Free Beyond Deserving by Sandra Scofield Page B

Chinese soup with chicken feet, roots, berries and wild greens gathered while camping. Whenever she has spent time alone, she hasn’t known what she wanted. Sometimes when Fish was gone, she ate nothing except a meal once a day where she worked.
    Her lover is an agricultural geneticist. He has developed an orange baby cauliflower. A crop is growing right now, hydroponically, at the agricultural experimental station. A few years ago he helped develop a delicate, blush-red pear. These pears are grown here, in this valley, but they must be further modified, for a hardier fruit, to withstand shipping. Since she learned about this exotic pear, Katie has looked forward with increasing longing to the late summer harvest, thinking of it at odd, inappropriate moments, such as during lovemaking, or as she attaches braided trim to an officer’s jacket for the Chekhov production. She prefers thoughts of the pear to thoughts of her lover. Meanwhile, Jeff’s attention has turned to grapes. He praises the conditions in the region, saying they are just right for producing varietals as good as in the Napa and Sonoma areas. Small wineries have sprung up all over. A Frenchman has even gone into partnership with a retired movie special-effects man to make a local brandy. Jeff says vintners are interesting people. He doesn’t comment on wine drinkers.
    It occurs to Katie that Jeff may see her as yet another hybrid, perhaps a wild fruit brought into the station for domestication. He professes delight in her somewhat out-of-date personal style (the long, straight hair, usually in braids or a ponytail; her “clear-washed”—his phrase—makeupless face, her disdain for hose, bra, slip, jewelry). At the same time, he brings her gifts obviously chosen to improve the appearance he claims charm him. He gives her lacquered hairclips and a straight linen skirt, a pale gray charmeuse slip, a fine gold chain, and perfume. He asks her about prospects for training in costuming, as if he cannot perceive her contentment as a seamstress-lackey who presses seams, sews velcro in garments for quick strips, stitches decorative trims, and the like. She does not try to tell him how like a resigned stepchild she is, working among women who have college degrees in theatre, or certificates of design and garment construction, portfolios of fiber art. Even the few other local women who were hired purely as seamstresses have vastly more experience than she, and keen ambition. They buy their own copies of books like Flat Patternmaking , and An Encyclopedia of World Costumes , books that make Katie’s eyes tear from the strain of reading them. She lets Jeff make what he wants of her modest position. She doesn’t blame him; everyone assumes something extraordinary about people who work in the theatre, even if their jobs involve mailing brochures and selling tickets.
    Though Katie only mildly wonders about Jeff’s affection for her (whatever he says, she believes it is sexual), she is increasingly bewildered by her growing attachment to him, not so much emotionally as practically. He has begun to direct more and more aspects of her life. He takes for granted their coupleship, when she is still married to another man. She knows she has let this happen, that his behavior has intensified since Fish returned and she continued to maintain her own place to live. When she did not find a way to resume residence with her husband, she let Jeff assume a kind of authority over her, without ever deciding to do so, and lately it has begun to vex her. She especially minds the way he has begun to ask her questions about her life: whether Fish ever hit her, if she ever wanted children (he doesn’t know about Rhea). He asks her questions like, “What worries you most in life?” She replies, “Earthquakes and spiders,” trying not to smirk. In turn, he tells her about himself. He tells her how he used to be terrified of water, how hard