The grove of oaks in front of Sadie’s house seemed to tremble and slant slightly. The wordravishechoed,that last syllable sliding through the air.Ravish. Ravish.
Anne gripped the wineglass tightly in her hand and sat very, very still, only because there was no reason whatsoever to squirm.
“Never mind. Just forget all that foolishness.” Sadie shook her head quickly, as though she was speaking to herself as much as to Anne. “Back to the subject. You want to live next door to me—established. But what else do you want for yourself?”
Beneath that seemingly easygoing exterior of Sadie’s lay a bulldog with iron teeth. At least it got them away from John Donne. “Enough cross-examination, Perry Mason. What doyouwant?”
“All sorts,” Sadie said breezily. “I want to bring as much beauty into the world as I can, right up until the very second I leave the earth. I want to write poems that make my readers ask, ‘How did she know I needed that?’ I want to learn howto do the Warrior three pose in yoga class without needing to lean on one of those foam blocks. I want to be a grandmother to the most incredible child ever created—tied with my Hal, of course.” She beamed, clearly thinking about her daughter-in-law’s pregnancy. “I want to learn everything there is to learn about the invention of agriculture, and radical compassion, and the right way to perfectly poach an egg. And I want to be your closest friend. Always.”
Fast pleasure spread through Anne, and the smile she gave Sadie was nearly as large, and as honest, as Sadie’s own. But Sadie’s list seemed incomplete. “You didn’t mention your students. What about UCLA?”
There it was again: that shadow.
Anne hadn’t imagined it. Her stomach clenched.
“Well,” Sadie said very slowly, and now she wasn’t looking at Anne, “yes, of course. I love my job. You know that. Getting to teach those kids makes me the luckiest woman on the planet.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Anne put down her empty wineglass. “Is it Diane? Is she sticking around as department chair for another term? I know you can’t stand her.”
“Miguel’s stepping up.” Sadie’s sentences were shorter than they’d been. “Thank God. I don’t think I could’ve taken three more years of Diane’s mean-fisted neoliberalism.”
“So what is it? Why are you acting like—”
“Stop,” Sadie said softly. “Let this one go, Anne. I’m not ready to talk about it.”
Despite the warm day, Anne felt a chill creep through her veins. She sat back in the chair, her spine hard against the firm cushion. What could Sadie not want to discuss? There wasn’t a topic under the sun her friend didn’t love dissecting until its innards splattered all over the conversation.
She nodded, unable to come up with a response that didn’t sound melodramatic.
“Let me tell you instead,” Sadie continued, her normal cheer restored, “about the poem I just finished drafting. It’s a villanelle—you know, five tercets and a quatrain with repeating lines—about keeping secrets, and the speaker’s unreliable. The repeating line is “‘I misplaced the place where honesty shows.’”
“Oh. Well-done.” Anne did her best to sound supportive—for Sadie, she could manage to muster up alittleshort-term interest in poetry—but unease still pricked at her. “Five tercets? Wow. That’s great.”
Sadie laughed good-naturedly and stood up, grabbing their wineglasses off the table before Anne could ask for the refill she wanted. “That reaction just earned a pity participation trophy and a star sticker withyou triedwritten on it. Sureyouhaven’t misplaced the place where honesty shows?”
Anne’s cheeks heated. “I meant it. I’m glad you’re doing something you love. Even if I don’t enjoy poetry. It’s not personal, I promise.” She knew what came next, what always came next.Give poetry a real chance. I know you’d like it if you actually made an effort.
Sadie looked down at her, warm eyes sharpened, and Anne’s stomach swooped.
“Of course you hate poetry, beloved,” Sadie said gently. “Youarepoetry. And you don’t like yourself very much.”
With that observation, she strode into the house, leaving Anne sitting alone on the porch, dumbfounded.
Dimly, she felt her heart pounding, as if it were somewhere else, not attached to her own body.
Youarepoetry.
If someone else had said that to her—one of the men Anne had dated in the years since her divorce, for instance—she would’ve known what to do with the comment. She’d smile, put it in an inner box of compliments, and never look at it again.
But Sadie wasn’t a man. Sadie was Sadie. Her best friend. And she’d said something else, too.
You don’t like yourself very much.
That was the old Anne, wasn’t it? The Anne who’d been cruel like Brenda, hating how much she loved doing it. The Anne who’d ignored a stifled, humming terror that simmered just below her attention, as though with each day that passed, her life was slowly slipping through her La Mer-moisturized hands. Back then, sometimes that terror had broken through.Is this it? Is this all I’ll ever have? Is this all I am?
She wasn’t that Anne anymore. That Anne had never held a crying Sadie in her arms after the death of Sadie’s beloved cat Wordsworth. That Anne had never opened up to anyone at all, not even a fraction. That Anne had never sat on the front porch of a pink cottage with a glass of cold wine, the light from Sadie’s attention loosening her tight chest.
Now that she’d left her old life behind, she liked herself just fine, whatever that actually meant. Sadie didn’t know everything.