Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [100]
Edwin doesn’t want to tell Sabrina about the incident. She is preoccupied with the play and often listens to him distractedly. Edwin has decided that he was foolish to suspect that she had a lover. The play is her love. Her nerves are on edge. One chilly afternoon, on the weekend before Oklahoma! opens, he suggests driving over to Kentucky Lake.
“You need a break,” he tells her. “A little relaxation. I’m worried about you.”
“This is nothing,” she says. “Two measly lines. I’m not exactly a star.”
“What if you were? Would you get an abortion?”
“What are you talking about? I’m not pregnant.”
“You said once you would. Remember?”
“Oh. I would if the baby was going to be creepy like those people on your bus.”
“But how would you know if it was?”
“They can tell.” Sabrina stares at him and then laughs. “Through science.”
In the early winter, the lake is deserted. The beaches are washed clean, and the water is clear and gray. Now and then, as they walk by the water, they hear a gunshot from the Land Between the Lakes wilderness area. “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top” is going through Edwin’s head, and he wishes he could throw the Oklahoma! sound track in the lake, as easily as Laura Combs threw the Plasmatics out the window of the bus. He has an idea that after the play, Sabrina is going to feel a letdown too great for him to deal with.
When Sabrina makes a comment about the “artistic intention” of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Edwin says, “Do you know what Janis Joplin said?”
“No—what?” Sabrina stubs the toe of her jogging shoe in the sand.
“Janis Joplin said, ‘I don’t write songs. I just make ’em up.’ I thought that was clever.”
“That’s funny, I guess.”
“She said she was going to her high school reunion in Port Arthur, Texas. She said, ‘I’m going to laugh a lot. They laughed me out of class, out of town, and out of the state.’ ”
“You sound like you’ve got that memorized,” Sabrina says, looking at the sky.
“I saw it on TV one night when you were gone, an old tape of a Dick Cavett show. It seemed worth remembering.” Edwin rests his arm around Sabrina’s waist, as thin as a post. He says, “I see a lot of things on TV, when you’re not there.”
Wild ducks are landing on the water, scooting in like water skiers. Sabrina seems impressed by them. They stand there until the last one lands.
Edwin says, “I bet you can’t even remember Janis Joplin. You’re just a young girl, Sabrina. Oklahoma! will seem silly to you one of these days.”
Sabrina hugs his arm. “That don’t matter.” She breaks into laughter. “You’re cute when you’re being serious.”
Edwin grabs her hand and jerks her toward him. “Look, Sabrina. I was never serious before in my life. I’m just now, at this point in my life—this week—getting to be serious.” His words scare him, and he adds with a grin that stretches his dimple, “I’m serious about you.”
“I know that,” she says. She is leading the way along the water, through the trees, pulling him by the hand. “But you never believe how much I care about you,” she says, drawing him to her. “I think we get along real good. That’s why I wish you’d marry me instead of just stringing me along.”
Edwin gasps like a swimmer surfacing. It is very cold on the beach. Another duck skis onto the water.
—
Oklahoma! has a four-night run, with one matinee. Edwin goes to the play three times, surprised that he enjoys it. Sabrina’s lines come off differently each time, and each evening she discusses the impression she made. Edwin tells her that she is the prettiest woman in the cast, and that her lines are cute. He wants to marry Sabrina, although he hasn’t yet said he would. He wishes he could buy her a speedboat for a wedding present. She wants him to get a better-paying job, and she has ideas about a honeymoon cottage at the lake. It feels odd that Sabrina has proposed to him. He thinks of her