The Longings of Wayward Girls by Karen Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

and fury. Craig’s face is mapped with confusion and love, and she is reminded, suddenly, of the time he approached her counter at lord & Taylor to ask her out. she was twenty-three, and Craig had come into the store more than once, always alone. The first time he was in men’s, buying shirts, and she caught him glancing up at her, sandy haired, smiling, his broad shoulders pulling at the fabric of his suit. He came over to her counter and said he needed a pair of gloves. A week later—a scarf. He was an attorney at Travelers Insurance and seven years her senior. The women in cosmetics told her to be careful.
“He probably has a wife at home,” one said, her lips dark and lush on her powdered face. “And kids,” another piped in. The two of them laughed at sadie’s horrified expression.
Craig was too old for her, she told them. A yale graduate, a star debater, the kind of man sadie might have been destined for had she lived her life differently, although she didn’t tell them that. Her own father had been disappointed that she hadn’t continued with college. “A store clerk?” he’d said, not bothering to mask his disdain. “That’s what you want to do with your life?”
The saturday afternoon Craig appeared again, sadie was busy with a customer, and when another girl offered to help him he declined. He wandered into the men’s department, pretending to sort through the ties as the customer sadie was with, a young woman trying to pick out a gift for her father, asked to see one wallet after another. Finally, Craig sidled up beside the woman at the counter and smiled at her. “I really like that one,” he said, beaming, pointing to the wallet in her hands, and the woman blushed and made her decision. After she left he asked sadie to dinner, and all she could think about were the cosmetic ladies’ warnings. she stared at him for so long that his face grew pale beneath his ruddy cheeks. she couldn’t refuse him, not because she was too nice, but because she’d seen his desire for her in his eyes and craved more.
she climbs into the car on the road’s shoulder and feels his anger wash off of him, charging the air. It is later than she thought. one of the neighbors has been asked to pick up the children from school.
“what were you thinking?” he says. “you frightened that woman.”
sadie tells him she’s sorry, she is so very sorry. still, she doesn’t cry. she watches the roadside blur by, the houses altered by time, the pastures now threaded with fresh asphalt and dotted with newly constructed houses. Craig drives quickly on the narrow road, one hand clenching the wheel. His silence presses her against the car door. sadie allows herself to be driven home, feeling displaced, as if she is one of the dead, returning as her own ghost.
That evening as she lies on her bed watching the shadows of the trees on the wall, Craig comes into the room and sits down on the edge of the mattress. He takes her hand in his, contrite.
“what about Girl scouts?” he says quietly. “why not volunteer to be a troop leader?”
sadie rolls over and looks up at him. His face, pale, handsome in the half-light of the bedroom, is entirely sincere. “I was going to ask you if you were serious,” she says. “but I’m disappointed to see that you are.”
Craig is exasperated with her. It’s the end of a long, trying day. sadie tells him she is fine. “I like to be morose,” she says. “It’s better than feeling nothing.”
“not for the rest of us,” Craig says, suddenly indignant. He gets up off the bed and goes downstairs and sadie hears him throwing around pans, trying to cook dinner. she stays on the bed a while longer, listening to the sounds of her family below her—Max asking his father for more milk, sylvia sliding her chair back, saying she will get it for him. she experiences the odd feeling of being absent from their lives, of being forgotten, and she stays listening until the darkness presses up against