First Desire

Chapter 1 Sadie 1929 July, the air grassy and mild, the sort of morn- ing Sadie waits for through the deep of Buffalo wintersmornings when it seems the city has surrendered to pleasure, to color and light. The harsh seasons are unimaginable. It's as if this is how all of life is meant to be; as if drinking coffee and reading, gardening and casual piano playing, are her true occupations; as if cardinals flashing through the yards and the lush green of lawns and the maple's fat leaves signal a permanent arrival. There are dahlias on the dining table, yellow and red, late strawberries. It's still early, and Sadie has an hour, maybe two, before the day's obligations intrude. The easy time, she thinks, the garden time. It's something she associates with marriagenot the image of a couple in the garden, but the luxury of time alone at her own house. A luxury apparent only after her mother's death, for which of course there is no compensation; but here is the second summer of such mornings, a time not yet occluded by children. She is twenty-four years old. Here is her coffee, the morning paper; in the back hall there are red geraniums to plant in a window box. The day is already bright, and she opens the living room drapes to the grass and pansies and oaks, and stops. There's a man on her lawn: light brown suit, cigar in hand, facing away from her. Slim and coltish, an impatience in his stance, a lack of definition she usually associates with faces but here sees even in the posture, the lines of his shoulders. It's Irving, her baby brother. She glances at the new aqua-colored divan. The smallest of diversions, the look away. Close the curtains, she thinks, try again later. As if he will vanish. As if in ten minutes or an hour she'll open the curtains onto a lawn empty of everything but border pansies and white petunias. Pretend the man on the lawn is instead a strolling neighbor pausing to relight his cigar. Because the cigar is out. But Irving makes no gesture to relight it, and he is in fact Irving: Sadie has only one brother and there is no mistaking him. Irving, whom she did not expect to see at all today, let alone at this hour, miles from the family house, dampening his shoes in the grass. She wishes it were noon. She wishes he were standing in a coffee shop: she is often happy to see him in coffee shops, in the company of pastry. They could eat Danish and argue about new pictures, and Irving could imitate Chaplin, walking with fast small steps and tipping his hat to make her laugh. Irving on the lawn cannot be a good thing. In her nightgown and robe she opens the front door. A spread of bright petunias hems the grass. "Irving?" He turns, ashes the burnt-out cigar, checks the bottom of his shoes, as if he has stepped in something unpleasant. For an instant he's a puzzled tan flamingo. And then he is Irving again, but he doesn't look her in the eye. What? A death? He'd have spoken by now if it were, and no one's been ill; there's evasion in his manner, but not the air of drowning. That half-embarrassed staring at his shoeit's more than a small gambling debt. A girl in trouble? Which would be dreadful, of course, more than a little shocking, but not out of character. "Have some coffee," Sadie says. And now he glances at herstill the puzzled lookcrosses the thick grass, wipes his shoes on the front mat, and follows her voice through the hall to the din- ing room. She seats him at the head of the table, makes a ritual of pouring the coffee, stirring in the sugar and cream. He could be like this when he was a boy, couldn't he? Quiet, half-elsewhere until he'd had his breakfast, though at her table he fidgets, toyReisman, Nancy is the author of 'First Desire', published 2004 under ISBN 9780375423086 and ISBN 0375423087.