An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (61 page)

Then one day, when Sarah was three months old, Carol had a dream. She was sitting at the kitchen table of her father’s house, unable to touch the plate her mother had set before her. It was raining outside, and thunder crashed until the walls shook. Her father scowled and said, “You don’t deserve that baby. You can’t even take care of her.”

Suddenly, Carol heard a faint wail coming from outside. Sarah was out there in the storm, alone and frightened. Carol ran outside to find her daughter, but the wind drove rain into her eyes until she couldn’t see. She tried to follow the thin cry to its source, but every time she thought she was nearly there, the cry withdrew into the distance. Frantic, she ran faster and faster, but always the sobbing child remained just out of reach, lost and helpless, dependent and abandoned.

Carol woke shaking. Kevin slept on as she climbed from bed and stumbled down the hall to Sarah’s room, where she listened to her daughter’s breathing and touched the tiny bundle beneath the quilt to convince herself that Sarah was not lost in a storm. Reassured, she sank to the floor and hugged her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth, weeping softly.

The next morning Carol told her mother that she thought she could manage just fine now on her own. Her mother brightened, eager to return home to her garden and her friends. Carol saw her husband and mother exchange happy glances, pleased that she had returned to her old self. Carol knew she hadn’t, not yet and perhaps never, but she would be better than she had been. She would be a good mother to Sarah, if only to prove that her father had been wrong about her. She was not a failure, though he had been convinced of it and had nearly convinced her, too.

After her mother left, she made a schedule for herself just as she had back in college. Every day that she managed to complete the tasks on her list was a subdued triumph. She fought off the old listlessness by throwing herself into her role of mother and wife. This was her new venue, she decided, and she could achieve there as well as any other place.

In fair weather she took long walks, pushing Sarah in her stroller. They had lived in that town for nearly a year, but in her distraction Carol had not yet learned their neighborhood. With her daughter’s pleasant company, she explored the streets near their home, and one day she chanced upon a sight that sent a stab of longing though her: a used book shop, its front window stacked with books of every size and description.

She maneuvered the stroller through the store’s narrow aisles, pausing whenever a book caught her eye, hungrily devouring a chapter or more before moving on to the next delight. The hours passed in the luxury of words and the smell of old paper. Eventually, Sarah grew bored and fretful, so Carol found picture books for her, which Sarah gnawed and flung to the floor. When other customers began to stare, Carol blushed and paid for the picture books, then hurried from the store. When she was almost home, she realized that she had forgotten to buy anything for herself.

Her embarrassment kept her away the next day, but she returned the day after. Soon she began to visit several times a week, sometimes to purchase a book for herself or for Sarah, other times merely to surround herself with so many stories, so many words. The polite hush of the shop was nearly religious in its serenity, and after more than a few days away, she found herself craving it.

The elderly woman who ran the shop came to know her by name, and Carol began to recognize other frequent customers. They would nod politely at each other, but this was not a place to strike up friendships. No one would dare intrude on another visitor’s quiet contemplation of the walls of books.

Only one person broke this unspoken rule of the bookshop: the owner’s nephew, Jack, who had dark hair and a quick flash of a grin. He was not there every day, but when he was, he would greet Carol with a slight bow as if she were someone of great importance. At first his slightly mocking demeanor embarrassed her, but she got used to it and began to return his bows with a mocking curtsy of her own.

Sometimes he searched the stacks for children’s books and set them aside for Sarah. When he detected a pattern in Carol’s purchases, he began to point out books he thought she would enjoy, classics in excellent condition. She appreciated his help and often thanked him with a small homemade gift—a slice of cake from yesterday’s baking, a basket of fresh rolls. When she saw the pleas-ure her gifts brought him, her cheeks grew warm and she hurried deeper into the store, pushing Sarah’s stroller before her.

One day he left the cash register and followed.

“Thank you for the cookies,” he said when he caught up to her, keeping his voice low so that he wouldn’t disturb the other customers.

“Don’t mention it,” she told him. His dark hair was so thick that it always looked tousled. Instinctively she lifted a hand to touch her own hair.

He misunderstood the gesture and extended his hand. “I’m Jack.”

“I’m Carol.” She shook his hand and quickly released it. “Carol Mallory. Mrs. Kevin Mallory.”

He grinned at her, then bent down to look into the stroller. “And who’s this big girl?”

Sarah squealed with delight, and Carol couldn’t help smiling. “My daughter, Sarah.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sarah,” he said, extending a finger, which she seized. Laughing, he let her hang on for a moment before he freed himself and stood up. “It’s nice to finally know your name.” Grinning, he turned and walked back to the front of the store.

Carol watched him go. It
was
silly that she had not learned his name before then, but names had not seemed necessary in the bookshop.

Suddenly she was grateful that she had not told Kevin about him.

The meetings in the bookshop turned into long chats over coffee at a nearby diner. They would discuss politics and literature—and themselves. Jack, she learned, traveled the country acquiring books for the shop; that explained his frequent absences. He had never married, though he had come close once, years before. “I came to my senses just in time,” he said, laughing. He had not yet decided if he wanted to take over his aunt’s shop after her retirement.

“Why wouldn’t you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know if I want to be held in one place.”

Carol understood. He wanted the pleasure of discovering a first-edition Mark Twain at an estate sale, not the drudgery of placing books on shelves and making change. That was all right every once in a while, but not day in, day out. That was no kind of life for a man like Jack. That was for a man more like—well, like Kevin.

Sometimes they went for long walks after the coffee, and Carol would have to race home as fast as the stroller would go in order to have dinner ready by the time Kevin returned from the office. She found herself thinking about Jack when she wasn’t with him. More than once, when Kevin made love to her, she closed her eyes and imagined Jack inside her, her hands tangled in his dark hair, his mouth on hers. Afterward, waves of guilt would wash over her, but she would tell herself she had done nothing wrong. She was unfaithful to Kevin only in her imagination, and no one could condemn her for that.

She knew that Jack had a girlfriend, a woman he had been seeing off and on for nearly three years. As the weeks passed, Jack mentioned her less and less frequently. Once, after a long walk through the park, as they sat on the grass under a tree watching Sarah play, Carol asked about her.

“I haven’t seen her in weeks,” he said.

Her heart pounded, but she kept her voice steady. “Why not?”

He met her gaze. “I think you know why.”

She trembled inside and couldn’t speak. She wanted to rip her eyes away from his, but she couldn’t. She felt as if he could see into the very heart of her and knew what she was thinking—and what she imagined as she made love to her husband.

Jack took her hand. “Carol, I want to be with you.”

“We can’t.” She felt her eyes filling with tears. “I’m married.”

“He doesn’t have to know.” He began to stroke her arm with his other hand, and she shivered, dizzy with arousal. “Please, Carol.”

She wanted to say yes. She wanted to taste him. She wanted to open her-self to him and love him until she was sated, complete.

But—“I can’t.”

It came out as a sob. Sarah looked up from her play, startled. Hurriedly, Carol snatched her up and placed her in the stroller. Jack had told her how he despised the manipulation of tears, and she would not let him see her cry.

“I won’t ask again,” he called to her as she walked away.

She hesitated. Was it a promise or a warning? She knew it made no difference. Without looking back, she continued on her way.

At home, she put Sarah down for her nap and flung herself onto the bed she and Kevin shared. Alone, she wept, mourning everything she had never had and would never feel. She wept until she was too exhausted to do anything but stare at the ceiling. She lay on the bed in silence, wondering how she would fill up her days with no more long talks over coffee to look forward to, no more meetings in the bookshop. She could never return to the store, that was certain.

The next morning, not long after Kevin left for work, the phone rang.

“I’m leaving,” Jack said.

“Why?” she asked. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. I just—I can’t stay here.” He paused. “I said I wouldn’t ask you again—”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes. I’m coming. Don’t go.” She hung up the phone and rushed Sarah into her clothes. She left her with the next-door neighbor, a widow whose children were grown, with the excuse that she had an emergency doctor’s appointment. When she reached the bookstore, Jack was waiting outside. Through the window she could see his aunt at the cash register, helping a customer.

“Are you sure?” he asked her when she reached him, breathless from running.

She nodded and gave him her hand.

He drove them to his apartment, where he began kissing her before he had even closed the door. She felt drenched and new and alive in his arms, and when they had finished making love, he held her close and stroked her hair. He held her for what seemed like a long time, and yet when he shifted to reach for his clothes, her heart broke that it was over so soon.

Her drove her home—or nearly there; he pulled over to the curb a few blocks from her house. They kissed swiftly, fervently, before she got out of the car and hurried down the street to the neighbor’s, where Sarah waited.

That evening as she served Kevin his pot roast and potatoes, she wondered how he could be so blind to the change in her. A warmth had come over her, a sensation that she had never known, and she knew she could never return to what she used to be.

Jack didn’t leave after all, now that she had given him a reason to stay. Over the next two months they met as often as Carol could get away, as often as she could get the woman next door to care for Sarah. “She’s going to think you have a terminal illness if you keep having so many doctor’s appointments,” Jack teased. In response, Carol hit him lightly with a pillow. Their lovemaking was joyful, playful, so unlike her perfunctory moments with Kevin, when she waited for him to finish so she could go to sleep.

The comparison was not fair, and she felt ashamed for making it. From then on, she tried her best not to think of one man when she was with the other. It was if she were two women, one demure and dutiful, the other passionate and reckless.

Sarah provided the link between those two halves of herself. She was too young to know what was going on, too young to divulge their secret, but she was a constant reminder of Kevin, and Carol felt herself withdrawing from her daughter as she drew closer to Jack.

Once, when Carol could not get a sitter, Sarah accompanied them on a picnic in the city park. They found a secluded spot in a grove of trees and spread their blanket. Carol ached for Jack, but she could not kiss him, not with Sarah there.

An elderly man walking his dog paused to watch them as they murmured to each other and watched Sarah play. He apologized for his intrusion and said, “It’s nice to see such a happy family enjoying this lovely day together.”

Carol flushed, but Jack merely grinned and thanked him.

Later that day, Kevin came home from work early with good news: His hard work had paid off, and he had been promoted. He kissed Carol deeply, then swung Sarah up in his arms. “Did you hear Daddy’s good news? Did you, my little sweet pea?” he said, nuzzling her until she crowed with delight.

Watching them, Carol felt a pang of guilt. Kevin worked so hard to take care of them, never realizing that his happy family was a sham. What would he do if he learned the truth?

Day by day, her worries accumulated, affecting her encounters with Jack. She thought about what they had done and wondered where it was going to lead. “What are we going to do about this?” she asked him once as he drove her nearly home.

“What are we going to do about what?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

She shot him a look. “About us, of course.”

“What do you mean?” He glanced at her as he pulled the car over to the curb. They had reached her usual disembarking place, but he left the motor running.

I love you, she almost said, but something in his eyes made her hold back the words. “Nothing,” she said instead. She kissed him quickly and got out of the car.

Jack didn’t phone her for the rest of that week, and when she stopped by the bookstore, he wasn’t there. Another week went by with no word. Finally she fought back her embarrassment and returned to the bookstore, where she casually asked his aunt why they had not seen him around the shop recently.

“He’s off on another buying spree,” the older woman said. “He’s traveling up and down the East Coast looking for bargains. Is there anything you’d like me to hold for you when he brings back the new stock?”

“No, thank you,” Carol murmured. She left the store, dazed.

When Jack finally came for her a few days later, her first question to him was, “Why didn’t you tell me you were going out of town?”

“Hey, slow down,” he said, laughing, holding up his palms as if to ward her off. Then he paused. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”