By the time I got to the Food Lion parking lot, there were so many cars and so many people that I knew I would blend in without a problem. I saw Keith—oh my God, his poor face! He didn’t look as if he’d stepped out of a horror movie or anything, but scars covered one whole side of his face and were impossible to miss. As soon as I saw him, I turned and walked in the other direction, getting into the search line as far from him as I possibly could.
I stayed with the search all morning. I saw a bunch of people I knew, including Amber Donnelly, who used to be my best friend back before Ben. I guessed she was home from college for a long weekend, and she was walking the search line with a few other girls from my high-school class. I was glad no one knew who I was. It was hard enough just seeing everybody, knowing I was no longer a part of them and their world and never would be again.
Now in the school parking lot, I looked at my watch. Seven forty-five, which was the time I was supposed to be in Mrs. Hadley’s classroom.
“Grow up,” I told myself, and got out of my car.
There were a lot of parents, both mothers and fathers, near the entrance to the school. Dropping their kids off, I figured, but then I realized they were standing in a line, all facing the parking lot. Facing me. There must have been twenty of them. What was going on?
I slowed down, unsure what to do. Turn around? Walk straight ahead like nothing was going on?
“Go home!” one of them shouted, and a few more joined in with the same words until it sounded like a chant. Go home, go home, go home!
I took another couple of steps forward.
“You’re not going in there!” a woman shouted at me.
“I’m supposed to work in Mrs. Hadley’s classroom today,” I called out, like this whole thing was a misunderstanding and they were keeping me from helping a teacher.
“You’re not getting anywheres near our children!” a man yelled. He had a bushy blond beard and a deep, gruff voice that sounded like he’d been smoking since he was in diapers. I suddenly felt truly afraid, and I froze at the curb of the parking lot.
“Get off school property!” one of the women shouted.
I felt a thud against my arm and looked down at the ground to see an apple lying by my feet. I lifted my purse in front of my face as another one whizzed past my head. That was it. I was out of there.
I was starting to turn around, when a tiny African-American woman suddenly pushed open the door from inside the school. The line of parents parted for her, and I knew she had to be the principal, Ms. Terrell. She marched over to me on high heels.
“Ms. Lockwood?” she said as she came closer.
My cheeks burned as I nodded. “I’m not sure what to do,” I said.
She didn’t stop walking. “Come with me,” she said as she passed me, and I followed her nearly to the middle of the parking lot, where she turned to face me. Out on the street, I saw one of the dreaded white vans, this one with a colorful peacock logo on its side. Oh, no. I took a step to the left so my back was to it.
“This clearly isn’t going to work out,” she said. “When I gave your mother the green light and Mrs. Hadley said she was fine with it, I didn’t count on this.” She waved her hand toward the parents. “I had to let them know you’d be working in the classroom, and I got a few concerned phone calls over the weekend, but I thought I’d put out the fire.”
I winced at her choice of words. “It’s okay,” I said. I just wanted to get back in my car and go home.
“This organization on the part of the parents was unexpected,” she said. “I can’t put your needs over those of the students, and since the parents are refusing to bring their children to school as long as you’re here, this won’t work out.”
I glanced back at the determined faces. “It’s okay,” I said again.
“You understand my position,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“They hate me,” I said.
“It’s not a matter of liking or hating. They feel as though they have to protect their children.”
I’m harmless, I wanted to say. “Okay.” I hiked the strap of my purse higher on my shoulder. “Sorry. I…I’m sorry about this whole thing.”
No one was around when I got home. I made sure all the doors and windows were locked, then went up to my room and lay down on my bed, the teddy bear in my arms. When I shut my eyes, I saw the angry, ugly faces of the parents in front of the school entrance. We lived in a kind, softhearted part of the world, and they were probably kind, softhearted people most of the time. I brought out the mean side in them. How many of them knew me personally? Some did, I was sure of it. Some were probably the parents of my former friends—my friends from before I flipped out. They’d probably wanted their kids to hang out with me back then, hoping a little of me would rub off on their own children. Now they thought I was crazy or dangerous. Maybe both.
I couldn’t do this community-service thing, I thought, running my fingers over the angora on the bear’s back. You needed a community to do that in, and I’d lost mine a year and a half ago, destroying it myself in a plume of smoke.
Chapter Seventeen
Sara
Private and Deep
1990
THERE WERE EMOTIONAL AFFAIRS AND THEN THERE WERE physical affairs. Before meeting Jamie, I thought a physical affair would be the far more devastating, destructive and complicated of the two. Now I knew that an emotional affair was even more dangerous. It created a need to share every thought and feeling with another person. It seduced you into being entirely vulnerable while still feeling entirely safe. That was what I was having with Jamie: an emotional affair. It ran deeper and darker than I could ever have imagined.
I didn’t even want a sexual affair with him. Sex was overrated. I’d never truly enjoyed it. I’d never even had an orgasm. When I watched an actress writhing with pleasure in a movie, I wondered if the problem rested in Steve’s lovemaking or in myself. Steve seemed perfectly content. He was one of those men who would fall asleep two seconds after he came, while I lay awake, longing for conversation, for the closeness the sex hadn’t given me.
I was finding that closeness in Jamie. I saw him nearly every day, sharing the care of a child with him, sharing the love of that child. Jamie and Maggie gave my life purpose and joy. It was impossible not to get close.
One afternoon when Maggie was fifteen months old, I was pushing her in a shopping cart at the commissary when I spotted a firefighter walking toward us. He was a big man, and although it was August, he was dressed in bulky tan-and-yellow turnout gear. Was there an emergency in the commissary? I looked over my shoulder to see if something was going on behind me.
“Hey!” he said, and I saw the smile. The eyes. Jamie! In the commissary?
Maggie heard his voice and twisted around in the seat of the cart. “Dada!” she cried, reaching for him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as he scooped Maggie out of the cart and hugged her to him. “Is something wrong?” He wasn’t supposed to pick up Maggie for another few hours after his shift as a volunteer firefighter ended.
“Everything’s fine.” He pressed his lips to Maggie’s cheek. His soot-streaked face was damp with perspiration, and he smelled of smoke.
I felt a smile spread across my face. Anyone watching me was sure to know I loved this man, and I didn’t care. “How did you get in?” I asked. He had no military ID.
“That’s why I kept on my uniform.” He nibbled Maggie’s fingers and she giggled. “I figured they wouldn’t turn me away. And they didn’t.”
“Did you come straight from a fire?” I still couldn’t get over seeing him there. “Are you sure you’re okay? You must be roasting in that jacket.”
“Just needed to see my baby girl.” He settled Maggie in his arms and she rested her head against his shoulder, her dark curly hair mixing with his. Jamie glanced in my cart. “Are you almost finished? Can we go back to your house so I can get a shower?”
I no longer cared about t
he groceries. “I’ve got everything I need,” I said, and I meant those words in more ways than one.
In my little house, I put away the groceries while he showered. This feels so right, I thought, listening to the spray of water behind the bathroom door. This is how a woman should feel when the man she cares about is in the house. My happiness was so simple and pure. If only I felt that way when Steve was home. Right then, I was glad he was back in Monterey, three thousand miles away, this time for two weeks.
I was feeding Maggie in the high chair by the time Jamie came out of the shower.
“Dada!” Maggie said again, but she was too intent on the yogurt she was eating to raise her arms to him this time.
Jamie leaned against the doorjamb between the hallway and the kitchen, smiling, his arms folded.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re here so early?” I asked. I’d almost said home so early.
“The fire was brutal,” he said. “It was in a third-story apartment and there were these twin baby girls about Maggie’s age.”
“Oh, no.” I set down the container of yogurt.
“No, it turned out okay,” Jamie said.
“Ehh! Ehh!” Maggie reached for the yogurt and I gave her another spoonful.
“I was able to find them and get them out,” Jamie said. “I had to give one of them CPR, but they’re both okay. I just had a need to see my Maggie girl before I did anything else.”
“Ah,” I said. “Of course you did.”
He crossed the room, took the spoon from me and gave me a gentle shove. “May I?”
“Da.” Maggie showed off her tiny new teeth in a grin.
“I’ll get her things ready,” I said. I went into the nursery—Maggie’s nursery, never Sam’s—and packed the diaper bag. Where my heart had felt light only half an hour earlier, now it was weighed down. In a few minutes, they’d be gone. Both of them. I’d be alone again.
“Sara.”
I turned to see Jamie holding Maggie in the nursery doorway.
“She’s done already?” I asked.
“Yes. And I was wondering…I know it’s too early, but if we put her in the crib right now, do you think she’d fuss or do you think she’d be quiet for a little while?”
I looked at him, and I knew what he was really asking. Why it didn’t surprise me when we’d never talked about it before—had never even come close to talking about it—I couldn’t say. I only knew that I loved him, and that he’d had no one to love him—not that way—in more than a year.
I stepped forward, reaching for Maggie, who came willingly into my arms. “Come here, Mags,” I said. “How would you like your special fishbowl? The magic fishbowl?”
“Fiss,” Maggie said.
“Dim the light, Jamie.”
As he lowered the light switch, I reached over the crib rail and let Maggie slip from my arms to the mattress. She let out one small wail of alarm as she realized she was being put to bed way before it was time, but I quickly pressed the button on the magic fishbowl attached to the end of the crib.
“And here’s your blankie, honey.”
Maggie took the small flannel blanket from my hands, but her eyes were already so wide with wonder that I could see the reflection of the blue and yellow fish in them.
I walked toward Jamie. “That should give us a good half—”
He stopped my talking with a sudden kiss, his hands in my hair, and we stumbled from the nursery to the bedroom, where I discovered more—much more—of what I’d been missing with Steve.
“That was longer than a half hour,” Jamie said after we’d been making love for close to two hours.
“You’ll have hell to pay tonight.” Instantly, I regretted what I’d said. I’d meant that Maggie wouldn’t sleep well after this long, post-dinner nap, but the “you” in my sentence was plural, including both Jamie and Laurel. He and I both knew it.
“It was worth it,” Jamie said. He lifted my hand to his lips, kissing my palm, then the backs of my fingers.
Don’t go, I thought. Please don’t go. Yet now Laurel was in my mind. I had struggled to befriend her, and she occasionally seemed to welcome my friendship. What was she doing right now? Right this minute? Was she thinking of the little girl in my nursery? The man in my arms?
“I love you,” Jamie said suddenly.
They were words I’d never once heard from Steve. I raised myself on an elbow to look down at him. “I love you, too,” I said.
He ran his fingers down my throat and over my collarbone. There was sadness in his face that I didn’t want to see.
“Jamie,” I said. “If you and Laurel split up, you and Maggie could live here.”
“What? Sara—”
“It’s Steve’s idea. He wants to rent out our extra room. He said you and Maggie could live here. We’d have to charge you rent, but that way I could watch her all the time.”
Jamie shook his head. “Sara, why are you saying this? Why are you bringing Steve and Laurel into this room right now?”
Why was I? I started to cry.
“Sara, Sara.” He wrapped his arms around me and rocked me against his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. But you know I can’t leave Laurel.”
“I know. I’m not asking you to. I wouldn’t do that.” I didn’t want to be one of those women who grew clingy and needy during an affair. I didn’t want to be one of those women who’d have an affair. Cheaters. Liars. Yet now I was one of them and although I couldn’t deny the guilt I felt, I suddenly understood those women better. How many of them lived hollow lives like mine? “I just wanted you to know what Steve suggested,” I said.
Jamie rocked me awhile longer, and I knew by the loud sound of his breathing that he was troubled. I wished I hadn’t said anything about him moving in.
“This was a mistake,” he said.
“No!” I raised my head to look at him again. “No. I didn’t even know I wanted to do this, but now I realize that it was absolutely necessary.”
He laughed. “Necessary, huh?” He kissed the tip of my nose. “You’re quite the romantic.”
I laughed with him, hoping the lightness in his voice would last. It didn’t.
“It was a mistake,” he said again. “Steve’s a good man and I bet if you tried, you could find some…common interests. You walk on eggshells around him. You need to communicate. To tell him what you want.”
I rested my head on his chest again, breathing in the scent of him. Trying to memorize it, because I knew he was telling me there would be no other evenings like this one.
“And Laurel is—” he hesitated “—she was a wonderful wife and she will be again.”
“I won’t ever feel about Steve the way I feel about you,” I whispered.
He swallowed loudly a couple of times. “Tonight was my fault,” he said. “We can’t always have what we want in life. I should know that by now.” He let go of me, and the air was cool where it hit my bare skin. “Help me, okay?” he asked. “Let’s never do this again.”
Two weeks later, Steve came home from California. We made love the night of his homecoming, and I had the bizarre feeling that I was cheating on Jamie in spite of the fact that we hadn’t made love again since that one time. I tried to capture with Steve the physical passion I’d felt with Jamie, but it was hopeless. I simply didn’t feel it. I knew Jamie was right and that I needed to talk to Steve, to tell him what I wanted from our marriage, in bed and out, but the words wouldn’t come. Steve was just Steve. Nothing I said would change him.
Late in September, Jamie did what he said he would never do: he left Laurel.
I arrived at the chapel office to take care of Maggie. I’d seen Jamie nearly every day since our “mistake,” and although we acted as we always had with one another, I knew there was a difference. I felt him looking at me when I played with Maggie. He brushed his fingers over mine when he handed me a toy or the blankie. It was not my imagination. There was a hunger in him that he struggled to tamp down
. I recognized it because I shared it.
“I need to talk to you,” he said that morning as he poured a cup of coffee from his thermos.
“Missu!” Maggie lifted her arms in the air to be picked up, and I saw the huge bandage on her left hand.
“Maggie, honey!” I lifted her into my arms. “What happened to you?”
“Have a seat,” Jamie said.
“Don’t you need to get to the real-estate office?”
“I need to talk to you first.” He motioned toward Maggie’s hand. “This happened yesterday. I got called to a fire, so Laurel took her out on the beach and Maggie picked up a board with a rusty nail and cut her hand.”
“Oh, no.” I kissed the bandage. “Did you get a boo-boo, Maggie?”
“Laurel couldn’t handle it,” Jamie said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean she lost it. Marcus heard Maggie screaming. Thank God he was there. Laurel was trying to run water over the cut, but she…Marcus said she just panicked. Freaked out. Started crying and let go of Maggie and didn’t seem to know what to do.”
“But she’s a nurse,” I said. It was extremely hard to picture Laurel as a nurse.
“Well, that was the old Laurel,” Jamie said with a sigh. “I feel sad for her. She was trying to be a real mother to Maggie. Taking her out on the beach to play with her. You know what an effort that must have been for her.”
I nodded.
“Anyway, we talked last night and she said…she said she wanted to leave. That Maggie and I would be better off without her.”
“Oh, Jamie!” I hurt for him. I truly did. But I was also thinking, what does this mean for me?
Jamie looked out the window toward the inlet. “She doesn’t want the responsibility of Maggie right now. She knows she can’t handle being a mother, but she won’t get help, and I don’t know what I can do about it.” Jamie had been able to talk Laurel into one appointment with a psychiatrist, but she’d refused to go back. “One thing I know is that I can’t let her be the one to leave the Sea Tender. She’d be so lost.”
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