she came to America. Turned out Cyn took after Arlo—the freckles, the short sharp nose that pointed the same way Arlo’s did. Cyn always called him Arlo, too, even as a baby. It was so cute the way she said it: the way he loved Cyn was enough for Gwendolyn because she liked Arlo so much.

But there was another problem. No matter what she did after Cyn was born, no matter how naughty she got, nothing seemed to excite Arlo, not even the underthings snapping open underneath when she needed them to, as if her clothes could say open sesame. Arlo, God love him, never said a bad word about her, and he never asked Gwendolyn to wear push-up bras or crack a whip or submit to anything involving leather. (Handcuffs were never mentioned.) When Arlo left for good, Gwendolyn bought a push-up bra and began to sing again, first in the karaoke bars where nobody ever goes, and then, showing her shoulders, at the open mic Saturday night at The Clove outside town.

***

After the snip-snip Gwen woke up with curtains around her bed and big red roses on a table. Russell was holding her hand as if he had been put on this earth just to make her feel safe, as if he had no other purpose under heaven.

Shhhh! Russell said. Don’t say a word.

I love you, Gwendolyn said.

Loving sex with a man was not the same as loving the man, of course, but Gwendolyn thought it was almost as good as liking Russell, if not better, and when she came back from the hospital everything was near-perfect. His wife was divorcing Russell to marry an attaché from the former Yugoslavia or whatever they called it, so that was out of the way. There was nothing between Russell and Gwendolyn now. They had taken the tests and they were both so clean Russell was never going to use one of those awful rubber things again. She could throw away her pills too, even though she wanted to keep taking them for her skin.

Russell said the whole thing would bring them that much closer together but Cyn was not buying it. Cyn said making her own Mum do such a thing was selfish of Russell. Maybe that was so, but he had also turned out to be right. Things got even better when they moved into a log cabin kit house on the outskirts of town that Russell put together himself from the instructions. They made love like wild beasts in the kitchen of the kit house as soon as they walked in the door. She positively loved the sex—there was that word love again— especially when he sprayed one of his big loads inside of her that made her cry like a baby and reach for a towel post-haste.

They even started singing again, when it was over, his voice laying there under hers like it was meant to be. They were singing like that when something, a beaver it turned out, chewed through a tree and knocked the power out all the way to the far end of town. Russell had dragged Gwendolyn way out here, away from her little place downtown, but at least he was paying for everything—for food, water, shelter, utilities, books, movies, streaming services, the internet, and all forms of entertainment, live or not. After Russell’s divorce was final, he had even paid for her operation with his excellent health plan that covered significant others with comprehensive care. Russell had residuals from a wedding song he wrote that Gwendolyn never heard of, so there was nothing to worry about on that front. And there were so many things Russell did for her —he was so handy, so considerate—any time the septic went sour he could fix it with a snake.

One of the things Russell always did was to light the candles and to make sure all the lanterns had kerosene filled up to the brim any time the power died another death. When the lights went out because of the beaver, Russell lit the candles and turned the lanterns down low. Then he got the wood stove going full blast, and before you knew it Gwendolyn was rocking back and forth on all fours facing the fire with her face going like blazes, with Russell on his knees behind her, that big hard thing of his all the way up inside of her like he was made of titanium. When he was done and Gwendolyn was done crying, she was about to sing something with a male part when Russell stopped her cold with a kiss on the lips.

I love you, Russell said.

Me too, Gwendolyn said.

You are so beautiful, Russell said.

You are extremely nice to me, love, Gwendolyn said. I want you to know that I know that.

No, Russell said. I mean it. I love the way your eyes look in the candlelight. So smooth and soft.

You can’t see my wrinkles, yeah? Gwendolyn said.

No, Russell said, I can’t.

Russell took Gwendolyn’s cheeks in each of his hands and moved his fingers to the corner of her eyes. With his fingers, he pushed the skin back against her temples until all her wrinkles were gone, albeit temporarily.

There, Russell said. Perfect.

***

When she came back from the hospital Gwendolyn’s face looked black and blue, like a raccoon’s, like someone had taken a tree trunk and caught her thwack on the bridge of the nose. Russell was there at the jetway, of course, waiting for her with his arms full of roses, long-stemmed. Gwen took the roses by the stems, but her whole head was throbbing like a bad vein. When Russell said they should celebrate Gwendolyn said no, not now, not looking like this, like some kind of freak. Instead Russell stopped at an ATM and took out the maximum in cash, the way he always did, and he whistled his one hit song, and then he ordered enough Chinese food on the cell phone to feed Shanghai. Gwendolyn had to mush her pork fried rice like baby food just to get it down without crying, but that was only in the beginning. The amazing thing to her was that Russell was right again. After the bruises healed her smile lines really were gone: she looked so pretty all over again, the way she had when she had left her Mum in Liverpool for good.

Cyn told her the whole thing was disgusting, what Russell was doing, and Arlo was nice enough to just smile and say nothing when he saw her. But Gwendolyn loved the way she looked now, and Russell loved it even more. That was the time when she came as close to loving Russell as she ever would.

I really love you, Russell said.

Something’s wrong, yeah? Gwendolyn said.

It’s nothing, Russell said.

What is it then, love? Gwendolyn said.

You’ve had a baby, Russell said. There’s really nothing you can do about it.

You don’t like me tummy? Gwendolyn said.

It’s nothing I can’t live with, Russell said.

***

Gwendolyn was in and out in no time this time, and she loved the way her pantyhose fit flat as you like, the way she could pull her belt tight all the way to the next-to-last hole without even holding her breath, the way she looked when she turned sideways to the mirror without even holding in her gut. Gwendolyn liked it even better when Arlo rubbed his hand round and round on her stomach, sometimes a little too low, without saying a word.

Cyn said Russell doing what he did was like assault with a deadly weapon. Gwendolyn told her it was no worse than having a mole removed in this day and age.

What’s next, Mum? Cyn wanted to know. A brain transplant?

Gwendolyn said nothing was next, because Russell loved her just the way she was, for who she was. That’s what Russell kept telling her, after all, and Russell had no reason to lie.

Gwendolyn’s eyes looked so pretty she did the laser surgery on her own without Russell saying a word, not even after he paid with cash in two installments from two trips to the ATM. Now she could see everything just as clear as the nose on her face, especially the woods around the house Russell had built with his own two hands. Everything was falling into place, like one of those big puzzles with just a few small parts missing. She had Russell to thank for that. All the things Russell was doing for her, for nothing—all the money he was spending on her—all of that was making Gwendolyn feel like she finally could love him back. She was putting beets into the new juicer when Russell said he had been married three times and this was it, the end of the line.

You mean marriage, yeah? Gwendolyn said.

No, Russell said. I can’t get married again. I just can’t. I think you know that. Four times and I would be like some kind of a freak. But this will be even better than that. I’m going to take care of you, Gwen, put things in your name, give you power of attorney. I’ve saved up all my life for this. I’ve got the residuals still coming in. Even if something happens to me, you’ll never have to worry.

Am I missing something? Gwendolyn said.

***

Before she met Russell, Gwendolyn the Liverpool girl wanted to stay as far away from the country as she could get. The country meant pigs in slop and bumpkins dumber than cows. That’s how stupid the woods outside town seemed to Gwendolyn the day she came home from the clinic with her new set. She felt wobbly, out of whack, as if the round and perfect shapes Russell had chosen for her breasts belonged to somebody else.

Hello? Cyn said. They belong to him!

And of course Cyn was right, right as rain. Gwendolyn would look in the mirror at her own reflection and wonder who was that woman with the tiny waist and the gigantic bazooms on her chest. When she bent over to hoe she felt like she was going to fall flat on her face like a cheap drunk. And it got worse every time Russell touched her, touched them. For one thing, he could not keep his hands off of her: Gwendolyn felt like she was being mauled, maimed, manhandled. Everything Russell did seemed sicko, like he had no idea who she was any more.

And her nipples: Gwendolyn could see them sticking out like pins on a pincushion whenever she looked down. Arlo said Gwendolyn had never looked better, that she would learn to love them if she just gave her new breasts a chance—and then they talked for hours about anything but. But Cyn was still going ballistic.

Can’t you see what he’s done to you? Cyn said. He’s turned you into a different person!

***

When Gwendolyn came home late one night from The Clove, she flicked on the light and found Russell butt-naked, passed out cold on the black-and-white tile of the bathroom. She screamed bloody murder but Russell did not move an eyelash. His big toe below the flesh-colored sleeve he never took off was an impossible purple, the color of a Tootsie Roll Pop just before you suck it down to brown.

At the hospital, the surgeon said the only option is to cut just below the knee. If we don’t, there’s no telling. Even if we do, it might be too little too late. He might die, anyway.

Russ would do the same for you, the surgeon said. Wouldn’t he?

Where do I sign? Gwendolyn said.

***

Arlo was making small talk with Gwendolyn, picking things up and looking at the bottoms, leafing through books he would never read, making himself at home in the kit home Russell had built all by himself. Gwendolyn was chugging cold white wine and chopping shrimp and wondering which slinky low-cut thing she should wear on stage at The Clove that night. She had to admit Russell was right again about her chest: her fans at The Clove could not get enough of her, and men everywhere were asking her out for coffee, touching her, holding her hand. She kept wearing black because she had to—it was expected of someone who might as well have been a widow—but once Russell was cremated, once she had dripped him away on the kit deck in a downpour, Gwendolyn was ready to get on with her own life as an independent single woman of means. She had not loved him, true, but Russell had set her up with the house, the insurance, the residuals. With Russell gone, was there anything wrong with Arlo coming around all the time without Cyn and sticking his funny little nose into her business?

Gwen-do-lyn? Arlo said. Can I touch them again?

She came over to where he was sitting and settled in on top of him, stopping only to unsnap the snap at her back to let them spill out. She loved it when Arlo got naughty, when he got hot for her. Now there was nothing not to like about Arlo.

I love you, Arlo said.

Gwendolyn tweezed his sharp little nose between her fingers and squeezed it toward the center, where it should have been in the first place.

You know what, love? Gwendolyn said. It wouldn’t take much to fix that. I know just how to straighten you out.