Familiar Spirit

Sarah shrugged away his nervous babble. “I won’t be living around here much longer,” she said. She spoke to Brian, and concentrated on him, but bits of Melanie came through almost subliminally. Melanie was very pretty. She was blushing and her eyes were cast down and she leaned against Brian like a shy child. Against his bulk, she did look as small and vulnerable as a child.

“Really? You’re moving? Why?”

She stared at him. Everyone else, after hearing of Valerie’s death, had assumed that Sarah would want to move out, to leave that horrible experience physically behind. But Brian had obviously not thought that; his broad, handsome face was guilelessly puzzled and interested.

She shrugged, wondering if he would see her decision to move as cowardly. She still wanted him to think of her as brave. She could never lean and blush, like Melanie. “I just don’t want to stay there,” she said. “You know.”

But it was obvious that he did not know. “What, is it too big for you, after all? Or too far out of the way? I guess it might be kind of tough for a woman alone, but you did seem to like it.”

“I changed my mind.” Was it possible? Could he really not know? She couldn’t imagine why he should pretend ignorance—it wasn’t like him. Brian often evaded difficulties, but he wasn’t a liar. She knew that he often managed to live in his own private world, undisturbed by outside realities. But even though he often went for weeks without glancing at a newspaper or watching the news, surely her name, or the address of the house, would have caught his attention? Surely someone, some mutual friend, would have commented on it. Valerie’s suicide had been very much in the news for two days.

“You found a new place yet?” he asked.

Sarah shrugged. “A possibility. Nothing definite.”

Brian hugged Melanie closer to him. “It’s an interesting coincidence,” he said. “Mel and I have been talking about getting a bigger place. A place where we could have a dog, maybe. The place we’re in now—well, you know it’s kind of crowded for two.”

Sarah nodded, her gaze flickering across Melanie and back again to Brian, thinking, Crowded, yes, but I thought you liked that. That suffocating warmth and closeness. Symbiosis. She remembered Brian’s words the day he had told her about Melanie—words that still hurt. She needs me. She needs me to take care of her. She needs me in a way you don’t.

You’re right, Sarah thought now. She needs you and I don’t—at least, I don’t need you in the way you need to be needed.

But there was no triumph in the thought. She might not need him, but she still wanted him—she still felt his absence like a painful emptiness inside her. Even her anger at him, even the desire to hurt him, didn’t change that.

“So maybe we could work something out,” Brian went on in his most persuasive voice. “You’re looking for some­thing smaller and closer in, and we’re looking for something bigger. Why don’t we trade?”

Sarah stared at him, scarcely able to believe what he had said. His suggestion went beyond insensitivity—it was obscene. She couldn’t answer him.

“Sarah? What do you think?”

“No. Hell, no.” Her hands gripped the metal and plastic handle of the grocery cart and she leaned into it. “How can you even ask? What do you think, Brian? You think I miss you so much I want to move into your old apartment and make it a shrine to you? To help me remember you better?”

She knew that look on his face well. He was trying to avoid a fight. He thought she was being unreasonable, and he was trying to find words that would soothe her rather than stir her to greater rage, and knew already from past experience that he hadn’t a chance.

She shook her head and backed away before he could speak.

“Sarah, look, don’t go. Don’t get upset. What are you getting so upset for? It was just a suggestion. If you’re not interested—”

“Damn right I’m not interested.” She turned the cart around and continued to walk away from them.

“All right, you’re not interested in my place. But we still like yours. It would be perfect for us, all that space. Could you mention us to your landlord?”

He had been raising his voice steadily as she walked away from him. As she turned the corner, Sarah looked back over her shoulder and said, “Forget it. Just forget it.”

But of course he didn’t.

The telephone rang a couple of hours later, while she was watching television. Repressing a quick, nervous tremor, she walked back to the kitchen to answer it. It was Brian.

“Look, Sarah, I’m sorry if I upset you at the store,” he said, speaking quickly as if afraid she would hang up on him. “I just wasn’t thinking—I mean, I meant it as a purely practical suggestion. I wasn’t thinking of the emotional aspects. I didn’t realize how it would sound to you.”