by Paul Lederer
‘I see,’ was all Don could think to say.
‘Is there anything you need?’ she asked Don with a smile that might have been meant to be enticing but only looked deeply weary. Everything about her looked tired; everyone in this place, patients and doctors and nurses alike, looked tired.
‘No thanks. I was just taking a look around.’
Don smiled at her – his general-purpose smile – and he went back inside, sliding the glass door shut behind him.
He found Sarah sitting where he had left her, looking at the cover of a magazine on the table in front of her without opening it.
‘Come on,’ Don said, ‘we’re getting out of this place.’
Once in the car and on the road, Don’s distress subsided, but not his concern. How in the Lord’s name could those people, Sarah’s family, even consider putting her in such an institution? Surely they had visited it! They must have. Sarah was not mad. Forty or fifty years of life lay ahead of her. How many years spent in that environment would it take to drive someone mad?
Sarah touched Don’s arm. It was a rather urgent gesture, and unusual for her. She was pointing toward a side road, which lay ahead.
‘What is it, Sarah? What do you want?’
She continued to point. Her eyes were eager, pleading.
Don was vaguely familiar with the road. It was a winding, slow stretch of two-lane asphalt which snaked through the hills. It eventually intersected the coast highway again south of town a few miles.
‘You want to go that way?’ He glanced at the gas gauge. ‘OK.’
Why not, if it was important to her? She seemed to know the road, and it ended up where he was heading. He was in no hurry to get back anyway, because then – he had to face it – he would either have to find a member of Sarah’s family or turn her over to the authorities. As terrible as much of the day had been, it had been a long, long time since he had enjoyed anyone’s company as much as Sarah’s. When they were alone, he felt a deep satisfaction, a calmness of mind. He looked at her from the corner of his eye. It was true: she did have a special and mysterious way of communicating. How could anyone not delight in her presence? How could they have determined to cast her aside like this!
‘Dear Sarah,’ Don March said, ‘why won’t you speak? If only a few words. To tell them that you don’t want to go to that place?’
But she remained mute, smiling at him as he swung onto the meandering back road, and they followed it down toward the coast through deep stands of cedar and old pine.
When they drove through cuts in the hills, the shadows were cool and deep. The occasional meadow was sprinkled with grazing white-faced cattle and the ripe scent of long grass mingled with the pungency of the cedar and pine trees. It was a clean, heady mixture. White clouds still floated past against a rain-cleansed blue sky.
‘I’m glad you brought us this way, Sarah. It’s nice. I wouldn’t mind living out here.’
Sarah felt her heart lift eagerly. Then, perhaps she wouldn’t have to move at all. Never leave Baby and Poppsy. If the young man bought the old house, the two of them could live there even if Mother and Aunt Trish went away. It was an encouraging thought. She leaned her head back and let the wind trifle with her hair as the miles drifted by.
The sea eventually came into view again, cobalt blue and glittering silver seen through a gap in the closely bunched hills, and Sarah leaned toward the dashboard, looking ahead expectantly.
‘What are you so interested in?’ Don asked. ‘It’s still a long way back to town.’
She shook her head, continuing to peer ahead through the rain-spotted windscreen.
Well, of course she knows where the town is, Don thought. If she knew enough to take this back road, she obviously knows where she is. He reflected on that eagerly-made choice. It seemed very unlikely that she had chosen it for the scenery. Then….
Sarah bounced in her seat excitedly and patted his knee. She looked at him and pointed toward a dark two-storey house standing alone on a low knoll.
‘Over there? Is that your home, Sarah?’
She nodded vigorously and Don slowed to turn off onto a rutted gravel driveway. He felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. He did not want to leave her, but maybe it was best to have done with it all. He had brought her home and after all, that was what he had started out to do in the first place, was it not?
The house was old weather-grayed wood, roofed with patchy and faded blue shingles. There were four gables, two in front, one at each end, above leaded windows. Some whimsical Victorian architect had placed an incongruous tower, cupola-crowned, with a surmounting weathercock at the back of the house. There was a tired garage surrounded by ancient oak trees, one of these with a huge limb broken off and left to dangle. As Don drove up the curving road to the house, the gravel crunched under the tires of the car. He noticed, here and there, old outbuildings, dilapidated and overgrown.
He pulled up at the side of the house in front of the sagging garage, and an old, half-blind, shaggy white dog came forward haltingly to meet them.
Sarah leaped from the car, leaving the door open, and went immediately to the dog, giving it the half cheeseburger and french fries she had smuggled from the restaurant. The dog wolfed the food down in three bites and settled in to lick at the napkin. Sarah sat beside the mangy white dog, petting it.
Don wandered that way and offered the dog the back of his hand to smell. A very old dog, there were cataracts on its eyes, sniffed at Don’s hand without interest and, discovering that he was offering no food, returned its complete attention to Sarah. It might have been a Samoyed, Don decided, mixed with something bulkier, maybe Old English Sheepdog. He crouched down beside Sarah and patted the dog’s shoulder.
‘And what’s your name, old girl?’
‘Her name’s Poppsy,’ a woman’s voice snapped from behind him, ‘and just who the hell are you and what are you doing with that girl?’
Don looked up to see a dumpy woman with heavy jowls and crudely-applied crimson lipstick watching him from the porch. She wore a black skirt over wide hips and a white knit top, faintly patterned. They were of a piece, causing Don to think there was probably a matching black jacket. Her expression hovered between mistrust and anger.
Don rose and started toward the porch, the woman watching him with a deep scowl.
‘My name is Donald March,’ he said, offering her a smile which was not accepted. She continued to glare mistrustfully at him.
‘I asked you what you are doing with that girl.’
Don explained. ‘I found her sitting out in the rain, quite alone. Earlier I had met Sarah and her mother. I took Sarah to my shop to get her out of the weather. I waited until it stopped raining and then went out looking for her mother. I couldn’t find her. So I borrowed this car and brought her home,’ he said with a shrug, omitting the side trip to the hospital. ‘Sarah showed me the way.’
‘Well, you’ll just have to take her back to town and keep looking for her mother,’ Trish said in exasperation. ‘I’m leaving in an hour or so. I have already called for a taxicab. You say that you know who my sister, Ellen is?’
‘I told you. I met her earlier, briefly, on the pier.’
‘Did you go out with her?’ Trish asked suspiciously.
‘With your sister?’ Don said with surprise, ‘why, no. Of course not. I told you, I just happened to run across Sarah later in the day. I took her to my place, out of the rain.’
Trish’s mouth tightened dangerously, but she simply said, ‘I should have known you weren’t Ellen’s type.’ She glanced at the kitchen behind her. ‘You might as well come in for a few minutes, have a cup of coffee. That’s small enough thanks for watching the girl. Perhaps someone else from the family will return before I leave … but I doubt it.’
Don followed the woman into the house, turning his head to look for Sarah, but she was going down the grassy knoll with the old shaggy dog behind her. Trish caught his look.
‘She’ll be all right
. She knows where she’s going. It’s the time of day when she likes to get out … the sun is getting low.’
Don crossed the room, smelling the undignified age of the structure, the rot all around him. Through an open door he saw three suitcases, one still open for packing. Trish poured Don a cup of extremely strong, tepid coffee.
‘Sit down,’ Trish said, motioning toward the chairs encircling a round oak table. She sat across from him and decided, ‘I guess you’re all right or you wouldn’t have brought her home. You walked into a mess, didn’t you?’
‘Well … into a mystery, at least,’ Don answered, sipping the terrible coffee.
‘You see why I’m leaving!’ Trish said with sudden emotion. Her eye clouded a little, ‘I’ve had five years of this! Babysitting the two of them. Ellen and Sarah.’ She shook her head with weary self-pity. ‘Nurse, maid, cook, family planner … Christ! Five years! You know,’ she grew briefly maudlin, ‘five years ago I had a man who wanted me. Not to marry me. Not at that point, I suppose, but he had asked me to live with him. I wasn’t this fat then,’ she said, smoothing her skirt over her heavy thighs. ‘I didn’t go to him. I had family obligations. Anyway, I didn’t go. That might have been my last chance, you know. Maybe,’ she admitted sadly, ‘I was just afraid … I don’t know.’ She went on, ‘But I do know that I have rotted away here, decayed like the house itself and gotten older … fatter. In the end I didn’t help anyone here – I just ruined my life. I haven’t got many years left if I ever hope to find a man to grow old with, Mr March!’ Her last words rose on an upbeat. A false, out-of-key note of optimism.
Don asked, ‘Can’t Sarah’s mother take care of her?’
‘My sister can’t take care of herself. Ellen is one of those unfortunate people who cannot take even one drink. If she has one, she’ll have ten. She’ll vanish for days at a time, or until whoever she’s taken up with kicks her out and she’s broke again.’
‘I see.’
‘Probably you don’t,’ Trish said, ‘unless you’ve lived with a real hardcore alcoholic. Do you see that trashcan in the corner? It’s ready to be dumped. One last gesture of mine before I go. I’ve cleaned out the cupboards. Removed all the vanilla extract, lemon extract, the mouthwash from the bathroom cabinet, Nyquil.’
‘Surely she doesn’t.…’
‘Of course she does, if I don’t keep my eye on her. Those cooking extracts, some of them are fifty per cent alcohol, and once she tastes any alcohol, she won’t stop. I learned a lot when I used to take her to the doctor for this. People will drink anything. Did you know Bela Lugosi drank formaldehyde? Tallulah Bankhead – you probably wouldn’t know who she was – used to drink ammonia. Apparently a lot of genteel ladies in the South did; it wasn’t considered drinking. Sailors at sea have been known to drink torpedo fuel. I guess there is some way of straining Sterno, that canned heat stuff, to make something they can drink.’
Don asked, ‘You said you used to take Ellen to a doctor for the problem. Couldn’t they do anything for her? Give her something?’
‘Lord, Mr March, they tried everything. First they gave her that Miltown, a tranquilizer; that didn’t work. Several other things – I can’t remember them all. Finally they gave her this stuff called Meprobamate. “It’ll fell an ox” the doctor said. So Ellen took twice as many as she was supposed to, of course, and then somehow got hold of a bottle of whisky and drank that on top of it. It put her into a coma briefly. About then I ran out of money and patience at the same time. We didn’t go back to the doctor after that. No, Mr March, there’s no way my sister can take care of Sarah … and that’s probably all of the family problems you care to hear about.’
‘Not really,’ Don said sincerely, ‘I’m trying to understand. You see, I care about Sarah and,’ he admitted, ‘I’ve seen that hospital. I went out there and talked to one of the psychiatrists.’
Trish expressed surprise but not censure. ‘Well, Mr March, you are a regular little busybody, aren’t you?’
‘I told you – I care about Sarah.’
‘You can’t know her.’
‘Does anyone?’
‘I suppose not….’
‘But you care nevertheless, don’t you?’ Don asked.
‘Yes. I do.’
‘All right. So you understand that I can care as well. I need to understand her family….’
‘What exactly are you trying to accomplish, Mr March?’
‘What I am trying to do is to help Sarah. It doesn’t seem that anyone else is,’ he said bluntly.
She studied him minutely, then came to a decision. ‘All right. If you can talk while I finish packing, I’ll tell you whatever I know. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore,’ she finished distantly.
Don followed the heavily-moving woman into the inner room. Through a curtained window, he could see Sarah sitting on the grass far below the house. She was holding something; it seemed to be a yellow flower. The low sun bathed her in reddish light. Her shadow stretched across the knoll, thin and long and desolate.
‘Take a seat, Mr March,’ Trish said, folding a white sweater that she placed in the suitcase. ‘Maybe it’ll even do me some good to talk to a stranger about it. Like – what do they say? Catharsis. Maybe then I can shed it like a snake’s skin and leave it all behind me instead of just pretending … just pretending as we all have for far too long.’
Five
TRISH HAD TURNED on a lamp, one with two red glass globes in imitation of an oil lamp. The dull light did little to banish the darkness or the gloom. She continued to pack her suitcase as sunset colors spread across the sky and sea beyond the windows.
‘I suppose it all starts with Raymond – Sarah’s father. Well, it must, mustn’t it?’ Trish’s expression was of complete disapproval, perhaps bordering on sheer hatred. ‘He is an arrogant man. He believes there is only one right way to conduct yourself in this world, and that is his way … one of those people. He’s not terrifically bright and so, of course, he assumes that he is, being so sure of himself and infatuated with Raymond Tucker. In the days when I first met him he was a cocky, good-looking, hell-raiser. He was a very heavy drinker, too, until the day … well, he was able to stop cold five years ago. I don’t believe he’s had so much as a beer since then. Of course it was he who introduced Ellen to liquor. She, as I have told you, cannot – will not – quit no matter what it costs her. Now her drinking is one more thing for Raymond to feel superior about; he quit, why can’t she? Like that.’
She paused briefly, a pair of red shoes in her hand. Her eyes and thoughts drifted away to some distant place and time and quickly returned. ‘Ellen was really an astonishingly pretty girl in those days. That’s where Sarah got her prettiness, from Ellen. And her intelligence,’ she said more quietly.
‘So you also believe Sarah is quite intelligent?’
‘I know she is!’ Trish placed the shoes in a pocket on the suitcase lid. ‘That’s one thing that makes it all the sadder. Raymond,’ she told him as if he hadn’t guessed, ‘was totally domineering, lord of the manor. He controlled Ellen so firmly that it bordered on cruelty. Nothing that she did was ever up to his level of expectation. Nothing. Poor girl. Things changed a little when Edward arrived. Growing up, the boy was subjected to the same emotional harassment, but he was able to shrug his father’s constant criticism off. Besides,’ she said, ‘Edward was good at everything, positively everything. Mathematics, sports, working with his hands. Just the opposite of Eric.’ An apparently unprovoked expression of intense dislike tightened Trish’s features.
‘Eric wasn’t so capable as Edward?’
‘Well, he was the younger, of course, and he was forced to compete with Edward who was not only bigger and older, but so talented in so many areas. It was extremely frustrating to Eric. Criticism was a deeply ingrained habit of Raymond’s now, and he was scathing towards Eric. No doubt a part of it was Raymond’s own failures financially. He went through his own father’s legacy at breakneck speed, one bad investmen
t after another. And there was the constantly escalating intake of liquor. Eric paid for it all. One can’t say it was Edward’s fault for being older, more athletic. He just was. Eric was poor at sports, troubled at school – no wonder! If he brought home bad marks, he could only expect the wrath of his God. The house used to shake with Raymond’s excoriations. Literally. Nor was Eric able to shrug off criticism as Edward could. It wounded him deeply to be picked on so violently. I think it cut his future manhood away from him. Cut it away as surely as a surgeon’s scalpel. All the same,’ Trish said thoughtfully, ‘it was Eric who loved his father, worshipped him. Edward – I don’t think Edward has ever loved anything or anyone in his life. Perhaps in that way, his father destroyed him as well. What, after all, could Edward have learned about love here? In this place.’
Trish gestured uncertainly around the big empty house and sat down heavily in an old overstuffed chair.
‘I can’t believe you want to hear any more of this, Mr March. Feel free to say “goodbye”.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Don said, seating himself in a matching gold-colored chair. ‘It fills in a few gaps for me. I didn’t tell you earlier, but I have met Sarah’s brothers.’
‘When?’
‘Today. They were looking for Sarah.’
‘I don’t imagine they were looking very hard.’
‘Well….’
‘What did you think of them?’
Don hesitated and decided not to answer directly. ‘What you’ve told me about their father explains part of it.’
‘I haven’t told you one-thousandth of what I know about Raymond Tucker; his ranting, cursing, his viciousness … and I won’t.’ She rose again and glanced at her wristwatch, ‘You wouldn’t have the time,’ she said, ‘and neither do I.’
She rearranged a few items in the suitcase and took another dress from a hanger, folding it.
‘But Sarah…?’ Don prodded.
