Fiction - Rain or Shine

It is the address that catches my eye. 4 Old Orchard Drive. It's an address that I'm not supposed to know about, one that I discovered in the phone book and have driven by countless times anyway, in secret, just out of curiosity. I never expected it to stare back at me from a little classified ad in my Saturday newspaper, promising bargains galore for those who would stop by between nine and three. No early birds, please, the ad reads. Rain or Shine.

I leave my husband in the backyard, trying to fix an old weed whacker, and slip my rusted Impala out of the garage and onto our noisy, dense little street. I often spend Saturdays this way, going saling, driving around to the myriad garage sales that dot the summer calendar. But I don't want Marshall to know about this particular sale. I've kept the newspaper from him all morning, convinced that out of thirty-two pages of hardware sale ads and stories about municipal taxes going up, his eye would manage to find the three little lines of black text that I don't want him to see. Even as I drive I keep it next to me on the upholstered passenger seat where I can see the bright red circle I've drawn around the ad, in case that address changes when I'm looking and I have to turn back, unsatisfied.

Old Orchard is an overgrown and rutted lane way off the main road that once led to the largest apple orchard in the county. Now it's the only way into town for the handful of houses that held on stubbornly after the farm's demise. My car jerks and bounces over the uneven road, and throws up a cloud of dust and pebbles that would have announced my arrival for miles if anyone had been thinking to look. But no one ever looks, and certainly won't today amidst the collection of cars that have congregated in front of a small cozy brick bungalow set back from the road. Tables of brightly colored junk fill the driveway and spill over onto the front lawn, a lawn that is a jumble of wildflowers and uneven patches of grass but which nonetheless looks happy and inviting, like the country garden of a old English estate. Across the garage a large homemade sign trumpets "Moving Sale!" in exuberant red letters, just below the large brass number 4 that hangs, slightly lopsided, above the door.

I pull over to the side of the road and kill the engine, relieved to see a dozen or so other salers examining the wares and milling about as only those with an excess of leisure time and an interest in other people's castoffs will do. I search their faces, hoping that maybe I can see her from the car. But I recognize no one. She has to be here, somewhere. I find a mint antacid in the glovebox, and pop it into my mouth before creaking open the heavy car door and making my way across the dirt road to the driveway.

Staked into the ground is a wooden sign hinged on a wrought iron rod, the kind of sign you can buy at home shows where they'll burn your names into it for eighty-nine cents a letter. The Blakes, the sign reads, and underneath, a curving line of black letters: Sam and Dave. Like that sixties duo, I think to myself, and wonder if anyone's pointed that out to them. I'm sure the neighbours think Sam is short for Samantha. What odd pride I feel in knowing that I know different.

Her name is Samedi. French for Saturday, the day she was born, a name that brought with it a lifetime of telling people "No, it isn't Sandy, or " same – dee" , or "sa – medd – ee". It's sam-dee. It's French." Samedi, an exotic whim of a name from a hippie mother, a name that she always shortened to Sam because it was just so much easier. A name that someone like me, a staid and unromantic Meredith, named for a crusty but wealthy old grandmother, could wrap her tongue around and taste. Samedi. A person I had never met, and would have known nothing about, had she not been the first woman to call herself my husband's wife.

I know her from pictures Marshall still keeps, wedding photos mostly but the odd vacation slides as well that turn up, unexpectedly, in the middle of our marriage. He used to take nude pictures of her too, provocative, playful things that showed off her lean, lithe body and his absolute adoration of it. I find these often, in the oddest places, like in between the pages of a cookbook or pinned to the wall beneath the fuses. He explained it once, that after she left him he wanted to feel like she was still there, and so would put her picture in places he'd be sure to forget so that she seemed all the more real when he came across them again. He has since filed most of them away in his private filing cabinet, along with videocassettes that I don't ask about and audio tapes of her singing to him. Whenever another nude photo of her shows up in the sinus medicine box or the sunvisor of his car, he simply tucks them away quietly and says nothing about it, but he might as well keep them out. I have long since memorized every line of Samedi's graceful body, and would recognize her anywhere.

I have seen her countless times, actually. I have seen her in every tall, slender willow of a woman who passes me on the street, in every swirl of long, silky brown hair, in every tanned face with a dusting of freckles across the nose, in every woman who boards my morning bus to work and crosses her long legs casually as she reads a book or absently rubs the back of her long, thin neck. Samedi has never seen me, has never been haunted by my apparition on her morning ride to work, since she knows nothing about me or the life her former husband has pursued in her absence. She has spoken to Marshall only once since their divorce and that was only to ask if he had taken her camping stove.

I walk up the driveway, pausing at a table covered in paperback thrillers and astrology guides for 1998 – Virgo, which must be Dave's since she's a Leo– and scan the other tables. There is happiness in this clutter, the junk of contented people who buy things that please them, on a whim, for their colour or their lighthearted fun. There are inflatable pool things, misshapen straw sunhats with the word Mazatlan stitched in the brim, shot glasses and record albums by Tony Orlando and Dawn. A woman reaches past me for a pair of beer steins, turns them over in the sunlight so that the rays bounce off them and hurt my eyes. I step away from her, irritated at her familiarity with Samedi's things, and slip my sunglasses on against the glare.

I turn from the tables and begin to stroll, casually, towards the house. Suddenly salers in front of me diverge to examine tables on opposite sides of the driveway and I see her, sitting comfortably in a frayed lawn chair, the plastic strips of green and white curling up like fingers around her hips. It's her, it's Samedi. I feel the breath leave my lungs.

I look down and away, absorb myself in examining a chipped china cup. But when I think it's safe I peer over the top of my sunglasses to take her in, the real her, animated, close by, clothed. She's wearing sleek black sunglasses, too, but they look good on her. She has the kind of thin, elegant face that suits sunglasses. Her chestnut hair is parted in the middle so that it all falls smoothly to one side and then the other as she tilts her head and reaches for the glass of iced tea at her feet. As if she knows I'm watching, as if she knows that my tight, dry, corkscrew curls will never tumble like that, she reaches up and runs her long fingers through that long sheet of luxury to make it fall better. Marshall has always said she falls out of bed looking like a haloed goddess, and I believe him.

The sun is kind to her; she does not seem at all bothered by the oppressive July heat but rather seems to thrive in it, as though she were born to bask. Her smooth, tanned skin is unblemished and especially golden across the taut, lean muscles of her legs, perfectly defined beneath the thin cotton of her yellow shorts. She sips her iced tea as more of an afterthought than a genuine need, and crosses her legs casually as she settles back in her chair.

At the house, a screen door slams shut and a tall, lanky blonde man emerges with a bowl of potato chips in one hand and a cold Mexican beer in the other. This is her Dave then, the man she met at a party Marshall was too tired to go to, a party that has lived on in his memory like a sliver lodged beneath the skin. This is the man who made her laugh, who shared her penchant for lazy afternoons in hammocks, her taste in seventies music and her faith in astrology. This is the tall, broad, native Californian whose sunny face and golden hair suits her so much better than Marshall's coppery beard and pot belly. As he strides across their lawn towards her she looks up at him with a brilliant smile, and the kind of admiration that can hardly believe it has finally found something to admire.

He whispers something in her ear as he squats beside her. She bends her head toward him intimately and smiles as she nods. In a moment he is up again, long legs striding away and across the lawn and her eyes follow him until he disappears into the house. She hugs herself, rubs the skin of her upper arms absently, lets her look linger on the doorway as if expecting him to reappear. Then she turns her gaze back to the people cluttering her driveway, picking over the unwanted remnants of a life she is about to leave, and comes dangerously close to meeting my eye. I cross to another set of tables quickly, and hide among three ladies in floral print dresses who are debating the value of a white wicker stand.

If anything could distract from Samedi it is this table. In one corner sits a cake topper of a bride and groom with the flesh-coloured plaster chipped away from the groom's head. A shiver of recognition rattles through me – the groom's head was chipped when the caterer knocked it off during the reception, I know about this. Marshall joked at the time that it was a bad omen, the best man mentioned it in his speech. I reach for the figurine and run my thumb lightly over the chipped face. It feels solid and heavy, not like the plastic ones they use now.

There's more. A silver plated frame with wedding bells in the bottom corner, empty now, the black rectangle in the center staring out blankly. Beside it, a little satin pillow with a length of white ribbon stitched to the middle – the pillow Marshall's three year old nephew tottered down the aisle with, saved from disaster by the fact that the ribbon anchored the rings so well. I pick up the pillow and the frame, and turn them over to find the price. Two dollars each. I tuck them under my arm. On the driveway beneath me is a brightly coloured basket with a broken handle, but it holds my treasures nicely. I fill it up carefully, making sure not to chip the groom's face any further.

Beside the basket is an old box filled with yellowed hardcovers, musty from years of storage and as I look through the titles I note textbooks and first aid guides and novels no one ever read. Near the front of the pile is a newer book, though, a softcover of an unusual shape, like a book of cartoons. I pick it up and see that it is a book of cartoons, entitled "Newlywed Honeymoon Guide." I flip open the cover and see my mother-in-law's handwriting, the words "To Sam and Marshall, may your honeymoon last a lifetime. Love always, Judy and Ken." The spine is cracked – it has been read, probably together, bent heads laughing, kisses punctuating each page of jokes. This too goes in my basket.

Samedi gets up from her chair as one of the floral printed ladies questions her about the wicker stand. She laughs lightly, shares a joke with the woman, and fishes into a fanny pack around her waist for change. As she bends I can see the curve of her breast through the widened neck of her white eyelet top, and know that if she bent forward only slightly more her tobacco-coloured nipples would peak out from beneath the lace cup of her bra. I know this because Marshall has a Polaroid of her in an almost identical pose, topless, laughing at the camera or him or both. She looks even better now than she did in those pictures, even though ten years older and slightly more rounded than in her lean and angular twenties. It suddenly occurs to me there might be children, hers and Dave's, children who came after the lawn sign was made. Children that were never welcome in Marshall's realm but who would somehow fit in perfectly with Sam and her Dave.

Opposite me a thick yellow rope is suspended between the gnarled branches of a cherry tree and the corner of the garage. From it hangs shirts and blouses and jeans with faded knees. I move over there casually to see if baby clothes are included in the mix, little jumpers or sleepers that might have outlived their usefulness. A woman blocks my way as she efficiently slides the hangers along the rope and examines each item before passing to the next. I don't see any baby clothes, only pants too long for me to wear and blouses too small for me to get into. But there, at the end of the women's clothes, a long white gown brushes the ground, it's opalescent sequins winking at me in the sun.

It is typical of the mid-eighties, with puffed up sleeves and little pearls, and a v-scooped headband behind which a jumble of white netting sits weightless as a cloud. It looks so much better on, at least according to the pictures I've seen. I hold it up with two fingers, and marvel at the width of the fabric before me. It is so small, I would never get one leg into this. But I feel the fabric anyway, remembering Marshall's complaints about how much this dress had cost them. I don't know how on earth I'll get this home without him seeing, maybe if I hid it in the trunk until he went to work...

"Only worn once."

I start, and look up. Samedi is standing in front of me, smiling.

I blink at her, stumble over my words. "Excuse me?"

"The dress, only worn once." She smiles. Then, ruefully: "Sorry, bad joke."

"Oh." I laugh, a preternatural laugh that doesn't sound right. The basket tumbles out of my hand and lands in a flower bed. I scoop it out of the flowers delicately, and uselessly restore to the dirt a moonflower that has been accidentally decapitated.

"Are you getting married?" Samedi asks pleasantly, unalarmed by the threat to her flowerbed.

"Sorry?" I ask, straightening up and brushing hair out of my eyes.

Samedi points to the wedding paraphernalia in my basket, and the dress. "Are you planning a wedding?'

"Yes...well, yes." I say. I can't look away from her deep blue eyes, they are perhaps the sharpest blue I have ever seen. "Soon."

"Well, congratulations." She says genuinely. "I love weddings."

I let my left hand drop down to my side so that she doesn't see my ring. It isn't much of a ring, not like the one that glitters from her finger. But my ring suits my wedding – not a big fancy wedding that would have warranted a dress like this or a big shining ring, not a wedding planned for a year or requested by a man on his knee with a little red velvet box. A wedding fought for, cried over, sought after and ultimately delivered as the answer to an ultimatum. A wedding arrived at via a cheap flight to Las Vegas, a midnight flight filled with gamblers and ladies with gold lamé handbags. A three a.m. wedding at the Chapel of the Bells, followed by a taco afterwards and flight back home. A second wedding completely lacking in the wide-eyed wonder of the first.

"It's a beautiful dress." I say. "How much do you want for it?"

She turns her head to look at the dress. "Oh, I don't know. How about twenty bucks?"

"Twenty dollars?" I repeat, knowing by how many hundreds she has come down in price. "That doesn't seem right."

But she misunderstands. "Tell you what, I'll throw in all the stuff in the basket, too." She peers in at the groom's chipped face staring back at her. "And the basket as well."

She waits for me, smiling as though finding everything delightful today. I have never imagined her to be this pretty up close, this effortlessly beautiful. Her smile is genuine, sunny, radiating from somewhere inside her. I can picture Marshall kissing those parted lips, just as I have pictured his mouth all over her tanned skin. I know why he took so many photos of her, why he keeps them still. She is the unattainable that he possessed for a brief time, or thought he possessed, a sylph that breezed into his life and convinced him he deserved her before drifting out again to leave him unfit for anyone else. I know why he says her name sometimes at night when he sleeps, and why he calls me Sam sometimes absently and then catches himself with a sad and sheepish look. I would call out her name too, if this much beauty had been mine and then wasn't.
She looks as though she thinks she's lost the sale. I reach into my purse quickly and take out my chequebook.

"I'll take it." I say. "The dress, and this other stuff. I'll give you fifty for everything. But I don't have that much cash...is a cheque alright?"

"Fifty, no don't be silly." She waves away the idea with a graceful hand. "Twenty's fine. And a cheque will be fine."

I scribble out the amount and the date with a shaking hand. "Who…who should I make it out to?"

"Sam Blake." She replies. "Spelled just like it sounds."

I write her name on the pay line, somehow different than the hundreds of other times I've written out her name while on hold or talking to friends. I have to be careful not to write out Samedi, then she'd know for sure. I see my own name in the top left, right below Marshall's, and worry that she'll find me out the minute I hand it over. I sign it quickly and hand it to her, hoping she'll only see the faded sailboats in the background and won't peer too closely at the names Meredith and Marshall Krajewski.

"So doesn't your husband mind you parting with all your wedding stuff?" I ask as I put the chequebook away.

Samedi tucks the cheque into the pocket of her blouse and looks over her shoulder as Dave reemerges from the house with a cooler full of colas. Her long brown hair falls smoothly in one long cascade as she does, and I have to hold myself back from reaching out to touch it. It is so beautiful, the pictures hardly do it justice.

"Oh, no, this stuff isn't from our wedding." She says, smiling at Dave as he walks around handing out cold drinks to the salers. She turns back to me. "This stuff is from another lifetime. My starter marriage, as my mother calls it. No kids, no property, no more than three years."

Starter marriage. Marshall does not see it that way. "But still...it must hold some memories for you."

Samedi's smile fades a little. There seems to be an expression in her eye as she glances down at the dress, as though I have found the pinpoint of darkness, the only one ever allowed into her existence. But then the light returns to her eyes, and she shrugs. "No, not really. I forget I was ever with anyone before Dave, most of the time. He's just light years away from my first husband, it's almost like I was never married before."

"Really? You can just...forget?"

She smiles sagely. "Well, you never forget. But you never forget root canal either." She reaches up to remove the dress from the rope, and hands it over to me gently. "I hope you get better use out of this than I did."

Her hand brushes mine as she places the dress in my arms. Her skin is smooth, so foreign to me, so startlingly real beneath my touch. I am unaccustomed to what thin feels like, it hardly seems real that a person's body can be so real and substantial and yet so ultra light and feminine at the same time. My fingers want to tighten around her wrist . As my hand lingers just that much longer than they should against her arm a look of mild surprise brightens her eyes.

"Sam…"I say, and grasp her fingers in my own beneath the dress. I feel like I'm going to laugh and cry at the same time. "Sam, I wanted to tell you..."

I hear the car with the rusted muffler pull up at the end of the driveway, know it by the rumbling thunder that follows it wherever it goes. I don't have to look, I know by the sounds of George Thorogood blaring from within, and by the creaking of the dented door that it is Marshall. I hear the music snap off quickly, I hear his worn cowboy boots hit the driveway, I hear the silence of his confusion a few seconds before his voice calls out uncertainly.

"Baby?" he calls out.

I can picture the look on his face, can imagine him frozen in the door of the car, half way out, his arm resting on the roof. I can imagine the bewilderment on his face.

"Baby?" he says again.

And this time, both Samedi and I turn to look.

Samedi. A person I had never met, and would have known nothing about, had she not been the first woman to call herself my husband's wife.