Round Robin Read Online Free PDF

conversation, not even Sarah. With him she had to feign perpetual cheerfulness or lose his interest. Once when she needed to talk about a frustrating argument with her mother, she watched as his face went blank and he began to look over her shoulder for someone more pleasant to talk to. That was when Sarah understood that Dave kept her around not because he loved her—although perhaps he thought he did—but because she worked so hard to amuse him. She had learned early in their relationship that there were plenty of other women on campus who would pretend anything, hide anything, if it meant having his warm smile directed at them. But Sarah was tired of acting, of being onstage every moment they were together. She wanted someone who could love the real Sarah, with all her bad moods and faults.
    After knowing Matt only a short while, she realized she had found that someone in him. He was kind and sensible, and though he didn’t have Dave’s charisma, he was handsome in a strong, unpolished kind of way, and he made Sarah feel valued. The first time they kissed, she learned that what she thought was love with Dave had not been love at all, or even a close approximation. Infatuation, yes; admiration, definitely. But not until Matt came into her life did Sarah truly know what it meant to love someone and be loved in return.
    It would have been pointless to explain this to her mother. She was convinced that Sarah had traded in a pre-med student from a good family for a man whose ambition in life was to mow lawns and prune bushes. Even after she met him, Carol never saw Matt’s solid core of strength and kindness, and never sensed how much he truly cared for Sarah. Those qualities made Matt worth two of Dave, with his roving eye and his refusal to plan anything more than a week in advance. Sarah saw this, but Carol couldn’t, or refused to.
    Carol evidently never gave up hoping that Sarah would change her mind, not even when Sarah told her she and Matt were getting married. Then Carol grew frantic. She warned Sarah that she would never be happy if she settled for a man like Matt. She begged Sarah to wait, to date other men, if only to be certain that she wasn’t making a hasty decision.She offered Sarah a check—enough for a more lavish wedding than Sarah could afford or even wanted—if only Sarah would cancel the ceremony.
    Sarah managed to hold her fury in check long enough to point out that Carol herself had chosen a man much like Matt. “Did you settle for Dad?” Sarah demanded. “Would you have let your parents buy your affection?”
    â€œI didn’t have your choices,” Carol said.
    â€œI’ve made my choice,” Sarah said, and as far as she was concerned the matter was settled. But Carol wasn’t willing to give up, and her appeals continued throughout the engagement.
    Sarah had torn up and discarded the letters long ago, but she could still see them in her mind, page after page of her mother’s small, neat handwriting on the Susquehanna Presbyterian Hospital letterhead she’d probably stolen from the receptionist’s desk. “Marriage will change your life, and not for the better,” Carol had written. “Twenty-three is too young. You should have a life of your own first. You could go anywhere, do anything, and you ought to do it now, while you’re young. If you marry that gardener, you’ll be stuck in some little town forever, and everything you ever wanted for yourself will be swallowed up in what you do for him.” Marriage was expensive, she argued in letter after letter. Sarah could forget about the little luxuries that made life bearable. If she took a job in an exciting city, she would come into contact with all sorts of eligible men, lawyers and doctors rather than overgrown boys who liked to dig around in the dirt. After a few years, while she was still young enough to look pretty in a wedding gown and bear children,