The Way They See

By Evelyn Marshall

Young, sensitive couple in love fall into a single misconception of each other that catapults them into opposite directions and alternative lives other than the one they would have together. Twenty-five years later, they meet again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9780984899951

Book preview

72

PART I

1

Susannah could not mark the day she fell in love with Sam Geddes because they played together as children and then as teenagers and all through high school. And Sam had loved her, too. Then Sam went off to college in 1953, out of their small town. And Susannah waited for his return. And waited. And the years passed.

The older citizens in the community were angry with Sam and shook their heads in bewilderment at Susannah. She’s risking ending up an old maid.

A good looking girl like that?

She was supposed to be such a smart girl. What happened?

Maybe she wasn’t smart enough for him?

What do you mean?

Well, Sam’s there, and she’s here.

So why, in all this time, hasn’t she looked around for someone else?

That’s what I mean. Maybe she’s not so smart.

I feel sorry for her.

For Sam, they felt, not sympathy, but anger. And it had nothing to do with her.

Susannah was a lean, naturally good-looking young woman with silken brown hair that moved across her shoulders like wheat in a wave of wind. Her easy gait reflected her tomboy childhood. But it was her eyes that gave her away, her wide, dreaming eyes reflecting the colors of the sky and the rain. She was in her twenties and lived all her life in this small remote Middle American town named Haventon. With long strides she entered the municipal park just as she had every Tuesday morning for the last six years, passing in and out of the sun’s rays that broke through the large oak trees. She came toward the swarthy little man standing in front of a wooden bench, tossing pieces of torn bread to the pigeons, delighting so much in his interplay with the birds that he simply could not keep his feet on the ground. One leg shot high and then stomped down only to give the other leg a turn in the air. He was talking to the plump grey pigeons and laughing uproariously while they fluttered and scrambled over one another for the soft morsels, even alighting on his shoulders near the wrinkled brown paper bag of treasure he held close to his chest. Susannah was perpetually amazed at the extent of the little man’s joy over so small an amusement.

She was also amazed, even after all these years, that he was Sam’s father. Her wonderment came at her a thousand times. Yet, she refused to call the combination of this father and son a freak of nature. Rather, she shook her head and concluded that there was no accounting for the unpredictability and uncanniness of Gaia, who was the great mother of all the heavenly gods, the Titans and the Giants, the one-eyed Cyclopses and the creatures of a hundred arms and fifty heads. Indeed, for such a father to produce such a son was not only divine, but full of humor if perceived in the right way. And the right way was to recognize that the little man had succeeded despite all the odds.

Good morning, Mr. Geddes, she sang out, thrusting forth her own bag of bread.

Good morning, Susannah. He smiled and his face crunched up until his little dark eyes closed tightly, his head nodded, and his thick black curls bounced. He took his place on the bench to make ready for her company.

She sat down beside him. What a high in the sky day, she said and stretched her long legs out in front of her, and her arms sideways along the back of the bench. She looked all around, breathed in deeply, and turned to him. Did you talk with Sam last night on the telephone, Mr. Geddes?—her customary opening question.

Yes. Monday night. Every Monday night, he said looking straight ahead. Sammy calls from New York City far away. He is a good son.

And was his telephone call full of happy news?—her second customary question. She listened carefully, interested in everything about Sam. She had invested six years in listening carefully.

The little man turned toward her, stretched his eyes in wonder, and said, He said he eloped.

WHAT? She leaped off the bench. What did you just say?

With Vanessa.

There was a sudden banging in her head.

With Vanessa?

She stood there, staring at him.

He eloped with Vanessa.

Who is Vanessa? Who in God’s name is Vanessa?

He cocked his head.

Her fingers clenched her brown bag. Are you absolutely certain he used the word ‘elope’?

The little man nodded.

Do you know what that means, Mr. Geddes? she asked, placing her hand on her head to stop the pounding.

Yes. Sammy explained it to me. There will not be a wedding.

He began tossing morsels of bread at the birds. I did not have a wedding. Hungry, hungry, hungry? Here is breakfast.

Slowly she sat down and inhaled deeply, trying to collect herself.

Are you unhappy that Sam is not having a wedding, Mr. Geddes? I mean because you won’t be sharing in a wedding celebration?

Sammy does what is best. He is going to be a big attorney in New York. He is a smart man.

She took his hand. Her own hands were quivering. Many people elope, Mr. Geddes.

Why?

Sometimes the two families don’t get along. Or there are too many people to invite, and it all becomes too much trouble. She was saying the first thing that came into her mind.

He looked at her. I am Sammy’s whole family.

She knew there were times when this little man was capable of sensing nuances in a conversation and it always surprised her.

Don’t worry, Mr. Geddes. As you say, Sammy does what is best; he is a smart man.

The two of them sat together in silence on the wooden bench and continued to feed the pigeons. Eventually they shook their bags upside down until nothing more came out. The sun rose higher and the pigeons, now with full bellies, cooed and settled down facing the warmth and tucked their tiny beaks under their wings and went to sleep. The two people stood up and, holding hands, left the park. Then they separated and walked in opposite directions.

Susannah had wanted to protect the little man, but she could not protect herself. She was so dumbfounded by the news of Sam’s elopement that she found herself stumbling along, almost tripping over cracked sidewalks as she made her way to her bookshop that she ran by herself since her father died. Then the tidal wave hit. Sam was married! Her Sam. So he was no longer her Sam. She had lost him, and it was a death. He had not come home during his years in undergraduate school and then in law school, not for his father, and not for her; and for all of those years he only telephoned his father on Monday nights and wrote letters to her, fewer and briefer until they dwindled to mere notes on Christmas and birthday cards. Now she saw the naked truth: Sam had deserted them. That’s what he had done. In fact, he had deserted them the moment he stepped on the bus and left Haventon. And both she and Mr. Geddes had denied that desertion from the start. But now, jolted awake as from a deep sleep, she saw that her waiting had been unreasonable; it went beyond common sense. It was irrational. Yes, irrational. Why did Mr. Geddes and she put up with it, not make a sound about the injustice of it? She knew the answer: Because of love. They loved him, and there was nothing reasonable and rational about love. Both Benjamin Geddes and she overflowed with a love that justified everything Sam did or did not do. They twisted and contorted his behavior to please themselves. They had excused him, and excused him, and excused him, and.…

Sam should have taken her with him. Not having done that, he should have returned home for her at some point and then taken her with him, out of Haventon, away to a big city life with him. But he had not done that either. Instead, he married another and left her here in Haventon to flounder. So, Susannah, he had never been in love with you, while you have always been in love with him. You lived in the anguish and reverie of unrequited love for six years, putting your life on hold until the day of Sam’s return. You need to analyze why you had not been the one. Why Vanessa had been the one.

Morning, Susannah. Been with Mr. Geddes at the park? said a spindly old lady in a sun visor and tennis shoes, slowing down her pace.

We’ve been feeding the pigeons.

His son should come home once in a while and feed the pigeons with his father.

Sam telephones every week.

Not good enough. You’re more of a daughter to the old man than his son is a proper son. She scowled and sped off. Shame on that boy.

Susannah’s life lay in ruins. It had collapsed with one word: eloped. So after six years of self-deception, she now was reduced to feeling like an absolute fool. It was incredible that she could have done such a thing to herself, injure herself in this way. She could die with embarrassment and humiliation.

She turned a corner and walked faster, then began running in an effort to escape her own skin. But seeing the futility in this, she slowed down and continued walking toward the little bookshop that had always been her sanctuary. Her father had run it, but then after her mother died he slipped into perpetual mourning, and Susannah at the age of 15 took over. Father and daughter lived together in the small house behind the shop, until only she lived in the small house. Most days she opened the door by ten o’clock, even though in this town there wasn’t any need. Nobody awakened in his bed to the thought of starting the day by rushing off to her bookshop for a purchase. Nor by ten o‘clock, nor by noon; but maybe at three in the afternoon someone might saunter in. She lived on the narrowest profit margin; her father had not set an example as a businessman. He was more interested in his own reading than in commerce. Thank goodness, he said, for the ladies of Haventon who read romances, the men who read westerns, and the boys who read science fiction. They keep us afloat.

The small town looked pathetic to her as she passed modest clapboard residences with small gardens protected by chain link fences to keep the dogs away. She swung along Main Street. The town awoke early, and by now it was bustling with small enterprises. Green-aproned merchants swept cigarette butts off the sidewalks in front of their stores, van drivers wheeled dollies of soda pop into the market, a few old bachelors were having breakfast in the diner, a gas truck was unloading at the gas station, and Susannah threw out her chin and declared that she was independent, could support herself, and that someone else would come along, someone better than Sam, and she would leap to marry that person. This thought gave her a sense of control over her life and she suddenly realized how free of Sam she was. She began to saunter in defiance, like a young colt in a high strut, shifting her hips, her swing skirt kicking out in front of her, her toes stretching in her open sandals, her loose silken hair tossing back and forth. She did not need Samuel Geddes at all.

On your way to open the bookshop, Susannah? said a young Haventonian mother, Susannah’s age, pushing a baby carriage alongside her girlfriend who was also pushing a baby carriage. Bright and early after feeding the pigeons with Mr. Geddes?

Mr. Geddes and I are good friends.

Time’s marching on, Susannah. Don’t you want babies?Susannah walked away quickly. Sam was going to have babies with Vanessa. Her throat suddenly felt parched. What was she like, this Vanessa? Yet she already knew. Vanessa must be a New Yorker, sophisticated, savvy; she attended the opera and the Broadway shows, had season tickets for concerts and the ballet, was an art collector, was, in fact, everything that Susannah was not. Since childhood, Susannah had admired city women who knew the world and were comfortable in it. She always took note of them in books and magazines and in movies. If she had gone off with Sam, she had hoped to become one of these women.

So now what? She could sell the bookshop and go away to college. But why? To read books and to write? She already did these things. She had been reading voraciously all her life. She already wrote stories and mailed them off, and from time to time met with publication and a few bucks. All she knew was that she had wanted to do everything side by side with Sam.

Sam’s communications with her had dwindled so pathetically that she wouldn’t be reading about the elopement for another six months when he sent a Christmas card.

Dear Susannah,

I met a gorgeous exciting brilliant woman

who is the epitome of my ideal woman.

Thanks for everything. Goodbye forever.

How long had he known this Vanessa? Had he known her the entire six years in college and law school, 1953 to 1959? Or maybe it was a recent whirlwind romance? When exactly did he meet Vanessa? Susannah was going crazy. She had to stop this.

But as she walked on, she began to look at the town of Haventon through Vanessa’s eyes, searching for smart commercial architecture and palatial country estates. She saw only rows of small utilitarian stores lining Main Street, and small look-alike houses along the side streets—everything was common, dull, ugly. Haventon was an example of a forlorn outstation.

Lumberingly, she approached the bookshop. She checked the letterbox. Well, well! Mail from Sam! He couldn’t wait until mailing his usual Christmas note to sever the last thread of their bond.

Dear Susannah, this year has been full of surprises. I am married. My wife’s name is Vanessa. She is the daughter of Angus Seaton who heads the eminent law firm of Seaton, McGoohan, and Crammel. As soon as I became a new member of the firm, I was invited by Mr. Seaton to his home for a weekend party where I met his daughter. And that was that. She is the kind of exceptional person you and I talked about up in the tree house. You would approve of her.

Susannah’s eyes jumped to the top of the letter, up to the words My wife’s name is Vanessa, and that was all she could see. She heard it in her ears: My wife’s name is Vanessa, Vanessa, Vanessa—

Good morning, Susannah. How are you today? hailed Mrs. Ethel Murdy, a middle-aged, round woman standing outside the bookshop.

Good morning, Ethel. Early for you. Waiting for me to open up?

Yes. I need to get lost in a good romance novel to perk me up. Can you suggest any?

Susannah unlocked the door. To be honest, Ethel, I don’t read romances. Come in and browse around! Just read the book jackets. They’ll help you. Would you like a cup of mint tea?

Mint tea? Ooh, that’s a little too exotic for me.

Exotic? I grow mint in my garden.

Well then, I should say it’s a little too fancy for me.

I see. You’re a coffee person.

All the way.

Sorry I don’t have coffee.

Susannah set the kettle on top of a two-burner stove at the rear of the shop and prepared her cup and saucer. Mrs. Murdy began to browse. Susannah reached for a note pad and wrote the name, Vanessa Geddes, to see how it looked.

Listen to this book jacket, Susannah. ‘Some women wait all their lives for their prince. Others settle for less. Still others go in and out of marriages endlessly searching for him. Charlotte Chancy found her prince at the start, but he went away and she spent years waiting for his return. Then one day.…’ Ethel looked up. I don’t think a woman should wait too long. She could end up an old maid.

So what’s wrong with being an old maid? Susannah snapped. In fact, it’s amazing that more women aren’t, when you think of the benefits.

What benefits?

A woman doesn’t have to worry that a man will be true to her.

You don’t trust men?

Susannah looked at her. We’re only talking about a novel here.

No, I don’t think so, said Ethel slowly. We’re talking about what it’s like being an old maid. Now that’s a subject I know a thing or two about.

Susannah threw out her chin defensively, protecting herself from what she was about to hear.

Other people regard an old maid as half a person who lives in the shadows and probably has peculiar habits. In a restaurant, she is a figure to be pitied sitting by herself. At the market, her basket is odd with its single lamb chop and two apples. Boredom glazes over people’s eyes when they speak to her; she knows she is taking up their time; no one ever asks her questions. In other words, she is perpetually out of place, and not accepted as a full member of society. Girls in Haventon live in a different world from old maids because they marry when they’re eighteen or nineteen. I was thirty-five when I married. I married an old bachelor. Do you know why we married each other? Because we wanted to look at another human being across the breakfast table and the dinner table. It’s too bad about you and Sam Geddes. You knew each other all those years. Don’t wait too long, Susannah. People are already looking at you the way they used to look at me.

Susannah wadded up the paper with Vanessa’s name on it. She removed the whistling teakettle from the burner and poured the boiling water over the mint leaves at the bottom of the cup, then carried the steaming cup over to her favorite rocker in the shop. She sat down, stared in at the circling leaves, and remembered back all those years to the first time she saw Sam.

2

It was at his mother’s funeral where she first saw him. He was only seven years old, wearing short pants, and his hair was white-blond and curly; his eyes a glassy green. He looked up at his father whose face was awash with tears. The minister nodded to his father who then stretched out an arm, opened his fist, and let drop a handful of earth over the casket. The sound hitting the wood was like fast rain. The minister then nodded to the boy. The boy likewise stretched out his arm and opened his fist. Again the sound of fast rain. A chain began squeaking and cranking and the casket slowly lowered into the gaping hole. The boy and his father burst out crying uncontrollably.

Susannah was the only other child at the funeral. She watched everyone’s eyes. They glanced at the boy, then at the father, and then furtively all around at each other, communicating something. Susannah liked to look at the boy, but it was the father at whom she looked long and steadily. He cried so much, but it was more than that. Something was wrong with him. He looked strong, but there was something wrong with him.

Susannah’s mother leaned over to her and whispered, That boy has suffered the worst kind of loss. It’s too soon for him to lose a mother. Go to him; be his friend.

Susannah understood, because to imagine life without her own mother was unthinkable. She walked over to the boy who was looking up at his father and holding onto his hand as if to let go he would fall down into a dark hole and be lost forever. Susannah went to stand beside the boy. She was taller. She took his hand, like an older sister. They were the same age.

The minister recited from the Hebrew funeral prayer, A Woman of Valor.

Her value is far beyond pearls. Her husband’s heart relies on her and he shall lack no fortune. She does him good and not evil, all the days of her life.…

Susannah could not hear the rest of the prayer because Mr. Geddes was crying too loudly.

After the funeral service, everyone walked from the cemetery to the tiny three-room house where the Geddes family lived and where people now gathered and ate refreshments and more or less stood in place because there was not much elbow room. Some people were forced to stand outdoors beyond the front and rear screen doors on the patchy grass. No one actually spoke with the little man whose wet face surrounded eyes that searched for the sight of his son.

The Women’s Club was whispering the question that everyone was thinking. How is he going to take care of the boy? How is he going to do it without her? We took over the funeral preparations, but now everything is up to him. They glanced over at him and then looked at each other. The answer came. He supported the family then; he will do it now. But we will keep an eye on both of them."

Susannah worked her way through the crowd to Sam. She looked at him, one small person to another. Hello.

Hello, he said back with his glassy green eyes, letting go of his father’s hand.

She looked around the room for signs that a child lived here. There was a cot in the living room where people now sat elbow to elbow, and balanced small paper plates of tuna noodle casserole and potato chips.

She asked him, Do you have special toys and things that you only show other people sometimes?

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he took her hand and led her into the bedroom and to a drawer where he kept a broken train car his father had retrieved from a neighborhood trash barrel. He said, You can have it.

She was amazed that at such a time, losing his mother and suffering so, he thought to give her a present. Later when she arrived home, she plowed through all of her personal things for her most precious object and laid it carefully in a shoebox. The next morning she hurried through breakfast because she was anxious to deliver her gift. She hoped it would make him feel better.

She knocked on the door. Sam opened it and she held out the shoebox. I want to give you one of my favorite things.

He opened the shoebox.

It’s real, she said. My mother gave it to me.

There, on a bed of cotton, lay a blue speckled bird’s egg.

He said, The mother bird must miss it.

Susannah had never thought of that. In fact, she suddenly realized it was an awful gift for him, the worst gift. And she began to cry.

He covered the box. I’ll take good care of it.

She wiped her eyes. Do you want to come out and play?

Every day after school, Susannah knocked on Sam’s front door. Can you come out to play? And every day they played. On the weekends, they played all day—except early on Saturday mornings when Mr. Geddes and Sam went to the park to feed the pigeons. Afterward, Mr. Geddes left for work, and Sam returned home. Then Susannah joined Sam and they played.

Susannah was a tomboy. She taught Sam to swim in the old watering hole. She showed him how to climb trees, and roll down hills. She took him to play in the open fields, and brought kites on windy days. They built a tree house together and that was their special place. You read books together up there? Is it safe? asked Mr. Geddes.

Yes, Mr. Geddes. And we talk about remarkable people.

Remarkable people?

Brave people who lead remarkable lives. We dream about someday being remarkable people ourselves.

Mr. Geddes clapped his hands. He hugged her.

We pretend to be the people in those books. You know, Mr. Geddes, other boys and girls don’t have the same kind of pretend world that Sam and I do. Other boys and girls go straight for cowboys and Indians or Batman and Superman. But Sam pretends to be Merlin the magician, or the advisor to a sultan, or a wise king—someone very smart. And I pretend to be a famous composer or painter or writer.

I like Sammy to pretend to be someone smart.

When they were not playing, Sam was studying. She left him alone then. He was the top scholar in the entire school. He carried a briefcase—like a miniature lawyer. And Susannah never let anyone laugh at him about it or they would have to fight her.

She was told the meaning of that briefcase the day Mr. Geddes presented it to Sam. The occasion was Sam’s tenth birthday, and Mr. Geddes wore his suit and tie for the occasion. Three cupcakes with candles were on the plate in the middle of the table, and Mr. Geddes’ eyes were dancing as he held out the box. He beamed as if the box were the biggest birthday