A

Short Story

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IT WAS BLEAK. A thin sun of negligible warmth glimmered in the pale sky as he walked down to the beach, crossing the road from the same block of flats where the poet had lived back in ’65 before drowning herself. He walked onto the sand, stopping for a moment to light a cigarette with an ancient lighter, flicking the ball of his thumb against the stiffness of the small wheel that activated the flint. It worked at the third attempt. Third time lucky, he thought, his lips thinning in a sour smile. That was a laugh.

He walked directly to the small outcrop of rocks on the left of the bay, and it was there that he found it: a flat round pebble about twice the size of a R5 coin. The spidery writing of her note had described exactly where he would find it. Its silky whiteness against the dark background of rock immediately drawing his gaze to where it lay, on a shelflike indentation at waist height. At the foot of the rocks were her tiny sandals, neatly aligned. It all meant the note wasn’t dramatised – not that he’d expected it to be. Not this time.

Three Anchor Bay. So this was where it ended. What portent had brought them here – to this place of tragedy and broken dreams?

He touched the pebble with lingering regret, then turned away and faced the ocean. The sea was rough and grey and looked forbiddingly cold. He walked at the water’s edge; his trackshoes left ghostly impressions of themselves in the sand, still damp from high tide, which now was almost an hour ago.

He bent and looked among the detritus brought in by the tide until he found what he wanted, a similar flat pebble. Not as symmetrical as the other, but it would have to do. He took a last pull of his cigarette and flicked it into the bubbly frill of the surf. He put the pebble in his shirt pocket with her note and retraced his steps.

Working the area around the rocky outcrop, he collected a number of the heaviest pebbles he could find, and shovelled them into the pockets of his jacket and trousers. When he was satisfied, he rested. Then turned to face the ocean again.

At that moment he spotted a whale gambolling in the swells beyond the breakers. The great dome of its head gleamed blackly in the strengthening light. What a sight! Tossing its head with a grand swagger, the huge creature spurted a fountain of spume skywards. Then it dove, its tail shaking in a brisk wave of farewell, and was gone. He wondered if Sheryll had seen it before placing her pebble on that rocky shelf. He hoped so.

He shook his head, with impatience – What did it matter? – then returned to the rocks and placed his pebble next to hers. Loving her more now than ever, as he thought back to her final words last night before she lay down to sleep, he sighed. She had suffered so much. It was all so sad. She ought now to have been a woman in her prime, not the wreck she’d become. He only hoped it had been swift and painless.

He shook himself, as a dog will at the buzzing of a bothersome fly.

It was time.

As the tide withdrew he followed the backwash. The next incoming wave covered his feet and ankles. Then his knees and thighs, his chest. Head thrust forward, he trudged on. A new surge of incoming water swiped at his face. He gulped as the tangy taste of salt hit the back of his throat. He could feel the pebbles in his pockets doing their work, weighing him down. He was having to drag himself forward now, one weary step after

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another. Rather like his life for a long time now. But not for much longer, he thought, as the slope of the ocean bed disappeared beneath his feet – and he was gone, swept up and hurled ever deeper by the might of the ocean.

Then at last it was done.

* * *

WHY, you ask? Good question. For the answer you need to go back to that day four years ago – 2003 – when first they made eye contact, these two. It all began one afternoon in the pub down at the waterfront of that east coast holiday town, the very moment he saw her at the counter ordering a whisky from Boetie Heynecke, the coloured barman.

“Whisky, please,” she said. She was gorgeous: petite, a perfect miniature in every way. Her hair, hanging to the middle of her back, was honey blonde. In contrast her eyebrows were dark and thick. Large blue eyes dominated the elfin face; a wide pink-lipsticked mouth framing perfect teeth. You could see she had spunk by the truckload.

They were the only two in the bar. It was a few minutes to four, half-an-hour before the afternoon rush when the holiday crowd, the fishermen, with their rough sunburnt faces, and others released from their workaday jobs would fill the bar to overflowing.

The girl – she couldn’t be much more than early twenties, he thought – returned his look of reproof. “Who said I wanted to drink with you, anyway?”

“I’ll take my chances on that.” The retort came unbidden to his lips. Where were these words coming from? This wasn’t like him at all.

“And why Chivas Regal? You trying to impress with the price?”

“Price is incidental. There isn’t a better whisky on Boetie’s shelves.”

“Why on the rocks?”

“It’s an insult to good whisky to dilute it.”

“Fancy yourself the connoisseur, don’t you?” She tucked her hands, clenched in neat fists, into her tiny waist, her perky breasts tilting up at him. “If it’s all the same to you, I prefer it with soda.” She pulled a face, her bottom lip protruding defiantly. “Who says I want to drink with a dirty old man like you, anyway?”

“I’m certainly not dirty,” he said, smiling as he extended his hands, palms upward. (She almost expected him to turn them over to show her his fingernails. Like a schoolboy, she thought, at early morning inspection.) “And I’m not that old.”

“That so?”

Clement Hewitt, in fact, was forty-eight that year, and riding the crest of a wave. He had been a fine sportsman in his day; would have made the 1981 Springbok rugby tour to New Zealand but for injury late the previous season. He was big and strong, a bullocking centre, with plenty of pace and tackled like a demon. Doc Craven once said Clem reminded him of Ryk van Schoor, even Jimmy White.

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Success in business and greater still in the gambling arena – he’d always been an

inveterate punter and then on holiday in Monaco with Lily, his boyhood sweetheart and

wife of seventeen years, he’d done it – broken the bank at Monte Carlo, which more than made up for that lapse of good fortune in rugby.

He winked at the barman. “You ask Boetie. I’m not a day over thirty-five.”

“Add fifteen,” she retorted with surprising accuracy. “But what the hell, okay. Pour them, Boetie. Just now he may change his mind.”

Clem tipped his cap to her. It was a sailor’s cap, white with blue band and peak, the edge of which was stylishly braided with gold leaf. The naval motif, extending to whites in the form of a V-necked top and half-mast baggies that showed off hairy bronzed calves, was altogether outlandish, she thought. Not to mention the open-toed sandals that accentuated his large feet. What’d he think he was – a ship’s captain or something? He moved up the counter to stand companionably close.

“Name’s Clem. Clem Hewitt.” He proffered a large hand. Though the handshake was gentle, the great mitt gave the impression of consuming hers, like a barracuda

guzzling a minnow.

“Sheryll,” she said, a small toss of her head setting the long wavy hair dancing. “Sheryll Storm. You can call me Sherry.”

* * *

WHAT Clem didn’t know was that tiny Sherry was not just a beauty, she was also a predator. She had been in the town a full week, checking on its male talent, officially available or otherwise – and she had seen Clem Hewitt long before he saw her.

Apart from the ridiculous outfit, which she could live with, he measured up nicely. Pretty much what she was looking for: rich and generous with it. He’d be able to provide for all her needs quite handsomely, she thought. And she wasn’t particularly concerned that he was married. In good time, that would take care of itself. A few discreet inquiries had told her he lived in this eastern Cape resort, was dirty rich, and that most days he paid this pub, the Eagle’s Eyrie, a visit in mid-afternoon. That was why she was already there, just emerging from the Ladies, as he came in that day.

Clem was very happily married. In the seventeen years he and Lily had been together, they’d hardly exchanged a cross word. Their only regret – one that over the years had become increasingly tolerable – was that the union, physically pleasurable though it still was, had produced no children. These days they joked about it, painlessly. “Three would’ve been just too much,” was Lily’s most frequent response to inquiries about children. “The two of us kids in one marriage was quite enough, thank you!”

Sheryll added half the soda water to her whisky. “Skol!” she said.

“Down the hatch,” Clem responded, sending most of it that way. His shoulders shook in a mock shudder. “Good stuff,” he added, smacking his lips. He offered her a cigarette, lit them both.

“What brings you down this way?” He half-turned in Boetie’s direction and

ordered two more, sausage fingers upraised in a V.

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“Man-hunting.” She looked directly into his eyes. Seemed almost to be trying to see past them to the grey matter of his brain itself.

Life had been kind to Clem. He was handsome, charming – but he didn’t understand women. He thought he knew a great deal about them, but in fact he knew very little. He saw only the surface. He knew nothing of what went on inside their heads. He loved this girl’s sense of humour, her spunk and her forthrightness. Further than this, however, he didn’t see.

“You are a card!” he said, completely taken in by the attractiveness of her personality.

“I know. Terrible, isn’t it?”

“Don’t know about that. Be inclined to call it refreshing.”

“My we are full of compliments.”

They had one more drink, and then as the first of the late afternoon customers

began to drift in, she asked what his plans were for the rest of the day. He shrugged. He grinned uncertainly; as coy as a young boy on his first date. He had in fact intended returning, as usual, to “Winchway Manor”, the home he’d built after the big win at Monte Carlo – its stark white exterior, soaring main tower, turrets and terracotta-tiled roofs giving it the appearance more of a castle than a house. Now, however, he was happy to go wherever the slightest whim of this enchanting girl might lead.

He felt sure he knew where this was heading. He’d never once in all his years of marriage to Lily been unfaithful. You didn’t tamper with a good thing. As the Americans liked to say – Don’t fix what aint broke.

Yet today somehow he felt differently, and failed to retreat in the face of temptation. He wasn’t sure why but there was something about this girl, something so different from all the others – and when their eyes met halfway through the third whisky, they knocked back the remains of their drinks and without another word left the pub and headed for her room at the resort’s best hotel.

As it turned out Clem was wrong on a number of counts. There was no afternoon of sweaty passion for one. Just a great deal of talk, more whisky and a single chaste kiss at her door. Clem thought he understood women but he did not.

Despite her tender years, Sherry was an angler of exceptional skill in the pool of dalliance. Her mother, who had been left to bring up the child on her own by a man whose glib promises of marriage had never materialised, had learnt the hard way. She never tired of telling her daughter: “Giving it away is plain stupid, Sherry. Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. Beauty is a woman’s best asset. It’s like gold, my girl! Invest it wisely. You’ll never regret it.”

Not until he’d told Lily he was in love with someone else and wanted a divorce, would Sherry allow him the ultimate prize. She teased him with it; dangled it in front of him like a lure before a trout. A big proud man, she brought him trembling to his knees. In the end this need to possess her became an obsession – which in turn led to the final unravelling of his marriage.

The divorce left Lily broken. As soon as the separation late in 2003 became official, she left the east coast and went to live in Benoni with an unmarried sister. The

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split brought Lily back to religion, and she and her sister devoted their lives from then on

to good works in the name of the Holy Gospel Church of St Mark.

It was Clem, always Clem she wanted, not his money – and because she couldn’t have him she agreed, to her lawyer’s disgust, to a very modest settlement. “It’s quite enough for me and Laura to live on in comfort, thank you,” she said, in an icy tone, chin thrust obstinately forward.

* * *

SHERYLL had never pretended to herself she was in love with Clem, and he – besotted beyond recall – was too infatuated even to notice. For the time being she was perfectly content. If not in love with Clem, she was very much in love with the life that marriage to him had given her.

If she were to be truthful, mostly she found him tedious. He was twenty-six years older than her. He had different values, different tastes, different interests. The habitual naval outfits soon began to annoy her – the rough-tough sea captain, what a joke! It wasn’t long either before his physical mauling of her began to pall. But she put up with it. It was part of the deal. Just occasionally, she balked.

“You can’t just switch me on like a – bloody light bulb, Clem, you know?”

Talk of this sort baffled – even hurt – him. But Sheryll always knew when to pull back, just in the nick of time, from the brink.

She’d smile and clutch his arm, with its tattoo of an anchor on the forearm. “Don’t be an old stick-in-the-mud, Clemmie. Nothing to get your knickers in a knot over, darling. I’m just a bit tired, is all.” She’d dig him in the ribs playfully. “At least I don’t pretend to have a headache!”

They soon had a child, a strapping boy with her blonde hair and a sunny smile. By mutual agreement they called him Bill – not William, just plain Bill – Bill Hewitt, it sounded so manly. He was the light of their lives. His mother showered him with so much affection Clem would have been jealous had it not been for his own overpowering love for the little blond boy. This was in the second year of the marriage.

He couldn’t wait for the kid to be old enough to handle a rugby ball. He bought the smallest size he could find, even before little Bill had started to walk. He put it at the foot of the pram he tirelessly wheeled about – to the shops, the Eagle’s Eyrie for his customary afternoon pint, to the wharf to check on the crew’s maintenance of his yacht and a boat, a cabin cruiser with lovely lines he’d oddly decided to name Sherry’s Champagne.

At age two, Clem was teaching the lad to catch the gently lobbed ball against his chubby chest. Six months later he was kicking it out of hand, really well.

One afternoon while his parents were entertaining at Winchway Manor, and the maid for just a moment was forced to seek the toilet, the kid punted the ball with such good effect it landed in the middle of the swimming pool. He didn’t doubt he could fetch it, without bothering anyone. He’d watched his parents and visitors dive in and swim. The boy stood on the copingstones at the edge of the pool and dived in. He was very surprised he couldn’t swim. By the time the nanny returned he had drowned.

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His parents were inconsolable. They both blamed the maid, but Sheryll illogically also blamed Clem. She became convinced that at the very moment of their son launching

himself into the pool, she had asked her husband to go outside and check on the boy.

“If only you’d listened to me, Clem,” she said bitterly. “We’d still have our lovely little boy.”

Clem became so confused about the matter he began to accept it probably was his fault. As to the maid, he said she must get out immediately or he was afraid he might do something he’d regret. He gave her two months salary and told her, in a trembling voice: “For God’s sake go! Get out of my sight!” The woman knew she had erred, but understood little else of what her, until then, kindly employer was saying.

Dating from this time almost everything about Clem began to irritate his wife. She would have left him, except she was afraid the divorce settlement wouldn’t be equitable to her needs. She began instead to experiment with affairs. She loved the feeling of power it gave her, the way she was able to make them eat out of her hand, these eager, gibbering men. Her mother was right: beauty was a wonderfully powerful weapon. She was pleasantly surprised, too, to find how much more she enjoyed the act of relationships itself with this succession of men. They were all so different; it was like a drug, it put her on a high. With Clem it was always so predictable, always just more of the same.

Clem was unaware of any of this. It didn’t occur to him that Sheryll could be unfaithful. After the loss of little Bill, he became increasingly devoted to her. He wanted them to have another child. But here Sherry drew the line. “Don’t even think of it. My God, asking me to have another – after poor little Bill!”

Instead he turned to lavishing gifts upon her. A silver Mercedes-Benz C230, a total makeover of the decoration and furnishings of Winchway Manor; overseas holidays. The more he spent on her, the more she despised him. Often while he sailed his yacht or fished, battling some deep-sea brute from the bucket seat of the cruiser’s after-deck, she’d be lying, limbs entwined, with some man in his apartment or hotel room, crowing inwardly with triumph. Poor sap! But of this, too, Clem was oblivious.

“My Old Man and the Sea,” she said on one such afternoon, kissing his forehead, as they met up for drinks at the Eagle’s Eyrie. “How was it? Did you catch a big ’un? How was she – fierce and strong? Tell me how you played her. Tell me everything!” Inwardly she smirked at the innuendo. Later in bed, she teased him, unashamedly hurried him; yet he thought it wonderful – pleasure such as he’d never known.

She made a decision; somehow she would make it happen. It started with her taking ill. The very next morning when he brought her usual breakfast tray to the bedroom, she could not sit up. Her mouth was slack, her speech slurred, her lovely eyes strangely vacant.

“What is it?” He reached for her with alarm.

“Dunno…” She barely managed the word. He levered her up, sitting her against a king-sized pillow. She flopped off it – a dying fish on the deck of his boat.

* * *

CLEM called the doctor. He examined her head to toe. He was mystified. There seemed

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to be nothing wrong with her. The vital signs all checked out. He shook his head. He recommended a specialist in Cape Town. It was to be the start of a long trek. Little did Clem know, it was a trek destined to wear him out.

Her condition remained unchanged so they flew to Cape Town. The physician, nonplussed, referred them to a neurologist, who in turn suggested a psychiatrist. For a few days she could do almost nothing for herself. Then she got a little better.

They flew north to consult eminent medical men in Johannesburg. One suggested a colleague in Durban, where Clem even allowed himself to be persuaded to consult a much-fabled isangoma – a witchdoctor as well.

Clem grew increasingly harassed. They travelled back to the Cape, where Sherry seemed happiest. They planned to settle in Sea Point. This was last year, the summer of 2006. The weather was good. Sheryll’s health seemed improved, though she was still painfully thin. She had no appetite, she told Clem time and again when he tried to tempt her with meals he had brought in from nearby restaurants.

They were living at the time in an hotel whose front verandah faced north into the sun and across which it shone for most of the day, casting a revitalising warmth, which doctors assured Clem could only be beneficial to Sherry’s general condition.

Still there was no improvement, and Clem, with an aching heart, watched as she seemingly continued to fade away. Her beautiful hair had become lustreless and lank. Though she’d put back some weight, she was still little more than skin and bone; her face as hollow-cheeked as a death mask that Clem could hardly bear to look at.

On her better days they would take a walk as far as the beach, he with an arm round her back, as they limped along; Clem trying to ignore the pitying looks of passersby.

* * *

IT was on one such walk that Sherry spotted a block of flats, just across the road from the pale sand of the Three Anchor Bay beach. This, she told Clem, was where she wanted to live. It so happened there was a For Sale sign outside on the pavement.

Clem didn’t fancy the idea. Money was no object. The hotel was just so much more convenient, everything on tap.

“But, darling… don’t you think the hotel’s a so much better proposition? Everything provided at the touch of a button.”

“No, no! Don’t you see? It would be so nice there. We’d be so happy. Private, without people gaping at me. Wondering what’s wrong with me. That’s awful – you know?” If there was one thing that wounded him above all else, it was to see her weep: the way her tears would teeter luminously on the brims of those huge eyes before boiling over. They were capable, those eyes, of unmanning him completely. He’d need abruptly to seek the privacy of the bedroom or go out on the balcony overlooking the street.

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They made enquiries about the flat. It was reasonably priced. The owners had already vacated the premises and gone to live elsewhere. The big attraction was its close proximity to the beach. But the elderly sellers said it no longer suited them. They would be going to stay with their son and his wife in Blouberg – a beautiful home with a stunning side-on view of the sea, Table Mountain and Robben Island in the hazy distance.

To keep Sherry happy, Clem signed the offer to purchase. He soon moved in workmen to retile the kitchen and bathroom, put in a second toilet, and repaint the entire apartment.

He would not move from the hotel until the refurbishing of the flat had been completed. He bought new furniture, paintings, ornaments. Soon it was the best-looking apartment in the block.

The agent came by to see how they were settling in. It was late afternoon and they offered her a glass of wine.

She was a young woman with a bright happy face. As she was leaving, she said: “You know Ingrid Jonker, the Afrikaans poet, of course?”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Sheryll volunteered.

“Yes. Died in ’65, I think. What a tragedy, such a talented girl.

“Didn’t she drown herself?”

“Yes. That’s what I was going to tell you,” the woman, picking up her handbag, added guilelessly. “She was living in this flat when it happened. Out there in Three Anchor Bay. A bust-up with her lover or something. Just walked in.”

Clem flew into a rage the moment the agent was out the door. “Stupid little cow! What’d she want to go and tell us that for? You’ll probably hate the place now.”

Imperceptibly Sheryll’s eyes had lit up. “No – not at all. I think it’s fascinating.” This was the key, what she’d been searching for.

“Who was she anyway? I never heard of her.”

“Brilliant – from what I’m told. Perhaps a bit unstable.”

That day, one of Sherry’s better days, they went walking on the beach. Near an outcrop of rock, as the tide withdrew, Janine found a perfectly symmetrical pebble about twice the size of a R5 coin. She said she’d keep it as a lucky charm.

Once they were settled in she asked to be taken to the Sea Point public library. Clem dropped her there one morning while he attended to outstanding business – including the drawing up of a new will in which he left his entire estate to Sheryll; in the event of her pre-deceasing him everything to go to Lily on his death. It was the least he could do. Then he went to a barber in the main street for a haircut.

When he pulled up the car at the kerb next to the library he found Sheryll with an armful of books, taken out on her new membership card. Two were slim volumes of poetry by Jonker, the third an evaluation of her work by a Stellenbosch academic.

She couldn’t wait to get home to read them. For days she sat in the lounge, poring over them. Clem was glad, if only for the fact that this new interest took her mind off herself.

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“She died in ’65, during the night of July 19. Just walked out, crossed the road and went straight into the sea. Poor girl, she was so unhappy. Born 1933, married at twenty-three, had a kid a year later. Divorced two years after that….”

Sheryll loved to reel off these statistics. Clem listened with half an ear. Two abortive affairs with married men, both writers…

“Not surprising, writing and her efforts to reflect her troubled life through it was always her passion. Listen – one disaster after another. Chaotic childhood: parents separate before her birth; she, her elder sister and mother go to live with her maternal grandparents. The grandfather dies when Ingrid is five, leaving the four poverty-stricken females to struggle on alone. Her mother dies when she is ten; she and the sister are sent to boarding school, then the father takes them in with his third wife and children. Treated as outsiders – stiefbehandel – like stepchildren. This caused a permanent rift with her father. No wonder!

“She starts writing poetry at the age of six – just imagine! Completes her first collection of poems, Na die Somer, at sixteen. First book of poems, Ontvlugting, published at twenty-three. That’s one of the books I took from the library.

“Her father, Abraham, a writer and editor, was a Nat Party MP. Was appointed chairman of a parliamentary committee responsible for introducing censorship laws, which Ingrid as a member of the liberal Sestigers writers’ movement, vehemently opposed. How ironic!

“I didn’t know this – her mother died at the Valkenburg psychiatric clinic in 1943; Ingrid herself was admitted there with a nervous breakdown in 1961. Tragedy upon tragedy…”

In the collection, Ontvlugting (Escape), Sheryll was to find lines in one of the pieces that seemed to hold a magnetic fascination for her. In translation they read:

“Amazing isn’t it? Like she foresaw her own death… and by drowning, too! She died on a Monday, the beginning of a week. Maybe she saw it as the closing of one door and the opening of another.”

Sherry became obsessed with the two lines of poetry, kept quoting them. It disturbed Clem for it seemed to coincide with a new turn in her condition, spells that recurred every couple of weeks, which he could only think of as madness.

The latest incident was on Sunday night. They went to a nearby restaurant for a meal. She said she felt weak, asked him to feed her the soup she’d ordered. While he was patiently spooning the broth into her mouth, she surreptitiously wedged her fingers under the rim of the plate and upended the scalding liquid in his lap. At first she laughed, gleefully. Then she began to cry. They left the restaurant in haste.

“Don’t know what got into me,” she blubbered in the car on the way home. “I’m sorry,” she muttered fearfully. “It’s Ingrid. She’s inside my head, Clem! I’m so afraid.”

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“Goddamnit, stop reading those bloody books then!”

Back at home the simmering argument raged on. Clem had poured himself a drink. Sheryll, who seldom drank now, joined him. At one stage she stood up to refill her glass at the liquor cabinet, and fell over. She started to cry.

“I think I’ll kill myself,” she shouted hysterically.

“Don’t ever say that.”

“Why not? My life is worthless. I’d be better off dead.”

He crossed to her chair and knelt before it, this great bear of a man. “Please don’t ever say that again. I’d kill myself! I’d rather die than live without you!”

Some time later he put her to bed.

In the morning she was gone. There was a letter on the dressingtable. It read:

Darling – I can’t go on like this. I’m going down to the beach. I’m going to do what Ingrid did. It’s for the best. This is no life for you, married to a madwoman. We will both be better off. – Sherry. PS: I’ve taken my lucky pebble with me. You’ll find it on a shelf on that outcrop of rock on the left of the bay.

* * *

A FAMILY on holiday was out walking the beach that Monday morning. They were startled suddenly by the sight of a frail-looking woman running hard towards them, wildly waving her arms.

“Help! Help!” she screamed. “My husband… he’s gone into the water. He’s trying to kill himself! Please help me!”

“What – where?” the bewildered father, who was walking with his wife and two teenage daughters, cried.

“Over there– !”

As they turned to look in the direction she was pointing, the woman slipped on the sandals next to the rocks. She also picked up the less symmetrical of two white pebbles that lay glinting there faintly in the weak sun. A keepsake.

Turning back to the woman, the couple and their daughters found her prostrate on the sand, sobbing bitterly. After a while, the husband managed to calm her down. Later he remarked to his wife: “Did you notice – when she’d stopped crying – how she began to smile? Her face took on the strangest expression – a mixture of… well, sorrow and relief.”

It was a smile Clement Hewitt would also not have understood. That was the trouble with Clem. He thought he knew all about women. In reality he didn’t understand them at all.

              Homecoming

Cathy Eaton

One night in late July, fierce winds knocked down the power lines and lashing rain pounded the roof. When the electricity winked out, Sadie crawled in darkness up the wooden stairway. On unsteady legs, the mother of four grown children, groped her way down the carpeted hallway to the last bedroom, Tommy’s room. With hands outstretched in front of her, she entered the room, turned right, patted the bureau and then eased open the closet door. As cannonballs of thunder shook the house and jagged bolts of lightening split the sky, she crawled into the refuge of her youngest son’s closet. Seated on the floor with her back against the closet wall, she reached up.

Even in darkness, she could identify each hanging piece of clothing by touch. Every two weeks for the last three years since Tommy had gone to Baghdad, she had washed, ironed and rehung his clothes. She touched his dress shirts for church and fingered the suit coat in which he had looked so handsome at the Harvest Dance. She stroked the silky graduation gown he had worn two weeks before he enlisted, and then tugged at the bottom of his hooded sweatshirt, the navy one he wore before tennis matches. Sadie pulled it over her head, slouched against the wall, and shoved her hands in the pockets, clasping them over her stomach in prayer.

Here she felt safe. Here she felt close to her absent son.

The next morning under a sky where wisps of clouds had replaced the night’s thunderheads, Sadie puttered in the garden, gathering some overripe tomatoes that had fallen among the dandelions. She wore lilac framed sunglasses and a straw hat with a broad brim covering her hopelessly straight brown hair. A faded blue t-shirt of her estranged husband covered her thighs and hid most of her cut-off jeans, hand-me-downs from Tommy. She plucked some beans from the vines twining up a pole and picked some leafy greens. A salad for lunch. Next she moseyed over to the miniature hencoop, large enough for her two chickens and gathered three mottled brown eggs from Gertrude and Hazel’s nests. Omelet for dinner and fried egg for breakfast.

A stiff breeze cooled her sweaty forehead and made the American flag flutter and clatter on the pole in front of the house. Every morning she raised the flag the soldiers had brought when she was a toddler, when they told her weeping mother about how brave her husband was when he died in France, trying to help a young Jewish girl hide from the Nazis. Sadie avoided looking at the flag. It didn’t make her think about patriotism or courage. Instead, if she wasn’t careful, its flapping and rattling seemed like a greedy crow that had snatched away her life and hidden it some place where she could never find it.

Sadie scattered handfuls of corn inside the barbed wire fence, which she hoped would protect the hens from sneak attacks by foxes or homeless, roving dogs. She had a brief chat with the uncommunicative chickens before heading over to her hammock beneath a gnarled apple tree. From her apron pocket, she removed her reading glasses and a sizzling romance. Shopping could be postponed for another day. Except for work, she hated to leave home.

Last night she had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room of her farmhouse before discovering if Penelope had escaped from the clutches of the drunkard fool who had kidnapped her from an elegant carriage traveling to Paris. Sadie worried that Penelope’s dashing fiancée, who had been absent from her life for two years commanding a naval ship, would return too late to save her.

After a half hour of reading, Sadie was repulsed by the drunken debaucheries and disgusting groping by the cruel kidnapper of beautiful, frightened Penelope. She tipped off the hammock and walked barefoot through uncut grass to the garage where she traded the book for Tommy’s tennis racket, a pair of his holey tennis shoes, and a can of balls that she had picked up at Wal-Mart’s. She patted the Chevy Impala, another hand-me-down from Louie. She had been separated from her husband for five months now. His attempts to persuade Sadie to leave their home in central Ohio, and go with him to Florida, had seemed sincere but lacked passion. For the thirty-eight years of their marriage, he had been the head mechanic for Ernie’s Auto Clinic, but last year he had conceived the ridiculous idea to move to Sarasota, Florida. He wanted to work on engines of motorboats. He couldn’t bear to live in Ohio anymore. He wanted to live by the Gulf coast of Florida. Much too hot and humid for Sadie to consider. Besides, hurricanes could rip your home apart and scatter everything that you had spent your life cherishing.

She really did miss Louie on Saturday evenings, which was the night they used to play bingo or go dancing at Ryan’s Pub and Steak House. She also missed their Sunday picnics at Placid Pond where they had been going for years with her cousin and his husband to fish and drink beer. She had worked hard to convince herself that she didn’t miss Louie too much. What with his bowling league and poker nights, and his working six days a week, he had never been home all that much. When he was home, he had been addicted to channel surfing from one sporting event to another, favorites being football and NASCAR, with baseball and bowling close seconds. Sadie couldn’t bring herself to leave their home, the home that would nourish Tommy when he returned to her.

She spent evenings doing crosswords, cutting out food coupons, and reading, alternating romance novels with books about military battles, concentration camps, and more recently, terrorists. The first satisfied her curiosity about the escapades of people in foreign lands and the second was her futile attempt to understand why first her father and now her youngest son had needed to fight in a war.

Ever since her son had left two years ago, she had tried to teach herself to play tennis, spending twenty minutes to an hour in nice weather, practicing forehands and backhands against the garage door. In all the years Sadie had cheered Tommy to victory when he played on the high school tennis team, she had never even hit a tennis ball. But now that service in the army in Iraq consumed her son’s life, she found whacking a ball satisfying to her soul. She took pride in long rallies. Today she planned to break her record of 83 hits without a miss against the makeshift backboard. During her solitary rallies, she could almost hear Tommy’s voice cheering when she smashed an overhead, or gently mocking when she flubbed a shot.

Hot and sweaty and unable to hit more than 37 forehands without missing, Sadie retired to her country kitchen, where she grated carrots and sliced peppers and radishes for a salad. She was tempted to have a thick slice of the loaf of honey bread that her neighbor had dropped off. But she refrained since she was trying to lose 15 pounds so she would look good and once again fit into her size 10 pants. She didn’t want Tommy, when he got home, to think that she looked fat. After lunch, she swept the slate colored linoleum floor and wiped clean the yellow countertops. Ignoring the blinking of her answering machine, she got out Murphy’s Oil Soap. The oak kitchen cabinets her grandfather had built needed a good scrubbing. As Sadie filled the bucket with warm water, the phone rang, and she hurried downstairs to the laundry room to put in a load of sheets and towels. She chuckled, thinking no one could accuse of her not answering the phone if she was busy doing laundry.

First she put in a load of Tommy’s darks: his sweatpants, tennis shorts, and several pairs of blue jeans. She always hung them to dry on the clothesline behind the house. The fresh, clean smell of summer air and dandelions erased the stink of dying, loneliness, and terror that so easily slipped into Sadie’s imagination. She spent over an hour ironing Tommy’s second set of sheet and towels. She felt like a bad mother if she didn’t pressed all the wrinkles away.

Back in the kitchen, she grabbed a sponge and began vigorous circular strokes.

How many times had she watched Grandma Gurt clean the lovely grain of these oak cabinets while the odor of chocolate chip cookies or apple pie teased her nostrils? Sadie caught herself counting each cupboard door she finished just as she counted each tennis stroke earlier in the day, and just as she counted each day that Tommy had been stationed in Baghdad, refitting Humvees with extra armor.

Counting made her feel old, reminded her of her mother counting out loud stitches for the endless baby blankets she had knitted in the dismal nursing home before she died last year, leaving another hole in Sadie’s life. The stupid blinking on the machine by the phone kept drawing her attention. “Gol darn it,” she swore as she pulled her wet gloves off and threw them in the bucket. “Why can’t they leave me alone?”

She pressed the button of the machine she had never wanted but had been too polite to take back to the store when her three eldest children had given it to her for Christmas. Ten messages. “Oh dear,” Sadie sighed. She grabbed the magnetized daisy pad off the green refrigerator. But before sitting down to listen to all the plans her children had for her, she sliced four pieces of bread and spread them with cream cheese and raspberry jam she had made last summer.

The first message was Mrs. Ferguson. Sadie jotted down on the notepad. “Clean Mrs. F’s house Thursday not Wednesday.” The next three messages were Vivian, her second oldest daughter, trying to convince her mother that she should join the Chinese cooking class that Vivian was starting on Monday. Sadie might not like the answering machine, but she dearly loved the erase button, not needing to hear more than, “Ma, class starts tonight.” Erase. “Ma, the fee includes a wok and a special knife.” Erase. “Ma, I could pick you up at 5.” Erase. She figured that Roy, Vivian’s boyfriend for eight years since their junior year in high school, never popped the question because he could take only one or two meals at most each week of eating whatever international or regional foods Vivian was passionately learning to cook that month. After trying the pottery class and the line dancing class Vivian had dragged her to, Sadie declined to fork out the money to join any other courses that her daughter thought would fulfill her life.

The next message was from Daniel, her playboy son who was going to take his latest girlfriend for a week of skiing. “Hey Mom, I thought you’d like to have Oreo visit for a week. He’s great company. He only needs two walks a day. You know how you need the exercise. Give me a buzz.” Dog sitting for her athletic son addicted to weight lifting and female companionship was not happening. He had no problem spending $50 a day for lift tickets but he whined about paying the local vet’s $12 a day for boarding his miniature collie. She wrote down his departure and return dates.

Three more messages from her house-cleaning clients about particular items they wanted her to focus on got jotted down. “Polish the silver” from Mrs. Taft. Must be her turn to host the bridge club. “Wash the sheets and change the beds in the guest room and the loft and clean the basement den” from Mrs. Lacey. Maybe this time her grandkids wouldn’t break anything or trample the rose garden. “Could she skip the mopping and weed the back patio?” from Mrs. Lansing. Sadie underlined kneepad and dandelion tool on her list.

Louie’s voice, always a little too loud, boomed out, “Why don’t you come down for a visit? We could take ourselves out on a sunset cruise. Big pickings in the Bingo Hall.” Sadie smiled at the invitation before she hit the erase button. “He’s sweet,” she sighed. “But I belong here.”

The final message was from her eldest, Stella, whose realtor voice tried hard to radiate charm and instill confidence. Instead she sounded like the chirpy weather lady on channel six. Looked like her too with platinum blond big hair and low cut blouses that revealed more than Sadie thought should be exposed. “Mother, we need to finish our conversation from last week.”

Hah, was a lecture about moving to a condominium complex a conversation? Sadie didn’t think so.

“I’m bringing over some carpet samples and a paint wheel so we can choose some colors. As I’ve told you, the house can’t go on the market until it gets a serious facelift.”

Sadie stood up to clear her plate and was about to erase the rest of Stella’s message when she caught the word “dumpster.” She rewound the message and listened, a frown on her face. “I’m having a dumpster delivered Friday, and on Saturday Vivian and I are coming over to help you sort through all the piles of stuff in the basement. We can take our time and go through Tommy’s room.”

“Idiot,” slipped out of Sadie’s mouth and her jaw tightened as she punched the erase button. Stella had crossed the line. Her children had been plotting against her. They had no right to try and force her to move to some disinfected condominium with the personality of dishrag, where nosey neighbors abounded and privacy was in short supply. This was her home, and she was keeping it ready for Tommy’s homecoming. Stella had some gall. Just because she was a realtor, she had no right to think she could sell the farmhouse and land that had belonged to the family for more than 80 years. Stella might pretend the money from the sale of the house would be invested for Sadie’s retirement, but she couldn’t fool her mother.

Sadie loved her children, but some days she suspected they were already spending the money. Just how many vacations to islands for snorkeling or winter resorts for skiing did Daniel think he needed? Vivian certainly didn’t need any more enriching courses. Marrying her fiancée and taking care of him was what would fulfill her. And Stella, the ambitious one of her children, well Sadie could see the dollar signs in her eyes. Although Stella had never mentioned dividing the farmland that had been in their family for nearly a century, Sadie wondered if such a plan lurked beneath her daughter’s efforts to get her to move. After all, a lot of big houses could be built on their land.

No way would her grown children move her to some sterile set of rooms. Tommy would come to life when he came home to familiar things where he could rest in his own bed, where he could relax on the porch rocker he loved, and where he could explore the trails through the woods he knew by heart. Sadie had restrung his racket every year. Maybe he would indulge his mom and hit some practice balls with her before he wore himself out playing some killer sets of tennis. Sadie unplugged the answering machine and slammed it in the trash before she stalked outside, her hands clenching and unclenching as if she was getting ready to strike whichever of her children who arrived with yet more invasive plans for her future. She listened for the rumbling of the motor of a car and looked far down her road, dreading to see the dust rising from Stella’s Mercedes Benz convertible. She just didn’t have the energy to have another argument with her daughter about how moving to a more populated community would be a healthy change for her.

As she was lying in the hammock, dozing with her book shading her eyes, a sharp rapping startled her. Her heart hammering, she flung herself awake, the hammock tipped, and she fell, awkward and sprawling. The impact slammed her arm harshly in its socket, and her face smashed against the hard ground. When she pushed against the prickly grass, a screech of pain erupted out of her. She fumbled at the ground as she struggled to sit up. Blood was dripping from her nose, and everything around her was blurry. The house only came in focus when she blinked hard.

Soldiers? Were uniformed soldiers at the front door bringing another flag? In horror, her breath coming out in gasps, she watched a figure emerge around the corner. Bright sun kept him in shadow. The figure carried something, and he began running. She blinked again. It wasn’t a soldier in uniform. The young man was carrying a tennis racket. He was wearing shorts and a hooded sweatshirt. It was Tommy. He had finally come home to her.

“Are you all right, are you all right, Mom?” Of course, she was all right. Everything would be fine now. Tommy was home. He was safe. She had been right all along. She knew that if she stayed in their home and didn’t let anyone force her to leave that he would come back to her. She had been able to keep him safe by refusing to go to Florida with her husband Louie, by refusing to take classes with Vivian. Everything would be all right now. Tommy would be so happy. His room, just as he had left it, was waiting for him. She smiled and held her arms, waiting for his warm embrace.

“Are you all right, are you all right, Ma’am?" a voice cried in alarm.

“Tommy? Tommy! Help me! Help me stand so I can hold you.”

Strong arms circled her and gently lifted her to her feet. As she swayed on her feet, Sadie was crying so hard now that tears blurred her ability to see him clearly. She was clutching his shoulders and standing on tiptoes so she could kiss his sweet face. “Tommy, Tommy, you’ve come home to me.”

“I’m Franklyn, Ma’am. I’m not Tommy. Let me help you to the porch, Mrs. Henderson. You fell and hurt yourself.” Confused and feeling weak, Sadie let herself be led to the porch where this tall, lean stranger settled her into the porch swing and hurried into the kitchen as if he had the right, as if he lived here. Within minutes he had come back carrying a pitcher of water, which earlier she had filled with ice tea. He was dipping her yellow kitchen towel in the pitcher and dabbing at her face. Red streaks marred its sunny surface. “Tip your head back, Ma’am. The bleeding will stop soon. You’ll be all right.”

“Stop it. Stop it,” Sadie blurted out, feeling dizzy and confused. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I’m Franklyn Wilson,” the sandy hair boy with hazel eyes introduced himself. “I came to meet you, Mrs. Henderson. To thank you.”

“What are you doing with Tommy’s racket? Did you steal it?” she accused, her eyes narrowing in suspicion and confusion. “Don’t thank me. You can’t have Tommy’s racket. He needs it. He needs it to play tennis.”

“It’s my racket, Mrs. Henderson,” the boy explained. The boy’s eyes lowered and his freckled face reddened.

“You must be lying. I always leave Tommy’s racket in the garage, right where he keeps it. Did you take it from the garage?” She shook a quivering finger at him.

“I think your arm’s okay. You seem to be moving it well,” Franklyn said, shifting from one foot to another. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Sadie rotated her sore right arm and rubbed it with her left hand. She looked at the boy, taller and less muscular than Tommy, standing in front of her, his feet planted on the grey planks and his arms leaning behind him on the porch railing. How many times had Tommy stood that way when he had something to tell her?

“You dumped out my ice tea!”

“I’m sorry. I needed something to dip the towel in.”

“You got my good kitchen towel all bloody.”

“I’m pretty sure the blood can be washed out. I’m sorry I messed up your towel. May I sit down?”

Sadie nodded, unable to think of anything more to say that would stop his gentleness, stop the kindness and sorrow she detected in his voice. Franklyn pulled the wicker rocker closer to Sadie and sat in the chair where Tommy had loved to rock in the cool early evenings.

“I came to thank you. Coach Dempsey gave me your address.”

“Coach Dempsey – that’s Tommy’s coach. He made him work hard, made him practice every day, even on weekends. That’s how Tommy won State Championship two years in a row. He’s got the trophies in his room.”

“Coach Dempsey sure admired Tommy. I watched your son play when I was a freshman. Nobody could slice a serve the way he could.”

“Would you like to see his trophies?”

Franklyn stood. “I’d like that. I’d like to see your son’s trophies.” He followed Sadie as she led the way into the house, up the polished oak stairs, down the carpeted hallway, past the room Stella and Vivian had shared, past Daniel’s room until they reached Tommy’s room. Sadie always left the door open to his bedroom, so her son would never feel shut out. She beckoned Franklyn inside. He was the first person besides herself to step foot in the room since Tommy had left home, left her behind.

Rows of small and large trophies lined the shelves above his desk, and framed photographs showed Tommy frozen in overhead smashes, in lethal backhands, and in brutal serves. In color and black and white, Tommy had been captured as he shook hands with foes he had vanquished and with grinning teammates.

Concentrating, Franklyn read the inscription of each trophy. He studied the face in the photographs that smiled in victory and frowned in fierce concentration during tough matches. Sadie watched in satisfaction. She felt this young man, another tennis player, could really appreciate how hard Tommy had worked, what a marvelous tennis player her son was. She sat on Tommy’s bed, not worried about wrinkling the sheets she had ironed last week.

“Are you a good tennis player, Franklyn? A really good player?”

“Pretty good, Ma’am. But not as good as Tommy was. He’s a legend. I won the state championship this year. It was my last chance. I just graduated in June.”

“Why that’s wonderful. You’re not going to do something foolish, are you?” Franklyn wrinkled his forehead, trying to decipher her question. “You’re not going to throw away you life and enlist?” Franklyn shook his head. “Will you play in college next year?” Sadie held her breath as she waited for an answer.

“Yes, Ma’m. That’s what I came to thank you for. I received the Lieutenant Tommy Henderson Memorial Tennis Scholarship. I’m the first recipient.”

Sadie’s shoulders slumped and her head bowed. “W illlll you do himmmm

pro udddd?” Sadie stuttered.

“I’ll do my best, Ma’m. Every time I go out on the court, I’ll play for Tommy.”

“You mustn’t give up even if you’re five games down.”

No, Ma’m. I’m a fighter. I’ll never let you down.”

Sadie nodded, a small smile hovering about her lips, her eyes blinking back the tears that threatened to spill. She watched the young man, who seemed in no hurry to leave. She didn’t mind him picking up the trophies that she polished every month.

“The trophy in the middle, the little one,” Sadie whispered in a hoarse voice. “Take that one home with you.”

Franklyn picked up the miniature trophy with the bent aluminum racket. He read the inscription. “Most improved player.”

“Are you sure?”

“That was his first one. He was awarded it at the YMCA camp in sixth grade. He told me once that trophy meant the most to him. That first trophy was his good luck charm. He took it with him to every match. I want you to take it with you to college. It will mean that you can’t ever give up. That you can’t ever quit.”

Not ready to meet Sadie’s eyes, Franklyn said a reverent thank you and tucked the trophy carefully in the pocket of his sweatshirt. He ran his fingers over the shelved biographies of famous tennis players. Sadie had read them all, always sitting at Tommy’s desk, never removing them from his room. Sadie began plucking the bedspread, making little puckers in the navy blue corduroy spread that Tommy had selected when they redid his room together at the end of his ninth grade year. She reached toward the pillow and touched it before she jerked back her hand as if fire scorched her fingers. Again she stretched her hands towards the pillow. This time she lifted up the pillow with her right hand and tugged out some red and white striped material that was neatly folded under the pillow. She sat up again and stroked the white stars on the blue background.

“Maybe you could help me raise this flag on the flagpole up front?” she asked Franklyn who had turned to watch her with large, gentle eyes.

“It would be my honor, Ma’m.” The tall young man, so like but unlike her Tommy, helped her stand and led the way out the door of her son’s room, which she pulled shut behind them. As they walked side by side down the hallway and stairs, summer thunder rumbled. Sadie’s face paled and she gripped the flag to her chest. Franklyn hooked his arm through hers to steady her. A car sped down the road, kicking up dust. Tommy’s mother and Franklyn paused on the porch, watching the hunter green convertible turn into the driveway and come up the driveway until it parked in front of the garage.

“Mom, Vivian and I’ve come to talk to you,” Stella called. The blond, slightly overweight woman paused as she shut the car door. As she saw the young man holding a tennis racket and her mother clutching a folded American flag, her usual flow of words were hushed.

“Hey Ma,” Vivian called, but then she, too, stood silent, her hand frozen in the beginning of a wave.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” Sadie said, her voice clear and sure. We’ll need to find some clothes line, so we can raise Tommy’s flag. “It’s time.”