Round Robin (28 page)

His kindness brought tears to her eyes. He alone knew how much it pained her to sacrifice one part of her dream so that she would not lose the whole. If only she were brave enough to defy her parents—but she was not. She would become a nurse rather than stay home until the unlikely arrival of a suitable young man bearing a marriage proposal. She would show her father that she was neither as stupid nor as useless as he thought. She would become the best nursing student in her class if it killed her.

And she did, but her father never knew it. He died of heart failure during her last semester, so he didn't see her graduate. Even if he had, he
wouldn't have known how her joy was tempered as she accepted her degree; he would not have been able to detect a single regret, for life in his house had taught her how to hide her feelings. But beneath the placid surface, emotions churned. She never wished for him to die, not even when he beat her, but since it had happened, why then and not years earlier, so that she would have been free to choose her own path?

The thoughts shamed her, but she could not silence them.

She found a job in a hospital in Lansing, where almost by accident she made the first friends of her life. She and two other new nurses banded together for mutual support as they struggled with the nearly overwhelming demands of the hospital, and their need soon blossomed into friendship. At least once a week they went out in the evening together, to see a movie or to shop. Once, when they went bowling, a group of three men invited them out for a drink. After a quick whispered conference, they agreed. Boldly, Carol drank as much as the other girls and laughed nearly as loudly. It was the most fun she had ever had, and the next day, her friends insisted that one of the men had hardly been able to keep his eyes off her all night. She was pleased, but she didn't believe them. She didn't even remember Kevin's last name. She had preferred one of the others, a dark-haired lawyer who had put his arm around her as the men walked the nurses to their bus stop. He was well-read and charming, and she wished that it was he, not Kevin Mallory, who stopped by the hospital later that week and asked her out to lunch.

She accepted the invitation, and when he asked her out again, she agreed. With more surprised fascination than desire, she realized he was courting her. A year later, when he asked her to marry him, she would have laughed except he was so earnest.

“I'll be a good husband to you,” he promised. “I'll take care of you. You won't have to work anymore. I love you and I want us to be together.”

She stared at him, astounded. He loved her? He hardly knew her. She searched her heart and wondered if she had fallen in love with him without realizing it. She was almost certain she had not. He was a good, kind man, and she liked him, but passion didn't sweep over her when she
looked at him. When he fumbled to kiss her good-night, she felt the pressure of his mouth but none of the electric warmth her friends described when confiding about their own trysts.

Still, she did like him, and she knew he would never hurt her. And a woman could not go through life alone.

“I'll need to think about it,” she told him. He nodded reluctantly and told her to take all the time she needed; he would wait for her forever if he had to. Carol knew hyperbole when she heard it but decided to kiss him rather than scoff. He responded eagerly, relieved that she had not refused him outright.

Her girlfriends thought Kevin too dull for a boyfriend but perhaps just right for a husband, since he wasn't bad-looking and he earned a good living. Her mother, who had never met him, was his strongest advocate. “Say yes,” she urged over the telephone from the town in northern Michigan Carol had successfully escaped. “You might never get a better offer.”

Carol couldn't ignore the truth in her words. The next time she saw Kevin, she told him she would marry him. And later, when his insurance company transferred him to Pennsylvania, she gave up her job and the only friends she'd ever had and made a home for him in a three-bedroom house in Pittsburgh.

Sarah was born a few months after the move. Carol's mother stayed with them during the difficult months before the birth, when the dangerous pregnancy forced Carol to remain in bed, and afterward, when a thick cloud of despair inexplicably came over her. The bright new baby in her arms brought her little joy, and she did not know why. Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night to find she had been weeping. Other times she could not sleep at all, but paced around the living room of the darkened house, smoking one cigarette after another. She did not know why she wasn't happy, and she hated herself for it. She had all she had ever wanted—an education, a pleasant house, an adoring husband, a beautiful child who would have everything, everything that she herself had been denied. What was preventing her from enjoying such blessings?

Her beloved books were forgotten. If not for her mother, meals, laundry,
housekeeping, and even Sarah herself would have been neglected, too. Carol nursed Sarah when her mother brought her the child, but otherwise she lay in bed sleeping or sat outside in a chair, alone with her thoughts. After a few weeks of this, her mother taught her how to bathe the baby, change her, dress her, care for her. Gradually, her mother's quiet but firm insistence helped her develop an interest in the child, and a thin shaft of light began to pierce the heavy fog surrounding her. Carol could not find the words to voice her gratitude, but for the first time, she realized how deeply she loved her mother.

For his part, Kevin left for the office soon after breakfast, and Carol did not see him again until evening. He would ask her about her day, although there was never anything to tell him. He would nod and kiss her gently, then talk quietly with his mother-in-law before going off to play with Sarah until suppertime. Carol considered telling her husband and mother that she didn't like them talking about her behind her back, but she couldn't summon up the energy to complain.

Then one day, when Sarah was three months old, Carol had a dream. She was sitting at the kitchen table of her father's house, unable to touch the plate her mother had set before her. It was raining outside, and thunder crashed until the walls shook. Her father scowled and said, “You don't deserve that baby. You can't even take care of her.”

Suddenly, Carol heard a faint wail coming from outside. Sarah was out there in the storm, alone and frightened. Carol ran outside to find her daughter, but the wind drove rain into her eyes until she couldn't see. She tried to follow the thin cry to its source, but every time she thought she was nearly there, the cry withdrew into the distance. Frantic, she ran faster and faster, but always the sobbing child remained just out of reach, lost and helpless, dependent and abandoned.

Carol woke shaking. Kevin slept on as she climbed from bed and stumbled down the hall to Sarah's room, where she listened to her daughter's breathing and touched the tiny bundle beneath the quilt to convince herself that Sarah was not lost in a storm. Reassured, she sank to the floor and hugged her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth, weeping softly.

The next morning Carol told her mother that she thought she could manage just fine now on her own. Her mother brightened, eager to return home to her garden and her friends. Carol saw her husband and mother exchange happy glances, pleased that she had returned to her old self. Carol knew she hadn't, not yet and perhaps never, but she would be better than she had been. She would be a good mother to Sarah, if only to prove that her father had been wrong about her. She was not a failure, though he had been convinced of it and had nearly convinced her, too.

After her mother left, she made a schedule for herself just as she had back in college. Every day that she managed to complete the tasks on her list was a subdued triumph. She fought off the old listlessness by throwing herself into her role of mother and wife. This was her new venue, she decided, and she could achieve there as well as any other place.

In fair weather she took long walks, pushing Sarah in her stroller. They had lived in that town for nearly a year, but in her distraction Carol had not yet learned their neighborhood. With her daughter's pleasant company, she explored the streets near their home, and one day she chanced upon a sight that sent a stab of longing though her: a used book shop, its front window stacked with books of every size and description.

She maneuvered the stroller through the store's narrow aisles, pausing whenever a book caught her eye, hungrily devouring a chapter or more before moving on to the next delight. The hours passed in the luxury of words and the smell of old paper. Eventually, Sarah grew bored and fretful, so Carol found picture books for her, which Sarah gnawed and flung to the floor. When other customers began to stare, Carol blushed and paid for the picture books, then hurried from the store. When she was almost home, she realized that she had forgotten to buy anything for herself.

Her embarrassment kept her away the next day, but she returned the day after. Soon she began to visit several times a week, sometimes to purchase a book for herself or for Sarah, other times merely to surround herself with so many stories, so many words. The polite hush of the shop was nearly religious in its serenity, and after more than a few days away, she found herself craving it.

The elderly woman who ran the shop came to know her by name, and Carol began to recognize other frequent customers. They would nod politely at each other, but this was not a place to strike up friendships. No one would dare intrude on another visitor's quiet contemplation of the walls of books.

Only one person broke this unspoken rule of the bookshop: the owner's nephew, Jack, who had dark hair and a quick flash of a grin. He was not there every day, but when he was, he would greet Carol with a slight bow as if she were someone of great importance. At first his slightly mocking demeanor embarrassed her, but she got used to it and began to return his bows with a mocking curtsy of her own.

Sometimes he searched the stacks for children's books and set them aside for Sarah. When he detected a pattern in Carol's purchases, he began to point out books he thought she would enjoy, classics in excellent condition. She appreciated his help and often thanked him with a small homemade gift—a slice of cake from yesterday's baking, a basket of fresh rolls. When she saw the pleasure her gifts brought him, her cheeks grew warm and she hurried deeper into the store, pushing Sarah's stroller before her.

One day he left the cash register and followed.

“Thank you for the cookies,” he said when he caught up to her, keeping his voice low so that he wouldn't disturb the other customers.

“Don't mention it,” she told him. His dark hair was so thick that it always looked tousled. Instinctively she lifted a hand to touch her own hair.

He misunderstood the gesture and extended his hand. “I'm Jack.”

“I'm Carol.” She shook his hand and quickly released it. “Carol Mallory. Mrs. Kevin Mallory.”

He grinned at her, then bent down to look into the stroller. “And who's this big girl?”

Sarah squealed with delight, and Carol couldn't help smiling. “My daughter, Sarah.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sarah,” he said, extending a finger, which she seized. Laughing, he let her hang on for a moment before he freed himself and stood up. “It's nice to finally know your name.” Grinning, he turned and walked back to the front of the store.

Carol watched him go. It
was
silly that she had not learned his name before then, but names had not seemed necessary in the bookshop.

Suddenly she was grateful that she had not told Kevin about him.

The meetings in the bookshop turned into long chats over coffee at a nearby diner. They would discuss politics and literature—and themselves. Jack, she learned, traveled the country acquiring books for the shop; that explained his frequent absences. He had never married, though he had come close once, years before. “I came to my senses just in time,” he said, laughing. He had not yet decided if he wanted to take over his aunt's shop after her retirement.

“Why wouldn't you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don't know if I want to be held in one place.”

Carol understood. He wanted the pleasure of discovering a first-edition Mark Twain at an estate sale, not the drudgery of placing books on shelves and making change. That was all right every once in a while, but not day in, day out. That was no kind of life for a man like Jack. That was for a man more like—well, like Kevin.

Sometimes they went for long walks after the coffee, and Carol would have to race home as fast as the stroller would go in order to have dinner ready by the time Kevin returned from the office. She found herself thinking about Jack when she wasn't with him. More than once, when Kevin made love to her, she closed her eyes and imagined Jack inside her, her hands tangled in his dark hair, his mouth on hers. Afterward, waves of guilt would wash over her, but she would tell herself she had done nothing wrong. She was unfaithful to Kevin only in her imagination, and no one could condemn her for that.

She knew that Jack had a girlfriend, a woman he had been seeing off and on for nearly three years. As the weeks passed, Jack mentioned her less and less frequently. Once, after a long walk through the park, as they sat on the grass under a tree watching Sarah play, Carol asked about her.

“I haven't seen her in weeks,” he said.

Her heart pounded, but she kept her voice steady. “Why not?”

He met her gaze. “I think you know why.”

She trembled inside and couldn't speak. She wanted to rip her eyes away from his, but she couldn't. She felt as if he could see into the very heart of her and knew what she was thinking—and what she imagined as she made love to her husband.

Jack took her hand. “Carol, I want to be with you.”

“We can't.” She felt her eyes filling with tears. “I'm married.”