Chapter 12 #2
“You know that I hated quitting my job when I got pregnant with Claire, and you know that it took me months after she was born to feel any real connection to her.” Anne ran one unsteady hand through her rumpled hair.
“You know that I think the exact right time to show up at a party is fifteen minutes after the official start, no more and no fewer. You know I prefer Amy to Jo in Little Women. You know that dogs frighten me because one jumped on me when I was a toddler and I’ve never gotten over it.
You’re the only one I let see me while I was healing from my facelift.
For God’s sake, I’m not a diamond. With you, I’m glass. ”
“What if you don’t know me as well as you think you do?” Not a challenge. A plea for reassurance.
Anne didn’t hesitate. “It takes thirty seconds for you to look at a museum painting before you get bored, even Three Lovers. You wanted at least two more children after Hal, but you were diagnosed with secondary infertility. You wrote your first poem on the back of a cereal box when you were six years old. In your early twenties, you made it two whole weeks as a go-go dancer at a nightclub in Miles City, Montana. Your left pinky’s still crooked from when you broke it falling over a laundry basket, but you tell everyone it happened while skydiving in Key West. Should I keep going? ”
“Please,” Sadie said quietly.
Anne looked at her again. Tears were glinting in Sadie’s eyes, the kitchen light making them sparkle.
“You’ve always wanted to write a novel, but you’re still stuck on getting the first line just right.
Your Spanish is flawless, even though no one realizes it at first because your nonexistent accent makes you sound like Mayor Gringo from Gringoland.
All of your plants are named after fabric patterns, but you’re saving Quatrefoil for when you finally track down a Philodendron White Princess.
You love crossing the creek when it’s low because you can pretend you’re Huck Finn.
You adore everyone and everything with a generosity I never knew was possible. ” Anne swallowed. “Including me.”
Sadie gave her a little smile of gratitude. The panic had receded from her face, at least for the time being. Then, she said, “I’ve never told you why Fred left.”
It wasn’t a question. “No, you haven’t.”
“We’d moved down from Oakland to be near Hal after he got into USC for his master’s degree—you know that part. Bought Hedge Nettle. Fred had been acting strangely for a while. Quiet even for him. But it got worse when we moved in. I finally forced him to tell me what was wrong.”
Another woman? A secret addiction? Anne had no idea.
“He said—” Sadie looked down at the kitchen floor.
“Fred said I was just too much for him. That I’d been too much for him for a very long time.
Years. He just hadn’t known how to tell me.
Too loud, too energetic, too communicative, too close, too demanding, too”—her hands moved briefly in the air—“much. I remember it so clearly. He said to me, ‘I don’t understand why you can’t ever tone it down.
Aren’t you exhausted?’ Meaning, of course, that I exhausted him. ”
The pain rutting Sadie’s voice spread into Anne’s stomach. What a cruel, cruel thing to say. All the crueler because Fred should’ve known how much that would hurt Sadie to hear.
You had her, Fred, she thought with a bolt of bitterness. You had this woman in your life, in your bed. You woke up every single morning for twenty-five years, and she was right there, choosing you. How could you ever want her to be any different than she is?
“Oh, Sadie,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
Sadie laughed, a sharp and derisive sound.
“I hadn’t gotten my ADHD diagnosis yet. So I thought I could change myself, if I put enough effort into it.
I spent a few months doing everything I could to tone it down.
With every fiber of my being, I tried to be quieter.
I tried to practice ‘serenity.’” She put air quotes around the words.
“I even went on a week-long silent retreat that summer to build up my tolerance. That’s how badly I wanted to make him happy. I would’ve done anything for him.”
“You tried to be someone else, you mean.” Anne couldn’t imagine a quieter Sadie, would never tell a tree to stop rustling in the wind. Her vivaciousness, her whirlwind delight, her inability to slow down, ever—all of it was integral to who Sadie was.
“None of it worked. He left anyway. Said it was for both of us—that this way, we’d be happier not having to be someone we weren’t or trying to fit into a marriage that wasn’t right for us anymore.
Except—I always thought our marriage was right.
” Tears trembled in her eyes again. “So I suppose it was just me. I was wrong.”
Anne had never met Fred Clark, who’d moved back to Oakland before she’d met Sadie, but now she had a few choice words ready for him if their paths ever crossed. Sadie was never too much. You just weren’t enough. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“That’s what you think right now.” Sadie began to cry in earnest, and the sound chewed Anne’s heart into crumpled paper.
“But you’re beginning to change, you know.
Just since yesterday. And it’s wonderful, it really is.
I can see it in your face, in your eyes, in the way you hold your body.
You’re starting to become another Anne.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t know who that Anne is yet.” Even through her tears, Sadie’s gaze pierced Anne. “Who you’ll be. What you’ll want. Neither do I.”
“I want you—”
“But what happens”—Sadie’s voice shook—“if you wake up a year from now, five years from now, and realize that who you are then isn’t compatible with who I am? The same way Fred did?”
“None of us have any guarantees!” Anne threw her hands in the air, and all that gesture did was fan her mounting fear.
“I’m telling you I want to be with you! How much clearer can I be?
I want us to build a life. Our life! I want you to be the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning.
For Christ’s sake, I want that so badly I’m willing to leave behind everything I know and move to New York just so we can be together! ”
“But I haven’t even asked you to come with me!” Sadie cried out.
The sudden blow buckled Anne’s knees underneath her.
She stumbled, nearly falling. Reached out for the counter to steady herself. Even when her feet were solidly planted again, the world still pitched violently.
Sadie rushed forward, her arms out. “Oh no—I didn’t mean—that wasn’t—”
Anne couldn’t breathe.
Sadie wanted her. She did. But not enough.
“Anne—” Sadie was at her side, voice filled with sharp concern. She gripped Anne’s arm, keeping her upright. “That came out all wrong, I’m so sorry—I just meant that we haven’t even had the time to have that conversation yet, not that I don’t want you to—sweetheart, are you—?”
Sweetheart, Anne thought. Sweetheart. Her fingers, clenching at the counter’s edge, were pinched rigid with pain. Sweetheart. Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart—the word banging around her head like a loose coin in a dryer.
Sadie might have the mark on her neck, but Anne’s entire body had become a bruise.
“You should sit down. Are you dizzy?”
Gray seeped into the rims of Anne’s eyesight. She fumbled her way toward the nearby dining room table, trying to regain control of her breathing.
Sadie was still clutching her arm. “I can get you something to—”
“Stop it!” Anne sat down hard in a chair, pulling her arm away. Had Sadie really just meant that they needed to have another conversation about moving, or was her damage control covering up an ugly truth? That outburst could’ve come from some subconscious place neither of them had known was there.
Her eyes burned, fear leaking down her cheeks. Last night, Sadie had kissed her, touched her, helped her come. But now—“Why did you have sex with me in the first place, if you’re so unsure about us?”
Sadie’s white face pinched with her obvious distress. “Because,” she said slowly, pulling out the chair next to Anne, “I wanted so fucking badly to touch you that I couldn’t stop myself. Maybe I should have figured out a way to hold back. Maybe that would’ve been wiser. But I couldn’t.”
“Oh,” Anne choked, her stomach cramping. Sadie regretted what they’d done.
“Please listen to me. I don’t want to move to New York without you.
I don’t want to do anything without you.
But we have a dilemma here. You say you’re absolutely certain you’re ready, right this moment, for a permanent commitment.
I’m not. And to be perfectly frank, I’m not sure you’re really ready either.
So, if I have to be the one to make us slow down, then I will. ”
“Slow down for what?”
“I don’t know yet!” Sadie exclaimed. “That’s the point. So we have more time to figure out what it is we both need before we make any lifelong promises to—”
“I need you!” How many times did Anne have to say it?
“You need more than that!” Sadie knit her fingers together, squeezing hard. “Weren’t you the one who said you’ve started to think back over your entire life? Your feelings about women? What you’re discovering isn’t just about me, Anne. Don’t you see that?”
Anne couldn’t take any of this in. All she heard was Sadie pushing her away.
“Are you saying you want us to be platonic again until you decide that we’re ready?
Or—” Another possibility suddenly broke through her fear, bright enough to make it recede a little.
Why hadn’t she thought of this before? “Is it that you just want us to, to be in a relationship for a while before we commit to anything else?”
She could do that. Sips of water, not the whole glass, but at least it would mean she could quench her endless thirst.
“I don’t know,” Sadie whispered, staring down at her hands as if her answer were hiding there. “I don’t know what I want. I’m so sorry.”