by Peggy Webb
“I can see myself out. Goodbye, Sarah.”
Her goodbye was so soft he barely heard her. He was still reeling from the encounter when he got home.
He made himself a spartan dinner, then went up to his rooftop. To watch the stars.
Jim adjusted his telescope, then shoved it aside in disgust. He hadn’t come to watch stars; he’d come to watch Sarah’s garden. In case she came. In case she danced.
Sarah didn’t know how long she sat in her chair not moving after Jim left. It was the only way she could keep from breaking apart.
Eventually she went upstairs to her bedroom. She took the dance dress out of her closet, folded it and wrapped it in tissue paper. Then she took the makeshift diploma from her bedside table and placed it on top of the dress.
Walking as if the floor were mined, Sarah went to the attic and placed the items in an old steamer trunk.
She wouldn’t be needing them anymore.
If Jim had not been back on active duty, he’d have hung around the telephone waiting for Sarah to call. As it was, he only haunted his phone during the nighttime hours. That and the rooftop.
But the phone was silent, the garden, empty.
Sarah had her first confrontation with her sister the day her father came home from the hospital. She could tell by the way Julie’s jaw was set that a storm was brewing.
Please, God, Sarah prayed. Not till after we get him home.
She got her wish, but as soon as their father was settled upstairs, Julie cornered her.
“We have to talk, Sarah.”
“Not now, Julie. I have to take Dad’s medicine upstairs.”
She escaped for a while, Sarah the Scared, hiding from her sister. Whatever had happened to Sarah the Warrior?
“I don’t like these things.” Her father took the pills out of his mouth. “They make me sleepy.”
“You have to have them.” Sarah gently moved them back into his mouth.
“I could spit them out as soon as you leave, you know.” He gave her a devilish grin. “I just might, you know.”
“Please. Swallow them. For me.”
“Mail me a letter,” he said.
This sort of rambling was not new. The sad part was that it was getting worse.
“All right. If you’ll take the pills, I’ll mail you a letter.”
He swallowed his medicine, then began to pick at the covers.
“The letter needs stamps. I didn’t have any stamps.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you some.” She smoothed the covers, then kissed his parchmentlike cheek. “Rest now.”
It was what Jim had said to her in New Orleans. Sarah’s knees and resolve both weakened. She leaned her head against the bedpost and closed her eyes, then she went downstairs to face her sister.
Chapter Sixteen
When Jim came home from the base, he found Delta in the kitchen polishing silver and muttering to herself.
“The house looks great, Delta.”
“Humph.”
“Does that mean I should get out of the kitchen and not make myself a well-deserved cup of tea until after you’ve gone?”
“It’s all the same to me.”
Jim filled the teapot and got out the teabags.
“How’s Sarah?”
He hoped he sounded friendly but casual. It had been three days since he’d seen her, three of the longest days of his life.
“That poor child is running herself ragged. Savannah says the new night sitter is not worth a toot, and it don’t help none that you’re sitting over here like a lump on a log.”
“I told her to call me anytime she needed help.”
“Humph. I reckon when your legs started working your brain went on strike.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Them’s easy words to say, Jim, but helping ain’t in the offerin’, it’s in the doin’. How many folks you know ever pick up the phone and say, ‘I need some help over here?’ Nobody, that’s who.”
She was right, of course. Although offers of that kind were sincerely given, most people didn’t respond. Sometimes it was a simple matter of pride. Sometimes guilt was the motive. Caregivers were especially prone to that one.
At this very moment, Sarah was probably eaten up with guilt, imagining herself the cause of her father’s problems.
Delta left off her silver polishing to pat Jim on the cheeks.
“Both of you’s my babies, and both of you’s hurtin’.”
Then Delta, who could go from outraged to charming in the space of a heartbeat, gave him a big smile that showed her gold teeth.
“The Bear I know is fixin’ to do something about it.”
“What can I do, Delta?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
He spent the rest of the evening doing just that. What could he give Sarah that she didn’t already have? Delta did the housework, Savannah did the daytime sitting, Jared mowed her yard.
Her house and grounds were being cared for. But what about her soul? What about her heart?
He wanted to do something to bring back the glow she’d had in New Orleans, the spontaneous laughter, the sense of joy. Given the mood she’d been in when he last saw her, she probably wouldn’t leave the house to have a meal, much less anything else.
For a while Jim got caught up in anything else, and he could do nothing but stare out the window and long. Under the present circumstances, recreating what they’d had in New Orleans was impossible.
Besides, there was no such thing as going back. All he could do was go forward. Where that forward momentum would take him, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he had to start moving.
Sarah used to love going to the grocery store. She enjoyed browsing among the produce, thumping the melons and hefting the Indian River grapefruit and admiring the strawberries. If she didn’t have a schedule to keep, she would spend as much as two hours prowling the aisles and happily contemplating what she would do with the fresh peaches and what kind of sauce she would make for the orange roughy and whether to buy sorbet or ice cream to top the fruit pie she planned to make.
Nowadays she was always in a hurry. Sure, Savannah was with her dad, and Delta was taking care of the house, but what if he needed her?
What if he called for her and she wasn’t there? Lately he’d been displaying a few of the aggressive tendencies the doctors had warned them about. When Lola Fisk, the new night sitter, had tried to take his new top hat off so he could go to bed, he’d swung at her. She threatened to quit and it took Sarah half an hour to convince her to stay.
She got huffy when Sarah wasn’t there to greet her in the evening when she came on shift. She had a way of pursing her lips so that her whole mouth looked zipped shut.
“How can I care for your father if I don’t get a full report before I go on duty?” she would say.
And since their last fight over the nursing home, Julie was barely talking to her. Her silence made her position loud and clear.
“If you insist on being a martyr, don’t expect me to make it easier for you.”
It was getting harder and harder for Sarah to turn the negatives into positives. Mostly, she wanted to crawl into a cave and hibernate like the bears.
Bear. A pain hit her high up under the ribs, and she had to lean on her grocery cart until it went away.
She grabbed a cereal box and threw it into the cart without even checking the list of nutrients. What did nutrients matter when your heart was broken?
By the time she got home, her feet were dragging. Delta met her at the car to help bring in the bags.
Wonderful smells filled the kitchen. She so rarely had time to cook a real meal these days that she’d forgotten how good a house can smell at dinnertime.
Delta was standing by the refrigerator unloading lemons and oranges and grinning like the cat that swallowed the canary. Cooking was not part of her duties, though she did occasionally surprise Sarah with a batch of fried chicken or a
crusty peach cobbler. Especially lately.
“It smells delicious in here.” She hugged her housekeeper. “Thank you, Delta.”
“You huggin’ the wrong one.”
“Savannah cooked?”
“Nah. The cook’s out yonder in the backyard. You might want to comb your hair before you go out there to thank him.”
Sarah raced to the window, and there in her backyard was Jim Standing Bear swathed in a blue apron and wielding barbecue tools over the grill. Tears clogged her throat, and she put her hand over it to hold them in.
“Oh, my…”
“Well, don’t just stand there gawkin’, honey. Do something.”
Sarah headed toward the stairs then stopped in mid-flight. What did appearance matter when the man she loved was waiting in her backyard?
Reversing direction, she hurried to the back door, pausing only long enough to catch her breath before she went outside.
If he lived to be a hundred and ten, Jim would never forget the look on Sarah’s face when she saw him turning a slab of ribs on her grill. That one look made it all worthwhile—the planning, the plotting with Delta and Savannah, the anxiety.
Until she stepped into the backyard, he’d questioned himself a hundred times over whether he was doing the right thing.
“I thought you and your dad might enjoy a backyard barbecue,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Mind? I think it’s wonderful.”
You’re the most wonderful man in the world. Once she’d said that to him. Would she ever say it again?
She’d paused beside the chaise longue, and now she gripped the back of it as if she needed something to anchor her to the ground. At least, he hoped that’s why she needed it.
From the minute she’d appeared, Jim felt a lurching within himself as if he were getting ready to take flight.
“I hope you like barbecue.”
“I love it.”
Their eyes spoke a thousand things they couldn’t say, and neither of them could look away. Jim stood with his barbecue fork poised in the air and Sarah stood gripping the chair.
Suddenly Jim had a vision of how things could be—small simple moments of joy mixed with heady pleasures that made the heart stand still. He imagined quiet comings and goings, soft kisses in the night, two tangled in the sheets while rain fell on the roof. Children.
His mind stalled. This was territory he wasn’t ready to explore.
“Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes,” he said, instead, and the hushed moment they’d shared vanished.
“I’ll go upstairs and get Dad.”
“I’ve made enough for Delta and Savannah, too.”
“Good.” She smiled. “You’re very thoughtful, Jim.”
It wasn’t the high praise he’d basked in during their idyll in New Orleans, but it would do. For the moment, it would do.
Sarah raced upstairs and made a detour by her bathroom. Who was that flushed woman in the mirror? She put her hands over her hot cheeks, then bent over and dashed water on her face.
She couldn’t afford to be excited. She couldn’t let herself take one sweet moment and build it into a lifetime. Her life’s course was already set.
She dried her face, reached for her lipstick, then withdrew her hand. She didn’t want Jim to think she’d primped for him. She didn’t want him thinking anything except that she was grateful for his kindness.
Did she?
Dreams of what might have been washed over her. Weak-kneed, Sarah leaned against the sink and closed her eyes.
“I must not think of it,” she said, but a vision of Jim bending over her with the early morning light shining on his face made her feel faint.
She sat down on the edge of the tub until she could pull herself together. Then she went to get her father.
Dr. Sloan wore his top hat. Not to be outdone, Savannah wore a gypsy skirt and gold dancing shoes. Delta was in her usual rainbow-colored garb.
Jim couldn’t have been more pleased. All in all, dinner had a festive air. Savannah knew more funny stories than most stand-up comics, and she kept them all laughing throughout the meal.
Jim kept watching Sarah. As the meal progressed she began to relax, and by the time they got to dessert she had lost the anxious look she’d worn when she brought her father outside.
“This pie is delicious,” Delta said, baiting him. “You ought to open a bakery.”
“I already did, Delta. I opened the bakery door, went inside and asked for two lemon cream pies.”
Everybody laughed, then Dr. Sloan said, “Did you get my letter, Commander?”
Jim didn’t know how to reply. Fortunately, Sarah saved him.
“Yes, Fred, he got it.”
Dr. Eric Sloan looked pleased, then the smile slid from his face and confusion took its place.
“I put it…” He glanced from Delta to Savannah, searching for answers, then his gaze settled on his daughter.
“Sarah?”
She knelt beside her father’s chair and held his hand.
“Yes, Dad. It’s me.”
“The yard is full of people.”
“They’re our friends.”
His lips trembled as he studied the friends whose names he didn’t know.
“We’ll go, Sarah,” Jim said quietly. Savannah and Delta were already making their way into the kitchen.
“Thank you, Jim. For everything.”
As he neared the back door he heard Dr. Sloan say, “Did you get my letter, Sarah?”
To have her father back, even for a few minutes, was a precious thing for Sarah. She didn’t want to discuss a letter. Imaginary or otherwise. She wanted to say the important things.
“Don’t worry about the letter, Dad. Just know that I love you and I’m going to take care of you.”
“No. The letter, Sarah, you must read the letter.”
He was getting agitated, and she sought to calm him.
“All right. I’ll read it.”
“Promise me!”
“I promise, Dad. Just tell me where it is.”
“It’s… I put it…” Tears stood in his eyes. “I don’t remember.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “It’s all right, Daddy. I love you.” She took off his top hat and smoothed his hair. “I love you, Daddy.”
Chapter Seventeen
When he looked at the eager young men sitting in his classroom Jim felt an emptiness that no amount of pleasure in teaching could fill. He’d lost the thing they looked forward to, flying.
He always left the base quickly when he got off duty, never looking up, never glancing toward the hangar. The sooner he was gone, the sooner he’d be away from the jets that roared through the sky.
Without him.
He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. Scenery passed by unnoticed, and suddenly Jim found himself veering left instead of the right turn that would take him home.
The private airstrip was on Highway 97 north of Molino, and a twin-engine Baron sat in front of the hangar. A sign at the gate said Grover’s Flight School and underneath it another said For Sale.
Chuck had mentioned the sale to Jim at lunch the day before, then he’d said, “Why don’t you check it out, Jim?”
“Why would I want to check it out?” Jim asked, but he knew why. Pilots live for flight, and grounded ones carry a misery inside that nothing can abate. Chuck wanted to get him in the air again.
While the injuries Jim had sustained made it impossible to ever fly the Hornet again, flying a twin-engine plane was a different story. But flying a twin-engine plane couldn’t compare with the thrill of flying a jet. Chuck knew that as well as Jim.
“Just a suggestion, that’s all.” Chuck had dropped the subject, but it had stayed in Jim’s mind fermenting till it reached the point of explosion, he guessed. Or else why was he here?
Jim drove through the gates, then sat in his car wondering what crazy impulse had driven him there. Compared to the Hor
net, the Baron looked a toy.
“What am I doing here?” he muttered.
He’d started his engine when a bowlegged man wearing aviator’s glasses came out of the hangar wiping his hands on a chamois cloth.
“If you’re wanting lessons…” His voice trailed off when he got closer. “You’re the Bear, aren’t you?” He gave a wry smile, then held out his hand. “I saw you in a show two years ago. Pleasure to meet you. I’m Grover.”
Jim got out of his car and shook the man’s hand.
“What can I do for you today, Lieutenant Commander?”
“I’d like to take the Baron up, if you don’t mind. See how she flies.”
The words had popped out of nowhere, and as Jim approached the plane excitement sizzled through him. He could fly again. He would.
“The old girl would consider it a privilege, and so would I.”
The minute he climbed into the cockpit, Jim knew he’d been right to come. As he taxied down the runway, the empty space inside him began to fill. He pulled back on the throttle, lifting the nose, climbing until he was in the skies once more.
He wasn’t merely in them: he owned them. He had transcended the earth and he owned the heavens.
His heart was full to bursting. He was flying again, and nothing was impossible to him. Nothing. Not even love.
“Sarah,” he whispered, breathing her name like a promise.
Sarah turned the house upside down looking for her father’s letter. His stint into reality had been short-lived. It hadn’t even lasted until she could get him back up the stairs after the barbecue—Jim’s wonderful surprise.
Her cheeks flushed and her eyes misted over. Don’t think about Jim, she told herself. If she did she would lose focus or go crazy or both.
She’d already searched the desk in her father’s room as well as the desk inside the library, the drawers of the hall table, all the kitchen cabinets, the closet shelves.
Where else was there to look? Maybe she’d missed something the first time around. She was in the library going through the desk again when the doorbell rang.