by Newall, Liz;
When I came home, Jack was leaning over the crib, bobbing the upper half of his body, singing “Send in the Clowns.” I slipped in beside him and looked down on Sammy. Sammy was fine. But Jack wasn’t. He had this clown mobile Aunt Kate had given to Sammy suctioned to the center of his forehead. He swung around and nearly caught me in the face. A yellow clown and a red one twirled into an orange tangle.
Jack smiled, a little embarrassed-looking but mostly pleased with himself too. I could tell by the way he lifted his eyebrows and crinkled his forehead. Of course, it didn’t crinkle evenly with the suction cup stuck in the center. “Sammy was crying so I thought I’d entertain him. See,” Jack said, swinging back around and tangling three more clowns. “I just pulled it off the wall and stuck it to my forehead. It stayed on,” he said tugging on the suction cup. “Really well,” he added. It didn’t budge. He pulled again, this time harder. I watched his skin stretch out from his forehead.
“It’s stuck all right,” I said. “Let me try.” I wiggled it back and forth, then up and down. The clowns jigged in a spastic dance. Sammy waved his hands.
“You’ve got to break the seal,” Jack said, his voice a note or two higher than usual. “Get a spoon.”
I reached into the drawer, grabbed a spoon by the handle, and aimed for the suction cup glued to Jack’s skin.
“For God’s sake! Sarah!” Jack yelled, “that’s a grapefruit spoon. I want you to break the seal not gouge out a chunk of my head like a grapefruit section!”
“Calm down,” I told him, grabbing another spoon. I stuck the rounded tip right at the junction of skin and rubber, held onto the mobile, and pushed hard. The suction broke, clowns fell forward, Jack backward.
“Thank God!” he shouted, catching his balance. Then a little calmer, “thought I’d have to wear the damn thing to work.” He rubbed his forehead.
“You’ll have to wear ‘part’ of it,” I said.
“What?”
“Look in the mirror.”
“Jesus,” Jack said. In the center of his forehead was the biggest, brightest, roundest hicky I’ve ever seen.
We tried combing his hair forward—too short. Band-Aids—took too many. Revlon cover stick—he said he couldn’t live with himself if he used makeup. Finally, he concocted a story about tripping over a lamp cord and falling head first onto a door knob. Then he made me swear on the sanctity of motherhood not to tell anyone, especially Donna.
He checked on Sammy again, grabbed some sunglasses, kissed me, and headed out to work singing “Send in the Clowns” more like Janis Joplin than Judy Collins. I sat in the middle of the nursery floor, untangling clowns and wondering how I could have ever left this man.
Thinking about Jack’s hickey doesn’t even get me out of this blue mood today. Maybe I’m worried about Donna. Jack says she’s just getting older “like the rest of us.” Aunt Kate thinks, whatever the reason, it’s an improvement because Donna doesn’t echo Andrew like she used to. Wonder how Andrew analyzes the situation—that is if he’s noticed? I’m not sure Donna even knows what it is. I do. Restlessness—plain and simple. But there’s no “plain and simple” way to deal with it. That’s what worries me.
Donna stopped by one day last week. She was wearing her usual hot weather clothes—camp shirt, Bermuda shorts, tennis shoes—but her face looked different. She jumped out of her Honda and ran to the door, acting happier than I’d seen her in weeks. I hadn’t really talked with her in weeks either. But Sammy was napping and I was glad for her visit.
“Notice anything different?” she asked, blinking her eyelids.
“New shoes?”
She checked her feet. “No.” She lifted her hands to her face and patted her cheeks.
“New dress?” I said.
“No-o-o, Sarah!” She blinked a few more times and patted her cheeks harder.
“I get it!” I said, shielding my eyes. “It’s your radiant beauty! You’ve been MADE-OVER!”
“Bingo!” she said, bending her knees into a curtsy. “Holly’s cousin did it just now in Holly’s shop. Can you really tell a difference?”
I nodded.
“I started to have it done gradual like those men who turn their hair back a little at a time with Grecian Formula. Base and blush one week. Lipliner and lipstick the next. Eye shadow, eyeliner, mascara and on and on. But then I thought, why not go whole hog and do it all at once.”
“You look great,” I said. “How much was it?”
Donna cleared her throat. “$76,” she whispered, “with starter kit and all. So, honestly, what do you think?”
“Worth every penny,” I said. “Has Andrew seen you?”
She shook her head. “I’m not going to tell him, unless he notices on his own, or Daddy or the twins either.” She stared beyond me. Her face clouded.
“Your eyes look so blue,” I said, wanting her good mood to continue, “bluer than I’ve ever seen them.”
“They’re blue all right,” she said. Then she looked back at me. “Holly’s cousin Barb used this highlighter she called brick powder or powder brick—meaning the color, not ground up brick or anything. She said it magnifies whatever color your eyes already are.” She smiled and blinked again.
“What about your hair?” I asked.
“What about it?” Her smile uncurled. “Does it need changing too?”
“Oh, no,” I said, wishing I hadn’t mentioned hair. “It always looks nice, curly and nice.”
“Truth is,” Donna said, sounding somewhat pacified, “I thought about giving up perms and getting one of those short blow-dry jobs.” She swept her hair up and away from her face. “What do you think?”
“Oh, Nonna! You’d be pretty bald.” I threw my arms around her.
She hugged me back. A desperate hug. “You haven’t called me ‘Nonna’ since you left. I’ve missed you so much!” she said. Then she began to cry.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she sobbed.
“Nothing?”
“Everything!”
“Like what?” I asked. But she shook her head between sobs. I held her until she was cried out. Then Sammy woke up. Donna went into the bathroom, repaired her make-over as best she could, and left. After she was gone, it hit me. Donna wasn’t crying just about her hair or even about missing me. There was sadness much deeper and stronger. And her crying wasn’t soft and dainty whimpers like it used to be. It was painful, jagged, ugly sobs like mine always was.
Donna’s acting more and more like Mama—busy, fidgety, distracted at times. Mama. She was buried a year ago today. No wonder I feel so unsettled. If only Mama could see Sammy. She’d love him just like Daddy. And she’d forgive me, too, like Daddy has. He hasn’t said so but I can see it in his eyes. I understand now what came between us for so long, even before the first time I tried to run away.
He’s back to gardening. Donna said he let his plot go to weed last year when Mama was sick. Probably the only time in his life that he wasn’t growing something. Daddy always said gardening was nature’s way of training humans. Sometimes he does what he calls “garden experiments.” Like with his mantelpiece cucumber. Donna and I called it his riddle pickle. One summer when we were still kids, Daddy tried an experiment in his cucumber patch. He took an empty vinegar bottle and slipped a blossom, still on the vine, through the small glass neck. Then he pushed the bottle under the plant. He asked Donna and me if we thought it could grow. We both said no, not without soil or light. But in a few weeks Daddy led us back to the same patch in his garden, like the maître d’ in a fine restaurant, and showed us the bottle. There inside was a huge white cucumber. He said it didn’t turn green like the other cucumbers because it didn’t get enough light, but it still grew because the vine nourished it. He broke off the vine, filled the bottle with vinegar, screwed on the lid, and set his masterpiece of an experiment on the living room mantel next to Mama’s Royal Dalton dancing girl. “A reminder,” he said, “of the wonders of nature.”
Aunt Kate sits back and laughs at both Jack and Daddy, more than she should I think. But it’s good to see her happy again. Her first new boyfriend in two years, according to Donna. She says he hasn’t done a single “inside” repair or addition to the house but he and Aunt Kate have spent a lot of time outdoors. That’s good to hear. I know she loves that old farm house but I think it has too many ghosts for her. Donna thinks Aunt Kate might even consider leaving with this llama guy. I can’t imagine her giving up the farm and going all the way to Washington. But she may. If I’ve learned one thing in the past two years, it’s that you can’t predict what people will do based on what they’ve done in past, especially your own self.
I’m standing at the kitchen sink, staring out the window and thinking about Aunt Kate when I see her blue Blazer ease up the driveway. She doesn’t see me from the window. She looks upset. My anxiety reaches flood stage.
“Hi, Aunt Kate,” I say, opening the door, my voice unsteady. She doesn’t make a move to come inside, doesn’t say anything for a moment. My mind whirls—visions of Jack holding his chest, Daddy facedown in his garden, Donna in a crumpled Honda.
Aunt Kate looks at Sammy. She finally speaks. “You need to come with me,” she says. Then, as though she knows what I’m thinking, she adds, “Everyone’s fine. I just need your help.” I can tell by the way she sets her jaw, she’s not going to explain.
“Jack won’t be home till lunch time. I don’t have anybody to keep Sammy,” I say.
“Bring him.”
We ride the five miles to her farm almost in silence. I stare out the window, try to empty myself from anxiety by absorbing the scenery. From the crunch of my driveway and out my street, onto the four-lane then back off, around the curve at Cater’s Bridge, past the Short Stop Bar and Grill, past Pilgrim’s Dairy, then up the bumpy dirt road to the farm.
Aunt Kate drives straight to the barn then stops. She turns and looks at me. I can see a range of emotions in her eyes—sadness, love, resolution. Now she’ll tell me, I think to myself, why she wanted me to come. Instead, she takes Sammy and says, “Follow me.”
She leads me into the barn and towards the back stall. It’s dark, almost dark as night. The air is charged. I feel it popping against my skin, inside my head. My heart beats faster with each step. I can barely catch my breath. Aunt Kate stops. “There,” she says, gesturing with her head. “Look in there.”
The stall is half obscured in darkness. Out of the shadow, like a flashback or a dream, steps Athene, my beautiful roan mare. I slip through the stall door, throw myself against her, rub her neck, run my hand down her leg, tug on her mane, and breathe in that wonderful horse scent—sensations I haven’t felt for an entire year. It seems now for a lifetime.
I turn to Aunt Kate. “How ‥? Where ‥?”
“Ask him,” she says, looking beyond Athene. She hands me Sammy and walks away. I turn back to the mare, see movement in the darkness.
“Hello, Sarah.” I am paralyzed by the voice—unable to speak, move, think—able only to search the dark for the speaker, for Michael. He moves out of the shadow to the other side of the mare, stretches his arm around her neck, close enough now that I can see his face.
“Couldn’t sell her,” he says. His voice sounds strained. “Didn’t seem right, her being yours and all. And I thought,” he clears his throat, “I thought you might be back for her.” I say nothing. “Can hardly see my hand in front of my face in here,” he says. “Let’s go outside.” He opens the stall door. My legs feel weak but they carry me toward the light.
Outside, my eyes drink him in—beard thicker than I remember, worn denim, arms shining golden in the sun. He looks at Sammy. Then he turns his dark eyes on me. I fall in.
“See you’ve been busy,” he says with a laugh that isn’t really a laugh. “When did he come along?”
“What?” I hear myself say, trying to stop my descent into his eyes.
“When was he born?” Michael says. His eyes have me tumbling.
“This spring,” the words break out of my throat. “Came a little early.”
“Spring or the baby?” His eyes shift from me to Sammy then back to me.
I feel my balance returning. “Both,” I say. “I was born a little early too.”
“Must run in the family,” he says. He reaches for Sammy. I reluctantly give him up. Michael holds him at arm’s length, studies his face. “Where’d he get these eyes?” he asks. “Does that run in your family too?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”
Michael smiles. Then pulls Sammy in close. “I’ve seen eyes like these before.” He rubs his hand gently over the crest of Sammy’s head.
“You have?”
“It’s fairly common in some breeds of dogs—huskies, setters—occasionally a horse will have different-colored eyes. But you see it in people too.” He doubles his arms underneath Sammy like a hammock and sways his shoulders back and forth.
“I haven’t,” I say.
“I have,” he says, more to Sammy than me. Then he turns his eyes on me again. “It tends to be hereditary.”
“Must come from Jack’s side,” I say, not blinking. “How’s Texas?”
“Still there when I left it.”
“How about Pete and Norris?”
“Same,” he said. “Pete’s still nailing shoes and Norris is still running horses in circles.” He stops swinging Sammy and cradles him in his left arm. “Back in the spring, just at dusk one day, Pete and I found a rattlesnake stretched out near the fence. We tried to scare it off before the horses caught its scent. I swear, Sarah, it was as big around as my arm.” He holds out his right arm for measure, one of those hard, tanned forearms that electrified me more than two years ago. I feel the current again. I try not to show it.
“Damn thing wrapped itself around a post and hissed and hissed until the horses went wild. They were running around the pen, bumping into each other, trying to break down the fence.” He shifts Sammy to his right arm. “We had to take a shovel and kill it,” he says, sorrow in his voice. “I’d rather have shot the thing and gotten it over with. But that would have make the horses crazier.”
“It might have bitten you or Pete or one of the ranch hands,” I say.
“Maybe so,” he says, “but it doesn’t seem right to kill something because you’re afraid of it.”
He looks out across the pasture toward the mountain range. “I missed the mountains,” he says.
“Hard to see them this late in the summer,” I say. “The air’s too thick. Takes a cool fall day to bring them out again.”
“From here it does,” he says, “but not in Tennessee. They’re all around you.” He looks at me again. “That’s where I am now. Have been for the past two months.”
“In Tennessee?” I ask, my voice too high.
He nods. “Been staying with Russell and Annie. Remember them?”
“Of course,” I say, my mind back in the coolness of their home.
“I bought some land nearby—room enough for a cabin, a small barn, little bit of pasture. A small stream runs along the lower edge. It’s really pretty. You’d love it.” I can’t think of anything to say but he seems wound up. “Plenty of horses in the nearest town, a few trail-ride outfits, and a stable or two. Enough to keep me busy.”
“Guess they can always use a traveling vet,” I say.
He doesn’t seem to hear me. “The other morning before sunset, I walked out to my little piece of mountain. I wanted to watch the sun rise so I could decide exactly where to mark the foundations for the cabin, the right slant so I can wat
ch the sun come up every morning if I want to. As the sun rose through the pines, mist from the creek lifted. It turned pink, this whole line of pink fog rising through the green pines. Really beautiful.” He looks into my eye and says, “It made me think of you.” I feel his hand slipping around my heart, tightening.
“Then I walked down to the creek. There stood a doe and her fawn looking back at me. For a minute they just stood there, dreamlike with the mist rising around them.” Sammy starts to squirm. Michael shifts him to his other side. “Can you imagine such a view from your own back porch?”
I shake my head and look at Sammy. My arms feel empty.
“There’s a big old oak tree right where I want the cabin. I’m going to cut it down when I get back and take it to the sawmill. Russell says there’s one about twenty miles away. He’s offered to help me build some furniture out of the lumber—a slab table and benches, some other pieces. But the first thing I want make to is a platform bed. Remember the one we … the one at Russell’s? That’s what I’m going to build first. What do you think?” He watches me. I don’t answer. I reach for Sammy. Fill my arms with him.
Michael stands there, hands on his hips, looking better than anything Zane Gray or Barbara Cartland could come up with, better than any mythical hero my own mind could create. I don’t want to give him up. I feel that familiar stir of restlessness. Sammy seems to feel it too. He wiggles in my arms.
“I’m using the plans we drew up for the cabin,” Michael says. “Remember the plans?” I nod. “There’ll be plenty of room.”
“For what?” I ask.
“For you,” he says, “and the baby,” he pauses, “if you want to come along.”
“If you want to come along” rings in my ears. Not “I love you” or “I need you” or “I’m claiming you and my son” but “if you want to come along.” Standing there, staring at Michael I realize what attracted me beyond pure lust. Michael is the kind of man who is content on his own. His love of nature, horses, freedom to move on when he gets restless or crowded is enough for him. He may stay in Tennessee for a while, but sooner or later, he’ll move on. The year we spent together, our restlessness wasn’t the same. He was looking to see and I was looking to find. I need connections.
