Sarah's Window

by Janice Graham

  rather motley version of the early Renaissance style, perhaps lacking a little of the purity of its Italian ancestors, but striking all the same, the aesthetics of symmetry and harmony captured in rose-colored brick and slate and stone. Classicism, she had learned, was the architecture of power, privilege, and wealth, and even had the chateau been abandoned and in ruin, it would have retained an aura of glory.

  She glanced over at Joy, whose mouth was hanging wide open. Sarah knew exactly what she was feeling. Joy had ceased talking minutes earlier, was leaning forward, gawking through the windshield.

  "No..." she drawled, her voice thick with incredulity. "Don't tell me that's it."

  "That's it," said Sarah, and she pulled to the shoulder of the road to allow a motorist to overtake her.

  "I thought you were kidding."

  "No. I said 'chateau.' That's what it is."

  "Yeah, but I thought you were exaggerating."

  "Well, parts of it are really run-down. A lot of the rooms are empty. All the really valuable antiques are in the rooms open to the public, and the family lives up there," she pointed through the windshield, "on the south wing."

  Sarah checked her rearview mirror for traffic and pulled back onto the road. "You'll see it better in a minute."

  Joy kept muttering, "My God, oh my God," as they turned into a long, poplar-lined drive. The chateau had been built in alignment with the solar movements, Sarah explained, so that come summer solstice the sun's arc would trace a path dividing the residence into two perfectly symmetrical sections. She stopped at the bottom of the drive and pointed to the upper windows.

  "Look. They're aligned front to back. You can see all the way through to the trees behind the house."

  "Oh my goodness..."

  "Midsummer, if you stand out on the back lawn, you can see the sun rise right through that upper window there."

  "Wait," Joy cried when Sarah began to accelerate. "Just wait one more second so I can take it all in."

  Joy fell silent, her hand over her heart in what Sarah knew to be a totally unconscious reaction, and honest to its core.

  A moment later, after she'd recovered, she laid a hand on Sarah's arm and grinned. "I can't tell you how much mileage your grandpa's got out of this."

  At the mention of her grandfather a tenderness washed over Sarah's face. "How does he look?" she asked.

  "Very good," Joy reassured her. "Fire in his eyes. Every time he gets one of your letters or postcards he brings it into the cafe and passes it around."

  "Does he?" Sarah asked with a bright smile.

  "Oh yes. He's so proud of you. You're all he talks about. His granddaughter the governess to a count and countess..."

  "Frederic's not a count," laughed Sarah. "The title went to his cousin."

  "Well, your grandpa's made him into a count, and if I were you I'd let him have his way."

  Sarah sat there a moment longer, hands fixed on the wheel, her smile fading as she stared blankly ahead.

  "Don't worry about him, honey," Joy said softly. "He'll be fine."

  "I feel like I abandoned him "

  "No you didn't, and he doesn't think that at all. I'm sure he doesn't," Joy said.

  "I know. And he tries so hard in his letters to let on like it doesn't bother him. But it comes across. Maybe because I can tell he's trying so hard."

  "Well, of course he misses you. But that's okay. This is what you should've done a long time ago. Get on with your life."

  "It's just that whenever I try to get on with my life, it's so far away from them."

  "Do you ever hear from Ruth?" Joy asked.

  Sarah shook her head. "Not really. Sometimes she adds a few lines at the bottom of Grandpa's letters. That's about it."

  They sat in silence for another moment, then Sarah shifted into first gear and the car crept up the incline.

  As she parked the little Renault on the gravel drive around the side of the house, three brindled hunting dogs came loping up the slope from a cluster of old stone barns. Sarah climbed out of the car and bent down to pet them, and they grew excited and jumped up on her. A man dressed in a blue work smock and boots called from the doorway of the nearest barn, and they turned tail and trotted back to their master. The man watched from the doorway, a piece of machinery in his hand, and when he saw the women trying to ease the bulky suitcase out of the backseat, he set it down and hurried up the slope toward them, the dogs at his heels.

  "Bon, laissez-moi faire ca," he said, shooing the women back and wiping his grease-stained hands on a filthy handkerchief. "Vous tie devez pas faire a"effort comme ca," he scolded, wagging a finger at Sarah. He stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket and then retrieved the suitcase.

  "What'd he say?" whispered Joy as they followed him inside.

  "I'm not sure," smiled Sarah. "I don't understand a lot of what they say. But it's okay. I'm getting used to it."

  With a manly display of strength he swung the heavy suitcase onto his back and followed the women up three flights of a creaky wooden staircase to a long hallway running the length of the top floor. Dormer windows under the steeply pitched roof looked down on the sweeping grounds, the front lawn with its circular drive, and the long tree-lined entrance and the forest beyond.

  "My room's down here," said Sarah.

  She flung open the door to make way for the blue-smocked man, whom Sarah thanked by name, and he set the bag on the floor and shuffled out.

  Sarah had already warned Joy not to expect much in the way of amenities, and she apologized that the toilet was at the end of the hall, adding that it was always, even in summer, bitter cold. A sink and a modular shower had been installed in the corner of the room, and a tiny refrigerator was crammed between the two, but these things had been discreetly concealed by a folding wicker screen. A four-poster bed engulfed the center so that one was constantly maneuvering around it. Facing the bed was a small television set perched on a cracked marble-top dresser. The room, traditionally that of the governess, boasted a fireplace with a decorative marble mantel on which Sarah had placed a few small prints she had purchased from vendors along the Seine. An old leather armchair had been pulled up to the hearth, and another chair served as a catchall for mail and newspapers and magazines. A glass trolley (by far the most unsightly piece in the room) positioned next to the armoire held an electric coffeepot, an assortment of crackers and cereal and some fruit, a few pieces of cutlery, cups, and plates. Sarah's underwear was strung to dry over an electric radiator rolled into the corner.

  It was impossible to move without running into something.

  "It's small," Sarah said with a bright smile, "but there's a gorgeous view." She nodded to the dormer window. "Actually, I have another room, behind that door, but I use it as a studio and there's no fireplace and I was afraid you'd be cold. So," she shrugged, "this is it for a week."

  Joy was standing next to her suitcase with her hands on her hips, in her denim jacket and gold hoop earrings and high heels, looking very much like a gypsy.

  "Honey," she shook her head, "I don't care how small it is. It's fantastic." She spread her arms and wheeled around. "I can just see you here. It's just you, all over."

  She stepped up to the window and peered out. "Look at this view!" Then she spun around and swooned, "And what a bed!"

  "It's not as comfortable as it looks."

  Joy stepped around Sarah and flopped backward onto the bed with her arms flung over her head. But Sarah would not let her rest, took her by the hand and pulled her back to her feet. They had only a few minutes before they had to pick up Justine from school, Sarah said, and she wanted to show Joy the gardens.

  They passed through the sprawling kitchen and Sarah stopped to talk to a stout little woman in an apron hunched over a cutting board. It seemed that Sarah was going to great lengths to make herself understood, something about a piano lesson, but the woman never looked up from the apples, just nodded and went on chopping.

  Outdoors the sun had disappear
ed behind a low bank of clouds. They followed a path through a tall hedge into a rose garden, and Sarah talked about how she had come to live with this family and take care of their children.

  "Sometimes it just gets to be too much, because I live on the property and I'm always around, and they've found that I'm flexible and don't have a problem with taking the dogs to the vet or helping prune the rosebushes." Sarah paused and pointed to a pale pink rose. "Look, the roses are still in bloom." She leaned in to smell it and Joy watched the way she moved. She knew there was something about her that was different, strikingly different, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She seemed older, with a kind of maturity, although she was more exuberant than Joy had ever seen her.

  As they left the rose garden and cut across the lawn to a cluster of stone buildings, Sarah explained how Victoria, Frederic's American wife and a former publicist for a haute couture house in Paris, had a difficult time keeping employees. "She's the center of her own little universe out here. She has only her family's interests in mind and everything else just completely escapes her attention. It's a terrific amount of work. Three small children and overseeing the estate, and her husband."

  They had passed behind a greenhouse and Sarah led Joy down a short gravel driveway to a narrow street while she talked about Frederic. "He had polio when he was a boy. He's paralyzed from the waist down. I drive him into Paris occasionally, and we have good chats. He's really a very funny man."

  They had been forced to walk single file along the narrow sidewalk, and suddenly Joy stopped and grabbed Sarah by the shoulder and spun her around.

  "Sarah, just listen to yourself."

  "What?"

  "You're going on like a magpie."

  Sarah laughed brightly. "I suppose I am."

  "I can't believe how you've changed."

  "Have I?"

  "You're... I don't know... you're, like, radiant. You look... happy."

  "Well, I am."

  "It shows, all over you." She looked down at Sarah's loose-fitting sweater and her soft, flowing jersey pants. "Put on a little weight, too, I can see..."

  Sarah blushed, stammered something about the bulky sweater.

  "But it looks great on you. Honestly. Look at those cheeks!"

  "Joy, I'm pregnant," blurted Sarah. She smiled, a little hesitant and unsure. "The baby is John's."

  Joy stood motionless, her expression frozen on her face.

  "What?"

  Sarah threw back her head and laughed.

  "You're what?"

  "I'm going to have a baby."

  "John who?"

  "What other John do we know?"

  "John Wilde?"

  "The one." Sarah turned back up the street. "Come on, we need to hurry."

  "Sarah," Joy cried, rushing along behind her. "Sarah, how on God's green earth can that be?"

  "Joy, believe me, it took a long time for the shock to wear off, but I'll explain it all this evening, when we have more time to talk." They turned a corner then, onto a wider street, and Sarah linked her arm through Joy's and briefly ran through the schedule for the evening. When Frederic was away, Sarah explained, she would eat late with Vickie. It gave them time to talk about the children. "But he'll be home tonight, so we'll eat early with the housekeeper and the children. Once I get them bathed and to bed, then we can go up to my room and I'll tell you all about it."

  "My God... Oh my God," Joy mumbled as she tripped along at her side.

  CHAPTER 41

  There was little chance for them to talk that afternoon. Sarah's day was a busy one, feeding lunch to the youngest and taking her in the stroller into the village while she ran errands, then picking up the boys from school and walking them home, and overseeing their homework, and the eldest son's piano lesson on the Pleyel in the salon with the young music instructor from Prague (he played Brahms's Hungarian Dance for them), and then there was dinner and getting the children bathed and into bed. Joy did not meet Frederic de Beauharnais but she met the lady of the house, briefly, at the end of the day in the vast book-lined salon that functioned as informal dining room and family room and office. Victoria was on the telephone when Sarah came in, but she took a minute out from her conversation and welcomed Joy, then exchanged a few words with Sarah. Joy was a little disappointed, had expected a great beauty, not this rather ordinary matron, a little on the heavy side, with broad shoulders and a square, Slavic face and pale hair.

  All afternoon Joy's thoughts were dancing around this news of a baby, but it wasn't until late that evening when she heard what the doctors had said (Sarah had seen several of them since her first visit), heard all about the improbabilities of such things happening, and heard, at last, Sarah's confession.

  Joy was in bed, knees tucked under her chin, watching Sarah stack kindling in the fireplace to start a fire.

  "I loved him," Sarah said quietly, without the slightest trace of regret. "I think it began that night Amy called and I went over there, and I fell asleep with Will in his study. From the moment I opened my eyes and saw him staring down at me..."

  The bed creaked and Sarah looked over her shoulder.

  "Are you falling asleep?"

  "Hardly," answered Joy.

  Sarah dusted off her hands and set a match to the newspaper she had stuffed beneath the kindling, then waited for the wood to ignite. "We never talked about it," she said quietly. "We just knew it was there, between us. It didn't need words."

  The kindling began to blaze and Sarah laid a log on the fire. "We were only together once. Just one night. After that..." She paused, remembering. "He's a good man, Joy, and a moral one, and I think it was very hard for him. It was hard for me, too. I didn't want my happiness at the price of someone else's."

  "Does he know?"

  Sarah hesitated, staring silently into the fire. Joy thought perhaps she had not heard, and so she repeated it. "Sarah, does he know? About the baby?"

  Joy saw her shoulders rise in a deep sigh, and her head swung from side to side.

  "No."

  "Well, are you going to tell him?"

  "I've thought about it. So many times. But I wouldn't know what to say. It's a very delicate situation, isn't it?"

  "Honey, he's got to know."

  Sarah picked up the poker and nudged the log into place. "Does he?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "It would be awful, if he left her because he felt obligated."

  "But he loves you."

  "Yes, but I'm not sure he knows what to do about it." Sarah smiled a little sadly, then glanced up at Joy, a candid look on her face. "What do you do with love, Joy? Where do you go with it? Where does it take you?"

  They were silent for a long while. Outdoors the plaintive call of an owl marked the silence.

  "But what about the baby?" Joy asked. "He wanted a child so badly, didn't he?"

  "I think so... especially later, when Will improved. He loved Will very much." She hung up the poker and turned to look at Joy. "But then, we never talked again, after Will died."

  There was a long pause, and the flames crackled in the silence.

  "Sometimes I hate him for that," she whispered.

  Joy sat up in bed. "Oh, honey, you can't blame him; he tried so hard to save him."

  "Not for that," she said in a voice paper thin.

  "I don't understand."

  Sarah looked down again, seemed to be contemplating her hands, the long slender fingers, the cuticles stained with paint. "I didn't have anyone to grieve with. I was alone. I felt Will's death just like I'd felt my own child's. It was all there again for me and I had to bear up alone. The father was gone, and there I was with all this sadness. This unbearable sadness. If he'd just called, or written, or done anything to let me know he felt it as deeply as I did."

  "You know he did."

  "And then sometimes I think, what if I lose this baby? What then?"

  "Don't talk like that."

  "But I think about it all the time. It's like I'm waiti
ng for things to flip around and for it all to come crumbling down. Then what would be the point of him knowing?"

  Sarah rose abruptly, replaced the fire screen, and announced with determined cheerfulness that she was going to have a shower. She peeled off her sweater and bared her stomach to Joy, and Joy placed her hand on the baby and smiled. Sarah's mood brightened then, and she disappeared behind the wicker screen and stepped into the shower, all the while babbling on over the noise of the spray, telling Joy about the work she was doing.

  "I'm doing some documentation for the botanical garden in Paris. On my day off I go in and do sketches of their exotic plants. They're really pleased with my work. And they're so nice to work with. I'm very excited about it."

  She turned off the water and stepped out and grabbed her towel, peeked around the wicker folding screen.

  "Are you still awake or am I talking to the walls?"

  "Half 'n' half," Joy mumbled from the bed.

  "I also had an offer from a publishing house that specializes in natural history. They wanted to send me down to the Pyrenees in the spring to do a series of brochures on the wildlife and the flowers, but of course I won't be able to go."

  She stepped out from behind the screen and walked naked across the room to the armoire and opened it. Joy watched her, thinking of all the times she had seen her scurry back and forth in the Cassoday Cafe with plates of the daily special, and that was always the way Joy had seen her, that was her Sarah. Now, here she was with swollen stomach and breasts, the firelight glistening on her skin, reaching for her nightgown, slipping it over her head and closing the door of the armoire. She stood in front of the mirror brushing her hair, and Joy couldn't imagine a man on the face of the earth who wouldn't fall in love with her.

  Sarah turned all of a sudden, hairbrush in hand, and said, "Don't think I'm deluding myself. I know what the risks are, trying to have another baby. I've been told by enough doctors, but I try not to let it get me down. I just pray a lot and hope for the best. I have confidence in Dr. Faure. He's the one who introduced me to Victoria. They're close friends."