Sarah's Choice

by Rebecca St. James

  “You should have everything.” She nodded wisely. “It’s your birthday.”

  Sarah could only nod back. The little girl dashed for the refrigerator, and Sarah peeked inside the card. More careful work with a big crayon had produced: “I lov you Momy. Lov Daisy.”

  Sarah sucked back a gasp.

  The child skipped to the table with a bottle of syrup under one arm and a container of Cool Whip under the other. “I hafta go back for the strawberries. I couldn’t carry them.”

  “Wait—Daisy?”

  The face wreathed into a smile of miniature white teeth. All except two big ones in the front which were as perfect and shiny as Chiclets. It was the same smile that had sprung toothless to a baby-chubby face in her mother’s dining room.

  “They’re okay to eat, Mommy,” Daisy said, her brown eyes now round with concern. “I already ate the ones that didn’t work out.”

  Sarah couldn’t speak the questions she’d been about to ask. She smiled because that was all she could do in the presence of this child and said, “And how many of those were there?”

  “Five. Or six.” A giggle bubbled out. “Maybe seven.”

  A laugh bubbled from Sarah, too, as if she’d been magically enchanted. “I don’t think I can eat quite that many,” she said, “but I’ll try.”

  To be on the safe side she smothered the pile with syrup before she cut her fork into them.

  “Aren’t you going to say the blessing?”

  The small face was serious. Sarah felt like she was drowning. When was the last time she had said grace at a table? And what had this trusting little thing’s “Momy” taught her? Obviously something, or she wouldn’t already be folding the chubby hands. Sarah floundered for the one she always said as a kid when it was her turn, but all she could come up with was, “Now I lay me down to sleep.”

  A tiny waterfall of laughter spilled from Daisy. “No! That’s not right!”

  “Um, why don’t you say it for us,” Sarah said. “For my birthday.”

  Daisy nodded soberly and bowed the curly head, eyes scrunched closed. Sarah couldn’t close hers. She had to watch the bow of a mouth shape the words. Any time now this gold-filled life would disappear and reality would return. She found herself clinging to the moments.

  “Dear Jesus,” Daisy said, “thank you for this food, and bless it to our bodies.” A smile pulled her cheeks into round, red blooms. “And please make this Mommy’s best birthday ever. In Jesus’s name we pray. A-men.”

  Sarah murmured her own amen. Daisy’s eyes popped open and she pointed to the plate. “Go ahead,” she said.

  Sarah added a dollop of Cool Whip before she popped a forkful into her mouth, all under Daisy’s expectant gaze. It ranked among the best things she’d ever tasted.

  “They’re so delicious I might just eat seven after all,” she told the beaming face.

  “And then what do you want to do? It’s your day, so you get to do whatever you want, just like you let me do on my birthday.”

  I do? Oh, baby girl, I don’t even know you. How could I—

  “I think I can guess what you want to do.” Daisy got to the window in two skips and pressed both hands and her nose to it, leaving warm little smears on the glass. “I think you want to go—”

  Sledding, apparently, because as abruptly as she’d been transported to the happy house with the bay windows, Sarah was with Daisy on a hill above it, bundled in down everything—mostly pink for the cherub—their faces almost covered in woolly scarves.

  Sarah’s was the one she always wore.

  Daisy squealed and jumped onto a well-used red sled. The purple flannel tassels on top of her pink hat tossed as she looked up at Sarah and said, “Come on, Mommy! I’m gonna take you for a ride!”

  She patted the space behind her with a mittened hand, and Sarah climbed aboard. She could barely distinguish between this downy bundle of energy pressing against her and herself at six, back molded to her father’s chest, the mingle of delicious fear and almost unbearable excitement coursing through her. And trust. Complete trust that he would take them safely down even the highest of all hills.

  “Are you ready?” Sarah said.

  The tassels bobbed in her face.

  “Then here we go!”

  Sarah gave a push with her feet, and the sled flew down the slope. Squeals mixed with the wind in their faces. They were halfway down the slope before Sarah realized half of them were hers. Daisy raised her hands in the air, the way Sarah and Denise had always done on the rides at the Navy Pier. Sarah tightened her own arms around the tiny middle and opened her mouth wide—to take in the sparkly confetti of snow they startled into the air, and to let out the joy she’d forgotten was possible.

  The sled reached the bottom and Daisy, still shrieking in that octave only little girls can reach, snuggled her face next to Sarah’s.

  “Again?” Sarah said.

  “Again!”

  Sarah told Daisy to stay on the sled while she pulled it uphill. Maybe it was the exhilaration or the fact that truly this had to be a dream. Whatever it was, Sarah had the energy of a woman who’d been a slave to aerobics.

  Or one who did this laughing, squealing, freeing thing all the time.

  That part had to be true. Daisy knew how to hold on, how to knock the snow from her furry mini-boots, how to plant them again on either side of the sled until Sarah got on. When she leaned back into Sarah, there was no doubt that she fit there.

  At the end of their third run, Sarah purposely tipped the sled over and ran from the doubled-over-giggling Daisy to scoop up a handful of perfect snowball snow. When Daisy ran toward her in her delightfully clumsy little-kid way, Sarah pelted her with a powdery ball that smashed lightly on the front of her coat and sent flakes twinkling like stars in the sun.

  “Is it on?” Daisy cried.

  Sarah froze. What six-year-old said that? She sounded like—

  “Oh, it’s on!” Daisy said, and hurled a clump of snow that missed Sarah by a yard.

  Sarah collected herself and moved closer so that Daisy’s next attempt would hit her square in the face.

  “You bet it’s on!” she said, and this time threw herself at Daisy and rolled with her into a feathery drift.

  Daisy’s face lit up brighter than the snow. “Snow angels, Mommy!”

  Of course. Sarah went spread-eagle and made giant wings as Daisy scrambled to her feet and watched from above. Sarah might have made an angel, but the form watching her with her curls poking from her zany hat was the real thing.

  The sun chose that moment to push a cloud aside and shine down with Daisy.

  “Mommy,” she said, “I love you.”

  Sarah wanted to see her face when she said she loved her too. But the sun blurred Daisy almost from sight. Sarah shielded her eyes with her hand and blinked. Daisy wasn’t there. Only the light slanting in bars between the slats of Sarah’s blinds looked back at her. The blinds in her apartment.

  Sarah found herself up on one elbow, squinting, yearning. It was harder than before to sort herself out from the dream. And it took longer to swallow the disappointment.

  She was still a single, broke, pregnant woman with four days to make a choice that no matter which way she went, her life would bear no resemblance to anything she’d planned.

  Anger started its upward rush, just like it had with Catfish the night before. Sarah swung her legs over the side of the bed and shook off the image of big, warm frog slippers and reached for the clock to see how much she’d overslept. Her hand brushed the Christmas card still propped on the bedside table. She didn’t bother to wonder how it had gotten there again. She snatched it up and glared at the wise men.

  Now two of them were looking at her instead of at that far-off dream. The anger made the rest of its way up.

  “Visions from the Lord?” Sarah flung her head back to search the ceiling. “Now you care? Aren’t you about three years too late?” Sobs threatened but she cried out through them. “You woul
dn’t save my dad, but you want me to have a baby? Really?”

  Sarah ripped the card in half, and then in half again, and hurled it away from her. No more visions.

  The wouldn’t-that-be-nice of her dreams wasn’t what God gave. Not to her. Not then. Not now.

  Not ever again.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sarah decided not to go to Audrey’s office for lunch again. What would be the point? She’d thought talking things through would help, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Not after the confrontation with her mother.

  And the one with God.

  The problem was that Audrey was expecting her. Sarah felt like she’d plastered disappointment across enough people’s faces. She had to at least give Audrey an explanation.

  She was on her way out of her cubicle, sans crackers and soda, when Jennifer Nolte was suddenly there, walking with kitten-heeled briskness as always, yet stopping as if Sarah were just the person she was looking for.

  “I hoped I’d catch you before you left for lunch,” she said.

  Sarah held her breath. Audrey said she didn’t think anyone else knew, but Sarah still wondered when somebody was going to notice that she spent most of the workday with her head in the toilet.

  Jennifer put her lips close to Sarah’s ear. “I’m glad to see you took my advice about Megan. I’m very close to getting Henry to go my way instead of Nick’s, so every little thing counts now.”

  Sarah had no idea what to say. Which wasn’t a problem because without another syllable, Jennifer was gone.

  By the time Sarah reached Audrey’s office, she was a wreck. Audrey turned from the chicken noodle to look at her and had her in the chair with the mug in her hand before Sarah could get out, “I have so screwed this up.”

  When she did, Audrey shook her head.

  “Have you made a decision yet?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re no worse off than you were yesterday.”

  “You have no idea. Audrey, I have this promotion if I want it.”

  “I know that.”

  “If I give it up and have this baby, I’m not going to be able to give her everything she should have. And you know what, I’m not sure my dad would disagree with me.”

  Audrey motioned for her to drink the soup. She took a sip.

  “Drink some more. You’re losing too much weight, and no matter what you do, you’re going to need your strength.”

  Sarah drank half of it. The shakes began to settle.

  “I wasn’t going to come in here and talk to you today,” she said.

  “Am I being too pushy?”

  “No! That isn’t it at all. I just didn’t see how it was helping, but now that I’m here and I’m calm like I always am when I’m with you because you’re like Mother Earth or something—”

  Audrey laughed her sandy laugh. “You crack me up, you know that.”

  “I don’t know . . . it just seems like if I could stay as sane as I am when I’m talking to you, somehow it’ll come to me. You know, what to do.”

  “You have no idea how glad I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to hear what your dad said when he came in to talk to you. After you pitched your fit.”

  “Okay.”

  Audrey waited.

  “Aren’t you going to knit?” Sarah said.

  “I thought I’d just listen.”

  “I don’t think I can talk if you don’t knit.”

  Audrey laughed and reached for the bag. “We can’t have that.”

  Sarah collected herself while Audrey cast on a mint-green yarn. This kid was going to be nothing if not well capped.

  “I thought my father was going to give me another guard-your-heart lecture,” Sarah said. “The extended version.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. He told me a story and it just absolutely rocked my world.”

  Sarah stopped.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I just realized I’ve never told anyone else this. I don’t even think Denise knows.”

  “Did he ask you not to tell anybody?”

  “No. I guess I’ve always felt like it wasn’t my story to tell. And that maybe he told me just for that situation.”

  “Do you think it could be for this situation too?”

  “I guess I’ll find out.” Sarah drank a few more sips of soup and picked up the spoon for the noodles and chicken chunks at the bottom of the cup. “You know you’ve ruined me for Campbell’s for all time,” she said.

  “That was my plan.”

  “Okay, so here’s what my father told me. He said he was married to someone else before my mother.”

  Audrey stopped knitting. “You didn’t know before then?”

  Sarah shook her head. “He said he was eighteen, barely out of high school, and he’d been in love with this girl since he was sixteen.”

  “Your age at the time.”

  “She was the girl all the guys wanted, and for some reason she chose him. I could totally see it, but he didn’t. Anyway, they started making plans for marriage their senior year. They both had full scholarships, so they figured they could each work part-time and make a go of it living in her parents’ garage apartment.”

  “They had it all worked out.”

  “Except that his parents were against it. So were hers, but she was an only child and used to getting exactly what she wanted when she wanted it.”

  “And she wanted your dad, and she wanted him then.”

  “Yes. So they gave Dad and First Wife—he never did tell me her name—a wedding in August, and they started their new life.”

  “I almost don’t want to know what’s coming,” Audrey said.

  “I almost don’t want to say it. Before the first semester of college was over, he knew he was losing her.”

  “I hate that.”

  “She found out it wasn’t any fun to go to the parties together and come home to dirty dishes and a pile of laundry. She didn’t get to join a sorority with all her friends or hang out with a gang of girls talking about guys. She and Dad were cooking their own meals instead of eating in the commons complaining about the food with all the other freshmen.”

  “You’re remembering these details like you were there.”

  “That’s the way he told them to me. She was missing everything her parents had warned her she’d miss. By June, she wanted a divorce.”

  “Your poor dad.”

  “At that point in the story, I was so ticked off at First Wife, I was ready to go after her and pinch her head off. Even however many years later, I could still see the hurt in his eyes.”

  “I get why he wanted you to know.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t all.” Sarah rubbed her chest. It burned there, the same way it did the night he told her. “He went to his parents and they were furious, not with him but with the girl. His father said Dad should sue her because her family had a lot of money and she shouldn’t get away with it without paying.”

  “Nice.”

  “My dad didn’t want to do that. And even he knew he didn’t have grounds. Besides, he still loved her and he just wanted to set her free so she’d be happy.”

  “No wonder you were looking for a guy like him. The man was a saint.”

  “My grandfather thought he was a fool. When my dad told me that, I was ready to pinch Grandpa’s head off, except that he’d already been dead for five years. Anyway, Dad didn’t know at the time that his father went into debt to hire a private investigator to basically spy on First Wife. It didn’t take him long to come up with the evidence that she was sleeping with not just one other guy but several. He had the photos to prove it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “So my father was not only heartbroken, he was humiliated. If he sued her it would be big news, and how was he supposed to stay there on campus with everyone knowing that?”

  Audrey had stopped on the first minty green row. “What did he d
o?”

  “He broke off ties with his father. They didn’t speak until Denise was born. Dad left town, gave up his scholarship, and took the first entry-level job he could find, in insurance. First Wife served him for abandonment, and he signed what little they had—a lot of useless wedding presents, you know, like silver tea sets—over to her and tried to forget.”

  “Which, of course, he couldn’t.”

  “Especially when he found out she was pregnant.”

  Audrey’s eyebrows went up. “His?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I asked him that, and I would sell my tongue to take it back. He said, ‘No, SJ. The possibility of that was over months before I left.’ I could only imagine how having to say that to me humiliated him all over again.” Sarah squeezed the now-empty soup mug. “I may still go after that chick.”

  “She’s the one who lost out, though.”

  “True that. Anyway, I said, ‘Dad, I’m so sorry.’ And you know what he said?”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘So am I. I have never forgiven myself for the damage I did when I married her.’ ”

  “The damage he did?”

  “That’s what I said. But he pointed out that he put his parents through total hades. And abandoned his young wife when she was probably as mortified as he was.”

  “She kind of deserved it.”

  “She didn’t deserve for my grandfather to send those pictures to the papers.”

  “Oh. My. Gosh.”

  “And—this seemed to bother him the most—he never told her he forgave her.”

  “Did he ever try to contact her, do you know?”

  “He said no. When it occurred to him to do that, he was already married to Mom and he just wanted that marriage to be different. Y’know, I was wrong—what really bothered him the most, what he could never get over, I think, was that like he said, he let his pride cost him his education. A lot of those doors he talked to me about were closed to him because he never went to college and always had to settle for jobs beneath his ability. And that meant he couldn’t provide for Mom and Denise and me the way he really wanted to. I started to protest about that, but he wasn’t having it.”

  “Really.”

  “He got right in my face, right where I could see that deep hurt still in his eyes, and he said, ‘Do I have to explain to you why I’ve told you all this?’ I said no.”