What He's Poised to Do

SARAH AND I WERE CLOSE. She was only two years older, which meant that all the things that happened to me were fresh in her memory. Getting your period, kissing, going to second base, but also other stuff, like how to dress on your first day in school, and how to hold a cigarette so that you didn’t look like you were imitating someone from the movies. She was always a little louder than me and a little wilder. When she was sixteen, she was going with this boy and she got pregnant, and she had one of her friends drive her down south of Lincoln for an abortion. She made me promise not to tell our mom or dad, and I didn’t. After that she was afraid that she couldn’t get pregnant again, and maybe she was right, because she didn’t from the next guy, whom she went with for two years, and she didn’t with the guy after that, whom she lived with for a year, and she didn’t with Ed. Right at the beginning of her time with Ed, our dad died when he had a stroke while driving, and for a few weeks we talked every day on the telephone. Our mother was sick by then, too, with lung cancer, and she was in and out of the hospital. I hope she goes soon, Sarah said. She needs to be with Frank. That was the other thing about only children: when parents passed, there was no one who felt the same exact things you were feeling.

WHEN DAVE CAME TO LIVE in the barn, he told me he was going to start a new life. “No more drinking,” he said, “and no more girls.”

“Good,” I said. “We can begin our new lives together.” He broke both rules the first week—I saw a small box of empty bottles stacked against the wall, and once I knocked on the barn door and heard noise inside, but no one answered.

When I asked him about it, he denied that there were any girls. “I told you,” he said. “I have a new life now.” He was propped up on pillows on a narrow board he used as his bed, sketching with a piece of charcoal.

“What are you drawing?” I said.

“Pictures of the things I can’t do anymore,” he said.

I didn’t care what kind of rules he broke. What did I care? Berne was less generous. He grumbled about Dave: Why would we let a man like that into our home, especially when we were trying to begin our own life together? I could see him getting angrier and angrier, but it wasn’t like Berne to do anything other than grumble. Finally, he asked me flat-out if there had ever been anything between me and Dave, and I said absolutely not, and he asked me if I was telling him the truth, and I just stared at him like he was crazy.

Sarah asked me why I didn’t tell Berne the truth. “Because he wouldn’t understand,” I said.

“I guess not,” she said. “Who would understand that a nice girl like you ever had a thing for that dirty little drunk?”

“Are you still thinking of moving?” I asked Sarah. Ever since she caught the bouquet she’d been telling me she needed to get out of town. On weekends she went to Lincoln; she was seeing a guy there sometimes.

“I don’t know,” she said. “This town isn’t doing much for me. I have a little money from selling the hardware store. I am seriously thinking about getting out of here.”

“Would you go to Lincoln?” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said again. “The problem with this guy is that he wants a family.”

“Don’t you want kids?”

“If I can have them.”

“You can.”

“Are you a doctor?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

FOR A LONG TIME, Berne and I weren’t getting pregnant either. He thought it made me sad, and he bought me lots of presents: another necklace (this one had a cross), another scarf (this one was blue), another hat (it looked just like the first). I didn’t like the necklace or the hat, but I loved the scarf. I wore it all the time, and even Sarah agreed that it looked like a dream on me. But then I lost it. Berne never seemed to notice, and I certainly didn’t mention it. Then I got pregnant, and it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Berne told me that the baby was a girl, that he was sure of it.

“I want to name her Laurel,” he said, “after my father’s mother. If it’s a boy, I don’t have any ideas.”

ONE DAY IN WINTER, I was out in town, getting some things for the house, and I came home to find a note from Dave on the counter: it was folded up and tucked inside an envelope, though the envelope wasn’t sealed. It said he couldn’t stay anymore. It thanked me for my generosity. It told me that we would always be special to each other, even without Ed, even without the hardware store. It said that there was a painting in the barn for me, the portrait of the woman that Sarah and I liked so much. It didn’t mention Berne.

I went out to the barn. Even before I got there, I knew that there was someone inside. “Dave,” I said. “What’s with this note?”