Familiar Spirit полностью

Valerie turned without answering and hurried away, almost running. She slammed the door so hard behind her that the house shook. Bemused, Sarah stood still in the empty house, listening for the sound of Valerie’s car. When she heard the Ferrari roar away, she moved again, walking into the kitchen and then making the same circle of the house that she had made first by following Valerie.

My house, she thought. My own. Home.

But the word home conjured another image. Against her will, she saw again the small, upstairs apartment she had shared with Brian for the past year and a half. One bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen barely large enough to turn around in, all made even smaller by the bulk of furniture, books and records, and a laissez-faire attitude towards housekeeping. It might have been comfortable for one, but it was not really large enough for two. Sarah and Brian had been forever bumping into each other. At first, they had found it romantic.

Although romantic wasn’t really the word for their relationship, Sarah thought. Necessary—that was more like it. Their constant companionship had been a necessity of life, like food or drink or sleep. They had been addicted to each other.

The realization of that had frightened Sarah. Sarah, who wasn’t afraid of flying, or of insects, or of going to the dentist, was afraid of what she felt for Brian. She’d had boyfriends before, but never had she felt this obsessive need which—it now appeared—was what everyone had meant all along by the word “love.”

And although this new life, this sense of being half of a greater whole, was nearly always pleasant and could be exhilarating, Sarah feared being trapped by it, becoming lost. When Brian proposed marriage, Sarah felt as if she’d been pushed out of an airplane: a giddy surge of pleasure, and then terror. She had seen herself taking the path she’d always sworn she would avoid, and turning into her mother, a hollow creature who hardly seemed to exist apart from her husband and children.

So she had put Brian off with excuses about being too young, and wanting to finish her degree, and how they should wait until they had both settled into careers. She had tried to tell him the truth—that she was frightened—but Brian, who seemed to know everything else important about her without the need for words, had not understood.

“But what’s wrong with being happy?” he had asked.

“Nothing. It’s not the being happy . . . it’s being dependent on you in order to be happy.”

“But, my love, I’m every bit as dependent on you.”

She had given up trying to explain. The difference between them, she thought, was not that he was less dependent or less vulnerable, but that he didn’t find those states of being threatening, and she did. From that moment, she began to work at keeping her separate identity. She made plans that didn’t include Brian, she met old friends for lunch, she spent long hours in the library instead of study­ing at home, she briefly took up a political cause, and she stopped rushing home to share every meal with Brian. She imagined she could win back her old independence without losing Brian. She should have known better.

Brian had seen Sarah’s campaign to save herself as a sign of loss of interest in him, as a lack of love, as a threat, and, finally, as a betrayal. And so, in the end, he had betrayed her: he had found someone else.

All along, Sarah admitted, she had been pulling away from him, seeking her own freedom, but she had imagined that they were engaged in a balancing act. When she pulled away, she expected him to pull back. The one thing she had not counted on was that he might stop pulling—that he would let her go.

It’s over, Sarah told herself. It doesn’t matter how it happened, or who was right or who wrong—it’s over, and time to stop brooding. But she could not get Brian out of her mind.

Sarah leaned back against the living room wall and closed her eyes. She might as well have a good old wallow while she was alone, she thought. Get it out of her system, for a time, at least, and maybe she wouldn’t break down in front of her friends again. She didn’t try to stop the tears as she remembered that terrible evening when Brian had told her he loved someone else.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen, Sarah,” he said. He sounded sincere; his broad, handsome face was more miserable than she had ever seen it. “But she needs me. Melanie needs me.”

“What about me? Don’t I count anymore? I need you, too.”

He almost smiled. “It’s funny that you’ve never said that before.”

“Did I have to? Is that what you need? Someone to feed your ego? Someone to go all helpless and cling to you, and worship you?”

Her fear of loss had come spilling out, sounding like anger, and Brian had turned her own bitter words against her: proof that she didn’t really need him, didn’t need anyone.