The Heart Heals Slowly

By Gerald Hickey

The Heart Heals Slowly, Gerald Hickeys
recently released third novel, weaves a stirring
account of an Ohio family shattered by personal
misfortunes as the world reels from a global war.
In this superbly told story, adolescent
Lane Canfield, the familys last surviving member,
tries to rebuild his troubled life with the Dantons, neighbors with two attractive teenage
daughters.
--"Gerald Hickey takes us on a journey from adolescence to adulthood with a member of the
generation that Tom Brokaw describes as the greatest generation, said Phoenix resident
Jim Stover. "His narrative follows a young man
coming of age during World War II. His victories are not on the battlefields of Europe but rather on the battlefields of life. It is a warm testament to spirit and love triumphing over adversity."
--Jack Munsell of Tampa, Florida, called the novel "a great page turner."
--"An uplifting story of one mans struggle to overcome lifes inequities," commented Jane Ryan of Chandler, Arizona.
This is a synopsis of The Heart Heals Slowly:

As World War II rages, adolescent hormones seethe in an affluent Ohio suburb, where teenage Lane Canfield feels trapped in an abusive home environment.

His older brother, Dale, a paratrooper who planned to become a surgeon, dies in the Normandy invasion. After exacting a promise from Lane to study medicine, his alcoholic father, widowed physician Grant Canfield, kills himself.

Nursing student Cara Angeli, whom Lane loves but deceived about his age, then breaks off their relationship and reunites with a former boyfriend blinded in combat.

Lanes neighbors the Dantons take him into their home, and their older daughter, Tish, an attractive cheerleader, begins coming to his bed. However, she intends to marry her highly motivated boyfriend, Brad Owen, who is headed for law school.

Growing to manhood in the home of the ambitious Dantons, Lane tries to find genuine love and a satisfying career. He had hoped to become a writer, but his promise to his father to study medicine nags at him. Brock Danton, his surrogate father and a bridge contractor, eventually manipulates him into choosing a career in construction management.

Obsessed with becoming a millionaire, Brock demands that Lane devote nearly all of his time and energy to his job. Brock has promised to share profits with him but keeps putting him off.

Disillusioned, Lane moves to California with his artist wife, Shari Danton, and their small daughter, Melanie. He works in real state there for a longtime friend, now a successful Santa Monica broker.

Although he finds real estate more lucrative and less stressful than construction, Lane becomes dissatisfied with the field. After a personal tragedy, the Canfields leave California for Colorado.

Years later, with success on his doorstep in Colorado, Lane still feels haunted by the tragedy and other demons from his past. Until a shocking event changes his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 9, 2002
• ISBN: 9781469105888

Gerald Hickey

Gerald Hickey worked as a newspaper reporter for 22 years, nearly 16 of them with The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. He also worked for dailies in Colorado Springs and Las Vegas. He did copy editing for a Los Angeles suburban newspaper and served a stint with a Beverly Hills public relations firm. He grew up in the Columbus, Ohio, area, where his father was president of a bridge construction company. He attended Kansas City University and Northwestern University. After spending four quarters in dental school at Ohio State University, he earned a B.S. degree in business administration there.

Book preview

The Heart Heals Slowly

Gerald Hickey

Copyright © 2002 by Gerald Hickey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are

the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any

resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely

coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

Acknowledgment: to Newsweek for articles on the D-Day invasion.

To order additional copies of this book, contact

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

15055

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Six

Chapter Twenty Seven

Chapter Twenty Eight

Chapter Twenty Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty One

Chapter Thirty Two

Chapter Thirty Three

TO PATRICIA, WHO TAUGHT ME HOW TO LOVE.

TO ISIDORE, WHO MADE THE SUPREME SACRIFICE

AT 19 IN FRANCE DURING WORLD WAR II.

AND TO DAVE AND DICK, LONG-AGO FRIENDS AND CLASSMATES.

The first act of bad faith consists of evading what

one cannot evade, of evading what one is: Jean Paul Sartre.

Chapter One

Lane strode toward the Mapleton Knolls swimming pool, relieved that he’d left home before his father arrived. He couldn’t stomach another drunken tirade this evening. Peace at home meant avoiding his father’s wrath. Since Dale went into the service, most family conversations consisted of yelling matches.

Another hot, humid August day was fading. The pesky mosquitoes would enjoy a feeding frenzy this evening. The dog days, his mother had called them. He’d never stop missing her . . . never stop loving her. Father Valentino’s glib platitudes about her soul being in heaven hadn’t softened the pain of losing her at

39. The date of her death—June 6, 1941—remained the saddest day of his life.

He had to remind himself on this humdrum evening in 1943 that GIs were dying in a bloody global war engineered by the two megalomaniacs: Hitler and Hirohito. He’d never understand why hordes of Japs and Nazis behaved like mindless robots, slaughtering innocents at the bidding of their deranged dictators. If only the Allies would crush their military machines before the draft snared him. With three more years of high school ahead of him, he wouldn’t lose sleep over it yet. Right now, the war seemed as remote a threat as an earthquake in a small, affluent suburb of Columbus, Ohio.

Approaching the chain-link fence enclosing the crowded swimming pool, he laughed as he watched the Ardel twins and Mickey Bailey explode into the water from the high diving board.

As usual, they were showing off for the girls—but attracting little attention. A deeply tanned, muscular lifeguard, drenched by their thunderous cannonballs, blew his whistle at them in a shrill warning.

Lane flashed his season pass at the gate attendant, a stolid physical education teacher, who handed him a towel because he was on the high school swimming team.

The Ardel twins and Mickey—friends and Mapleton Knolls High classmates of his—were now chugging toward the shallow end in their typically unwieldy manner. Flailing their arms at the water as if they were at war with it.

Having doffed his T-shirt, tennis shoes and the cotton slacks covering his black bathing trunks, Lane waded into the tepid water and joined his three friends. He took pride in knowing that he looked older than the others, with his taller frame, black stubbly beard and dark tuft of chest hair.

Identical twins Wayne and Seymour Ardel had thatches of flaming red hair and gangly bodies with bony shoulders, knobby knees and protruding ribs. But Lane envied their academic prowess. Both made the honor roll regularly, yet claimed that they never cracked a book.

Mickey Bailey, who was barely five feet tall, had the thick torso and pugnacious features of a bulldog. He regarded himself as the class clown.

The handsome one’s arrived; chase away the girls, or I swear I’ll crush a grape and cry, he said in a falsetto voice, leering effeminately at Lane.

The Ardel twins guffawed.

Where’s Yatsi tonight? Seymour, the more outgoing twin, asked Lane.

Slaving at the restaurant.

Yatsi should demand an allowance, instead of working his butt off at his old man’s restaurant, Mickey said. Nick only put him on the payroll to get cheap labor.

Lane scratched the suddenly itchy stubble on his face. Nick refuses to give him an allowance, Mickey.

Mickey grunted his disapproval. Nick’s getting rich selling black market food at the restaurant. Someone should ream his moldy ass with a corkscrew for not giving his son an allowance. The same goes for every other tightfisted Mapleton Knolls dad.

He shifted his attention to a roiling surge of water near the ropes separating the deep and shallow ends. Brace yourselves for a tidal wave, he said. Big tits Sabra just did a belly smacker off the side of the pool. That dairy farm chest of hers’ll probably keep her afloat.

Seymour smirked. Yatsi’s got a hard-on for her. He bet me a buck he could get in her pants.

Sabra’d be a great morale booster for the Army, with those milk factories of hers, Mickey said. She’d keep the GIs from getting malnutrition.

Sabra Silver, whose ample breasts commanded their attention, emerged from the water, pushed back her long, dark hair and rubbed her eyes. Sloe-eyed with high cheek bones and full lips, she had an attractive face, Lane found himself thinking. But most of her male classmates noticed only her corpulent, top-heavy figure.

Mickey and the Ardel twins were now ogling Tish Danton, a shapely cheerleader lolling on the pool deck with her sister, Shari. The girls lived next door to Lane, and he occasionally walked to school with them. Tish would be a junior; and Shari, a freshman at Mapleton Knolls High this year. They were chatting with Brad Owen, Tish’s boyfriend.

I’d down a gallon of castor oil to see Tish in her birthday suit, Mickey said.

The others laughed, then began splashing water at him, until the muscular lifeguard blew his whistle and motioned for them to stop.

Later, after Mickey and the twins had gone and the crowd had thinned out, Lane swam 30 laps, gliding through the water like a young dolphin. He forgot everything, even his nagging resentment toward his father, as he propelled himself onward with a powerful free-style stroke and flutter kick.

Stars were blinking in a black velvet sky, when he left the pool, his bathing suit nearly dry now under his street clothes. He sauntered toward Doc Randall’s drugstore, a block away. The longer he put off hearing his father’s abrasive remarks, the better. The morose Dr. Canfield was probably downing his quota of bourbon at Nick’s Steakhouse tonight. Yatsi’d keep an eye on him there.

At the drugstore, Lane ordered a chocolate malt from Lily Doyle. She served it thick enough to eat with a spoon, just the way he liked it.

Tall and slim with bleached blonde hair and a sensual face—cat-like green eyes, thick lips and wide nostrils—Lily wore a playful smile. She appraised him from behind the marble-topped counter, as if she were seeing him for the first time.

I can’t believe you’ll only be a sophomore this year, Lane. You keep growing, you’ll soon be as big as Dale.

He said nothing. He disliked being compared with Dale.

With that beard of yours, you could almost pass for an adult, Lily said. How tall are you now, anyway?

He’d measured himself with a yardstick the night before, a weekly ritual. About an inch shy of six feet, he told her. It didn’t sound impressive, with Dale a muscular six foot, four.

Lily stood watching him spoon the thick malt into his mouth.

What have you heard from Dale? she asked.

Not much. Paratroopers must be too busy to write.

Lily’s eyes glowed with admiration. I’d love to see your big brother in his uniform.

Lane lapped up the last of his malt, savoring a taste of chocolate syrup at the bottom, then rose and moved toward the cash register. Doc Randall, the balding pharmacist who owned the drugstore, was filling a prescription in a glassenclosed area. Lane waved at him, and received a friendly nod in return.

At the cash register, as Lane pulled out his billfold, a pack of condoms that Dale had given him dropped on the counter.

Lily burst into laughter. She wagged her index finger at him. Naughty, naughty. What’s a boy like you doing, playing a man’s game?

Lane flushed. Dale said I should carry them . . . in case I ever needed one for . . .

He gave his little brother good advice.

Snatching up the condoms, Lane quickly inserted them back into a slot in his billfold. He paid for his malt and turned to leave.

You don’t have to run off, Lane, Lily said. I’ll be finished here in a few minutes.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, flushing again. All right, Lily.

Trembling with excitement, he grabbed a Saturday Evening Post from a magazine rack and riffled through it. Then, glancing up, he caught Lily gazing at him, her green eyes glinting impishly, and he lost interest in the magazine. She had a reputation for being fast, especially with Mapleton Knolls High athletes. He’d made the swimming team last year, but its meets attracted few spectators.

Lily, who would be a senior at the high school in September, teased him about his stubbly beard as they headed away from the drugstore. In the glare of a streetlight, he noticed that her breasts looked small under her white middy blouse; her legs, long and shapely in her navy-blue linen skirt.

I used to wish Dale would ask me for a date, she said, but Linda was always hanging on him at school. I wonder if he still likes her.

Lane shrugged. I don’t keep track of his love life . . . . I hear Linda’s away at college now.

Lily slipped a hand under his T-shirt and felt his chest. Even got hair there, huh. You’re a man already, Lane.

He felt goose bumps where she had touched him. Knowing that she regarded him as physically mature elated him. He’d heard Dale and some of his friends boast about a romp with a prostitute in downtown Columbus on the night that they graduated from high school. He’d never gone all the way with a girl. He hoped to do it before he had to risk dying in the war.

He’d assumed that he was walking Lily home. When they ended up at the high school football field, he had a momentary qualm. What if someone caught them here? Still, that didn’t seem likely at 10 o’clock on a summer evening.

He hoped that Lily wouldn’t ask whether he’d ever had sex with a girl. Dale had shown him pictures of the female anatomy in their father’s medical books and where to arouse a girl. But he’d hate to embarrass himself.

She tousled his thick black hair playfully. You’re one of the best looking guys in the school, Lane. I really mean that.

He grinned. I like being with you, Lily. You’re easy to talk to. Some of the girls at school seem standoffish.

Yeah, I’ve heard spoiled-rotten Mapleton Knolls girls in the drugstore, jawing about what they expect boys to be . . . or do . . . or have. Or they won’t go out with them. Girls like that want boys to crawl to them. Not me. When I feel attracted to a boy, I let him know it.

Catching a whiff of a fragrant musky scent, he leaned toward her and kissed her. She nestled up to him, pressing her soft body against him. They eased down on the grass, locked in a tight embrace, and Lily slid her tongue into his mouth, making him feel lightheaded.

She put his hand under her skirt, and his heart skipped a beat when he realized that she wasn’t wearing panties. He began gently stroking the sensitive place that Dale had shown him in the medical book. The clitoris, he’d called it.

Oh, God, that’s my weak spot! Lily gasped. Don’t stop, Lane . . . please don’t stop . . . .

He wriggled out of his slacks and bathing suit, slipped on a condom and climbed atop her. He began pumping, and she moaned and swung her body into rhythm with his. He felt as if he were dreaming—bursting with joy and suffocating simultaneously. They finished in a frenzied surge of excitement; then he rolled off her and lay there breathing hard.

You know more about girls than some older boys do, Lily said.

Does that mean you liked it?

She sighed and patted his face. What a prince you are. I could just eat you up.

He felt as if he’d ascended a mountaintop.

The sweet scent of honeysuckle wafted into his nostrils. Propping himself on his elbows, he gazed at the concrete grandstand beyond the cinder track encircling the football field. Mapleton Knolls fans had leaped to their feet and cheered wildly for Dale there.

Streaking down the field like a Thoroughbred, he’d raced past tacklers, leaving them sprawled on the ground looking confused and frustrated. In four years, he’d chalked up a record number of touchdowns for the high school football team. His gridiron feats had brought him adulation—and given their father something to brag about.

On her feet now, Lily adjusted and smoothed her skirt. Lane pulled on his bathing suit and slacks and rose, too.

Want me to walk you home, Lily?

She laughed. I’m a big girl, Lane. I’m not afraid of the dark . . . . By the way, I’ll be working at the drugstore tomorrow evening. Want to drop by?

Sure. I’ll probably go swimming again. I can’t do laps in the daytime with all those little kids splashing around in the pool.

Save some of your energy for me. She winked at him and padded away with feline grace.

Noticing that a light was burning in the living room in the Canfields’ colonial-style white brick house, Lane felt a knot in his stomach. He’d hoped that he would make it to bed without seeing his father. How could the man drink so much and still keep a medical practice going?

Inserting his key into the lock, Lane let himself into the house. His father was dozing in his easy chair, his long legs stretched across the hassock, his mouth partly open. In a metal ashtray on an end table beside his chair, a half-smoked cigarette smoldered. Lane walked over and pressed the butt against the metal until the ashes stopped glowing. His father reeked of stale tobacco and whiskey. Some ashes had fallen into an empty highball glass on the end table, which was marred by cigarette burns.

Lane gritted his teeth. A disgusting sight. How many of Dr. Grant Canfield’s patients knew that the prominent physician was a stinking sot? In sleep, his large aquiline nose stood out on his furrowed face like a hatchet. Fortunately, his younger son hadn’t inherited it. Nor had Dale, although, with his rugged features, he resembled their father more.

Grant stirred in his chair, coughed and opened his eyes. Nearly as tall as Dale, he had streaks of gray in his hair and the beginning of a paunch. Now 42, he looked years older.

Where in the hell have you been, Lane? he asked, rubbing his eyes.

Swimming.

All you high school kids do is play. You’ll have a rude awakening when you start working for a living. I never had time for fun. I worked two jobs every summer to save money for medical school.

Lane said nothing. He’d heard the same shit before.

Beads of sweat coated Grant’s flushed face, and his glazed, bloodshot eyes blinked inanely. He wiped sweat off his broad forehead with the back of his hand.

I’m sick of this muggy weather, he said.

Maybe you should have stayed in Pennsylvania.

Grant averted his eyes. That wasn’t an option. We had to get away from there. Besides, humidity’s a problem in Pittsburgh, too.

Lane pondered his father’s remark about having to get away from Pennsylvania. He’d heard numerous times how Grant had brought his wife, Keely, to Ohio in 1926 to start a medical practice in Columbus.

Although his mother often seemed unhappy in Ohio, she liked Mapleton Knolls’ rolling terrain. It reminds me of the hilly area where we lived in Pittsburgh, she’d told him.

After her premature death, of pneumonia, Grant lapsed into an emotional tailspin and began drinking heavily. Now, more than two years later, he couldn’t seem to stop.

Straightening up in his chair, he fixed his steely blue eyes on Lane. You can’t play all day tomorrow, he said. I want you to cut the lawn and trim the back hedge. And don’t do a halfassed job of it this time.

Lane repressed an urge to shout an angry retort, his stomach churning. He earned his weekly allowance by doing various household chores, but regardless of how hard he tried, he couldn’t please his father. He thought he knew why: having spent his early years on a marginal family farm, performing rigorous chores for a few pennies, Grant resented his son’s easier lot.

I see more of your mother in you every day—you even have her long eyelashes, Grant was saying. A boy shouldn’t be that handsome. Too bad you don’t look more like Dale. He has a man’s face.

Maybe I should slash my face with a razor, so I’d look like one of those Prussian military officers. Would that please you? Grant scowled. You’re too sensitive, Lane. A good looking boy can get into trouble with girls, if he isn’t careful. A doctor knows about these things. Your mother was a black Irish beauty, men went crazy over her. I was lucky to be the one she . . . His voice trailed off, and a muffled sob escaped from his lips.

I’m tired, I’m going to bed, Lane said. He moved toward the stairs.

Dale wouldn’t walk away from his father like that. He listens to me, because he respects me. You could learn a lot from him.

Lane paused, his hand on the banister. Dale’s perfect in your eyes. I never will be.

Grant sighed. It isn’t your fault that you didn’t inherit more of his manly traits. He got them from me.

Thanks for telling me that; I feel better now, Lane said, and bounded up the stairs.

As he closed the door to his room, he heard Grant yelling at him from downstairs. He slipped a Harry James disk on his 78 record player and turned up the volume to drown out the sound of his father’s drunken tirade. He felt like yelling back, but it wouldn’t do any good . . . . He’d work on a short story. He could leave all his father’s shit behind when he let his imagination take over.

He’d write about a boy who left his comfortable Midwestern suburban home to get away from his miserable father . . . and found happiness in some idyllic place. He could almost visualize the place, nestled in a scenic valley surrounded by mountains. As if all that he needed to become whole awaited him there.

Chapter Two

Lane had stopped attending Saint Rita’s, the parish church in Mapleton Knolls, after his father began drinking heavily. But his frequent trysts on the gridiron with Lily nagged at his conscience. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, he committed a sin each time he had sex with her. He’d taken a headlong plunge toward hell. On the last Saturday in August, he decided to go to confession.

Having obtained a temporary driving permit, he drove Dale’s 1939 Plymouth sedan to the church, located in an outlying area of Mapleton Knolls. Nicholas and Minnie Jablonski, parents of Lane’s best friend, Yatsi, attended Saint Rita’s. Active in the Knights of Columbus, Nicholas made generous annual donations to the church. Lane had heard Father Valentino, the pastor, publicly praise the restaurateur for his financial support.

Slouched in a wooden pew in the Gothic-styled stone church, Lane waited nervously for someone to vacate one of the two confessionals. Afternoon sunlight angling into the nave through the church’s large stained-glass windows warmed his face. He watched an elderly woman plod from a confessional and took the curtained space that she had vacated. A window slid open, its darkly tinted screen obscuring the priest, who cleared his throat and coughed. Lane took a deep breath, his stomach queasy. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been two