The Church Fair Confession

I want to tell you about the day I met Suzanne Dunn, because it started with a lemon bar.

I'm Astrid Garcia, I'm thirty-five, and I work at the Halverson feed warehouse out on Route 9. Two years ago I lost my husband, Stan, to the kind of illness that eats a person slow. I've been on my own ever since, living in the little apartment over the feed store, which sounds lonelier than it is. Mostly.

It was the third Saturday in September, the county church fair, and I only went because my coworker Deb begged me to help her haul pie boxes. I was standing in front of the Bake & Blether tent, which is what our town calls the bake sale, because we're cute like that, when I saw her.

She was behind the folding table in a flour-dusted apron, brown hair pinned up with a pencil, laughing at something an old man said. And I don't know how else to put it except that my whole chest went hot. I hadn't felt that in two years. I actually stepped back and checked the sign like maybe I'd walked into the wrong tent.

"You're staring at my cinnamon rolls," she called out, and everyone around us laughed, and I felt my face go red all the way down my neck.

"I was not," I said, walking up anyway. "I was staring at the lemon bars. The rolls were a distant second."

"Well, that's honest." She stuck out a floury hand. "Suzanne. I own the bakery stall at the Saturday market, so if you're local, we've probably crossed paths and I forgot your face, which I apologize for in advance."

"Astrid. I work at the warehouse, so you've probably never seen me, I'm indoors lifting boxes all day."

"A woman of upper body strength. I respect that." She handed me a lemon bar without asking, which I liked. "Tell me if that's a distant second."

It was not. It was the best thing I'd eaten since before Stan got sick, and I told her so, and she looked pleased in a way that made my stomach do a small flip. Deb showed up, we hauled pie boxes, and I thought that was that.

But around two, when the fair got quiet and the hay smell mixed with all the sugar, I came back and bought two more lemon bars, and she said, "Sit, my feet are killing me, nobody's buying anything till the raffle."

So I sat. We had bad fair coffee out of paper cups under the tent, and somewhere in the second cup we got to talking about real things, the way you sometimes do with a stranger when the afternoon is long.

"You married?" she asked, casual, eyes on the tent flap.

"Widowed. Two years ago this month, actually." I stirred my coffee even though there was nothing in it. "His name was Stan. He was sick a long time."

Her hand came over and rested on mine, just for a second. "I'm sorry. Mine too. Brennan, two years ago. Tractor accident, it was fast, which I've decided is a mercy but some days I'm not sure I believe that."

"No," I said. "Some days fast is worse. You don't get to say goodbye."

"Exactly, thank you." She laughed a little, wet-eyed. "Look at us, two widows at a church fair drinking terrible coffee. We should get a commemorative plate."

"I'd buy that plate."

"What do you miss?" she asked, and it was such a plain question it caught me off guard. "Everyone asks how I'm doing, nobody asks what I miss."

I thought about it. "Being looked at. Honestly. He used to watch me fold laundry and I'd tell him to stop being weird, and now I'd give anything for someone to watch me fold laundry." I laughed, embarrassed. "That's a dumb answer."

"That's the best answer." She looked at her cup. "I miss being touched. Not even, I mean, yes, that, but also just. A hand on my back when I'm reaching for a top shelf. Somebody's elbow in my ribs when a joke lands. I've been alone in a house with a rooster for two years and the rooster is not a conversationalist."

"What's his name?"

"Duke. He's a jerk. But he's my jerk." She smiled, then it faded into something more careful. "Can I say something and you not think I'm strange?"

"Those are my favorite kinds of somethings."

She leaned in, close enough I could smell sugar and yeast on her, and lowered her voice like the tent had ears. "There's something I've always wanted to try. In bed, I mean. Something intimate. And I never found the courage to ask for it, not with Brennan, not with anyone, and now I think, God, I'm thirty-eight, how much longer am I going to not ask for things?"

My heart was hammering so hard I was sure she could hear it over the fair noise. "What is it?" I asked, and my voice came out lower than I meant.

She looked at me for a moment, checking, the way you check before you hand somebody something breakable.

"It's anal," she said, plain as the weather. "I've wanted it for years and I've never once told a living soul, and I don't know why I'm telling you except that you have kind eyes and you admitted the lemon bar was better than the rolls, so clearly you're an honest woman."

I laughed, mostly from nerves, and then I took a breath and told her the truth, which was that Stan and I had talked about it once, late one night, and never gotten around to it, and then there wasn't any around to get.

"So neither of us has," I said. "We'd be figuring it out together. Badly, probably."

"Badly at first is my favorite way to do anything new," she said. "That's how you know it's new."

* * *

She closed her stall early because, and I quote, "the raffle crowd is a lost cause, they're all waiting for the quilt." I drove ahead in my little hatchback and she followed in her truck, a blue Ford with a dent in the tailgate and Duke's feed sacks in the bed, and when I pulled up in front of the feed store she leaned out the window and said, "This is you?"

"This is me. Above the feed store. It's not much but nobody in Stillwater knows which window is mine, which has its value."

"Upstairs, then. I'll bring the lemon bars."

Upstairs, she set the box on my counter and looked around at my small, clean apartment, the one couch, the stack of library books, and she didn't say anything kind or fake about it, which I appreciated.

"Okay," she said, turning to me. "Before anything happens, I want to say it plain, because I've spent twenty years not saying things plain. I'm asking. I would like to come to your bed tonight, and I would like us to try the thing we talked about, slowly, with lots of checking in. And if you'd rather just eat lemon bars and talk, that's a good night too."

I set my cup down. "Suzanne. I've been wanted exactly nowhere for two years. Yes. Please. All of it."

"Good." She stepped in and took my face in both hands. "Can I kiss you now? I've been thinking about it since the rolls comment."

"You've been thinking about it for three hours?"

"Since the second you walked up, yes, don't tell anyone."

I said yes, and she kissed me, soft at first, then her fingers slid into my hair and I made a noise against her mouth that I hadn't made in so long I'd almost forgotten my own voice could do it.

"Bed's that way," I managed, pointing.

"Lead on, warehouse woman," she said, and grabbed the lemon bar box on the way, which is how I learned she plans ahead for everything.

We ate lemon bars on the bed, sitting cross-legged facing each other like it was a picnic, and I think we both needed the silly pause before the serious part. I had crumbs on my shirt. She had crumbs on her apron. She took the apron off finally and folded it over my desk chair, careful, the way she probably folded everything.

"Okay," she said. "Slow, right? We said slow."

"We said slow."

"And checking in. If anything feels wrong, you say so, and I stop, no offense taken. Same for me."

"Same for me," I said, and it settled something in my chest, having it said out loud like that.

She pulled the pencil out of her hair and laid it on the nightstand, and her brown hair came down past her shoulders, and I just looked at her for a while. Thirty-eight years old and she blushed when I did it.

"Stop that," she said, laughing. "You're making me feel like a bride."

"You look better than a bride. Brides look nervous."

"I am nervous."

"Good," I said. "Me too. At least we match."

We undressed slow, like a conversation, each piece a small question. Her shirt, then mine. Her jeans, then mine, and I stepped out of them feeling ridiculous and thirty-five and oddly fine about it. She wore plain white cotton, no nonsense, and I told her so and she said, "I stand on my feet at a market stall for nine hours, lace can suffer."