Sarah's Choice

by Rebecca St. James

  He went off muttering about women and their issues. That would be a topic of discussion for his next nine holes with Nick. But he had asked the right question. Who was it from?

  Sarah knew where to start to find out. And maybe the rest of the answers would be there too.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Matt leaned back in his desk chair and tapped his cell phone on his chin as he stared up at the fluorescent light. He was in prime position to see the paper airplane, clearly constructed from United Financial stationery, soar over his cubicle and dive into Cherie’s.

  She croaked out an unsurprising: “What am I, the tarmac?”

  Somebody in the hallway, probably Wes, let out a whispered expletive, followed by a snicker. Followed by an expectant pause.

  Matt didn’t fill it.

  As disappointed footsteps faded down the hall, he studied his phone screen and looked again for a text message, a phone call, an e-mail from Sarah, but all in-boxes were empty, just as they’d been each of the five times he’d checked them in the last fifteen minutes. He’d lost count of how many unanswered messages he’d sent her, and the longer he went without hearing her voice, the harder it was to breathe.

  Maybe she was sending him a message with her silence. Matt squinted at the light. That wasn’t her MO. But then, being pregnant wasn’t either. Uncle Clay told him women had major mood swings when they were carrying a kid. His Aunt Jerri had dropped all the plates in the cabinet on the floor, one by one, two months before Lucas was born, because Uncle Clay asked her what time dinner was.

  Matt couldn’t buy that Sarah was having a pregnancy-induced mood thing. It was him. He’d messed this up from the minute she told him, and it looked like his chances of un-messing it were about as good as him winning the lottery.

  His father’s voice was in his head before he could shut off: The minute you get real is the minute I’ll believe we share DNA.

  He came forward in the chair and held the phone between his knees. How did a guy know when it was time to give up? He’d always been able to pick up on the cues from women before, when he’d stayed around long enough for them to start in the first place. But Sarah wasn’t other women. And those women weren’t the mother of his child.

  Matt tapped her number on his phone. One more time. He wouldn’t beg her to talk to him this time. He would just tell her—

  “This is Sarah. I’m not available right now—”

  Straight to voice mail. She’d probably gotten so sick of him calling that she turned off her phone. His mouth went dry.

  The thing beeped and he licked his lips. A full five seconds passed before he could say, “Hey, Sar. I guess you want me to leave you alone, but it’s hard to . . . Anyway, just checking in.” He closed his eyes. “I love you.”

  Matt ended the call and slid the phone across his desk. It hit the rubber band ball and sent it tumbling over the side, where it landed at his feet. He kicked it into the corner and watched it take two startled bounces before it rolled against the trash can and stayed like a defeated five-year-old.

  That helped, like, not at all. Sarah could totally marry a guy who threw a tantrum when something didn’t go like he planned it.

  Except—what plan? He turned the chair back to the desk and pulled the Series Sixty-Five manual toward him. Sarah would marry a guy who studied for his exam and got a promotion and gave a rip about his career. Matt flipped the book open and traced a finger along the heading at the top. “Finding Future Values.”

  Who did give a rip about prime rates, seriously? Especially when the rest of his life was falling apart. Did he even have a life without Sarah?

  He grabbed the phone from where it had slid into his gripper. What hadn’t he tried yet?

  Or would it matter what he did at this point?

  “I think this was meant for you, Evans.”

  Matt jerked and stared at the figure in the doorway, and with good reason. Cherie was standing there. Cherie, who never came out of her cubicle during the day unless there was a fire drill. He was startled, as he was every time he saw her, by how short she was. Her voice croaking and growling and snarling from the cubicle made her sound like a middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers. Wearing silver bell earrings.

  She carefully patted the comma-shaped portions of impossibly black hair in front of her ears and with burgundy talons shot the paper airplane across the room and onto his desk. It lodged next to the manual.

  “The lunatics are taking over the asylum,” she said. “Seems their keeper is on sabbatical.”

  “I’m sorry, Cherie,” Matt said.

  He steeled himself for the sarcasm or the lecture on what would go down if Clay found out they were using company stationery for aircraft. She had, after all, emerged from her office so it had to be important. Maybe she was there to pass on the rumor that he was being let go. That would chip off the last piece of his life, wouldn’t it?

  But Cherie merely nodded, bells jingling, and although she continued to nod, her bicycle helmet of hair didn’t move. Neither did her eyes from his face.

  “I knew it was in there,” she said.

  Matt cocked his head. “You’ve lost me, Cherie,”

  “What I’m looking at. I knew it was in there.”

  He glanced at his desk. “What are you looking at?”

  “You,” she said. “I’m finally looking at you.”

  She turned to go, like a robot changing direction, but she pivoted back.

  “Don’t leave her alone, Evans,” she said. “Or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

  Matt stared at the doorway long after he heard her settle in at her desk and resume muttering over her time sheets.

  I knew it was in there. You.

  A you so different she had come out of her cell to see it? Matt looked down at his body, still hunched in the chair. What was different? That was the problem, the problem Sarah saw: that he was the same as he’d ever been. Who could trust him to be anything else?

  Matt put the phone on the desk again and reached for the manual. With it came the airplane, now flattened down to a mere waste of heavy bond stationery. Something was written on it.

  He unfolded it and spread it on the desk. Texted you twice, it said in Wes’s scrawl. High noon. North corridor. Dude, it’s on.

  Matt read it again and waited for the delicious anticipation of distraction—for the devious ideas to teem in his head—for his thumbs to go automatically to his phone to text something cryptic and clever back to Wes.

  None of it came. The only thing he felt was a slow, heavy drag toward the memories of wasted time.

  That was what was different.

  Matt picked up the paper and wadded it into a ball in his hands. When he tossed it to the trash can, it missed and rested next to the rubber band ball. He crossed the cubicle and dropped them both in.

  Audrey still wasn’t in the office at two that afternoon. As Sarah signed out for the day a few minutes later, she wondered if she would have told Audrey about the visions. And about what she was about to do. Audrey was the only sane person she knew right now. If she’d told her not to go, to let go of this, she probably would have.

  Except that Audrey never had told her what to do or not do. All she did was ask questions.

  Sarah was full of questions of her own as she set out for the clinic in Buzz Lightyear. For the first day that week she didn’t have to battle snow and ice, and by some miracle Buzz got her to Lincoln Park without having an asthma attack at every intersection.

  She avoided the eyes of the knot of people on the sidewalk in front of the clinic building who were apparently setting up for another protest. Good thing Megan wasn’t with her, or she’d be calling them Jesus freaks and quoting Roe v. Wade.

  Actually, Megan would be telling her she needed psychiatric care. But she had to do this, or she really was going to go crazy.

  The waiting room was empty except for a twenty-something guy sleeping in a chair in the corner with his feet u
p on the toy box. Sarah pushed away the scenarios that immediately came to mind—of who he was waiting for and why. She went straight to the window, behind which sat the same round-faced receptionist who had checked her in. She was hanging up the phone.

  “If you’ll sign in on the computer screen, we’ll be right with you,” she said into the microphone.

  “I don’t want to sign in. I just—”

  “It’s required if you want to see somebody.”

  “I don’t. Look, I’m sorry but I just need to ask a question.” Before the girl could tell her she had to sign in for that, too, Sarah rushed on. “I was in here a couple days ago, and there was this older woman that was handing these out.” Sarah pressed the card to the glass. “I just wanted to know if you knew anything about her or where I could maybe find her . . .”

  She let her voice trail off as the girl leaned forward and studied the card. She moved only her eyes up to Sarah.

  “Uh, this is a Christmas card.”

  “I know.”

  “We don’t hand them out.”

  Her voice was dismissive, but Sarah kept the card against the window. “You haven’t seen anybody hand out anything . . . like this?”

  The girl was already shaking her head. “No. Sorry.” She went back to the ringing phone.

  Sarah pulled the card down and stared at it again. So it was her imagination. If that was what she’d come here to prove, why did she feel so deflated?

  She left the card on the ledge and hurried out of the waiting room. She knew why her insides were sagging: because the visions were the only times she liked who she was. The only times when she felt real. If they weren’t real, then where did that leave her?

  She fought back panic all the way down the elevator and out onto the sidewalk where the afternoon sun cut through the cloudless sky and hit her full in the face. She was blinded until she shaded her eyes with her hand. Directly across the street a line of twenty- and thirtyish women held balloons in gloved hands, but their faces didn’t reflect the bobbing brightness above them. Some were still and pensive. Some bit their lips as if they were holding back tears. Others let them slide down their cheeks and licked at them when they reached their mouths. Whatever was going on over there, it wasn’t a party. But then, she guessed protestors didn’t usually get together on the street to celebrate.

  “Excuse me,” said someone behind her.

  Sarah turned to face a substantial woman in a houndstooth-check coat who stood behind a camera on a tripod. Sarah was right in front of it, blocking the woman’s shot.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said and stepped aside.

  The woman smiled from an open face. Everything about her seemed open, including the unbuttoned coat that flapped in the Chicago wind.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re just a couple of minutes away from filming.”

  She went to the curb and held up five fingers to the group across the street. Sarah wasn’t sure why she didn’t move on, why she said, “You’re filming protestors?”

  The woman shook away the thick auburn hair the wind flung across her face. “No. These aren’t protestors. These are gals getting ready to send letters to heaven.” She turned from the curb to look at Sarah. “It’s a post-abortion recovery group, is what it is.”

  Her eyes invited the next question. Although the real next question was, Why am I still standing here, Sarah said, “Why the balloons?”

  The woman parked her hands comfortably into her pockets. “The balloons give them an opportunity to write a letter to their unborn children, and name them, and then release them into heaven.”

  Sarah looked up involuntarily at the flawless sky.

  “These girls know that God has forgiven them, but they’re struggling with forgiving themselves.”

  Sarah’s gaze went back to her. If she’d been in the woman’s home, they’d be having coffee and gingerbread by a fire right now. She felt her throat thicken.

  “Does it actually work?” she said.

  “Yeah.” The auburn head nodded. “It does. Anytime in our lives when we make a bad decision, it’s great to have a chance to seek forgiveness and move on. And that’s exactly what they’re doing. It’s very powerful. Would you like to stay and watch?”

  “I don’t want to be in the way.”

  “You won’t be if you stand back here by me.”

  Still not knowing why, Sarah followed the woman to the camera. Someone across the street whistled, and the woman signaled back. As Sarah watched, fifteen or twenty brilliant orbs floated from upstretched hands and let the wind carry them above the towers and penthouses and satellite dishes and into the vast expanse of blue. Below, the women watched them go. The pensive faces softened. The tear-streaked ones smoothed into wistful smiles. The bitten lips opened and released the cries so long held in.

  Sarah had never seen Megan look like any of them.

  She felt her own spirit lift at the freedom of it, but a downdraft pushed it back in place. The woman would say it was all God, and maybe it was. But how was she supposed to go back to God now when she’d dissed him for so long?

  As the balloons drifted into mere dots in the sky, some of the women slid their arms around each other. A few just wordlessly touched hands.

  “They’re not alone,” Sarah said out loud.

  “No, they’re not.”

  Sarah jumped. She didn’t mean for her to hear that. It was clearly time to go.

  “Can I help you at all?” the woman said.

  “No, thank you,” Sarah said.

  Right now, she could only think of one person who might.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Audrey answered her cell on the first ring.

  “If you’re in labor, just tell me and I’ll hang up,” Sarah said instead of hello.

  “No such luck,” Audrey said. “Why did you think that?”

  “Because you left work.”

  “I went to the doctor to find out the same thing he told me last week: any time now. So what’s up? You sound stressed.”

  “It can wait ’til tomorrow.”

  “Or not. Where are you now?”

  “Lincoln Park.”

  “What are you doing for dinner?”

  “The same thing I always do—not eating.”

  “Come to my place. The minestrone’ll be done by the time you get here.”

  “What about your husband?”

  “He’s working extra hours to save up time to be home when the baby’s born.”

  “Are you sure? I mean about me coming over?”

  “Let me think about it. Yes. What time shall I pick you up at the train?”

  “I’m in my car.”

  “All right, then.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Whose?”

  “Your baby.”

  Audrey gave a soft giggle. “Alexander John. After my dad and Jack’s. Any particular reason you’d ask that right now?”

  “I have no idea,” Sarah said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

  Somehow Audrey’s house seemed even cozier than it had four days before. Maybe it was because Audrey let her stir the soup and cut the bread and toss another log in the fireplace.

  “Thanks,” she said when they were settled in with mugs and a loaf of whole-grain. “I’m so tired tonight.”

  “I can’t believe you’re working right up to labor.”

  Audrey looked down into her mug.

  “What?” Sarah said.

  “I’m actually not. Working, I mean. I was going to, and then I decided not to. Friday was supposed to be my last day.”

  “Then why are you still there?”

  “Because of you.”

  Sarah let her spoon clatter against the mug.

  “After Saturday night I just wanted to be there in case you still wanted to talk.”

  “Are you—you’re serious.”

  “I am. And don’t ask me why because I’m not usually that compassionate.”

  “Tha
t I don’t believe.”

  “It’s the truth. It just felt like a God-thing.” She waved her spoon. “Not that I’m not enjoying every minute of it because I am. Maybe enjoying isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s more like I’m learning a lot. And like I’ve told you, you totally crack me up.”

  “I never thought I was that entertaining. Especially right now.”

  “Eat first,” Audrey said. “Then you can entertain me some more.”

  The minestrone was by far Audrey’s best soup yet, but Sarah only got halfway through her mug and a slice of bread before she put them both aside.

  “So you want to talk about why you were so stressed out when you called me?”

  “Jennifer knows I’m pregnant. She told me to have—to take care of things or I can forget the promotion.”

  “Megan told her, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah. She even admitted it. She said Jennifer asked her and she had to tell her the truth or get fired.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous—” Audrey put a hand up. “Never mind. So you’re feeling like the pressure’s really on, then.”

  “Yeah. But if I do that, I just know I’m going to regret it. I’m not sure I can live with it.”

  Audrey peeled the crust from her bread. “You asked me the other day if I believed in God. Do you mind if I ask you the same thing?”

  “Since it’s you, no, I don’t mind,” Sarah said.

  She didn’t add: As long as you don’t start delivering a homily. There was no need to. And that was why it was Audrey she’d come to.

  “I do believe in God,” Sarah said. “I just don’t trust God anymore.”

  “Is that because of your father’s death?”

  “Not entirely, no. People do die.”

  “Yeah, but at younger than fifty? That had to be rough.”

  “It was. But I got that, you know?”

  “Uh, no, I don’t.”

  Sarah contemplated the fire. She’d never told anybody this either, not even her mother or Denise. She didn’t even like telling it to herself in those middle-of-the-night sessions when it wouldn’t leave her alone. But Audrey had asked all the right questions so far . . .

  “The evening before my father died . . . I can still see him in his recliner that he always sat in, even before he got sick, but he practically lived in it after that . . . I can see him wearing his red watch cap over his chemo-head. He had a blanket draped over him—you could have mistaken him for a passenger on the deck of a ship crossing the English Channel, if it weren’t for the oxygen tube hooked to his nostrils.”