Why Sarah Ran Away with the Veterinarian

by Newall, Liz;

  One night when Judy went for a second pack of Salems, she came back dragging a bundled-up blanket.

  “Look at these,” she said, swaying a little. “This is what I do sometimes.” She unwrapped the blanket and released a stack of sunsets, the prettiest ones on canvas you’d ever want to see.

  She spread them out on the beach towels and the seat of the couch. In some of the paintings even layers of pastel yellow, lavenders, pinks illuminated the horizon. In others, wild streaks of incendiary oranges, reds, purples shot across the sky so hot it seemed the canvas had burst into flames.

  “What makes them so different?” I asked.

  Judy chose two, and propped them against her knees. “Dust,” she said. “Dust and clouds.”

  “This one’s a sunrise.” She pointed to a pastel one and lifted it slightly with her foot. “Gentle, full of hope, like the morning.”

  “And this one,” she said, streaking her hand across the canvas, “is a sunset, full of the day’s dust and clouds from the day’s heat.” She laid the sunrise face down and held the sunset closer to her face. “Dust and clouds shoot light out in a thousand directions.” She held up her beer and sucked the bottom out of it, swallowed hard and said, “A really dirty day makes one hell of a sunset.” Then she burped loud enough to knock the fake wood off the walls and we burst into giggles. A fit of giggles just like Donna and I used to give each other.

  “Why don’t you hang them?” I asked.

  Judy quit laughing. “Roy won’t let me,” she said. She stacked the paintings back on the blanket.

  I opened and handed her another beer. “Why not?”

  Judy slowly pulled each side of the blanket over the canvas until only one lavender corner still showed. “Because,” she said, wiping the sweat from the new bottle, “he says painting makes me crazy. I’m really happy while I’m working on it. I get so excited I can’t eat or sleep, just plain high, I guess, like a drug. Only better than marijuana or black beauties or anything else I’ve tried. But when I finish, I start to get sad, then sadder until I get so blue I can’t do anything but go to work and come home and cry and go back to work.”

  Last time I heard from Judy she’d quit painting altogether. “What good is something you love if it makes you crazy?” she wrote. She was still with Roy. I haven’t written since I left, but I should. She’d love the sunsets out here. Huge puffy clouds gather over the horizon almost every evening. Some people around here call them storm clouds but they’re white, puffier and bigger than any I’ve seen back home. They roll in at dusk, still white. Then like giant sponges they soak up all the colors of the sunset—reds, oranges, purples—straight up to heaven. I wish Judy could see them and paint one for me.

  It’s the same feeling I got from those preemies. Happy at first, then too sad for words. I had to quit going. It was in the spring and I kept thinking I’d feel better staying outside. Andrew says, “Light-deprivation induces psychoses,” or something like that. He thinks teaching psychology makes him Sigmund Freud Jr. His little snippets of pyscho advice drive me crazy and the rest of the family too. But the benefit of light sounded reasonable so I started hanging around Aunt Kate’s farm, roaming around the pasture, trying to soak up warm, bright sanity.

  That’s when I remembered horses. As kids, Donna and I spent summer after summer at Aunt Kate’s farm on top of her two quarter horses, Penelope and Ulysses—Aunt Kate named them herself. Donna always used a saddle. It was black with little silver studs around the back and sides and across the stirrups. The whole saddle really stood out against Penelope’s creamy coat. Donna looked like a princess on top of that mare.

  But saddles were too boxed in for me. I wanted to feel the horse beneath me, its back smooth and warm against my skin. I rode Ulysses. He was black and he was the fastest. He could stop on a dime. He’d stop so fast I’d flatten out against him and still slide halfway up the crest of his neck. I’d leave Aunt Kate’s barn with a layer of dust and sweat and horse hair tatooed inside my thighs. And stay that way until Mama made me wash.

  Andrew would probably call that “pubescent sexual displacement.” He may be partly right about the displacement. All through high school, whenever I got worried or disappointed or had to cry, I’d go over to Aunt Kate’s. I don’t like anyone to see me cry. If I cried like Donna, I wouldn’t mind. She cries pretty. Little droplets collect in her lashes and sparkle, her cheeks deepen a shade of peach, and her mouth draws up into a little pink blossom. She would have made a perfect soap star, the kind who tears up at the drop of a mate and doesn’t even smear her mascara. I cry ugly. My eyes look like they’ve sunken in and my face turns the color of my hair. So if I felt like crying, I’d run over to Aunt Kate’s barn. And after a good sob, I’d hang around the barn, storing up the cool, damp smells of hay and oats and horses, until I felt better.

  I quit going to Aunt Kate’s barn the summer after high school. Just quit. It was right after the rodeo left town. When I felt like crying, then I’d crawl in the back of the closet, put a towel against my face, and try to sob as softly as I could. Or if Donna was around, I’d take a shower and cry under the faucet. Going to Aunt Kate’s barn and being around horses made me sad. Sad like when a really good book ends. You care about the characters and you go through adventures with them and you know what they’d think and do if only they had another murder to solve or sister to avenge or country to reach.

  The book ends. You carry them around inside your head for a while. But they’re not really yours and they go back to the frontier or the city or the jungle and settle into life without you. Mama always told Donna and me, “Leave while you’re having a good time.” It never made sense to me, but I guess that’s what a really good book does. I tried to do that with Aunt Kate’s barn.

  I put horses out of my mind when I went to college. That’s where I met Jack. He was sure about everything. Not cocky sure, like Andrew, but confident sure. He knew the odds on every football game, who to tip and how much, the best place to buy gas on any given week. I guess it was his confidence that first impressed me. That and how he looked.

  He had the clearest bluest eyes, almost translucent, and dark wavy hair. He doesn’t have as much hair now, but he hasn’t gone bald. Not unless he did after I left. When he let it grow out, it would flip around his ears and kick out on the back of his neck. I loved it that way, but he said it was a nuisance. Jack was tall, almost lanky. He could have played basketball at the college but he was already on an academic scholarship and he didn’t want to quit his job at Pettigrew’s Appliances. Another thing about Jack. Even back in college he looked comfortable in a suit, not really tailored, just easy.

  You couldn’t help liking Jack. I think just about everybody in town had something he’d sold them. Toaster, clothes dryer, mixer. When he went to work for Whittaker’s Auto-Rama, a lot of his appliance customers followed him. In two years he was making as many sales as some of the men who’d been there a lot longer. Aunt Kate used to say, “That Jack’s a natural-born salesman.”

  When Jack and I started dating he wasn’t pushy like the other college guys I went out with, the kind that reach for your breasts before they even kiss you. He was patient. He just kept holding me a little more each date until I was crazy for him. The first time we made love was at his dad’s house. His dad had gone bowling. Jack told me he loved me. I didn’t say anything back, I just kept pulling him to me and pulling him to me until we couldn’t get any closer. Afterwards Jack whispered, “I made a strike!” Sounds silly now, but it was funny at the time and we made a lot of bowling jokes afterwards. Every Tuesday night after that, while Jack’s dad was with his league, we were bowling on our own.

  Mama and Daddy loved Jack. What parent wouldn’t? He was a walking Consumer Guide. When Mama needed a new washer he told her which model, what features, and which store had the lowest price. That was over twenty years ago and the thing still washes. It did when I left. And when Daddy wanted a new truck, Jack pulled out a book with dealers’ pri
ces, markup, and other information on little lines of coded numbers. Then he drove Daddy around town and helped him pick out a truck. Mama and Daddy seemed relieved when we got married.

  Right before our wedding, Daddy said, “Sarah, you hang on to Jack, you hear.” Bet he never said that to Donna. Mama just said, “He’ll be good for you.” She didn’t say how. Mama could be cryptic sometimes. But she was right, for a while anyway. For a long while until this restlessness started creeping up on me.

  Finally, I started thinking about horses again. Aunt Kate offered her barn, although Penelope and Ulysses were long gone. So I sat down with a red pen and a Farm Market Bulletin and started circling. I found a pretty little roan named Athene. Jack dickered on the price. I think the horse trader got the best of him, mainly because Jack couldn’t find a horse consumer guide. He grumbled and grumbled but he bought her. He didn’t “mind throwing money away,” he said, if it would help me “kick the blues.”

  And it did for a while until Athene started limping in her left front foot. That’s when I met Michael. Bilo’s vet didn’t treat livestock so he recommended Michael. It’s not like I spotted him at a bar or health club or grocery store and brought him home. It just happened. The first time he walked into Aunt Kate’s barn, I could almost see electricity in the air, feel it popping all over me. I thought he felt it too, but he acted very professional. He leaned against Athene, his knees slightly bent and pressed together, trapping her hoof between his thighs. “An abscess,” he said, not looking up, “she’s got an abscess in the outer curve here.” I leaned in close, really close, to look but the whole time I was thinking, these are thighs I could kiss. Michael was there a long time. He showed me how to soak her foot in Epsom salts, paint it with iodine, and bandage it with gauze and duct tape. When he got ready to leave he said maybe he’d stop by later in the week to see if I needed any help. He was back the next day. And every day. For a month. In a barn all woodsy and cool.

  When I realized what was happening, I tried switching Jack and Michael in my mind, Jack in denim and boots, Michael at the breakfast table eating a grapefruit half with one of those little pointy spoons, like Jack has done every morning of his life as long as I’ve known him. We must have shared a ton of grapefruit by now. Jack could tell you how many. He’d figure it in his head. Then he’d estimate what the average grapefruit costs and its inflation quota. Jack loves numbers.

  Switching men in my mind didn’t work. For one thing, Jack’s not in the same shape as Michael although he plays basketball once or twice a month with the Chamber of Commerce guys. And Michael would look silly in Jack’s loafers.

  By then Michael and I had progressed from the stall, to the feed room, to the hay loft. In his arms I was warm and comfortable and more alive than I’d been in years.

  But Michael decided to leave. He said he didn’t want to have to sneak around to be with me, and he couldn’t handle the thought of me in Jack’s bed. But I think his leaving was just as much restlessness. The morning he came to tell me goodbye, the pasture was saturated with rain and the lot looked like the pond. We’d had a downpour most of two days. But as the clouds lifted, the mountain ridge behind the farm shone the bluest I’d ever seen it, cobalt blue. So blue I wanted to run straight into those mountains before the color paled a single shade. Still I didn’t plan on going with Michael until the last minute. Like when a plane slips out of a cloud and crosses you and you wonder what if you were up there in it looking down. I had to know “what if.”

  I didn’t leave a note. How do you say, “I love you but I’m leaving with another man. XXX”? And to be honest, I didn’t want to think too much. I learned early how to blank out pain with my mind. I’d pretend to be out of my body, just watching. Like those people you read about who are clinically dead but come back to life. It usually works for me. Except with the babies.

  It’s been a year worth remembering, of being in the book instead of reading it. I’ve tried to store up everything—like the hills in Tennessee and the sand storms in Texas and the dry winds in Arizona. On our way through Oklahoma we saw a sundog, a tiny rainbow almost in a circle just above the horizon. Michael said it was a reflection of the sun and it usually meant bad weather. But I imagined a huge rainbow behind a little round tear in the sky, so you only got a glimpse of the colors from this side.

  I’m pregnant again. Don’t know which I’ll lose first, the baby or Michael. He’s like me—born restless. We had to leave Athene in Tennessee. Michael says he’ll go get her soon but I’m thinking I should sell her. Don’t know what she’ll bring now. Jack could tell me to the dollar. Maybe I’ll give her away then go back home.

  If I do go home, I’ll have to tell Jack something, most likely in numbers. Maybe that my hormones were up 65 percent and made me crazy. Andrew will agree with that, I’m sure, and probably provide a lecture on the female hormone condition and its psychological consequences. I won’t tell Mama or Daddy anything. Because Daddy won’t be able to understand and I think Mama’s been mind-traveling for years on her own. Donna will just be glad to see me.

  But I wish I could tell them the truth. If I knew the truth. I’ve been thinking about it the whole year and I still can’t give an exact reason for leaving. I can tell them it’s like you’re in halves and neither side fits. Or that for once in my life I had to do something crazy to feel alive. Or that I need this one year—right or wrong—to think about for the next forty. If I can make them understand, maybe I will too. Then I can go home.

  PART II

  FUNERAL

  DONNA

  Mama would be proud, really proud to see all these people teary eyed for her. The flowers! Daddy told Maurice down at the florist to let people send nothing but gardenias. They’re all over the place—the choir loft, the communion railing, the window sills—every space where somebody’s not sitting or standing. And the food! We had fourteen cakes, seven casseroles, eight gallons of tea, and a whole pan of ham biscuits as of this morning. Mrs. Lois Turpin’s at the house, keeping a list. Andrew says we handle grief by eating ourselves silly. I asked him what did they do up in Massachusetts? Drink themselves silly?

  It’s good to have Sarah home. I’m not even mad at her anymore. I mean how could I be with her looking so bad? Nobody’s blaming her. At least, nobody’s said so. Still, I wonder if she’d come home a little earlier, but that’s water over the well.

  Sarah’s last letter had a return address in tiny boxy letters across the back of the envelope. Andrew said it was a sign that she wanted to be found. He can analyze handwriting. He said he could see it in the way she signed her name too. But I still don’t think she would have come home except for Mama.

  Mama wasn’t the same after Sarah left, though she didn’t say much about Sarah. It was more like she was shrinking. She was already little, smaller in the waist than me. Of course, she didn’t have two babies at the same time. But Sarah’s the same way. She took after Mama. I took after Daddy’s side. Granny Crawford was big as the side of the barn before she died. That’s scary! I’m thinking about signing up for aerobics down at the Y. Andrew says I should, not because I need it but because I’d feel better. But I was too worried about Mama at the time. She didn’t go out as much, or talk as much, or do anything as much. I tried to talk to Daddy but he wasn’t any help. He just stayed busy fertilizing or staking his tomatoes or mulching. Andrew said they both needed to get away. The only thing I could think of was Florida.

  They used to talk about going to Florida. Especially when somebody from the church came home showing Disney World postcards or photographs from Sea World or handing out oranges. Andrew and I finally talked Daddy into taking Mama to Orlando. Daddy said he didn’t care one thing about Disney World but he’d like to see how they grew oranges in those groves and he wouldn’t mind walking through Sea World while he was there.

  Mama didn’t seem to care one way or the other, but I went down to Swirl’s and bought her some new cotton shifts, a pair of light weight pants, a T-shirt with wav
es on it, and some tennis shoes. They were navy blue with rope like trim around the edges and they fit just fine. I packed my suitcase for her and tried to tell her how pretty and different everything was in Florida. I’d been once. With Andrew on our honeymoon. I still have my mouse ears.

  Mama and Daddy were gone less than a week but when they got back both of them were like kids, talking about what they’d seen and done. Mama’s hands were flying. “We thought we’d never get there,” she said. “Joe drove and drove and drove before we even got to Florida and then we were only halfway to Orlando.”

  “Thought we’d never get there,” Daddy echoed. “You wouldn’t believe the orange groves on this side of R-land-o, all gone to root.”

  “Orlando,” Andrew said.

  “Yea,” Daddy said, “all gone to root. A real shame. I asked some feller taking money on the pike.”

  “Turnpike?” Andrew said.

  “Yea, I asked the feller on the pike why the groves were like that.” Daddy rubbed his palms together. “Know what he said?”

  “‘Move along, sir’?” Andrew said, cutting his eyes at me. He was starting to fidget.

  “Yea, but before that, he said they got froze out five years ago. Said the growers just let those orange trees go.”

  “Sea World was really something,” Mama said.

  “Ex-pen-sive!” Daddy said, stretching his arms like a preacher.

  “But I had those $2.50-off coupons,” Mama said to Daddy. “Lonita gave them to us,” she told Andrew and me.

  “It was still $50 to get in,” Daddy said, looking straight at Mama. “But I guess it was worth it.” Mama smiled.