Seeking Sara Summers (2 page)

Sara turned an irritated gaze to her students, who could still be intimidated in their first year of high school. The volume of chatter decreased.

Maggie leaned against the edge of Sara’s desk. “What’s going on, Sara? Is the cancer back?”

“No, no,” she said. “Nothing like that. I was just looking for a nail file to break out of this joint.” When was it, she wondered, that she started hating her job?

The tardy bell rang. Maggie apologized. “I’ve got to go before my little angels start a Civil War.” Maggie taught American History. She squeezed Sara’s arm. “Don’t worry, honey. You’ll get through this.”

Would she?

The door closed, leaving Sara as the only adult in a room full of twenty-four teenagers.
Never let them see your fear,
a mentor teacher had told Sara her first year of teaching. She squared her shoulders, retrieved her red pen from her satchel and opened the classroom roll book. For a few seconds she studied the captives in front of her. Was she ever like them?

A mixture of bravado and insecurity seeped out of their attitudes, speech, and their very pores, accentuated by piercings, tattoos, and fake hair colors to hide their middle-class roots. Following homeroom, several of these same captives would stay for her honors Freshman English class.

Sara raised her voice, “Settle down!” The roar of laughter and conversation subsided as if they instantly understood that today was not a day to challenge her. She enjoyed the power she had at first. But by the end of the first semester they had usually started to see through her.

Sara glanced out the windows that lined the entire wall. It was one of those schools built in the 50s that still had large, panel windows framed in dark wood, making the room freezing in winter and boiling in summer.

Ironically, as a teenager Sara had sat in this same classroom, a student of Mrs. McGregor’s English literature class. She and her best friend Julia always sat together in the back of the room next to the windows. Day after day, they secretly made fun of Mrs. McGregor, a woman they considered older than Methuselah. When bored, they entertained themselves by keeping tally of Mrs. McGregor’s wrinkles, making comic faces when they hit double digits. One day Sara’s laughter had accidentally escaped into the room. A loud, honking footnote to Mrs. McGregor’s lecture on
Beowulf.
Everyone turned to look at her as she ducked her chin to her chest and wished to disappear. Her face still turned hot just thinking about it all these years later.

Whatever happened to Julia? she wondered.

“Mrs. Stanton?”

Molly Decker slouched toward her, dressed entirely in black. Her black lipstick was in sharp contrast to the ivory makeup that covered a crop of pimples on her chin.
Would she find out some day that she wanted to run away from her life?

“Yes?” Sara answered.

“Do we have drama after school today?”

“No, not today. I have to cancel,” she said. Sara never cancelled anything. Not even in the throes of chemo. But the combination of really bad Shakespeare and her current angst seemed too much drama to bear today.

Insomnia robbed Sara of another night’s sleep, as if a nightclub sign flashed the words
GET A LIFE
outside her window
.
She slipped from under the covers and stepped over Luke, their youngest son Sam’s golden retriever—abandoned when Sam went away to college, never to be retrieved.

Moonlight came through the blinds and helped her find her way to her office downstairs, a home improvement project that had distracted them for months. An endless stack of papers to grade filled the extra chair in the room, a faded wingback beauty that Sara had found at a garage sale a decade before.

Bookshelves covered an entire wall where aging classics fought for space among the stacks of self-help books. She was always buying books that she never had time to read.

Sara searched the bottom desk drawer for a framed photograph of Julia and Sara as girls. After she found it she ran a finger along the glass to remove a layer dust. Sara stared into the past. At the time of the photo Julia’s family was getting ready to move to England. Julia’s eyes sparkled anticipating a new adventure, her arm around Sara’s waist. Julia wore a pair of blue-jean overalls and red high-top sneakers. Julia had said once she wanted to be buried in that outfit, she loved it so much. And Sara had loved her.

Over the years Sara had wondered about Julia. But losing touch with people had become as habitual as losing touch with herself. She turned on the computer. Could she track Julia down on the internet? She had no idea if her childhood friend had married and used a different name. But what could it hurt? She typed
Julia David
into the search engine and waited for the response. How easy it was to check on people these days, she thought. She had typed in her own name on more than one occasion but there was nothing. Sara Stanton from Northampton, Mass didn’t exist, as far as the world wide web could surmise.

Several references came up for Julia David. A few press releases about promotions, an article in an alumni magazine. Sara clicked on each reference. Evidently Julia had been an attorney in England for several years, specializing in high profile corporate cases. But the latest entries were of an artist in Florence. Was that Julia, too?

Sara smiled. She liked thinking of Julia in Italy. As a girl, Sara would have given anything to go to Italy. She had even written to the Italian Tourist Bureau and requested pamphlets, maps, anything Italian. Instead of teen posters of the heart throbs of the day, Sara had a map of Italy on her wall and a poster of the Duomo in Florence.

Sara continued her research, finally finding an email address for the Julia David in Florence. She started a new email and paused. What do you say to someone you haven’t seen or talked to in almost thirty years?

Dear Julia,

Do you remember me? If you are the right Julia David, we used to be best friends nearly 30 years ago. We went to Beacon High School together.

If you have any desire to be in touch, please email back.

Your friend,

Sara (Summers) Stanton

It’s worth a try, Sara thought, and sent the email. She returned upstairs and turned on the light in the bathroom. She squinted into the mirror and tried not to notice how much she resembled her mother who had died of breast cancer when Sara was twelve.

Her mother’s illness was kept hidden from Sara and her older brother until close to the end. Then one day they came home from school and their dad was waiting for them. Their mom was in the hospital. Doctors were running tests, he had said. Before Sara had time to see her again she had died. Would her mother have run away from home if she had had the chance?

Sara ran a finger along the slight crook in her nose that she had contemplated with disgust during her entire adolescence. At least I inherited Mom’s high cheekbones, she thought, which served to redeem the nose. The hair growing in was dark blonde with streaks of gray. She had gone from a blond soccer mom hairstyle to a middle-aged punk rocker in a matter of months.

She pulled down her gown and studied the area where her right breast used to be. She had looked at it hundreds of times to get used to this new version of herself.

Mammary glands. That’s all they are, she thought. But why did everyone worship them? Two breasts were a commodity. One breast made a woman automatically less of a person.

Sara turned off the light and walked down the dimmed hallway. At times, she felt like a character in a Charlotte Bronte novel, roaming the dark corridors at night. In the half-light she passed photographs of their children at different ages lining the walls. Jessica in her ballerina outfit—lessons lasted about as long as it took to take the photograph—John and Sam in soccer uniforms, Sam in his bigger brother’s shadow, always looking up to him for approval. Not to mention every school photograph ever taken, complete with missing teeth and dated haircuts. Around the edges were a dozen photographs of Grady’s family, most of them given to them by his mother, in contrast to only two of Sara’s extended family. One of her father and Barb, his second wife, on their 10
th
wedding anniversary in a tacky teal frame with woodcut dolphins in the corners. And a black and white photograph of her mother posing in front of the diner their family owned in downtown Northampton, after it first opened. She wore a huge smile, held a cigarette in her left hand, and looked like a young Meryl Streep.

It had occurred to Sara to tell her dad and brother about her cancer but she didn’t want to open old wounds. Ten years before her dad had sold the diner and had retired to Miami with Barb, a woman with as little interest in getting to know Sara as Sara had in getting to know her.

Barb was always giving them gifts of dolphin figurines. Dolphins jumping in mid-air while anchored to ceramic bases; dolphins in groups of three, jumping in tandem above waterless oceans; dolphins painted in the base of ashtrays given to a family where no one smoked. These figurines were stored in the back of the pantry and only brought out for their infrequent visits.

Five years older than Sara, her brother, Steve, owned a seafood restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine, with Amy, his high school sweetheart, whom he had never officially married. He rarely got away from his restaurant and Sara rarely got over to Maine. Neither of them ever thought to call or write, so years would go by without any contact other than a card at Christmas. Despite bloodlines Sara and her brother were practically strangers. She doubted he would recognize her if they passed each other on the street. Especially now.

Sara stepped over Luke who always slept on the Oriental rug on her side of the bed. His tail thumped softly against the hardwood floor. She sat on the edge of the bed. In the darkness Sara placed a hand over where her breast used to be. Her next appointment was with a plastic surgeon to talk about reconstructive surgery. But what I need reconstructing more than my breast is my life, she thought. Who could help her with that? Most importantly, could you reconstruct a life that had never been there in the first place?

CHAPTER TWO

Morning light filtered through the window creating tree-shaped shadows on the tile floor. House plants cluttered the seat of the bay window, some gangly and overgrown in their pots, and competed for the limited space with haphazard stacks of home improvement magazines.

Clutter gave birth to yet more clutter, spilling over from room to room, creating a constant need to organize the chaos—stacks of mail, papers, books, clothes—evidence of a consumer-driven culture gone awry. Beyond the bay window was Sara’s attempt at a flower garden, an extension of the chaos inside.

Projects around their two-story, 1920s brick house had kept their marriage alive long beyond its natural shelf life. Grady and Sara had discovered that their marriage worked best when they were building something, whether it was a comfortable life, a future for their children, or an addition to their home. Intimate, detailed home improvement projects gave them a diversion from intimacy with one another.

“I want to organize the garage this weekend,” Grady said. “But I’ll need some shelves.”

Sara poured them both a cup of coffee and joined him at the table in front of the bay window. “Why don’t we go to Home Depot after we finish our coffee?” she said, surprised by her enthusiasm. For years she had wished for at least one unplanned Saturday where she could experience the contemplative solitude she had read about in books. Now the thought of having time to evaluate her life seemed cruel punishment.

Grady used the back of an envelope to make a list of the things he would need. As long as he has the right tool for the job his life is complete, Sara thought. He had no desire to question his manner of existence. No need for regrets. At that moment she envied his simplicity.

She looked at her engagement ring, remembering when they were first married. They had struggled financially for years and agonized about whether or not to buy their house. But they had been happy back then, hadn’t they?

Sara and Grady arrived at the home improvement store early and roamed the aisles with the oversized shopping cart. Sara pushed the cart, rushing to keep up with Grady’s pace as they moved quickly through this vast world of fixtures, tools and lumber.

“Grady, is there a reason we’re going so fast?”

“I want to beat the crowds,” he said.

“Crowds?” Sara asked. “The store is deserted.”

Grady ignored her comment.

Sparrows chirped and flew among the rafters as if resigned to their captivity. Yet the large sliding doors opened frequently, giving them glimpses of freedom. Why didn’t they make a break for it? Sara wondered. Was freedom that scary? She thought of her own need to escape. No, it wasn’t that easy. Beyond those doors was something foreign and unknown. She felt compassion for the sparrows but little for herself.

His task completed, Grady approached his favorite cashier, a short, apple-shaped woman who looked like she existed on even less sleep than Sara did.

“There they are,” she said to the younger woman next to her. “I was telling Jody you hadn’t been in yet. But here you are, regular as clockwork. Every Saturday morning.” The cashier in the next aisle smiled over at them. Her name, in bold letters, revealed the word “Trainee” underneath.

Grady’s charm with other women always surprised her. Sara studied him for a moment, imagining what the cashier saw when she looked at her husband. Grady had aged well. His graying hair accented his blue/gray eyes and the five miles he ran religiously every morning kept him physically fit. She would never have guessed from knowing him as a gangly, awkward boy that he would mature into such a handsome man.

“How are you, Ginny?” Grady asked the cashier.