by Noah Gordon
R.J. was just as careful. “I doubt it, but then, I’ve never had any experience with crystals, so I’m not in a position to say.”
“Well, I think heartrocks are magical. I know they can be very lucky, and I carry one wherever I go. Do you believe in luck?”
“Oh, yes. I definitely believe in luck. I do.”
While the coffee was brewing Sarah put the package on the table and cut the tape. Getting through the various layers and obstacles, she laughed a lot. When she saw the tiny black heartrock she gasped. “It’s the best one yet,” she said.
There were paper balls and boxes and popcorn all over the table and the floor; R.J. felt as though they had been opening presents on Christmas morning. That was how David found them when he came downstairs in his pajamas, looking for coffee.
R.J. began to spend time on her house, enjoying the experience of making her own nest without having to consider the likes and dislikes of anyone else. She had received the books that had filled the library in the house on Brattle Street. Now she bartered pediatric care for four children in exchange for carpentry work by George Garroway, their father. She bought seasoned lumber from a little one-man mill deep in the hills. In Boston the black cherry boards would have been kiln-dried and prohibitively expensive. Elliot Purdy did all the labor himself, logging trees on his own land, milling and carefully stacking and air-drying the lumber, so the price was reasonable, and R.J. and David carried the boards to her house in his pickup. Garroway filled the living room walls with bookshelves. R.J. spent evening after evening sanding them and hand-rubbing them with Danish oil, often helped by David and sometimes joined by Toby and Jan, whom she rewarded with spaghetti dinners and opera on the CD player. When they were finished, the room took on the warmth that only glowing wood and the spines of many books could give.
Along with the cartons of books that she had trucked from the storage warehouse in Boston came the piano, which she placed in front of the living room window, on the Persian rug that had been her favorite possession in the Cambridge house. The antique Heriz had started out brightly colored 125 years ago, but through the long years the red had mellowed to rust, the blues and greens had softened into fine, subtle shades, and the white was now a delicate cream.
A few days later, a Federal Express van turned into R.J.’s driveway, and the driver delivered a bulky package with lading marks from the Netherlands. It turned out to be her legacy from Betts Sullivan, a beautifully worked silver tray, coffeepot, teapot, sugar bowl, and creamer. She spent an entire evening polishing the heavy pieces and then placed them on the lowboy where she could see them and the Heriz rug as she sat and played the piano in her home. She discovered deep contentment. It was an unfamiliar sensation, but one to which she could easily become addicted.
David exclaimed over the silver service. He was interested when she told him about Elizabeth Sullivan and moved when she took him to the small riverside clearing where she had buried Betts’s ashes.
“Do you come here often, to speak to her?”
“I come here because I like this spot. But, no … I don’t speak to Elizabeth.”
“Don’t you want to tell her that her gift has arrived?”
“She isn’t here, David.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just know. I buried just some bits of burnt bone under that rock. Elizabeth merely wanted her remains to be added to the earth in a pretty, wild place. This town, this place by the Catamount River, they meant nothing to her during her lifetime. She didn’t know them. If souls can return after death—and I don’t believe that happens, I think that probably dead is dead—but if it could happen, surely Betts Sullivan would go to some place that was significant to her?”
He was shocked, she could tell. And disappointed in her, in some important way.
They were completely different kinds of people. Perhaps it was true that opposites attracted one another, she thought.
* * *
Although their relationship was full of questions and uncertainties, they shared wonderful hours. They explored her property together and found treasures. In the middle of her woods was a series of water containments like the beads in an enormous necklace. It began with a tiny dam that enclosed a trickle too small to qualify as a real brook, producing a collection of water scarcely larger than a puddle. Working with unerring engineering instinct, beavers had built a series of dams and ponds beyond the first one, each somewhat larger than the last, ending in a pond that covered more than an acre. Wading birds and other wildlife came to the largest pond for nesting and to hunt trout, and it was a place of stillness and peace.
“I wish I could walk out here without crashing through trees and undergrowth.”
David agreed. “You need a trail,” he said.
That weekend he brought cans of spray paint with which to mark a trail’s course. They walked the route many times to make certain of it before they marked the trees, and then David came with his chain saw and went to work.
They deliberately kept the way narrow and avoided dealing with deadfalls or cutting large trees except to prune away lower branches that would impede a walker’s progress. R.J. dragged away the limbs and small trees that David cut, reserving those thick enough to be firewood and making piles of the rest of the slash to provide shelters for small animals.
David pointed out animal sign, a buck tree where a deer had rubbed the velvet from his antlers, a dead trunk torn asunder by a black bear seeking grubs and insects, and now and again a pile of bear droppings, sometimes formless with berry diarrhea, sometimes exactly like human ordure except that it was of comically enormous caliber.
“Are there many bears around here?”
“Quite a few. Sooner or later you’ll see one, probably from a distance. They don’t let us get close. They hear us coming, smell us. They stay out of the way of human beings, for the most part.”
Some of the scenery was particularly beautiful, and as they worked she made mental note of several places where she wanted to build benches. For the time being, she bought two plastic chairs from the supermarket in Greenfield, and she placed them in a clump of brush on the shore of the large beaver pond. She learned to sit there for long stretches of time without moving, and sometimes she was rewarded. She watched the beavers, and a gorgeous pair of wood ducks, and a blue heron wading in the shallows, and a deer come to the pond for a drink, and two snapping turtles the size of Betts’s silver tray. Sometimes she felt as if she had never been in a traffic jam.
Little by little, whenever they could find the time, she and David cleared her narrow path through the whispering woods, all the way to the beaver ponds, and beyond, in the direction of the river.
22
THE SINGERS
Despite all kinds of misgivings, she slid into the relationship.
It frightened her that a woman of her age and experience could become so completely unglued inside, as vulnerable as a teenager. Her work kept her apart from David most of the time, but she was capable of thinking of him at random and inopportune moments—of his mouth, his voice, his eyes, the shape of his head, the way he held his body. She tried to examine her reactions scientifically, to tell herself it was all biological chemistry: When she saw him, heard his voice, sensed his presence, her brain released phenylethylamine to drive her body crazy. When he stroked her, kissed her, when they had sex, the release of the hormone oxytocin made their lovemaking sweeter.
She drove him out of her mind ruthlessly during the day so she could function as a physician.
When they did get to spend time together, they couldn’t keep their hands from one another.
It was a difficult time for David, a pivotal time. He had sent half his book and an outline to a leading publishing house, and in late July he was summoned to New York, to which he traveled by train on the hottest day of the summer.
He came back with a contract. The advance money wouldn’t change his life—twenty thousand dollars, average support for a literary first
novel that wasn’t about a murder and a sexy detective. But it was a victory, with the added triumph that he had allowed his editor to dine him but not to wine him.
R.J. took him for a swank celebratory dinner at the Deerfield Inn and then accompanied him to an A. A. meeting in Greenfield. He had confessed to her at dinner that he was terrified about his ability to finish the book. She took note at the A. A. meeting that he didn’t have the confidence to identify himself as a writer.
“I’m David Markus,” he said. “I’m an alcoholic, and I sell real estate in Woodfield.”
When they returned to his house at the end of the evening they sat in the dark on the battered couch on the front porch, next to the jars of honey. They talked quietly and enjoyed the breeze that every now and again teased out of the woods and across his pasture.
While they were sitting there, a car came down the road and turned into the driveway, its yellow beams casting vine-shadows on David’s face from the old wisteria that shaded the porch.
“It’s Sarah,” he said. “She went to the movies with Bobby Henderson.”
As the car approached the house, they heard the sound of singing. Sarah and the Henderson boy were harmonizing to “Clementine,” their voices thin and untrue. Obviously they were having a very good time.
David gave a snort of laughter.
“Shsh,” R.J. said quietly. The car came to a halt in front of the house, separated from the porch by only a dozen feet of air and the thick growth of wisteria.
Sarah started the next song, “The Deacon Went Down to the Cellar to Pray,” and the boy joined in. At the end of the song there was silence. Bobby Henderson must be kissing Sarah, R.J. thought. We should have let them know we’re here, she realized, but already it was too late. She and David sat in the dark and held hands like an old married couple and grinned at one another in the dark.
Then Bobby began a song.
“The Ring-dang-doo, it’s short and fat …”
“Oh, Bobby, you’re such a pig,” Sarah said, but she giggled, and when he continued the song, she sang harmony.
“It’s covered with hair …”
(“Lots of hair …”)
“Like a pussy cat. …”
(“A puss-y cat …”)
David let go of R.J.’s hand.
“Yes, covered with hair …”
(“Curly black hair …”)
“And split in two …”
(“Split right in two …”)
“That’s what they call …”
(“’At’s whatta-they-call …”)
“Sarah’s ring-dang-doo!”
(“My ring-dang-doo-oo-oo-oo-oo!”)
“Sarah,” David said loudly.
“Oh, God,” Sarah said.
“Get into the house.”
There was a spate of intense whispering, then a giggle. The car door opened and closed. Sarah ran up the front steps and past them without speaking, as Bobby Henderson’s car shot away, made a tight turn in the barnyard, and went past the house again and down the road.
“Come on, I’ll take you home. Then I’ll deal with her.”
“David. Calm down. She hasn’t committed a murder.”
“Where is her self-respect?”
“So … it’s a mistake in judgment. A bit of teenage foolishness.”
“Foolishness? I should say so!”
“Listen here, David. Didn’t you sing dirty songs when you were her age?”
“Yeah. I used to sing them with the guys. I never sang them with a respectable girl, I’ll tell you that.”
“How sad for you,” R.J. said, and went down the steps and out to his car.
He called her the next day to invite her to dinner, but she was very busy; it was the start of a five-day marathon for her, nights as well as days. Her father had been right, her sleep was too often interrupted. The problem was that the medical center in Greenfield to which she sent her patients, half an hour away by fast ambulance during emergencies, wasn’t a teaching hospital. In Boston, on the less frequent occasions when she was awakened at night, she almost always had been given a house physician’s assessment of the problem and could return to bed after telling the resident what to do with the patient. Here, there were no house physicians. When she received a call, it was from a nurse, often in the middle of the night. The nursing staff was very good, but R.J. came to know the twisting Mohawk Trail too well as it appeared by day, at night, and in the dying dark of early morning.
She envied doctors in the European countries, where patients were sent to the hospital along with their charts, and a staff of hospital doctors assumed full responsibility for their care. But she was practicing in Woodfield and not in Europe, so she made frequent trips to the hospital.
She had terrible premonitions about driving the Mohawk Trail when winter came and the road was slick, and that week during the most wearying of those exhausting trips she reminded herself that she had wanted to practice in the country.
It was the end of the week before she had time to accept David’s invitation to dinner, but when she got to his house, he wasn’t there.
“He had to take clients up to Potter’s Hill to show them the Weiland place. A couple from New Jersey,” Sarah said. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts that lengthened her long, tanned legs. “I’m cooking tonight, veal stew. Want some lemonade?”
“Sure.”
Sarah poured. “You can have it on the porch, or you can keep me company in the kitchen.”
“Oh, the kitchen, by all means.” R.J. sat at the table and sipped while Sarah took veal chunks from the refrigerator, washed them under the tap, patted them dry with paper towels, and dropped them into a plastic bag with flour and seasonings. After she had shaken the bag and coated the veal, she poured a small amount of canola oil into a pan and put in the meat. “Now, into the oven for half an hour at four hundred degrees.”
“You look and sound like a great cook.”
The girl shrugged and smiled. “Well. My father’s daughter.”
“Yes. He’s a terrific cook, isn’t he?” R.J. paused. “Is he still angry?”
“No. Dad gets mad, but he gets over it fast.” She took down a trug basket from a hook over the kitchen counter. “Now, while the veal browns, we have to go outside and get the vegetables for the stew.”
In the garden, they knelt on opposite sides of the row of Blue Lake bush beans and picked together.
“My father is very funny about me. He would like to wrap me in cellophane and not unwrap me until I’m an old married lady.”
R.J. smiled. “My father was the same way. I think most parents would like to do that. They want so desperately to protect their kids from pain.”
“Well, they can’t.”
“No, that’s right, Sarah. They can’t.”
“That’s enough green beans. I’ll get a parsnip. You pull about ten carrots, okay?”
The earth around the carrots had been hoed a lot and they came up easily, deep orange, short and broad-shouldered. “Have you been going out with Bobby a long time?”
“About a year. My father would like me to meet Jewish kids, that’s why we belong to the temple in Greenfield. But Greenfield is too far away for me to have really close friends there. Besides, he’s spent my whole life telling me that people shouldn’t be judged by their race or religion. Does all that change when you start dating?” She glowered. “I noticed your religion didn’t come into the picture when he started going with you.”
R.J. nodded, bemused.
“Bobby Henderson is really nice, and he’s been very good for me. I didn’t have many friends at school until I started going with him. He’s a football player, and he’ll be co-captain next fall. He’s very popular so that’s made me very popular, you know?”
R.J. nodded, troubled. She knew. “One thing, though, Sarah. The other night, your father was right. You committed no crime, but your singing that song didn’t show a lot of self-respect. Songs like that … they’re like pornography
. If you encourage men to think of women as sex objects, that’s how they’ll think about you, as meat.”
Sarah looked at R.J., no doubt reassessing her. Her face was very serious. “Bobby doesn’t think of me that way. I’m lucky he’s my boyfriend. It isn’t as if I’m this raving beauty.”
Now it was R.J.’s turn to frown. “You’re kidding, right?”
“About what?”
“You’re kidding me or you’re kidding yourself. You are a knockout.”
Sarah brushed the dirt from a turnip, added it to the basket and stood. “Don’t I wish.”
“Your father showed me a bunch of pictures, in those albums he keeps in the parlor. A number of them were of your mother. She was very beautiful and you look exactly like her.”
Deep within Sarah’s eyes there was a subtle warming. “People have told me I look like her.”
“Yes, you look very much like her. Two beautiful women.”
Sarah took a step toward her. “Do me a favor, R.J.?”
“Of course, anything I can.”
“Tell me what I can do about these,” she said, covering her chin, on which there were two pimples. “I don’t understand why I have them. I scrub my face, and I eat the right things. I’m perfectly healthy. I never need a doctor. I’ve never even gone to the dentist for a filling. And I use face cream until my fingers fall off, but …”
“Stop using face cream. Go back to soap and water, and use a face cloth gently, because it’s easy to irritate your skin. I’ll give you a salve.”
“Will it work?”
“I think it will. Give it a try.” She hesitated. “Sarah, sometimes there are things it’s easier to talk to a woman about than a man, even your father. If you ever have any questions, or just want to gab about something …”
“Thank you. I heard what you said to my father the other night, sticking up for me. I appreciate it.” She came to R.J. and gave her a hug.
R.J.’s knees felt weak; she wanted to hug Sarah back, to stroke the girl’s shining black hair. But she contented herself with patting her clumsily on the shoulder with the hand that wasn’t holding the carrots.