Sarah's Window by Janice Graham Page B

undefinable happiness, and what had manifested itself on that wintry night traveled on through the core of her being like a deep tremor.
    During this time, during the nights, she stayed awake to paint in oils, and she watched new things appear on her easel—landscapes of lonely houses perched among fierce hills and peopled with elongated shadowlike forms. Minimal, barely more than silhouette, but they were there, easily distinguished as man and woman and child. It had been many years since she had painted even the faintest abstraction of the human form.
    Her restlessness was not easily appeased. The familiar faces that made up the tapestry of her days, the routine amusements and distractions, appeared now to her like a pale, wintry world. Everywhere she turned there was a blinding sameness. She could no longer distinguish one moment of her life from another, and the events of each day were forgotten as soon as they had passed. She began to take short trips up to Lawrence, where she had once gone to university. She had always loved Lawrence from the first time her grandfather had taken her for a visit as a little girl and they had wandered hand in hand through the campus, along footpaths winding between stately old halls of cream-colored stone. The town itself was a lively place, animated by a peculiar mix of academics, artists, cowboys, and old hippies, and Sarah never grew tired of it. And so, that spring, she began spending her days off up there. Removed from prying eyes, she would take her sketch pad with her and sit on a bench with the March wind scattering dead leaves at her feet. Here she could make believe life held hope and promise.
     
    When John was in Lawrence he generally ate a late lunch, if he ate at all. He avoided the funky old cafes on Massachusetts he had frequented as an undergraduate; even more fastidiously, he avoided the affluent West Lawrence neighborhood, steered clear of the shops and restaurants enjoyed by his parents and their friends. There was a new bakery and deli on Louisiana Street that he liked, a clean, sunny place called Wheatfields that reminded him of his favorite bakery in Berkeley. He usually tried to time it so that he missed the lunch crowd; it was generally quiet then and he could find a booth to himself and spread out his work and read while he downed a sandwich and a salad. He liked the ambience, the lack of pretense and the way the sunlight angled through the slats of the Venetian blinds.
    He heard the door open and casually glanced up from his journal. When he saw Sarah walk up to the counter and pause to read the chalkboard menu on the wall, there was such a sudden change in his countenance that any casual observer would have noticed the effect she had on him.
    He waited, following her with his eyes until she had paid and then paused to pick up a napkin from the service corner. When it seemed she was moving toward a table near the door and might not see him, he laid aside his journal and rose.
    She saw the movement, turned her head. Her eyes held a look of disbelief, utter amazement; only slowly did she smile and walk toward him.
    She was dressed as he had seen her before, in worn denim jeans and a loose, heavy-knit sweater, a backpack slung over her shoulder, the uniform of those who wish to blend in.
    "Here," he said, "please, come join me," and he cleared room on the table.
    "I won't disturb you? Were you working?"
    "No," he answered and quickly rolled up his journal and stuffed it down behind the worn leather briefcase near his elbow. "Please, sit down."
    "Thanks," she said, and set down her tray.
    He hid his hands under the table, tried to hide his nervousness.
    "I never expected...," he began, then her backpack knocked over his iced tea and he grabbed for it.
    "I'm so sorry," she said, quickly mopping it up with her napkin.
    "It's all right."
    Finally she was settled, the sandwich and Coke removed from her tray, and both of them took a deep breath and looked at each other