So they talked about the architecture and history of the houses in the neighborhood; about Chicago and the people who built it from the ruins of the Great Fire; its commerce and culture and evolution into a city of sophistication, influence, and wealth, while the rest of the country, entranced by the drama of both coasts, missed entirely what was happening in the center. They talked about theater and music and the politics of Chicago, until they came to Sara’s house, where Reuben had left his car.
With Sara giving directions, they drove to Fox & Obel and made up a picnic basket, then drove west on the expressway, past commerce and industry and clusters of frame houses giving way to low buildings with shops on the ground floor and apartments above, gasoline stations and auto shops, storefront restaurants, and then more industrial parks.
“It seems to go forever,” Reuben said.
“Its easy to spread out when there’s nothing but prairie,” Sara said. “New Yorkers live on an island; Chicago never had even a hill to slow it down.”
“You have a lake.”
“But open prairie on the other three sides. I like thinking about those people who decided every once in a while to leave everything and move farther out, and create a new life for themselves and their families.”
“Or,” Reuben said thoughtfully, “they discovered that it didn’t really happen that way: that they’d brought so much baggage from their other life, all they’d really done was change landscapes.”
“I hope it was more than that,” said Sara, wondering what circumstances in New York led him to say that. “I do believe people can change their lives. Unless they’re so locked in…” She gazed at the changing scene as Reuben turned onto another expressway. Now fields of wheat and corn stretched between the towns where vignettes flashed by: neighbors chatting, planting gardens, mowing lawns, children on swing sets or splashing in backyard pools. Sara gave a quiet laugh. “Chicago has always believed lives could be changed, as the landscape could, because there always were places for new beginnings, new ways of doing things, new dreams. Did you know engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River? It’s wonderful to think about how to control the flow of rivers…”
On either side, the prairie spun out to the horizon, dotted with white farmhouses, red barns, the bizarre sight of a huge auto dump of rusting cars tossed as if by a careless giant onto precarious piles. And then they were on roads slicing through small communities of small frame houses, run-down, sorrowful looking, crouched beneath huge trees in yards overrun with weeds. Beyond, they glimpsed a river glinting in the sunlight. Riverfront property, Sara thought. In most parts of the country, that’s where the largest homes would be. She was going to ask Reuben about it, when he pulled off the road onto a dirt track beside a chain-link fence, and in a few minutes stopped the car to unlock a gate.
“Carrano Village West,” he said, almost formally, and she heard anticipation and pride in his voice. He relocked the gate behind them, then bumped along the track until stopping at what seemed a randomly chosen spot in the middle of a prairie exactly like the ones through which they had been driving for over half an hour. “The Fox River is our western boundary.” They walked toward the other side of the expanse, carrying the picnic basket between them. “A creek flows through the property, deep enough for rowboats and kayaks. And there’s pretty good fishing in the Fox.” They walked toward a long line of trees. “Lunch by the creek?”
They spread a checked cloth beneath ash and hawthorn trees, and set out duck pâté, smoked salmon and a long loaf of French bread, Manzanilla olives, and almond biscotti. Reuben opened a Rhône wine. “My favorite kind of lunch. Do we have glasses?”
Sara handed him two glasses from the picnic basket. “Is this Carrano village limited to young families, like the other one?”
“Isaiah refused to consider anything else. If we’re sued for discrimination in New Jersey, and lose, or if we open that one to all buyers to avoid a trial and a nightmare of publicity, this one will open up, too. I hope it does.”
“What happens if you do restrict it to young families, and they get older?”
“They’re not forced to move. But if they move, they have to sell to a young family. It’s crazy, you know, and it can’t work, but Isaiah is a stubborn old man with a vision, and so much money he most often gets his way.”
“We’d all like some of that,” Sara said with a smile.
“A vision? So much money? Getting your way?”
She laughed. “All three, wouldn’t you say?”
She began to fill their plates, and Reuben poured the wine. He watched her, admiring the way she looked, in jeans and a blue shirt open at the neck, her sleeves rolled partway up. (In fact, they both wore jeans and a blue shirt, which, foolishly, pleased him, as if it were an omen.) She wore walking shoes and looked perfectly at home sitting on a tarpaulin on prairie grass, with flies buzzing above her, and a few bees, which she ignored. Much more than simply a city person, he thought.
Once again, he was aware that they both were comfortable when silences stretched between them, and for the first time he understood that silence created an intimacy that conversation often cannot.
They contemplated the creek, narrow and languid in this flat stretch of land, gleaming pewter in the sun, leafy shadows stretching across it like lace curtains lifted by a breeze, small birds hopping along the shallow banks in intense pursuit of the insects that skipped over the water’s surface, leaving a trail of concentric ripples. Sara’s gaze circled the land that would become Carrano Village West, from the river to the distant chain-link fencing, from the prairie grass rippling around them to groves of trees, and back to the river. Wildflowers and tall wild grass in greens and browns reached as far as she could see; a green snake, thin as a pencil, rustled nearby and disappeared around a boulder at the river’s edge; far above, a hawk rode a current, its motionless silhouette black against the piercing blue sky. Nowhere was there a hint of the strident commerce of a great city an hour away.
What a shame to bulldoze this, she thought. To destroy one of the few places left where people can sit beside a river and be part of a prairie that was here from the beginning.
“Someone will build here,” Reuben said quietly. “If not Isaiah, another developer, who could make a real mess of it.”
She was dismayed that her thoughts were so obvious.
“I’m not reading your mind,” he said, reading her mind again. “Many people have the same reaction when they come to these wonderful untouched places that seem almost prehistoric. And of course you’re right; it would be better to leave them alone, for their own sake, and for us to touch earth’s history. But those people you talked about who kept moving farther and farther out didn’t think of that; they just wanted land, a new place. And that’s still happening, so we don’t even have the option of leaving it alone. The land is owned, owners have a right to sell, buyers have a right to build and to make a profit. And some of them maximize their profit by building the maximum they’re allowed, until nothing is left, not a blade of wild grass or a single wildflower.”
He picked something from the ground and held it out to Sara: a tiny snail shell, grayish white with black discolorations of age. “Once, this was all a sea; when it receded, snails were left behind and evolved into these land snails. They’re all over the world; you can even find them in the mountains.”
Sara contemplated the shell in the palm of her hand. Snails on the Midwestern prairie. She had lived here all her life, and had never known about them. How much we don’t know about the things around us, maybe about our own lives. Unnerving, she thought, and exciting.
“It isn’t a sea anymore,” Reuben said, “and it won’t be prairie anymore, but what we’re trying to do here, what good developers try to do everywhere, is have the best of all possible worlds. We build houses that blend with the landscape, we make a profit on them, and we leave as much open space as possible. Not golf courses masquerading as open space, though we’ll have those, too, but
as many acres as we can of the real thing, the prairie that’s been here for thousands of years. The prairie belongs to all of us, I do believe that, and I’d like to see more of it open and free, not anyone’s property, but that’s not the way the world works.”
He refilled their wineglasses and spread duck pâté on slices of French bread. “This is my favorite spot; I’m hoping it stays exactly as it is.”
“Hoping?”
“I don’t have control over everything.”
“But over some things?”
“Some. Mostly we negotiate. When anyone builds a whole new town, there are so many specialists and interest groups and experts and neighbors, every one with absolute ideas of what to do and how to do it, that it’s like a dance: we spend a lot of time trying not to step too hard on anyone’s toes.”
“So it’s all compromising?”
“Most of it. When we can’t do that, we’re in gridlock, and someone has to break it with a decision one group or another will vociferously hate.”
“Are you that someone?”
“Often. Just as often, it’s Isaiah. But we don’t decree anything unless it truly is gridlock. It’s a question of learning when and where to draw a line. Knowing when to fight, what is really worth fighting for. If you’re sure of that, you can do almost anything.”
“Except keep out people who don’t have young children.”
Reuben laughed. “Probably. You could do it in a dictatorship, but even Isaiah wouldn’t want that. Would you like to see how we’re going to develop the land? We can walk the property, if you’d like, and I can show you where the buildings and the open space will be.”
“Yes, I would like that.”
“It’s several miles.”
“Even better, after all this food.”
Later, Sara thought that that Sunday was the real beginning of her love affair with Reuben Lister. They walked the warm, grass-scented land, the only people there on a quiet Sunday afternoon, and it was as if they were the first people in the world, the first to discover flowers hidden beneath spreading leaves of burdock, wild fennel, Solomon’s seal, and wild ginger; Rugosa rose bushes covered with pale pink flowers, their single layer of petals open flat to the sun; dry leaves from the previous fall rustling beneath the scurrying feet of unseen animals; the harmonic rippling of the grass beneath a sudden breeze; blue jays darting among groves of trees and bushes, bright blue flaring amid the shadowy leaves.
Reuben took Sara’s hand and they walked for hours, stopping as he pointed out the four staked sites, widely separated, where houses would be built along curving roads, each house backed by a yard flowing into untouched prairie that stretched to the perimeter of the land; the area in the middle where the recreation center would be built, surrounded by a softball diamond, a playground for young children, tennis courts, a climbing wall—“and so forth,” he said. “We haven’t finished designing this part.”
Along the main road at the edge of the property, a double row of stores would curve toward each other like two long parentheses with gardens and benches between them. “I want to put small apartments above the stores,” Reuben said, “for employees, or anyone who’s single.”
“But Isaiah says no,” Sara guessed.
“He has, so far. You know, sometimes I want to say, ‘Save us from people with visions,’ but, in fact, they’re the ones who move the world. And I have my own visions, so I’m not one to talk.”
“But you’re not rigid.”
“I hope not. We all get stuck in what we believe is best, and sometimes we get irrational, fighting for it.”
“ ‘It’s a question of learning when and where to draw a line,’ ” Sara quoted mischievously. “ ‘Knowing when to fight, what is really worth fighting for.’ ”
Reuben laughed. “You’re right. I should listen to myself before I contradict myself. But in fact,” he said, suddenly somber, “both are true. If we’re irrational, we lose, and we know we will, but still we fall into it when we want something desperately, when there’s a vision dancing before us, so real we can reach out and touch it…”
Sara waited for him to go on, and when he did not, she thought, Well, at some point he will. When he’s comfortable enough, he won’t stop in the middle of his sentences. And neither will I.
But the walk through that untouched prairie had changed both of them, as if they had indeed been the first people in the world and were open to all discoveries, especially the ones they would make together. And so that night, after a leisurely dinner at Tru, where widely spaced tables, low lighting, and a barely discernible hum of conversation created an intimacy even before wine and food were shared, it was quite natural, and inevitable, that Sara would return with Reuben to his house, and he would lock the door behind them, and they would climb the stairs to his bedroom, arms around each other, in warm and easy silence. They had not yet kissed; they had done no more than hold hands.
“A long wait,” Reuben murmured, holding her. “But we both—”
“Yes.” Sara kissed him. They had both wanted it to be right. Behind them, in their separate lives, lay sadnesses and disappointments, searchings, longings, lost chances. What they had found in each other, they both knew, was worth treating with care, and as they embraced and stood tightly together without words, their kiss was an affirmation of all they had built so far, and a prelude to all that lay ahead.
They had both been alone for a long time (though as yet they did not know that), and, in the soft light and silence of Reuben’s bedroom, they undressed each other with increasing urgency, tumbling onto the bed like children allowed into a room that always had been locked, and discovering, through touch and sound and response, a rising passion that submerged thought and talk and surroundings. There were only the two of them, the one of them, enmeshed, enclosed, coming deeply together again and again, open, alive, illuminating each other, illuminated by each other.
They had known each other for six weeks, but tonight they met anew. And tonight, with both of them changed within themselves and with each other, they would begin.
SIX
My brother gave it to me,” Carrie said proudly. She stood with her friends in the school courtyard at recess, watching as they passed from hand to hand the large leather-bound journal, dark maroon, embossed with Carrie’s name in gold.
“Doug?” Will Farish asked incredulously. “This is, like, expensive.”
“No, my brother Mack.”
“Mack? Who’s he?”
“I told you. My brother.”
“You’ve got another brother? Since when?”
“He just came back from…a long trip, and now he lives with us.”
“For good? Cool. How old—”
“It’s like… sexy,” said Martha Gold, smoothing the leather as if she were stroking a cat’s soft fur.
Edie Stone threw Martha a scornful look. “It’s for work. Carrie, you’ll be a real writer with this.”
“She’s already a real writer,” said Joanie Tavish. “She’s a great writer.”
“He must be great, your brother,” said Brad Dorner, who often telephoned Carrie at night for help with his homework. “I mean, my brother never buys me anything like this. Actually, he never buys me anything at all.”
“Your brother’s too busy chasing girls,” Joanie said.
“He doesn’t; they chase him.”
“Girls in high school don’t chase boys. I won’t when I’m in high school. My sister’s a sophomore and she says there’s no guys worth it; they’re, you know, immature and whiny, and they sulk when they don’t get their way.” She gave an exaggerated shiver. “Ugh!”
“You don’t know anything,” said Brad weakly, unable, as always, to think of a cutting riposte until hours later, when it did no good.
“I’m going to use it for all my stories,” said Carrie loudly, dragging everyone’s attention back to her and her shiny journal. “And Mack wants to read them all. He’s really interested in me.”
; “I wish my bro—” Brad began, but Trent Felsen asked, “How old is he?”
“Twenty,” Carrie said warily, because you never knew what Trent was going to say next; he didn’t really fit in, and was always saying things that made people uncomfortable.
“Twenty?” he repeated, stomping on the first syllable. “And he’s really interested in you? In your mind or”—he leered—“your virginal body?”
“Oh, stuff it, Trent,” someone said, while Brad searched in vain for a chilling comment, and Carrie, her face flaming, scurried away.
Joanie and the others caught up with her. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” Joanie said. “If my mother allowed me to use four-letter words, I’d say he’s a shit.”
Carrie gave a small laugh.
“Anyway, what about your brother?” Leonora Yates asked. “I mean, he sounds so cool; I’d really like to meet him.”
“Don’t tell Trent,” said Joanie. “He’ll think you want his body.”
“Is he a virgin?” asked Barbie Vance, who always talked as if she were so experienced she was way ahead of all of them.
Carrie’s face was flushed again. “How would I know?”
“But he is cool, right?” Leonora asked. “Could you introduce me?”
“I don’t know,” Carrie said miserably.
Susie rescued her. “Carrie’s too nice to tell you that he wouldn’t be interested in you. Why would he want to meet a thirteen-year-old?”
“I’m fourteen,” Leonora said.
“Whatever. He only likes older women, I’ll bet. Does he bring them home, Carrie?”
Carrie shook her head, wondering why she had gotten into this. “He’s…he’s just with us when he’s home, you know, doing things together.”
“Like what?”
The Real Mother Page 14
