driveway, the tarred surface already cracked and threaded with weeds. That they were different was acknowledged by the imposed distance the neighbors kept from the bingham house. Children invited to play were told by their mothers that they had to clean the gerbil cage, or by fathers that they had to rake the leaves—as if the parents, operating as an orchestrated unit, sensed something amiss and invented reasons to prevent them from going there.
Francie didn’t usually venture up the hill on her bike, so her appearance was suspicious. sadie turned from one window to another to watch her, and then went into the guest bedroom to view her better. From here she could see past Mrs. Hoskins’s house through a stand of sycamore. Francie pedaled furiously up the last bit of hill to the dead end. sadie saw her red cheeks, her hair stuck to her forehead. she saw Francie drop her bike and look about, as if to check if anyone was watching, then kneel down, lift the stone, and deposit something small and bright beneath it. Around sadie the house became a vacuum of silence, and suddenly she felt her days there, like a stay in a sanatorium, were over.
March 22, 2003
T
hrough the fall and into the winter months, a time in which the boundaries of the world outside sadie’s house seem to narrow, when at night the cold
descends and covers the neighborhood like a tight lid, ray Filley begins appearing places. she thinks it is a coincidence at first—that it is a small town, and now he is back in it, and why shouldn’t she run into him at shaw’s supermarket buying steaks one evening in november, at the bank with his deposit slip one morning in January, at the post office in front of the stamp machine in February, the cold curling beneath her coat collar, the parking lot filled with slush? Everyone has errands, she thinks. They make light of these encounters, inquire about the appropriate holidays. ray laughs and shows his bright teeth.
“you again!” he says, raising his arms in the air. He wears a plaid wool shirt and a hunting cap, and his long hair hangs out around the cap’s flaps. or he has on jeans and a leather coat and hiking boots. when he smiles his eyes crinkle up at the corners.
“I guess I’ll see you over at battiston’s dry cleaners next,” she says.
she doesn’t ask him why he’s still in town, how long he’ll stay. He asks her nothing about her family, her life. Instead, they exist in a strange alter world in which nothing exists beyond the moment they share.
48
Then one afternoon in March sadie tells him she’s joined the Tunxis Players. The revelation feels overly personal, as if she’s performing a kind of striptease. “we’re doing The Night of the Iguana, ” she says. It is the play her mother was in that last summer. she sees his face and knows he remembers, but he only nods and says, “well, well,” and nothing more about it. He tells her he’s moved back into the old Filley Farm homestead.
“My father was living there until he died,” he explains when she seems surprised. “I like fixing up old houses,” he adds.
when they separate, sadie feels people eyeing them, as if the space they occupy gives off its own heat. she lets herself imagine that there is something otherworldly at work, that their accidental circling of each other might be attributed to some alignment of magnetic fields, to the start of a cycle of preordained events. but then sadie sees his truck, an old Filley Farm work truck, idling in the Vincent elementary school parking lot after play practice, and she knows that he’s investigated the Tunxis Players’ rehearsal schedule. she must now accept that her childhood longing for him has somehow been made manifest, that he has been seeking her out, tracking her movements about town. but for some reason she refuses to do so. she gets into her car and lingers, waiting for the other players to head home, watching the string of taillights disappear, and then she pulls
Francie didn’t usually venture up the hill on her bike, so her appearance was suspicious. sadie turned from one window to another to watch her, and then went into the guest bedroom to view her better. From here she could see past Mrs. Hoskins’s house through a stand of sycamore. Francie pedaled furiously up the last bit of hill to the dead end. sadie saw her red cheeks, her hair stuck to her forehead. she saw Francie drop her bike and look about, as if to check if anyone was watching, then kneel down, lift the stone, and deposit something small and bright beneath it. Around sadie the house became a vacuum of silence, and suddenly she felt her days there, like a stay in a sanatorium, were over.
March 22, 2003
T
hrough the fall and into the winter months, a time in which the boundaries of the world outside sadie’s house seem to narrow, when at night the cold
descends and covers the neighborhood like a tight lid, ray Filley begins appearing places. she thinks it is a coincidence at first—that it is a small town, and now he is back in it, and why shouldn’t she run into him at shaw’s supermarket buying steaks one evening in november, at the bank with his deposit slip one morning in January, at the post office in front of the stamp machine in February, the cold curling beneath her coat collar, the parking lot filled with slush? Everyone has errands, she thinks. They make light of these encounters, inquire about the appropriate holidays. ray laughs and shows his bright teeth.
“you again!” he says, raising his arms in the air. He wears a plaid wool shirt and a hunting cap, and his long hair hangs out around the cap’s flaps. or he has on jeans and a leather coat and hiking boots. when he smiles his eyes crinkle up at the corners.
“I guess I’ll see you over at battiston’s dry cleaners next,” she says.
she doesn’t ask him why he’s still in town, how long he’ll stay. He asks her nothing about her family, her life. Instead, they exist in a strange alter world in which nothing exists beyond the moment they share.
48
Then one afternoon in March sadie tells him she’s joined the Tunxis Players. The revelation feels overly personal, as if she’s performing a kind of striptease. “we’re doing The Night of the Iguana, ” she says. It is the play her mother was in that last summer. she sees his face and knows he remembers, but he only nods and says, “well, well,” and nothing more about it. He tells her he’s moved back into the old Filley Farm homestead.
“My father was living there until he died,” he explains when she seems surprised. “I like fixing up old houses,” he adds.
when they separate, sadie feels people eyeing them, as if the space they occupy gives off its own heat. she lets herself imagine that there is something otherworldly at work, that their accidental circling of each other might be attributed to some alignment of magnetic fields, to the start of a cycle of preordained events. but then sadie sees his truck, an old Filley Farm work truck, idling in the Vincent elementary school parking lot after play practice, and she knows that he’s investigated the Tunxis Players’ rehearsal schedule. she must now accept that her childhood longing for him has somehow been made manifest, that he has been seeking her out, tracking her movements about town. but for some reason she refuses to do so. she gets into her car and lingers, waiting for the other players to head home, watching the string of taillights disappear, and then she pulls
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