The Longings of Wayward Girls (18 page)

“I need a drink,” she says into the car’s quiet interior.
“let’s get you a drink,” ray says. “let’s get you that lobster.” He opens the truck door and sadie hears its metal scrape. The seat springs groan. He tells sadie he’s gotten used to the sounds of the old truck, that he even imagines his father hearing the same things and staring out of the same splattered windshield and feels close to him because of it.
“you’re more generous toward him,” sadie said. “now that he’s gone.”
“since I found the bottles,” he says.
ray steps around the truck to open sadie’s door and tells her he hated his father more for giving up the drinking than the drinking itself. “He was so righteous when he quit,” he said. “At least when he drank he could be pitied. we could see he felt guilty for being a bastard, and he was smothering his guilt with drink.”
ray said it was as if when the drinking stopped the guilt disappeared as well. “He was still a bastard then, just sober. Always telling us what to do and how to do it. Faulting us for the slightest mistake.”
Finding his father’s bottles, hidden in the linen closet, tucked inside a crocheted tissue caddie, was like uncovering the man’s weaknesses, bit by bit. ray tells her he found the first bottle and went on a search of the house, digging through cabinets and bureaus, even under loose floorboards.
“I found fifteen bottles in all,” he says, explaining that the old man must have forgotten where he’d hidden one and bought another, evidence of years of covert drinking.
“And that makes you happy?” sadie says skeptically.
ray stands beside her, his face bright with vindication. “yeah,” he says. “It was pretty pathetic. I found a bottle in a bag of birdseed.”
“Did he put any in the hidey spot?” sadie asks. she remembers his angry phone conversation with beth at the old house.
ray’s face clouds and he stares at her with a dark look like the one he gave her in the bedroom. “no,” he says, shutting down the conversation, taking her hand. They walk across the parking lot to the restaurant, strangely somber.
As a child sadie’s parents would bring her to Cherrystones for dinner when they vacationed at the shore. They would come in and sit at their regular booth, and her father would have the cook make her mother a special lobster thermidor, and sadie would have a club sandwich. she’d sit quietly while her parents drank martinis, and her mother would begin to criticize her father for something he’d done or said that day. These arguments would be conducted in soft, conversational tones—unlike those at home—and only sadie, small and unable to leave, would witness the escalating anger, the biting remarks that could never be taken back.
The restaurant is much as sadie remembers from her childhood: smoky bar, dark wooden booths, shuttered windows. everything is varnished, like the deck of a ship. The light fixtures are lanterns hung by coiled ropes. ray leans in close to her ear. “shiver me timbers,” he whispers. His lips brush her neck. There is no hostess to seat them, and they wander into the dark looking for a table. The bar has a television, the noise of drunken sunburned vacationers. sadie tugs ray into the dining room. Here there are tables and booths, mostly empty. A family is at one long table, and they barely glance up at sadie and ray. The waitress ambles past, her arms filled with baskets of fried clams.
“sit anywhere,” she says. “It’s just me tonight.”
Her voice is careful and low, a calm, almost musical sound. she wears jeans, a T-shirt. Her belly is swollen with child. The arm holding the tray is a tattoo sleeve: deep-pink-petaled flowers, a swirl of green stems and leaves. sadie feels an awful yearning. she and ray slide into a back booth. It is so dim, and the booth so wide, that they could lie down together on the bench. when she is with ray, every place is an opportunity to have sex. she turns to him, playfully trying to squelch her sadness, and pushes him back. He laughs and shakes his head. “oh no you don’t,” he says.
The waitress appears, tugging down her T-shirt. she wears her jeans below the mound of her stomach, and a strip of skin shows. “I’m emma,” she says in her music-box voice. she looks at them. she has wavy red hair, blue eyes. Her mouth is a half-smile. sadie remembers only too well the tranquilizing effects of pregnancy, the way her body made the rest of the world seem under a gauzy haze. she envies the girl and her beautiful skin, her baby. she looks at her and smiles, one that feels false and stiff on her face.
“when are you due?” she asks.
emma puts her hand on her stomach as if for confirmation. “she’ll be here october eighth,” she says. “Do you need menus?”
ray is staring at sadie, and sadie stares back. “Menu?” she asks him.
He nods and emma turns to retrieve two large sheets of what looks like parchment, covered in plastic. The edges are burned, like a treasure map sadie made once in fourth grade. The restaurant is quiet—the family at the long table is busy eating. The restaurant smells of spilled clam broth, of old bay seasoning. she realizes she has never brought her children here, and she feels something like terror at what she is doing. she imagines Craig appearing in the doorway. what expression would he wear? Disappointment? Fury? sorrow? she has no idea, and this is more frightening than the idea of being discovered by him.
“I’d like a bloody Mary,” sadie says.
emma nods. she leans against the booth and crosses her arms.
And you?
her look says. ray orders a beer. she leaves them to get their drinks.
“we don’t need the menus,” sadie tells him.
she can’t be bothered to look it over. His nearness, their situation, distracts her. They sit side by side. she thinks it odd that she can know his body intimately and yet find everything else about him still a mystery.
“what do you think beth did when she found you weren’t at the house?” sadie says now. “would she have waited for you to get back?”
ray makes a face. “oh, I’m not going back. And she knows exactly why.”
sadie’s skirt and blouse are still damp. The restaurant’s airconditioning is cold. And yet she doesn’t think these things cause the chill she feels. she stares at him as if she hasn’t heard him correctly, and he turns to her, his expression blank, difficult to construe.
“I mean, what did she think for the last seventeen years?”
“ray,” she says.
“yes, sadie.”
“where do you plan to go if you’re not going back?”
“you mean where do
we
plan to go?” He leans in and kisses her, slowly, and then pulls away. He keeps his face close to hers and grins, boyish and silly.
sadie wonders what he is giving up to be with her. nothing. He is giving up nothing at all. she ignores his suggestion that they are running off together.
They
are not running off together. The only clothes she has are the ones she’s wearing. but it is getting later and later, and soon it will be too late to go back. she imagines being ousted from her old life, a reviled imposter. As with most things unseemly she will go unmentioned, disappear like she was never there. They are all tethered to their houses, the rooms and the people inside calling them back with needs to be met. somehow, sadie thinks, she has cut her own tether. she thinks of Craig’s smiles, his soft, shaved cheeks, his persistence. All those years ago she loved that he loved her without knowing very much about her, assuming he knew all he needed to. even as she is thinking about leaving him, sadie is aware that she loves him still.
emma brings their drinks and they order food, too much for two people to eat. sadie recalls doing this as a teenager— she and her friends scrambling into booths at the Farm shop restaurant, ordering specialty cheeseburgers called Golden Abigails, fries and onion rings, sundaes and milkshakes. The food made them happy, like a drug. now she orders chowder and lobster, the club sandwich the restaurant still offers. ray orders fried clams and fries. They will share it all, they tell emma, who smiles her little smile and nods. she doesn’t write any of it down. she gives them a slightly suspicious look, as if they are children who will dine and dash and leave her with the tab.
“Don’t worry,” sadie tells her. “we’re responsible restaurant patrons.”
she sucks her drink through a straw and chews on the celery. ray puts his cold mouth on hers and they kiss. she tries not to see herself as she looks now, giddy, making out in a restaurant, the kind of woman she would normally despise and talk about. It is a relief to be the type of woman she despises, a woman like her mother. she sees that it is so much harder to be the other.
“I feel like I could just burst,” she tells him.
ray grins and kisses her again. He is all intensity and focus. sadie feels he has closed out the rest of the world for her.
other patrons enter the dining room. Two couples, the women in sundresses, the men in polo shirts; another older couple and a young girl that sadie imagines is a granddaughter or a niece; and an older woman who seats herself at a small table near them. she has on a peach-colored sleeveless blouse. Her shoulders are tan and strong for a woman her age. she wears her white hair back in a chignon. sadie looks at her, and cannot stop looking. she is someone she knows. sadie cannot place her—not a woman from Gladwyn Hollow, not a Tunxis Player. she feels light-headed with the threat of being recognized. one of the children’s teachers? A historical society member? she doesn’t want ray to see. but he is busy cracking the lobster claws and pulling out the meat. The table is littered with the bright remains of the lobster shell. He dips the meat into the butter and holds it up for her and sadie opens her mouth. The older woman orders a drink from emma. sadie can hear her voice, low and authoritative.
“A Manhattan, please,” she says.
sadie thinks if this were the era in which women wore gloves this woman would have now taken the opportunity to remove them, tugging at the fingers of each hand, setting them inside her old-fashioned purse. And in a flash she knows who it is. she remembers the letters:
My darling Bea, you must never forget me.
she remembers a fall day filled with the scent of swirling leaves and car exhaust, and she feels her stomach drop the way it did on the Ferris wheel as a child. ray leans over to kiss her and she is suddenly wary. what will Mrs. sidelman think of her? she pulls away, just a bit. ray freezes.
“what?” he says.
sadie sees him take in the dining room, lighting on each of the guests, looking for the source of her refusal.
“nothing,” she says. she kisses him lightly on his mouth. His lips taste of butter, the tartar sauce that came with the clams. “It’s nothing.”
but ray has seen Mrs. sidelman. He slinks down into the booth as if he is hiding.
“you’ve got to be shitting me,” he says. “It’s that old bitch from the neighborhood.”
sadie shushes him. “Mrs. sidelman,” she says.
Then ray reaches out and takes sadie’s face in his hands. His eyes are haunted and mournful. she cannot imagine what has come over him.
“It’s just Mrs. sidelman,” she says softly, reassuring him. “she’s harmless.”
but between them is now a widening painful silence, into which pour their respective memories.
Summer 1979.
“It’s nothing to do with us,” sadie says. “Don’t think about it.”
The food is unappetizing now, the mess of the table an embarrassment. sadie’s head is foggy from the drink. emma comes by and removes some of the plates and asks them if they’d like another round. ray says yes. He has his chin in his hand. every so often he peers around sadie to look at Mrs. sidelman. sadie dreads glancing her way. she won’t do it.
“we should go,” she whispers.
“why are you whispering?” ray asks.
The dining room is fuller now; the voices of the patrons rise and fall, a regular din.
“she can’t know who we are, can she?” she says. “It’s been too long.”
“she must be ancient,” ray says. He is fiddling with his fries, stacking them up in a small pile in the plastic basket. when his beer arrives he gulps it down. emma pours out water from a pitcher, her arm rising over them, languid and colorful.
“Have you picked out a name?” sadie asks her. Despite the waiting customers, the orders she must be tallying in her head, she smiles and leans against the back of the booth. “Cecilia,” she says. “From Frances burney.”
emma places her hand on her stomach. Her T-shirt rides up and sadie can see a bright blue vein under the pale skin. beside her ray sings, “Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart / you’re shaking my confidence daily / oh, Cecilia, I’m down on my knees / I’m begging you please to come home / Come on home.”
sadie stares at him in surprise. His ability to sing is another thing she’s forgotten about him.
“simon and Garfunkel,” he says.
emma laughs, a sound more melodious than her speaking voice. “you’re good.”
And then Mrs. sidelman leans toward them. “burney was a brilliant satirist,” she says. “Cecilia was an heiress who could only keep her money if a man agreed to marry her and take her name.”
emma turns and smiles at Mrs. sidelman. “That’s it exactly,” she says.
sadie feels she should announce herself now. I’m sadie watkins, she could say. she might invite Mrs. sidelman to sit with them. but she says nothing. emma looks at them, then back at Mrs. sidelman.
“Check?” ray says, his voice low, a mumble.
emma saunters off, slowly, slowly, as if she is walking through a field or easing herself into cold water. sadie worries that Mrs. sidelman will continue to speak, but she has turned to her drink and seems to be absorbed in thought. she remembers Mrs. sidelman’s house, the shelves filled with books, the carefully placed vases and crystal on the sideboard, the painting of the woman whose eyes bored into you like an accusation. she was a retired teacher. Her family helped found the public library, and she wrote arts reviews for the newspaper. sadie remembers her mother standing on the back deck with her drink, watching Mrs. sidelman in her backyard with slit eyes after the woman had reviewed
The Glass Menagerie.
“Clare, don’t be such a bad sport,” sadie’s father said. He was sitting at the patio table with the paper. The grill smoked, and every so often he folded the paper and got up and checked the steaks.
“everyone else said that my laura was brilliant. what’s wrong with her?”
“she has to say something interesting. reviewers like to rile things up. what do you care?”
“I hate the way she fiddles with everything over there. look at her plucking up weeds with those veiny hands. look at her flat ass and her old-fashioned shorts. she hasn’t had sex in years.”