Her Loving Husband's Curse

by Meredith Allard

  Sarah closed her eyes. Her hands reached for her stomach, then full with the baby that should have been born. Suddenly, the pain, so strong just moments before, dissipated into a dull tugging. When she opened her eyes she realized a few of the visitors had gathered around, listening as though she were a museum tour guide. When they moved onto the next scene, Olivia put her arm around Sarah’s shoulders.

  “I am so very sorry, Sarah.”

  Sarah leaned into the warmth of Olivia’s embrace. Olivia reached into her bag and pulled out a tissue, dabbing at her eyes, and she dabbed at Sarah’s too. Sarah kissed her friend’s cheek, grateful for this second mother in her life, wondering where she would be without her wise Olivia. Olivia gestured toward the end of the exhibit.

  “I think there’s someone who needs more comfort than I do,” Olivia said.

  Sarah saw him across the darkened room, James, his beautiful face twisted into a torment so powerful she thought he’d be permanently scarred. She saw the blood spots at the corner of his eyes, visible under his wire-rimmed eyeglasses. She took his hand and kissed it, but he was so caught up in the nightmare-like panic he didn’t feel her caress.

  “James? Jamie? It’s all right.”

  He stared at the exhibit, his black eyes wide, almost child-like, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. As if the monsters of his imagination had come to life and he was mesmerized by them. As if he were afraid the exhibit would disappear before his eyes and he would never understand. Sarah looked at the scene that held him in stop-motion terror. He was staring at a woman mannequin, dirty, ragged, kneeling between two walls with barely the width of her body as space between them. She couldn’t sit. She couldn’t stand or lay down, caught in pain-filled limbo.

  “Why is she trapped between the walls?” he asked.

  “She hasn’t had her trial yet,” Sarah said. “Sometimes they kept the accused witches in these tiny spaces hoping they would be in such agony they’d confess. Everything in the dungeons was about forcing confessions.”

  “But she’s trapped,” James said, hysteria creeping into his voice, the sound a nails-on-chalkboard contrast to his usual mellow tone. He dropped his head into his hands, his eyeglasses hanging down his nose. “No. No,” he said. “You hadn’t had your trial. You never had your trial.” He looked at Sarah, a trail of blood slipping down his cheek. “You weren’t here were you?”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. You were not here. Sarah stroked his face, wiped the red away, his pale-blue cheek streaked pink.

  “Were you here?” A question now.

  “It was a very long time ago.”

  “Were you trapped between the walls?”

  Sarah nodded. James walked closer to the mannequin stuck in a perpetual half-up, half-down stance, the never-ending torture everywhere on her face.

  “Oh my God,” James said. “You were trapped between two walls? And couldn’t lie down? Couldn’t sit? Couldn’t stand?” No matter how tight he shut his eyes he couldn’t stop the sobs. “Oh my God,” he said again. “Elizabeth…”

  She took his face between her hands. “My name is Sarah.”

  But James turned back to the mannequin, drawn to the horror the way lookie-loos gape at accidents on the road, not wanting to see the carnage yet unable to look away. Sarah stood between James and the mannequin so he had to see her.

  “The reason they removed me from the walls was because of the money you paid them. You did help me, James. You did.”

  “It was too little too late and you died. Oh Lizzie…”

  Sarah took his hands in hers. She felt a shard of glass poking her heart from the inside out at the sight of her miserable husband. “I thought the exhibit would help us face the sadness from this time so we could be done with it. I hate feeling like there’s this whole part of our lives we have to tip-toe around.”

  “Do you really feel that way?”

  “We need to remember these times, James, the good and the bad. They’re a part of who we are, the good and the bad.”

  “There is no bad of you, Mrs. Wentworth.”

  “Or you.”

  James shook his head. “I’m not so sure.”

  She wiped his cheeks with the back of her hand, then stood on her toes, leaning up, kissing his lips.

  “Let’s just say these times, as horrible as they were, are a part of us. And now that we’ve faced them head-on we’re ready to leave them behind and focus on the wonderful, perfect years ahead. The madness can’t touch us anymore.”

  “There is always madness, Sarah.”

  “But it’s our turn to be free of it. We’ve earned it.”

  James smiled with a pensiveness that said he wasn’t so sure. Sarah took his hand.

  “Come with me, Doctor Wentworth. A few of your students have spotted you and we need to wash your face before anyone wonders why you’re bleeding from your eyes.”

  James went into the men’s room and washed his face. He was quiet as they left campus. On Lafayette Street, Sarah took his hand again, but she didn’t lead him toward home. She led him into Marblehead, where the fancy people lived. She walked, faster and faster in the nook of a neighborhood, past the trees, the colonial-style homes where doctors and lawyers had their offices inside, through the parks. It was, Sarah thought, a perfect place to raise a family.

  James stopped. “Where are you taking me?” he asked.

  Sarah smirked, caught like a naughty child. “I thought we could visit Jocelyn and Steve. Their new house is down the block.”

  “Are we going to see Jocelyn and Steve or Billy?”

  “We’re going to see the whole family.”

  “Sarah…”

  Sarah turned away. She looked at the red brick houses, the yellow houses, the colonial-style churches with the steeples on top. As they neared the green-covered coastline and the bay in the distance she strained to see Jocelyn’s house, certain that if she could get James there he would understand.

  “Sarah…” He touched her cheek with his fingertips, his face still pulled from the wretched dungeon. “I know you want a child, but we can’t have one.”

  “Jocelyn and Steve have Billy.”

  “Billy’s adopted.”

  “We could adopt too.”

  James turned away. “Do you know what problems Billy will have with a mother like Jocelyn? How are they going to explain her differences away?”

  “As long as children have a loving home who cares if their family is different? He’ll think his mom works at night and sleeps during the day. What’s wrong with that?”

  “How are they going to explain to that little boy that his mother drinks blood?”

  Sarah wanted to scream. She felt goosebumps in her gut and her head ached. Again, she remembered the baby from so long ago. Her hands nearly went to her stomach, but she stopped herself. Why was James so set against a child?

  Because he was dead.

  But he seemed so normal, Sarah thought. Did the fact he didn’t breathe matter in any meaningful way? She didn’t think so, but she didn’t know how to convince him.

  “I’m going to Jocelyn’s,” she said. “You can come with me or you can go home, but I’m going.”

  Her pace quickened in time with her racing heartbeat. Was she angry? Worried? She thought she might be dying inside. It hurt too much to know James didn’t want everything exactly as she did.

  She kept walking, faster and faster, hoping he’d go home, but he caught up to her in two quick strides. They walked the tree-lined streets in silence, lost in their thoughts. They were near the harbor now, near Marblehead Neck, and Sarah saw Castle Rock Park, a lookout for fishing fleets and pirate ships in colonial days. She felt the soothing sweep of the Atlantic Ocean in the air. In the distance was the mouth of the harbor, jagged and green, the sailboats rocking, the lights inside the houses beaming like curious eyes at the strangers on the road. It was a dark night, the stars resting, and everyone else had cleared away. The benches and picnic
tables were empty, the swimmers gone. They were only a few miles from Salem, but to Sarah this was another world entirely.

  She gazed longingly at the homes, some modest and narrow, others mansions with harbor-front views and personal docks. She was most attentive to the homes with swings and basketball courts behind the garages, lawns decorated with slides and kickballs. She looked at the gardens, the roses, the sweet Williams, the wild flowers, the American beeches, one fine tulip tree, and the requisite oaks. She admired the shrubs and the herbs, and she remembered suddenly that she used to like to grow things. In her previous life, in Los Angeles, she had a few rose bushes she cared for, along with two lavender bushes and assorted petunias and daisies. In her previous life, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, she grew herbs and vegetables. When they were married the first time, when she was Elizabeth, James made a point of admiring her front yard garden. She grew tomatoes, carrots, cabbages, and onions in the raised beds within the brown-wood fence. She would walk the gravel pathway to tend the beans and pumpkins in the copious land behind the house. There was no aesthetic value to gardens in the seventeenth century—they were for food and medicinal purposes—but sometimes she gathered native woodland flowers and set them out inside the house. They were wealthy enough to hire all the help they needed, and in truth she didn’t need to lift a finger, but she was a farmer’s daughter and she liked getting her hands dirty, digging in the dirt, feeling the roots in her hands, delicate yet vibrant, strong yet fresh. When Sarah saw Jocelyn’s house down the block she thought she might like to start gardening again. She would like to create something new.

  Jocelyn’s new home was pale-yellow, a single-level, ranch-style house with a green lawn and manicured bushes. James stared at the swing set behind the house.

  “What happened to all the land?” Sarah asked.

  “What?”

  “Our house was surrounded by land. What happened to it?”

  “I didn’t need more than what the house stood on so I sold it all, piece by piece.”

  Sarah looked at Jocelyn’s house. “We’re here,” she said.

  “I see.”

  “Will you come inside?” She wanted him to go inside. She wanted him to see what she saw whenever she was near the happy little Endecott family, and she wanted him to relent and see that they could have that too.

  James sighed. “For a while,” he said.

  But he didn’t step forward. He had that little-boy-lost look, a ‘why’ between his brows. He spoke to the blades of grass beneath his feet.

  “You knew when you married me your life would be different. A baby is the one thing I can’t give you, and I know that’s what you want more than anything right now. Don’t you know how that hurts me? But I’m not like ordinary men, Sarah. I’m cursed.”

  “You’re not cursed, James.”

  “Only a curse could turn me into a three hundred and forty-nine year old man who doesn’t look a day over thirty. Only a curse could turn me into something that’s seen the Salem Witch Trials, the American Revolution, the Trail of Tears, the American Civil War, World War II…”

  “But a curse is a bad thing. You’re not a bad thing.”

  James looked like a child left to find his way out of a haystack maze, where everywhere you look there’s one more row of taupe-colored straw the same as everywhere else. She rested her head against his chest and listened to the hollowness. There were nights when it was still a shock to remember he was silent inside.

  “But the baby…” Sarah said.

  “What baby, Sarah?”

  “I can feel her. She’s calling me.”

  “Sarah…”

  She had to restrain herself from reaching out toward the phantom child. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Grace.”

  “Grace has been gone a long time.” James took Sarah into his arms. “I’m so sorry, honey. I’m so sorry my curse makes it impossible for us.”

  Sarah went numb. She felt the way Olivia looked when she went into a psychic trance—detached from her body, her mind, the earth beneath her feet.

  They were shrouded in the shadows when the lights in Jocelyn’s living room went out. The lamp upstairs went out too. But the den stayed bright. Jocelyn. She wouldn’t sleep for hours yet. James glanced at the illuminated window, then looked at Sarah with a maudlin grin, as if to say, “This is why we can’t adopt a child. The baby will have a father whose light stays on when the others have gone dark.”

  Sarah turned toward home. She thought of running away and leaving James behind, but something stopped her, unseen but tangible. She remembered the fluttery thread-like line she felt binding her to James, and the silken thread brushed her knotted shoulders, lassoing her frustration and releasing it to skid across the ocean, to the moon, and beyond. As suddenly as her frustration came on, she felt a wave of contentment wash over her as though she were standing in the bay at high tide, and instead of aching for the child she had seen so clearly in her mind’s eye a moment before, now she ached for her husband. When she looked at him she saw the man who loved her every night for over three hundred years. And I love him just as much, she thought. That was all. It was a simple sentence. No fancy similes. No poetic metaphors or alliteration or assonance. But it was so true. I love him just as much.

  James brushed a dark curl from her cheek and pressed her head to his chest. “I don’t want you to be unhappy,” he said.

  “I can never be unhappy with you. You’re my dear and loving husband.”

  “And you are my Sarah. My Sarah.”

  He brushed another stray curl from her face, the bay breeze was whipping her hair from its clips, and he kissed her, softly at first, then passionately. Sarah parted her lips, receptive to him. She wasn’t through wanting a child, she knew, and they would continue the discussion another time. They didn’t need to settle anything that night. They had time.

  When they arrived home, James swept Sarah into his arms and carried her into their bedroom. He undressed her slowly, though she was always impatient when she undressed him. She could never wait as he could. When she connected with him that way she was transported, first somewhere far away where there was only wholeness and peace, then back to herself and she knew who she was in the world. Where she was supposed to be, in that house, at that time, in that place. When the moment was over, her panting done, when James was on his back pressing her head to his chest, when he stroked her hair from her forehead past her shoulders, twirling her curls through his fingers, he was silent for the longest time. Sarah pressed her cheek into him, trying to feel even closer. Sometimes, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get close enough.

  And then, as if he could read her mind, he said, “We’ll be all right, Sarah. Just the two of us. I’ll never leave you ever.”

  “And I promise you the same,” she said.

  She felt cold suddenly and trembled, the hard bumps rippling her skin. She didn’t understand the rawness she suddenly felt, as though she were left exposed in a winter storm, and she closed her eyes and calmed her breathing the way she used to whenever she woke up from a nightmare. There was an echo to James’s voice when he said, “I’ll never leave you ever,” and Sarah realized she was afraid that one day he wouldn’t be there. But that will never happen, she thought. He promised me he would never leave me, and I believe him.

  And she did.

  CHAPTER 2

  Late the next afternoon Sarah watched the top layer of night descend like a blanket over Salem. She was antsy waiting for James, so she straightened up the bookcases, cleared off the counter in the newly remodeled kitchen, and sighed again at the ladder leading up to the attic. She startled at the woodpecker-like knock at the door and looked through the window, shuddering when she saw the man outside. While it wasn’t the pock-faced monster come to drag her away, this visitor wasn’t any more welcome and she wondered if she could pretend she wasn’t home.

  “What’s he doing here?” she said.

  “Who is it?”

  Ja
mes came out of their bedroom and looked over her shoulder to see an unshaven black-haired man in dark glasses though the sun was gone.

  “It’s my ex-husband.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Sarah was hesitant as she opened the door to the man she had been married to for a decade. He looked small, Nick, wearing a black sports coat over a white button-down shirt untucked over blue jeans, rubbing the stubble of perfectly trimmed three-day-old beard.

  “Nick,” Sarah said. “This is unexpected.”

  “Sarah…” Nick held his arms out like they were high school buddies connecting at a reunion. “It’s been too long, babe. I was in town to scout a location so I thought I’d stop by. How’ve you been?” He looked Sarah up, down, around, and back again, smiling the whole time. “You’re looking hot, Sarah, I have to say. I see you lost that weight you gained.”

  Sarah sighed. “Nick, I’d like you to meet my husband, James. James, this is Nick Corelli.”

  “Good to meet you, Jim.”

  Nick stepped around James, who was standing his full height, his eyes glaring, his mouth set, a preternatural barrier between the intruder and his wife. Nick glanced around the newly remodeled kitchen, tapping the stainless steel appliances and the cabinets like he was testing melons for ripeness. James leaned against the bookcase, his arms crossed in front of him like a battle shield, his lips a flat line. Sarah thought he looked ready to pounce.

  “Nice house,” Nick said.

  “It was built in the seventeenth century,” Sarah said. “So was most of the furniture.”

  “I like old things. That’s why I married Sarah.” Nick winked at her. “Sorry, buddy, but I guess you get sloppy seconds.” He laughed as he ran his hand across the wood wall. Sarah hoped he’d get a splinter somewhere painful. “So what do you do again, Jim?”