Sadie

Spring came like the breath of a lover on the back of your neck which causes you to spin around delightedly and grin at her face, wrapping your arms delicately around her thin back, and pulling her close to greet her with a little kiss on the lips. Sadie smiled and kissed me back, then grabbed my hand, weaving her slender fingers into the spaces between my own sinewy digits, and pulled me down the gray sidewalk toward her convertible, a deep green in the vast presence of gray asphalt and rotten-tomato-colored brick. The air was thick with humidity and the clouds promised rain, but when I gazed upon Sadie’s bright face, I could see only the sunshine of her hair and her blue–sky eyes, her rose-colored lips and the cumulus flesh of her cheeks; her smile was all the springtime I could ever need.
Sadie directed me to the passenger-side door and I took a seat on the smoke-colored leather, remembering to fasten my seatbelt. Sadie scurried to the other side of the car and took a seat before the steering wheel. I watched her soft hands turn the key in the ignition, and I watched her put the little car in drive. She smiled at me before turning the wheel to the extreme left and pressing her foot gently to the gas pedal. We took off sluggishly and crept down the muggy, vacant street lined with tall gloomy-looking structures of stone and of brick. I looked around at this neighborhood which simultaneously made no sense to me and seemed inexplicably familiar until we came to the stop sign and Sadie turned left and we approached the busier part of the city.
“How are you feeling, Sonny?” said the woman in the seat beside me. She was smiling at me as if I was a child, and her voice was bright and animated as if she was speaking to a little boy. I did not reply, though I’m not sure why not. Instead, I cocked my head to one side and wrinkled my forehead in a garbled gaze. Sadie seemed to find this risible, for her smile grew wider and she chuckled a little under her breath before returning her eyes to the road before her, and I looked too ahead at the sea of traffic upon which we seemed suddenly to be sailing.
The oceanic battalion of automobiles moved forward in waves until I heard the soft clicking of the turn signal and Sadie pulled into a lane on the right before steering the car onto a bridge. I looked out at the river. The sun was shining, and its bright yellow rays reflected on every wake. “Ellen,” said I, and I was not sure why, but it seemed all I could say. “Ellen,” I said again, and I saw that Sadie was peering at me, a troubled expression on her face. “Sorry,” I muttered. (So I could speak two words.)
We traveled on in silence for some time. On the other side of the bridge, there were suburbs, and on the other side of the suburbs there were rolling hills and fields of clover and lilac. The cool, congenial wind, smelling of summer storms, blew through my strawberry-blond hair and my wispy locks flew behind me to reveal my lacy sideburns, and Sadie tossed another songlike smile toward me. I caught her eye and realized I was not sure where we were going.
“Sorry,” I said. I frowned at myself. Why had I said that? “Ellen?” I enquired. I frowned even more, wrinkling my eyebrows in frustration and confusion. “Sorry, Ellen,” I said a little louder. “Sorry, Ellen,” I repeated. Why could I not ask her where we were going?
Sadie was looking over at me now, and her face bore an expression of concern and of disarray. Not wanting to worry the girl I knew I loved – (How did I know I loved her?) – I piped down and sat back in the passenger seat. I watched the hills and the trees and the fields of clover and lilac. Houses sped by before my eyes, and the occasional pick-up flashed by in the other lane. I felt the cold metal in my hand. It felt strange, but it felt right.
I looked over at Sadie. She was no longer glancing over at me nervously but was staring ahead at the highway, her thin yellow hair riding the air gracefully behind her. I looked up at the clouds on the horizon, a deep navy mass of churning nimbus. I grasped the smooth metal, raising and lowering my fingers on its silky surface. The heavens overhead were turning from puffy and white to dark and malevolent, but Sadie did not move. I lifted the dark, shiny instrument, then lowered it again. What was it I should be doing now?
Of a sudden, Sadie’s right hand moved toward a button which would have closed the roof of the little green car had it made contact with its surface. Instead the knife in my hand seemed to fly through the air before my eyes and draw a solid red line down the side of Sadie’s face. The wheels veered toward the side of the road and the car was launched into a ditch and spun eighty-seven degrees in one direction or the other. Someone was screaming; I’m not sure who it was. The blade found its way to Sadie’s shoulder and then to her heart. I’m not sure why she was crying. I felt I should tell her I love her. “Sorry, Ellen.” I could hear a thunder from underfoot and the car moves in a strange direction before turning over. There was then the horrible crack and then no sound at all but the rain pattering overhead. I’m not sure how I survived all that.
Hours must have gone by but it seemed a matter only of seconds before I was in the uncomfortable oak chair behind the little wooden fence, and there was a crowd, and there were people talking but I couldn’t tell what they were saying. After a moment of blurred sentences and words which ran together, several heads seemed to turn toward me. A few seconds went by in which there was only silence. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Sweat was running down my forehead like a dreary springtime rain as the dark clouds roll over the clover and the lilac and the highway. Finally I spoke:
“Sorry . . . Sadie.”1