Sally by Howard Fast

Author:Howard Fast
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

CHAPTER

8

SALLY went to the window and raised it as high as it would go. Then she spread her arms, gulped the cool April air, tasted and savored it, and admitted to herself that it was a delirious and wonderful thing to be alive.

Now she skipped around the room, making a little dance for herself, crossing one leg over the other, swaying from side to side, letting go in the exuberance of her spirits, weaving, spreading and then bending her arms, and going into a rough Sally Dillman imitation of the frug.

She went to the mirror and stood in front of it and made faces at herself and laughed at herself. Then she dropped into a chair and contemplated her hands with original interest. They were nice hands—not unusual or very ordinary—strong, wide, and long-fingered. She bent finger after finger, watching each motion curiously and looking with pleasure upon the movement of the muscles, the cleverness of the joints, the simple fact of the miracle of life, life in her and a part of herself. She was alive, she was going to live, and suddenly she had a strong man in whom she could put her trust.

Specifically, as a woman does, she thought about Gonzalez and she tried to imagine what the social and home life of a Puerto Rican policeman in New York would be like. He was thirty-three years old; her mother had once said to her that when a man gets to be thirty-three years old, he is a problem in marriage at best and a tragedy at worst.

“But what on earth,” she asked herself aloud, “can make you think of marrying the man? It’s out of the question. It’s absolutely the last thing in the world that should even occur to you.”

Yet her thoughts dwelled on this, and as much as she tried to shake loose from the subject of Gonzalez, again and again the thoughts returned to the policeman. She had always liked dark men, tall men with big bones. Her father had been built like that—wide-shouldered and large-boned; and the memory of her father and of her mother made her a little sad and led her into other memories of Timmerville, of her life as a little girl, of growing up. She remembered her fears as the first day to teach school approached. Her fears, her embarrassments, and finally her triumph. The day passed and she conquered, and she was a teacher.

Remembering all this she cried just a little. Her father and mother, all the nostalgic memories, all the remembrance of pain and happiness—yet these were easy tears and she was able to dry them and be rid of them.

Now she desired a cigarette very much, and she got up and walked over to the sideboard where she had left her purse. The purse contained a lighter and a cigarette case of tooled Morocco. She smiled slightly as she remembered the boy in Timmerville who had given her the case. She had not yet started to smoke, but his was a great anticipatory love.

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