by LK Rigel
He said it suggestively, as usual. With Bram, flirting was a way of life. He held onto Sara’s hand, circling his thumb on her palm, and a jolt of desire ran through her. His schedule was seriously ruining their love life, and little teases like this made her ache for him.
“So what’s happening with your aunt?” Bram said after the waitress left.
Sara told him about Aunt Amelia’s fall. She meant to sound concerned—and she was—but she couldn’t hide her excitement. She was going to see Turtledove Hill again. “I have a bad feeling about it,” she said. “Aunt Amelia didn’t sound very happy. I don’t think she likes the rehab place.”
“Who would?” Bram made a face. “It’s probably full of old people. Sick old people.”
Sara was used to Bram’s comments about older people. She’d given up trying to change his attitude. “I wish I could go right now.”
“She said to wait, and she’s right.” Bram still ate like an athlete. He raced through his Moroccan chicken. “In two weeks school will be out, and she’ll be home from rehab. Better for both of you. She’ll need you more then.”
“That’s true.” Sara picked at her Caesar salad. It was too soon after lunch, and she wasn’t hungry. “When I go, why don’t you come with me, just for a few days?”
“Nah.” Bram pushed his empty plate away. “She wants to see you, not me. And I could use the space.”
“Space.” Sara put her fork down. Sometimes Bram could really hurt her feelings without realizing it.
“Ah, come on. I love ya, babe.” He smiled and raised one eyebrow. He knew she loved that. “But you know I can’t write when you’re around.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
She acted like she was joking, but her smile was a lie. She was dead sure how she felt about it. She hated it. It felt wrong that Bram couldn’t be creative when she was in the same room. It would be more romantic to be a muse, not an obstacle.
“Aunt Amelia would like you.”
“I doubt that.”
“If you spent a little time with her, you wouldn’t dislike old people so much.” Actually, that might not be true. The one time Sara saw Aunt Amelia, she wasn’t very friendly. But Sara remembered liking her anyway.
“I don’t dislike old people,” Bram said. “I’m just not used to them.”
“Not just old people. Anybody over forty.”
Before he finished kindergarten, all four of Bram’s grandparents had died. His father was killed in Iraq when he was ten, and his mother had died of cancer when he was sixteen, just before Sara met him. She believed his aversion to the elderly came from the same place as his need to flirt. It was all about his fear of death.
The first time they had sex, he collapsed on top of her and said, “Fucking is the opposite of dying.” It sounded philosophical and deep, and it made her feel powerful and necessary.
“Everybody dies,” he said now. “Especially old people. I can’t be near that.”
She wasn’t going to argue with him. “Aunt Amelia must hate being away from Turtledove Hill.”
“She’s eighty-five. She should get out of there,” Bram said. “Sell it. A couple hundred acres in the middle of nowhere.”
“She’s lived there sixty years,” Sara said. Sixty years of constancy, dependability. It must be wonderful.
Bram stabbed a piece of the chicken on Sara's salad with his fork. “Are you going to eat this?” He knew her too well. When she started pushing her food around, she was finished.
“Marie got a final notice.” She slid the plate over to him. “I forgot to check the mail yesterday. I’ve had intimations of doom ever since she told us.”
“You’ll squeak through.” Bram’s face clouded over at the mention of RIFs. “You’re safe.”
“If I taught math or science, maybe. Today Charlotte threatened to quit. Her husband made partner at his firm, and she’s been talking about having another baby anyway.”
“Nice to have a choice.”
Thoughts of children made Sara restless again. Envious, if she’d admit the truth. “Where are we going, Bram?” she blurted out. Her heart pounded hard. Had she really said that?
Bram closed up. He sat back in the booth, and his eyes dulled. “What?”
“We’re closer to thirty than twenty.” This would make him uncomfortable, but this was important. This was their marriage. “We should be more … I don’t know. Settled.”
“I’m sorry.” He dropped his fork on the plate with a clatter. “I’m sorry I lost my job. It wasn’t in the plan, I know. I’m sorry the economy has gone to hell. I’m sorry I’m not—”
“I didn’t mean that. It isn’t you, Bram. It’s us.”
“I’m working on it, babe.” He squeezed her hand and softened his voice, but there was no warmth in it. She’d pushed him away. “I do need the time to write. That’s my real work now.”
“I wish we could move in with Aunt Amelia.”
“So your banishment is over, now that she needs you,” Bram said. “I doubt Pelican Chase High School is hiring.”
“Turtledove Hill would be a great place to write. Wait until you see it.”
“I’m sure it’s as perfect as you say,” Bram said. “But for now it’s writer for love, waiter for money, and this is where the waiter jobs are.” He threw too much cash down on the table and slid out of the booth.
“We have to stop living like this.” Sara grabbed Bram’s hand. He never wanted to hear anything that wasn’t cheerful, but sometimes things came spilling out.
Bram twisted his hand out of hers, as if he wanted to put his wallet away. “What choice do we have?” he said, his eyes on the restaurant door.
“We can’t keep passing in the hall, one clocking in as the other clocks out. We’ll become strangers to each other.” It would be a wrench to quit teaching, but better that than lose her marriage. “We could run the vineyard.”
“Yeah, right. And that doesn’t take any special training.” Bram leaned over and kissed her forehead. “We can’t talk here. I’ve got to go, babe.”
- 4 -
A One-Off
BRAM’S SNORE STARTLED SARA awake. Her reading glasses were askew on her face, jabbing below one eye, and her reading light was still on. She was pinned under Bram’s bare arm. He smelled like scotch and salmon and charbroiled filet mignon. She crawled out from under the arm and set her glasses on the nightstand by the clock. 5:19.
The essays she’d been grading before falling asleep were strewn all over the floor out of order. She gathered up the papers and went to brush her teeth, closing the bathroom door so she wouldn’t bother Bram.
Work today was going to be crappy. Everybody would be depressed over final layoff notices. No way was Marie the only victim. Sara spit out her mouthwash. She’d call in sick if it wasn’t a Friday. The district was such a dick about people taking Fridays off.
She had to go in.
She had to finish grading those Jane Eyre papers.
Gah! She had to read Bram’s book.
Everything in her life was about have to. It felt like her whole life was slipping away. Everyone said twenty-eight was still so young. Then why did she feel so old?
She’d spent all her life waiting to be older. You can’t drive until you’re sixteen. When you’re eighteen you can vote. You can’t buy a beer until you’re twenty-one. Now she felt too old for anything. Too old to change careers.
Too old to start having children.
She didn’t want to start being a mom in her late thirties, ancient when her last kid was still in high school.
She took the last two Jane Eyre essays out to the kitchen. The morning light was beginning to outline the trees in the backyard. She made a cup of coffee and opened a window to let in some fresh air. Her ereader lay by the Keurig.
She’d meant to look at Hot Heat again last night, but she’d been caught up in grading papers. She opened the book now.
I small-talked the stenographer while Hiz
zoner and the shysters met in chambers. “I hear court reporters stroke with speed and accuracy,” I said to the red-headed dame. “I’ve got something hard and hot that could use a few strokes.”
The stenog stared at my bulge. The light in her eyes didn’t help my concentration. Her voice was like honey and mint over ice on a long, hot summer day.
“Someday I’ll show you what I can do, Harker,” she said. “I’m accurate as hell, but I can be slow too.”
Sara switched off the reader. Bleah! She just didn’t get Bram’s style. She suspected he was a bad writer. She should know—she had a master’s degree in English lit! But her judgment went out the window where Bram was concerned.
Besides, it wasn’t him. It was her. She was too old-fashioned. She should have been born in another time, when Dickens and Trollope and Gaskell were giving way to George Eliot and Henry James.
Not to detective pulp fiction.
She made another cup of coffee and went back to high school freshman treatments of Jane Eyre. David needed a B to pass the class. Sure enough, he wrote about “the Prometheus dude” —and misspelled Prometheus. Thankfully one paragraph redeemed him.
Everyone says Rochester is bad and St. John is good, but it’s the opposite. Rochester loves Jane just the way she is. He doesn’t want her to change. St. John never listens to what she says. He wants her to want what he wants and think what he thinks and go slave for him on his mission.
Relieved, Sara put a big blue B by David’s name at the top of the essay. One drop of critical thinking improved an ocean of regurgitation and nonsense.
She moved on to essay she’d saved for last because it would be the best and would prove she wasn’t a failure as a teacher. The one from the ghostly Mona, her most thoughtful student. Mona made a similar point to David’s, but with elegance. And proper spelling:
In the end, Bronte’s novel is about inner truth versus outward appearances. That conformity is often a lie. She says it’s better to follow your own values. Who you are matters more than who other people want you to be.
Sara marked the paper with an A and went back to the bedroom. Bram wasn’t in bed, and the water in the bathroom was on. It sounded like he was brushing his teeth, which was odd. When he worked until two in the morning he usually didn’t wake up until close to noon.
“Goodbye, Bram,” she called out and picked up her briefcase. “I’m going to school.”
As she reached the kitchen she heard him running down the hall. He stopped her before she could open the door to the garage.
“We need to talk, babe.” His face was a blank, but pale.
“Now?” Fear ripped through Sara. If guts could spontaneously open up and spill out on the floor, Sara would swear hers just did. “I’m going to work, Bram.”
“We have to stop living like this.” He looked as sick as she felt. “That’s what you said.”
“What are you saying?”
He took her briefcase out of her hand and slipped her purse off her shoulder and dropped them on the ground. She let him lead her to the kitchen table.
“I’ve been seeing someone,” he said. “One of the waitresses at work.”
No. This wasn’t happening. “You…you’ve been having an affair.” It wasn’t a question. It was a dull, flat, statement. Affair, affair, affair…
“It doesn’t even rise to that level,” Bram said. “It was meaningless. A one-off.”
“Was?” A one-off. So unfeeling. Should that make her feel better or worse?
“It’s over,” he said. “It was over the minute it started. I couldn’t live with myself anymore without telling you.”
“Maybe I wish you hadn’t.”
“God, I’m sorry, babe.”
“Yeah. Well.” She couldn’t think. She had to get away. “I have to go to work.”
SARA DROVE AUTOMATICALLY, BARELY seeing the road or the traffic. She had a searing headache. She didn’t want to go to work. She hated Bram. She hated the world. She hated Rocklin. Each summer here was hotter than the last, but it wasn’t just the hot heat. She drove by her old church. It always reminded her of her dying mother and how quickly Dad found a new wife there.
It would be a symbol of her failure in marriage too. She’d lied to herself all this time. Bram married her because she was pregnant, because it was the right thing to do. Maybe he never loved her. She wasn’t his density after all.
The drive-through was exceptionally slow this morning. Same routine as every morning. Everything in her life was routine. Sexless. Lifeless. She was just going through the motions, accepting the unacceptable, one day at a time. One of those days she’d be forty-eight instead of twenty-eight. Would she and Bram still be together? At the moment, it didn’t seem possible.
She thought of Mona’s essay. Was this who society wanted Sara to be? Did she even know who she wanted to be?
At the order window they recognized her and knew her order. Couldn’t they see she was an entirely different person now? She was a woman whose husband had affairs.
She stopped at the trash can at the end of the line. As she bent over to collect the empty paper cups lying on the floor, her phone rang with a call from the 707 area code. Aunt Amelia’s area code.
“Sara Lyndon Blakemore?” the caller said. “This is Marnie Sims, the administrator at Pelican Chase Skilled Nursing. I'm afraid I have bad news.”
No. Sara’s gut wrenched.
“Last night…”
“Wait.”
With a rush of anxiety, she ripped the BlueAnt off her ear. Why hadn’t she gone up to Pelican Chase right away? Somehow, she pulled over into the parking lot without hitting anybody and got the earpiece back on. Her words came out in a whisper. “Go ahead.”
“Ms. Blakemore, you’re listed in Amelia Lyndon’s admit paperwork as next of kin.”
She recognized the fake-polite voice. It was the one she used in parent-teacher conferences to hide what she was really thinking. “Is she dead?” she blurted out. Yes, yes. I should have been there sooner. I know. I’m a terrible niece.
After a brief silence came a terse, “No, Ms. Blakemore.”
She was so relieved she ignored the woman’s tone. “What happened?”
“Your aunt developed an infection. Last night she took a turn for the worse. Her immune system isn’t as strong as we’d like.”
As we’d like. Whose fault was that? “What are you saying?”
“You’re listed as next of kin. I’m sorry to have to tell you that your aunt is very ill.”
“Is she dying?”
“She is very ill, Ms. Blakemore. You should come quickly if…if you’d like to see her.”
“I’m in Placer County, hours away. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She headed back home, dreading to see Bram, and relieved beyond belief to see he was in the shower. She threw pajamas and a change of clothes into an overnight bag and headed back out to the car. She’d let Bram know later where she was. Maybe.
Once she was on the freeway, she called the district to let them know she wouldn’t be in today. The scheduling supervisor sounded skeptical. “My fourth case of pink slip flu this morning.”
Sara lost it. “My aunt is dying and she’s all alone.” She broke down in tears. “She’s all I have.”
It was only hours later, when Sara was turning onto Highway 1 north of San Francisco, that she realized her Freudian slip. She’d meant to say I’m all she has.
- 5 -
Bonnie
SARA FOLLOWED MS. SIMS down the hall at Pelican Chase Skilled Nursing, fighting back tears of rage. The place was horrific.
The hall smelled of disinfectant, vitamin B, and urine with a hint of mashed potatoes and gravy. A pitiful moan somewhere in the distance provided the counterpoint to monitor beeps and elevator music. The yellow walls were faded. The potted plants begged for water.
“I’m taking my aunt home immediately,” she said. “I’ll drive her to town every day for physical therapy if I have to
.” She started to wish Bram had come with her—then she remembered. He was a no-good cheating son of a bitch.
The administrator looked at Sara as if she’d said ghosts are taking tea on the roof. “You don’t understand, Ms. Blakemore—”
“Call me Sara.”
“Sara. Miss Lyndon is too sick to go home.”
“But you said it was an infection. How long can it take for antibiotics to kick in?”
Ms. Sims let out a weary sigh and walked on. Her heels clacked against the tile floor, adding a cruel staccato beat to the convalescent home concerto. Why didn’t she wear those soft, thick-soled shoes like a normal nurse?
“Here we are.”
Up ahead on the right the door was open, and a woman’s urgent voice filtered out to the hall. “Where is it, Amelia? Tell me where you put it.”
The voice sounded familiar, but Sara couldn’t place it.
“Bonnie, she’s here,” Ms. Sims said to a young woman sitting on the other side of the hospital bed. “This is Amelia’s niece.”
Bonnie. The one who’d left the message on the phone. She was close to Sara’s age, maybe a little older. Their eyes met. A flicker of animosity passed over Bonnie’s face and disappeared. Judgmental much? Sara had come as soon as she could. And why was Bonnie being so pushy with Aunt Amelia?
Sara focused on the woman in the bed and gasped. “Aunt Amelia!” The old lady’s bony hand was taped up with an IV line. It was cold from the fluids being pumped into her veins. Her hair had gone white, and she was pale and small. In Sara’s memory, her aunt was on the overweight side, robust and athletic. This fragile-looking woman was wasted away.
Aunt Amelia brightened when she saw Sara, and the wrinkles around her eyes crinkled. “Yes,” she said weakly. “Good.”
She raised her head and worked her lips as if she wanted to say more, but the effort was too much. She fell back and closed her eyes.
“Her sleep medication is kicking in,” Ms. Sims said.
“Sleeping pills?” Sara said. “But you knew I was coming.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t be here sooner, but right now sleep is the best thing for Amelia. You can come back in the morning.” She looked pointedly at Bonnie Norquist. “Both of you.”