Now, his office up at the university, that was a different matter. He had moved in an old sofa so he could nap during his nocturnal stints at the lab, and he had installed a small refrigerator and a microwave to enable him to catch a bite to eat without leaving the premises. His work had always been a veritable emotional and mental fortress against invasion from the outside world, against tumultuous passions and disturbing events, those things he spent his life trying to avoid.
Whenever he came into town he would generally pick up a rental car at the airport, drive straight to his office, and work long into the night. He preferred to catch a few hours' sleep on the sofa and then walk down to the faculty club gym for a shower and shave in the morning rather than commute back and forth to the city. Nevertheless, he made it a rule to stop by the house at least once and visit with the neighbor who was keeping an eye on the place in their absence. The lights had been set to an automatic timer and a security company was being paid to keep watch. A gardener came by once a week to maintain the lawn. Most of their furniture was still there; they had moved only their personal belongings and the desk and chairs from John's office.
Most of the time John whisked in and out, but on this particular evening he found himself lingering at the bay window, pausing to take in the ocean view that had sold them on the house. They had achieved an enviable lifestyle, both of them with prestigious careers, and Susan's skilled investment decisions had already netted them enough personal wealth to assure their financial security.
As John watched twilight settle over the ocean he tried to imagine their return to this house in the summer, what it would be like to carry on as they had. With or without Will, it seemed to him equally strange. Uncomfortable. Instead of setting foot back in an old, familiar place, a place filled with bright hopes for their future, it seemed to him a dead place, a place to be rid of. When he thought about it he realized that—outside of his work—the only passion he had experienced in his life, and what little joy he had known as a father, seemed to be bound up with Sarah, in a little town of no consequence in a remote part of the country. Things had happened to him back there that had never happened to him before, and he felt connected. Whereas this place that he called home left him with an emptiness as vast and barren as the hills he had gazed upon from Sarah's window.
Quickly he locked up the house and hurried out to his rental car. After fighting the Friday-night traffic all the way back to Berkeley, he arrived tired and out of sorts, ate a sandwich he had picked up on the way, and then lay down on the sofa in his office. He awoke a few hours later and worked through the night and all the next morning in the lab, taking apart and rebuilding the magneto-optic trap, a procedure that normally took him days of intensive work. He left a long, detailed memo for his colleague and then, without shaving, drove directly to the airport and waited in the lounge until he could get a flight back to Kansas City.
He tried to call Sarah from the airport in Kansas City but there was no answer. He knew her well enough now, knew this did not necessarily mean she was not home, and so, heedless of speed limits and lurking highway patrol, he sped down the turnpike to Bazaar with the accelerator of his old BMW flat to the floor.
It was after nine o'clock when he pulled up to her house. There were still lights on, although not in her window. He tapped lightly on the front door and the porch light came on and Jack answered the door. He spoke gruffly, said Sarah wasn't home, and John apologized, thinking he'd probably woken the old man. John asked if she'd be home this evening, but Jack said something about her being her own free agent and his not keeping tabs on her. Yeah, Jack said, she had Will with her. Never went anywhere without him, and then, seeing the troubled look on John Wilde's face, Jack asked if there was anything wrong. John answered that there wasn't, just that he was missing his boy, he'd been out of town and hadn't seen him in a while, although Jack suspected there was more to it than that.
An hour passed and Jack was on his way to bed when he looked out the front window and saw John Wilde's BMW still parked in front of the house. He told Ruth he was going outside for a smoke and then he hobbled out and leaned against the porch railing while he lit a cigarette. He pocketed the lighter and glanced around the front lawn. The BMW appeared to be empty, but as he moved to the side of the porch, he caught sight of John Wilde sitting on the curb on the other side of the street.
John stood and crossed the street.
"I thought I might wait for them. If you don't mind," he said as he came up the front walk.
"She might not be home till late," Jack answered as he picked a flake of tobacco off his lip.
"I don't mind."
Jack motioned to the front porch swing.
"Wanna sit for a while?"
"I'm imposing."
"Naw. Once I get to bed I'm not sleepy anymore. Can't seem to sleep except in front of that damn TV."
Jack laid down his crutch and settled himself onto the swing, and John sank down next to him.
Jack started rambling on about his accident, about how he lost his leg and how the gangrene had been eating away at him all these years.
"Doctors tell me if I quit smokin' it might help. But a man's gotta have some pleasure left, don't he?"
Then he talked about Thut's quarry, the place where he lost his leg, and said how it had been one of Sarah's favorite places when she was a kid. Back when she was little it wasn't being worked, he said, had been abandoned since the 1800s.
"She loved to wander out there," he went on, "and when I got her her pony, she'd take him up there. A little Connemara stallion. Black as pitch. You shoulda seen her ride that fella. Those little Connemaras are jumpers, and she'd take off over the open fields with him lookin' for fences and ditches and scrub brush to jump. She used to come home all bruised up from fallin' but she never said a peep about it 'cause she was afraid we wouldn't let her ride. She'd just hobble up to her room and close the door and we'd never hear a complaint out of her. Never broke anything. She was lucky for that.
"When she got older, she'd just light out on her own. It got so the neighbors used to call up to let us know what part of the county she was roamin' in. The Prathers at Tetersville, they'd call and say they'd seen her down their way; or old Dirty Shirt Sam, who worked several of the ranches, he'd call me and say she was over on the Verdigris. Come summertime she'd disappear all day long. Sometimes even all night. That's when her grandma put an end to all of it."
Jack paused, took one long pull from his cigarette, then snuffed it out in a coffee can on the floor beside him.
"Her grandma sold the pony. Without a word of warnin' to Sarah." Jack shifted in the swing. "Sarah was fifteen then and Ruth was worryin' a lot about her. She looked grown, like a young woman, and she was wild. But that was the end of it for Sarah and her grandma."
Jack shook his head. "She hasn't really changed much. Still wild. She may seem tame 'cause you don't know her. But I figure she's just biding her time until the waters return, and then she'll be gone. Not really the kinda girl a guy can depend on. Got her own way of seein' things."
Jack fell silent. After a moment he picked up his crutch and rose from the swing.
"Time for me to be turnin' in."
John stood abruptly. "I guess I might as well go," he said.
Jack thought maybe he was waiting to be contradicted, the way he lingered there, his hands on his hips and his eyes still on the road. But then he mumbled a good night and marched quickly down the steps.
Jack hobbled back inside and switched off the porch light.
CHAPTER 27
John slept on the sofa in his study that night and woke around four in the morning and worked for twelve hours straight. He needed to get out of the house after that, so he walked up the street and over a few blocks to Broadway and got himself something to eat at Hannah's Cafe. He wandered up and down Broadway a little, then went back home where it was cool and turned on the television and watched the evening news.
Around nine-thirty he call
ed her. There was no answer, and so he got in his car and drove over there again. This time there was a dim light shining from her window.
He knocked on the door but there was no reply. Jack's truck was gone and he guessed she was alone. He went back down the stairs and stood out on the wet grass and called out her name. After a moment there was a shadow at the window, and she drew back a curtain and peered out.
"Sarah?"
"John!"
"May I come up?"
"Of course. Door's open. Come on in."
The living room was dark and he tripped over Ruth's shoe boxes stacked on the floor in the hallway. She heard the clatter and his confused muttering as he came up the stairs, and she laughed.
She wore a white summer dress and stood barefoot in the middle of the floor with a book in her hand. A soft, muted light came from a lamp on a nightstand beside her bed. John noticed the crib against the wall.
"Is he asleep?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
"Yes."
"Am I disturbing you?"
She did not answer right away, but dropped the book onto the nightstand and looked back up at him. "No, of course not. I was just trying to tidy up a bit."
"I came by last night."
"You did?"
"Your grandfather didn't tell you?"
"No, he didn't."
Sarah avoided his eyes and pulled up an old wicker chair for him to sit on.
"Sit down."
But he remained standing, a little more relaxed now, finally tearing his eyes away from her and turning his attention to the mural.
"You've finished."
"Not really. But I needed to move everything in. Couldn't take forever."
"It looks so different."
"Yes, it does," she said brightly.
"My God," he whispered.
"What?"
He shook his head, mouth agape. The figures were only lightly sketched and filled in with pale gouache, nothing like the vivid hues of the original, but even without all this detail she had managed to capture the spirit of the work.
"I was just playing. Really. Having fun with it."
His eyes fell back to her, and then her smile faded.
"Can I offer you something to drink?"
He hesitated. "No," he said at last. Then, "Sure. Why not?"
She laughed. "It was only a gesture."
"I understand."
At that moment he gave in, stood in the middle of the room with his head lowered and his hands on his hips.
"Sarah," he whispered. "I took marriage vows. And I take them seriously. I've broken them in the past. But I did it thoughtlessly." He lifted his eyes and met her gaze. "If I had known I would ever feel about a woman the way I feel now, I never would have married."
She crossed the room to him, and he drew her into his arms. They stood in the dim light and held each other in a tender embrace.
Nothing more was said. Slowly, his lips found her forehead and her hair, and his fingers brushed back a curl and he kissed the top of her ear. Her hands moved slowly over his body, over the rounded curve of his shoulders and down his back and around his waist. When he tried to speak she closed his lips with a kiss. Deftly, she worked her hand under his belt. He groaned softly, and she quickly unfastened his belt and opened bis trousers. He groaned again and whispered her name.
She drew him over to the bed and lifted her white skirt, raising a bare leg, and eased herself down on top of him.
Never had he experienced the kind of loss of self he felt just then; he thought he knew love, assumed he had known passion, deep in his heart had no great regard for either, until this moment. He gave himself over to her and she swept him away, obliterating all he thought he knew about himself.
In the dim lamplight, with the cool night breeze fluttering the curtains from time to time and the cicadas harping senselessly outdoors, they lay naked on her narrow bed and completed what had begun in heart and mind.
The pleasure they gave each other that evening was the greatest either of them had ever known, and it was given with such full hearts, and yet achieved so simply and naturally. All of John's anxieties vanished; he sensed it was not so much that he was in the hands of a greatly experienced lover, but that he was in the hands of a woman who was capable of great love. He knew it from the way her eyes sank into his when he rolled her onto her back and she grew so terribly still, as if she were listening with her entire body when he entered her, and reading his heart through his eyes.
For a long while afterward they lay wrapped in each other's arms. He kissed the sweat from between her breasts, and she raised her head and swept back her hair across the pillow. He lifted himself on one elbow so he could see her better in the dim light, and then her eyes and the way she moved told him she wanted him again. He found himself aroused, not gradually but quickly, and he laughed a little, surprised at himself, but she did not laugh. There was an urgency that overtook them then, and their bodies were wet from sweat and she gasped and closed her eyes and raised herself to him, begging him to look at her body as they made love a second time.
This time her pleasure exploded in cries she had to stifle against his shoulder. When he had finished he looked down at her face and saw tears in her eyes. He took her in his arms and cradled her against his body and kissed her and held her, and still not a word passed between them.
At last, they slept.
She awoke first, and she gently roused him. He had been sleeping deeply, more soundly than he had slept in months, and for the first few seconds he did not know where he was. Then he realized he was with Sarah, and he opened his eyes.
"You must go," she whispered. She was caressing his face with her fingers and he found her lips and kissed her deeply.
"Really," she repeated, pulling back from the kiss. "It's almost five. It'll be getting light soon. You have to go."
"When can I be with you again?"
He saw by the look in her eyes what the answer would be even before she whispered it.
"Never."
She sat up, swung her feet over the side of the bed, and sat quietly for a moment, feeling his hand caress her waist and her hips. Then she stood and he watched while she pulled her dress over her head and walked toward the bathroom.
When she came back he was dressed and leaning over the crib, watching Will sleep. She led him quietly down the stairs and kissed him softly goodbye, and waited while he walked barefoot down the front walk with his shoes in his hand. When the taillights disappeared from sight, she shut the front door and went back upstairs to bed.
CHAPTER 28
Nancy Wilde was surprised to find her daughter-in-law already up, sitting in the hearth room with the morning paper spread across the coffee table and a mug of coffee in her hand.
"You're up early."
"John called," Susan said, looking up from the paper.
"I didn't hear the phone."
"He called on my cell phone."
"So early? Where is he?"
"He's home."
"In San Francisco?"
"Cottonwood Falls."
Nancy was pouring herself a glass of orange juice, and she glanced over the counter and said with a twinge of surprise, "I thought he wasn't due back until tomorrow."
"He wasn't."
"And he didn't come by here?"
"Got in too late, he said." Susan set down her coffee. "He wants me to come home."
Nancy came around the counter into the hearth room. "Have you finished with the front page?"
"Right there."
Nancy set down her juice and retrieved the paper from the floor. "If he wants you home, then you should go home." She settled into an armchair opposite Susan. "When's your mother coming back?"
"Not for a while, I think." They never spoke about Clarice's problem, and Susan had not told them her mother had gone into rehab. Susan shook her head in dismay. "I just don't think I can handle it yet."
Nancy watched without comment while her daughter-in-law ro
se to get herself another cup of coffee. Susan paused with the carafe in her hand, set it down, and looked at her mother-in-law. "He just doesn't understand," she said in a strained whisper.
"About the baby?"
"Yes."
"How did you leave it?"
"Unresolved."
"Then go home and resolve it."
"If I go back there I'll have to take Will back. And I'm not ready. Not physically, not emotionally."
"If your husband wants you home, then you go home. The rest, you'll work out." When Susan did not respond, she said, "He's trying to tell you something."
Susan looked up in alarm. "What do you mean?"
Nancy Wilde was not comfortable with intimacy, even among women, and when her daughter-in-law had settled back down opposite her and sat peering at her over the rim of her coffee cup with a worried frown, when Nancy finally spoke, it was with great difficulty.
"Once, before John was born," she began, and she grew very still. "Actually it was right after Nick was born—Armand started behaving strangely. I can't tell you precisely in what way, not now, although at the time I could have chronicled every little thing. The most minute details, the things he did differently for no reason whatsoever. For a while I thought it was just me. You know, postpartum stress. That kind of thing. But my instincts told me otherwise.
"Then, one weekend we had one of his doctoral students and her husband over for dinner. Armand did that very rarely. He didn't socialize with many of his students. Right then and there, that should have tipped me off. But there was some justification for it—I don't recall now what he said. Anyway, that evening, during dinner, we had a terrible blizzard. Snow just wouldn't stop. Their car got snowed in. Armand invited them to stay the night."
She removed her reading glasses and rubbed her eyes, then put them back on. When she spoke at last it was with averted eyes, and her voice was forced.
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