Sarah's Window (4 page)

Clarice had inherited the Blackshere mansion upon her husband's death—and a good deal of money besides— much to the outrage of the Blackshere clan. Clarice was certainly not without distinction, had a noticeable and lively charm about her, the very quality Jacob Blackshere, Jr. had so enthusiastically embraced. She had been Jacob's second wife, and by the time Susan was born, Jacob was sixty-eight and had already sired three sons and two daughters, and had five grandsons to carry on the name.

Now, the Blacksheres were a clannish people, and when Clarice had appeared on their horizon with her dark, glowing eyes fixed on their Jacob in no uncertain manner, they closed ranks and greeted her with cold smiles. Clarice was delicate and flirtatious and all those things the Blacksheres were not. She laughed too much and dressed in trim pastel suits and sling-back shoes; she wore gold charm bracelets that tinkled with her every move, and a cloud of soft, puckish scent always seemed to cling to her, inevitably leaving its trace on Jacob so that they could always tell when he had been with her, and it rankled them something awful. Eight months from the day of their marriage she gave birth to a nine-pound little girl, and that child, proof of Jacob's enduring manhood, became the crown jewel of his heart.

Susan looked and acted every bit a Blackshere, gave evidence even at the toddler stage of a single-minded determination and keen intelligence. But with Jacob's early death, Susan was tossed into her mother's camp, and after several years of empty gestures the Blacksheres snapped clean of them.

Clarice spent the rest of her days trying to whittle herself a chunk of life out of that tight-mouthed and judgmental little community. When a new man came through town, Clarice swallowed her pride and put a little color on her face, wriggled into a skirt, and went out and tried to catch his attention. But inevitably the town machine went to work on her. The nastiness always got back to her, came flapping around on the tongue of a dim-witted neighbor, and then Clarice would spend sleepless nights with those cutting words sluicing through her mind. More than once, Susan had watched her mother crumble to her knees and huddle childlike in the corner of her bedroom, sobbing her heart out in loneliness and despair.

It was like that until Susan and John had adopted little Will, and Clarice felt maybe her life still mattered to someone, maybe she was needed after all. Mothering had not come easily to Susan. The baby had needed surgery and his recovery had been slow, and Susan had the idea to come home for a visit with the baby. Then John got approval for a semester's leave of absence, and so Clarice volunteered to move into the renovated servants' quarters next to the old bam, offering them the old Blackshere house for as long as they wished to stay.

It was late in the evening on Valentine's Day when Sarah got a frantic call from Amy. Sarah recognized her thin whine when she answered the phone.

"Sarah, puhleeez...," a plea followed by unintelligible babble.

"Whatever you've got in your mouth, spit it out and start over."

"I don't have anything in my mouth."

"Well then, just start over. Slowly."

"I'm baby-sitting for Susan and you've just
got
to come over," she repeated. "Please... I don't know what to do..."

Sarah could hear the baby crying in the background. She asked Amy what was wrong.

"He's been crying for so long, I'm afraid he's gonna have a heart attack and die. Can that happen to a baby? Can babies have heart attacks?"

"Where's Susan?"

"They drove up to Emporia to have dinner. I tried the cell phone but nobody answers. Then I called Clarice..." Amy paused. Everybody knew evenings were Clarice's worst times. "She couldn't help. She was useless," Amy finally pronounced with a sigh.

"You want me to come over?"

A light snow was falling when Sarah parked her truck in front of the house. The front door stood open, with Amy shivering on the porch and the baby's cries piercing the still night. Sarah had heard they were having a rough time of it. The baby had been born prematurely and with a weak heart, and he had spent most of his time in hospitals before the adoption. Now, at fourteen months, he wouldn't bond with Susan, didn't seem to take to anybody, wouldn't eat and just whimpered or fussed. The doctors called it "failure to thrive," but nobody seemed to know how to cure it or what to do.

"You know," Amy said as she led Sarah up the stairs, "I can see why Susan just comes unglued. He's impossible when he gets into one of these moods. He doesn't want to be held, doesn't want to eat." Her voice got all pinched, and Sarah could tell she was near tears. "I never knew a baby could cry the way he does, nonstop, and he just doesn't fall asleep."

Sarah opened the door to the nursery and looked toward the crib. His cries were muffled now; he had crawled to the corner of the crib and buried his face in the blanket.

"Hey, buddy..." she said as she approached.

At first he didn't respond, but then she called him by name and he sat up. He was clearly undernourished, but there was something in his appearance, in the feral-like gaze of his pained eyes that spoke of a misery beyond hunger. His face was flushed from exertion, and his thin little shoulders shuddered in exhausted sobs.

Sarah stopped then, gripped by a powerful sentiment. She had known sadness and despair and read these things easily in others, but what passed between this abandoned infant and the troubled young woman now approaching him was something beyond logic and reason.

Will grew still and fixed his large dark eyes on Sarah, and the anger on his face gave way to a curious look.

Sarah paused momentarily with her hands on the crib rail, studying him as he studied her, as though they both were deliberating the next step.

Then she scooped him up, lifting him into the air, and felt a shudder run through his body. She was sharply aware of his slightness, as if he were more bird than child. He tilted back his little head and fixed her with a curious stare, then he grabbed a handful of the corkscrew hair and kneaded it in his tiny fist.

"He wouldn't even let me pick him up," Amy said. "I don't think he likes me."

Sarah answered, "Oh, it's just my hair," and felt a warmth flow through her body as he inclined his head on her shoulder. There were bald patches on his head, but the little bit of hair he had was dark and shiny and smelled sweeter than anything she had ever smelled before. She kissed the top of his head and said softly, with a faintly secretive smile, "I don't think it's anything personal."

"He's lost a lot of hair, I guess. Susan said they might have to put him back in the hospital."

"I hope not."

"They will if he doesn't gain any weight."

"Has he eaten anything?"

"No. He drank a little water. That's all."

Sarah rifled through the bags of homemade baby food Susan had so carefully prepared and stashed in the freezer. She pulled out one marked "Spinach" and waved it in front of his nose, emphasizing his need for such strong medicine, and while the cubes melted down in the microwave, Amy—now relieved of responsibility for Will—turned her thoughts to more personal worries and began to fret about her algebra exam the next morning. She carried on at length about her distaste for algebra, which, she believed, exceeded even Will's dislike of food, although, she astutely remarked, she would not expire for lack of it. It so happened that Sarah was good at math, had great fondness for those things that came together so neatly at the end, with just one simple, happy ending. So Amy fetched her book while Sarah settled Will on her lap with a dish towel tucked into the neck of his sleepers, and they sat at the kitchen table and went over several of the problems that had given Amy difficulty. Which is to say they did together the homework Amy had neglected to do in favor of evenings on the telephone with her boyfriend.

It was a while before they took notice of Will. He had not fussed and had eaten a little of the spinach. He had not flicked it away, had not turned his head and squeamishly avoided the spoon as was his habit, but instead had nibbled at it, lolled it around in his mouth and even swallowed some. By the time several mysterious unknowns had been deduced, he had eaten more than half the rather inappreciable puddle of greens that had been placed on the table before him.

They were, of course, relieved, and a little amazed, but Amy was even more amazed by her ability to grasp one or two mathematical concepts that had up until that evening eluded her.

"He tried to help me," Amy said as she pushed her chair away from the table and stretched her legs.

"Who?"

"Mr. Wilde." She rose and pulled open the refrigerator door. "You want a Coke?"

"No thanks."

Amy popped open a can and sat back down. "He was very nice about it, but I couldn't understand diddly-squat, and then he started showing me what he was doing, you know, some of the stuff he's working on." She leaned across the table on her elbows to catch Sarah's eye. "He gets so intense when he talks about that stuff. I mean, the guy can actually make math sexy, I swear to God."

Sarah's reaction was immediate, a heat rising to her cheeks. She looked down at Will, away from Amy's quick eyes. "He struck me as rather... I don't know." She shrugged. "Detached."

"Oh, he's in the clouds, that's for sure." Amy giggled. "But damn, I sure wouldn't mind being up there with him."

"What's Susan like?"

"Oh, I don't know. Busy all the time. She's on the phone a lot. Does investment stuff from home. She works in the room upstairs." Amy paused to guzzle down the last of the Coke. "Not much of a cook, either. Fixes the same thing all the time. On Mondays it's this. Tuesdays it's that." She grimaced. "Yuck. How boring."

She removed a sheet of ruled paper from the back of her book and unfolded it.

"Here. I kept this. It's his handwriting."

Sarah lifted an eyebrow. "Did you get a lock of his hair, too?"

"Seriously, look at it. This is where he was trying to explain number twelve, and he just totally lost me."

Sarah took the paper from her. The script was surprisingly neat, even elegant. She found herself intrigued by it. As if she might read some expression of the man in his equations.

She folded it up and gave it back to Amy without further comment. Will had grown restless, and Sarah attempted a last swipe to clean his mouth, then lowered him to the floor.

"He forgets to eat, too."

"Who?"

"John!"

"Oh."

"I've taken lunch in to him sometimes and it sits there all afternoon."

Her mouth flew open in a great gaping yawn. She slid the Coke can aside and dropped her head on the table and mumbled, "I'm so tired. I wish they'd come home."

That's when Sarah suggested she go on home, leaving Sarah to finish out the evening. Amy took to the idea immediately, particularly when Sarah reassured her she wanted none of the baby-sitting money for herself, would gladly turn over to Amy all monies paid and received for an evening of suffering Will.

But Sarah was secretly glad when Amy left, and she carried Will around the kitchen and the parlor, talking to him the way one talks to things that listen mutely. She tempted her luck with a bottle of formula, and Will took a little of that, too. Finally, it seemed that sleep was winning out; his head rested heavily on her shoulder and his fingers slipped from her hair. But when she went upstairs to the nursery and approached the crib and attempted to separate him from her, even though his eyes were closed and his breath was giving way to slow, deep rhythms, he protested and grew agitated, and she could see he might easily throw himself back into a state.

In truth, Sarah was no more eager to part from him than he was to part from her, and so she turned out the lights and closed the door and went downstairs with Will curled up on her shoulder. She found her backpack on the floor in the parlor and pulled out a book, then looked around for a place to alight.

It was curiosity that drew her to John Wilde's study that night, and undoubtedly a wish to know him obliquely, to discover him refracted through the places he inhabited and the words he wrote and the books he read. There would be no harm in knowing him like this, with intent so innocent, while she might still remain unseen and unrevealed to him.