Sarah's Choice

by Rebecca St. James

  “Her boys are all grown up. No, she and I made them—”

  When we were kids ourselves. The cardboard snowman with all of its cotton balls missing. The clothespin reindeer. The crooked stars, stripped of all glitter by the years, now showing only the faint traces of glue. On one, the adhesive trail still read “Daddy.”

  The nurse began to back out of the room. “You enjoy those memories. If you need anything—”

  “I won’t. I’m expecting another visitor tonight.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Could this girl be any more patronizing?

  “Yes.”

  Sarah heard the I’m-about-to-order-you-out-of-my-room edge in her voice—that voice she still couldn’t place. Maybe it just sounded like a Megan-type as an old woman. Maybe that was it.

  But when Nurse Ponytail walked past, if not actually through Sarah, and she was able to venture into the room, the tissue-faced figure in the bed wasn’t an aged version of a former executive.

  She was the woman from the clinic. The one who gave Sarah the card. The one whose prediction had taken her . . .

  Here.

  “It’s you,” Sarah said.

  The old lady’s smile nearly cracked, as if she hadn’t used it in a while. “It is. I was expecting you.”

  Sarah moved close to the bed and wrapped her fingers around the cold bed railing. It was solid, and when she removed her hands they left the prints of her clammy palms. This was no less real than the visions that had left her bright with hope, even for a moment. The slow-growing fear in her throat was as palpable as the joy when she held her granddaughter.

  “Why am I here?” she said.

  “To see.”

  “To see what?”

  “The direction your decisions are taking you.” The woman raised her white head from the pillows with obvious effort. “You’ve seen what can be. Now you’re seeing what will be if—”

  “Did I go through with it?” Sarah gripped the railing again. “Did I have an abortion?”

  “No. I did.”

  Sarah felt an odd stab of disappointment. This visionary old lady was just another Megan. And maybe a senile one.

  “Not yet,” the woman said. She reached her almost transparent white hand under the railing and managed to brush her knuckles against Sarah’s belly before she sank back into the pillows. “Your baby’s still alive inside you.”

  “I know that.”

  Sarah found herself shielding her abdomen with her own hands. This place, so suffocating with its heat a few moments ago, now sent its chill through her sweats and into her bones.

  “I don’t have long,” the woman, this other Sarah, said. “And really, I have no reason to hang on. But you don’t want to die alone, do you?” She pointed a knotty finger at the tree. “With only ancient memories to keep you company?” She didn’t wait for Sarah to answer. “Trust me, it can be worse than that. You don’t want to think every minute that you’ve done the wrong thing—until you just no longer want to live with it. I was never healed of that.”

  Sarah hugged her arms around her body. Okay, so this wasn’t an old Megan-type. Megan said she rarely thought about her abortion and the child she didn’t have except at this time of year. And she, the real Sarah, wasn’t Megan: she wasn’t even close to being like her any more.

  Something pounded in her ears. It took her a minute to realize it was her own heartbeat, driving her to look again, closely, at the old woman with the faded brown eyes and the smile that no longer reached all the way to the laugh lines it had once created in her face. She seemed just as familiar as she had that day in the clinic when she’d pressed the card into Sarah’s hands and promised her . . .

  “The visions,” Sarah said. “I had them, like you said. But how do I know they’ll come true that way if I don’t . . . if I keep the baby? They didn’t tell me how I’m supposed to support her or even if Matt . . . How do I trust them?” She whipped her gaze frantically around the room. “Or this?”

  Old Sarah shook her head. Her eyelids, thin as the pages of an old book, closed. “Sarah, you’ve been given the opportunity to see things from a . . . a divine perspective . . .”

  The vision of herself nuzzling Baby Daisy’s sweet neck returned in its sunlit frame.

  “You have to trust that God will be there . . .”

  The frame filled with the purple tassels of Daisy’s hat as she leaned into Sarah and squealed into sparkle-filled air.

  “And make your choice regardless of the consequences.”

  Sarah was once again in the beauty of midlife, glowing in gold light and beatific Nana-hood.

  “Sarah.”

  Sarah refocused on the old face. Though her voice had faded with weariness, she was at once the new grandmother with her first streaks of silver, the confident woman full of Mommy energy, the young mother budding with a love that outreached first-baby fear. In the light Sarah had grown to love, the vaguely familiar became clear.

  “You’re me,” Sarah said.

  “Only if you make the choice I made.” The gnarled hands clutched at the bed covers. “God will be there no matter what you choose . . .”

  She struggled to sit up. Sarah reached over the bar and supported her back. The weak neck bent until her lips were close to Sarah’s ear. “But you will be a far different you if you choose life.”

  She dissolved in Sarah’s arms, but the vision-light stayed, even after Sarah found herself standing in the open doorway of her apartment with the card pressed between her palms. The moon must have beckoned her out there, weaving its silvery beams into the vision-light that still clung like an aura. The night was perfectly still. Not so much as the distant whistle of a train ruffled the quiet. Outside or in.

  Sarah uncovered the card in her hands and searched the faces of the Magi. She didn’t even blink at the fact that all three of them now looked at her. They had done what they’d come to do: bring her gifts. Now it was clearly up to her to do something with them.

  A small wind nudged her, and Sarah backed into her apartment and closed the door. When she turned to head to the warmth of her bed, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. What she saw caught her breath in her throat.

  Just a few hours ago—as far as she could tell—that mirror had shown her a young woman bleak with fear and indecision. Now the face that looked back at her was still and pensive except for the biting of the lip, the vain attempt to hold back the tears that coursed down her cheeks anyway. She licked at them when they reached her mouth and she knew: she was every face she’d seen on the women clasping the strings of their balloons, waiting.

  She didn’t want to look that way anymore.

  Matt took the day off Friday, but his mind wouldn’t let him sleep in. He hit the gym at 6:00 a.m., pre-coffee, and was pounding the treadmill at six fifteen. Today was the day and he had to be physically ready for it, even if the rest of him was scared spitless.

  He tried clearing the mental desk the way Uncle Clay suggested. Item one: go back to the pawnshop when it opened. He’d tried to pick one that wasn’t in a seedy part of the city, one that didn’t look like armed burglars went in there to sell hot plasma screens and DVD players. None of them actually seemed legit when he went the first time, not with black bars on the windows and guys behind the counters with so many tats you couldn’t tell where they stopped and their clothes started. Matt hoped the original deal would still be on the table when he went back.

  Item two: try not to go crazy between then and eleven. All hope of Sarah contacting him first had disintegrated at about 2:00 a.m. He could only hope that was because she was as scared as he was.

  That was a lot of hoping. None of it was the kind of optimistic thinking that had gotten him into more pyramid schemes and sure-thing sales opportunities than he even wanted to count, now that he’d cleaned out his actual desk and fed six new brochures into the shredder. Without the trumped-up conviction that this would be the big one, he was floundering.

  Matt tri
ed to focus on the guys on either side of him. One was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt that looked like they’d just come from the dry cleaner. The only thing missing was a matching necktie. He was zoned into CNN and barely breaking a sweat.

  The guy to Matt’s right, on the other hand, had perspiration marking the sides of his face like sideburns and forming a vest-shaped stain on his T-shirt. Propped on the book stand were some typed pages scattered with red markings. Matt got that sick rush he’d always experienced when the English teacher handed back the essays. The guy murmured a constant monologue ranging from disgusted to flabbergasted, and slowed periodically to add another red mark. The bag on the floor bulged with more of the same, judging from the ones that poked through the opening. No wonder the guy was sweating like a boar.

  Given a choice between the two of them, Matt would have traded places with Sweat Vest Guy in a heartbeat.

  But the fellow predawn athlete who caught Matt’s attention and held it was an older guy who took the indoor track around the clump of treadmills at a pretty good walking pace for somebody sixty-five, seventy. But it wasn’t that, or the fact that the dude smiled as if this wasn’t an ungodly way to wake your body up, that made Matt stare every time he made another lap. He was sure he’d seen him someplace besides here.

  The guy was on his fifth pass before Matt realized he’d seen him at the church, the Sunday he went with Sarah. Yeah, he was the pastor—Jones? Smith? Definitely Smith. The only religious person Sarah didn’t sneer at. The guy who made Mary and Joseph’s deal seem like it was happening to him.

  Which a day later, it was.

  Matt wasn’t sure how he got from the treadmill to the track or how he wound up walking in stride with the Reverend Smith. It was apparently a normal occurrence for him. His smile pushed his cheeks closer to his eyes and he said, “The good thing about walking here is you don’t have to watch the traffic. As involved as I get with my own thoughts, I’d have been run over by now.”

  “Am I interrupting?” Matt said.

  “Not at all. I can talk to myself anytime.” He glanced sideways at Matt. “We’ve met before.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t expect you to remember me. We just shook hands when I was leaving church. I was there with my girlfriend—”

  “Sarah.”

  “Right.” Matt raised his eyebrows. “That’s impressive.”

  “Not if you consider the fuss her mother made over you.”

  Matt had to grin. “Agnes is a trip.”

  “That she is.”

  They fell into a walking silence broken only by the squeak of their tennis shoes and the occasional groan from the guy doing crunches in the corner. The quiet didn’t make Matt feel like he should say something—anything—but it did invite questions that eventually elbowed their way out.

  “You’ve known Sarah a long time?”

  “Since she was a little girl. I’m sure you can imagine what a doll she was. Curly hair. Nonstop motion.” The reverend grinned too. “Big white front teeth. She always reminded me of a wise little bunny. But fearless. She didn’t back down from anything.”

  Matt let the shoes squeak some more. There had to be a confidentiality thing for ministers like doctors and lawyers had. He couldn’t think of anything else he could ask about Sarah that wouldn’t be a violation of that. Has Agnes told you what’s going on with her right now? was definitely out of the question. He had to give the old guy credit: if he knew, he sure didn’t show it.

  So . . . if he was that discreet . . .

  “Y’know it’s weird,” Matt said. “But ever since that Sunday—what was it, a week and a half ago?”

  “It was.”

  “Ever since then I’ve been thinking about what you said in your sermon.”

  “Wait, let me write this down: someone has thought about one of my sermons.” The reverend slowed the pace a little, and an irreverent twinkle took over his eyes. “You’re not going to tell me I mispronounced something, are you? I get a flood of e-mails when I preach on the pentecost gospel. Nobody can pronounce all those names of ancient places. I doubt even the people who lived in them could pronounce them.” He picked up speed again. “I digress. Please—tell me what you were thinking.”

  Matt heard a laugh come out of his throat—not a sound he’d made in a while.

  “You were talking about Mary and Joseph and the whole thing about nobody believing this vision thing was for real.”

  The reverend nodded. A light sheen now covered the bald top of his head.

  “And you said ‘nothing is impossible with God.’ Do you really think that’s true?”

  “I do. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times.”

  Matt let the squeaky silence resume for another half lap before he looked at the side of the reverend’s now-rosy face and said, “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  “I was hoping you’d ask,” he said. “They make it good and strong in the shop downstairs. Sounds like we might need it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Sarah’s computer calendar wordlessly announced that today was Friday, December 23. Decision Day for Henry Carson.

  She had made hers regardless of the consequences, and that was a thing she’d never done before. It had a surreal quality to it. Or maybe it was like Audrey said—it was the real Sarah who’d made it.

  Maybe that was what allowed her to leave her cubicle without squaring her shoulders or putting on her game face. About halfway down the hall she turned back . . . and got her Dad-scarf. Megan would have a massive stroke if she saw it wrapped around her cranberry turtleneck, unraveled yarn poking out like hair on a Raggedy Ann. It would help her speak her decision out loud, and that was what she needed to hear herself do. And not just for Henry Carson.

  Again she headed down the hall, now strangely empty of all the people who had taken vacation time to start their holidays, and took the elevator up to the executive floor, which housed a hospitality suite and Henry Carson’s massive office. Sarah had never been there before. She’d only listened in rapt attention as Megan described it. Something about a desk made from African mahogany and Italian marble, original artwork purchased at auctions where you had to show your American Express Platinum to get in, and a view of Lake Michigan that was hard to distinguish from the paintings. Megan had gotten a distant gleam in her eyes and said, “Someday, it will belong to moi.”

  Back then Sarah would have settled for the ConEx account. As the elevators doors opened almost soundlessly, as if not to disturb the inner sanctum, she wondered now at how simple Ambitious Sarah’s future life had seemed.

  She wasn’t sure she even knew that person anymore.

  The Sarah who emerged from the elevator tightened her scarf and approached Carson’s secretary’s desk. The woman looked harder up close than she had when Sarah had glimpsed her from afar at company picnics and the rare all-employee staff meetings. Her hair was pushed back severely, and her mouth was small and pursed, like a Barbie doll.

  “Can I help you?” she said, as if she sincerely hoped Sarah had made a wrong turn somewhere and could be dispensed with quickly. Her eyes swept over the scarf.

  “No,” Sarah said. “I’m here to see Mr. Carson.”

  “You don’t have an appointment.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Do you want to make one?”

  She obviously couldn’t see for the life of her why Mr. Carson would want to talk to this woman who couldn’t even pick out decent accessories.

  “No,” Sarah said. “I need two minutes, and I’m gone.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  If eye-rolling had been allowed in the How to be an Executive Secretary Manual, there would have been one. Evidently long-suffering sighs were okay. “You can’t go in there now. He’s in a meeting.”

  “I know. With Nick and Jennifer. About the ConEx account promotion. That’s why I need to interrupt: I have information that’ll make their decision easier.”

  Sarah t
urned to the door with the gold plate that read, Henry Carson, President and CEO.

  “Are you Sarah Collins?”

  “I am.”

  The woman rose from the chair, unfolding a figure that was fairly close to Barbie’s too. “If you want this promotion, I strongly advise you not to open that door.”

  “Thanks,” Sarah said, and gave the door in question a polite rap.

  “You’re going to blow it.” The blow went up as if she were singing Sarah a warning song. There was a certain solidarity in it which Sarah would have warmed to . . . if she hadn’t already blown it.

  Her knock was answered with a rather irritated, “Come in,” from Mr. Carson. Sarah heard nothing fatherly in it.

  She pushed the door open and was momentarily blinded by the light from the window that comprised the entire wall behind Mr. Carson’s desk. When her eyes adjusted, she knew Megan hadn’t missed a detail. Except to say that the effect was so cold a person wondered why no icicles hung from the track lighting.

  Jennifer’s stunned face all but shouted, WHAT are you doing here? Nick snickered as if he’d expected her all along. Only Henry Carson’s reaction surprised her: he looked like an indignant king who had just been walked in on in the royal bathroom. Again, there wasn’t a hint of anything paternal in it, which made it easier for Sarah to say what was already rolling off her tongue.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s something I need to tell you before you make your final decision.”

  “You’ve got dirt on Thad,” Nick said. He all but licked his chops.

  “No,” Sarah said. “Even if I did, I would keep it to myself.”

  Jennifer moved her hand from her face long enough to nod at Sarah, and for the first time Sarah hesitated. Jennifer was right. She could bring some integrity to this place. To the snickering Nick who looked openly disappointed that she hadn’t come bearing gossip. Even to Henry Carson himself, who had spent more money on one painting than it would cost to . . . support a baby through her first year.

  So doing one right thing meant not being able to do another right thing. No, Ambitious Sarah, life is not simple.