by Sue Miller
On that particular evening, though, Sarah and Annie were sitting at a small square table in the corner of the old room, some of the leftover dinner dishes still around them.
She was talking with Sarah about something odd. What?
“Inappropriate touching,” that was it, following up on the ideas in a handout Sarah’s day-care center had given the parents, the handout with the rules that would keep the children safe from sexual predators. This was in the era when there was a general panic about this issue, when there were trials in which very young children were witnesses against their caregivers.
As she put the plates into the dishwasher, she was remembering that it had been dark out. So maybe it had been a wintry night. But the room was full of warm light, candlelight. She and Graham often lit candles for dinner then, in part because it harkened back sweetly to their days alone together, before Sarah; but in part too because Sarah took such pleasure in blowing them out when it was time to go up to get ready for bed.
Annie had had a cup of tea sitting on the table before her, Sarah hot chocolate. Graham had set his glass of wine on the counter while he cleaned up. They’d already played the requisite postprandial three or four rounds of I Spy.
Now Annie was asking Sarah, “What if someone wanted to touch your body, the private parts of your body? What would you tell them?”
Sitting in her booster chair, Sarah waited a moment before she answered—gravely, a bit hesitantly. “I would tell them no.” She was looking at Annie: Was this correct?
“That’s right!” Annie said. “Let’s say it together. Ready?” Annie inhaled loudly, drawing herself up, mouth open, eyebrows raised, and Sarah did too, watching her mother, trying to do exactly what she was doing. “No!” they said, almost at the same time.
Sarah had liked that. She had sat back, smiling at Annie with her mouth open, her neat, scalloped baby teeth showing. Then, watching Annie’s face for approval, she said, more loudly, “No! no! no! no!”
“NO!” Annie shouted back at her, and Sarah laughed. This was right up her alley. Sarah loved being loud. She was loud, occasionally embarrassingly so.
Now she yelled at her mother, “NO! NO! NO!” rocking her whole body with each word.
“Nosirree BOB!” Annie yelled back. She was enjoying herself; it gave her almost as much pleasure as it gave Sarah, yelling no, scaring away some imaginary bad guy.
From behind Sarah and Annie, Graham said, “No way, José!” and Sarah instantly echoed him, only much louder.
Annie had turned to look at him then, this is what she was remembering now. He was standing by the dishwasher in his apron, a dripping plate in his hand, watching them. Annie could see that he was taken with what Sarah had made of this exercise, an exercise he’d excused himself from, he’d seen it as so ridiculous. Now his eyes were steady on her, alive, amused.
Oh, Graham.
Together then, all three of them had done “Nuh-uh!” They did “No dice!” They did “No ma’am!” and “No sir!” They did “Nix!” and “Ixnay!”
Then Sarah wanted to do it all over again.
So they had, they did, Sarah and Graham and Annie, all those years ago.
Annie stood motionless at the sink, the warm water still running over her hands, lost in this memory.
After a minute, she started to work again. Rinsing Graham’s wineglass, the last one he would use, setting it into the dishwasher—this seemed ceremonial to her. Final.
Unbearable.
At about nine thirty, she called Sarah—waking her, Annie could tell by her scratchy voice. She had rehearsed the words, and she spoke them just as she’d said them to herself.
“I have terrible news, Sarah.” And without pausing, “Daddy has died, in the night.”
There was a long silence. I forgot to say my name, Annie thought. I forgot to tell her who was calling.
“No!” Sarah breathed. “Not . . . Mom!”
“In his sleep.”
“Oh, my God, Mother. I can’t believe it. I’m . . .” Her voice grew small. “Just, I can’t believe it.”
Annie explained it, waking to find him dead, how fine he was last night.
Sarah asked a few questions, and then, within a minute, said, “Well, I’m coming back there. I’ll be there probably sometime tonight. I’ll let you know.”
Annie felt ashamed of the impulse she had to say “Don’t. Please don’t.” She didn’t, of course, but she had a sense of the way it would be for the next days, her own powerlessness, her inability to control anything.
Frieda cried out violently, like someone struck. She cried out twice, actually. Then, after a long silence on both ends of the line, she asked, “Are you sure?” as though it were possible that Annie might have made a mistake about this. A question so absurd, so absurdly desperate, that Annie was able to feel for her. To understand, really, deeply, maybe for the first time, how much Frieda had loved him. Had gone on loving him.
They talked for a few more minutes. Frieda wanted more details than Annie wanted to offer, but finally she asked whether Annie had told Lucas yet. When Annie said no, no, of course she hadn’t, Frieda was audibly relieved. “Well, I’ll do that, then. I’m sure he’ll want to come up.”
At about ten thirty, when she knew that everyone at the bookstore would be long settled into various routines, Annie called the office there. She was imagining it as she listened to the phone ringing—the small, narrow room at the back of the store, windowless, the walls covered with autographed posters advertising many of the readings they’d had over the years. There was a long desk against one of these walls where they all sat in a row facing their computers—Erica, the events person, who arranged the readings and all the attendant publicity; fiftyish, hippie-ish Georgie, still lovely in a girlish way—she was the secretary and general factotum; and Emily, small, quick, efficient, who did the books and the ordering. And then, of course, Graham.
Who owned the store. Or was owned by the store.
Or who was the store, she thought.
Emily answered, and in response to Annie’s news said her version of how impossible it was, how unbelievable. Already this felt familiar to Annie, this response, and she did her part. When it seemed that had gone on long enough, she said, “Right now, though, here’s the thing: Could you just get the dinner party canceled? Let everyone know?”
“Oh!” Emily said. “Oh, of course . . .” There was a long pause. “But, should we, shouldn’t I, cancel the reading too?”
“No, no, the reading has to happen. Graham would never have wanted that. Just. I can’t do the dinner.”
“Of course not. Of course, no one would expect that. God!”
“And Jamie, too. Just tell her how sorry we are. I am. And, you’ll have to find someone else to introduce her.” Graham’s job, always. “So, if you could just, let the others know . . . the ones who were coming to dinner? . . . Do you have a pen?”
“Yes, right here. I’ll get paper, just a sec.”
So Annie listed the dinner guests for Emily; the old friends, the two writers, the other photographer, the painter, wives and husbands and lovers. Emily would call them and they would know about Graham, and Annie wouldn’t have to go over it and over it. At least with those friends. There would be others, too many to think of, but now the word would start to spread, wider and wider, and she wouldn’t be in charge of the news. Now it was no longer hers. Graham, his death, were no longer hers.
After she hung up, she sat for a few moments, considering what came next in this long, empty day. She was about to go upstairs to begin to get ready to face it, when it occurred to her that she should let Danielle know that she wasn’t going to be able to come to the opening on Sunday—even the thought of it seemed impossible. She pushed the numbers in, and after a few rings Danielle came on. Annie wasn’t sure what she said, maybe just, “I’m not going to be able to make it on Sunday.” Something like that.
There was a long silence, and then Danielle said, “This better be g
ood.”
9
The moment Sarah clicked off her phone, Thomas, who’d been lying next to her, watching her face as it changed and then changed again, said, “What is it, Sarah?” His voice was urgent with concern.
Sarah turned to him. The early June sunlight through the venetian blinds made stripes across his smooth, tan skin. “It’s my father,” she said in a small voice that sounded unfamiliar even to her. “My father died.”
He sat up. “Oh Jesus, Sarah!” he said. His hand on her back was warm. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” When she didn’t turn to him, he let his hand fall.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Thank you.” Her voice was still strange to her own ears. She cleared her throat. “I just don’t feel it yet. I don’t feel anything.”
“Of course not. I mean, how . . .”
“Yes.” She gave a great sigh, as if trying to order her breathing. They sat together, both awkwardly upright in the bed, both naked except for the sheet still covering the lower part of their bodies.
“Was he . . .” Thomas faltered. “Had he been . . . ill?”
Now Sarah looked at him, at this perfect man in her bed, at his face so full of real concern. “No,” she said. “No. He had a heart attack. In the night. So . . .” She lifted her shoulders. “He just didn’t wake up, I guess.”
“So. Not a hard death, anyway.”
“No, there’s that.”
“But a shock, it sounds like.”
“Yes,” she said.
The complexity for Sarah of this moment with Thomas was that she didn’t know him very well. She wasn’t ready to be grief-stricken with him. To share her father’s death—her father’s death!—with this gentle man she’d now been to bed with three times. It made the death seem even more unreal, even more impossible, having to find a reasonable way to speak of it with Thomas. It wasn’t reasonable. It shouldn’t be spoken of reasonably.
Her father! He was so alive for her. There was some part of her that almost literally did not believe it was real—his dying. She sat very still, waiting to feel something. Thomas sat behind her, watching her breathe, feeling helpless.
They’d met when he called her at the radio station to ask her out. Before then they’d talked on the phone twice, but that was work, that was when she was calling him, when she was getting him ready for his interview.
This was her job. To do the reading, or listen to the music, or watch the movie—all things the radio host, Shelley, wouldn’t have time to do for every single guest. To mark the passages in the book, to gather the quotes, to make excerpts of the dialogue in the film, to summarize reviews—criticism, praise. To frame the questions, to work out a plan for the discussion and run it by Shelley and Mary, the producer; and then to talk with the guest, to be sure he would be easy to work with. To ask some of the questions Shelley might be asking. To make it possible for both people—guest, host—to sound at least knowledgeable, and perhaps—this was the goal, anyway—much better than that.
Thomas had just published a book on what he called “The Silent Minority”—Asian Americans—and after reading an enthusiastic review of it, Sarah had proposed it at the group meeting at which they planned out the programs for the following week. Thomas was funny on the phone, relaxed with her and seemingly at ease with himself. By the end of their conversation, she was sure everything would go well, he was so articulate, so comfortable with what he knew. So confident in his opinions. And more, she’d liked talking to him so much. This was always a good sign.
They didn’t speak when he came in—she was in the booth, and then she had to leave to take a call before his segment was over. But when he phoned her at the station the next day, he said he was disappointed not to have met her. Perhaps they could have coffee? A drink?
Watching him cross the room to her, the only woman sitting alone in the café, the only woman waving at him, Sarah could tell he was disappointed again. She was used to this, this disappointment, but also used to the interest that preceded it—the interest based on her voice, which made the disappointment almost inevitable.
She was, as a high school acquaintance had once said to her, meaning it kindly at the time, okay-looking, and she’d learned, slowly, to make the best of that. She’d lost weight in her sophomore year of high school, the same year she’d made herself try out for any school play that came up. She got character parts—Ursula in Bye Bye Birdie, Mrs. Gibbs in Our Town. She’d had to work then to get her voice, so loud, so braying in childhood, under her control, so as not to overpower the other actors in their scenes with her. And backstage, she’d watched what makeup could do, though what she wore for her own roles emphasized what was least attractive about her. She made friends, of a sort. People who would at least say hello as they passed in the halls, or talk with her when they worked together.
It was better in college, where she’d worked at the student radio station among a bunch of eccentrics, running the eleven o’clock jazz show. At first she knew so little about what she was doing that she had to consult regularly with Graham. For a while, then, she was playing the music she’d heard in childhood as it had floated upstairs to her bedroom from the parties her parents were always throwing. But slowly she came into her own tastes. Diana Krall, Joshua Redman, Irvin Mayfield Jr., Jane Monheit.
In the talking she did between the musical segments, she tried to make her voice perfect for that hour—deep, restful, knowledgeable. That show, and maybe the voice she created for it, led to an internship and then a job at the radio station in San Francisco.
So when she talked to Thomas on the phone, she sounded confident, and she was. Her voice sounded like the voice of someone wise and sophisticated and curious and perhaps, sexy.
She had spent more than an hour getting ready the night they were to meet. She dressed carefully—a soft silk shirt, checked, a pencil skirt. Her jeans jacket over that. Dangly earrings, though at the last minute she’d taken those off and substituted the pearl studs her father had given her for Christmas the year before.
She didn’t imagine that much would come from their evening together, though she was interested in Thomas. But then, as it lasted longer than she’d expected, and then even longer than that, she understood that he was interested, too, interested in her.
She liked him. Oh! she liked him. She liked looking at him, his black hair and almost-black eyes, the pretty light brown of his skin. He wore a pressed white shirt, open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up. She liked looking at the shifting muscles in his forearms as he gestured.
She liked him because he asked her as many questions as she’d asked him on the phone when she was getting him ready for the interview. Because they talked so easily.
They talked about their lives, where they’d grown up, how they’d ended up here. He was from New York. He’d been born in Korea, but came to the States when he was two—his father had gotten a job teaching at Columbia.
“This is such a California conversation,” he said. “That assumption that pretty much everyone is from somewhere else. Or that discovery, anyway.”
They talked about radio, how special it was—listening without seeing, being required to imagine so much. They talked about old radio shows. He’d liked listening to the rebroadcasts of The Firesign Theater as a kid. “Good training for Monty Python,” he said. They talked about Monty Python. Then John Cleese. Then John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda. He said he’d seen it twice on a hot Saturday afternoon when it came out.
He must be around Lucas’s age, she thought.
They talked about the pleasure, the illicit pleasure really, of spending a beautiful summer afternoon in a cool, dark theater, of coming out to a still-hot, still-light evening.
“But you feel guilty too, don’t you?” Sarah had asked.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve wasted the beautiful day. Because you should have been doing something more . . . I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulders. “Worthy, I guess.”
He looked across
the table at her for a moment, amusement in his face. “I think I can be of help to you with that,” he said. His eyes reminded her of her father’s, the deep wrinkles when he smiled.
She laughed. “Do I need help?”
“Apparently you do.”
He asked her about herself, about how she got into the work she was doing, about what came next for someone with her job.
“More of same, I think,” she had said. The restaurant had emptied out. There was one other couple still there, and the waitress was setting tables up for the next day.
“You wouldn’t like your own show?” he asked.
“God, no!” Only as she said it did she realize how deeply she felt this. “I’d like to run a show, though,” she said after a moment. “Be a producer. I guess that’s where I’m headed, finally.”
“Why not be the host? You’ve got that wonderful voice, you ask such . . . welcoming questions.” He was leaning toward her now, his elbows on the table.
“Well, thanks,” she said.
“I was, just right away, completely comfortable talking to you.”
She shrugged. “That’s my job, of course.”
“Ah, so it wasn’t especially me.”
He was smiling at her, flirting with her. And here it came, the question that often arose for Sarah with men. Was it the kind of flirting other guys had sometimes done with her, the kind of flirting based on the assumption that she would see it for what it was—essentially a joke? The kind of flirting made possible because of the mutual, but tacit, understanding that it wasn’t intended to go anywhere—the way men were sometimes flirtatious and courtly to old ladies?
Or was it real?
She looked across the table at him, at his dark eyes steady on her, the smile playing on his lips as he waited for her answer. Why not take the risk? Why not?