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Authors: Scott Spencer
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years ago she’d been born in New Orleans, at Touro Infirmary. She’d been lucky to be named Sarah. Mr. Williams believed in sprightly, submissive names for girls: her sisters were Tammy and Carrie. Perhaps they’d sensed her fanatical will from the moment of birth: I remember her baby pictures—a long face with huge cold blue eyes. Spooky little girl. I felt her heart beating next to mine. Was she here because I’d grasped the dream from which she’d tried to persuade me? Had I conjured her to witness my odd triumph? We can love the dead like loving God and Sarah was within me, as frightening as an angel wielding a sword.
I closed my eyes and stumbled on. I felt the weight of the snow in my hair. My trousers were soaked; my bones were throbbing. Sarah rose within me, with her straight dark brown hair, her large forehead, her earnest, demanding eyes, her wide mouth, powerful chin, the articulated muscles in her arms. And though we did not have an easy time of it and were, in truth, falling to pieces by the time of her death, I would have given—I was going to say my right arm, but really I would have given more than that, a great deal more than that, to see her again.
And then, just as suddenly as her presence had filled me, it was gone again and in the wake of her leaving was a startling emptiness, as if the lack of her had just carved out another cavern of loneliness, and it was just me in the night, trudging through the snow on my way home, firmly fixed on this side of the mystery.
I COULD BARELY see our apartment building and, once I found my way in, I had to keep my hands on the wall to find my way up the pitch-dark stairway. There was a complete silence, a silence without curves or cracks, except for the noise of my boots staggering up the stairs and my shattered breaths, rattling around in me like frozen lace.
Snow was dripping off me, falling in clumps. It was still warm in the apartment, though the furnace had cut off with the power. “Home,” I said, shaking my hands until my gloves fell off. Juliet came toward me, holding a candle. She was starting to unbutton my coat when the phone began to ring.
“I’ll get it,” she said.
I peeled off my clothes. I could barely see myself in the dim, unstable candlelight. The scented candles sat in their little red glasses, trembling in the little drafts. I flexed my fingers. I hoped there was hot water for a bath. My face was burning and itching as it thawed. I dropped my wet trousers onto the floor and rubbed my hands over my legs. Juliet came back, holding a candle in a white ceramic sconce. The flame lit her up the middle but even in the eerie light she looked calm, dependable, set in her ways. “It was a woman,” she said, in a slow, contemplative voice. “I said you weren’t home and she said she’d try later. I asked her for her name but she just hung up.”
Just then, power was restored and all of our lights came back on.
4
I FIRST MET Sarah Williams when I was twenty-four years old, in 1970.I was in the Coast Guard, stationed for the time on Governor’s Island. I’d gone through Harvard like a hot knife through butter, learning what I could, making surprisingly few friends, and, on the whole, behaving like a boy building a résumé rather than a life. Now, my master plan ticking away, it was time to fulfill my military obligations in the least bloody way possible—I couldn’t imagine a man being elected to any important office who hadn’t put his time in in uniform. When I was finished with the Coast Guard, there was a spot waiting for me at the University of Chicago’s law school, a spot reserved by the father of one of my few college chums, Jeremy Green’s father, Isaac. Isaac and I had met one Thanksgiving and then again at the Greens’ cabin in Wisconsin the following summer; Isaac sensed my calculating spirit, liked the way I thought ahead. My own family, while enthusiastic, had its doubts. My father worried that the spot at the U.
I closed my eyes and stumbled on. I felt the weight of the snow in my hair. My trousers were soaked; my bones were throbbing. Sarah rose within me, with her straight dark brown hair, her large forehead, her earnest, demanding eyes, her wide mouth, powerful chin, the articulated muscles in her arms. And though we did not have an easy time of it and were, in truth, falling to pieces by the time of her death, I would have given—I was going to say my right arm, but really I would have given more than that, a great deal more than that, to see her again.
And then, just as suddenly as her presence had filled me, it was gone again and in the wake of her leaving was a startling emptiness, as if the lack of her had just carved out another cavern of loneliness, and it was just me in the night, trudging through the snow on my way home, firmly fixed on this side of the mystery.
I COULD BARELY see our apartment building and, once I found my way in, I had to keep my hands on the wall to find my way up the pitch-dark stairway. There was a complete silence, a silence without curves or cracks, except for the noise of my boots staggering up the stairs and my shattered breaths, rattling around in me like frozen lace.
Snow was dripping off me, falling in clumps. It was still warm in the apartment, though the furnace had cut off with the power. “Home,” I said, shaking my hands until my gloves fell off. Juliet came toward me, holding a candle. She was starting to unbutton my coat when the phone began to ring.
“I’ll get it,” she said.
I peeled off my clothes. I could barely see myself in the dim, unstable candlelight. The scented candles sat in their little red glasses, trembling in the little drafts. I flexed my fingers. I hoped there was hot water for a bath. My face was burning and itching as it thawed. I dropped my wet trousers onto the floor and rubbed my hands over my legs. Juliet came back, holding a candle in a white ceramic sconce. The flame lit her up the middle but even in the eerie light she looked calm, dependable, set in her ways. “It was a woman,” she said, in a slow, contemplative voice. “I said you weren’t home and she said she’d try later. I asked her for her name but she just hung up.”
Just then, power was restored and all of our lights came back on.
4
I FIRST MET Sarah Williams when I was twenty-four years old, in 1970.I was in the Coast Guard, stationed for the time on Governor’s Island. I’d gone through Harvard like a hot knife through butter, learning what I could, making surprisingly few friends, and, on the whole, behaving like a boy building a résumé rather than a life. Now, my master plan ticking away, it was time to fulfill my military obligations in the least bloody way possible—I couldn’t imagine a man being elected to any important office who hadn’t put his time in in uniform. When I was finished with the Coast Guard, there was a spot waiting for me at the University of Chicago’s law school, a spot reserved by the father of one of my few college chums, Jeremy Green’s father, Isaac. Isaac and I had met one Thanksgiving and then again at the Greens’ cabin in Wisconsin the following summer; Isaac sensed my calculating spirit, liked the way I thought ahead. My own family, while enthusiastic, had its doubts. My father worried that the spot at the U.
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