Page 44 of The Strawberry Field
“Hey,” she says.
“Morning.”
“I hope you don’t mind me coming over without—”
“I never mind, Sawyer. Come on out here and help me pull some weeds.”
She looks relieved, walking across the grass to join Hattie and me in a strawberry row.“There aren’t that many,” I say.“Just these that pop up right around the vines. The black paper keeps almost everything else from growing up, but I like to pull any I see just because I feel like they take energy away from the plant.”
“That makes sense,” she says.“Where should I start?”
“Anywhere you like,” I say.
She walks ahead of me, Hattie by her side, tail wagging hard. Sawyer rubs her head, once, twice, three times, and then drops onto her knees and begins pulling weeds from the base of a plant. We work like that for a while in silence.
I figure when she’s ready to tell me why she’s here, she’ll do so. And it’s not long before the questions come.
“How did you live through all of that, Jake?”
I consider my answer, wanting to be accurate.“It wasn’t easy,” I admit. “Not for a long time, actually. I got on board the pity party boat, drank myself into more hangovers than I care to admit and despaired of ever figuring out what I was going to do with my life. I started with getting a dog, Hattie, something I’d always wanted, but never felt like I had the time for before. That turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. She kind of let me see that I must not be such a bad person if she could have such a high opinion of me.”
Sawyer smiles at this, searches out another weed and gives it a hard yank.
“May I ask you something?” she says without looking at me, keeping her gaze on the task at hand.
“Sure,” I say.
“Was there any truth at all to the accusation?”
Coming from anyone else, I might take the question as an insult. But coming from Sawyer, that’s not it. There’s something in her voice that tells me she needs to know if I’m who she’s always thought I was, or if I might turn out to be just another one of life’s disappointments. I think about my answer, giving it the pause it deserves.
When I speak, my voice is low and even.“It’s true that I should have picked up on what was happening before I did. I knew she was stopping by my office on a regular basis, but she did have some difficulty with the class I was teaching, and she told me she wanted to make a good grade to prove to her parents she was taking school seriously. That went on for six weeks or so. Until one afternoon, when she came by the office after a quiz to see if I had graded hers yet. She kissed me, and I guess I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to say for a moment. But the look on my face must have told her what I was thinking, and she left the office before I could say anything.I decided to pretend it hadn’t happened, thinking that would save her the embarrassment of talking about it with me. But then, the next day, she started posting stuff on social media, telling her friends not to take any of my classes because I had tried to assault her in my office. Honestly, I thought it was a joke. I didn’t know whether to keep silent or attempt to address it. As you can guess, it didn’t go away. It took on a life of its own, students sharing her post, until it went viral, and the truth didn’t matter. I got an attorney that same day because I had a feeling that things were going to get worse. And, of course, they did. What I figured out was that it didn’t matter whether I was guilty or not. All that seems to matter these days is doubt. If there’s any doubt about your reputation or something you’ve been accused of, that’s enough to turn your life upside down.”
Sawyer is standing now, looking at me. I see the empathy in her eyes, feel it emanating from her like waves washing in from the ocean.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Jake,” she says.“It’s terrible. More than terrible.”
“It was. But I don’t question it now. I guess I’ve come to believe that things happen to us for a reason. And if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here.” I consider my next words, wonder if I will come to regret them, but say them anyway.“If that hadn’t happened to me, I might never have seen you again.”
Surprise registers in her eyes, immediately followed by something I’m less inclined to interpret.
“I’d like to see life like that,” she says.“I’m having trouble doing that, though. Maybe that’s something I can learn from you.”
“How to make lemonade out of lemons?”
“I don’t know how you were able to do it.”
“I didn’t want to live my life marinating in bitterness over something I couldn’t change. I grew up watching my mom do just that, and at some point, it seemed like a terrible waste of life. I didn’t want to give someone else the power to do that to me. I always wondered why she couldn’t reject the label she thought my dad had put on her, acknowledge it as his shortcoming and not hers.”
“It’s not easy to raise children alone,” Sawyer says.“Not now. And not then, either.”
“No, it isn’t,” I acknowledge.“And I always admired my mother for having the courage to make the decision she did. She certainly could have made another one. But I always felt like she could see herself through the lens of his rejection and never opened herself up to letting someone else give her another interpretation.”
“That’s painful,” Sawyer says.
“Yeah, it is,” I agree.
“Does your mom still live here?” Sawyer asks.
