Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon [63]
“Oh, Grady,” said Sara. She kissed me. We fell backward on the purple davenport, and she pressed herself against me.
“I started this garden right around the same time I fell in love with you,” she said, in an incantatory, almost childish tone of voice, lying crooked against me. “It was in April. There was nothing out here. Just bare ground and dead grass. I was the same way really. Then one day I came out here to find a flower or something to put in a note to you.”
She paused, and I realized she was waiting for me to take my cue. She gave my shoulder an impatient shake.
“The crocuses,” I said.
“I walked out into the yard and there were crocuses everywhere. I still don’t know where they came from, or who planted them. I asked you to drive me out to that equipment rental place on the South Side. It was our second date.”
“It was on Opening Day.”
“You liked it that I let you listen to the ball game. I got that rototiller thing and I plowed under the whole field. Then I had them come in with all that horseshit. The ground steamed for a week. Then I put up the fence. I built the beds. I planted spinach and broccoli and wax beans.”
“I remember” I said.
“You’re going to tell Emily about us,” she said, in the same dreamy voice. She reached for my right hand and laid it atop the modest dome of her belly. “About this.”
I lay on my side, looking up at the tangled iron lace of the roof over our heads. I saw that Sara, alone in a frail canoe, was drifting nearer and nearer to the roaring misty cataract of motherhood, and that she now believed I was right behind her, in the stern, madly paddling. I searched my feelings, an activity never far removed from looking for a dead rat in a spidery crawl space under the house. I was appalled to see, after five years’ exposure to the unstable isotopes of my love, how many of her hopes Sara Gaskell still entrusted to me; how much of her faith there remained for me to shatter. How could I tell her the terrible things I had to tell her? Your dog is dead. You have to get an abortion.
“I’ll tell Emily,” I said. After a moment I took my hand from her belly, kissed her cheek, and then hauled myself to my feet. “I’d better get going. I left James Leer sitting out in the car.”
“James Leer? What’s he doing out in the car? Is he all right?”
“He’s fine,” I said. “He’s sleeping off a mighty hangover, is all. I told him I’d only be a few minutes. I didn’t know—”
“Are you taking him with you? Out to Kinship?”
“That’s right,” I said. “He’s not too interested in WordFest, I guess, and I felt like I could use the company.”
“Especially for the ride back, eh?” said Sara.
“Especially that,” I said.
I kissed Sara good-bye. Then I let the greenhouse breathe me out.
When I got back to the car James slowly opened one eye and looked at me, as though afraid to expose any more of himself than this moist and bloodshot half inch to the perils of waking life.
“Well?” he mumbled as I climbed in. “Did you tell her?”
“Tell her what?” I said.
James nodded and closed the eye again. I settled back against the seat and reached out to adjust the sideview mirror, which stuck for an instant, then snapped off completely. I tossed it into the backseat, along with the roses. Then I gunned the Galaxie’s addled engine, put her in reverse, and we hurtled, backward and blind, up the driveway, at forty miles per hour.
I INTENDED TO LET James sleep the whole way to Kinship, if he needed it, but about ten minutes out of Pittsburgh I inadvertently dropped us into a deep pothole, and with the ensuing jolt he gasped, sat up, and looked around him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes wide. He sounded very sincere, the way people do before they have fully awakened.
“That’s all right,” I said. “Hey, you have that doughnut in your lap.”
He looked down at the doughnut and nodded.
“Where are we? How long was I asleep?”
“Not very long.