Why Sarah Ran Away with the Veterinarian (16 page)

I look at Jack. He seems oblivious to everything around him. You'd think Sarah were dying instead of giving birth. In the opposite corner is Joe. Buddha-like, belly and all, staring at the television. It isn't turned on. Kate's got the other corner. Smoking a cigarette and nursing a cup of coffee as if she's spiked it. She probably has.

After sixteen years of living with these people, I thought nothing they could say or do would surprise me. When I married Donna, my family and friends kidded me about getting used to mushy food, i-n-g without the g, “S-u-u-u-r” and “May-yam.” But it's not the way they eat or even talk, although they do have a knack for backyard metaphors, that's so peculiar about them. It's the way they think and, as a result, act that makes you wonder about oxygen deprivation south of the Mason-Dixon.

Take Mr. Crawford's white pickle. It's suspended in a bottle of vinegar, sitting on the living room mantel. “A conversation piece,” he calls it. It looks like a giant's thumb or huge growth or a man's vital organ floating around in vinegar. Guests invariably ask what it is. Old Joe says “a cucumber.” Just that and no more until someone asks how he got it through the small mouth of the bottle without cutting it or why it's not green. That's what he waits for, lives for, someone asking about the mystery of his huge albino cucumber.

He won't tell me. Each time I ask, he just sits there, sphinx-like, letting me guess and guess, while he clicks his teeth or laughs at my hypotheses or says, “Do ya give up?” I refuse. I'll figure out that damn pickle as soon as I don't have so many other matters on my mind. My tenure project, for one.

It's that sort of behavior you have to get used to. And I thought I had until Sarah came home. I could understand her returning to see about her mother and, of course, staying for the funeral. But afterward, she just moved back in with Jack as though she hadn't been away for the past year. And Jack let her. Amazing. They were back at Sunday dinner like they'd never missed a pot roast. A regular couple just sitting there in domestic bliss, passing the rice and green beans.

Of course, I relieved the tension by keeping the dinner conversation going. I'd told interesting tidbits I'd read in
Time
or the latest
Journal of the American Medical Association;
we in the business call it JAMA. But if Sarah were my wife, absconding with another man, I'd never let her back in my house. Not that Donna would even consider leaving me for another man or for any reason that I can think of.

I told Donna I would offer them counseling but she said it might start something. She's probably right. If I counseled every troubled marriage I've seen, I'd never get my project done. The whole family treats Sarah as though she's never been away, except Joe, who's been extremely withdrawn from all of us since Vivienne's death.

Then Sarah turns up pregnant. We didn't even know it until two months ago. My Donna popped out the second month, but she was carrying twins. When Donna told me Sarah's due date, I figured backwards. Nine months, to the day, when Vivienne was buried.

“Sarah's cutting it close,” I told Donna. But Donna said that was Jack's calculations, not Sarah's.

I stare across the waiting room. It hits me. I think out loud, “Sarah's not due for two more months, is she?”

Jack jumps to attention, “one month and twenty-eight days,” he says, panic evident in his voice. “She made it to six months one time—that was the longest.” He wrings his hands. “But seven months and two days. That's better. Much better for both of them.” He's talking more to himself than to us.

I look at Donna. She rolls her eyes and whispers, “Sarah saw her doctor this morning. He said she was ready.”

“Tell Jack,” I whisper back. “Maybe that will help calm his nerves.”

“Mama died seven months ago, Andrew, just seven,” she says. “Better he worry about premature than other things.” She lifts her eyebrows to punctuate “other things.”

I don't know why we're debating due dates. For God's sake, the man's had a vasectomy! I'm not supposed to know, but Sarah told Donna and, of course, Donna told me.

“Think I'll turn on the TV,” Donna says, reaching for the dial, “Oprah's supposed to be about UFOs today.” She begins flipping through stations.

“Wait,” Joe says, leaning forward, breaking his Buddha pose. “Turn back.”

“What, Daddy?”

“Turn back.”

“To what?” Donna says, turning the dial slowly.

“The black and white one. I don't know the number,” he says. “Stop! That's it.” He shifts in his chair, “Mayberry RFD, you know, Andy Griffin.”

I say, “It's Andy Griff-ith.”

“That's what I said, Andy Griffin. Leave it there, Donna.”

“I want to see ‘Oprah,'” Donna says, disappointment obvious in her voice. “It's about UFOs, Daddy. Some people who've been kidnapped by aliens.”

Jack looks up. “Kidnapped?” he says, his voice almost high.

“Just television,” I say. “Good God, he's on edge,” I whisper to Donna. She doesn't hear me.

“They've all been examined by aliens,” Donna is saying, “touched inside and out.”

“That's a bunch of bull,” Joe says, not taking his eyes off Andy Griffith. “They just say that to get on TV.”

“Anybody need coffee?” Kate says, disappearing through the door before I can answer.

“How long has it been?” I ask.

“What?” Donna says.

“How long has Sarah been in labor?”

“Two hours,” Donna says.

Jack looks at his watch. “Two hours, fourteen minutes,” he says.

“You've got a long time yet,” Donna says. “I was in labor twelve hours, ten of those hard labor and I do mean hard. Wasn't I, Andrew?”

“Yes,” I say, not really wanting to remember.

“And Andrew was with me the whole time, holding my hand, rubbing my forehead. Weren't you, honey?” She smiles at me sweetly.

“Yes,” I say, “the whole time.” The delivery room comes floating back to me like a bad dream. Donna yelling, voices saying “push, Mrs. Webster, push.” The stirrups and those umbilical cords, all wet and coiled. I swallow hard and stare at Don Knotts.

“This is the one,” Joe says, “where a counterfeiter comes to Mayberry and pretends to be a barber.” He starts laughing. “Course he can't cut hair worth a hoot and Andy gets suspicious.”

I'm starting to feel claustrophobic. “Think I'll go out for a stretch,” I tell Donna.

“Maybe you'd better pick us up a bucket of chicken while you're out,” Donna says. “It's right across the highway.” She looks at Joe and Jack. “Does that suit y'all?” Neither answers. “Make it extra crispy,” she calls after me.

I detour the labor room, take the stairs, push through the glass double doors and into the wide-open day. A pretty day. Slight chill to the air but almost spring-like. The buds on the red maples are ready to burst open. At home it would be the sugar maples, but not for another month at least.

Donna thinks it's bitter cold, but she doesn't know what cold is. At home there's probably snow on the ground, maybe even into April. I'll bet the kids are skating as I did as a child. Every winter when the city would send in snow plows to clear the streets, they'd push up berms of snow in the school yard. Then they'd release water from the fire hydrant to make layers of ice within the berm. Mother wouldn't let me skate on ponds, but I could skate all winter in the school yard. Dad would come for me every evening after work. It would be almost dark by then. I would carry my skates over my shoulder and we'd walk home, like a Currier and Ives Christmas card.

When summer came, sometimes we'd drive up to Berkshire Hills. Dad and I would hike while Mother and Grandmother and Aunt Ruth would go to concerts at Tanglewood Music Shed. Other summers we'd head east to Cape Cod. Those beaches are different from these down here. Shorter stretches of sand framed between rock, more private than the miles and miles of Southern beaches. You could buy French rolls stuffed with lobster right on the shore.

That was when Dad was alive. All that stopped the year he died. I was ten, but never a child again. Grandmother moved in with us. Then Aunt Ruth. They called me “the little man of the house.” All three took it upon themselves to make Andrew Junior into the perfect Andrew Senior. Grandmother was as proper as a finger bowl. She appointed herself etiquette warden. “You can,” she would say, “but you may not.” Aunt Ruth became the education warden. She was a teacher and wanted me to benefit from her vast knowledge. Actually, I did learn a wealth of her trivia, but better, I learned to collect my own, a trait that has become useful in adulthood.

For Mother I became her only reason for living, “all I have left.” She was a walking record of what “your father did” and didn't do, “your father would like” and wouldn't like.

I don't go home very often. For one reason, Donna doesn't like to fly. I went for Grandmother's funeral by myself. It reminded me so much of Dad's death that I didn't sleep for days. I've only been a few times since then. If Mother and Aunt Ruth know I'm coming, they save up every broken appliance, tax notice, and household repair job for me. Last time I went home, the first thing Mother said was, “Oh, Andrew, you're getting a bald spot just like your father. Come see, Ruth.”

“Tut, tut, tut,” Aunt Ruth's voice came from somewhere behind me, “he certainly is, just like Andrew Sr.”

Then both of them in unision said, “So good to have a man in the house.” And out came a list of “things for Andrew to do.” I haven't been back.

Maybe I'll take the twins after school is out. I'd like for them to see places I loved as a child. I'll get Mother to fix mutton and mint jelly for them. I can hear what Donna will say, “Oh, Andrew, I just can't eat a little lamb!”

“But they can sure chow down on little chicks,” I say out loud as I reach Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“Pardon me, sir?” the cashier says.

“Barrel of chicken,” I say. “Make it extra crispy.”

“Fresh air helped,” I tell Donna, handing her the barrel.

She distributes the chicken. “Drumsticks for Daddy. White meat for Aunt Kate. Jack, what do you want?”

“What?”

“What piece do you want?”

He shakes his head. “Not hungry.”

Donna fishes out a roll, and sets it on a napkin beside his chair. “You need your strength,” she says, “for Sarah.” I can hear Vivienne in her voice.

I pass on the chicken too. The “Andy Griffith Show” is going off. Joe whistles along. Donna commandeers the dial for the last half of “Oprah.”

“You were really kidnapped?” Oprah is saying.

“Yes,” says a rather plain woman, probably in her mid-thirties.

Oprah glances out to the audience, then back to the guest, “What exactly did they do to you?”

“They took off my clothes,” the woman says, her eyes down, “and examined me. Then they erased my memory.”

A man, one of the few in the audience, stands up. Oprah points the microphone in his face. “If they erased your memory,” he says, looking around for support, “how do you know they they took off your clothes and examined you?”

“I dream about it,” she says, “every night. I see what they're doing to me in my dreams.” The audience snickers.

Kate puts down her coffee. “Isn't there a term, Andrew,” she asks, “for those kinds of dreams?”

“Yes,” I say, “and it has nothing to do with aliens. It's a subconscious manifestation of sexual frustration.”

Donna picks at the crust on her chicken. “Maybe that's just what the aliens want you experts to think.” She says “experts” as if it's doubtful.

“Sounds like stuff for a research project to me,” Kate says. “Alien-Induced Sex Dreams: Myth or Reality?”

“Tell them about your real project,” Donna says, folding a napkin into smaller and smaller squares. “He's been working on it for-e-v-e-r.”

I clear my throat. Joe gets up and switches channels. Jack stares at the roll beside him. Kate picks up a magazine, looks up and says, “Go ahead, I'm listening.”

I clear my throat again. “My research project,” I say, “is the effect of early adolescence on female fraternal twins. It's like analyzing why you and Vivienne turned out so differently. Or why Donna and Sarah are so different.” I have all of their attention now. “The age difference and birth order are automatically eliminated as factors with twins, yet with fraternal twins the genes are as different as …”

Voices from the hallway interrupt me. “It's over here, Mama. I smell chicken. Do you?” Two women enter the waiting room. Both are the same shade of blond and both are wearing sweat suits, the same size, I'd guess, but the fit is significantly different. The younger woman, about Donna's age I think, is wearing pink, hot pink. The other woman is an older version of the first. She's wearing purple, stretched to the limit, particularly in the waist.

I look at Donna. She throws her second piece of chicken back into the bucket and sucks in her stomach.

The one in purple says, “Look at all these people. Must be a full moon. That's when babies like to come.”

“Hello,” Donna says, as though she's the waiting room hostess.

“Hey,” the younger one says. “You waiting for a grandbaby?”

Donna's eyes bulge. “Lord, no!” she says, “My sister's having a baby.”

“My daughter is,” the younger one says, “her first.”

The purple woman speaks up, “She ain't but eighteen.”

“Mama, quit worrying. Tina'll do just fine,” the pink one says, pointing her mother toward chairs near Jack. Then to Donna, “I weren't but seventeen when I had Tina.” Joe catches her last words and looks in her direction.