Warm Winter Love (13 page)

Once she had dreamed that they were still at Cedar Crest. She was at the top of Devil’s Mist and Sam was waiting for her at the bottom of the run. Somehow, everything that was vital to them depended on her getting down the slope. She could even hear Sam saying,
“Come, Katie, come on. Follow me, we’ll do this together.”
But she stood there paralyzed. And then she woke up and realized that she had called out his name. She stared into the dark until she realized that it was only a dream, a nightmare, and there was no Sam to meet and no Devil’s Mist to conquer. She had tried to go back to sleep then, but, instead, tossed on her bed for the remaining two hours before her alarm clock went off.

Tonight was another night like that one; only, this time someone had phoned her and then hung up before she could answer. It had awakened her, and she lay there, her arm outstretched toward the phone, waiting for it to ring again, fantasizing that it was Sam calling her. When she awoke the next morning, her arm was numb.

“If I tell you you look terrible, believe me,” Irene told Katie in the parking lot that morning. “It must be your conscience.” As Katie opened her mouth to speak, Irene caught herself: “I’m sorry. Just an unfortunate use of words.” She locked her car door. “Still haven’t heard from him?”

“I really don’t expect to.” Katie shifted the stack of folders in her arms. “I told you it’s all over.”

“Only if you want it to be.” Irene opened the door to the school building. “I keep telling you—go for it. Tell Jason the wedding’s off. Call Sam and tell him the wedding’s on. A plus B equals C. Mathematically proven.” She smiled.

“You make everything seem so simple.”

“Because that’s the way it should be.”

“I can’t do it, Irene. I can’t trade my life.”

“Your orderly, well-tuned life?”

“Suppose Sam was just a flight of fancy, that he really had no lasting effect?”

“Then you would have known it by now.” Irene stopped at the foot of the hall stairs. “Tell me truthfully—have you forgotten about Sam?” She peered at her friend. “You don’t even have to answer that because your face tells me my answer.” She started running up the stairs, leaving Katie behind. “I’m telling you, my friend, go for it.” She turned at the landing and swept her arms out to include the schoolrooms and the hall and stairs. “There are other schools, other places. But is there another Sam Hubbard for you? Answer that riddle, Katie, and then you’ll know what to do.” Irene disappeared down a hall.

Katie had assigned an essay on romantic poetry and she knew that most students would choose to analyze one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnets.
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
She could see and hear them now, reading it aloud, snickering and circulating notes with parodies.

She remembered the first time she had heard the words and been stirred by their pledge of eternal devotion. Fifteen and ingenuous, she had asked herself then if she could ever love anyone that deeply or that strongly. Today she knew the answer.

Chapter Fifteen

Katie stayed after school to talk to two students who needed more help in their work. She had tried to show the difference between fact and fiction in a book report and the two boys wanted a more thorough explanation.

“Well,” Katie said, “if you know something to be true and you write it, that’s fact. But if you’re not sure and you make up something, even just one sentence about it, that’s fiction.” She turned to wave at Irene, who had taken a seat in the classroom. “But that doesn’t mean that fiction can’t turn to fact. It can.” She smiled at the boys. “Okay? It’s that simple.” When the students had left and they were alone in the classroom, Irene said, “For someone who can teach an English course on what’s fact and what’s fiction, you sure do a lousy job of mixing it up in real life.”

“Please, let’s not start on Jason and me again.”

“Let’s not forget Sam. You do remember Sam, don’t you? The guy you met at Cedar Crest, the guy you fell in love with?” Irene took out a pencil and tapped it. “That’s fact, Katie,” she said, mimicking her friend’s words. “It’s that simple.”

Katie nodded. “I know. But what about the other part—the fiction? I haven’t heard from him, not since he left.”

“You told him not to bother you, that it couldn’t be.”

“But he really hasn’t tried to contact me. Not in three weeks.”

“Maybe he will yet. But that’s not the entire problem. Even if you never hear from him again,” Irene persisted, “you’re still going to have to do something about Jason. You don’t love him and never will. Sam proved it. It’s not fair to Jason.”

“We could have a good marriage,” Katie said weakly.

“Great! And you’d settle for it?” Irene walked to the blackboard and idly drew circles on it. “Don’t you want something more, Katie? You just don’t fall in love with a man within two or three days and then say, ‘the heck with it, I’m going back to my nice, little, safe corner of the world.’ ”

Katie stared at her friend. That was exactly what Sam had said to her—that she would rather take second-best, that she’d rather not go for the gold. That was why she didn’t attempt Devil’s Mist after that first time because it was too frightening. Better to be safe than sorry, and now here she was safe and sorry. Jason was here and she was going to marry him, and Sam was elsewhere and she was in love with him.

“Jason and I want the same things. We have the same values.”

“And you’re both schoolteachers and you both understand your professions and you would both stay right here on this spot of earth for the rest of your lives. Is that what you want?”

“You make it sound so dull, so boring.”

“It is, Katie. There’s no life there. You just think you want the same things because you saw how unhappy your mother was with your father’s job. But did you ever think that it might have been more, that his traveling was only a cover-up, that maybe there was something basically wrong with the marriage and that travel was the handiest excuse around? Maybe, if you asked your mother for the real reason, you would learn something about her and your father.

“Katie, you can’t try to live your life by reliving your mother’s. You can’t save the world or change it. It just is, and believe me, you have to go out and do the best you know how and love whomever you want. You owe yourself that much. I saw you when you came home from the ski trip. There was a sparkle in your eyes, a happiness I hadn’t seen since you were a kid. You were alive again, emotionally and mentally. And it was all because you’d met Sam.” She drew a small circle on the board and then placed points around the orbit. “This circle is you and Jason,” she said, writing in their names. And then she pointed to a distant dot. “And this is Sam.”

“Floating all around the earth, I notice.” Katie laughed even though she knew it was true and it hurt her.

“At least he’s able to get a better perspective on the world.” Irene drew a line from the dot to Katie’s name within the circle. “This is your way out of a nice little niche that you’ve created. And if I were you, I’d think very carefully about it.”

Everything Irene had said was true. She would be locked into a predictable and prosaic life with Jason, and she wondered why neither of them ever talked about transferring to another school or district, or even moving to another town. Surely Jason would be at least an assistant principal, if not a principal, in another school. He was capable and had a good rapport with students.

But then again, so was she, and she hadn’t considered transferring. Maybe Irene was right, maybe she had settled down at an early age. She was only in her twenties. Why hadn’t she done anything about her career? She was a good teacher and could be an assistant principal, but the thought had never entered her mind. Irene was right; she didn’t have any ambition. And neither did Jason. They were too content and secure to move on. She wondered if they had done that to each other.

“Are you listening, Katie?” Irene’s words cut through her reverie. “If I were you I’d talk to Jason, tell him what’s been going on, make him see that you two aren’t good for each other because you don’t love him. It’s that simple. Tell him the honest truth.” Picking up the chalk again, she wrote Sam’s name on the board once more. “And then I would write Sam a letter. Or I would call him and tell him what you’ve done and that maybe he should come visit you. And then… well, then you will see what happens.” She folded her hands as though she had just completed a lesson. “Any discussion?”

“And if I can’t locate him?”

“You can.”

“And if he doesn’t want me?”

“Ah,” Irene said, “that’s the key question. Well, if he doesn’t want you, he won’t answer. And if he doesn’t answer, then you won’t have to deal with whether you should marry him. And if you don’t deal with it, you will have at least cleared up the Jason-and-you match.” She erased the blackboard. “Oh, Katie! Don’t be as stupid as I was once upon a time.” Katie shook her head.

“I don’t understand.”

Irene sat down at a desk and pursed her lips. “I’ve been wondering whether I should tell you this.” She looked away through the window toward the white dogwoods in bloom at the front of the school. “Don’t ask me any questions and don’t ask me when this all happened. Just sit and listen and when I’m finished, just file it under ‘gone but not forgotten’ and never talk to me about it again. You’ll understand why.” She took a deep breath.

“A few years ago, when I went away on one of my beach weekends, I met someone I considered pretty special. Incredibly special. It was summer, we were both on vacation, and one thing led to another and there I was, head over heels in love with this guy. I won’t even tell you his name—not that I’ve forgotten it. I never will, Katie, but his name is important only to me. Like your Sam, he was totally different from me, and he absolutely swept me off my feet and I loved it. But to make this very long and very sad story very brief, he was going back to his hometown somewhere in the Northeast and when he asked me to go too, I thought about everything I had—my family, friends, career—and I said I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that I needed those roots because I knew they would always be there for me. But he was so absolutely different from me, and I was, to put it quite simply, afraid to take the chance. I was too darn scared to go with him.”

Irene shook her head. “That was several years ago, and I’ve never forgotten him. I never heard from him again and when I came home I never said anything to anyone. I think that was because I knew immediately, even while driving home from the beach, that I had made a mistake. But a lot of things—pride, stupidity, fear—never allowed me to write or call him. And now I look back and say to myself that it was so foolish of me… so very foolish.”

Irene looked once more at the dogwoods. “And I don’t want that to happen to you, my friend.” She stood up and grabbed her purse. “Learn from other people’s mistakes, Ms. Jarvis! I lost a love because I was too demanding and set in my mind. Go for it, Katie! Go for it!” She looked at her laptop computer. “I once did a search on the internet and found out that he’s married now.” She sighed. “I hope he’s happy. I really do.”

Katie opened her mouth to speak but Irene motioned her to silence. “Uh-uh. I told you no questions. Ever. “What’s done is done! So come on, I’ve got a ton of papers to grade this evening though maybe I’ll just forget them and read a book and maybe think about what might have been. I’ll give the papers back next week.” Irene laughed. “Only those who passed the test will be interested in their marks. Somehow, the kids who don’t know a right triangle from a circle couldn’t care less.”

Chapter Sixteen

When she saw the postman put the letters into the mailboxes, Katie knew somehow that there would be a letter from Sam. She saw it immediately, the plain white envelope with the no-nonsense, almost-print handwriting, and she peered at the return address from somewhere in England. Her hand trembled as she tore it open, and a thousand thoughts raced through her mind as she read the letter.

My dearest Katie-Katie,

I hope this is welcome news. I’m afraid I can’t keep my promise to you, the one that I agreed to when I told you I would never try to contact you. I’m afraid, my love, it’s much too difficult and too high a price to pay in my life right now. I won’t bore you with the details—let it be sufficient to say that I’m traveling, doing well, and, Katie-Katie, I miss you very much.

Maybe you’ve had a chance to think about us and have been able to sort out the obstacles that keep us apart. Doesn’t that phrasing sound so terribly old-fashioned?

Katie, I will be in the States next week and I will call you. Maybe it’s not too late for us!

Know that I love you very much,

Sam

She held the letter tightly and reread it, almost hearing him speak the words. Then she looked at the postmark. Last week! That meant he was going to telephone any day now.

She sat down at the kitchen table. Was it welcome news? If she had to tell the truth, yes, it was very welcome although she knew that seeing him again would only cloud her plans. Her heart was racing. Yes, she did want to see him, there was no question about that. She missed him and his easy humor and the excitement of being with him.