Any Minute: A Novel

by Deborah Bedford

  Sarah pictured Mitchell with his cowlick sticking straight up after he showered and practically gnawing the end of his pencil as he worked a thorny math problem and plopping in her lap at the city swimming pool. Mitchell, who, Sarah realized, had told her Wingtip was a friend, only she’d been too terrified to listen.

  In that one moment, Sarah missed her children so much that it seemed more than she could bear. Both of their precious faces were branded on her heart. The pain of losing them felt like a fist wringing out her heart. Why hadn’t she looked Mitchell in the eyes that day? Why hadn’t she heard what he had to tell her?

  She said, “I don’t get the part about you spending time at the ballpark. For an angel, you sure know a lot about the Chicago Cubs.”

  He stood mute for a beat too long.

  “No. Don’t say it. You’re not the angel for the Cubs.”

  Wingtip lowered his gaze at her and waited for her to make her own deduction.

  “No. You’re telling me the Cubs have had an angel up in that old scoreboard all this time? And counting.”

  “You told me not to say it.”

  “You’re not,” she argued.

  “Well, don’t you think they could use one?”

  “If you’re an angel, then why were you pretending to be a bum on LaSalle Street?” She gawked at him, speechless, before she started shaking her head, fending off the idea.

  “Would it be so bad,” he asked, “if the Cubs had an angel and that angel was picked by God to watch over you a little bit and show you around?”

  You need help finding your way around? A vagabond’s question from LaSalle Street. And her answer, I don’t need you to show me anywhere. I’m not lost.

  “You knew this was going to happen,” she said.

  “Who knew?” he asked. “Who knew what choice you would make?”

  “Annie?” Sarah drew a deep breath, turned toward her grandmother. “Where does my family think I am?”

  Her grandmother had been in the process of carefully peeling off her silk stockings and gently kneading her vermillion-painted toes. But Annie’s fingers paused. Slow-motion like, her foot returned to the floor.

  “They think you’re at the bottom of the river. So does everyone else.” She said it as matter-of-factly as if she’d said, “The soup is on the third shelf, the second row, at Boldt’s Grocery and Meat Market.” Which sobered the mood between the three of them considerably.

  Sarah stared into the pot as if trying to see through the surface of the cold, tea-colored water that had closed over her head, the rippled surface she couldn’t quite get to, its shimmering dancing light. What was Joe doing right now? What was he thinking? Feeling? Was he frantically looking for her?

  I didn’t mean to leave like this, she wanted to cry out to Joe. And then the horrifying realization of where things had been left between them. Suppose he thinks I did this on purpose.

  Suppose he thinks I was trying to punish him. Or that I was trying to escape.

  Sarah felt again the breathless loss, the hollow cramp of sorrow that had come unexpectedly as she watched him sleeping beside her, heard those light snores he made, that sharp mind-boggling emptiness she felt when she tried to imagine living without Joe. How she wished she had told Joe how much he meant to her. She wished with all of her heart she had told him how wonderful he was, how talented and creative, but all she’d done was find fault with him. Now it was too late.

  She gripped the sideboard, her vision swimming, her head pounding. The noise behind her ears was deafening. Why had it seemed so important to beat those barricades this morning? What had she thought so important that she’d made such a reckless dash to the other side?

  Annie’s voice came then, gentle and full of sorrow. “Sarah, I know how hard your life has been for you. Being resentful and feeling sorry for yourself hasn’t done any good. All you’ve been thinking about is trying to make yourself happy, and God wants you to understand that’s why nothing in your life is working. It is impossible to be both selfish and happy, Sarah.”

  “Oh, Annie,” she whispered, and she might have been a little girl again, hearing the mournful way she sounded. She gripped her grandmother’s hand. “If I could just go back and do it all over again, I would do things differently.”

  Annie shook her head solemnly, her voice measured. “Don’t you know most people think the same thing? Why would you be any different?”

  Sarah sighed, feeling sufficiently chastised.

  “Everybody wants second chances. And no one realizes that taking a really honest look at changing things isn’t easy. But if you genuinely want to change, God will help you. You cannot do anything about the way you got started in life, but you can determine how you will finish.”

  “Annie, I’m scared. Are you saying I can have another chance? That I’m not dead after all?” Sarah whispered.

  “God loves you, and he wants you to feel better about yourself. He wants you to live the life he intended for you to live. You don’t have to be scared about that.”

  The timepiece above Annie’s head stared at the two of them. It wasn’t ticking, but it was pointing at 7:35. Sarah wondered if the clock was right. She had no concept of just how long she’d been gone. The clock stood silent as a stone.

  “The Father holds every second in the palm of his hand, Sarah,” Annie said. “His timing is always just right, and everything that happens to you is intended for your good. Even the disappointments you had as a child hold a treasure if you will ask God to work something good out of them.”

  In one way Sarah hated the thought of leaving this place. She loved the light, the golden glow, the feeling that nothing could ever be wrong here. But maybe she had a chance to see Joe and the children again. Maybe she had a chance to tell them how sorry she was for the way she had been treating them. She wanted to promise to go to a ball game with Mitchell and not disappoint him and be really happy about being there. Sarah wanted a chance to learn what was really important in life and how to live for someone other than herself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  What does a person do at a time like this, Joe thought, when you really don’t know how to pray?

  Joe crouched beside the riverbank and stared into the murky water. The police captain had been right. Even where the river lapped onto shore, he could barely see an inch beneath it. He glanced over his shoulder to see if his friend Pete was watching. Then Joe slipped his hand into the water and watched his skin instantly tint a sickly shade of green. Another four inches deeper and he couldn’t see his fingers at all anymore.

  As surely as he felt his hand attached to his arm beneath the water, Joe felt his wife somewhere down there too, crying out to him, floating away from him. And even though an army of professional rescuers searched for Sarah, Joe couldn’t shake the feeling that he was the one who was supposed to find her. Maybe if he just kept hoping she was alive, that would draw her to him. All he knew was that he couldn’t give up… not yet, anyway.

  He should have let the chaplain stay. That would have been better than phoning the pastor at the church they’d attended a few times. It would have been easier and better and guilt free. How did you say, “You don’t know me, but I need you”?

  Maybe pastors got calls like that all the time. Joe wondered.

  The day Joe had met Sarah, everyone at the Chicago bank had told him he couldn’t cash his paycheck. Here they’d been, a group of college guys who couldn’t have looked more bedraggled if they’d been hiking cross-country, making a scene in the lobby and refusing to leave.

  The teller had examined the draft he’d slid across the ledge toward her. “It’s out of state.” She’d laid both hands flat, one on either side of the check, and said, “There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”

  The teller had been kind of cute and he’d had an audience—four of the guys he hung out with stood nearby. Joe leaned forward on crumpled sleeves that hadn’t seen the inside of a washer for a good month. He veed his fingers alongside
a jaw that hadn’t seen a razor for days. “What’s wrong?” He shot her a come-hither glance that he knew worked magic with women. “Don’t I look like someone you can trust?”

  “I’ll get my manager,” she said with distaste.

  “Yes. You do that.”

  Joe winked across the lobby at his buddies, one possessive arm still crooked across the counter, making sure the guys noticed he had pull in this place. He expected an old battle-ax to emerge through the swinging door, someone he could charm with his quick wit, his ready smile, and his round, dark eyes. Especially his round, dark eyes. He put a lot of faith in those. Generally he could get anything he wanted when he flashed them.

  He should have known what he was up against the moment Sarah Cattalo strong-armed the door the way a running back would strong-arm a tackle. With the door still wagging behind her, she surveyed him with crossed arms. “What can I help you with, sir?”

  If she didn’t have her mouth screwed up tight as a persimmon, he thought, she’d be pretty good-looking. “This is a bank, right? This is where I go to get money, right? Well, that’s what I need.” He thumped the check to draw her attention to it.

  She didn’t even glance in its direction. “If you want to open an account here, you’re welcome to make a deposit. After the deposit clears, you’ll have access to the money. Does that sound like something you’re interested in doing?”

  He sent her the message with his eyes. I could be interested in you. And this time, he really meant it. The more he looked at her, the more he thought she was about the prettiest thing he had ever seen.

  For a moment he almost considered opening an account, just to talk to her longer. He had an apartment here in town, but when he left to take the temporary job in St. Louis for a few months, he closed his bank account. He didn’t see any point in paying monthly fees to keep it open if he wasn’t going to have anything in it.

  Now he and a bunch of guys had decided on the fly to take their final paychecks and head back to Chicago where they could all invade his apartment. Reality had hit, and they realized their paychecks were no good unless they could cash them. Joe was determined to flirt until his charm won the boss lady over to his side.

  They had been driving five hours, devouring Pringles and telling man jokes and listening to punk rock in the CD player. At twenty-four, he hadn’t been one to think ahead. His friends had agreed to fill up the car with gas. He’d made the pilgrimage without so much as a dollar to his name.

  “If I open an account, how long will it take to get my money?”

  He’d expected her to say something like thirty minutes. “Four days at least.”

  “Well, that answers that question.”

  “Don’t you have an ATM card? We have a machine right out front. If you have funds in your account at home, you ought to be able to access those.”

  He had the card from his old account that was now closed, which did Joe no good whatsoever. With all those guys watching, the last thing Joe wanted to do was walk away empty-handed. He selected a lime lollipop from the jar, slowly unwrapped it, and tried to figure out how she could be a bank manager and so young. Either she was a fast climber or she must have started working when she was like ten. “So. You got a boyfriend or something? Is there someone who’s going to come slash my tires or beat me up if I ask you out?”

  She drew herself to her tallest height. After twelve years of marriage he still teased her about her answer that day. “You don’t have a prayer.”

  Joe could never determine for sure which motivated him more, the ribbing he got from his pals that night or the flicker of self-doubt he’d noticed before something clicked shut in her face. He did open an account, which gave him a good excuse to keep returning to the bank until finally he’d convinced a reluctant Sarah Cattalo to join him for dinner at a dive on Lawrence Avenue, just around the corner from Hoyne Savings Bank.

  When Sarah said, “You don’t have a prayer,” it made Joe that much more determined to win her over, and later she told him she secretly admired his determination and confidence.

  Sometimes now, with the two of them struggling, it was easy to forget the times he’d savored being married to her. Sharing the bathroom, shifting his body so she could reach past him to the sink, the way their eyes locked in the mirror, the way he liked to kiss inside the crook of her arm. The times he’d cupped the back of her head in his hand and felt her hair falling through his fingers. The times they’d lain in bed and he’d been fascinated by the ebb and flow of her breathing, the fiddle-curve of her spine.

  On the day she’d given birth to Kate, he’d found her with a foot propped on the coffee table, trying to paint her toenails. Only problem was, she couldn’t bend over and reach them.

  “What are you doing? Isn’t it about time for the hospital?” he’d asked.

  She’d groaned, bending over herself with the bottle of Maybelline’s Saucy Brown. “Things were too crazy at Roscoe. I didn’t have time to get a pedicure downtown. Nobody wants to go through childbirth without painted toenails. Your feet are up high and waving around and everyone in the hospital sees.” The way things looked was very important to Sarah, probably way too important.

  “Oh, so that’s what they’re looking at,” he’d said, laughing at her. “Here. Let me do that.”

  “I don’t want any smudges. You have to be careful.”

  “Just give me the bottle, Sarah.”

  Mitchell had already been picked up to spend the day with a friend from school. And there they’d been, Joe touching the tiny brush to her toenails with the same attention to detail he employed repairing dings in his auto shop. She’d gripped his shoulder and breathed through another mild contraction, inhaling through her nostrils with her eyes closed, counting to ten as she exhaled through the O of her mouth. She knew she still had time; her contractions were too far apart to be concerned yet.

  “So do you have your hair ribbons packed too?” He screwed the cap on the nail polish and grinned at her. “Pink ones? And all the little pink clothes?” They’d had an ultrasound and knew it would be a girl.

  “Don’t tease me about it anymore.” Sarah’s eyes smoldered with something he didn’t understand, her words fervent. “It’s important. I want everything right for her when she comes, Joe.”

  “Why would you worry so much about that?”

  “She is going to be perfect and I want to look perfect for her and I want her to look perfect when I bring her home.”

  “She’s not going to know any difference.”

  “Yes she will. She’ll know later. She’ll see the pictures. I want her to know how much I want her.”

  The Windy City had been living up to its nickname that day, complete with lake-effect snow, when Joe toted Sarah and her bare feet to the car. Her coat was open as she clung to him, her arms locked around his neck. When she laid her head against him, he could see her pulse rising in the hollow of her neck. Even carrying her weight this way, even with their pulses tangled, Joe knew there was still a part of her that he had never been able to penetrate, an area closed off in her soul that she wouldn’t let anyone into.

  He remembered how, about a week before their wedding, with gift money in their hands and a couch in their sights on the showroom floor at Colemans, she’d grabbed a throw pillow from its display, hugged it against her chest like it was something she wanted to hide behind, and asked, “Joe? Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “What?” he’d asked wearily. He wanted her to have whichever color she liked best. “Pick the brown tweed over the plaid? I think so. Yes.”

  “No. Not the couch. I’m not talking about the couch.”

  “What, then?”

  “Are you sure you want to marry me?”

  He’d taken the pillow away, held her face in his hands. “Why would you ask a question like that? Of course I am.”

  “Because maybe you haven’t known me long enough to really know me. Maybe you won’t like me when you get to know me better.”
>
  He could see her, he’d told her. He could see everything about her. He loved everything about her. But now, as surely as water obscured his hand just below the surface, as surely as her words had been a mystery to him, he thought maybe she’d been right. Even then he’d sensed that he didn’t really know her like he thought he did.

  I wanted to make things right for you, Sarah. I just didn’t know how to do it.

  Joe had never been much for words when it came to asking for help. His simple, blunt request to God had come from desperation to save his family, not from any trust in prayer. Even though he believed in the existence of God, Joe’s life creed had always been: “Do the best you can, stand up for yourself, take life as it comes.”

  God, I asked you for help, not more problems than I already had.

  How could he trust a God who didn’t fix their lives the way Joe wanted them fixed?

  What am I supposed to do? Who am I supposed to rely on now?

  Things had changed in a moment.… Just like that, everything was different. He stood at a precipice, with two children who needed him, not knowing what to do and having nowhere to run.

  He soberly realized that now he would never be able to reconcile with Sarah or have the life with her that he longed to have.

  Mitchell sat wedged between Nona and Harold in the front seat, his wet feet straddling the hump and the Kleenex box, air blowing in his eyes from the vents, which made him squint. The inside of Harold’s car smelled funny, like dust and decaying foam rubber. When he tried to get comfortable, the seat scrunched beneath him like hay.

  When Harold had hauled Mitchell into his arms at school, Mitchell couldn’t remember ever being held that tightly.

  There were too many things to think about. Mitchell missed his mom. He wanted her right now, for her to cup his face in her hands and tell him everything would be okay. He didn’t want to think about what Harold had told him, that she had somehow gotten lost in the river and the firemen were trying to find her but they might not. It felt scary to be let out of school with all his friends still in Mrs. Georges’s class.