Forgiving

by LaVyrle Spencer

  “Let her cry for a while and then I’ll go up to her,” Addie said.

  “She won’t let me touch her.”

  “She needs to be alone awhile.”

  Noah nodded, then stood forlornly. “Addie, I’m really sorry,” he finally said.

  “Well, who isn’t, but what can we do about it except try to overcome it and make our lives happier?”

  “I never knew... I mean, when I used to come and see you up at Rose’s...” His eyes flashed to Robert, back to Addie. “This is awkward, but I figure it needs saying. I wouldn’t have come there if I’d known. I thought you girls were... well... I thought...”

  She took pity and touched his arm. “Yeah, that’s what everybody thinks. That we’re just crazy about it. But listen, Noah, it’s not your fault, what the old man did to me. I don’t want you feeling guilty about it, too. I think there’s been enough guilt around here for one day.”

  Noah shifted his eyes to meet Robert’s.

  “Robert,” he said, and paused, searching for words.

  Robert said, “Some big mouth I’ve got, huh?”

  “Hell, you didn’t know.”

  “That doesn’t help Sarah any though, does it?”

  They stood awhile, quiet, until Noah put one hand on each of their necks, forging them into a circle.

  “You two are good people. You’re going to be happy, I know it. And Sarah and I are going to be happy, too. We’ll all get over this and be two old married couples who play cards every Sunday night.”

  They narrowed the circle and stood with their heads touching in a clumsy three-way embrace. Noah broke it up.

  “Listen, I’ve got to go. Tell Sarah I’ll be by tomorrow. You’ll go up to her soon, won’t you, Addie?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  He nodded and gave her a little smile of gratitude.

  “Robert,” Noah said by way of parting.

  The two clasped hands, necks—a silent communion, gripping each other, reluctant to let go. Finally they parted, clearing their throats. There’d been more emotion expended in this house tonight than any of them were comfortable with.

  “I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

  Up in her room, Sarah lay lifelessly on her side, her hands limp, one of them holding a damp handkerchief. Her lips felt puffed and glossy. Her eyes hurt. Her body was inert but for an occasional residual sob that shuddered through her.

  The pieces all fit now. Everything.

  Father, abandoned by his wife for another man, never marrying or even seeing other women. Addie, after Mother left, inconsolably sad, wetting the bed, getting a room of her own but growing sadder as the years advanced and she should have gotten over Mother’s absence. Father’s first approval when Robert entered their lives, his later antipathy when Robert reached puberty and began noticing Addie as a girl. Addie’s disappearance followed by Father’s immediate failing. Addie, taking up the oldest profession as an extension of her role at home; her adamant refusal to speak of their father or accept any inheritance money from him. Even Addie’s being excused from having to work at the newspaper office the way Sarah had. Sarah understood now the true reason.

  How lucky she’d been.

  Sarah, the smart one.

  Addie, the pretty one.

  She groaned and dragged one heavy arm closer to her face, guilt-struck because she’d complained about Addie not having to help the way she did. Ruler appeared out of the darkness, jumping up behind her with a soft “Mrrr?” as if asking what was wrong. She reached an arm back and hauled her over her hip, settled her in a silky, vibrating curve against her stomach. Funny how when she really needed her the cat stayed, even though her first loyalty was to Addie.

  For a while Sarah erased tonight’s revelation from her mind, concentrating on the cat’s purring, the warmth of her body, the milky smell of her fur, the comfort of having her close, just as Addie must have been comforted by her when she worked at Rose’s.

  Rose’s.

  Father.

  The ugly truth returned, bringing a shudder that closed Sarah more tightly around the cat until her mouth touched her head.

  Was this how Addie had felt, night after night, alone and wretched after their father had done his dirty work?

  No. Much worse... immeasurably worse. Guilty and frightened and filled with hatred and despair and helplessness, for whom could she have turned to? Who would have believed a child so young, given the sterling reputation of Isaac Mer-ritt, who was respected from one end of St. Louis to the other?

  The faint light from the lower level went out and footsteps came up the stairs in the dark... into Sarah’s room... to the bed. Sarah remained silent, facing the wall. Addie lay down behind her, matching the curves of her body to those of Sarah’s, hooking an arm around her waist and finding Ruler on the far side, then locating the back of Sarah’s hand. She fit her own over it and squeezed hard, her fingertips digging into Sarah’s palm, the younger sister now succoring the older, protecting her from what she herself had never had protection from.

  Sarah’s tears came again, stinging her sore eyes. She felt Addie’s face pressed between her shoulder blades. They lay motionless a long time, like twins in a womb, until Sarah could contain her despair no longer.

  “All this time,” she said in a croaky voice, “I thought it was something I’d done that made you run.”

  “No. Never you. You were my bulwark, didn’t you know that? You still are.”

  “Some bulwark. I feel like I’ve been struck by a big fist right here where Ruler’s lying against me. I’m unable to move or to... to reason.”

  “Maybe it’s better that you know.”

  “It doesn’t feel better.”

  “I know it doesn’t right now, but in the long run.”

  “Now that I do, I’m surprised it took me this long to figure it out except I... I never knew...” Sarah swallowed a new lump forming in her throat. “I never knew f–fathers...” She couldn’t finish.

  “Shh... don’t cry anymore.” Addie petted Sarah’s hair. “It’s not worth it. It was over a long time ago and I’ve come through it all right. Look, we all have. Like Noah said, soon we’ll be two old married couples playing cards on Sunday night.”

  Sarah touched her knuckles to her lips, her eyes still streaming.

  After a while Addie said, “Robert said to tell you he’s sorry.”

  Sarah made an effort. She blew her nose. She took a deep, shaky breath, turned to her back and settled Ruler between herself and Addie.’

  “Dear Robert... how he must love you.”

  “He loves you, too. He felt terrible about hurting you.”

  “How long ago did you tell him?”

  “Christmas Eve.”

  “Christmas Eve...” The night things had started between herself and Noah.

  “It was a terrible night. He came to Rose’s wanting to hire me for the night, but in the end he couldn’t make himself do it for money. I ended up crying and telling him about Daddy and that’s when he made me leave Rose’s. He said I should tell you then. He thought you should know, but I didn’t see any reason. You always loved Father so much and thought he was some kind of a god. I knew this would happen when you found out. But Sarah, you have to forget it. If I can be happy with Robert, that’s all that matters.”

  “It’s not all that matters. It matters that my father was a hypocrite, preaching one thing and living another, that he was a filthy bestial criminal, preying on his own daughter and ruining her life. I feel so guilty, Addie, for not knowing, for not helping, for... for criticizing you because you never had to go to the newspaper office and help.” Sarah rolled to her side, facing Addie. “Don’t you see, Addie? He took everything away from you and gave me everything. How can I live with that?”

  “By remembering what you did for me. You came here to find me, you brought me Robert. If it wasn’t for the two of you I’d have died in that whorehouse thinking that I wasn’t worthy of anything better, because all those y
ears I thought I was a low, foul person, the scum of the earth. I thought all I was good for was that one act. But Sarah, I don’t think that anymore. You and Robert have given me back my self-respect.”

  They lay awhile in silence, thankful for the dark, each with a hand on the cat’s fur, linked by her comforting presence.

  “Addie, did Father...” There were so many questions Sarah wanted to ask, needed to ask, was afraid to ask.

  “You can ask me, Sarah, if you want. Anything. I’m not ashamed anymore because I know now I was innocent. But what good will it do you to hear the truth? I’ll tell you this much. The real stuff didn’t start till I was twelve. Till then it was a lot of him touching me and kissing me. Now think good and hard before you decide to ask me more.”

  The room remained quiet a long time, the darkness impacted with unwanted visions. Finally Sarah replied, “All right, I won’t ask, but I have one more confession to make. May I?”

  “What could you have to confess?”

  “I was always jealous of how beautiful you were.”

  Their fingertips touched on Ruler’s fur.

  “And I was always jealous of how smart you were. I used to think if I could just get smarter he’d let me go to the newspaper office the way you did and he wouldn’t need me for that other reason.”

  “Oh Addie...” Sarah reached up and put her hand around the back of Addie’s head and drew it near so their foreheads touched.

  “The world’s not a very perfect place, is it?” Addie said. After her staunchness through Sarah’s weeping, she now sounded on the verge of tears herself.

  Sarah became the strong one. She patted Addie’s short, silky hair and left her hand curved protectively around Addie’s nape. “No it isn’t, dear one. Far from it.”

  They fell asleep where they were, fully dressed and exhausted from the surfeit of emotion. In the deep of night Addie awakened, removed her shoes and those of Sarah, who mumbled, “Addie?... whm...?”

  “Get under the covers and go back to sleep.”

  The next morning Sarah overslept and arrived at the newspaper office late, her face looking like an overstuffed pillow. Patrick glanced at her sideways and took a swig from his flask. Josh stared at her head-on and said, “You look pure awful, Sarah! Are you sick?”

  Her head felt like she’d boiled it. Her eyes ached and her nose was swollen. Concentrating was impossible. She stayed until nearly eleven A.M., when she finally gave up and went back home to bed.

  Addie came to her room much later and gently shook her shoulder. “Sarah, wake up.”

  Sarah opened her bleary eyes and tried to recall why she was in bed in the middle of the afternoon.

  “Ohhh...” she groaned and rolled to her back with a hand covering her eyes.

  “Noah is here.” Sarah struggled to become lucid. “You’ve been sleeping four hours already. It’s the third time he’s been here and I thought I should wake you. Do you want to see him?”

  Sarah pushed herself up shakily. “No, not really.” She scraped a hand over her tousled hair and glanced around, orienting herself. The sun was on the windowsill. Ruler was near her feet. At her desk her journal lay closed and the crystal penholder sat beside it.

  “What time is it?”

  “About quarter after three.”

  Sarah boosted herself to the edge of the bed and dropped her feet over. “How are you today?”

  “I feel wonderful, actually. What shall I tell Noah?”

  “Tell him I’ll be down in five minutes.”

  “All right.” Addie swept toward the door. She pointed to the pitcher and bowl. “I brought you some warm water.”

  Sarah rose, feeling unsteady as a newborn colt. She washed her face, combed her hair and winced at her reflection in the mirror. She looked no better than she had this morning. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin saggy and purple around the eyes. Even her lips looked swollen. Yet Addie seemed revitalized. Perhaps Robert had been right: revealing her secret, Addie had at last become free of it. If so, Sarah felt as if the burden had been transferred to her shoulders.

  She changed her wrinkled dress and went downstairs to face Noah. He was sitting on the parlor settee wearing his work equipment—gun, holster, brown leather vest and star. He held his hat in his hands—the one she’d given him—and rose immediately when Sarah entered the room.

  “Hi,” he said with an uncertain pause. “How are you?”

  “Puffy and shaky and a little incohesive.”

  “I was worried when I went to the newspaper office and you weren’t there.”

  “It was a bad night.”

  “I imagine. You and Addie talked?” Addie had retreated to the kitchen to give them privacy.

  “Yes.”

  Noah left his hat on the settee and went to her, taking her by the upper arms while she crossed them and fixed her eyes on an armchair to her left. Neither of them spoke.

  At length, she pulled back so he was forced to release her. “I’m not very good company today.” The damnable tears threatened once more and she turned away to hide them. “I’m sorry. I know this must seem bizarre to you. It does to me, too. I’ll need a little more time to get my emotions in order.”

  “Of course you will,” he said quietly. “But don’t worry about me. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy at work. When you’re rested up and want to see me, let me know.”

  “Thank you, Noah, I will.”

  She recognized the coldness in herself immediately—her unwillingness to meet his gaze, a reluctance to be touched by him, relief when he dropped his hands. His visit was absolutely correct, even thoughtful, yet she could not conjure the slightest sense of gratitude for his attempt at comforting her.

  Rebuffed, he withdrew, collecting his hat and leaving the house with the careful footsteps of one retreating from a wake.

  When he was gone, Sarah sat on a stiffly upholstered side chair, her eyes closed, her arms crossed, imagining this must be what it felt like to be in a coma, chilly and removed from the life around you, hearing it but not heeding it.

  In the kitchen Addie clamped a handle on a hot iron and laid it on a damp cloth over a curtain-in-progress. It sizzled. Out on the back doorstep Ruler meowed to get in. Addie went to the door, opened it and said, “Well, are you coming in or not?” The door closed and the iron clanked again, hitting the stove. Outside, a wagon passed on the road, rearranging the gravel. Some birds chirped.

  The way you treated Noah was unpardonable.

  I am suffering.

  Maybe he is, too.

  His suffering, if it existed, was of little import to Sarah beyond that brief thought. She struggled to merely open her eyes, to rise from the chair, to proceed with normality. How could Addie be ironing curtains in the kitchen as if the axis of the world had not tilted?

  Sarah moved to the kitchen doorway. Addie looked up.

  “Noah has gone?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “He’s very worried about you.”

  “Is there any coffee?”

  Addie blinked in surprise at Sarah’s response. “Yes, I believe so.”

  Sarah poured some and took it upstairs without a further word about last night or about Noah. Leaving the kitchen, she only said, “I’m not very hungry tonight, so don’t fix much for supper.”

  She returned to work the next day, submerging herself in daily duties and trying to keep unwanted images from her mind, but they persisted, horrid vignettes of her father hunkering over Addie. They came at frequent intervals and Sarah would snap from her involvement with them to find her hand clenched on a pen and her stomach muscles quivering. Though she was ignorant of the machinations of copulation, she had once seen a pair of dogs mating. A woman had run out of her house with a broom and had beaten on the male, shouting, “Get off her! Get off her, you big thing!” to no avail. The two had remained sealed together for an ignominiously long time in the woman’s front yard, until every child in the neighborhood had witnessed the spectacle.

&nbs
p; Sometimes Sarah imagined herself with the broom in her hand, flailing her father, whom she pictured in the pose of the male dog. The image might have lasted only a second or two, but it would leave her feeling soiled and shaken.

  It persisted at night, too, before sleep came, while she lay in the room next to Addie’s and nursed an anger for her father that grew to immense proportions. She began having nightmares, awakening from them with her heart hammering and the visions from her dream already evaporated before she could see them.

  Four days passed and she had not seen Noah. Five, and she still hadn’t seen him. Six, and he appeared beyond her window glass, standing outside the newspaper office, raising a hand in silent hello. She raised hers, too, but returned to work without going out to invite him in.

  A week after that fateful betrothal supper, he came to the house while making his early-evening rounds.

  Addie answered his knock. She and Robert had been sitting on the settee making wedding plans while she stitched her own bridal dress.

  “Noah!” Addie exclaimed happily, “come in!”

  “Noah!” Robert jumped up from the settee and came to greet him with a handclasp. “Where have you been? We were just talking about you.”

  “I’ve been keeping out of Sarah’s way. How is she?”

  “Remote.”

  “From you too?”

  “From all of us, I’m afraid.”

  Noah sighed and looked worried. “Is she here?”

  “I’ll get her,” Addie said.

  Sarah was sitting at her desk writing when Addie announced from the doorway, “Noah is downstairs. He’d like to see you.”

  Sarah looked over her shoulder. She was dressed in a white long-sleeved nightgown topped by her old pumpkin-colored shawl. Her hair hung in a loose braid down her back. Some seconds passed while she contemplated. Finally she answered, “Tell him I’ll be down.”

  Five minutes later she emerged from upstairs wearing a wine-colored dress and high-button shoes with her hair secured in a fastidious bun at the back of her head. When she entered the parlor all conversation ceased. She stopped near the foot of the stairs and returned the regard of the other three, who were seated on the settee and an adjacent chair.