“My love,” said Beverly hastily, catching hold of Pete’s arm, “is dinner going to be ready anytime soon?”
Her question threw him, and for a moment he looked confused. Then he said, “I need to steam the broccoli; once that’s done, the chicken and potatoes will be ready. Probably in about ten minutes?”
Beverly nodded and nudged Sarah. “Go on. About how strange she was.”
“Oh. Yeah.” She had been interested in Pete’s diversion—she was looking for reasons to substantiate her feelings about Valerie. But that could wait—the kind of meandering, theoretical, philosophical/psychological discussions Pete and Sarah loved to get into usually bored Beverly. “The whole thing was strange,” Sarah went on. “Not the house. I mean, the house is great. I think. So far. At least . . .”
Beverly laughed. “I don’t believe it! You’re talking yourself out of it!”
“I’m not!”
“But something upset you,” Pete said.
“The girl?” said Beverly.
Sarah nodded. “It was the way it happened. It was as if she was looking for me, as if she knew—the way she stared at me, like she was reading my mind. How could she have known I was looking for a house? What made her pick me, out of all the people sitting around the commons this afternoon?”
“It’s called luck,” Beverly said. “Or maybe she was attracted to you, because you looked so nice.” She rubbed her shoulder against Sarah’s and gave her a kittenish look.
“Maybe you don’t really want the house,” Pete said. “Maybe you’re just not ready for making the commitment to a house of your own.”
Was he right? The image of the house resurfaced in her mind, and with it a pang of longing. She wanted to live there. The house might have been made especially for her. “Of course I want the house,” she said. “It’s perfect. I knew the moment I saw it. And if I’m not ready to live by myself, I should be. Brian and I are finished. I can’t hang around here as if I expected him to call me back. The only thing that upsets me is Valerie.”
“Perhaps she’s an excuse,” Pete said. “A focus for all your doubts.”
Sarah grimaced and shook her head hard. “No. There’s a reason for my feeling this way. There’s something very odd about how this happened—something very odd about her. When we were at the house and I decided to take it, she informed me that she’d already told the landlady my name. She was that sure of me. Before I’d even seen the place. How could she have done that? How could she have been that certain?”
Pete shrugged. “She was lying. Maybe it was all a part of her game, to tell you that. All a part of her own strange reality. You sensed something disturbing about her—maybe she’s whacko, a nut-case.”
“To use the scientific terminology,” Beverly said wryly. “You didn’t give her any money, did you?”
Sarah shook her head quickly. “No. She gave me the landlady’s name and address. The rent is due the twenty-second.”
“Maybe you should call her,” Pete suggested. “Just to make sure everything is fair and square, and to let her know about you. That might make you feel better about it, too.” He stood up. “I have to attend to dinner. Would one of you ladies set the table?”
“When did you plan to move in?” Beverly asked as she and Sarah distributed the flatware on the round, glass-topped table in a recess of the large living room.
“I thought maybe this weekend.”
Pete looked in from the kitchen. “I have a student with a van,” he said. “I’m sure I could talk him into helping us on Saturday morning. It shouldn’t take more than a trip or two to get all your things moved.”
“The things his students do for extra credit,” said Beverly.
Sarah concentrated on the pepper grinder she was holding, placing it precisely in the center of the table as she replied. “Brian has a truck, you know. And he could move the heavy things for me.”
“Sarah,” said Beverly, sounding dismayed.
“You don’t have to ask him,” Pete said.
Sarah turned away from the table. She had to look at one of them, so she chose Pete. “Brian might as well do it,” she said. “All my stuff is at his place, after all. And he said he’d do it.”
Pete was silent. Sarah saw him look at Beverly, cautioning. Then he said gently, “We could easily take care of it, Sarah. You don’t have to worry about it. You don’t even have to see him.”
Sarah shook her head. “That’s silly. Of course I have to see him. It’s his apartment, and we have to sort out our things, decide what belongs to him and what to me. We bought a lot of things together during—”
“I could do it, Sarah,” Beverly said. “You could just tell me—I remember your things from when we lived together.”
Sarah half-turned so she did not have to face either of her friends directly. She tried a laugh. “Look. Brian exists. My things are in his apartment. It’s not going to kill me to see him, and it’s the most sensible way to handle this. I have to get used to it, and so do you. I can’t have a nervous breakdown every time I run into him on campus. This is a small town, and we know the same people and we go to the same school—I can’t avoid him forever. I have to see him sometime, and it might as well be this weekend.”
Pete went back into the kitchen. Beverly moved closer to Sarah, touching her arm. “You look. You don’t have to be sensible, you know. We won’t think any less of you. I know you’re tough and all that; I know you’re capable of going over there and packing up all your stuff and being cool and perfectly friendly to that jerk, but you don’t have to do it. There’s no point, if it might upset you. You don’t have to put on a front for anyone; you don’t have to prove anything. Don’t rush it. Just wait until you happen to run into him . . . wait until you’re well and truly over him before you try to see him.”
“But I am over him,” Sarah lied. “Mostly, anyway, I think. How can I know for sure unless I see him, to test myself? I’ve gotten used to being alone . . . but then, you know, we were drifting apart even before he met this Melanie. It was just a matter of time, really.” She looked cautiously at Beverly to see how her story was being accepted.
“I always thought you could do better,” Beverly said. “Honestly, Sarah. I mean, O.K., I’ll admit Brian’s a hunk, and he’s very nice—at least, I always thought he was nice until this business—but . . . I could never see you spending the rest of your life with him. He’s so lazy. You know, in five years you’ll be a professor somewhere, and Brian will still be living in that same little apartment with all his books and records and games, and he’ll be taking classes in Zen and the art of basket-weaving, or something equally useful, and he’ll be no closer to getting a degree than he is now. And he’ll be perfectly content.”
Sarah had to smile and admit the accuracy of Beverly’s prediction. “All right, he’s not ambitious . . . but he’ll find himself eventually. Is it better to be ambitious than to be happy? You know he’s intelligent, and talented, and good-natured. A much nicer person than I am, really. And he did so much for me—he was so good to me—all the time, little things and big ones. He’d—” She faltered and broke off, trapped again by memories. Brian’s warmth, his smile, the way he said her name when he had one of his surprises for her.
“Oh, Sarah,” Beverly said softly, sadly.
Pete came back into the room with the platter of roast chicken. “Let’s talk about something else,” he said.
“I’m all right.”
“Of course you are,” Beverly said softly as they all sat down to dinner.
Brian was not mentioned again that evening, but Sarah was so aware of the unspoken name that she sometimes felt he was physically in the room with them, Pete and Beverly ignoring him out of loyalty to her. It gave her an odd feeling, but she did not mention Brian again, either, observing the unspoken rules—and then wondered who the rules were for, who was being protected. They talked about Sarah’s new house, and the oddity of Valerie, and an experiment Pete had been observing in the psychology department. They talked about books, and watched a well-meaning but extremely dull local arts program on television, and played a game of Scrabble. By the time she went to bed, Sarah felt ready to burst with self-restraint and self-denial. In bed at last, alone and free, her thoughts flew greedily to Brian.