The Widow's Season (31 page)

Adele presided from a wingback chair, her yellow blouse ruffled at her neck like a daffodil’s petals. She patted the divan to her right when Sarah entered.

“I’m glad you’ve come.”

Platters of lemon squares and brownies covered the coffee table, and Sarah took a macaroon from a passing tray. “If I’d known it was a dessert potluck, I would have brought something.”

Adele waved as if brushing away a gnat. “The group always insists on bringing food to my house. They seem to think that baking is too strenuous for an old woman. Are you planning to help with the Easter food drive?”

“I hadn’t heard about it.”

“I think you’d like it. On the Saturday before Easter we pack huge baskets with food for the adults, and chocolate bunnies and toys for the children. We deliver them that afternoon; I was hoping you’d drive with me.”

“I will if I’m in town.”

“You have travel plans?” Adele asked.

“Possibly.”

Around them, the widows were sharing news, the conversation a moving talisman that each woman was required to touch. Ruby’s stepson had dropped his lawsuit; in return she had willed the house to him upon her death. She expected the “son of a bitch to knock her off” any day now. Meanwhile, the water-skier’s widow had just returned from Florida. She had begun to swim again, and was allowing her children to sail sunfish and catamarans—nothing with speed or deadly propellers.

When the conversation reached Sarah she tried to pass it along lightly—“I don’t have much to report”—but the red-haired soci ologist wasn’t satisfied.

“Have you seen your husband lately?”

“Yes.” Sarah hesitated, feeling the women’s eyes upon her. “But he’s not happy with me. He doesn’t like what I’ve been doing with my life.”

“That’s classic.” The professor took over. “I’ve been reading ghost narratives from the past seven centuries—real accounts, not Edgar Allan Poe. And from the seventeenth century forward the most common hauntings have been from legacy ghosts who didn’t approve of what their widows were doing, either with their money or their children.”

“What were the ghosts worried about before the seventeenth century?” Sarah asked.

“Mostly purgatory. They wanted their widows to pray for them or give the church a lot of money to buy their way into heaven.” The professor bit into a brownie. “And of course there are the ghosts who don’t like their widows’ sex lives, sort of like the king in
Hamlet
.”

Sarah blushed at the affinity between herself and Shakespeare’s Gertrude while Margaret, who had been sitting nearby, rose to place another log on the fire.

“Well,” said Ruby, turning to face Sarah. “I don’t know about disgruntled husbands, only obnoxious stepsons. But as I see it, it’s your life. So
fuck
him.”

Adele gave a disapproving cough, and the conversation moved along. Sarah concentrated on her macaroon, until she felt Adele’s hoarse whisper at her ear. “You know, dear, I love my visits with Edward. I wouldn’t give him up for anything in the world. But I’m a great-grandmother, and my life is in the past. You’ve got most of your life ahead of you. If your husband isn’t making you happy, maybe it’s time to let him go.”

Sarah patted Adele’s hand. “That’s easier said than done.”

 

 

 

When Margaret pulled into Sarah’s driveway late that evening, she shifted the car into park and lowered her hands into her lap. “There’s something that’s been bothering me.”

“What’s that?”

“The things you said tonight about David. How he doesn’t approve of what you’ve been doing with your life.”

“I should have said that I don’t
think
he
would
have approved.”

“It’s not your verb tense that’s the problem.” Margaret raised her hands and gripped the steering wheel. “This has been around for a long time, and I just never thought that I should bring it up.”

“Go ahead and tell me.” Sarah braced herself while Margaret paused, looking out the windshield.

“Remember three years ago when we went shopping in Charlottesville? We both bought new outfits to wear to the fund-raising dance for the free clinic? And you chose that red dress with the gold thread woven into the fabric?”

“The flapper dress?” Sarah laughed.

“I thought it was lovely,” said Margaret.

“I did, too.”

“Then why didn’t you wear it?” Margaret turned to face Sarah. “You arrived in a black skirt and white satin blouse. I remember it clearly. After all that talk about having some fun with your wardrobe. I never said anything, but I’ve always had my suspicions.”

Sarah remembered it, too—how, on the night of the dance, she had gotten ready before David was home from work. The new dress had inspired her to paint her fingernails red and wear raspberry lipstick. She thought that the colors complemented her dark hair; when she smiled in the mirror she was a woman on fire.

David entered the bedroom just as she was putting on her gold earrings.

“What do you think?” she asked, spinning around so that the dress floated above her knees.

David hesitated for one second too long. “You look great in whatever you wear.”

He might as well have said that she looked like the whore of Babylon; diplomacy was wasted on her paper-thin ego. “I guess the dress is a bit much?” She forced a smile.

“Yes,” said David, clearly pleased that they were in accord. “That’s what I thought too. But what do I know about fashion? You should wear whatever you like.”

When Sarah glanced back into the mirror she saw that she resembled a fire truck more than a flame. Her lips were carnivorous, her fingers bloody.

“Maybe on another occasion.” She had retreated to the bathroom in search of nail-polish remover.

“It wasn’t David’s fault,” Sarah explained to Margaret. “He told me I should wear whatever I liked.”

“But he wasn’t wild about the dress?”

“Not even a little.”

“So what did you do with it?”

“I gave it to Goodwill two days later.”

Margaret sighed. “I figured it was something like that.” She flexed her fingers on the steering wheel. “You know I liked David a lot. I admired him; everyone did. But it must have been hard to be married to a man with such a strong personality.”

“You think that I deferred to him too much?” Sarah smiled faintly.

“I think you are deferring to him still.”

Sarah felt that if she stayed in the car one minute longer she would break down, confess everything, collapse under the weight of the last five months.

“Message received.” She opened the car door and stepped out.

“The last stage of mourning is separation.” Margaret spoke quietly, as if she were talking to herself.

Sarah nodded. “Same as the last stage of marriage.”

In mid-March Sarah drove to the cabin for her final visit. The weather was dry and sunny, which she usually took as a good omen, but as clouds of dust rose from the gravel, she felt a slight foreboding. Here was the ditch where her tires had sunk three weeks ago; there was the tree that had shielded her from David’s eyes. Here was the long stretch of road where his flashlight had bobbed like a phantom’s lantern. In the face of these dark memories, nature was her only ally. At the foot of the driveway, rhododendrons offered purple nosegays, and when she pulled up at the cabin she saw forsythia in the backyard, shooting fountains of yellow sparks.

Inside, the cabin air was thick with its usual musty scent; the fireplace appeared untouched. But when she stepped out on the deck and trained her eyes upon the river, she made out a man in green flannel at the dock’s end.

“Hello!” she called, and David turned.

He approached over mounds of uncut grass bent low from weeks of snow, pausing at the tulipwood tree to push the chicken wire deeper into the earth. At the bottom of the deck stairs he stopped and looked up at her, his posture reminiscent of Halloween.

“We need to talk,” she said, and when she opened the door he walked past, into the cabin.

They sat across from each other at the pine table, Sarah squeezing her hands tightly in her lap.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said, about going away, and you know how much that appeals to me.” The slightest hint of a smile crossed David’s lips.

“But we can’t go together,” she went on. “It’s impossible. That was never more than a mutual dream.” She lifted her hands and hugged her arms around her chest. “It’s time for me to get on with my life.”

“How do you plan to do that?” asked David.

“I called our department chair yesterday and told him I wanted to get back to work next fall. He’s going on sabbatical, so he says that I can teach as many of his courses as I like. British literature mostly—Shakespeare through Dickens. I’ll have to do a lot of reading over the next few months.

“I’ve also decided to sell the house,” Sarah continued. “Spring is the season to do it, so I’m planning to put it on the market in another month or so. And this cabin. Too many memories.”

David nodded.

“Margaret has invited me to stay at her place for a while. At least until I’ve found another house. I think it might be a good idea, to avoid being so isolated.”

“It sounds like you’ve mapped everything out.”

“There’s one more thing.” Sarah stared at the table’s wood grain. “I’m going to see about adopting a baby from somewhere overseas. Not right away. It will take a while to work out all the details. But sometime in the next few years.”

She looked up and was surprised to see that David’s eyes were blurry. “I would have liked to raise a child with you,” he said. He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Things never work out the way you plan.”

David glanced around until his eyes settled on the easel. “I haven’t completed your portrait . . . I don’t need you to model, but it would help to have you around, so I can see your profile, and your hands, and your hair. It won’t take long.”

He’s stalling, thought Sarah. Still unwilling to let her go. She rose and walked to the easel, looking down at her unfinished self. Her features were expressionless, her acrylic hands cloudy. Outside the painted window, the world had not yet taken shape.

“I can stay for a few days,” she said. “Just until you’re done.”

And so for three days she stayed at the cabin, sitting on the dock and dangling her feet in the cold water. In the afternoons David painted while she read on the couch, poised so that he could see her face, and the color of her hair. It was strange, how slowly the portrait progressed. Her hands grew fingers, her fingers grew nails. The windowpanes filled with trees and clouds, but her face remained blank, impervious to the view.

Meanwhile, time moved at a geological pace. Across the river the limestone cliffs rose in gray and brown scribbles, each layer another monument to drought or flood. She watched the water carrying streaks of mud into the crags, and felt the real danger of being lulled back into dreams. She was reminded of the cicadas that had surfaced years ago, their brief intermission of activity after years of rest, brown shells left clinging to the pine trees. How well she understood the impulse to burrow, to live in fits and starts and long stretches of retreat. But she had to resist while resistance was possible.

The end came on the fourth morning. Rising at nine-thirty, she padded silently into the living room and discovered David at his canvas, scraping her eyes and mouth with a wet Q-tip. She watched her irises and lips retreat into a foggy cloud, and thought, See no evil. Speak no evil.

“It’s not right yet,” David explained when he noticed her standing across the room.

“It never will be right,” she answered.

She walked up behind his chair, wrapped her arms around his neck, and leaned her lips into his hair. “We’ve lingered here much too long.”

David placed his right hand over hers and pressed it to his chest. She rested her cheek on his head until she felt the tremors in his body settle into long, deep breaths. Slower and slower the breathing came, quieter and quieter, until she couldn’t tell that he was breathing at all. Then she felt his body stiffen. A vehicle had pulled into the driveway.

Sarah drew her hands away and walked to the front window.

“Oh God,” she murmured. “It’s a police car.”

She turned back toward the easel, but the room was empty. Outside, she thought she heard the creaking of the deck stairs.

Sarah took a long, shaking breath and opened the front door.

“Hey there, Carver.”

“Hey, Sarah. Mind if I come in?”

She swung the door wide.

Carver removed his hat as he entered. “I’ve been trying to reach you for a couple of days now.”

“Did Margaret tell you where to find me?”

“Actually I had my own idea that you might be coming out here.”

“Why’s that?”

Carver leaned against the kitchen island. “You know your neighbor Rich Haskins? I play poker with him about once a month, and I asked him last November how you seemed to be doing. He told me that you’d asked for the power to be turned back on at this place. That struck him as kind of strange. He didn’t think you’d be wanting to come out here in the winter.”

Sarah felt the blood rise in her cheeks. “I hadn’t thought about Rich.”

Carver shrugged. “We live in a very small town.” He looked around the room. “I came out here myself last summer. Right after David disappeared. Did you know that?”

Sarah nodded. “I told you where to find the key.”

“Actually, the key wasn’t in that spot. But the door was unlocked, and the key was on the counter, right where David must have left it.”

“I think I’ll sit down.” Sarah took a chair at the table.

“That’s a good idea.” Carver paused at David’s easel. “I noticed David’s painting last time I was here.”