I turned. Mimi was coming down the slope of the lawn with a woman in tow. My first impression of Sadie-everyone’s first impression, I have no doubt-was her height. She was wearing flats, as were most of the women here, knowing that they’d be spending the afternoon and evening traipsing around outside, but this was a woman who had probably last worn heels to her own wedding, and even for that occasion she might have picked a dress that would hide just one more pair of low-or no-heels, chosen so she wouldn’t tower comically over the groom as they stood at the altar. She was six feet at least, maybe a little more. I still had her by at least three inches, but other than Coach Borman and Greg Underwood of the History Department, I was probably the only man at the party who did. And Greg was a beanpole. Sadie had, in the argot of the day, a really good built. She knew it and was self-conscious about it rather than proud. I could tell that from the way she walked.
I know I’m a little too big to be considered normal, that walk said. The set of her shoulders said more: It’s not my fault, I just growed that way. Like Topsy. She was wearing a sleeveless dress printed over with roses. Her arms were tanned. She had dashed on a little pink lipstick, but no other makeup.
Not love at first sight, I’m pretty sure of it, but I remember that first sight with surprising clarity. If I told you I remember with similar clarity the first time I saw the former Christy Epping, I’d be lying. Of course, it was at a dance club and we were both toasted, so maybe I get a pass on that.
Sadie was good-looking in an artless what-you-see-is-what-you-get American-girl way. She was something else, as well. On the day of the party I thought that something else was plain old big-person clumsiness. Later I found out she wasn’t clumsy at all. Was, in fact, the farthest thing from it.
Mimi looked good-or at least no worse than she had on the day she’d come to my house and convinced me to teach full-time-but she was wearing makeup, which was unusual. It didn’t quite conceal the hollows under her eyes, probably caused by a combination of sleeplessness and pain, or the new lines at the corners of her mouth. But she was smiling, and why not? She had married her fella, she had thrown a party that was obviously a roaring success, and she had brought a pretty girl in a pretty summer dress to meet the school’s only eligible English teacher.
“Hey, Mimi,” I said, starting up the mild slope toward her, weaving my way around the card tables (borrowed from the Amvets Hall) where people would later sit to eat barbecue and watch the sunset. “Congratulations. I guess now I’ll have to get used to calling you Miz Simmons.”
She smiled her dry smile. “Please stick to Mimi, it’s what I’m used to. I have a new faculty member I want you to meet. This is-”
Someone had neglected to push one of the folding chairs all the way back in, and the big blonde girl, already holding her hand out to me and composing her how-nice-to-meet-you smile, tripped over it and went spilling forward. The chair came with her, tipping up, and I saw the potential for a nasty accident if one of the legs speared her in the stomach.
I dropped my cup of beer in the grass, took a giant step forward, and grabbed her as she fell. My left arm went around her waist. My right hand landed higher, grabbing something warm and round and slightly yielding. Between my hand and her breast, the cotton of her dress slipped over the smooth nylon or silk of whatever she was wearing beneath. It was an intimate introduction, but we had the banging angles of the chair for a chaperone, and although I staggered a little against the momentum of her hundred and fifty or so pounds, I kept my feet and she kept hers.
I took my hand away from the part of her that is rarely grasped when strangers are introduced and said: “Hello, I’m-” Jake. I came within a hair of giving my twenty-first-century name, but caught it at the very last moment. “I’m George. How nice to make your acquaintance.”
She was blushing to the roots of her hair. I probably was, too. But she had the good grace to laugh.
“Nice to make yours. I think you just saved me from a very nasty accident.”
Probably I had. Because that was it, you see? Sadie wasn’t clumsy, she was accident-prone. It was amusing until you realized what it really was: a kind of haunting. She was the girl, she told me later, who got the hem of her dress caught in a car door when she and her date arrived at the senior prom, and managed to tear her skirt right off as they headed for the gym. She was the woman around whom water fountains malfunctioned, giving her a faceful; the woman who was apt to set an entire book of matches on fire when she lit a cigarette, burning her fingers or singeing her hair; the woman whose bra strap broke during Parents’ Night or who discovered huge runs in her stockings before school assemblies at which she was scheduled to speak.
