Why Sarah Ran Away with the Veterinarian (22 page)

I chose a chair opposite the couch and watched Sarah. I could almost see Vivienne. I remembered her boiling all those diapers on top of the stove. She'd fish them out one by one with a wooden spoon, rinse them two or three times, then hang them on the clothesline. Sometimes I'd help. Joe bought her a washing machine when Donna came along. “Didn't have those plastic diapers when you were a baby,” I said.

“I meant to use cloth,” Sarah said, lifting Sammy's little butt by his feet and sliding a Pampers underneath it. “They're hard to find now. Cloth diapers.” She lifted him to her chest, his head against her neck. He seemed content. She sat back and relaxed.

I took it as an opening. I drew a breath, let it out slowly, and said, “You've got to tell him.”

“Tell who what?” Sarah said. Her green eyes widened then narrowed as though I'd flashed the light switch off and on. She turned her face from me to Sammy.

I said the word she'd carefully avoided for the past six months—“Michael.”

“Tell him what?” she said in monotone. I could see the muscles in her arm tense. Sammy wiggled.

“Cut the crap!” I said. “You're in the same fix your mama was. Vivienne lived in fear of David showing up. Maybe more in hope than fear. That's the last thing she'd want for you. You've got to face Michael, tell him about his baby, and put it behind you, one way or the other.”

She hesitated for a moment. “I don't know where he is,” she said, “and besides,” more defiance in her voice than I'd ever heard, “Sammy may not be his.”

“Bullshit!” I said. “Sarah, I didn't come here to butt in your business. I just don't want to see Sammy in the same situation as you, growing up feeling something isn't right but not knowing what the hell it is.”

“Jack is a good father,” Sarah said, her voice starting to crack, “Sammy won't feel like I did. I won't let him!” She struggled to control her face. “I won't let him,” she repeated.

I left.

We didn't talk again for a couple of months. At Sunday dinners Sarah was polite but that was all. And, hell, I'd had my say. But it hurt. She was like my own daughter and I felt cut off from my last bit of kin. Maybe she did too because one night she called and asked to come over “to visit,” she said.

She brought a six pack of Bud. I had plenty but I didn't say so. I pulled off two and stuck the rest in the fridge.

“It's just June, and dear God, it's already hot,” Sarah said. She slid the can across her temple, then held it to her neck.

“I've seen it hotter,” I said, “but not much.” I took a pull. “Jack keeping Sammy?”

She nodded. I expected a front-room conversation, so that's where we settled. She took several drinks, almost gulps. Her eyes swept the room. She looked at me and smiled. “Aunt Kate, you ought to date somebody in the air-conditioning business.”

“That's an idea,” I said, not altogether kidding. “Hell, I ought to date somebody!” I reached for my cigarettes. Lit up. “My only vice,” I said. “Just one left.”

“And baiting Andrew.”

“Two, only two vices left,” I said, “neither of which I plan to give up.” We both laughed. Then we stopped and turned up our cans almost in unison.

“Ready for another?” I asked.

“I shouldn't,” she said.

“That's not what I asked.”

“Ready,” she said.

When I came back, Sarah was staring at the mantelpiece. “I want to explain,” she said without looking at me, “why I don't want Michael to know about Sammy.” I popped the fresh can and handed it to her. She ran her finger around the rim, then took a drink.

“Aunt Kate, I loved Michael more than any man I've known.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead. It was damp. “I still do in some ways. But the truth is I was planning to leave before I heard about Mama.” Her voice shook. She took another drink. “And it wasn't because I was pregnant.” She traced an initial on the can. I wondered whose.

“Before I left,” Sarah said, wiping away the wet initial, “I felt like an old photograph, black-and-white turned gray, one that had been left in the sun too long. Sarah Crawford Brighton was fading, fading, until almost nothing was left. It wasn't Jack's fault—but that's the way I felt. Then Michael came along in living color. Like all outdoors. I was a teen again, giddy in love.” She smiled and for a minute I saw her as seventeen again, auburn hair streaking behind her as she galloped Ulysses. “A real fantasy,” she said.

“Contradiction in terms.”

“Real fantasy? Maybe so, but Michael was romance—horses, log cabins, sunsets, opal skies. I took off like an airplane, higher on life than I'd been in twenty years, able to see so much more of it.” Sarah stared into the fireplace as though she saw a flame. She took a pull on her beer. Then another.

“The thing is …”

“The down side,” I said, finishing her sentence, “the crash.” She looked surprised. Then studied the sweat on the can and nodded.

“Michael wouldn't let me stay close to him—not emotionally. He never even told me he loved me. I know he did at times, I could see it in his eyes. But he wouldn't say it. And every time he was especially tender, there'd be a week or so of distance.” She stretched out her hand and scooped through the air as though she were retrieving a memory. “Like in Tennessee. I loved the mountains so much I didn't want to leave. Michael loved it there too, at first. We even planned our own cabin, drew it out on butcher paper—one big room with a river-rock fireplace, a kitchen of pine, a stained-glass window high over the bed. He wanted to find the perfect tree for our bed, have it cut into lumber then build it himself.

“One morning I woke up to find him packing. I asked him where he was going. Without turning around he said, “Heading west.” I sat up in bed, pulled the sheets into a cocoon around me. I clutched a corner of the blanket like a child. I watched him cram things into a suitcase, searching my memory for some clue I must have missed. Then he looked me in the face, his dark brown eyes glazed over. Know what he said, Aunt Kate?”

I shook my head, but she wasn't looking in my direction.

“He said, ‘You can come if you want.'” Sarah sat still, both hands cupped around her beer, as though she were back in that Tennessee bed.

She straightened up, lifted her chin, and swept back her hair. My Sarah again. “I should have learned then,” she said, “but I was so dependent on him for love and beauty and feeling alive that I went with him. Once we reached Texas he transformed back into the Michael I loved. Neither of us had been that far West so we were constantly amazed at the sights. Windmill after windmill, dust storms thicker than night, armadillos, prairie dogs. For a while I was glad I'd stayed with him, even felt heroic in a sense. But then the crash came again—a whole series of crashes. Michael would start to talk about feeling guilty for what we did to Jack. He'd ask me didn't I miss my family. Then he'd always finish by telling me he was just naturally a loner and always would be. I never knew if he was sincere or trying to make me feel bad enough to leave.” She drained her can and grimaced again. “Up and down, up and down like a damn yo-yo! A Goddamn yo-yo!”

“Hurt like hell, didn't it?” I said, finishing off my beer. She nodded, the pain still in her eyes. “You're lucky,” I added.

Her eyes widened. I let her think about that while I went for the last of her six-pack. “What do you mean, I'm lucky?” she said, a slight irritation in her voice. She took the beer.

“Pain,” I said, “is a great balancer. It helps you get over memories, not bad memories but good ones, so good they can kill you.” I opened the can and drank. Sarah stared at me. “I had painful memories with all my lovers,” I said, “except Sammuel Harrison.” I wiped a drip from my chin.

“Everything I remembered about him was good—his eyes, his hands, the way he touched me, the way he made me feel. Then he left—that's the only pain, terrible for sure but nothing I could really connect to him. I've wished a thousand times I had followed him, hung around long enough to see his meanness, or faults, or at least ordinariness. Instead of making him a god in my mind.”

“Maybe you're right,” she said. “But it's ‘academic' as Andrew would say, because I won't see Michael again.”

“Don't count on it,” I said.

“It's been a year, Aunt Kate. No calls, no letters, no nothing.”

I couldn't tell if it was relief or sorrow in her voice.

“He's most certainly moved on by now, probably two or three times, found some other woman who dotes on his good moods and endures his bad ones.”

“Sorry you left with him in the first place?” I asked.

“No,” she said without hesitation. “I'm sorry about Mama and for what I did to Jack. But I had to save myself.”

“And now, Sarah?” I asked, “are you saved?”

She didn't answer. She bottomed out the beer and frowned at the can. “God, I hate that last swallow!”

“That's what Tennyson called ‘drinking life to the lees.'”

She set the can down carefully as though it wasn't empty. “I'm not exactly Ulysses,” she said, then smiled, “but he's got a point.” She touched her hand to her chest.

“Still breast-feeding?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “and I'm about due.” She rested her head against the couch and closed her eyes.

“I'll drive you home.”

“I can drive,” she said but she didn't open her eyes. “Besides, I'm in the Cutlass. What'll I tell Jack?”

“Tell him it wouldn't start.”

“I hate lying to him.” Her words hung in the air. Her eyes popped open and for a minute I thought she might cry.

But I couldn't help laughing. “Sarah Crawford Brighton, since when did you become so honest!”

She started laughing too, soft at first, then deeper and louder until we both were holding our stomachs like we might get sick. “Dear God,” Sarah shouted between fits, “I love you, Aunt Kate. You're the only one …”

“I know,” I said, cutting her off short before she could get teary-eyed. I wanted to hear her laughter, so much like Vivienne's. I steered her to the Blazer and drove her home, more giggling now than laughing. “Good night,” I told her. “Don't worry about Jack. He may not sleep well tonight, but you and Sammy will.”

On the drive home, under the cool blaze of the moon, I thought about what Sarah had said. That part about Michael being a loner. She bought it and maybe he believed it too. But it's a crock. It's just a cheap way to avoid entanglements and separations. I ought to know, I've used it for two Goddamn years now. I'm not a bit better off. At least with entanglements there are risks, excitement, highs and lows. With this there's just one long monotonous “me.”

I was still in that frame of mind the next day when I set out to wash my car. Somebody had run over the end of my hose where the nozzle screws on, Donna I think—she comes out here a good bit now. When I turned on the faucet, water shot up my arm and into my face. Soaked me. To the bone. And I was pissed. I didn't even go inside and change. I just headed out to Floyd's Feed and Seed to buy a new hose.

There I stood, in a foul mood staring at the hose display, when I heard somebody say, “Who's the lady in the wet T-shirt and tight-fitting jeans?” He said the last part like Conway Twitty. Then I heard Floyd say, “That's Kate McMahan, but she's no …” I spun around before he could finish. Or maybe he did finish and I didn't hear what he said because leaning on the counter next to Floyd was the best looking man I'd seen in years, maybe eons. About eight or ten inches taller than me, salt-and-pepper hair, steel gray eyes, and a body like Adonis, a fifty-ish Adonis. Best of all, he was staring straight at me.

“Kate, this is Charlie Buchanan,” Floyd said. “He raises llamas.” I forced my eyes from Charlie to Floyd. Floyd's a cut-up, so I waited for the punch line. It didn't come.

“I really do,” Charlie said, reading my mind. This is dangerous, I thought to myself. He seemed to read that too. He lifted his eyebrows and smiled. “My ranch is in Washington,” he said, “but I have one of my llamas with me, outside. Taking her to Georgia.” He shifted his weight from one boot to the other. Suede boots. I love suede, but I tried not to think it. He winked. “Want to see?”

“You're not pulling my leg, are you?” I said, then attempted my best smile. The thought about the leg was not unpleasant. He motioned and I followed him out to the parking lot. He stopped beside a rig that would have had Joe and Jack talking for days. It was a silvery-blue Chevy truck, chrome-trimmed, with running boards, an extended cab, and dual rear wheels. Behind it was a matching gooseneck trailer, sleek as a bullet. Washington tags read LLAMA 1.

“Like it?” Charlie said with a little-boy smile. I nodded. I peeked inside the trailer. There stood what appeared to be two animals in one. A giraffe's head and neck on a sheep's body with extra long legs, all bound together in creamy white fur.

“Snow White,” Charlie said, “meet Kate.” Snow White turned to look. I expected a silly mug, but her face was beautiful—a face of curves, delicate rounded nostrils, ears shaped like Ss, big round eyes with sweeping lashes—all balanced on a small, delicate head. “Pretty thing, isn't she?” Charlie said.

“Yes,” I answered, still surprised at my own thoughts. I turned to Charlie. He was looking straight into my eyes. I turned away and looked back at the trailer. “You're hauling all the way from Washington?” I asked. He nodded. “Nice trailer and all,” I said, “but doesn't she need to get out and exercise some?”

“I stop several times a day,” he said, stroking Snow White's neck, “unload her and lead her around. Then at night she and I go for a run.”

“Where?” I asked, trying to picture man and llama out for a jog in the countryside or along the highway. Either way, around here they'd cause a wreck or at least a good story or two.