Sarah's Window (23 page)

And so it was that word got around that Joy was staying in Paris, and within a week the tale was embroidered with all kinds of colorful twists and turns, and folks were saying the Cassoday Cafe would soon be up for sale, and Joy was to marry a count.

Joy exercised more courtesy and self-restraint than usual when it came to calling Jack Bryden. She didn't want to jar the old man out of sleep in the middle of the night, particularly given the kind of news she had for him. It was tough to break it over the phone, but she didn't want to wait for a letter to reach him. She knew Jack would be terribly wounded that Sarah had hidden all this from him. But he surprised her by saying he had suspected there was something wrong, had suspected it for months now, was dead sure of it when she didn't come home for Christmas. Jack had hoped that whatever it was, Sarah'd share it with him in good time, and now he was just relieved that she was not ill, or in danger. He asked why Sarah herself hadn't called, and Joy explained that Sarah didn't know she was calling him, said she was using her own judgment in this matter and needed his help. She wanted him to find John Wilde.

Ruth had gone to the store that morning, and Jack was on his second pot of coffee, checking the newspaper ads for after-Christmas sales with a mind to picking up some new tires for his truck, when Joy called. After he had hung up he sat at the table picking at a callus on his palm and thinking it was silly for an old man to cry like this. The tears just slid down his cheeks and dripped onto the table, and he sat and stared at them as if they weren't his own.

He didn't really spend a lot of time pondering the thing, knew what he had to do, what he should have done all along. Tediously, he hobbled up the stairs to Sarah's room and opened her top dresser drawer. At the back was a small manila envelope. He took it downstairs and sat back down at the kitchen table. He tore open the flap, then dumped the letters onto the table.

There were only three, and they were still sealed. He had shown that much respect for the man that he had not opened the letters. He turned them over and read the return address. The first two had been written from Greece. He instantly recognized the postmarks, remembered Sarah's mother writing from places in Greece, remembered the strange alphabet. He remembered how he had felt sitting here at this same table talking to a man at the embassy who was trying to tell him his daughter had drowned but Jack hadn't been able to understand him. He knew where Greece was. He'd been there. Only place he'd ever been in his life outside of Kansas. He'd stood on a pristine white beach among a bunch of sunbathing tourists and looked out to sea where his daughter had last been seen. He'd stood there in the new shoes Ruth had bought for him with sweat trickling down his back underneath his shirt, with children running into the water and laughing, and he'd cried then, too.

He wondered if Sarah would ever forgive him. It wasn't right, what he'd done. Maybe if the letters hadn't been written from Greece, maybe if John Wilde had written them from California, maybe then he would have forwarded them. He didn't know. He wasn't really sure why he'd done what he'd done. All he knew was that his granddaughter had suffered enough, and this tall man with stone blue eyes who had lived among them only briefly and yet seemed to know her so well, this man would only break her heart.

He turned over the last letter. It had been postmarked only a month before, from Cambridge. In England.

He got up and took a knife from the drawer, sat back down, and slit open the envelope. He would do what he had to do. Go wherever he had to go. She would have done as much for him. Had already done it.

In design and discipline, Cambridge was not all that different from Aghion Oros. For centuries a monastic sort of life had prevailed. Like the holy mountain, its colleges—surrounded by walls of stone and brick—presented a closed face to the world. One entered through a great arched gate, down a dark passage past a lodge where a porter admitted visitors and kept keys. Here men wore robes and lived in cloistered halls with chapel bells chiming the hours, and young boys with angelic voices sang old Anglican liturgy. There was a cloying nostalgia in the green quadrangles and the sound of bicycles rattling across cobblestone paths, in the very sound of the names—King's College and Trinity Hall. Here were nurtured young men of finer intellects and higher spirituality. John Wilde was suited to such a place.

He did not miss the holy mountain. The monks had been indifferent to him. Even with Yannis as interpreter he had not been able to draw them out. He had expected his choice to stay on the mountain to be questioned, but it seemed to rouse not the slightest bit of curiosity. They passed him daily in the courtyard, sweeping by him in their long robes with their dark eyes full of intrigue. Each evening they ate their meals in silence, content with their salt fish and black bread and pewter jugs of wine. He had felt deeply the isolation and utter foreignness of the place, but in the end, this was what had set everything in motion.

At first he had been tormented by guilt and a sense of having betrayed family and colleagues and friends. He had endured long torturous telephone conversations with Susan and his mother and—most painfully—his father. His father had threatened to fly to Athens, to come out there and talk some sense into him, and John knew it was only the remoteness of the place that had stayed him. And then there were the tedious conversations with the chair of the physics department at Berkeley as they sorted out all the implications and what could be done to replace him at this eleventh hour, and most important, the repercussions of such an action with regard to his career. Their letters had been full of astonishment and anger and disappointment, accusing him of all kinds of weaknesses, of self-indulgence, even cowardice, but none of them had come close to the truth. Only Sarah would have understood. He remembered how he had set about writing her, knowing she would see the need for his decision, would understand and encourage him. How eagerly he had waited for a reply that never came.

When, by the end of September, his family realized they had lost the battle, there was a last-minute frenzy of telephone calls and then, abruptly, all communication with him ceased. In October he wrote Susan asking for a divorce, which set off another round of agitated calls from his parents. But John no longer feared their disapproval. No longer did their voices live inside him dictating his conscience. When Susan wrote back, a curt and bitter letter of consent, he felt as if his psyche had at long last thrown off an invisible burden, something weighty and cloying, and he had been set down in a new world a naked and free man.

Early in October he had begun collaborating electronically with two Cambridge mathematicians from Trinity College introduced to him by Rupert Shelley. With their backing John had been awarded a grant from the Royal Society—Britain's most distinguished scientific body—and Rupert Shelley had made available his small house near the university, an arrangement that would enable John to move to Cambridge and devote himself entirely to mathematical research.

Cambridge was full of distinguished and unusual faces, faces such as John's, and he drew no attention as he stood in the cobbled courtyard of the pub with a pint of ale in his hand waiting for Jack Bryden. The old man had refused to discuss the purpose of his visit, despite John's probing questions. He only said he was coming to see him on a matter concerning Sarah, and he asked John to be good enough to suggest a hotel where he might stay for a night.

John had reserved a room in a quiet guest house with views of the river Cam and Jesus Green and suggested they meet at the Eagle, an amusing pub, he claimed, of historical significance, where the scientists Watson and Crick had first announced their discovery of DNA. But John suspected Jack Bryden was not in Cambridge for his amusement. John had detected a strange note in Jack's voice when they had spoken on the phone, not quite remorse, but a kind of concern behind the gruffness.

For nearly half an hour John waited in the courtyard, then he went in to the bar and ordered an ale. At that moment the door flew open and a crowd of punters barged noisily into the pub. He looked up and saw the old man standing in the doorway. There was a striking vulnerability about him, the way he stepped inside with a self-conscious glance around the room, and for the first time, seeing the old man with fresh eyes from a distance, he saw a strong resemblance to Sarah.

John raised his hand and waved to him. He had never seen Jack Bryden in anything but jeans and a work shirt or old overalls, and he was a little surprised to see how well street clothes suited him, saw the man had once been handsome in a rough kind of way.

John waved him over to a table near the wall and Jack worked his way through the crowd. The limp was more pronounced than John remembered it. Jack held out his hand for John to shake and then he dropped down onto the booth with a deep sigh of relief.

"Leg still bothering you?"

"Don't have no leg left. Took off the last of it couple of months ago," he said as he unbuttoned his jacket. He kept his eyes averted, but John could see he was in pain.

"Damn," muttered John. "Why didn't you tell me?
I
could have come to your hotel."

"No need for that. I been through this before. Muscles just need time to get used to walkin' different." He glanced up then and forced a smile, and John could see the beads of sweat on his forehead.

"What can I get you to drink?"

"What they got up there?"

"Anything you want."

"Whiskey?"

"How do you want it?"

"Get me a double. Straight up."

When John came back he saw that Jack had removed a thick envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and laid it before him on the table. John set the glass of scotch in front of the old man and sat down opposite him. Jack lifted the glass and muttered, "Cheers," then took a long drink. He set the glass down gently and looked up.

"I owe you an apology, John Wilde."

John watched while Jack lifted the flap on the envelope and poured out three letters.

"You wrote these to my little girl. She never got 'em."

John scooped up the letters and turned a dark look on the old man but said nothing. They were all there. All three of them. Only the last one was opened. Jack motioned to it, then drew back with a weak shrug of contrition.

"I only opened that one to see if you'd given a phone number."

"You never sent them on."

"You're a married man."

"Not anymore."

Jack kept his eyes averted, but John could see there was a softening around the mouth.

"That makes things easier, I guess," Jack mumbled.

"Makes what easier?"

"What I have to tell you."

Jack's glance fell on his glass; he lifted it and quietly studied the amber liquid, then bolted the last of it down.

"Is Sarah all right?" John asked in an anxious voice.

"I don't know how to say these kinds of things to make 'em sound pretty."

"Where is she?"

"Paris."

"Sarah's in Paris?"

"Been there since this summer. Went over on vacation and ended up staying."

A light crept into John's eyes.

"She's gonna have a baby."

John didn't even flinch. His look remained fixed on some point in the distance. "Is this what you came to tell me?"

"Yes."

"Why should this concern me?"

"Because the baby's yours."

"That can't be."

Jack gave a little chuckle. "That's what I said. And I imagine that's what Sarah said, too."

"It's Billy Moon's."

"Ain't Billy Moon's baby. Sarah wouldn't have a thing to do with Billy Moon after she met you. I know that much to be true."

"When's the baby due?" John asked.

"Middle of February."

John made a quick mental calculation, and then he began to feel a kind of warmth seep through him, a kind of rosy glow, and he knew it was not the beer.

Jack added gruffly, "Sarah don't have no reason to lie about that kind of thing. And besides, I'm only here 'cause Joy called to see if I knew where you were. Nobody even knew Sarah was pregnant. Sarah was gonna have the baby on her own. Wasn't gonna tell you or me or nobody."

John took this in, then glanced up, worry etched around his eyes. "Is she okay?"

"Joy says she's doin' fine, but the doctor won't let her get out of bed." Jack fingered his glass, glanced down.

"Somehow you don't reassure me."

"Well, I don't know much more than what I've told you."

"You haven't seen her?"

Jack shook his head. "Not yet. I'm takin' the train to Paris tomorrow."

It was a tacit invitation, and it hung in the air between them. Jack was thinking he'd hate the man forever if one more second of silence slipped by.

Jack leaned back against the booth and stole a glance at John, but there was none of the uncertainty, the indecision he had anticipated. A radiant smile had crept into the man's eyes, and their color had softened.

"You know, many years ago," John said, "way back when I got married, there was one doctor who told me this kind of thing could happen. I had mumps when I was thirteen. Bad age for mumps. And this doctor said that sometimes the tests don't really show if the damage is only partial or complete. He said couples go for years... even adopt a few kids, and then, suddenly it happens." Then he turned that look on Jack and added softly, "And it happened with Sarah. Sarah's going to have my baby."

And right then Jack knew from the look in his eyes that John Wilde loved Sarah, loved her as much as any man had ever loved a woman.

Suddenly Jack was keenly aware of change, thought perhaps he had never felt it as sharply as he did at this moment. He wondered maybe had this conversation taken place somewhere else, someplace familiar like the Cassoday Cafe, then maybe he could have taken it better, absorbed the shock without feeling as if he were made of something brittle and fragile that could crack and fall apart. He saw then that things would never be the same again, and as the realization flooded over him it seemed to sweep his heart right out of his body so that he felt empty and terribly alone.