Read The Sabbathday River Online
Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz
The Sabbathday River (11 page)
A Speck of Dust
THAT AUTUMN, HEATHER FOUND WORK IN GODDARD, at the sports center.
The sports center was new, a bit of the federal brass ring the town council had managed to grab as it whooshed overhead, swinging south to Keene and Manchester and the snug, prosperous towns scattered between them. The center had opened that June with enormous local fanfare, but when the summer residents headed home it became clear that townspeople considered working out in the gym, with its new machines and shiny free weights, something of a laughable activity, and they were disinclined to learn the gentlemanly sports of squash and racquetball, leaving the little courts abandonedâshiny wooden rooms hoarding stale air. Swimming was the only draw, and swarms of kids turned up after school for group lessons, but the center stood depressingly empty throughout most of the day and showed little promise of ever being able to sever the federal umbilicus.
Stephen Trask, a son of Goddard Falls who'd made it to the University of New Hampshire and then beat it right back home after graduation,
was the director of the center, and he hired Heather in part because he appreciated the gravity of what she'd just done and wanted to be in a position to lean on her about going back to school. Trask still had family in Goddard Falls, but he lived in Goddard now, in a new ranch on a new street near the Stop & Shop, with his wife and sons. The Trasksâwho read books and belonged to a mail-order video service that allowed them to rent foreign filmsâwere probably the only Goddard residents who tried in more than a perfunctory way to make friends with some of the summer people, an effort that consistently proved frustrating to all concerned, since the couple hoped to talk about culture and politics and the visitors seemed to want to talk only about local lore and the scandals of Goddard neighbors they barely knew. Celia, his wife, worked too, at Tom and Whit's, and even though she came from Manchester, she'd done well in Goddard, where she was considered sophisticated but still comfortably native. When things got bad for Heather at the sports center, it was Celia's idea to bring the girl to Naomi.
was the director of the center, and he hired Heather in part because he appreciated the gravity of what she'd just done and wanted to be in a position to lean on her about going back to school. Trask still had family in Goddard Falls, but he lived in Goddard now, in a new ranch on a new street near the Stop & Shop, with his wife and sons. The Trasksâwho read books and belonged to a mail-order video service that allowed them to rent foreign filmsâwere probably the only Goddard residents who tried in more than a perfunctory way to make friends with some of the summer people, an effort that consistently proved frustrating to all concerned, since the couple hoped to talk about culture and politics and the visitors seemed to want to talk only about local lore and the scandals of Goddard neighbors they barely knew. Celia, his wife, worked too, at Tom and Whit's, and even though she came from Manchester, she'd done well in Goddard, where she was considered sophisticated but still comfortably native. When things got bad for Heather at the sports center, it was Celia's idea to bring the girl to Naomi.
But things didn't get bad for a long time, because in fact Heather liked her job. She liked leaving her house in the morning and waiting by the roadside for Martina, who was the center's entire housekeeping staff, to pick her up and ride her into Goddard. She liked Martina, who had been born again in a West Lebanon church made of cinder blocks, with an ARE YOU ON THE RIGHT ROAD? sign out front. And she liked the center itself, a clean white box of a building with skylights over the basketball court and a cozy lunch bar in back whose windows overlooked the slope down to the Sabbathday River. Perhaps most of all, Heather liked the fact that from her swivel chair at the reception desk she could blamelessly watch the interplay of husband and wife, of parent and child, of boyfriend and girlfriend. Her experience of what she had, since the age of reason, thought of as “normal” life was little more than superficial, since her own and her grandmother's interaction with neighbors had always been minimal and since high school had a skewed normality all its own. Here, in her official capacity, she loved the fresh tone of authority in her own voice, her ability to answer the questions asked of her. She loved introducing herself on the telephone as “Heather Pratt, over at the sports center,” and hearing the “Ah yes” of recognition that had absolutely nothing to do with her. She typed Stephen Trask's letters and checked ID and called up parents when their kids got too rowdy in the pool, and she walked the rooms and corridor with an
authoritative gait, making a note of anything that needed seeing to, since who else would know what to look for?
authoritative gait, making a note of anything that needed seeing to, since who else would know what to look for?
She felt, for the first time, the satisfaction, if not the nobility, of work, the comfort of real fatigue at the end of her day. She enjoyed being able to return to her role as her grandmother's emissary to the world of the town of Goddard, a post she had filled de facto while in school. Now, for the first time since graduation, she had her observations to offer at dinnertime. She had the relative variety of her days, the relative panorama of humanity upon which to embroider her stories as she and Pick embroidered together, and she knew the good effect of this steady, carefully regulated influx of other people into the stilted air of the farmhouse.
Pick, who had earned her nickname as a perfectionist eight-year-old (the precise incident involved a Four-Star quilt, assembled over a period of ten months, disassembled for six, and reassembled for a solid year, all because it wasn't good enough the first time), was nearly seventy when Heather came back from Hanover. She was frail, like something that had grown too tall and now buckled under its own height, but she was still up most days at dawn. When she had pain, she found something to do sitting down, and she had pain a lot, which was why the house was full of objects she had madeâpillows etched with flowers, sheets crowded with pattern, every chair needlepointed and every floor hidden by some confection of salvaged cloth. Pick had taken care of Heather on her own since Ruth, her daughter and Heather's mother, had set out west from Goddard Falls fifteen years earlier, her trail turning cold shortly thereafter, somewhere west of Chicago. Heather did not remember Ruth and seldom had occasion to miss her. Pick remembered Ruth all too clearly, and so missed her even less.
In her time, Pick too had been a good studentâor what passed for a good student if you were a girl when she was a girlâbut she accepted with no resentment at all the smallness of her place in the world. She did not fault Heather for coming home; on the contrary, she had endured the ten or so days of her granddaughter's college career in a general anticipation of Heather's return, and she marked the happy occasion by killing and roasting one of her portlier hens (as if Heather's modest sexual forayâwhich she kept to herselfâhad somehow marked her as a prodigal). Heather unpacked her bag, and returned her clothes and books and sewing to their places with a sense of intense satisfaction,
since she was back in the one place where no one questioned her oddnessesâto her face, at any rate. And she was content. At least until she saw Ashley.
since she was back in the one place where no one questioned her oddnessesâto her face, at any rate. And she was content. At least until she saw Ashley.
Later, she would date the change in her circumstances from this moment, like some temporal guillotine crashing her asunder, splitting her from the life she had led and reeling her, at first, into a shrill unutterable joy. At first.
He was on a ladder in the women's locker room, his upper half swallowed by the ceiling, his trousers poignantly slack to revealânothing so crude as his backside, but the place where his back narrowed, the sweet hairs in that most vulnerable curve. She saw, later, that her first impulse had been to touch those hairs from sheer curiosity, to seeâin other wordsâif they could possibly be as wrenchingly soft, as beautifully smooth, as they appeared in that miraculous and paralyzing instant. She saw the ghost of her own hand reach up to them as she herself stood, paralyzed in her corporal bulk, watching, and the shiver came down through her fingertips into her arm, and chest, and out again, shooting to every point on the surface of her skin. There was a kind of crush in her lungs, as if each had been taken in a broad hand and squeezed like a sponge. And there were deep stigmata piercings in the palms of her hands. She was suddenly hot, and very upset.
Ashley, oblivious, groped at the back loop of his pants, for a pair of pliers. He found them, his fingersâhard-skinned but unaccountably elegant in their length, in their linesâgripping the instrument, already wielding it as he brought it up to his shoulders and past sight into the hidden gap of the ceiling. Heather had a brief, crushing vision of those fingers inside her, the wrist supple between her thighs. She had not known she was capable of such wantonness. Nor had she known she could covet so fiercelyâshe had seen the clear glint of gold, a thick band, on that finger as it flashed overhead.
She looked down at her own finger, baffled; then, abruptly, enraged âthat he had married someone else in the first place. That he hadn't waited for her.
“Aw, fuck.”
The legs shifted. One foot searched backward for a lower rung. Another four inches of chest was revealed, smooth-skinned in a ragged, open collar. The other foot came down: a ponytail of russet hair, unruly but clean and wrapped in a coil of red bandanna, a winsomely shaped
ear. His chin was smooth, like his chest, with a faint pointâelfin, almost. She wanted to look more closely, to stare at it, in fact, but with one more descent of the ladder, Ashley was suddenly there, in front of her, near enough for her to touch and looking at her as if he absolutely expected her to do just that. Involuntarily, Heather stepped back, and to her intense relief, that compulsion abated, at least for the moment.
ear. His chin was smooth, like his chest, with a faint pointâelfin, almost. She wanted to look more closely, to stare at it, in fact, but with one more descent of the ladder, Ashley was suddenly there, in front of her, near enough for her to touch and looking at her as if he absolutely expected her to do just that. Involuntarily, Heather stepped back, and to her intense relief, that compulsion abated, at least for the moment.
“Excuse my language.” Ashley shrugged. She wondered if he mistook her expression for disapproval. “I didn't know anybody was here.”
“I was just ⦔ Heather heard her own voice, but she didn't know what it wanted to say. She was glad it still worked, though.
“You work here, right?” he prompted. “I've seen you.”
Her throat went dry. He had seen her, she thought. She had been seen, without her knowledge. By him.
“At the front desk.”
“Right.” Heather nodded. He was telling her all the important stuff.
“What, two, three months?”
“About that. I mean, yes.”
He took hold of his ladder to rattle it down, dislodging a puff of dust, an irresistible shimmer in the wake of some bleak fairy's wand. Heather looked up.
The tear came first, then the pain. She bent over, heat searing her eye, as if some thorn had lodged there, taken root and grown: a twig, a branch, a tree sprouting agony from the optic nerve. She had never imagined anything could be so sharp. She pressed against it, uselessly, with her hands. She was weeping freely, if lopsidedly: a one-eyed geyser. Her own voice moaned. Through the blur, she saw him step close.
“Let me,” Ashley said.
His hand took away her hand. He watched for a moment, his face so close. The needle in her eye jabbed with pain. Then, with two careful fingers, he spread her lids apart, splaying her open. Heather stopped cold, her tears arrested. It occurred to her that she had wet her pants. They were wet, anyway. She knew what he was going to do. She could not believe what he was going to do.
“Don't move,” he said, as if she could.
Ashley opened his mouth. He breathed over the surface of her eye, then licked his own breath away. His tongue was inexpressibly soft. The thorn evaporated. He licked again, this time out of love. His tongue traced a line down her center, dividing and conquering as it wentâeye
from eye, breast from breast, lip from lipâsplitting her open, then patching her together again with some sweet cement. She did not want the light back, or the air. She did not want him to see her face like this. Her avid eye searched the dark inside of his throat, but there was nothing visible to the eye, even the naked eye.
from eye, breast from breast, lip from lipâsplitting her open, then patching her together again with some sweet cement. She did not want the light back, or the air. She did not want him to see her face like this. Her avid eye searched the dark inside of his throat, but there was nothing visible to the eye, even the naked eye.
Then he stepped back. The light blurred in. His abundant smile focused in her line of sight.
“All right?” Ashley said. “Is it gone?”
It was gone, that grain, though a boulder had taken its place. It seemed to her now that the amorphous, irreducible thing that had always been wedged between herself and her peers, between herself and the town in which she had spent her life, had suddenly crystallized into stunning certainty. Finally, beautifully, the world had a point around which it revolved. The world had a winsome symmetry, and the music of its turning spheres was transformative. Through primitive instinct, she understood the mesh their lives would make. Her tongue knew the taste of his skin. Her skin knew the sweetness of his hands.
Ask me something else, she thought, but Ashley already knew everything.
“Your name's Heather. Steve Trask said.” His voice seemed to resonate in her own throat, as if she were ventriloquizing him without conscious intention.
“Yes.”
Ashley bent down to his toolbox. His ponytail fell forward, over a shoulder. A blue vein rose from the back of his fine hand.
“I think I've figured out why the air conditioning isn't working, anyway. I need to order a part, though.” He looked up at her. His confidence in her was electric between them. It made her strangely proud, as if she had indeed accomplished something rare and utterly admirable. “Have to come back, I guess.”
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