SARAH TAYLOR'S APARTMENT
Paula
knocks quickly on the unfamiliar
door and then drops her hands as she waits for an answer. She glances to
her sides, up and down the corridor. She's only been here a handful of
times, she realizes, since Brent
and Sarah moved in here two years ago.
She is far less comfortable here than she is over at Tim
and Claire's --
or rather, Claire's -- apartment.
Maybe that's what Sarah was talking
about, she thinks with a frustrated sigh. She knocks on the door again,
her need to see her daughter suddenly even greater.
"Mom," Sarah says, sounding rather
surprised, when she finally does open the door. "What are you doing here?"
"Hi, dear," Paula smiles, though
her face feels a bit too wooden all of a sudden. "I, um, I picked up a
gift for Victoria earlier in the week and I've been meaning to drop it
off."
Sarah glances down and for the first
time sees the pink gift bag in her mother's hand. "Oh, thanks. I'll grab
her so she can dig right in."
Paula stands in the doorway as Sarah
heads back to the bedroom to grab Victoria. She isn't sure if she should
move further into the apartment. After what happened during her last conversation
with Sarah ... There are some very heavy things hanging in the air, and
right now, it is rather overwhelming to Paula. How can she even begin to
deal with the accusations Sarah tossed out the other day?
"Hey, sweetie," Sarah is saying as
she carries Victoria into the room. "Grandma brought you something ..."
"Here you go, darling." Paula hands
Sarah the bag and kisses her granddaughter on the cheek. The little girl's
face lights up.
"Oh, wow! Look at this!" Sarah narrates
to Victoria. She removes the tissue paper from the gift bag and extracts
a stuffed puppy. "It's cute, huh?"
Almost immediately Victoria reaches
for the puppy and, with a giggle, holds it up in the air.
"I think it's a hit," Sarah says.
She looks up only briefly at Paula.
"I'm glad. I thought she'd like it."
Paula finds herself at a loss now; she had expected Sarah to come flying
out of the gates with her usual emotional bang. This calmer behavior is
even more unsettling. "Sarah--" she begins suddenly, feeling a sudden need
to cut to the chase.
"This is about the other day, isn't
it? What I said about you and Dad and Molly?"
Paula nods solemnly. "Yes. Hearing
what you had to say -- it hurt. Not just because it made me feel, well,
awful, but ... it broke my heart, too. Hearing you say things that I've
never been able to say, never even been able to think outright -- that
really pushed me to thinking."
She can see Sarah becoming more and
more receptive to what she is saying, as though she has been trapped inside
a giant block of ice and it now thawing around her, letting her touch the
outside world again.
"I don't want things to go on like
this," Paula continues. "I want to close this--this distance between us."
Sarah purses her lips. "I appreciate
that, Mom, I really do. But it's not possible now. Not while I'm still
living in Molly's shadow."
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