Sympathy Between Humans

“No,” I said, “no, I’m not. Look…” I twisted the phone cord around my thumb. “I’m just trying to have a life. To make a life, that’s all.”

In the silence that followed I could almost hear him think that it wasn’t much of a life, an industrial job and a rented room, but he couldn’t say any more. I was 19, an adult.

“What about Christmas?” he asked. “Wouldn’t you like to come home then?”

New Mexico at Christmastime. Light glowing from the farolitos- sand-weighted brown paper bags with candles in them- and the sopaipillas and rich mole sauce of a traditional Noche Buena feast on Christmas Eve…

“Is Buddy coming home at Christmas, too?” I asked.

“Yes,” my father said. “He’s got a week of leave.”

I put another twist in the phone cord. “I can’t come,” I said.

“Why not? Surely you’re not working?”

“The mine runs 365 days a year,” I said. “It costs too much for them to shut the equipment down and then start it back up. And I was the most recent person hired. It’s too early for me to ask for Christmas off.”

I wanted him to believe it, but he wasn’t stupid. “I haven’t had you and your brother under the same roof for years,” my father said. “Why is that, Sadie?” The bafflement in his voice seemed, for all the world, to be genuine.

My thumb was turning red from having the phone cord wrapped so tightly around it. You know why. I tried to tell you, and you wouldn’t listen.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t come.”

January came, and with it the coldest weather of all. Night came so early that I walked home from work in darkness, and it was too cold and icy to go out after di

I should have realized something was wrong with my life when I strayed into the wrong section of the library, found a paperback of Othello, and immediately wanted to check it out.

After leaving school, I’d believed I’d never torture myself with anything an English teacher would approve of ever again. But then, standing amid the faint attic scent and educational posters of the public library, I felt a thrill of pleasure and nostalgia, remembering Othello as being the only Shakespeare I’d really liked. Something about the world Othello, Iago, and Cassio lived in, that world of martial duty and sometimes perverted honor, had spoken to me. At home on those coldest of nights, I read and reread Othello. The library had to send two overdue notices before I returned it.

If this were a movie, Othello would have changed my life. I would have moved on to other Shakespeare plays, loved them too, and finally enrolled in community college. But it didn’t work out that way. After Othello, I went back to the pulp novels I’d preferred before.

And then, in the spring, I found something else I liked to do.

In the maintenance shop, I worked with an Armenian-American girl, thick-waisted, dark-haired, pleasant-looking, easy to talk to. Her name was Silva, and she seemed to live for one thing: the dance at the VFW hall every Saturday night.

“You should come,” Silva said more than once, but I’d been noncommittal. Dances at the VFW hall sounded too much like bingo or pie suppers at a church to me, but one March night, I decided there was no harm in checking it out.

At nine-thirty, the scene at the VFW hall was surprisingly animated; people spilled out onto the steps along with light and music from inside. The high spirits of the crowd surprised me, but it didn’t take long to learn the secret.

Technically, these dances were dry, meaning no alcohol was served. But, as is painfully typical of small-town life, the majority of the young people inside the hall were in some stage of intoxication. Bottles were passed around in the shadows of the parking lot, and if you weren’t lucky enough to know someone who’d brought a bottle, there was Brent, a local entrepreneur who parked his Buick LeSabre near the VFW hall and sold liquor from the trunk. Ill at ease, and feeling like an outsider, I quickly sought him out.

Alcohol hadn’t been a part of my life since a few girls’ nights out at UNLV. The single shot of whiskey hit me hard. Pleasurably hard. Not long after, a young man I didn’t know asked me to dance, and I said yes. Silva, flushed with exertion and pleasure, brushed by and winked at me. I felt the world begi

That week I’d gotten my first pay adjustment, the one that marked the end of my initial six-month period at the mine. I felt newly rich, and in my current state of elation, I realized something: if making the world recede a little was pleasant, there was no reason not to make it recede even more. A lot more.

“Morning, Sarah. You want a ride?”

A bright Monday morning in early May. Ke

Ke

“Thanks,” I said, scrambling in. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work already?” Ke

“I told ’em I’d be late. Took Lorna to the doctor.”

“She’s not sick, I hope?” I said.

“Oh no. The ear doctor. She’s getting a hearing aid,” Ke

I laughed. “That’ll never happen.” I set my bag between my feet. “Hey, I’ve started saving up for a car.”

“You told me something like that,” Ke

“Really?” I said, puzzled. “When?”

We bounced over the entry to the employee lot, the bad shock absorbers on Ke

He pulled the automatic-transmission lever over to park and killed the ignition, then turned to me. “You don’t remember being in my truck this weekend, do you?” he said.

I opened my mouth and closed it again. Memory flashed, but only dimly. I’d been dancing Saturday night, as usual. I’d gotten a ride home from friends. Hadn’t I?

“That’s when you told me about wanting to buy a car. I didn’t know if you were serious. You were saying a lot of things. You were drunk.”

I looked around the cab. “I didn’t throw up in here, did I?” It was the only reason I could imagine for the disapproval in Ke

“No,” he said. “But you were staggering when I saw you walking. You were drunk out of your head.”