Revisions Revisions Revisions

Many people who look at this blog (almost all 5 of you!) will have noticed in recent weeks that I've emailed a story around and asked for edits and suggestions. I can now make the educated statement that this is the least fun part of the writing process, as a matter of fact it is downright not fun! On the other hand, it is perhaps the absolute most helpful thing for a writer. I revised my story, and then I revised it again. And then, after careful consideration, I revised more and more things until I came up with a story that I believe is infinitely better. The sad part of all this is for this story to be all it could be, it will need to go through many many more revisions and rewrites. Yet, for now I'm satisfied with where it is. I recently submitted it to a magazine contest in the hopes of winning lots of money and being published. I can't say I'm entirely optimistic about this. I believe it's a good piece of fiction, but as far as success goes I understand it often takes years of hard work, rejection and minor successes, then a giant piece of luck, before one truly "makes" it.

For now, in the spirit of doing things not for fame or fortune or glory but merely for fun and to share the joy of one's own efforts with friends, I present to you my latest draft of When Sarah Smiles.

P.S. I'm not crazy about the title. If anyone has a suggestion on that I'd be happy to hear it.

When Sarah Smiles

Roger sat at his table sipping his champagne and watching, always watching. He watched the servers hurrying back and forth bringing drinks, entrées, salads, and pie and always smiling. Servers only have one emotion, smiling and helpful. They never worry or complain. Customers didn’t like to think about it, but servers are in fact people capable of experiencing the whole myriad of emotional range. They hid it well, but he could see it in them anyway. In those brief moments as they hurried back to the kitchen or turned away from a table, he saw and he knew. Probably they weren’t hiding anything dangerous or unflattering. One young lady was clearly attracted to one of her coworkers, who just as clearly had no idea. Others may have been worried about money, or family. He couldn’t always tell the cause of the pain behind their eyes, but the feeling was always clearly painted on their frames. The diners were no different. Everyone was hiding something. Well, not everyone. The young boy whose heart was being broken by the pretty girl who just wanted a ‘friend’ and a fancy meal wasn’t hiding it well. The girl was. She was exceptionally talented, Roger noted. To any random onlooker she was truly remorseful over the poor boy’s ‘misreading’ of her signals. On the inside though, all the way behind those big, brown eyes, in the furthest reaches of her soul she couldn’t be more pleased. Roger saw it all. It never failed. His lobster arrived. After assuring the young man, who didn’t really care about him, that all was well, he set about cracking the lobster open with real fervor. At Gianni’s they normally did that back in the kitchen, but he always requested the pleasure of performing the task himself. It was the one truly joyful experience in his life. It was the highlight of his first date with Sarah. They had come back here each anniversary and cracking open his lobster reminded him of the most blissful moments of their short marriage.

It ended one day in November. The day began like any other day. Sarah told him goodbye, kissed him, and headed off to work. On her lunch break she and some friends decided to go out. They were driving through an intersection when a Ford Explorer hit some ice and slammed into them. Sarah got the worst of it. She hit her head against the window, got a concussion and passed out. She hadn’t woken since. The doctors offered little hope of a recovery. They said even if she did revive, which was unlikely, she probably would have greatly reduced function, living the rest of her life like a newborn. The doctors said better to let her pass, but Roger couldn’t. He visited the hospital every day, and he still felt the pain of her lies every time he looked at her. He needed to know what she had been keeping from him. Not knowing was the worst part, and now he couldn’t ask her. If he let her go he’d never find the truth.

He came back to Gianni’s this year even though she was gone. He watched the people. He ordered champagne. He cracked his lobster, and the activity hadn’t lost its flavor. Normally, he savored every moment of his meal and ordered a mousse for dessert. Today, though, he finished his lobster and champagne quickly. Today, he needed to be gone. He called the waiter over, placed a quick to-go order, paid his tab quietly and left.

During his musings Roger had noticed a man three tables away. The man’s back was to him, but Roger could tell who he was. It was all there in his false bravado and overly friendly manner. There was always something shifty about Glenn that Roger could never quite pin down. The man was something of an enigma.

When Sarah started working with Glenn she had said very little about his shiftiness to Roger. She went on about how nice he was, and how he was the only one in a company full of arrogant, self-centered jerks who had been courteous enough to welcome her to the office and to offer any help when she was still learning her way around. As time went on she talked about him more and more. He had a wife and three children, two girls and a boy. The youngest was seven. Last summer Glenn invited Sarah and Roger to a BBQ at his house. Heather was a wonderful woman. Roger knew that the first time he saw her. Smart. Dependable. Pretty. Honest, or at least as honest as a pretty woman could be. Glenn, on the other hand, while being every bit the gentlemen Sarah had made him out to be, was just a little too friendly. A little too helpful. A little too happy. And there was that mystery about him. The same type of mystery that surrounded Sarah now. He was hiding something, and he was hiding it well, but Roger could see it lurking there behind that grin. He didn’t like Glenn, and he didn’t want to talk about Sarah. So he paid quietly and worked his way around the edge of the restaurant making sure to avoid Glenn’s eyes.

He walked from the restaurant straight to the hospital. He brought Sarah her favorite dessert, blueberry Tiramisu, and a simple necklace. She would never be able to wear it, or eat the dessert, but it was their anniversary and she deserved something. He skipped the front desk. They were oddly strict, he felt, about enforcing visitors’ hours, but Roger found if he simply walked to his wife’s room and didn’t talk to anybody they just left him alone.

The lights blinked on all the monitors in the room. It was dark except for those lights and a sliver spilling in from the hallway through the almost closed door. She lay unmoving in the bed in the center of the room, surrounded by the machines. The slow, steady sound of her breathing matched the beeping of the heart rate monitor. Roger sat slumped down in one of the chairs against the wall. Despite being cushioned the chair felt hard underneath him. The whole room felt hard. He sat there and listened to his wife’s breathing, which was only interrupted every now and then by a loud beep from one of the life support machines. The room smelled like disinfectant. That was the smell that he associated with his wife now. He used to think of her vanilla body spray and the fragrance of her shampoo, but now it was only lifeless disinfectant.

She looked just as she had for the last four months. Someone had brushed her hair today. They didn’t do that every day. She looked beautiful. Peaceful. Roger got out the necklace and held it up to her across the room.

“Happy Anniversary Honey. I got you something. It’s not much, just a golden chain with a heart charm on it. I even got it engraved, see. It says, ‘When Sarah Smiles The Sun Draws Near, No Matter What I’m Happy You Were Here.’ I know, I know. It’s not like me to get sentimental. I just missed you today. I just want to you to know that whatever was going on with you and Glenn, I still love you.”

He felt the darkness pressing down, and the lights stabbing through, and the silence closing in. He felt it all, and he sat in the chair and slumped down a bit further and waited. He sat there, looking at her and trying to make sense of what he said. It was all true, but it wasn’t like him to say it out loud. He talked to her sometimes, but in the dark and the quiet it seemed almost blasphemous to speak. Instead he sat and stared at her and prayed to the silence. He used to pray to God, but he had given that up early. He asked the silence to end. He asked her to move, to do something.

In the end, he settled for just sitting and feeling lost. It was too fresh today to make sense of. He watched Sarah breathing in and out, in and out, in and out. She looked calm and peaceful. After all this time, even unconscious she was hiding it. It never went away. It was so damn frustrating! How could she be so calm when she was the one with the secret?! What kind of game was she playing?! Did she even care about him?! Of course, she had to care or she wouldn’t have been with him, but how much? Did she care that he was miserable? Did she even know? He tried to keep it hidden, but still there had to be signs. There are always signs! Was he really the only one who could see? She wasn’t blind. She had to see! She had to

“Roger? Roger, hey Roger.”

Roger looked up. A blurry Glenn was standing in the doorway.

“Hey man, how are you holding up?”

There was no answer. Roger couldn’t answer. He tried to say something, but what could he say? He worked his mouth for a minute, but nothing came out. Glenn came and sat down beside him.

“I know. It’s crazy, right. I still don’t really believe it sometimes. I feel like I’ll go to work tomorrow and she’ll be there smiling away. It’s been tough, you know, since the divorce. I knew it was coming, I mean, you know when your marriage isn’t working, don’t you? But even knowing, I wasn’t really prepared. Then, when Heather left me, I just fell apart. I couldn’t work or sleep or anything. And I tried not to show it, for the kids, right, but I was drowning and I was pulling them down with me. I put a face on in public, you know, but Sarah saw right through it. She always saw through it, like she had ESP or something. She helped me out of it, made meals for us. You know she would take my kids to a movie every week! Gave me some time to sort things out. She even introduced me to Cathy. I was going to ask her to be my best man. Now she’s just gone and there’s this huge gap in everything, you know? When someone plays that big a part in your life, and then just leaves how do you keep going? . . . I’m sorry man. I didn’t mean to come here to sob to you. Is there anything you need?”

Roger sat there stunned. Nobody ever just opened up like that. He always had to carefully pry and prod and dig. Like unearthing an extremely fragile skeleton, if the skeleton knew you were there and you couldn’t let it know what you were doing.

“I’m alright.” He got out after a minute. “It’s tough, but I get by. Today was our anniversary.”

“Yeah, I know. I looked for you over at Gianni’s but I guess I missed you. Don’t worry man. I’m not stalking you. Sarah told me you go there on your anniversary. Before the accident she asked me to help her out with something for you. After everything, I just felt like I owed it to her to finish it."

Glenn pulled a small, square package from his coat pocket, about six inches across and two deep. The paper was slightly crumpled from riding in the confined area, but it was obviously professionally gift wrapped. Each corner was perfectly square and an almost perfect bouquet of ribbons adorned the top. The wrapping paper gleamed a little in the light from the monitor, its original golden color transformed into a sickly blue-green. The paper crinkled as Roger accepted it from Glenn. He held it very still for what seemed like ages, too afraid to open it.

Glenn’s voice came out in a croak. “I…um..,” he cleared his throat and spoke again more strongly, “I guess I should get going. Cathy’s waiting.” He stood up and started to leave, then paused just as he got to the door. “Listen, Roger. I know we’ve got our differences, but if you ever want something just call. Okay?” He opened the door slowly, trying to not disturb the stillness in the room, but that only drew the creak out to an embarrassing, long and loud squeal. Roger knew he meant well. Somehow, that only made it more annoying.

He sat there in the hospital room until the nurse came to check on Sarah. The poor fellow didn’t even notice Roger until he was almost finished with his patient. When he finally turned and saw Roger, he jumped half out of his skin and bolted out the door yelling for security. When he returned with two guards the room was empty.

*             *             *

Life went on as usual for Roger. Work. Eat. Work. Hospital. Movie. Drink. Sleep. The little golden package with slightly crumpled corners sat on Sarah’s dresser. Every day he would pick it up, examine it, then place it back where it lay. He wanted desperately to know what was in it, but he couldn’t bring himself to open it. Glenn had said she asked him to help her with it. Glenn. Of all people. Did it hold the answers to his questions? Did it contain her big secret? He had to know! Yet…every time he picked up the box he felt something holding him back. What if it didn’t hold any answers? What if she had worked so hard to give him this and it didn’t mean anything? So, back on the dresser it went, just in front of her Russian nesting doll.

After a month Roger didn’t pick it up anymore. He didn’t even touch it. He didn’t trust himself anymore to hold the package without ripping it open. When he cleaned he dusted everything around the package, but he wouldn’t touch the little, golden box. It sat, in its own quadrilateral of dust, surrounded by cleanliness. It sat on the dresser, and he sat in bed. Watching. Puzzling. Resisting. It fell into his routine. Work. Eat. Work. Hospital. Movie. Drink. Movie. Watch, puzzle, resist. Sleep.

Sarah’s birthday fell on a Tuesday that spring. As usual Roger went to the hospital after work, but he turned away as he saw there was already a crowd in Sarah’s room. Her sister with the new..ish baby. Glenn with his fiancée and the kids. Roger’s sister was there too, with her husband. That explained all the phone calls lately. Thank God he’d ignored them all or he’d have been forced to be in there with all of them. Sarah had them all convinced she was some kind of saint. They stood there, with their sad smiles, eating cake and telling her how much they missed her. He knew her better though. He knew the real Sarah. How she kept things from him with her little smile and, “You wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise, would you Honey?” Oh, she loved her surprises. She loved to plot and deceive. It wasn’t any wonder to Roger that Glenn’s wife left him what with all the scheming he’d been up to with Sarah. He wouldn’t stand there with them and parade around telling lies about his wife’s virtues. He knew her virtues, and he knew her vices, and he wouldn’t pretend they weren’t part of the same person.

Roger sat at home that night watching, puzzling resisting, fuming. He didn’t need her gifts or her derision. He was done with it. He snatched the dusty, golden box off its perch and crammed it into his jacket pocket. The next underground to Washington Square was late, but Roger made up for it by speed walking the five blocks to the hospital. After slipping past the front desk, he stomped quietly to her room. She seemed pleased. She looked beautiful.

“Look Sarah, I don’t know what games you’ve been playing at, and I don’t care. Not anymore. I loved you, you know. I loved you so much, and so I looked the other way all that time, but this is too much. You shared your secrets with Glenn, and then you left me all alone. Did you even think about me in all this? Huh? You lie there with your smile and don’t even care. Well, I’m done. I don’t need this, and I don’t need this!”

He pulled the crumpled, golden box from his jacket and tossed it on the table next to her bed. Sarah just lay there looking pleased.

A moment later a nurse poked her head into the room. “Oh, Roger, it’s you. I thought I saw someone in here. I just need to check her fluids. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.” She busied herself with the tubes and buttons plugged into Sarah’s arms and legs and torso. “Happy Birthday, Sarah! You must be so happy that Roger’s come to see you. And don’t you just look sweet today! Oh. What’s this? Someone brought you a gift. And just look how cute it’s wrapped up. Why don’t we see what’s inside?” A part of Roger’s brain screamed for her to stop, but before he could even open his mouth she had picked up the little golden package and tore it open. He watched numbly as she removed a small wooden sailboat and set it on the bedside table.

When he was ten years old, he spent his Christmas vacation in Wyoming with his father, helping him cut wood for sale. It was hard work, but Roger adored it. Christmas Eve, they worked from five am until four in the afternoon when they dropped their last load of wood, got their money, and headed for home. They pulled into town just before midnight, but before going home they stopped at the drugstore for food and presents. Roger’s father told him to go to the deli and find some turkey and potatoes while he grabbed a few gifts. The next morning, the family ate their cold turkey and potatoes and opened one present each. Roger tore open the newspaper wrapped around a wooden toy boat.

After his father died, Roger received a box full of childhood memories, but to his dismay the boat hadn’t been there. He called everyone who might know something. He called his sister. He called his mother. He called the movers and the estate lawyers. But the boat remained lost forever. Or, until now. He moved woodenly to the bedside table, picked up the boat and turned it over. On the bottom two letters were painted in black watercolor: RB.

The nurse finished checking her patient and set the box on the table before leaving. Inside Roger saw a card. He picked it up and read: For memories lost and found again. For my love and my best friend. Sarah.