Seeking Sara Summers

by Susan Gabriel

  “Italy?” He laughed a short laugh and looked up as though waiting for a punch line.

  “Actually, Florence,” Sara said.

  Grady returned the ice cream container to the freezer and leaned against the counter, his spoon clicking against the side of the bowl with his first bite.

  “What old friend do we have in Italy?”

  “Julia.”

  Her name bounced lightheartedly across the room and landed like a stone at Grady’s feet. His brow furrowed. “How is Julia?” He put down his bowl of ice cream as if it had suddenly soured.

  “She’s doing very well.” Sara felt protective of her old friend and didn’t go into the details of their correspondence.

  “So Julia’s in Italy,” Grady said thoughtfully. “I always wondered where she ended up.”

  “Yes, Julia’s in Italy, and I’ve decided to go and visit her,” Sara said, her fledgling confidence bolstering her boldness.

  Grady set his jaw and jiggled the keys in his pocket, a melodious sign of his impatience. “Are you serious?” he said. “How in the world would we ever afford a trip to Italy? Not to mention how busy things are at work right now.”

  “Actually, the invitation was to me.” Sara’s voice lost some of its energy.

  For a brief second his face flushed, as if he should have been the one to receive the invitation instead of her. “Do you have money I don’t know about?” he asked coldly.

  What was left of Sara’s enthusiasm drained away, like water out of a bathtub. Her shoulders dropped. The trip was totally impractical; and in their household practicality trumped dreams.

  Sara grasped the invitation in her jacket pocket and a flutter of energy returned. Sara stood straighter, challenging herself to look him in the eye. “You know, Grady, sometimes a person just has to do something totally illogical.”

  “Well, more power to you if you can figure out the finances. All our credit cards are totally maxed out.” He sat down at the table and rifled through the mail, dropping the subject of Julia like a piece of dirty laundry on the floor. He was making the trip about money, yet somehow Sara knew it wasn’t about money at all.

  “Why do you hate Julia so much?” she asked.

  “I don’t hate Julia.” His voice momentarily softened. “It’s just a ridiculous idea. Why would she be in touch after all these years, anyway? What does she want?”

  “Nothing,” she said. Sara never thought she would have to defend Julia to Grady. “For your information, I was the one who got in touch with her a few weeks ago.”

  “So now she finally has time for you?”

  “What is this really about?” Sara asked. “Are your feelings hurt? Are you upset that Julia asked me to come instead of you?”

  “Julia never cared about me,” he said.

  His anger felt old. He was a jilted teenage boy again. “Is that really what you believe?” Sara asked.

  He glared at her, his Adam’s apple erect. “You two always were against me,” he said.

  “Where’s that coming from?” Sara asked. “Julia loved you like a brother. We both did.”

  “Is that what I am to you, Sara, a brother? A brother who doesn’t know what’s best for you?”

  “What’s best for me?” Sara wanted to slap him. “Since when do you get to say what’s best for me?”

  “Since forever,” he said. “You wouldn’t know how to make a decision if your life depended on it.”

  Sara grabbed a clean pan sitting on the stove and hurled it in his direction. It missed him by about six inches and bounced at his feet. The sound echoed the sharpness of her emotion.

  “What’s gotten into you?” He stepped back.

  “Maybe a little backbone.” Sara slammed the cabinet door that had never closed properly and one of her mother’s china tea cups fell to the floor and shattered.

  “That was intelligent,” he fumed. “You hear from Julia and you suddenly become an idiot.”

  “And you become a jerk!” Sara countered.

  Sara had never, in twenty-five years of marriage, called Grady a jerk. He grinned, as if her reaction had secured the final piece of evidence needed to pronounce her thoroughly unreasonable.

  But Sara had gone too far to turn back. The Pandora’s Box of their marriage had flung open, their denied issues escaping into the room. “I’m so sick and tired of you limiting me. And of me limiting me. Something has to change, Grady. I just can’t live like this anymore.” Her bottom lip quivered a signal that tears were next.

  “Live like what?” His voice rose to match hers.

  “Just pretending that everything is all right. Pretending I never had cancer. Pretending we have this great marriage . . .”

  Grady’s jaw released, as if Sara had delivered an unexpected left hook and the knock-out blow that could cost him the match. The sharp edge of his silence followed. The blue and white tiles on the kitchen floor held Grady’s gaze. Tiles they had put down in the weeks after her cancer diagnosis. The remnants of Sara’s boldness quickly dissolved.

  Their marriage lay on the floor like a dead body they were both afraid to touch. What was she thinking? She couldn’t go to Italy. The trip no longer made sense. A train had derailed in their kitchen. Sara had to stay and attend the wounded. Didn’t she?

  “Grady, I’m sorry if I hurt you.” Sara touched his shoulder. He turned away, but not before shooting her an angry look. She had broken an unspoken rule in their marriage. She had told the truth.

  “Julia always did know how to shake things up,” he said.

  “This isn’t about Julia,” Sara said softly. “It’s about us.”

  Her words were met with silence. Something had happened that she and Grady hadn’t planned. Something that they didn’t know how to recover from in ten minutes of Psych 101 chitchat and simple reassurances. It felt like one of those necessary, but regrettable, moments when you know you’ve said too much. And when you know you haven’t protected the other person from some nastiness in yourself.

  “Maybe we should deal with this in Doctor Evan’s office,” Sara said.

  “I agreed to go to counseling,” Grady said, “but I don’t think it’s doing any good.”

  “Then what are we supposed to do?”

  The blue wall clock over the kitchen sink ticked away the seconds in the background. “Maybe you should go to counseling,” he said.

  “Me?”

  He crossed his arms; a judge about to pronounce a verdict in a case. “Ever since you got sick you’ve been different, Sara.”

  “You mean ever since I got cancer? Are you afraid to say the word?”

  “You’re just not satisfied with things anymore,” he said.

  “I’m surprised you noticed.” Sara regretted the words as soon as she said them. She bit her bottom lip and relaxed her hands that had worked their way into fists.

  “Grady, I’m sorry,” she said again.

  He turned and walked away.

  Two days after their fight the lifeless body of their marriage still lay in the kitchen where they each dealt with it in their own ways. Sara, with her morbid fascination with its decomposition. Grady, choosing to step over the corpse and pretend it didn’t exist.

  Silence became their drug of choice, until the dead quiet between them finally wore itself out and they began to speak again of ordinary things. They returned to a life of polite, respectful interaction. It wasn’t a horrible life, Sara decided. Not heaven or hell, but more like a marital purgatory.

  The telephone rang that night during dinner. They glanced at each other. Neither of them made a move to pick up the extension in the kitchen. After several rings, Grady finally went to answer it.

  “Stanton residence,” he said formally.

  His face turned ashen. Sara suddenly worried that something had happened to one of their children. She rose from the table anticipating car crashes, broken hearts and broken bones.

  “What a surprise,” Grady said finally. His voice wavered, but then his
formality returned. “Sara said just the other day that she’d heard from you.”

  Sara froze momentarily and then stepped closer.

  “I’m fine. No complaints.” Grady laughed and ran a hand through his hair like he used to when he was younger. He suddenly seemed boyish. There could only be one person who could make Grady react this way, Sara thought. “Yes, Sara’s right here. Hold on, please.”

  Grady handed her the telephone. For several seconds Sara simply looked at it. In general, she didn’t like surprises. Not even good ones. Grady nudged her to speak. “Julia?” she asked weakly.

  “Yes, Sara, it’s me!” Julia’s exuberance vibrated through the phone line.

  Three decades of emotions rushed forward. They were girls again, playing in Julia’s backyard. Julia had yelled “Freeze!” and at her command Sara became a statue, holding her features in an unblinking daze. To have her call was as if Julia had suddenly yelled, “Unfreeze!” and Sara’s life had resumed again after thirty years.

  “Sara, are you there?” Julia asked.

  Her voice sounded familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. “Yes, yes, I’m sorry,” Sara said. “It’s just so strange to hear your voice again. It’s like coming face to face with a ghost. Or should I say, ear to ear.” Sara laughed, and then grimaced at her lame joke.

  “I guarantee I’m not a ghost,” Julia said. “I’m sitting right here in the flesh.”

  “Are you in New England?”

  “No, Italy.” Julia paused, as if waiting for Sara’s fledgling exuberance to catch up to hers. “Well, Grady sounds the same.”

  “I think you surprised him,” Sara said.

  “I’m sure I did.” Julia’s tone implied more than Sara had the wherewithal to pursue. Julia asked how she and been and Sara responded in ways that she might have given a stranger on the street. It occurred to her that she was saying all the wrong things. But at that moment Sara felt incapable of anything more. Trapped in a time warp, she was both forty-four and sixteen.

  “Are you okay?” Julia said, her voice softer.

  Sara reassured Julia she was fine. “I just never expected you to call.”

  “They have phones in Italy, you know.” Julia’s voice was playful, dynamic.

  Grady leaned in closer; his breath touched her shoulder. Sara resisted the urge to swat him away. They were a triangle again, Julia at its apex.

  “It’s so nice of you to call,” Sara said.

  Why did she sound like she was talking to someone trying to get her to change her long distance service? This was Julia, the best friend she hadn’t seen or spoken to in nearly thirty years.

  “I think I caught you at a bad time,” Julia said, her exuberance fading. “I just wanted to make sure you got my invitation.”

  “I did,” Sara said. “I’m afraid I can’t make it. But I’m sure it will be lovely.”

  Seconds passed where Sara promptly forgot everything she wanted to say. It was the most disastrous phone call of her life. The shock of Julia’s call had caused a massive exodus of crucial brain cells. It didn’t help that Grady had suddenly become clingy.

  Sara hadn’t realized until that moment how much she had missed Julia. So much so she could feel it in her chest, throbbing beneath the scar that had turned a light, glossy pink over the months. But the emotion refused to translate into words. Sara had morphed into the most boring person alive, attempting a conversation with the most vibrant.

  “Well, it’s late,” Julia said finally.

  They said their goodbyes, promising to keep in touch. After Sara hung up the receiver, Grady relaxed, as if a soldier going from attention to at-ease and Sara went rigid.

  “I can’t believe she telephoned,” Grady said. “What’s it been, like thirty years?”

  “Almost.” Sara couldn’t believe he wanted to talk about it.

  “It had to be midnight in Italy when she called,” he said. Grady found it difficult to stay up past ten.

  “Julia always liked staying up late. Even on school nights.” It seemed odd that Sara would remember details about Julia, given there were crater-sized gaps in her own childhood memories.

  “I never knew that about her,” Grady said thoughtfully.

  It was the closest Sara had ever seen Grady to being reflective. They hadn’t spoken of Julia since her invitation had arrived. And before that it had been decades since her name had come up.

  “We probably won’t hear from her again for another thirty years,” Grady said.

  Sara still had the receiver in her hand. Grady walked over and kissed the top of Sara’s head, as if their fight from two days before was suddenly forgiven. His lips lingered longer than she expected. “Your hair smells nice,” he said softly.

  This gesture felt too intimate for them. Had Julia’s call made him nostalgic for their old semblance of togetherness?

  “I’m going to bed,” he said, the spell broken.

  How could I have been such a total idiot over the phone? she thought. She made herself a cup of herbal tea and thought of all the things she should have said if she hadn’t totally lost her mind during the call.

  Ironically, earlier that day Sara had decided not to email Julia again. But then the universe had mysteriously wrapped around itself. Instead of saying goodbye to Julia, she was actually saying hello.

  When Sara went into the bedroom, Grady was already sleeping, his book resting on the chest. She removed his reading glasses from his nose and laid them with his book on the nightstand. It was ten o’clock exactly. He would rise refreshed at 6:00 A.M., after a full eight hours sleep, ready for a morning run. She smiled at the absurdity of sleep after the phone call from Julia. But she went through the motions anyway, just in case her mind was exhausted enough to allow her to rest.

  Moments later Sara had a vague sense of longing. Grady lay a few inches away, yet she missed him. More exactly, she missed the relationship they could have had if they had been different people.

  Before turning out the light, she went to the closet and pulled out the jewelry box that had been her grandmother’s. She took out Mimi’s ring. It had been an unexpected inheritance a decade before. At the time, Sara had had it appraised and found out that it was worth as much as a new car. She had never told Grady this. It had felt good to have something of her own.

  Sara observed the man sleeping next to her: the graying hair at his temples, the creases on his forehead that had grown deeper over the years, the slight smile on his face when he slept. He was happiest when he was unconscious.

  She closed the lid of the jewelry box and returned it to the shelf behind all of Grady’s ties. Was she really considering selling the ring and going to Italy for Julia’s art show?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Inside the airport, Sara adjusted the travel bag on her shoulder. The strap slid off with nagging frequency. “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” she said to her daughter, Jess.

  “You deserve it, Mom. Except I don’t see why we had to get here four hours early.”

  “I didn’t want to miss my flight,” Sara said.

  “That would be pretty impossible.” Jess smiled, as if acknowledging another of her mother’s ridiculous traits she had put up with her entire life. Spontaneous risk-taking was Jessica’s mode of operation. Sara’s risks took thirty years to pull off.

  “It’s so sweet of you to come see me off, honey.”

  “It’s no big deal. I work in the city. Besides, I don’t want that guilt you’re famous for to stop you from going.”

  “I hope you don’t hate me for selling Mimi’s ring,” she said.

  “Mom, for the thousandth time, it’s okay. I would have never worn that gaudy thing anyway.”

  Jess was fit and muscular from all her workouts at the gym and exercised as religiously as her father. She also reminded Sara of her mother sometimes if she turned her head a certain way.

  Sara pushed a strand of her daughter’s blonde, shoulder-length hair behind her ear the way she had when
she was a girl. During Jess’ stormy adolescence, Sara wouldn’t have attempted this.

  “So your flight goes from New York to Milan?” Jess asked.

  “Yes, then from Milan I’ll take the train to Florence. I can’t even believe I’m saying this, Jess. Am I really going to Italy?”

  “Relax, Mom. People do it all the time.”

  “I don’t think I ever told you that when I was a girl I dreamed about going to Italy. I was practically obsessed about it.”

  “Really?” Jess said. “You never told me anything about when you were a girl.”

  “Sometimes I forget I actually was one,” Sara said.

  Jessica popped her gum. “You must get tired of being so serious all the time.”

  Sara laughed and hugged her. “Yes, actually I do.”

  They stood in silence, watching the bustle around them. The scene reminded Sara of when Jess first went away to college. She and Grady had delivered her to the steps of the freshman dorm, and then they were somehow supposed to drive away.

  Now, it seemed, their roles had reversed. Sara was the one at the crossroads and dropped off on the doorstep of a new adventure. She smiled at the melodramatic ease with which she analyzed life these days. Cancer had given her permission to indulge herself.

  “I’d better check in,” Sara said. A sensation registered in her chest, like a bird knocking its wings against the bars of its cage. She took a deep breath. “Why don’t you give your dad a call later and check on him.”

  “Is he still pissed at you?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s what his silence means.”

  “He’ll get over it,” Jess said. “He’s just used to getting his way.”

  Grady had left the house early, stepping around her luggage in the hallway, without saying goodbye. No wishes of safe flights, or good trips.

  The week before, Sara had considered inviting him to come along. Induced by guilt rather than genuine desire, this invitation would have undoubtedly created a mooring for the rough seas she wasn’t so sure their marriage could weather. But in the end she had decided that this trip had nothing to do with Grady. She had deemed it her farewell tour. She would use whatever time she had left to erase the regrets in her life.