Raising Hope (12 page)

At dinner one evening, Daddy had just remarked about the warm autumn we’d been having when Mama said, “Sara Lynn, I have the most wonderful news. Edith Jergens from my garden club is close friends with Marilyn Hanson. Marilyn’s son is that nice Ray Hanson from your class in high school.”

“He wasn’t in my class, Mama,” I told her through gritted teeth. Was it so difficult for her to see that I didn’t have it in me to discuss her friends and their children and all the other nonsense she insisted on prattling about? “He was probably about five classes ahead of me.”

“Now, let me finish,” she replied gaily, cutting her steak. “Ray knows you’re back in town, and guess what?” She paused and then, as if she were reading the week’s winning lottery numbers, announced, “He’d like to take you out to dinner!” She patted her mouth with her napkin and wriggled in her chair with delight. “He’s working at his father’s bank, you know. He’ll take it all over when Ray senior retires. Ooh, it’s just too exciting.”

“Exciting?” I dropped my fork onto my plate so it made a loud clink. “Exciting for whom, exactly?”

She looked at me with wide eyes and said, “Honey, I’m only trying to help.”

I grabbed my napkin off my lap and threw it on the table. “Excuse me, please,” I said to my father as I pushed back my chair and stood up. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

I retreated to my bedroom, barely restraining myself from slamming the door. Instead, I shut it gently with a precise click and whirled around to catch sight of myself in the mirror hanging over my bureau. I moved closer, drawn in by steely blue eyes, high cheekbones flushed an angry red, and full pink lips. I stared at myself as I twisted my hair up and put it on top of my head and then let it fly loose around my shoulders again. For the first time, I saw myself as a troubled, passionate woman rather than a sweetly pretty girl. I was beautiful in my complexity, and a reckless urge rose up in me to strip naked and show myself to a man.
Look at me,
my brain howled to the phantom man.
Look at me.

“Bobby Teller,” I said to my reflection, and his image replaced that of my ghost admirer as his name crashed through my mind. I remembered how he’d made me feel in high school, when we’d pass each other in the halls. We hadn’t spoken, but we’d looked at each other with a frankness that had scared and thrilled me. I hadn’t come anywhere close to acting on that attraction between us, because girls like me didn’t even think about boys like him; but now I was hurtling toward it, my body tingling with a jittery excitement. I pictured myself driving with him, fast, with all the car windows rolled down. I was throwing my head back and laughing so that my throat was exposed, and he was pulling me close with his hand that wasn’t on the wheel. I bet it would hurt a little to be pulled close by Bobby Teller. I opened my bureau drawers and began throwing clothes on the floor, trying to find something to wear that night when I went out to track him down.

I knew he’d be at O’Malley’s. It had always been the hangout for people like him—people who’d never left town to go to college, people who worked menial jobs that paid minimum wage, people I’d not spoken twice to in high school. When I walked in the doorway of the bar, my bravado surrounded me like an electric field. I saw him right away, leaning over the pool table with his cue poised behind the ball. He missed his shot, stood up and shrugged, then said something that made his opponent laugh. He looked toward the door then, and his eyes locked with mine. As I started to smile, he turned back to the pool table without acknowledging me, and I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach.

“God!” sneered a girl trying to walk past me into the bar. “Figure out what you’re doing! Are you going in or coming out?”

“Oh!” I said, startled. “I’m . . . I’m . . .” I stared at her dumbly for a moment. “I’m going in. I’m in,” I told her, and my words decided it for me.

I held my head high as I walked into the smoky dimness, trying not to jump out of my skin with the uncertainty of what I’d do next. I hoped I wasn’t looking frantic as I scanned the room, looking for someone to talk to, someone to make me look like a confident young woman out on the town as opposed to a lonely failure desperate to connect with her bad-boy high school crush at last.

Ah! Finally. I spied Ruth Teller with a group of girls in the corner. She was Bobby’s sister, but she also had cleaned my mother’s house for years. I’d seen her over my vacations from school when she’d come to clean. I knew her. It was perfectly plausible that I walk up to her and talk. Thank God, I thought, my knees buckling a little. Thank God there is one person here I know well enough to approach.

I walked across the room and said, “Hi, Ruth.”

“What?” Ruth yelled over the loud music, her eyes glaring at me.

I cleared my throat and spoke over the music. “It’s nice to see you.”

My words hung between us, and I was beginning to doubt that she’d respond when, finally, she sort of grunted. My warm feeling toward her faded as I realized she wasn’t going to make this easy for me.

I took a deep breath and said loudly, “I love your outfit. It’s great.” I was lying, of course. She was wearing a halter top and jeans that did little to flatter her tall, lanky frame.

She stared at me as if to say, “Shut up right now,” so I turned to the other girls and smiled my party smile. “Hello,” I said, including all four of them in my greeting. “I’m Sara Lynn Hoffman.”

“We know who you are,” said a stocky girl with blond hair in bangs that stuck straight up from her forehead.

“Oh!” I said, feigning surprise. Well, of course they knew who I was. Hadn’t I been valedictorian and class vice president and best dressed and popular? It would have shocked me if they had looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m afraid my memory for names has failed me. I’ve been down in Boston, you know. For college and law school and work.”

They didn’t bat an eyelash; it was as if I hadn’t spoken.
Ask them about themselves,
Mama’s voice prodded me.
Get out of my head,
I told my mother, and then I smiled and asked, “And what do you do?”

They didn’t answer, just looked at me as if I were an alien trying to make conversation with them in an entirely different language. I stood my ground, though, smiling all the while.

The music changed to a slow song, and Ruth and her friends began glancing around, straightening their clothes and flipping their hair. Sure enough, some boys trickled over from the bar and pool table. They didn’t even ask, “Would you like to dance?” They just came over and claimed the girls they wanted. How barbaric, I sneered inwardly. I’d never let a man just gesture to me and expect me to go with him.

My superiority plummeted into terror as everyone continued to pair up. I felt as if I were in a biblical scene, where all the animals were boarding the ark and I was going to be left behind to drown because I didn’t have a partner. Finally, only Ruth, the girl with blond bangs, and I were left standing on the outskirts of the dance floor. I put on a bored, indifferent look to hide the panic that was overtaking me. I tossed my hair and looked at my watch, and when I looked up from checking the time, there was Bobby striding over from the pool table. He was just as handsome as I’d remembered, with his broad shoulders and his dark, curly hair. He still had that power he’d had over me in high school, the power to make my stomach flip and my skin tingle. I held my breath as he approached me, and when he touched my arm I went with him onto the dance floor and swallowed a few times to open up my closed throat.

I was absolutely light-headed being so close to him, and I feared if I opened my mouth, I’d utter nothing but giddy nonsense words.
Talk, Sara Lynn,
I lectured myself.
Talk.
“Well,” I finally said, and my voice was brittle and high-pitched, but not as foolish-sounding as it might have been. “Fancy meeting you here.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I wondered if I’d only imagined saying something. That’s how being around him affected me: I wasn’t even certain whether or not I’d spoken. Finally, he raised a corner of his mouth in a half smile and said, “Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?”

“Why?” I asked, tossing back my hair and looking up at him. “Why is it so surprising to see me here?”

“Because you actually got the hell out of this town. Why would you come back to nothing?”

My back stiffened, and I tried to sound casual as I said, “Oh, I don’t know that I’ll stay. I just got tired of Boston. Maybe I’ll try New York next.”

“Must be nice just to be able to go anywhere you want whenever you feel like it.” His dark eyes smirked at me, almost as if he knew I was just a scared little girl who’d never get out of Ridley Falls again.

“Maybe that’s why Ridley Falls doesn’t feel so suffocating to me,” I said, trying to lighten the defensiveness creeping into my voice. “Because I can leave anytime I want.”

He shrugged, and then he pulled me closer. His arms were strong, and his back, where I touched it, was hard and muscular. I could feel his breath moving little strands of my hair.

“So what have you been doing since you got back?” he said into my ear.

“Nothing at all,” I said, my heart pounding because here was my opening, my chance. “I’m so bored I could scream. I’d forgotten how dull this town is.”

He laughed. “I don’t know how you could have forgotten that.”

“At least it’s really pretty here outdoors. Down in Boston, it was just tall buildings and dirty sidewalks and air pollution.”
It’s now or never,
I told myself.
Be brave. For once in your ridiculous life, be brave.
At least I didn’t have to look at him when I asked, “Do you ever hike or anything like that?”

“No,” he replied. “Can’t say that I do.”

I swallowed hard as the music ended and our bodies broke apart. I looked at him then and asked, “Well, would you ever like to?”

He flashed me that half smile again and said, “Are you asking me on a date?”

Oh God, I’d blown the whole thing to pieces. Stupid, stupid, I chided myself. He’ll tell everyone, and they’ll all laugh at me for even thinking someone like Bobby Teller would look at me. “Don’t flatter yourself,” I said in a bored voice. “It came up in conversation and I was simply being polite by asking if you wanted to come along.”

He shrugged and said, “Yeah, I’ll go. Nothing else to do around here anyway.”

“Fine,” I said, flooded with relief followed by a twinge of disappointment. What had I expected, for heaven’s sake? For him to fall at my feet, saying, “Sara Lynn, I’ve worshipped you all these years. Thank God you’re back so we can finally consummate our great passion for each other”? Right. I shook my head a little as if to clear the stars from my eyes. I looked up at him, and he was giving me that sly, knowing half smile again, as if he could read my mind.

“Well, why don’t you call me sometime?” he asked.

Me? Call him? Oh, no, no, no. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. I could tell he was going to bolt back over to the pool table any minute and just leave things like this, so I pulled my last card from my hand and said, “I have to go now. Would you mind walking me to my car?”

His eyes looked puzzled for a minute, but then he smiled and said, “Sure.” He ran one hand through his dark, curly hair. “No problem.”

As we walked out of the bar, I sighed heavily, breathing in the clean night air. “God,” I said, “it was smoky and loud in there. Isn’t it peaceful out here?” I breathed again, moving my arms from my side and holding them out from my body to take in a big gulp of air.

“You always were strange, Sara Lynn Hoffman,” he said, but he didn’t say it meanly.

“You were always strange to me, too, Bobby Teller,” I replied, and it sounded like a promise I was saying back to him.

“This is me,” I said when we arrived at my car.

He patted the hood of my jazzy little car. “Sweet wheels,” he said.

“You can drive it when we go on our hike,” I told him.

“Isn’t the point of a hike to walk?” he asked.

“Well, I thought we might drive over to the nature preserve in Hadley and walk through there.”

“Planned it all out, have you?” he said, and there was that smile again, quick and mocking.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I crossed my arms over my chest, and he gently uncrossed them.

“Nothing,” he said as he pulled me into his arms. “Nothing at all.” He kissed me then, and I lost my breath. I just kept kissing him until my lips went past hurting and became numb, until my insides were aching with wanting him. We were splayed out on the hood of my car, him on top of me, when we heard a voice in the night.

“Bobby, what in hell are you doing?” It was Ruth, standing in the alley watching us.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Get out of here,” he yelled to her. “Just go.”

He got up off me and I slid off the car, and we stood looking at each other, panting hard. “Sorry,” he finally said, his voice soft. He touched my nose and kissed me hard before he turned away. “Come back tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll see you.”

I see him in my mind right now like I could reach out and touch him. I see his dark eyes glimmering and that half smile, two thirds mocking and one third sweet, that I used to trace with my finger.

“Sara Lynn!” I hear Hope’s voice speaking to me, and I realize I’m leaning over the steering wheel, gripping it hard.

“Yes?” I say jumpily.

“I’ve been trying to tell you about a million times that I saw some clothes I want for school. Kelly had a
Seventeen
magazine, and we were looking through it, and . . .”

I nod and smile, trying to respond appropriately. I’m not with Hope in this car, though. I’m someplace else, a place where ghosts surround me, pulling at the corners of my heart. I need to get out and work in my garden. There’s weeding to be done, and watering, and every little chore I can possibly do to take myself away from the regret and yearning that would choke me if I let it, would strangle me like the bittersweet vine I hack away in my garden year after year, getting rid of it all only to have it come back, again and again.