Sarah's Window

by Janice Graham

"I'm fine," she answered, pushing them away with a shade of annoyance.

  Millie had the good sense to wrap up some crushed ice in a dish towel for Sarah's forehead. She, for one, was glad the jerks were gone, she said, and thought Sarah had done the right thing. Everybody voiced their agreement and pretty soon everything was back to normal.

  Apart from her red eyes and the lump growing on her forehead, Sarah behaved as if nothing had happened. She took their orders and served their hotcakes and sausage and refilled their coffee and even took a minute to look at the photo of Millie's new grandbaby. But John left not long after that. When she cleared his table she noticed he had barely eaten a thing, had left most of his pancakes and a full cup of coffee. Next to his plate was a twenty-dollar bill to cover the four-dollar breakfast. When he walked out the door that morning without looking back, he took the sun out of the day, took the light right out of her heart. No amount of good-natured joking or laughter could bring it back, and Sarah had no smiles left for anyone.

  Joy didn't say much to her about the incident, was oddly silent about the whole affair. That evening when everyone had gone and Sarah was upending the chairs on the tables so Joy could sweep the floor, Joy paused and turned to her and said, "Did you notice the way he was looking at you?"

  Sarah gripped another chair and swung it up on the table and said calmly, "Who?"

  "Oh, come on."

  "You mean Billy?"

  "No. John Wilde."

  "I didn't see anything. I was down on the floor."

  "I can't believe you didn't notice. Jeez, the way he dove in there."

  "He probably just saw it happen before anybody else."

  "I never imagined him that kind of guy."

  Sarah shrugged and turned away and changed the subject, although she didn't miss the look on Joy's face, the look of one who suddenly sees things in a new light.

  CHAPTER 19

  John was in Berkeley for the better part of that week. He returned home late Friday in an animated state, stood in the kitchen unzipping his leather jacket, his briefcase wedged between his feet and his eyes afire, telling Susan how well the research was going, that it required only a few more trips before he polished it up and sent it off for publication.

  "Where's the little guy?" he asked as he hung bis jacket over the back of a chair.

  "He's in his room."

  "Asleep?"

  "I suppose so."

  He looked around the kitchen. "Where's the monitor?"

  "It's up in the bedroom. I didn't turn it on." She saw the look on his face and turned away and went back to the pile of laundry she had been folding on the kitchen table. "I can hear him. I don't need it"

  "It's a big house."

  "And he's got a damn loud voice, John." She flung down the sleepers she had in her hand and turned back to face him squarely.

  "You can't imagine what he was like these past few days while you were gone." Suddenly she was on the verge of tears, and waving her hands in the air. "And Mother! God, she's more trouble than help! She's always inviting people around, and I can never get any rest!"

  "It wasn't such a good idea, was it?"

  "Don't start coming down on me."

  "I didn't mean it that way, I just meant your mother—"

  "I know! I know she's useless."

  "She means well."

  "Everybody means well, but it still all falls on me! You lock yourself away in your office or run off to KU for the day and..." She stopped and her shoulders sagged. "I'm sorry. It's just that... for a while I thought he was getting better...."

  "He's not eating, is he?"

  "It's not only that, it's just, whatever I do it isn't enough. I can't make him happy. He's just totally listless or he cries, and when he does sleep it seems like I always have something I have to get done and so I don't sleep...."

  She sank into a chair and took one of his hands in both of hers and looked up at him.

  "John, tell me, how attached are you really to this child?"

  "What are you suggesting?"

  "Your mom says we should give him back. For re-adoption." She hurried on to say, "People do that. It can be done."

  She caught the disturbed look on his face, and tried to hold onto his hand but he withdrew it.

  "Is it worth our marriage?" Susan said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm unhappy. He's making me unhappy." She went on, her voice cracking. "He's making our lives miserable and he's tearing apart our marriage."

  A tear inched down her face and John felt his heart ache for her. But he could not bring himself to kiss her and so he touched her cheek and gently wiped away the tear.

  "But I thought you wanted a baby."

  "Not like this," she whispered. "Not at this expense."

  "I knew it wouldn't be easy."

  "We were so happy. Just the two of us." Her eyes were swimming in misery. "Am I so awful? Am I such an awful person?"

  "Of course you're not," he said gently, touching her hair.

  "Your mom said it could just get worse when he's older. If he doesn't bond with us now, imagine what he'll be like when he gets older."

  "He will bond with us."

  "But when? How?" she cried, and in a sudden outburst of frustration she grabbed an armload of laundry and flung it angrily onto the kitchen floor. "I don't want him in our lives anymore! I just don't!"

  John stared at her mutely while she sobbed into her hands. Lightly, he stroked her hair, then, after a moment, he picked up his briefcase and took bis jacket from the back of the chair and walked out through the kitchen to the entry hall. He hung up his coat, then climbed the stairs to the top floor.

  The door to the nursery was closed, and when he opened it he found Will sitting in his crib, clinging to the rail, his dark thatched head peering out between the white bars and his eyes full of unfriendly fire. His smooth, tawny cheeks were covered with red splotches and his frail little body shuddered with each breath. John knew he had been crying for a long time, had finally just worn himself down to these muffled sobs.

  "Will, my boy," John said as he closed the door behind him, but he didn't in the slightest feel like Will was his boy. He stood at the side of the crib and reached down to take him, but the baby turned away, crawled into a corner and drew his scrawny little legs up under him and lay there with his white-diapered rump in the air like a hedgehog in the headlights.

  John remembered how he had looked the first time he saw him, lying all wasted and frail in the clear Plexiglas crib with his chest still bandaged and plastic tubing up his nose and his tiny arms strapped to the aluminum rails. No one else had wanted him. He was so ugly, barely the size of a newborn although he was eight months old at the time.

  He had been adopted by a South African diplomat, a woman working for the UN Assistance Mission in East Timor. She'd found him when she was on a visit to Sri Lanka with her American husband. He had needed heart surgery and she offered to send him back to the United States and pay for the procedure with the understanding that she would adopt him. They arranged to have him brought back to the KU Medical Center in Kansas City, where her husband had done his medical internship, but the woman was delayed in East Timor because of political unrest in the region. A few weeks later the mission office was attacked and she was stoned to death, leaving Will recovering from his surgery in Kansas City with no family to return to.

  The surgeon was a friend of John's brother, and John and Susan had flown out from Berkeley just to see the baby. John had never had much occasion to be around children, had no special affinity for kids in general, and certainly not for babies. But even before he saw him, he had felt there was some connection there, something beyond mere circumstance that had brought him into that hospital room.

  Susan had been more cautious, but John won out in the end, and they brought him home, convinced they could pull him through.

  But nothing was as they had hoped it would be, nothing was as they had planned. And now John stood in de
feat looking down at his son.

  "Oh, Will," John whispered again, and this time a wave of pity swept over him. He wanted to reach out and take him but he was afraid if he did he'd set him off. Gently, he placed his hand on the baby's back, and the size of his hand over the little being amazed him. He wondered, beyond the muteness and the helplessness, what kind of consciousness lay under his palm, if it was great or small, if it was full of powerful instinct or spirit If it had issued forth from elsewhere, drawn forth "from out the vast," as Tennyson liked to believe, or if it was a temporal consciousness only, and would, with time, cease to exist.

  Will was still whimpering, but he was tolerating the touch of John's hand, and John wished he knew what more he could give him, what would soothe him and lull him back to sleep. Once again Sarah stepped back into his thoughts, and he saw her face up close looking at him unsmilingly, with a knowledge that was somehow to Will's liking. But no, it was just the hair, the soporific effect of her hair clutched in his tiny fist.

  CHAPTER 20

  When John left the following week, Susan was on the verge of despair. The first day went smoothly enough, but come nightfall the child became agitated and irritable. Susan tried repeatedly to get him to sleep, but he would doze off only to awaken a short while later and start to cry, and then she would race back up the stairs to rescue him from his misery. He sat up in his crib and wailed and pleaded with large dark eyes, but there was little she could do to soothe him.

  Susan was lost. She could not know, nor could anyone, what consciousness directed his body and mind. She knew he was uncomfortable, that he was mute and dwelled in a world of instinct; this she could forgive him. But that he had rejected her so absolutely, this she could not abide.

  Throughout the evening she appealed to the child. She brought him things to drink and eat, piled gadgets and cuddly toys before him. Then, finally, feeling herself growing frantic, she turned off the monitor, closed the door, and went back downstairs and turned up the stereo. But still she could hear his cries.

  She was in the kitchen chopping onions for a spaghetti sauce when suddenly all her frustration and resentment erupted. She slammed the knife down on the chopping board and threw her head back and shrieked at the ceiling, "Stop it, Will! Damn you, just stop it!"

  She brusquely dried her hands on her apron and marched down the hallway to the stairs.

  "I've had enough of you!" she shouted at him from the bottom of the stairs, and for a moment he seemed to stall, but then he started up again, and she went on.

  "I've had enough of your tantrums! Now shut up!"

  She started up the stairs once again, fueled by rage, threatening him with each thundering step. When she rammed open the door and came charging in, he looked up at her, stunned and fearful.

  "What do you want?" she cried and swept up a toy from the floor and flung it across the room, knocking the little teddy bear music box off the dresser and sending the lamp crashing to the floor.

  She advanced, and Will shrank from her and crawled to the back of the crib.

  "What did I ever do to you to make you hate me so?" she screeched. She sprang at his crib. "I'm not evil! But you make me feel that way!" She gripped the crib railing and leaned menacingly toward him, and Will cowered in the corner and wailed.

  "Stop it!" she screamed, and she shook the crib railing. "Stop it!"

  Then, suddenly, she paused. She felt as if she were teetering on the edge of a dark and terrifying moment. Something had stepped into her mind just then and brought her up short, and she felt as if she were dragging herself back with all the mental courage she could summon. In those agonizing seconds she did not see Will; her mind was focused on what lay beyond, on her next gesture, her next action. And she was horrified at what that might be.

  She deliberately lifted her hands from the railing and took a step back. Then she turned and fled down the stairs.

  Her hand shook as she dialed the number. "Mama?"

  Clarice answered, and Susan knew she had been drinking, and her heart sank. Oh, Mama, she thought, for God's sake, why can't you be sober tonight?

  "I'm coming over to get you. Right now. I need to get out of here. I can't stay cooped up with this child."

  "Susan, honey. Are you okay?"

  "No, I'm not okay. And I need you to put down whatever it is you've been drinking and get your hair combed and put on your shoes and come out with me."

  "It's late. And it's raining."

  "I don't care if it's a blizzard. Get yourself dressed."

  She found her mother lying on her bed flat on her back, sound asleep. It appeared she had tried to get herself ready and passed out before she could finish. She was wearing her raincoat over her nightgown and a shoe on her left foot; the other shoe lay on the floor beside her bed.

  CHAPTER 21

  Jack Bryden didn't sleep most nights. When it finally got to the point where the sheer tiredness of being just hung around his neck like a horse collar throughout the day and weighed him down, then he'd sleep like a baby. But most nights he'd just lie in bed, trying not to fidget too much and wake up Ruth. He'd listen to whatever song was running through his head, hoping it would be Cole Porter or Emmylou Harris, but sometimes it was something dumb he'd heard on the radio and didn't even know the words to and then he'd get irritated.

  Occasionally, when he couldn't stand it any longer, he'd roll slowly out of bed onto the floor and snake his way on his belly into the other room. These actions required a good deal of strategic planning and mental resolve, and he would sometimes fall back asleep just thinking about it. Inching to the edge of the bed, slowly drawing back the blanket and suffering the shock of cold air, then twisting his front half down and off the bed, the hind part following, slithering onto the cold hardwood floor, grinding over onto his back and lowering his hips ever so slowly. Once while doing this he caught sight of himself and got the giggles and had to hurry and get his rump off the bed because he was jiggling the mattress and was sure Ruth would wake up and think he was playing with himself again, after which nights she wouldn't talk to him for weeks.

  Once his body was safely on the cold wood floor, he would begin his serpentine crawl, using his elbows the way he had done in the army except now he didn't have to carry a rifle. He'd maneuver past the sleeping enemy, around the foot of the bed and out the door, which, if all went as planned, he would manage to catch with the toes of his lone leg and pull neatly shut behind him. One night he had fallen asleep, exhausted, right at the foot of the stairs, and Sarah found him when she came down in the early hours of the morning. But Sarah was good about those kinds of things, never harped at him or acted wounded. She had helped him to the sofa and covered him with a blanket before she left for the cafe, and he'd gone right back to sleep.

  Most invertebrate nights, however, he'd lift himself on a crutch and slip on a coat and make his way to his old pickup, where he'd sit with the heater on and listen to Ella or Louis on the Discman Sarah had given him for Christmas one year. And in the spring and summer he'd just sit in the porch swing, and then he was glad to be alive.

  There was a thick mist creeping silently through the Hills that night, moving through the darkness like something predatory, and the sweet smell of spring hung in the chilly air. Jack ventured out onto the porch and lowered himself onto the cold slatted swing and laid down his crutch.

  He hadn't been out there but a few minutes when he heard the stairs creak, and the screen door hinged open and Sarah came out, wearing her long green robe and dragging a coverlet behind her.

  She laid the coverlet over his lap and sat down next to him.

  "It's sweet out tonight," she said.

  "Sure is." He paused. "Can't see a damn thing, though."

  She took the Discman from him and flipped it open to see what was inside, then gave it back to him.

  "I need to get you some new CDs."

  "No point in doin' that. I always listen to the same old ones."

  There was a long silence be
tween them, and then Sarah kicked the swing into motion and they swung together without talking.

  Finally she said, "Did the phone ring?"

  "Nope."

  "I thought I heard it ring."

  "Must've been dreaming."

  "I wasn't asleep."

  They could hear the sound of the engine long before they saw the red-and-blue light swimming through the fog. The vehicle slowed and turned off the highway and cruised down their street, coming to a stop in front of the house.

  A cranelike figure wearing a badge and uniform strolled toward them out of the mist.

  "Evenin', Jack. Sarah," Randy said politely, pausing with one boot on the bottom step of the porch.

  "You got trouble written all over you," Jack said.

  Sarah said nothing but planted her bare feet on the ground and leaned forward just a little in a manner of expectation.

  "Somebody already notified you?" Randy asked. "About what?"

  "Well, since you're up, I thought maybe Clay'd already given you a call."

  "Nobody's called," Jack answered.

  "Had us a little accident down the road a piece."

  "That's a nasty road," Jack said, squirming to get comfortable.

  "What happened?" Sarah asked.

  "Well, now, I'm gettin' to that, Sarah. Just hold your horses."

  But Randy was a talker, and he had a certain way of thinking. He had to start at the beginning and tell them the whole story, about how Susan Wilde had run her Land Cruiser into the ditch and flipped right into the low drystone wall that ran next to the road for the length of Donnie Henryson's farm. It woke up Donnie and his wife and terrified the kids, set the hounds to barking for the longest time. Donnie's wife didn't want to go outside, so Donnie had to go out alone and wade across the ditch in the dark with his flashlight.

  "Who was in the car?" Sarah cut in anxiously.

  "Now, I'm gettin' to that, Sarah."

  "Then get to it," grumbled Jack.

  Susan had been wearing her seat belt, he said, and didn't appear to have sustained any truly serious injuries, thought she might have a broken bone or two. But it seems she'd lain there in the ditch, pinned back with the air bag, and then it deflated and she was part floating in water. Donnie Henryson had stood out there with her until the fire department came, trying to help her keep her head above water, because she couldn't hold it up herself after the air bag went down. He kept talking to her, and praying for her. Couldn't do anything himself, trapped the way she was. And the worst part was that the baby was in the back crying his little heart out, and Donnie said Susan was saying some pretty awful things to that baby, but that was the shock, of course.