Suddenly

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Use my kids.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about and said so with a look.

  “Community service. It’s my thing. They may kick and scream, but they’ll have the place painted in a week.”

  She shook her head. “If they’re going to paint any house, it should be one in lower Tucker. The people there could use the help. Me, I can afford to pay. And I may have time. Who knows, the people tomorrow may not be the right ones. The house may be on the market for months.”

  “I hope not, for your sake. You need closure.”

  It was another direct eye-to-eye statement, a succinct summation of the problem. “Closure,” she said with a sigh. “Painful, but it needs doing. Like the oven.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “I have to get back.”

  “So what can I do?”

  “Nothing. Really.”

  “Please,” he insisted, “I have to do something. It’s either help you here, or drive around for another few hours. I can’t go back. Not yet.”

  Paige wondered why but didn’t ask. She didn’t feel strong enough to take on his woes. She had work to do, and the longer she lingered, the later it would be before she finished.

  “Upstairs,” she finally said with a wave toward the cleaning goods. “There are four bedrooms. Two are empty. You can start with those—dust, vacuum, do anything that might make them look more inviting. The realtor suggested putting a small piece of furniture in each, but I can do that later. I’ll be up to do the other bedrooms myself when I finish with the kitchen.”

  “Can’t I help with that?”

  She shook her head and set off down the hall feeling sadder than ever. There was something about Noah’s unexpected kindness that was touching. It wrenched her at a time when she didn’t want to be wrenched. She wanted to do the job she’d set out to do and go home.

  So she finished the oven, scrubbed the stove top and the counters, then wiped out the refrigerator, which looked as forlorn as she felt with its single carton of milk, half loaf of bread, quarter stick of margarine, and gouged wedge of cheese. At first she left them there and mopped the floor. Then she returned, sniffed the milk, and, in a burst of furious action, dumped it into the sink, stuffed the bread, margarine, and cheese into the disposal, and ground it all up. They smelled of things gone bad. She was devastated.

  Desperate for fresh air, she went through the bowed screen door to the back porch. She kneed the swing and watched it creak back and forth, but the knowledge of Mara’s fondness for it brought her no solace. An empty swing was a desolate sight.

  With a sound of despair, she left the porch and, by the frail light that filtered from the house, wandered into the yard. The birds were still for the night, leaving a hollowness in the air that the chirp of the crickets and the rustle of dying leaves in the breeze barely touched. It was a warm night, but she was chilled. Rubbing her arms, she walked farther into the dark.

  At the spot where grass gave way to the woods, she sank to the ground. The black of night matched the dark thoughts she held, enlarging them until they encompassed the whole of her future. The years lay before her, a continuation of the ones that had gone past, yet different. More quiet and, like Mara, alone. Increasingly empty. Profoundly sad.

  She heard his footsteps but didn’t look up.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I needed air.”

  She heard him settle in the grass and wanted to protest. Noah Perrine, with his rules and regulations, wasn’t the kind of person she was normally drawn to. But he was human and alive. His presence made the night less ominous.

  His voice came from that softer place. “Was she a childhood friend?”

  “We met in college. Something clicked.”

  “Were you very much alike?”

  “In looks more than personality. She was more feisty than me. More intense. And selfless. Of all the things I remember about Mara, that’s the best. She put most anyone else’s welfare before her own. If the tables were turned and I was the one who had died, she’d probably be out there trying to memorialize my life. She wouldn’t be sitting here brooding about her own future.”

  He pulled up a blade of grass and tossed it aside. “Reflection is inevitable, when a friend dies.”

  “Is self-pity?”

  “Sometimes, when the reflection shows us things we don’t like.”

  “But I like my life. It’s a fine one. I’m doing worthwhile things.”

  He pulled up another blade of grass.

  She heard herself say, “But there’s an emptiness that’s been there since Mara died. I’m busier than ever, especially now with Mara’s little girl. Still, there are times when I feel I’m drowning in it, drowning in it, and I keep wondering whether this was what Mara was feeling when she drove into the garage that night.”

  She took a breath. When it came short and hard, she took another.

  He touched her neck.

  “I’m okay,” she said, but she wasn’t sure. Alongside the emptiness was a yearning, nearly as puzzling as the other in its depth. “I’m okay,” she whispered, this time against the hand that was by her cheek, and then there was a greater warmth along the side of her body.

  She leaned into it with an awareness of intense relief.

  The night didn’t protest. The sough of the wind in the trees grew rhythmic, hypnotic, lulling. She breathed in Noah’s warmth, the faint smell of his skin, and when he drew her closer, she went. The emptiness seemed suddenly less sharp, and if the yearning was more so, it wasn’t unpleasant.

  That was why, when he kissed her, she kissed him back. His mouth was firm, demanding in quiet ways that reminded her of his voice. But he didn’t say a word, simply kissed her again, for a longer time now and more deeply.

  Later, she would wonder what had come over her, but just then, sitting behind Mara’s house in the dark of night, there seemed no better way to keep emptiness at bay than this. Her body came alive, responding to his with a need that rose as quickly as instincts long suppressed.

  She tasted the inside of his mouth and touched his arms, leaning into him, finding comfort in his strength. The chill she had felt moments before waned, replaced by a heat that started at the points he touched and stole inward. She gave herself up to it. It was the first relief she had had in days. Wanting more, needing more, she opened her mouth, and when the kiss was done, she was breathless.

  She wasn’t alone. His breathing was ragged. Given pause by its sound, she put her fingertips on his mouth, then his cheekbone, then the curve of his glasses.

  He was a stranger. Nothing about his features was familiar in the way of an old friend or lover, yet she inched closer. His mouth welcomed her again, more hungrily this time. And the hunger was contagious. It swelled, creating a barrier against reason such that she could think of nothing but feeding it.

  He tossed his glasses aside and buried his face in her neck, breathing faster and harder, and all the while his hands were at her back, holding her closer, moving her against his chest.

  The heat spread. She made a sound of relief when he touched her breasts, then another, moments later, when he slipped the T-shirt over her head, released the catch of her bra, and took her bare flesh in his hands.

  He might have been a stickler for rules and regulations at school, but there was nothing prescribed about what he did on the grass. He was a masterful lover, blessed with an intuitive sensitivity, even in the heat of his own passion, that told him what Paige needed and when. In due time his shirt joined hers, then his pants, and just when she thought she would die if she didn’t have more of his body than even his nakedness allowed, he pressed her back and entered her.

  Reality had no chance then. Between the dark of night, the friction of his thrusts, and the greed of her body, she was lost. He drove her higher and higher, intuitive still and hot, so hot, until, with a small cry and the suspension of every muscle in her body, she broke into a shattering climax. She was still in its throes when he found his own
release.

  Sanity returned in wisps, fighting its way through a foggy pleasure, surfacing and sinking back as she fought it. Inevitably it prevailed. With the steadying of her breath, the cooling of her heat, and the clearing of her head, she found herself lying naked on the grass beside an equally naked man whom she barely knew. Worse, he had come inside her, and she was unprotected.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned, pushing up. She wrapped her arms around her knees and held them close. “I can’t believe I did that.”

  “Shhhh,” was all he said.

  She looked back, but the night hid his expression. So she buried her face against her knees.

  He touched her back. She wanted to move away, but, incredibly, the comfort was there again, so she let it stay.

  “I won’t give you a disease, Paige,” he finally said, “but I may have made you pregnant. Is that a problem?”

  In a higher than normal voice, she cried, “Yes.”

  He moved his hand lightly. We’ll deal with it if it happens, Paige felt him say, then laughed, vaguely hysterically, at the absurdity of her imagination.

  “What?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Tell me,” he coaxed.

  The hand was a connector, she realized. It kept something going between them, a relationship that was innocent in ways that their coupling hadn’t been, but that made it somehow less wrong. “It’s ironic,” she said. “I make my living in part teaching adolescents the facts of life. I encourage abstinence, and when that doesn’t work, I drum safe sex into their minds. Smart, huh? So what do I do?” She made a disparaging sound and groped for her clothes. His hand stayed with her until she moved out of reach. Then she felt a chill and dressed hurriedly.

  He didn’t move. She was on her feet before he said, “Why the rush?”

  “I have work to do.” She ran on into the house and went directly to Mara’s bedroom. “That didn’t happen,” she muttered as she looked around. Seconds later, she was dusting the collection of tiny bottles on the dresser and polishing the oak beneath. She did the same with the oak pieces at the head and foot of the bed, with the night tables, with the rocker that sat in the corner. She puffed up the comforter, straightened the cushion on the rocker, vacuumed every inch of the bare floor and the wildly colored rag rug.

  Then, breathless from the exertion, she paused. When she reached back to massage the muscles above her waist, she realized that they weren’t the only muscles that were strained. Her thighs were shaky.

  But she wouldn’t think about that. She couldn’t. So she crossed the room, sank onto the rocker, and hugged her knees. She relaxed only when her eye fell on the large, covered wicker basket that stood beside the rocker. It was Mara’s knitting basket, filled from the bottom up with remnants of projects.

  Swallowing, she lifted the lid. She might have guessed that the ongoing project would be pink, but although she would have put her money on a sweater, the piece proved to be an afghan, a delicate expanse of crocheted shells, just about the size of a crib.

  She held the wool on her lap and rocked. After a while she looked again into the basket and found the sweater. Knitted into a yellow field were the same distorted blue stars with which Mara had decorated Sami’s room.

  Vowing to finish both pieces, Paige dug deeper. Though there were no other projects in progress, the yarn balls of varying sizes were like the rings of a tree, marking Mara’s history from the most recent to the past. Paige found a ball of the nubby green yarn of which Mara had made a cardigan sweater for Tanya last spring, the variegated worsted she had used last Christmas to make hats and mittens for the poorest of her patient families, the fluffy chenille from which she had made a voluminous sweater for herself the fall before that. There was a handsome maroon of hand-loomed wool that Paige didn’t recognize, but she recognized the brilliant orange of a sweater for another of Mara’s foster children and the purple and pink from a scarf. There was the white wool, left over from the shawl Mara had crocheted for Nonny years ago, with which Mara had taught Paige the rudiments of the craft, and interspersed throughout were knitting needles and crochet hooks of every size and length.

  Hooked on the activity as she might have been on sifting through a picture album, Paige dug deeper. She had pulled out remnants of two other projects when her hand hit a pack of papers. Assuming they were knitting instructions, she pulled them up.

  They were letters, written on cream-colored stationery, bound together neatly by a piece of green yarn. The top one, the only one immediately visible, was addressed to a Lizzie Parks in Eugene, Oregon, and Mara’s own address was where the return address should be, but the letter had neither been stamped nor, obviously, sent.

  Lizzie Parks. Paige didn’t recognize the name. A childhood friend? A letter written before Paige had come to know Mara? But the return address was for this house, which Mara had owned for six short years.

  She held the bundle of letters in her hand, feeling its weight for a time, until curiosity got the best of her. Then she untied the yarn and thumbed through the pack. There were half a dozen letters in all, each addressed to the same Lizzie Parks.

  She repeated the name, yet still it didn’t ring a bell. Her first thought was to stamp the envelopes and mail them. Her second thought was that if Mara had wanted them mailed, she would have done it herself, rather than keeping them in a neat collection, tied with a ribbon. Clearly she hadn’t wanted them sent, and while Paige might still have decided that Lizzie Parks had a right to the letters, she wasn’t that noble. Mara had been her friend. Now Mara was dead. Paige wanted to know what was in the letters.

  She turned over the top envelope and found that it hadn’t been sealed. After withdrawing the letter, she unfolded it. Her heart started to thud when she saw that it had been written less than a week before Mara’s death.

  “Dear Lizzie,” she read:

  Exciting news! As I write, the little girl I’m adopting is about to leave India. I can’t describe my relief. It’s like I’ve been thrown a lifeline.

  If I had an extra picture of her, I’d send you one. She’s a beautiful child, has brown hair and brown eyes, like me. I still can’t believe that she’ll be mine once she’s here. I’ll have to file adoption papers with the state of Vermont, but the adoption agency assures me that it’s a formality. The tough part was getting the approval of the Indian authorities.

  My parents don’t put much stock in adoption. When I told them about Sameera, they said that it wasn’t the same and that I could call them when I was married and pregnant. But that’s easier said than done. When I didn’t get pregnant with Danny’s child, I thought it had to do with his problem, but then I didn’t get pregnant after Danny either, and I tried. I tried so hard. Maybe too hard. They say that happens.

  Paige wondered whom she had tried with. She couldn’t think of anyone Mara had dated seriously. Unless there were men she hadn’t known about.

  Wounded, she read on.

  I think something’s wrong with my body. Sometimes I think something’s wrong with my mind, too. I can do so much right, but then the things that I want the most fall through. Like having a baby. So I’m adopting Sameera, and I don’t care if my parents never recognize her as their granddaughter, she’ll be mine.

  Since Tanya ran off, things have been hard. Everyone tells me that it wasn’t my fault, but if it wasn’t mine, whose was it? I thought I was helping her. She was starting to sleep through the night. She wasn’t wetting the bed as much. She was talking more than she ever had. I still don’t know what went wrong, some bizarre thing must have snapped in her head. Either that, or I unwittingly said something that set her back.

  So I need Sameera. I need to prove to myself that I can do it right. It’s like there’s a little window of time open right now, and if I don’t take this opportunity, it will close for good.

  I can’t afford another failure. There have been too many.

  Paige let her hand fall to her lap. Another failure. “You weren’t
a failure,” she insisted. “If you had seen the people at your funeral, you would know that. You were as successful as any one of us.”

  But these letters hadn’t been written by the professional Mara. They had been written by the private Mara.

  “Not a failure,” Paige whispered, and opened the second letter in the pile. It had been written shortly after Tanya had fled.

  “Dear Lizzie,” she read:

  The Lorenzos were in the office today. They have six children under the age of ten, and every ailment imaginable. One of the children is diabetic, another has a hearing deficiency, and the rest are continually in the throes of one infection or another. I kept thinking that nights in their house must be a circus of coughing, crying, and vomiting, and to hear the parents’ complaints you can believe it. Still, I was envious. Nights in my house are silent—dead—barren. I do what I can to fill the void, but inevitably I end up lying in bed listening to the nothingness that is my life.

  Sure, I have a satisfying career. But that doesn’t count. What counts is what happens at night. That’s when the trappings of a life fall aside and the truth comes out. That’s when I’m all alone. It’s a sad statement about what I’ve accomplished in life. I’ve tired to change it, but nothing seems to work, and now I’m tired of trying. I’m feeling defeated. The nights are empty, long and lonely, and unless this adoption comes through, the future will be more of the same. I’m not sure I can bear that.

  Feeling chilled, Paige refolded the letter, put it back in the pile, and tied the bunch with the yarn. “You should have told me,” she said, studying the packet. “I might have helped.”

  But the truth was that she didn’t know what she might have done. Granted, she wasn’t feeling defeated as Mara had, but neither were her nights filled with the things Mara wanted. Moreover, the sense of emptiness Mara described was eerily like what Paige had been feeling of late.