I wrote this story ten years ago as my entry in a contest sponsored by the University Of Utah. I won first prize in the short story competition. Today, Sarah reminds me of all the choices I might have been better of if I had chosen a different road to follow. Sarah I sat alone in the back of the small, oh so exclusive suburban church watching as only an outsider watches. I had no part in the funeral services although my heart would be buried at the graveside. I half listened to the unctuous, self-important preacher extol the virtues of a woman he had never met in an orator’s voice that had no sincerity. My own thoughts ranged back over the past as I cried inside for that which might have been. I asked myself yet once again why I was even there. Of course I already knew the answer. I was here to try my best to put finished to our relationship. To lose her again, this time to death was almost more than I could bear. We were both cheated out of so much! Charlie, her husband sat in the front pew masking his non-grief well. He looked almost bored with the whole proceeding. Beside him sat a young woman who could only be Sarah’s daughter. She looked so much like her mother. Numbly I stared and kept staring at her through the rest of the droning service. The last amen sounded and I got up to leave. As I walked back outside I blinked my eyes and waited until they became adjusted to the bright sunlight. It seemed so wrong for the sun to shine brightly and for the birds to sing so sweet and happy on this day that held so much sadness for me. I resented the ordinariness of it all. To me it would have been more fitting for the day to be gloomy, dark clouds hanging heavy in the sky and no birds singing as the world mourned the passing of my beloved. But it was not to be. Instead, the world didn’t even notice she was gone, dead now always and forever. So far out of my reach. “I win and you lose. She was still mine at the end.” Charlie Potts, the not too sorrowful, newly made widower gloated at his imagined “winning.” His nasal rasping voice grated on me as he added, “You think I didn’t know about you and her? Hell boy, I had her watched almost from the time her daddy told her to marry me. You never did anything I could catch you at or you wouldn’t be standing here right now, I promise you.” “Charles, you are a pathetic fool,” I told him contemptuously. “You were when we were in high school and you have not improved with age. “You never understood the first thing about Sarah or what she meant to me. Now you never will.” I turned away and started down the steps. I wanted to get away from this glittering rich man’s house of worship where no God had ever dwelled and back into my own quiet world of near anonymity. I fought back the tears I felt welling up in my eyes. I was damned if I’d let him see them or any other sign of the depth of my feelings. “Don’t you turn your back on me!” he screeched as I went down the steps, to get away from him before I lost my temper. I was damned if I’d let the arrogant, selfish fool goad me into what I would consider a sacrilege, to fight on the church steps right after her funeral services were over. He yelled foul names at my back and I kept walking away from him. I walked the whole four miles back to my house, eyes burning and throat aching as the hurt inside refused to go away. She was gone forever now and I’d have to get over it. Self-torture over the might have been things of this world isn’t my way of coping. Peg, my old terrier walked stiffly out of the yard to greet me as I approached. I scooped her up in my arms and told her sadly, “She’s gone, old girl, Sarah is gone.” Peg let out a “woof” and struggled to get down when she heard Sarah’s name. I sat her back down on the sidewalk and watched as she futily looked for our Sarah. Finally she whined her disappointment and followed me toward the house. I tiredly let myself into the house and sat in my old recliner. Then I wept, now that no man could see me in my sorrow. Finally the tears slowed and then stopped completely. I sat there, remembering how it had been twenty-some years ago when I held her close and vowed, “Sarah May, I love you so much I’m going to explode.” She hugged hard and whispered, “Me too. Let’s go back inside before we get foolish.” We had engaged in a little petting and quit after one near mishap. We both vowed to wait for marriage, our marriage, because we wanted things done “just right.” “About now, I’m ready to get foolish as hell,” I told her. She laughed and dragged me back inside so we could dance another slow dance together. It was the night of the senior prom and we guys were all wearing our best dress suits and the girls in their best formal wear or party dresses. It was our last magical night. Just one week later a tearful Sarah rushed up to me in the school hallway and sobbed, “I have to marry Charlie Potts. If I don’t Daddy will go to jail.” “What?” I exclaimed, not understanding. “What are you talking about? What jail?” Numbly I stood there in the hallway, holding her tight against me, trying to make sense of what she had just said. Charlie Potts was about the most unpopular person in the whole school. “Charlie’s father says that Daddy stole thousands of dollars from the bank and that he can prove it.” She looked up at me and sobbed, “What am I going to do?” “Let’s run away right now. If we elope they can’t make you marry anybody else.” “But then Daddy will be arrested and go to jail. I have to do what Daddy says. I don’t want him in prison; I love him, he’s my father.” Slowly the whole sad tale came out. It was all about hospital bills. Her mother had a brain tumor that appeared suddenly and seemed to grow larger almost by the hour. It was malignant. Either she would undergo an operation or she died. Even if she was operated on, there was little hope. They operated and she died anyway while still on the operating table. It had all been so very expensive. The insurance was not enough and their savings were all gone. More money had been needed, so Sarah’s father stole it and got caught. We cut classes the rest of the day and walked aimlessly, seeking solace in each other’s nearness. We ended up at her house and the inevitable happened. It was the only time we made love to each other. Finally we got dressed and I blindly walked home. Sarah lay on her bed sobbing. A week later she married Charlie and became legally Missus Charlie Potts. They moved to New York City, leaving me and her father behind. Two years later I married a nice girl who became less nice with time and after ten years of childless bickering she thankfully left me for another man and I remained unmarried. I worked at my father’s old job and in turn became the foreman after he retired. My life became my work. Then it all changed. Sarah and Charlie moved back to take over his father’s bank after the old man died. It was sheer chance that we met at the Library. I had just selected a book of Poe’s short stories and bumped into someone behind me. I turned and we both exclaimed at the same time, “Oh my God!” I felt a sharp thrill in my stomach. We laughed and I said, “Oh Sarah, you are as beautiful as that last afternoon we spent together. You are a little older, but even more beautiful than I remember you. Oh God, you look so good!” My heart began to pound in my chest and I had trouble breathing. All the old feelings of love, dormant all these years, were still there inside me. I never realized how much I missed her until I saw her again. “Oh God, how I have missed you.” “And I you. You were never far from my thoughts all those years we lived in Manhattan. Oh, my dear, I see you and it seems like only yesterday, or last week and not…” She paused a moment, “twenty years. Has it really been that long?” “Yes,” I told her, “It has and I felt every one of them peel away just now.” We stood there as people grumbled and moved around us, looking into each other’s eyes, saying nonsensical things, reveling in the newly rekindled feelings we shared with each other. “Please,” I begged her, “could we go somewhere for coffee and a pastry and catch up on all the lost days since I saw you last?” She hesitated and then nodded yes. We spent that perfect Saturday afternoon together, reveling in each other’s presence, laughing and sharing all our thoughts. Solemnly she said, “My dear, I have a confession to make.” I touched her lips with a fingertip and said, “Hush, confess later. Enjoy the moment.” Every Saturday after that, we met at the library and shared pastries and coffee and rekindled the love we had for each other. Then all too soon she told me, “I had decided to leave him as you asked and come live with you. But it’s too late. I ‘m going to die, soon. The doctor told me yesterday I have leukemia. I go into the hospital this evening. “Please come visit me tomorrow, I have something to tell you, something very important. She turned away from me and walked out of my life again. Numbly I watched her slowly get into a taxi and ride away. In the morning she was gone. Our last meeting was never to be… Suddenly old Peg let out a low “woof,” bringing me back out of my reverie. There was a knock at the door and Peg whined. Slowly I opened the door and for a moment thought I was looking at Sarah May. She had her mother’s honey blond hair and that classically sculpted face I so loved. “Yes?” I asked her cautiously. She handed me a sheet of paper. “Mother gave me this before she went to the hospital. You had better read it.” She smiled her embarrassment and said, “It seems that you and not him,” she made a face and continued, “are my father. It’s all there in the letter.” That night my newly found daughter left late to go to her apartment. She left that letter with me. I placed it on the nightstand by my bed where I could touch it and smile a happy foolish smile. Sorry, Charlie, I thought to myself as I drifted off to sleep. It looks like I had a lot more of Sarah May than either of us ever realized. Smiling, I slept.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 12:39:09 +0000
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