“She liked you, although she never could figure out what to make of you. She said you reminded her of the way they used to show ghosts in those old movies from the thirties. ‘He’s bright and shiny, but not all here,’ she said.”
“I’m no ghost,” I said. “I promise you.”
He smiled. “No? I finally got around to checking your references. This was after you’d been subbing for us awhile and did such a bang-up job with the play. The ones from the Sarasota School District are fine, but beyond there…” He shook his head, still smiling. “And your degree is from a mill in Oklahoma.”
Clearing my throat did no good. I couldn’t speak at all.
“And what’s that to me, you ask? Not much. There was a time in this part of the world when if a man rode into town with a few books in his saddlebags, spectacles on his nose, and a tie around his neck, he could get hired on as schoolmaster and stay for twenty years. Wasn’t that long ago, either. You’re a damn fine teacher. The kids know it, I know it, and Meems knew it, too. And that’s alotto me.”
“Does Ellen know I faked my other references?” Because Ellen Dockerty was acting principal, and once the schoolboard met in January, the job would be hers permanently. There were no other candidates.
“Nope, and she’s not going to. Not from me, at least. I feel like she doesn’t need to.” He stood up. “But there’s one person whodoesneed to know the truth about where you’ve been and what you’ve done, and that’s a certain lady librarian. If you’re serious about her, that is. Are you?”
“Yes,” I said, and Deke nodded as if that took care of everything.
I only wished it did.
10
Thanks to Deke Simmons, Sadie finally got to find out what it was like to make love after sundown. When I asked her how it was,she told me it had been wonderful. “But I’m looking forward to waking up next to you in the morning even more. Do you hear the wind?”
I did. It hooted around the eaves.
“Doesn’t that sound make you feel cozy?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to say something now. I hope it doesn’t make you uncomfortable.”
“Tell me.”
“I guess I’ve fallen in love with you. Maybe it’s just the sex, I’ve heard that’s a mistake people make, but I don’t think so.”
“Sadie?”
“Yes?” She was trying to smile, but she looked frightened.
“I love you, too. No maybe or mistake about it.”
“Thank God,” she said, and snuggled close.
11
On our second visit to the Candlewood Bungalows, she was ready to talk about Johnny Clayton. “But turn out the light, would you?”
I did as she asked. She smoked three cigarettes during the telling. Toward the end, she cried hard, probably not from remembered pain so much as simple embarrassment. For most of us, I think it’s easier to admit doing wrong than being stupid. Not that she had been. There’s a world of difference between stupidity and naïveté, and like most good middle-class girls who came to maturity in the nineteen-forties and -fifties, Sadie knew almost nothing about sex. She said she had never actually looked at a penis until she had looked at mine. She’d had glimpses of Johnny’s, but she said if he caught her looking, he would take hold of her face and turn it away with a grip that stopped just short of painful.
“But it alwaysdidhurt,” she said. “You know?”
John Clayton came from a conventionally religious family, nothing nutty about them. He was pleasant, attentive,reasonably attractive. He didn’t have the world’s greatest sense of humor (almost none might have been closer to the mark), but he seemed to adore her. Her parents adoredhim.Claire Dunhill was especially crazy about Johnny Clayton. And, of course, he was taller than Sadie, even when she was in heels. After years of beanpole jokes, that was important.
“The only troubling thing before the marriage was his compulsive neatness,” Sadie said. “He had all his books alphabetized, and he got very upset if you moved them around. He was nervous if you took even one off the shelf—you could feel it, a kind of tensing. He shaved three times a day and washed his hands all the time. If someone shook with him, he’d make an excuse to rush off to the lav and wash just as soon as he could.”
“Also color-coordinated clothes,” I said. “On his body and in the closet, and woe to the person who moved them around. Did he alphabetize the stuff in the pantry? Or get up sometimes in the night to check that the stove burners were off and the doors were locked?”
She turned to me, her eyes wide and wondering in the dark. The bed squeaked companionably; the wind gusted; a loose windowpane rattled. “How do you know that?”
“It’s a syndrome. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD, for short. Howard—” I stopped.Howard Hughes has a bad case of it,I’d started to say, but maybe that wasn’t true yet. Even if it was, people probably didn’t know. “An old friend of mine had it. Howard Temple. Never mind. Did he hurt you, Sadie?”
