Waiting For Sarah

by James Heneghan

  “You’re so grown up, Sarah.”

  Her hair blew about her face. She held out both her hands and he held them and they stared at each other, smiling and happy, saying nothing, words unnecessary.

  Then she pushed his wheelchair through the market and on to the sea wall, where the lights from the upscale waterfront condos shone out at them.

  “I can push myself from here,” he said. “Walk beside me. I want to look at you.” She walked beside him, her hand softly intimate at the back of his neck.

  They moved in silence. He had to push harder on the right wheel because of the cambered pavement. He wanted to tell her about the sweat-soaked nightmares he’d been having about Dorfman pursuing her. He wanted to tell her about the police detective, how he kept dropping in to the co-op to ask more questions, how Norma was starting to believe that the accident and the loss of his family was making Mike see things that were not there, and about how ... But he said nothing; those were the wrong words: they would spoil everything.

  She was wearing stockings and leather shoes with flat heels. He had never noticed before ... “You’re pigeon-toed!”

  She laughed. “Isn’t it awful? My mother is pigeon-toed too; I get it from her.”

  He couldn’t stop looking at her. She was so grown up. “Let’s stop and you can sit on that bench. It’s sheltered from the wind here.”

  “No, Michael. You’re cold. You should get home.”

  “I want to look at you on my level; you’re so tall I’m getting a crick in my neck. I can’t see your face.”

  She sat on the edge of the bench. “I don’t need to see your face, Michael; I have memorized every line of it.”

  “Yours has changed, Sarah.”

  “Yours is changed too.”

  “Mine? How’s that?”

  “You used to be such a grouch, hating everyone, frowning, barking at me for no reason — and at everyone else, but now your face is ... happy.”

  “Because of you.”

  She pulled her coat around her. The yellow light from the living room of a nearby condo fell on her shoulders and hair, and they sat together in happy silence, isolated in a cocoon of wind and rain, cut off from the world.

  Sarah nodded towards the lighted window, whispering. “It looks so warm and peaceful in there. Do you see the woman reading? In an easy chair? The furniture is red and brown and rich. There are paintings on the walls.”

  He said, “A man is bringing a tray. Tea or coffee. The husband.”

  “It’s tea. I see the teapot. He’s asking her something.”

  “Normal people living normal lives.”

  “Yes.”

  He thought about his family and about the people who died every day in airplanes and floods and other disasters. “Why do normal people living normal lives have to die too soon, Sarah?”

  “Everything must die; you know that, Michael: leaves, flowers, trees, people, all that lives must die. Some lives are long, others short. It’s natural.”

  “Yeah, but why young people — kids? It doesn’t seem right.”

  The only reply was the squeeze of her hand.

  They watched the storm in silence, holding hands. The wind blew Sarah’s hair. The front of her coat fell open at the knees revealing a plaid skirt.

  Mike said, “Dorfman — ”

  “Don’t say anything, please.”

  “He ... the police — ”

  “I know. Say no more. I can read it in your eyes. You are fighting for me.” She removed the scarf from her neck. It was red, he could see that now. “You are my brave knight, Michael.” She tied the bright scarf to his wheelchair. “You must carry your lady’s favor with you into battle.”

  Then she stood. “You’re cold. Your hands are freezing. And I must go.”

  “Stay a while longer, Sarah.”

  “I must go.”

  “Another minute.”

  “Wait for me, Michael.”

  She touched his face with her fingers, lingering. Then she hurried away along the sea wall into the rain, stopping once to look back and wave before she disappeared into the dark.

  He sat for a while, watching the place where she had disappeared. Then he ran his fingers through the scarf. Silk. He thought of Sarah’s watercolor painting: wheelchair shape, dark head over a red heart, a boy with no legs.

  Now he had two things belonging to her.

  He wheeled himself home through Bucketwheel Alley.

  33 ... one last look

  It was the second semester, and he had four new courses; he was finished with the archives room; his history of Carleton was done. And he was finished with history from Dorfman. The project had earned a good mark, but now it was all over and he need never look at Dorfman’s ugly face again.

  He made a final visit to his archives room, to tidy up, to take one last look, to sit for a while and think of Sarah and their time there together. He looked around. There were still cobwebs and dirt on the window and in the spaces above the bookshelves and under the sink, but the yearbooks and newspapers were now neatly organized and arranged on the shelves with labels to show the dates. Sarah’s work mostly. Then he noticed what looked like a painting on Sarah’s side of the desk. He reached over and picked it up. It was a picture of a thin, smiling boy with cropped hair, wearing a white undershirt and dark shorts that covered his knees. It was Charlie Johnson, the high-jumper from False Creek Flats. Sarah had painted him standing in front of a squatter’s shack Mike studied the painting, wondering how many other times Sarah had visited the room when he was not there. He inserted her painting carefully between the pages of his History of Flight to take away with him. Then he took one last look around, locked the door and hung the key in Miss Pringle’s office.

  He wheeled by Dorfman’s classroom each morning, impatient to see if the police had taken him away. But no, he was still there, setting up his overhead projector to torture a new set of students. Mike tried to think of a way to convince the police that Dorfman was a murderer. But he could think only of DNA, which was as good as a fingerprint. The technology hadn’t been available back in 1982. But now it was. But Detective Samson didn’t seem to be doing anything about it. Perhaps he had decided to drop the case. Because it was too unbelievable, too bizarre.

  But what if he were to get something of Dorfman’s, a hair or two perhaps, and hand them over to Samson? Dorfman usually hung his sports jacket on the back of his chair in the classroom. There were sure to be a few hairs on it; the man was bald on the top of his head, but there was enough hair left around his ears and in his comb-over; balding men shed hairs easily, didn’t they?

  So that was what he did, that same day, between classes while Dorfman was taking care of his nicotine habit. He wheeled in to the murderer’s deserted classroom, picked off three hairs from his jacket and placed them carefully into an envelope, which he sealed and anchored between the covers of his History of Flight book in his packsack.

  That evening he called Samson and told him he had some physical evidence for him, three hairs in an envelope. Samson told him that it wasn’t legal and that he couldn’t possibly use them.

  A detective arrived twenty minutes later to pick up the envelope.

  34 ... the dark color of his skin

  He was tall and athletic and was on the track and soccer teams. He was also on the school’s debating team. His name was Ben Packard.

  “Hi, I’m Mike Scott and I just wanted to apologize for the way I was earlier this year.” They were in the school cafeteria.

  Packard frowned. “I offered to get you a Coke. How could I forget? You were pretty unfriendly.”

  “I was worse: I acted like a real jerk.”

  “Right on. I figured you for a racist. But I found out later you treat everyone the same — black and white, so I didn’t feel discriminated against.” He grinned, his teeth a shining white against the dark color of his skin.

  Mike said, “Let me get you a Coke, okay?”

  Packard smiled. “Sure
. But make it a grapefruit juice.”

  The short rainy days of February were all darkness and gloom, but not for Mike, for he felt good. The world around him had taken on a new reality, as if he hadn’t ever seen things as they really were before. Colors seemed brighter and sharper; small everyday things, like the bare wet branches of maple trees along the sea wall, seemed important somehow, as if there was something there waiting to be discovered if only he looked hard enough. Silent and still, he watched a glistening black winter twig with its translucent drop of rain and thought of Sarah.

  35 ... forgotten by everyone

  Weeks went by. Sarah did not come.

  Chris drove Mike to St. Augustine’s graveyard one evening with daffodils and a bottle filled with water. Mike filled the glass jar on Sarah’s grave with water and flowers.

  March battered its way in with bitterly cold gales that downed many trees all over the Lower Mainland. Mike struggled to school against powerful headwinds. Dorfman, child killer, monster, was still in his classroom. Mike pestered Samson’s office, trying to get an update on the investigation; the det7ective inspector was out came the unvarying reply.

  Though Norma asked him no further questions about Sarah, Mike could see that she was still worried about his mental health. Even Robbie had stopped asking about Sarah. It was as if Sarah no longer ex­isted: she was gone and forgotten by everyone.

  Everyone except Mike.

  36 ... complete and utter silence

  “What’s with the red scarf?” asked Robbie one Wednesday afternoon as they trundled home.

  “It’s Sarah’s.”

  “You haven’t mentioned her in a while.”

  “Only because you don’t really believe there is a Sarah. You and Norma. Both of you think I made her up. Because I lost my legs. Because I lost my family. Because I lost my mind. You think I imagined it, like it’s a movie.”

  “You’re wrong. I believe you, Mike.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I believe you. I believe you because I know you haven’t lost your mind. You’re the same guy I’ve always known. We been pals since we were kids, right? You always stuck up for me, man, especially in elementary school when the other kids were calling me Fatso and all those other names. I know you, Mike. Right now, ever since you met this girl, you’re more like your old self, the way you used to be before the accident, not blaming and not mad at everyone. The other kids at school say you’re easier to get along with. You know what I’m saying? I believe you’re okay and I believe Sarah’s a real girl, because she’s the one who did it.”

  “You really believe me!”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “But what if I told you she died over seventeen years ago? Would you still believe?”

  “Come again?” Robbie stopped the chair and walked around to the front to look his friend in the eye.

  “Sarah Francis was murdered back in 1982, Robbie.”

  “You’re kidding me!”

  Mike shook his head.

  “You’re saying she really is a ghost?”

  He shook his head again. “She’s just simply Sarah. She’s real to me. That’s all I can say.”

  “Tell me about the murder part.”

  “You won’t say I’m crazy again?”

  “I promise, man. I swear — cross my heart and hope to die, okay?”

  Robbie got back behind the chair and pushed. As they rolled along, Mike told him how he’d discovered the report of Sarah’s murder in the Clarion and how Dorfman was the murderer and how Mike had handed the hairs over to the police and how he’d gone to see Sarah’s grave.

  Robbie, for once, was astonished into complete and utter silence.

  On Saturday evening at Robbie’s place Mike showed his friend the Clarion report of Sarah’s murder. Rob­bie asked more questions, getting more and more excited. “What a story!” he said. “But I don’t get it. How come the police haven’t arrested Dorfman? He’s the worst kind of slime.”

  “Evidence, Robbie. They’ve got to have enough hard evidence to stand up in court. The police haven’t told me, but I think everything depends on DNA. If there’s a match from the hairs I gave them the least it can do is give them the power to bring him in for questioning. Then they might get further evidence. Who knows? Maybe he’ll confess.”

  “Yeah! I’d make him confess. I’d have the light shining on his ugly face while I questioned relentlessly, cleverly. I’d have teams asking him the same questions over and over, all through the day and night, never allowing him to sleep, and when he nods off, waking him and starting in again with the questions, pounding away at him until he breaks down and gives a written confession, sobbing onto the paper.”

  Mike grinned. “You’ve seen too many of those old black-and-white detective movies, Robbie.”

  They had watched it before, but they — once again — vegged out in front of Raiders of the Lost Ark on video, and ate popcorn. Then they watched Indiana Jones again in The Last Crusade.

  When the movies were over, they were tired. Robbie said sleepily, “You know what, Mike? That story of yours, it would make a great movie!”

  37 ... a feeling she would come

  He had a feeling she would come.

  He wheeled down to the sea wall late one evening through a thickening mist coming in from the sea and sat, peering at the faint glow of lights from West End towers across the water and inhaling the pungent smell of seaweed exposed by a low tide. Though there was no wind, mist and dampness made him wish he’d dressed more warmly, a thick sweater instead of the thin jacket.

  The mist drifted about the sea wall and the dark trees and the damp benches. The sound of a truck on Cambie Bridge, muted by the mist and damp coastal air, faded away into silence.

  He was starting to shiver; he should go back.

  The silence was broken suddenly by the high, ringing sound of footsteps hurrying along the sea wall, and then the mist slid and shifted like a door opening as she came running towards him, breathless and happy.

  His heart gave a lurch. “Sarah!” His voice suddenly hoarse, his body no longer cold.

  She kneeled beside the chair and flung her arms about him. “Oh, Michael!”

  Each time he saw her she was a little different, a little older, a little taller — or so it seemed — and more lovely, more fresh and alive.

  They moved to a bench and she sat, clasping his hands, and they stayed like this for several minutes, enjoying the silence and their closeness.

  “It is wonderful to see you, Michael. You are so strong and well.”

  “And you look wonderful, like a movie star, Sarah. Remember how you liked to play those stupid movie star games?”

  “You were such a sorehead.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  They laughed.

  “You graduate soon, Michael. I want to be there to see it.”

  “You will come to grad?”

  “I will try very hard to be there, Michael. It will be a graduation for me, too.”

  He didn’t understand. Her hands were warm.

  He said, “I decided I’m going back to Rehab to get fitted with a pair of tin legs.”

  “Legs? And then you can walk?”

  “That’s what they tell me. It will take a couple of months to learn, once they get the legs for me.”

  “I’m happy for you, Michael. This will be good for you, I know. What made you decide?”

  “A book Norma gave me. An English air ace named Douglas Bader lost both his legs, like me, but he was determined to y and he did. He flew fighter planes with his artificial ones. He called them ‘tin’ legs.”

  “Your aunt is a smart woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you can do it, Michael.”

  He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “I can try.”

  “They’re not really tin, are they, these legs?”

  “No. Metal and plastic, I think,
but I haven’t seen them yet. I will need canes or crutches for a while, until I get used to them.”

  They talked. She stayed until it was very dark and the mist had caused all the lights from the West End towers to disappear. He felt tired and sleepy and barely noticed her hands slip away.

  The first week was impossible. If the therapists hadn’t continued to encourage him every time he lost his balance and fell he would have quit by the end of it.

  Adjustments were made to the legs.

  The second week was also bad: he wanted to give up. The muscles in his thighs ached with weariness and his stumps were irritated and sore. “We’ve got to build the muscles up,” they said. “Exercise is the answer.” He exercised at Rehab and he exercised at home.

  Further adjustments were made to the legs and to the socks and the cushioning.

  By the end of the third week he was beginning to get the hang of it; he fell less often and could walk a short distance without the aid of canes. “The more you practice the better you will become,” they said. “Practice, practice.”

  He continued to use his wheelchair: it would be a long time yet before he would be ready to walk in public.

  38 ... charged with murder

  “It made the Vancouver Sun,” said Robbie. “Look! It even made the Globe and Mail.” He dropped the newspapers on Norma’s kitchen table and pulled up a chair. Mike picked up the Sun. The front page showed a picture of masked federal agents with guns, breaking into a Miami home to snatch the six-year-old Cuban boy, five months after he had been pulled from the sea.

  “Not that story, stupid,” said Robbie. He turned the page.

  Mike stared at a picture of Dorfman — taken when he had hair — with the caption, “Albert Dorfman in 1982.” The headline read: “TEACHER CHARGED WITH MURDER.”

  “They got him!” cried Mike. “They got Dorfman!”

  There was also a picture of Dorfman’s arrest: flanked by three plainclothes officers, he was being led, handcuffed, to a waiting police car.