Chapter 6d06
Chapter 6 (Draft 06)
Two weeks later the phone rang in Ethan's bookstore.
"Hello?"
"Ethan?"
"Yes, Sally."
"Are you busy?"
The man stood on his toes to survey the store around him. "Not really. There are a couple of customers looking for…"
"I need to speak with you. Can I come to the store?"
"Of course, Sally. Is something wrong?"
"I'll be there shortly."
There was a click and Ethan was already frowning. In the short time he had known Sally Carmichael, she never appeared irritated, but her tone this time sounded a little angry. He slowly set the phone back into its cradle.
"I'll take these," said a smiling woman, setting a set of plastic pens down on the counter.
Ethan made the sale and his eyes followed the woman out the door and into the waiting sun outside. As she disappeared, the man found his gaze stuck on the door.
She definitely sounded upset.
"Excuse me."
Ethan was startled to find another woman standing at the counter.
"I'm sorry, what?"
The woman frowned. "I asked you if you have The Catcher in the Rye on CD. I see you have the unabridged recordings on cassette, but I was looking for the CDs. Do you carry them?"
He looked at the door again. "No… I'm sorry, I don't."
"Do you know where I can purchase them?"
Ethan looked at the woman and tried to smile. "Ah… do you have a computer at home?"
"Yes."
"Then you can log on to Amazon and order it from there, new or used."
"Oh… excellent! I never thought of that. Do you know what it might cost to do it that way?"
The door tinkled and Ethan looked over. Sally was standing there in her coat and holding her purse tight. She had a book under her arm and was clearly breathing hard. Ethan immediately rounded the counter.
"Excuse me," the customer called to him. Ethan stopped and turned to face her.
"I'm sorry. Ah… you shouldn't pay more than twenty dollars for the set if it's already used."
"Do you know if the site will gift wrap them before they send it out?"
"Yes… absolutely. Just don't buy too much from them, or you'll put me out of business."
The woman smiled and at last seemed satisfied.
When Ethan reached Sally she was still standing just inside the door. He was surprised she had arrived so quickly. It took ten minutes for Ethan to negotiate the streets to Sally's house, but she had made the trip in half that time.
"Sally, are you all right?"
He could she his new friend was clearly angry. Her eyes were blazing with what looked like utter contempt.
"I need to speak to you in private, Ethan. Is there a place we can be alone?"
"Of course; we can go in the back." He looked around. "Laura, can you take over the register for me?"
"Sure Mr. Dodge," said a young girl he had recently hired. She rose to stand above a box she was working to unpack and looked curiously over to Sally. "Is everything… all right?"
Without replying, Ethan turned and headed toward the reading room. He entered with Sally close on his heels and he quickly pulled the curtains closed behind them.
"Would you like to sit?"
She immediate turned to scowl back at him. "Why did you give me this book?"
He looked down at his first edition copy of East of the Sun and West of the Moon clinched tight in Sally's hands. Ethan frowned.
"I thought… you might enjoy it. You said you'd never read it."
"And what are the themes important in this book?"
Ethan hesitated. "I… well… there are several."
She scowled again. "Explain them!"
"Sally, what's the matter? You're obviously upset. What can I do to…?"
"Answer the question, Ethan!" She said, in her loudest but still whispered voice. Even in her current state, Sally wasn't one for making a scene in public.
Ethan studied her and then finally directed her to one of the chairs. "Okay, let's talk about it. Please sit down."
She finally sat, but her livid stare never left him. Her lips were pursed tight and Ethan was astounded that the woman who had just covered four city blocks in record time wasn't gasping for air. Her eyes were ablaze with a rage barely contained.
Ethan slowly sat himself and then shifted to find a comfortable spot in which to converse.
"Well?" Sally snapped.
Ethan took a deep breath to think. "East of the Sun and West of the Moon comes from an old Scandinavian fairy tale. The original version was called Prince Hat under the Ground. Its themes gather their influence from the Greeks in the ancient world after Alexander the Great."
"I don't need a history lesson, Ethan. Get to the point!" the woman retorted.
"I'm trying, Sally. Maybe you should just tell me what's wrong." She glowered back at him and he could see her beginning to wring her purse.
He continued. "The transformation of the man into a bear has been interpreted by some as a young girl's loathing of the sexual act. What's different in this version of the tale, of course, is the stepmother's purpose for the man's transformation." He paused.
"Go on!"
Ethan's mind was searching desperately for the cause of Sally's anger, but he knew he hadn't found it yet. His brain tried to race ahead to the last remaining theme he knew was embedded in the story, but he still couldn't see the connection from that to the fire he could see glowing hot in the woman's eyes.
"Ethan?"
The man shifted nervously in his chair again. "The tale has been interpreted as a figurative depiction of an arranged marriage and the unhappiness and evil within."
Sally immediately stood. "My Sam was not a beast!"
Ethan was taken aback. "I'm… I'm sorry?"
"My husband, Sam, was not a bad person. He was kind and gentle man, and an excellent father and provider to his family."
"But I… would never suggest otherwise."
She thrust the book at him. "Oh–but I think you did!"
Ethan reached out to take the book from her. He looked puzzled.
"Sally, I don't understand. Why would you think I meant to say anything about your life with Sam by giving you this book?"
"Are you denying it?"
He could see her eyes starting to sparkle with tears.
"That I meant to say something about you or your husband?" he answered back, straight faced. "Yes. I would deny any suggestion I had a hidden motive in that way. I never meant to connect the themes in this book to you in any way at all. It was one of the few you haven't read in my collection. So I thought you might enjoy it."
Sally slowly sat back down and Ethan could immediately see she wanted to believe him.
"I'm very sorry, Sally, if I've upset you with my recommendation to read it. But you must believe me when I say my intensions were motivated only by the possibility that you might enjoy the writer's style and the settings within the story."
Sally wasn't convinced. "You once asked me if my marriage was arranged and I told you no. All the decisions of my life have been my own. Nobody ever forced me to do something against my will. I should never have told you I wasn't happy in my marriage."
Ethan leaned forward. "But I'm glad you did, Sally. And not because I wanted to pry into the reasons why you were unhappy, but because that part of your life helped to define a person I thought to be amazingly brilliant and interesting. I wanted to get to know you… and maybe understand what made you the person you are today."
Sally's chin fell, her face distraught, her purse fisted tight. Her voice was sulking and hollow. "The bride's aversion to marry the beast was symbolized by his form." She looked up at him. "You would agree?"
Ethan shifted again. "Yes… I would."
"And you didn't mean for me to see this as an analogy of my life with Sam?"
"No, Sally. I didn't."
He watched her eyes fall to look at her feet once more. He could see her struggling with her inner thoughts of betrayal. She looked up at him again, her lips opened to reply… but she didn't. They were shaking.
"I really didn't, Sally."
She stood. "I don't believe you, Ethan Dodge. I think you're a terrible man. You don't know anything about my husband or my life. Sam was wonderful. How dare you imply otherwise."
She turned and pushed through the curtains and Ethan quickly rose to follow her.
"Sally, please… I never meant to say anything like that; you must believe me."
She was already at the door. The bell sounded and she was on the sidewalk. Her quickness astounded him as he followed her out the door.
"Sally — please, come back. We have to talk about this. Come back, I'm begging you!"
The woman stopped and spun around.
"I never want to see you again, Ethan. I think you're a terrible person."
And without waiting for a reply, she turned again and walked away.
Ethan stood there, watching her go. He wanted to chase after her, to convince her he never meant to hurt her, but he knew it was too late. The man slowly turned and reentered the store, his heart crumbling. The words of Sally reciting Shakespeare suddenly came into the man's mind: But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end. Ethan thought to add to the poem: yet without thee, friend, mine sorrows are only to begin.
Another phone was ringing.
"Howard here."
"Please hold for a call, doctor," said a familiar voice. Doctor Gladwin Howard recognized the man's timbre immediately. It was Bezuhov's muscled bodyguard.
"Doctor Howard?"
"Yes, Mr. Bezuhov. What can I do for you, sir?"
"I thought it was time for us to talk again, doctor. Congratulations on your promotion, by the way."
"Thank you… and I suppose I should be grateful to you for this opportunity. The President of the University said you provided a very positive recommendation after our meeting."
"Grateful, doctor? Well, if it proved useful… then I'm glad I could help. Are you getting settled in? Have you moved into Wetzler's office yet?"
"No… I haven't," the man faltered. "I thought that would be inappropriate given the fact John was my best friend."
"Admirable of you… if not overly benevolent. And I hear young Benjamin received his acceptance letter from Eastman. Am I to assume your son is planning his move to Rochester, then?"
Howard hesitated again. "Ah… yes… as a matter of fact he is."
"A shame; I still believe he would have preferred New York, but… no matter."
There was a long pause, and Howard could only imagine the man's doctors at the other end rushing forward to help him with his oxygen mask. He was startled when the old man's voice came back strong and clear.
"I need a report on your review of Wetzler's work by the end of the week, doctor. We've already lost too much time by his inconvenient departure. We should be moving forward without delay."
The doctor was suddenly appalled at the use of the word 'inconvenient'. He thought his best friend deserved better than the extremely offensive characterization of his death and his family's grief. It immediately made the man stiffen and look for ways in which to rebel.
"It'll take me a little longer than Friday to review all of the files you had delivered to my house. There was an extraordinary amount of documentation there."
Again there was silence, enough time for Howard to worry about the coming response.
"Doctor Howard, let me state my expectations… a little more clearly. Please sit down."
Howard had long since stopped trying to guess at whether or not his team's benefactor was physically watching his every move. He slowly sat down in his chair to listen.
"I expect you to finish your review and report by Friday. No further delay will be tolerated. Failure to comply with my wishes will be met with great hostility, and your continued role on this project will immediately come to an end.
Howard was too stunned to reply.
"Your silence concerns me, doctor, so let me try again, because it is imperative that you understand me. I am a dying man… so I will not hesitate to act upon my disappointments, and not just because I have the means in which to do so, but because more than just my life is at stake here. Your family is also depending on you, doctor. Your wife Elizabeth… Julie… Janice… and Benjamin are relying on your success more than they are allowed to know.
Howard clinched the receiver tight.
"There are twenty four hours in a day, Doctor Howard. Allowing for your normal five to six hours of sleep, this leaves you seventy two hours to complete what I've asked of you; more than enough time." More silence again.
"I… understand, Mr. Bezuhov, and… I'm sorry I've disappointed you. I… will get that report out to you as soon as possible."
"Friday will do, doctor. I am not an unreasonable man, but I believe I've made my point clear. I will call you again after I've read the report."
There was a click and Bezuhov was gone.
As Howard set the phone down, he was certain of two things: First, both he and his family had just been threatened, and second… there wasn't anything he could do about it.
The man cradled his head into his shaking hands. What in the world have I gotten myself into?
A week later, Ethan was eating lunch by himself in the reading room and the rain outside matched the gloom in his heart. He had tried knocking on Sally door so many times following the night of their misunderstanding, but there was no answer. The apartment looked dark and she wasn't answering her phone either. The man reflected on his reasons for his giving Sally the book, looking for anything subliminal in his ambitions. Had he actually given her the story because it reminded him of the unhappy marriage she had briefly described to him? No… he was positive he did not, but he would admit to anything if he thought Sally might forgive him.
He looked up at the book, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, sitting again in its proper place on the shelf. He suddenly felt the angry urge to burn the book. The friend of a lifetime lost because of a silly misunderstanding; was this to be the final chapter in their friendship?
Still, even though he had been accused unfairly, he was very concerned for Sally. Her reaction to the mistake had left Ethan questioning her motives as well as his own. It was clear she was unhappy in her marriage to Samuel Carmichael. She said it herself: he was a man devoid of any true compassion other than what his work had brought to him. He had dragged her out of her beloved Nebraska to live in a state she hated, and where she eventually lost her daughter to drugs. Sally never told him what her husband's reaction to Mary's death had been, but to Ethan, the fact she didn't mention it said volumes about the man.
He took another bite from the apple he bought from Mario's cart that morning and then looked over at the bowl of diced cantaloupe sitting next to him. He decided to try Sally's door again that night and every night until she gave him his chance to fight for their friendship, which for some reason, meant more to him now than anything else in his life.
"Hello, Ethan."
The man looked up and found Kari Dietz standing between the curtains.
"Hello! It's… Kari, right?" He immediately stood, wiping his hands with a napkin.
The woman stepped into the room. "Hi," she said, smiling back at him.
"Please… come in. Have a seat."
Kari was already inspecting the books on the shelves around her. "Wow… Sally said you had a very large collection of old books, but I had no idea."
"How is Sally? I've been so worried about her."
Kari turned to look at him and then sat down. "That's why I'm here, Ethan. Sally is a mess." She could see the man's face fall disparagingly into a grimace.
"What do you mean?"
"Well… she's been withdrawn, very quiet, kind of brooding." She looked suspiciously at him. "She won't tell me what's bothering her, but I think it has something to do with you."
Once again, Ethan's face confirmed her suspicions. "I think I've hurt her," he told her longingly and he tried to explain what had happened.
Kari listened quietly to his side of the story and as he stumbled and faltered to describe Sally's pain, there was a spark of something warm that began to fill her. She didn't really know Ethan Dodge, but there was something about him that she wanted to like. Yes, he was very handsome, but there was a gentleness about him that at first made her suspicious, almost mistrusting of the man. But the more he spoke of Sally, the more Kari began to understand what her friend saw in him. She watched him fall back into his chair as he finished his account.
"And I've gone back each and every night after closing to see if she'll talk to me, but she won't even answer the door."
Kari thought for a moment and then said, "I think Sally wants to believe you, Ethan. She's not angry anymore, but I know she's feeling lonely. You've only known each other for a short period of time, but I think she really misses you."
Kari stopped to evaluate the man. "Can I ask you a question?"
He looked up from the floor, a little surprised. "Yes… of course — anything."
"What exactly… do you see in Sally?"
The man frowned. "Well… you should know better than anybody. I shouldn't have to explain to you what's so remarkable about her."
She nodded. "Yes, I love Sally like my own mother, but I'd like to hear it from you. Tell me why you spend so much time with her. I mean… let's face it, Ethan: You're an attractive guy… you could be spending your time with just about any girl who walks into this place. You're obviously well off… enough to travel around the world buying and selling these valuable books. So why would you spend most of your free time with a ninety three year old woman?"
Ethan smiled. He finally understood what Kari was doing. She was protecting Sally, a woman who obviously meant as much to her as she did to himself.
He thought hard about his answer and then said, "Sally Carmichael has lived a very long time, and I've come to know her as a woman of immense goodness and deepest thought. She has a beautiful fire within her that draws me, Kari." He glanced up at her and looked momentarily distracted by the personal level of his confessions. "She reminds me of an exquisite sunset, fading fast on the horizon of life, but burning more and more beautiful with each passing moment toward that far away and unreachable horizon. There is so much to know about her before she finally reaches…" his words stumbled and he looked away.
Kari was touched by the man's honesty and his ability to translate his feelings into words. She found herself wanting to reach out to him, to turn his attention away from Sally and to herself. She wanted his devotions, his alertness to the things she might offer him as a younger woman and the obsessions more suited to satisfy the deeper longings that she thought she perceived in his silent thoughts. Certainly, she could offer this man more than Sally… but was that really true?
Ethan was showing the uncanny ability to direct Kari's attention at something within Sally Carmichael that the girl already knew well, but given a lifetime to try, she could ever hope to describe. She suddenly felt ashamed at wanting him, at wanting to take him from her friend.
He looked deep into her eyes and said, "It's difficult to tell you what attracts me to her, Kari, but…" his stare moved to the ceiling, as if trying to pin point some distant memory before trying again:
"The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold;
"And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold,
"The thatched roof of a cot a-glance;
"Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze;
"Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze,
"Great moveless meres of radiance."
He looked over at her again and Kari could see the tears forming in his eyes. He shrugged. "Victor Hugo," he whispered softly, before wiping his face with the back of his hand. "Sally is… a most beautiful and wonderful sunset."
The girl smiled and from that moment on, Kari Dietz never questioned Ethan's motives ever again.
"That… was beautiful, Ethan."
She suddenly stood. "Well this is just ridiculous! You've done nothing wrong and Sally is miserable. I have to fix this."
She turned and headed for the door, and Ethan was surprised as got to his feet.
"If you could just convince her to talk to me again, Kari, I would be most grateful."
She turned to face him and felt a pang of jealousy.
"Sally's always calling me 'a little schemer' — and for good reason most of the time. Let's see if I can find a way to put the two of you back together again. Give me your number and let me think about this; I'll make it my little project."
He wrote down his number and handed it to her.
"I can't thank you enough for trying, Kari. Please call me when you think of a way. I'll do anything."
Sally awoke the next morning feeling strange. She had grown accustom to the deep stiffness in her bones and the pain radiating up her spine to her neck since before her eightieth birthday, but this was different. Normally, the pain would last until ten or eleven o'clock in the morning when her "old trigs", as she was so fond of calling them, had a chance to warm themselves and throw off the disease of time. Along with the pain in her back were her swollen legs and feet. The doctors said the problem was bad circulation due mainly to a weakening heart. She remembered smirking the first time at hearing this diagnosis. Weak heart… he could just as well had said 'old heart.'
She eventually learned to sleep with her legs set on a stack of pillows. This uncomfortable practice made the task of sleeping more difficult, but the effort of getting up in the morning a little easier and a lot safer than the days when she literally fell to the floor when trying to stand.
This Wednesday morning, however, brought something she hadn't experienced in more than twenty years. For the first time in recent and certainly escaped memory, Sally had climbed unthinkingly out of bed and was halfway to the bathroom before it occurred to her… she hadn't been weakened by any pain.
The realization of this wonderment first brought confusion and then a spike of sudden shock to her. She actually froze where she stood when comprehension struck her, expecting nothing less than a short trip face-down to the floor. Her hands flew themselves out to the side to brace herself as she waited for her frame to give out. She slowly looked around and frowned; maybe her legs were a little stronger that morning, but as soon as the pain in her spine found its way into her dulled brain, she was sure the walking parts of her body would begin the process of shutting down.
But no: Given the time necessary to discern her situation, there was only the slightest twinge of… no, she thought in amazement… there wasn't any pain whatsoever. She finally gathered the courage to move to the chair next to the window where she gradually sank to sit. And there she waited for it; waited for that spike of sorrow; that reminder she had lived much too long. But after another minute of uneasiness… she found that she was still comfortable.
She leaned over to raise the hem of her nightgown and looked at her feet. There was no swelling in her arches, and the bright veins that usually pooled to glow an angry shade of blue looked rather happy and pink. She raised her hem to inspect more of her legs and was surprised to see a small budge of muscle in her calves where there was usually hanging flab. Maybe they were cramped. She massaged the places that looked tight and found them soft and reasonably unrestricted.
And then she noticed something else: Her hand, the thing rubbing her leg; it looked almost foreign to her. She raised her hand to look at it closely, turning its palm to the front and back. It looked like a stranger's hand to her. That was definitively her wedding band on the ring finger, but the skin covering her old bones looked strangely smooth and supple. The liver spots she had first seen when she turned fifty were still there, of course, but they seemed… she couldn't believe it… lighter in color. She looked at her other hand and carefully flexed her fingers. This hand looked even better than the first; even her crooked index finger, the one she had broken in that machine shop during the war, looked longer… straighter, nearly perfect.
"What in the Lord's good name…?"
She leaned back to look out the window where she found a nearly perfect day. No rain, not a cloud in the sky. She worked the lock and slid the sash and immediately caught the scent of fresh flowers outside. A warm breeze blew into the room to encircle her and she could see its movement through the uncut grass in front of her apartment. It reminded her of her childhood when she would sit for hours watching the currents of air moving across the wheat fields of her Nebraska home. It was like witnessing the living fingers of God combing through those golden knolls. And that's when an idea finally dawned on her and she immediately looked around to her empty bed.
"I must have died in my sleep. And all of this… this must be heaven!"
The woman unconsciously pinched herself and the pain of it coincided with a honking horn outside. No… she thought disappointedly. It would seem that I'm still here; still working to fulfill God's greater, all be it inconvenient plan.
She sighed and thought about her argument with Ethan Dodge. She missed their conversations, the love of literature they shared. Sally looked down at her wedding band again, hanging like some lose bobble on a stranger's hand. He couldn't have been so callous to think he would force her to remember the worst part of her marriage to Sam. Still, at the time, she was so sure he had done so. Now… she wasn't sure of anything. She remembered the things she had said to him and the thought of it made her feel uncomfortable to sit, and the old pain she had expected when she was standing slowly began to creep into her body once again. She pictured Ethan's gentle face and the soreness began to retreat again. The old woman looked outside and watched the grass shifting under the wind's ebb and flow and she smiled. She had to see him again.
She stood and headed into the bathroom and then glanced into the mirror. At first, she felt a wrench of disappointment, but what had she expected? While her body might have felt stronger, was she hoping to see some beautiful twenty-year old staring back? Well that certainly wasn't the case. The old face she knew so well was still there, no different than any other morning going back as far as she could remember.
She came forward to inspect her face more closely and found herself saddened again. Sally was never one to talk about it, but there was a day, in fact several of them, when she did collect her share of wolf whistles before leaving Omaha. The face staring back at her now wouldn't know anything about that, of course, but the memory was still there if, for no other reason, than to sound the horn of regret at how far her vanity had fallen.
"You're a very old woman now, Sally Carmichael," she mumbled to herself blandly. "Old… wrinkled and gray… longer more than not."
And that's when she did notice something different in the mirror. She slowly came forward again to look at her hair and closer still at her scalp; and there it was: protruding like a dirty spring in much the same way she had found her very first gray hair at the age of thirty-two. But this time… she reached in to grab the hair and then promptly yanked it out. She held it up to the light and turned it between her fingers to inspect it. Unwilling to trust her eyes, she reached for a tissue and set the hair between the folds. It was auburn. One red hair on a head that hadn't seen any color since she used an anniversary gift certificate to change the few she had left to match the occupying force of gray. She always thought how stupid she had been for doing that, considering the fact she never saw another colored hair growing on her head afterward; not, that is… until now.
She leaned forward again to look for another tiny spring of color, but no luck. Sally looked down at the plucked curl in the stranger's hand and marveled at its sandy shine; and, once again, she thought how stupid she had been to pluck it out.
10
