I was telling Sarah that when David came into the back office.
“She’s only nineteen, Sarah. Can you even imagine?” I sat on the edge of the desk, my shoes off, swinging my bare feet and noticing her looking at my legs admiringly, not for the first time today, under my green and blue plaid skirt. I’d worn it specifically for clubbing, along with the white blouse that made it look the typical “school girl” uniform. I was determined to bring home a guy tonight, and I’d told her so. She’d eyed my outfit, laughed, and then said, “That’ll do it.”
“Can you imagine?” I asked again, punctuating my statement with a nudge.
“Maybe she’s pregnant,” she replied distractedly, chewing on the end of her pen and peering through her reading glasses at some report.
“No one gets married because they’re pregnant anymore.” I rolled my eyes. “I know a girl who had nine abortions. Nine. Seriously.” Sarah did look up then, her eyes showing surprise. “Well… not everyone can make that decision.”
“I guess.” My nonchalance seemed to irk her even more. She turned almost imperceptibly away, just a slight tilt of her shoulder, and went back to her report.
I watched David gathering up his paperwork through the two-way glass. I knew he was listening, even though he couldn’t see us. The office door was open.
“Is that a real wedding ring?” I nudged her again with my foot, tugging her skirt upwards with my toe.
“You know it isn’t.” She flipped one of the pages of the report so hard it tore.
“It looks real.” I leaned in to look at it as she clutched the paper in her hand. “Did you go out and buy it?”
“Not exactly.” Sarah turned and yanked open a drawer, digging through the tray of pens.
“Where did you get it?”
She slammed the door shut, a yellow highlighter clenched in her fist. “Someone gave it to me.”
“What someone?” I knew I was pushing it-even for me.
Sarah looked at me, blinking fast, her mouth open but no words coming out.
“Lizzie, I’ve got work left to do.”
“Sheesh, avoid much?” I hopped off the desk. “Fine, I’ll go talk to David.” She grabbed my arm and sighed. “Sit down.”
I did. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.” She pulled the cap off the highlighter and drew a fat star next to something on the report. “I’m not mad at you.”
I sat on the edge of the desk, watching her, waiting. “So who are you mad at?”
“I’m not mad.” She was back to highlighting again.
“And I’m Sister Mary Margaret from Our Holy Virginity.” She laughed then, shaking her head. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Just pay attention to me.” I stuck my tongue out at her.
“Brat.” She smiled, going back to her work.
“Sarah, I’m going back to school in two weeks,” I whined. “We don’t have much longer. What’s more important, me or that stupid report?” Her eyes flashed as she glanced up at me. “This is life, Lizzie. And trust me, life sucks. And it never stops sucking. Get used to it.”
“You’re such a bitch.” I pouted.
“And you’re such a baby.” She continued to chew on her pen cap and we sat in silence for a while, Sarah working, me pouting.
“Are we fighting?” I asked.
She smiled up at me. “Do you want to fight?”
“I don’t know what I want.” I sighed.
“Maybe that’s the problem.” She traced her fingernail down a line of numbers, distracted again.
“Well I know what I don’t want.”
“Hm?”
I nudged her again. “I don’t want to get married before I’m forty.”
“You’d better put Tim on a leash, then.” Sarah snorted.
“Very funny.”
“Nineteen, Sarah!”
“I heard you.” She slipped her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “Stupid people do stupid things. Young people are inherently stupid. And again, I wouldn’t rule out the pregnancy idea.”
“But-she’s only nineteen! And… hey… are you calling me stupid?!”
“Who’s only nineteen?” David had materialized, filling the door frame. I knew the moment I looked at him that he’d overheard us.
“My boyfriend’s friend’s girlfriend… well, fiancee, I guess,” I amended. “They’re getting married next weekend. Who in their right mind gets married at nineteen?” I noticed him looking at where my foot was resting on Sarah’s thigh, but I didn’t move it.
She was too busy working again to notice him noticing.
“Nineteen is right about the age when you think you know everything, but you really don’t know anything.” He moved further into the room, helping himself to the other chair opposite Sarah. He set his surveys down on her desk. “I was only twenty when I
got married…trust me, I can believe it.” He sighed. Sarah glanced at him for a moment, then at me. David didn’t usually talk about his private life.
“You’re married?” I was just making conversation. Sarah had told me he was divorced.
“Was married,” he corrected.
“How long?” Sarah asked.
I cocked my head at her. I didn’t think she’d ever paid this much attention to David. It wasn’t just that she’d asked him a personal question-it was that Sarah was showing an actual interest.
“Eight years.”
I raised my eyebrows. Their eyes were locked, and there was some communication going on between them that I didn’t get.
“Kids?” I asked, just for something to say.
“No.” He smiled over at me. “She wanted them, but I…” He cleared his throat. “I can’t. That was one of the things that broke us up, actually.”
“Can’t?” I looked at him, puzzled. “Can’t have…sex?”
“Lizzie!” Sarah pinched the inside of my thigh, making me yelp. She looked kindly at David-so kindly, her face didn’t even look like Sarah’s for a moment there. “He means he’s sterile. Probably a low sperm count?”
“That’s about right.” David nodded and shrugged. “I’m shooting blanks.”
“Oh.” I rubbed my thigh. It hurt.
“It was the same with us.” Sarah revealed. “My ex wanted them, but I couldn’t…” I noticed her looking down at the ring she was wearing, and it didn’t occur to me for a moment that when she said “her ex,” she actually meant ex- husband. “I had… well, I was damaged. Pretty much beyond repair. There was no way I could carry a child to term. So he went and married someone else who could.”
“I’m sorry, Sarah.” David didn’t reach out to touch her, but she responded as if he had, her face softening as she looked at him.
“Lizzie, you can close your mouth.” she said, not even glancing at me, but smiling a small, knowing smile.
My mouth snapped shut, and I tried not to reveal my hurt. I dropped my foot from her lap. David sensed something going on between the two of us, but his eyes never left her for a moment.
“I know, it hurts, doesn’t it?”
It took me a moment to realize, he wasn’t talking to me, but to her. She looked at him speculatively, still with the pen cap in her mouth. Finally, she nodded.
“How long?” he asked.
“I got married at twenty-eight… was married for five years. He was…” She groped for the right word. “Self-absorbed.”
That put the divorce about two years ago, I calculated.
David nodded, leaning back in his chair. They were looking at each other, and I think she was really seeing him for the first time. With his dark curly hair, big brown eyes and flirtatious nature, she seemed to always dismiss him as a pretty boy. She’d never really given him a chance, and I wondered, looking at the way she was looking at him now, if he reminded her of her ex in other ways. And I wondered if I was going to get the chance to find out.