Forgiving

by LaVyrle Spencer

  “As far as I’m concerned, any time would be the perfect time,” Addie said.

  “Also the perfect time for me to move out,” Sarah added.

  Addie’s brow furled. “But Sarah, we have plenty of room. Why, this little feller won’t need more than a clothes basket to sleep in.”

  “It’s time,” Sarah said simply. “I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of months already. I appreciate your letting me live with you for as long as I have, but this is your home, and it’s time I left it to you.”

  Addie and Robert spoke together.

  “But Sarah—”

  “You know we don’t—”

  Sarah held up her hands. “I know.” She rested them on the table. “You would allow me to stay until I grew too old to climb the stairs if I were silly enough to put you out that long.”

  “We love you, Sarah,” Robert said earnestly. “We don’t want you to leave.”

  Sarah smiled at him tenderly and squeezed the back of his hand once more. “Thank you, Robert, but I need to go. I need to have a place of my own, roots of my own, some sense of belonging somewhere for life.”

  “But the house is yours as well as mine,” Addie said.

  “It was bought with Father’s money, but so was the newspaper office. So we’re even, aren’t we? Now, I don’t want to hear any more about it.” Sarah rose, collecting empty coffee cups. “I’ve decided I’ll start looking immediately and will hope to have a place of my own by the first of the year. I’ll stay here through Christmas, but that’s all.” As she carried the cups away, Robert and Addie exchanged glances that admitted, while they were reluctant to see Sarah go, the idea of living alone was undeniably inviting. Robert rose and followed Sarah to the dry sink where she set the cups down. He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him.

  “As long as you know you’re always welcome here.”

  There was no question in Sarah’s mind. She also knew as she looked into Robert’s eyes that he still felt guilty for causing the breakup between herself and Noah, and that, as penance, he would keep her beneath his wing forever if she would let him.

  “I know, Robert. I’ll only be across town somewhere, and I’ll come back often to see that little boy of yours. I’ll probably spoil him silly.”

  He squeezed her arms and kissed her cheek. The touch of his mustache brought the memory of another and made Sarah already feel like a lonely maiden aunt.

  Shortly thereafter, Addie began wearing loose-fitting dresses without waists. She was the healthiest expectant mother imaginable, with a new glow in her normally pale cheeks, her gold hair shiny and grown to collar length, and a contentment level that sometimes brought Sarah a pang of envy. Having grown up as she had in a motherless home, Sarah had never witnessed marital bliss. During those winter days while Christmas approached—short days when dark fell early and the favorite place was near the kitchen range—both she and Robert took to coming home earlier. He would enter the house smiling and go directly to Addie, wherever she was, whatever she was doing. He would kiss her forehead, mouth or ear and ask how the little fellow was doing in there, and would glance lovingly at Addie’s round stomach. She would show him the tiny clothes she’d made—the sewing machine was constantly clunking—or exclaim that she’d read in Peterson’s Magazine some tidbit about the preparation of baby foods or diaper care or teething. Once Sarah found them standing facing a kitchen window at dusk with Robert behind Addie, his chin on her shoulder and his arms doubled around her midriff below her breasts. Addie’s arms covered his and her head was tilted to one side. Neither of them spoke, only rocked blissfully left and right. Sarah watched them for some time, then tiptoed away, leaving them undisturbed to stand by herself at the front-room window and stare out at the dusky tones of twilight, thinking of Noah and aching for all they had missed.

  Addie and Robert were painfully aware of Sarah’s increasing despondency and withdrawal. At night, in bed, they whispered about it and wondered how to help her.

  One night in December, when supper was over and Sarah had retired early to her room, Robert went to Addie where she sat stitching in the parlor in a straight-backed side chair which had grown more comfortable as her girth increased. He bent down and braced his hands on the arms of her chair and said, looking into her eyes, “I’m going to Noah’s.”

  When they had exchanged a prolonged gaze she somberly touched his cheek and said, “Good luck, dear.”

  It was almost eight-thirty by the time he approached Noah’s kitchen door. Noah answered his knock and for moments neither man spoke.

  Finally Noah said, “Well, this is a surprise.”

  “You still pissed off at me?” Robert asked, point-blank.

  “No. I got over that long ago.”

  “Am I disturbing anything?”

  “Hardly. Just having a late supper. Come on in.”

  Inside, Noah said, “Take your coat off, sit down.”

  The room looked barren and lonely but for the yellow flowered curtains that Addie had made last spring, the only woman-touch in the room. Noah’s interrupted meal consisted of beans and bread on a blue enamel plate. The table had no cloth; the room no pictures on the wall, ivies at the windowsill, nor rug beneath the table. Noah’s boots stood by the wood-box, his hat lay on the table, his gunbelt hung on the back of his chair and his heavy leather jacket hung on a peg by the door, alone. It wrenched Robert’s heart to see his friend so lonely. ‘

  “So how’ve you been?”

  Noah shrugged. “Oh, you know. Same as always.” He sat down and resumed his meal. “I hear you and Addie are going to have a baby,” he remarked.

  “That’s right. Sometime toward spring. She’s one happy woman.”

  “I hear you’re one happy man, too.”

  “That’s a fact.”

  “Well that’s good. I’m damned happy for you both.”

  Silence fell. Noah ate a forkful of beans. Robert sat back in his chair with one elbow on the table and his ankle over a knee, studying his friend.

  “How come we never see you up at the house anymore?”

  Noah stopped eating. “You know why.”

  They measured each other awhile. “So,” Robert said, “you avoid her and you avoid us, too.”

  “It’s not intentional. I figured you’d know that.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth, we miss you around there.”

  Noah set down his fork and studied it in silence.

  “I came over here to tell you something.”

  Noah met Robert’s eyes and waited.

  “Sarah says she’s moving out the first of the year.”

  Noah’s eyes remained expressionless while he absorbed the news. “So?”

  Robert spoke with fire. “So she’s going to find some house and live in it alone, and you’re going to sit up here eating your beans alone at eight-thirty at night and it makes no goddamned sense at all!”

  “She doesn’t want me.”

  “She wants you so damned bad she’s dying inside.”

  Noah snorted and looked away.

  “Jesus Christ, man, she had a shock. I know because I’m the one who gave it to her. And, yes, she needed some time to get over it, but not the rest of her life!”

  Noah snapped a look at Robert. “She wrote me off and I’m not crawling back to her to get kicked in the teeth again. Twice is enough!”

  Robert studied Noah awhile and asked quietly, “You love her, don’t you?”

  Noah threw his head back, pushed away from the table edge with both hands and exclaimed to the ceiling, “Sheece!”

  “Don’t you?”

  Noah leveled his chin and shot a withering glance at Robert from the corner of his eye.

  “So how many other women have you been seeing lately?”

  “How many other men has she been seeing?”

  “None. She sits in that house at night watching Addie’s stomach get bigger and tiptoeing around to try to keep out of our way, and I never saw a l
onelier sight in my whole life than her trying to pretend she’s happier without you. Unless, of course, it’s you up here with your beans, trying to pretend you’re happier without her.”

  Noah tipped forward, clunked his elbows on the table, joined his hands in a hard knot and pressed them to his mouth, staring at an empty chair on the opposite side of the table.

  Robert let the silence go, let Noah stare and think awhile. On the stove a teakettle sizzled. In the firebox a coal popped. Noah’s eyes got suspiciously glisteny. He held them wide, careful not to blink.

  Finally he closed them, dropped his forehead to his thumb knuckles and whispered, “I can’t.”

  Robert reached out and put his hand around Noah’s forearm. “I know,” he said softly, “it’s hard. But it’s hard for her, too.” He let some seconds pass before adding, “Chambers and Adrienne Davis have invited Addie and me to their place for dinner next Saturday. We’ll be leaving the house at seven o’clock.” He squeezed Noah’s arm once, let his hand fall away and rose, buttoning his coat.

  Noah lifted his head and stared at the chair as before. Robert put on his hat and gloves.

  “Sometimes a person can suffocate on his own pride,” he said, then left his friend sitting there in his silent kitchen with his elbows braced on either side of a plate of cold beans.

  When Robert was gone Noah remained at the table a long time, his wounds freshly opened. The last seven months had been hell: lonely, painful, tormented. She had rejected him, emasculated him, and left him still loving her. Love? Was this love? This colorless movement through days that seemed to have neither crest nor trough but rolled along doldrum-flat? This searching the faces on the street for a glimpse of her, then crossing to the other side if she appeared up ahead? This dwelling on the memories he had of her instead of making new ones with someone else? This wanting, one minute, to go to her and shake her till her head snapped, the next pitying her to the point of misery?

  He had moved through his first twenty-six years with relative clear-mindedness, quite sure of himself, his motives, his desires, his goals. Since Sarah Merritt had come into his life and left it, he had become like the habitual drinker who says, I can quit anytime I want to, then gets drunk by noon every day. She was his liquor, the thing he declared he could live without, but dwelled on with debilitating regularity.

  Perhaps this was true because he was the spumed one and his ego was wrinkled. But if that were the case, he would have hied himself over to Rose’s and gotten his ego starched months ago. Instead, he had felt no predilection toward that pastime in which he’d once, so blithely indulged; the revelations about Addie’s sorry past had taken care of that.

  There were other women in Deadwood now, decent women he might have pursued, but none seemed to appeal, nor could he shake the feeling that he still owed monogamousness to Sarah Merritt, broken betrothal or not.

  He wondered if he would go through life without ever marrying, one of those pitiable creatures about whom the locals, when he was seventy and bent, would say, he never got over his broken heart, just holed up there in that house they bought together, and let those yellow curtains she’d put up hang there till they were nothing but holes, and ate his meals alone.

  Robert was right, eating his beans alone was one of the most pathetic rites he’d ever experienced. Why did he do it? Why didn’t he go up to Teddy’s and have supper with people? Why didn’t he say, to hell with Sarah Merritt, I have some living to do?

  Because he’d been waiting for her to heal, to knock on his door and walk into this kitchen with regret in her eyes and say to him, Noah, I’m sorry. Noah, please take me back. Noah, I love you.

  But would she? Could she? Or was he pining away for something she was incapable of doing?

  He could go to her and do the pursuing once more, might even get her to say she’d marry him, but what then? An attempt at seducing her before marching her down the aisle was unthinkable. She had made it abundantly clear she would not abide it—and, hell, to tell the truth, the thought of laying a hand on her terrified him by this time. So... let Victorian mores dictate that she approach her wedding bed a virgin? But supposing she froze up on him then too? Supposing he took the jump and found himself committed to a lifetime of living with a frigid woman.

  Noah Campbell sat with his elbows beside his beans, beleaguered by the dozens of unanswered questions that felt like hammerblows as they clanged through his head.

  So what’re you going to do when Saturday night comes, Noah?

  I don’t know.

  You gonna go over there and let her turn you away again?

  She might not.

  That’s right. She might not, but then again she just might.

  CHAPTER

  23

  On Saturday night Sarah watched Addie bustling around the house getting dressed for her first social invitation since she’d married Robert. She pinned her hair up in a neat gold crown, polished her lips with petroleum jelly and donned a maternity frock covered by a hooded cape of periwinkle blue. Dressed totally respectably, she nevertheless stood before Sarah looking doubtful. “I wonder if Adrienne Davis knows about my past.”

  “My guess is she does, but she’s willing to overlook it. She’s a natural-born social leader, and tonight is going to be your ticket into acceptable society.”

  “Do you really think so, Sarah?”

  Sarah kissed Addie’s cheek. “You’re Mrs. Robert Bay-singer now.” She tipped her chin up. “Be proud, and don’t let the past matter.”

  When they left the house, Addie looked proud indeed, holding Robert’s arm, excited and anticipatory. Sarah watched them go, feeling wistful and a little envious of their happiness.

  When they were gone the house felt mournful. She wandered around listlessly, watered some houseplants, went up to her room, removed her shoes and replaced them with maroon felt carpet slippers. She pulled the combs from her hair and let it trail down her back, too lonely to care about brushing it. She released her throat- and cuff-buttons, wrapped in her favorite ugly pumpkin-colored shawl, took out her engagement brooch, placed it before her on the desk, donned her spectacles and got out her journal. In time she got chilled and found herself staring into the cubbyholes of the desk, writing little.

  Around eight o’clock she took her writing materials downstairs. There was a Christmas tree in the parlor, but the room was dark as Sarah crossed through it on her way to the kitchen where she arranged her things on the table, the brooch within easy reach beside the journal with its marbelized cover and unlined white pages. She added two logs to the fire, poured herself a cup of leftover coffee and sat down once more to write.

  The sounds in the kitchen—homey in times of fulfillment—tonight seemed lonely, and intensified Sarah’s sense of solitude: the hiss of the teakettle in its customary nighttime spot at the cooler end of the range; the soft pop of the fire as it subsided to glowing coals; the creak of her chair as she leaned over the table; the scrape of her pen on the paper; the hiss of the lantern while she sat staring at the brooch, waiting for words to form in her mind; the quiet thump as Ruler jumped from a chair and stretched with her hindquarters raised.

  Sarah sat back. “Hey, Ruler, come here,” she coaxed, dropping her hand with the fingers pursed.

  Ruler finished her stretch, seated herself in the curl of her tail and blinked at Sarah from five feet away. She studied the cat awhile, wishing she would leap up to her lap—a warm, living solace—but Ruler had other things to do. She started giving herself a bath.

  It ‘d be nice to be a cat. All you’d have to be concerned with would be eating and sleeping and preening. There’d be no such thing as regrets or wishes or broken engagements. When the spirit moved you, you’d go out and hunker down and growl for half an hour, nose to nose with one of your ilk, and howl a little bit and leap around in the moonlight in the tall grass or the crusty snow, and when the moment was right, couple with your lady love, and the next day have no concern or memory of it.

 
; Ruler moved farther away, leaped onto the rocking chair seat where she settled in the shape of a muff with her front paws hidden.

  Sarah dipped her pen and wrote, “I wonder what it would feel like to be expecting a child, to don my cape over my bulging stomach and leave the house on Noah’s arm, heading for a dinner with Chambers and Adrienne Davis, to be at last a part of the world that moves two by two.” She dipped her pen again and held it above the page, staring at its black nib until the ink started drying, creating a marbelized design of peacock and copper on the curved metal.

  In the front room,’ some needles fell from the Christmas tree onto the bare wood floor. Ruler’s ears twitched, her pupils dilated, and she glanced sharply at the doorway.

  Sarah sat watching her absently until Ruler settled back into a furball and squinted her eyes. Sarah turned her regard to the brooch, reached out and touched it with her fingertips, as lightly as if inspecting it for fine cracks.

  In time she sighed, dipped the pen and wrote on. “I find myself fantasizing about Noah so often, picturing what it would be like if I were like Addie and could—”

  A knock sounded on the front door.

  Both Sarah and Ruler shot startled glances through the doorway. Sarah sat unmoving until it sounded again, then pushed back her chair and removed her glasses, leaving them behind as she gripped her shawl and headed for the dark front room. With one hand she clustered her disorderly hair at her nape, then let it spring back into disarray as she opened the door.

  Noah stood on the step.

  For seconds neither he nor Sarah spoke. Or moved. He studied her from beneath the brim of his brown Stetson, his hands at his sides, his features only a suggestion in the faraway light from the kitchen lantern. The lines linking his nose and mouth were deep grooves, disappearing into his dark mustache. His somber eyes were mere pinpricks of light.

  She stood on the threshold above him, one hand gripping her aged shawl, the other, the doorknob, while only the ragtail outline of her hair was lit from the light behind her.

  “Hello, Sarah,” he said finally in a voice that sounded weary beyond belief.