Give, a novel

by Erica Carpenter Witsell

  “Okay,” she said at last. “I’ll stay.”

  Len could not contain his delight. “Great!” he said. “Jessie! Sarah’s going to stay for dinner.”

  “Yippee!”

  Sarah lingered after dinner, sipping her wine, and when Jessie asked if she would read their bedtime books that night, she nodded.

  “I’d love to,” she said.

  While she was in the bedroom, reading to the girls, Len quickly cleaned up the kitchen, his heart pounding. By the time he finished the dishes, she still had not emerged. He poured himself another glass of wine, and then, after a pause, he filled the empty glass that Sarah had left on the counter. He took both glasses out onto the tiny deck behind the apartment, leaving the door open so that he would hear her. He set her glass down on the railing and stood looking out into the night. It was October already, not that anyone could tell, Len thought. He had learned to accept that in Arcata the shift in seasons meant little more than a dip of a few degrees, the summer fog giving way to winter’s rain. Len looked up, surprised to see a few stars winking in the dark sky. A light wind blew, rustling the high limbs of the sequoia in the yard.

  Suddenly, Sarah was at his side, startling him.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I was being quiet.”

  An awkward silence descended. Sarah tipped her head back and her eyes followed the massive trunk of the sequoia up into the night. Len let his gaze rest for a moment on the pale thumbprint at the base of her throat.

  He swallowed. “Sorry,” he said at last, gesturing toward the interior. “I didn’t mean to subject you to that.”

  “Oh, no. It was nice.”

  “It took a while. Were they okay?”

  “Yes. I sat with them for a bit afterwards. Just until they fell asleep.”

  “I never do that.”

  “That’s what Jessie said. I said it was a treat.”

  Len smiled. “They’re asleep already? That is a treat.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, usually Jessie will be up and down for a while before she settles. ‘I need to pee. I need a drink of water. I need another kiss.’”

  Sarah nodded, shifting beside him. She reached for her glass, took a sip, and set it deliberately back on the railing. Her arm brushed his.

  Len’s heart raced. Was it possible that Sarah had sat with the girls until they fell asleep so that . . . ? His mind could barely form the thought, it was so unlikely. But could it be?

  He set his glass next to hers on the railing, and as he withdrew his hand, he brushed her arm with his. She did not move away. He could feel how hard his heart was beating; surely, she could hear it, too.

  “Sarah,” he said, and that was all, but somehow the two soft syllables managed to contain all the weeks of his loneliness and longing. He saw Sarah turn her face up to look at him, her skin pale and luminous in the light from the still-open doorway.

  “Sarah,” he said again, and it was almost a whisper this time. And then, unbelievably, he was kissing her. At first only their lips touched, dry and soft and tentative. But then Len felt Sarah’s fingers on his arm and with her touch something was released between them. Len reached out for her; his hands were on her back, her sides, her face. Her mouth tasted like white wine and something else, something unidentifiable but delicious. He never wanted to stop kissing her, but after a minute he forced himself to pull away.

  He looked down at her. “Is this okay?”

  She laughed softly. “What do you think?”

  She couldn’t kiss him; he was so much taller than she was. But she took a little half step closer and reached for his arm again, and that was all the invitation he needed. He kissed her again, more deeply, while his hands moved across her back. She was so slender—he could feel the ridges of her spine. He traced them all the way down, then moved his hands up her sides. He felt the give at her waist, the hard rise of her ribs. As his hands moved up along her sides, his wrist brushed against the outer curve of her breast. He stilled his hands and pulled back reluctantly to apologize; he was so nervous that he might overstep. But Sarah gave a little sigh and seemed to lean, just a little, into his hand, and after that he did not hold back.

  There were three more evenings like that. Each time, Sarah put the kids to bed and sat with them until they were asleep, while Len cleaned the kitchen, his heart pounding in anticipation. Despite their desire, they were restrained. Their hands went everywhere, but their clothes stayed on; it was an unspoken understanding between them.

  After a while, her breath hot against his ear, Sarah would whisper, “We’d better stop now,” and, with an effort, he would. It killed him, but he didn’t hold it against her. He felt grateful simply for being allowed to touch her.

  Twice, they were together on the deck. And then the dry weather ended and the days grew rainy and cool; it was too wet to be outside in the evenings. Shyly, Len suggested his bedroom, but Sarah shook her head. They made out on the couch, instead, but Len could sense how wary she was. She kept glancing at the hallway that led to the girls’ room.

  “They’re asleep,” he reminded her gently, and she nodded, but he could tell she was not at ease. After another moment, she pulled away for good. “I’d better go.”

  She did not stay again after that night. Something had changed in her. She still greeted him warmly when he came from work. Once, she even agreed to stay for dinner, but when Len pushed back his chair and said, “Bath time, girls,” she rose to go.

  “How come you’re not going to put me to bed this time?” Jessie said, and Len wanted to hug his daughter for asking what he would not presume to ask.

  “I’ve got to get back to my own house, sweetheart,” Sarah told her. “I have to take my own bath and get ready for my own bed.”

  She spoke kindly, and Len could see Jessie’s eyes widen with the idea of it: that Sarah, too, had her own bedtime rituals to attend to. But Len felt that all the owns—my own house, my own bath, my own bed—were really meant for him. They fell on his ears like bricks, the heavy base of the wall that he could sense she was building between them.

  Sarah glanced at the cluttered table, the dishes in the sink.

  “It’s rude of me to leave you with this mess,” she said. “Let me help you clean up.”

  But this was just a formality, it was clear. Sarah had to know that with the girls to put to bed, Len wouldn’t begin on the kitchen until later. And Len, still tender from the sting of her rejection—for that is what it was, she could not deny it—was suddenly irked by her insincerity.

  “It’s fine,” he said brusquely. “I’ve got it under control.” He wiped the worst of the food from Emma’s face and lifted her from her high chair. “Come on, Jessie. Bath.”

  His voice was wounded; Sarah looked at him sadly. Len looked away, burning with emotions he dared not name.

  “I don’t need your pity—” he began, and then made himself stop, because Jessie was looking up at him curiously.

  “Len, I’m not—” Sarah began.

  “No?” he said. He couldn’t help himself. But they had to stop this now. He would not talk like this in front of his daughters. He took a breath.

  “Thank you for having dinner with us, Sarah. Goodnight.” His tone had changed completely; he spoke in the voice he used with her when the girls were listening.

  “Jess, give Sarah a hug goodbye.” He took Emma’s sticky hand in his and made it wave at her. “Goodnight, Sarah.”

  That had been on Thursday. On Saturday, they had plans to go together to an orchard in Fortuna. Len spent Friday in a state of resigned dread, sure that Sarah would not go after all. But when he brought it up that afternoon, steeling himself for her excuses, she only nodded slowly.

  “That’s right,” she said, “I said I would go, didn’t I?” She, too, was using the voice she used with the girls, and just like her politeness from the other night, it too felt barbed, intention
al: another layer of bricks laid between them. “What time?”

  In the morning, she met them at the house, but she didn’t come inside. She wanted to drive herself, she said. She would follow them in her car, since she didn’t know the way.

  “Sarah, this is silly. Just ride with us,” Len said, exasperated. “We don’t bite, do we, girls?”

  And then they all laughed, because they had all looked immediately at Emma, who chewed incessantly now on anything and everything, and who, at that very minute, was gnawing at the corner of a wooden block.

  So Sarah rode with them, and at first it seemed that perhaps it would be fine, because their shared laughter at Emma had put them all in a lighthearted mood, and the gray autumn days had finally given way to the kind of day that Len felt fall should be, with a sky so deeply blue you could swim in it.

  Their expedition started out well enough. They were given a little wooden wagon to take into the orchard, and at this, Jessie jumped up and down excitedly. She wanted to pull it at first, and then ride in it, but once they had picked a bushel of apples in no time at all, both were impossible. The apples were unreasonably heavy. Jessie plodded down the grassy aisle between each row of trees and sulked, kicking at the fallen fruit. The ground was littered with apples, so many that it was all Len could do to stop himself from filling their basket from the ground. But to do so would hardly make a dent—there was so much waste. The sickly smell of too-ripe fruit hung in the air, making him queasy and irritable.

  Oh, the whole outing was a waste. There was Sarah, wordless and withdrawn, struggling to push the stroller over the uneven ground. And Jessie, poised for a tantrum; he could see it in the way her eyebrows pulled together. She was simply waiting for an excuse.

  “Come on, Jessie,” he called to her as she lagged farther and farther behind, knowing he was provoking her.

  “I don’t want to walk,” she whined.

  He looked to Sarah, who was bent over the stroller, unfastening the strap.

  “Would the stroller go in the wagon?” she said. “It’s not much use on this ground.”

  Surely, she hadn’t meant to sound accusatory, but Len felt wounded nonetheless. After all, it was his stroller, his baby, his choice to bring them both along.

  He nodded and shifted the basket of apples to one side. Sarah put Emma on her hip, and Len folded the stroller and wedged it, as well as he could, inside the wagon.

  “Why can’t I ride in the stroller?” Jessie said, watching them. “If Sarah is gonna carry Emma?”

  Len didn’t answer. He continued lugging the wagon down the row. He felt overheated, not from the effort of it, but from the shame. But why? What, really, did he have to be ashamed of? It had seemed like a good, wholesome idea. He had pictured Jessie running excitedly from tree to tree, marveling at all the apples. He had pictured himself strolling along behind her with Sarah, the light golden in the changing leaves, her smooth hand in his.

  He had not pictured this. Len felt both cheated and embarrassed by his own delusions. He glared at the basket of apples in the wagon. They would not eat this many in a month.

  Ahead, he could see the little shed that served as the register. When they finally made it, the girl inside took their wagon and weighed the apples they had picked. Then she rang up the sale on an old-fashioned cash register. When the numbers flicked up, Len waited; surely, that was too much. He held his wallet in his hand, waiting for the girl to tell him the correct price.

  “Sir?” she prompted finally, gesturing at the register. “It’s seven seventy-five.”

  Len’s mouth opened. Eight bucks for a bag of apples? Bristling, he opened his wallet and pulled out the bills.

  “What a rip-off,” he muttered as they trudged back to the car. “You pay less in the store.”

  Sarah sighed, conciliatory. “I guess you’re paying for the experience.”

  Len laughed mirthlessly. “Some experience.”

  They were almost across the grassy lawn that served as the parking area when they were passed by an elderly couple headed to pick their own overpriced apples.

  The woman pushed up the brim of her hat and smiled at them. Len had Jessie by one hand now, the string from the bag of apples cutting into the other. Beside him, Sarah pushed the stroller with Emma restored inside.

  “What a beautiful family you have,” the woman gushed. “And what a beautiful day for the orchard.”

  “Oh, we’re not . . . I’m not . . .” Sarah began, just as Len nodded tersely in acknowledgement. The blood rushed to his face. Because what did it matter? They were nobody to this woman; why bother to explain? Still, he noted how quickly Sarah had jumped to exclude herself, and his mood grew darker than ever.

  When Jessie’s tantrum finally came—she wanted to sit behind Sarah, not Daddy!—it was almost a relief to him to hear it. His daughter knew no reason to contain her malaise. If she felt irritable, tired, sad—well, the world ought to know it. The tiny thing that set her off was inconsequential, but her anguish was real. She wailed it out unfiltered. Len buckled the seatbelt around her, his ears humming with her screams.

  In the car, Jessie cried herself out, then fell silent at last. After a few minutes, Sarah glanced back.

  “They’re both asleep,” she said quietly.

  Len sighed. “Thank God.”

  She smiled at him sympathetically, and they rode in silence for a while. Len waited, his breath shallow. Finally, she spoke.

  “Len,” she began. “I need to talk to you.”

  He nodded, his eyes not leaving the road.

  “Is it okay to talk now? Since—” She gestured with her head toward the back seat.

  “Of course.”

  “Len, I . . . I can’t do it.”

  “Can’t do what?” He knew he was being obtuse, but he didn’t care. Let her say it.

  “Whatever there is between us. I just can’t do it. Not like this.”

  They were both silent for a moment, staring out the windshield.

  Finally, Len said, “Like this?” He shook his head. “This is what I have, Sarah. It’s what I have.” He knew she meant the girls. She was young and beautiful. She wanted a real romance, of course, not diapers and tantrums. Resignation washed over him, leaving in its wake a sad stillness. He let out his breath. “I understand.”

  “I don’t want to have to put your kids to bed so we can have some time together.”

  “I said I understand.”

  “I don’t want to pretend that there isn’t anything between us when there is.”

  Of course, she had to explain, for her own sake. But he found himself being drawn in, despite himself.

  “Why do we have to pretend?”

  But Sarah wasn’t listening to him. She had opened the dam. Now it would all come out.

  “I’m not going to be your daughters’ babysitter and your . . . your . . . whatever I am.” She paused for a moment, and then took a breath. “I’m not going to be your Maria von Trapp.”

  Len said nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Len. But I just can’t.”

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He managed, at last, a tremulous “Okay.” He was relieved to be driving, and not looking at her, so he wouldn’t have to see the awful pity in her eyes.

  Neither of them spoke. Ahead of them, the road curved through beautiful countryside, the trees along the shoulder gleaming in the afternoon sun. It felt almost like a betrayal, that the external world could glow so brightly. His own private darkness was of no account. It would be a relief, he thought, to get back to Arcata—its soggy grayness was a better fit.

  He felt Sarah’s eyes on him, and then her light hand on his where he held the stick shift between their seats.

  “Len? I’m sorry. I know it’s—” She paused a moment, searching for words. “Inconvenient for you.”

  He glanced at her sharply, pulling his hand away. “Inconvenient? Sarah, you must have absolutely no idea how I feel about . . .” His voice cracked. It was over. Wh
at was the point in suffering though all the words? But he gathered himself. “How I feel about you.”

  She laughed softly. “I think I have some idea,” she said. “That’s why I think it would be a good idea for you to find another babysitter. So we can see where this is going. Where it might go, I mean.”

  Len was mute. “Another babysitter?” he managed at last.

  “Don’t you think?”

  “So we can see,” he repeated.

  “If you want to, I mean,” she said. She sounded tentative suddenly, unsure if she had misread him after all.

  Len said nothing. Slowly, he eased the car to the side of the road. He left the engine running, for the girls. Then he turned to Sarah.

  She smiled at him, still tentative. “Do you want to?”

  He laughed. “Are you crazy?” He snaked his hand under the loose hair that fell to her shoulders, cupping his fingers around her nape. He felt her head shift a little, leaning into his hand. His throat was so full he didn’t think the words would come. When they did, they were half whisper, half croak.

  “I don’t think I have ever wanted anything more,” he said.

  She laughed, looking toward the back seat. “I doubt that.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t.”

  He pulled her face toward his and kissed her. Her lips were warm and giving, but after a moment she pulled away.

  “Len, it’s no guarantee, you know. I said, ‘to see where it might go.’ It might not go anywhere.”

  She was trying to warn him, he knew. He might still be hurt. But it was too late. She had let the light in; there was no damping it now. His heart soared.

  But then he thought of Jessie, and of Emma, and how crushed they would be to lose her. He could picture Jessie’s strained face when he told her, the tears she would try to hold back. And Emma. She might not understand in words, but she would understand her sister’s tears. Like Jessie, she would feel the hole that Sarah would leave in their lives.