Her Dear and Loving Husband (7 page)

“Did Sarah tell you why she wanted to see your house?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.” 

“You should ask her.”

“But you know.” James put his hands on Jennifer’s shoulders and turned her to face him. The sound of the rain made a quick-time tapping, matching his impatience for the information he guessed she knew. “Tell me.”

“She said your house looks like the house she’s been dreaming about.”

“She dreams about my house?”

“And a man.”

“What man?” He felt the blood under his skin quicken. “What man, Jennifer?”

“She wouldn’t say.”

James grunted in frustration. He locked his office door, and Jennifer followed him into the hallway. He walked to the elevator, pressed the down button, and waited.

“You should tell her,” Jennifer said.

The elevator dinged, the door opened, and they stepped inside. He waited for the door to close before he spoke.

“I’m not telling her anything. She’s scared enough of me as it is. I don’t think I made a very good first impression. Or a good second impression, for that matter.” 

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Jennifer said. “I’ll tell her.”

“No!” He said it with such force the steel elevator walls rattled like an earthquake had shaken Salem. He dropped his voice to a firm whisper. “It’ll frighten her too much, especially after the way I treated her.” 

“You should give her more credit than that. I told her I was a witch a few days after I met her and she didn’t mind.”

“You didn’t tell her everything.” 

“I told her enough. She needs to know, especially if you want to get to know her.”

“She doesn’t need to know.”

When the doors opened onto the first floor, James brushed past Jennifer, out of the library, across Rainbow Terrace and College Drive to the North Campus where his classes were held in Meier Hall. Somehow, despite his internal turmoil over Sarah, he managed to talk coherently about William Wordsworth and his 1804 poem “Intimations of Immortality.” He was amused by the title, and the theme, that age causes man to lose touch with the divine. He didn’t tell his students how true that might really be.

CHAPTER 7

The next night James found Sarah in the library, huddled over one of the study desks, a stack of books beside her. She was so intent on her reading she didn’t notice him when he pulled out a chair and sat down. 

“Hello, Sarah,” he said.

Her head jerked up and her mouth opened. As he looked at her lips all he could think about was how much he wanted to kiss her, but she didn’t look like she wanted to be kissed just then. He pressed the idea aside, though he didn’t want to.

“Jennifer can help you,” she said, turning back to her book. “I’m on my break.”

“I don’t need help. I just wanted to say hello.”

Sarah smiled. It was the same smile he remembered, full, soft, joyful. Again, those lips. She leaned back in her chair and watched him, studying him, as if she were trying to decide which James she was going to see that night, the calm, courteous one or the one who jumped out from the shadows. Her face softened and she didn’t seem annoyed, so he hoped she had settled on the first possibility. 

“Hello,” she said. 

“What are you reading?”

Her hand went to her cheek and she shook her head. “About the Salem Witch Trials. They really were dreadful, weren’t they?”

He glanced at the book over her shoulder. “I know a lot about that time. Let me help you.”

She looked at him, her chocolate-brown eyes taut in concentration, staring into his, as if she were trying to see his whole truth. But he didn’t want her to see his whole truth. He wanted to be near her too much. He had to strike a balance, appearing available without giving everything away. He didn’t want her to run from him.     

“All right,” she said.

He picked a book from the stack and flipped through the pages. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you already know.”

“I’ve only just started reading. I know they were about false accusations.”

“Madness. The Salem Witch Trials were about madness.”

His fists clenched and his jaw tightened. He made a conscious effort to relax his muscles so he wouldn’t appear tense and make her nervous again. He reminded himself to breathe.

“Madness can take many forms,” he said, “and each one stems from fear. Madness implies that things are abnormal, and if things are abnormal then you cannot predict what will happen no matter how hard you try. When madness consumes everyone everywhere there is nowhere to go to find sanity.”

He looked at her, worried about her reaction, afraid again he had said too much, but she didn’t seem concerned. Instead, he thought he saw a glimmer of something long forgotten in her dark, wondering eyes. Or perhaps he only wanted to see it there.

“But how did they start?” She leaned toward him, and he had to struggle to stay focused while enveloped in her sweet scent—strawberries and cream. He couldn’t get close enough. He pulled his chair forward until it was touching hers, and he turned his head so his mouth was near her ear. He could have sat that way all night. If only they were talking about something else. But he had offered the information, and she wanted to know, so he was compelled to tell her.

“During the 1630s over fifteen thousand Puritans journeyed from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a time known as the Great Migration. The Puritans who settled Salem were a stern, sober, complicated people who believed in conformity, the Bible, and God, in that order. When they brought their strict Calvinist religion to the colonies they also brought their hatred for witches. They believed in original sin, certain they were born sinful, and they were consumed with worry over the state of their souls. They believed in Predestination, where God decided if you were saved or damned before you were born. Their only hope was to live a pious life and pray that God’s decision would swing their way in the end. It was troublesome for them, not knowing if they were saved. When Judgment Day came they wanted eternal salvation as a reward for their earthly toil and trouble. It was hard to live here…” He waited for the words to straighten themselves out in his mind. “It was hard for those who didn’t share their strict religious views.”

Sarah sat upright, her hands in her lap, her breath coming in shallow bursts. She looked like a child enthralled by a bedtime story. He was distracted by a consuming waft of strawberries and cream, and he leaned even closer.

“But the accusations.” She stuttered her words, as if she couldn’t articulate her thoughts. “How can people turn on each other that way?”

“The madness began the way all madness begins, with something unsettling that needs explanation. Samuel Parris’s parishioners were unhappy with him as the minister of the church in Salem Village, and they refused to pay their local taxes, the funds from which he received his salary. Suddenly he was giving sermons citing how the Devil was infecting Salem, telling everyone they must pray for an end to the evil here. Around this time his nine-year-old daughter, Betty, with her cousin, Abigail Williams, and her friend, Ann Putnam, spent their days listening to mystic-filled tales told by Tituba, a slave the Parrises brought with them from Barbados. Tituba told the girls about witchery, fortune-telling, and magic spells, and afterwards the girls had convulsive fits. The only diagnosis the doctor offered was witchcraft.”

“The girls must have been playing a joke,” Sarah said. “Or maybe they were put up to it by Parris himself. After all, he was probably afraid of losing his job.” 

“The girls were coerced into naming their demonic tormentors, and they named women who were outcasts, women who didn’t fit into the norms of Salem society. Women who posed a threat to the Puritan demand for conformity. They named Sarah Good, a lame, homeless woman who begged door-to-door with her children. If she were refused alms she’d leave muttering what some called a curse, and her curses were blamed for the death of some livestock one year. They named Sarah Osburn, who married her servant and didn’t attend church, scandalous behaviors then. They also named Tituba herself. After Parris whipped her, a torn, bleeding Tituba confessed to being a witch.”

“I read about that.” Sarah took a book from the stack, flipped to the index, then turned the page and pointed to the passage. “‘The Devil came to me and bid me serve him,’ Tituba said.”

James nodded. “Tituba spoke of demon creatures, black cats, green dogs, pewter-colored birds, and a white-haired man, a master wizard who made her sign the devil’s book in her own blood. She said there were undiscovered witches lurking about whose sole goal was to destroy God-fearing people. Then the girls, Betty, Abigail, and Ann, began accusing others of being witches, and many applauded them. It was up to the good people of Salem to destroy the witches because their souls wouldn’t be safe until Satan was defeated, they said. God must triumph here. After all, battles with the natives raged just miles away, and many lived in fear of an attack. There had been a smallpox epidemic a while before. God must be angry with us, they said. It’s our independent spirit He’s angry with. We are to be good. We are to conform and to follow. The accusations unleashed hysteria, which became fear, which became paranoia. That was the true madness, there, in the witch hunts. People began to accuse others of witchcraft because they didn’t like them, because they wanted attention, because they wanted retribution for some slight they felt, because they wanted the land the accused lived on, just because…” 

He couldn’t go on. Speaking about it felt uncomfortable, painful, like old clothes too small to fit, but you lay on the bed, zipper up anyway, and walk around with a pinching ache. He had to shake himself back into that moment in the library with Sarah. He stood up, walked to the stacks, pulled a few random volumes off the shelves, flipped through them, put them back. He turned to Sarah, saw her waiting, her face soft, her smile easy. He could have looked at her all night.

“There you are, Sarah!”

Jennifer came around the corner, and when she saw Sarah and James together she smiled that conspiratorial grin that was becoming her trademark. “I didn’t mean to disturb you two. I’ve been waiting to go on my break, but I couldn’t go until you came back, Sarah.”

“I’m sorry, Jen. James was telling me about the Salem Witch Trials and I lost track of time.”

Jennifer turned to James. “Was he?”   

James ignored Jennifer. He gathered Sarah’s stack of books and walked her to the librarians’s desk, setting the books on the shelf where she pointed. When he saw the time he realized he didn’t want to leave. 

“I have to go to class,” he said. “Will you be here after?” 

“I work until closing tonight,” Sarah said.

“See you later then?”

He waited. He thought it took her longer than it should have to answer. Finally, she smiled.

“Yes. See you later.” 

He left the library feeling lighter than he had in oh so many years. He hoped, as they talked, that he felt Sarah softening toward him. He had to remember to keep control. Always keep control. He was determined. Sarah would not know. When you have a secret to keep, you must keep it. There is no other way.

After his first class that night he saw Timothy waiting for him. Timothy was leaning against the back wall with his arms crossed over his chest, waiting while James finished writing the assignment for his next class on the whiteboard. James didn't know what to do about the boy who looked too young to be in college. So far, Timothy had managed to avoid attention because he stayed so quiet. But that night he looked upset, and James braced himself.

“What is it, Timothy? Having problems with your paper on
Great Expectations
?”

Timothy shook his head, the frustration obvious in his close-pulled lips and flat-black eyes. He paced the room. “Silly? Is that always going to be everyone’s reaction? Or evil? Or villains?”

“Are you still thinking about that?”

“I’m tired of having to hide.”

James watched the students in the hallway wandering past the open door. “You have to be more careful than that,” he said. “I have another class coming in. Besides, you should be less afraid of what people are saying and more afraid of what they’re doing.”

“But we’re real. We’re more real because we last forever.”

“Forever is a long time. It’s a difficult concept for people who have only decades, perhaps a century at best.”

“But that doesn’t make us silly.”

“No, it doesn’t make us silly, but people aren’t ready to know. Bad things happen when people are confronted with things they don’t understand.”      

“So we have to keep hiding?”

“Yes, for the foreseeable future we have to keep hiding.”

“Fine.”

James had seen that sour expression before. They had had that conversation countless times.

“Timothy, the only certainly I have ever had in this existence is the need to keep moving. I look like I’m thirty so I can settle somewhere for maybe ten years since I might be able to pass for a young-looking forty, but then it’s time for me to leave.” 

“That’s my point. I like living here and I don’t want to move. It’s not fair to Howard to have to leave because of me.”

“Howard knew what he was getting into when he became your guardian, and he loves you for who you are the way you love him for who he is no matter what night of the month it is. I’ve found it’s best to move on before anyone notices anything odd about me and pulls together an angry mob to chase me away with torches and pitchforks.”

“People don’t use torches and pitchforks any more.”

“I know. These days their weapons are more far-reaching and dangerous. You don’t know how people can overreact when they don’t understand something. You haven’t lived it like I have.”

“You’ve been shuffling from here to there and back again for so long. Aren’t you sick of it?”

“Yes, but it can’t be helped. That’s the way it needs to be.” 

Timothy huffed and left at a flash, slamming the door so hard it nearly swung off its hinges. The students walking into the room hardly seemed to notice, and James taught his next class, which went by in a blur. When his last class was over he made his way back to the library, up to his office to grab a pen and some papers that needed grading, then down to the main floor. He stepped out of the elevator, smelled the air, and caught her scent. Strawberries and cream. He went around to the stacks and saw her, Sarah, pulling books from a wheelie cart, checking Dewey decimal numbers on the spines, sliding them into their slots on the shelves. Her eyes brightened when she saw him. He hoped that meant she was happy to see him.