A Reckoning (6 page)

“Does she?”

“At first she was very angry. She wouldn’t speak to me. I knew that meant she was very angry.”

“I know,” Laura said almost inaudibly.

“Of course it’s terribly hard for you to see your mother like this.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Laura said absent-mindedly, as though she were speaking of someone else. The pinned-down butterfly felt completely detached.

Mercifully, a nurse came in with two cups of coffee on a tray and interrupted this excruciating conversation for a moment. After she had left and Laura had taken a sip of the lukewarm coffee (Is this how it tastes on the fourth floor? she wondered. Her mother liked coffee hot and strong.), Cousin Hope said, “You are not feeling well, are you, Laura? Is anything the matter?”

Startled back into full consciousness, Laura assured Hope that she was suffering from a low-grade virus and felt rather tired. Where to go from there? Take the plunge and talk about Sybille? It might be her last chance, and Hope deserved a little better than what Laura had been able to manage so far.

“I wish we could talk a little about Mamma. I sometimes feel I never knew her really. You, perhaps, did.”

“I did,” Cousin Hope’s eyes shone. “I think I knew Sybille very well.”

“Warts and all?” Laura smiled for the first time.

“No warts, dear Laura!” Hope visibly blushed. “What an idea! She was simply as far as I know a glorious woman, beautiful, brilliant,
everything!
She was so brave, you know—when you were ill—heroic I always thought, to shut herself up like that in that tiny village for two years, taking care of you.” Hope, totally unaware of Laura’s reaction, leaned forward confidentially. “I’ll tell you something. It’s really nothing, but it made a great impression on me. I’ve never forgotten it. Adrian and I were in London then, at the School of Economics, if you remember. I went to Harrod’s and bought your mother a beautiful camel’s-hair dressing gown for Christmas.”

“That was dear of you.”

“No, as a matter of fact, it was all
wrong
. You see, it was brown, and Sybille returned it and explained that for your sake she must never look dreary. Brown is a dreary color. It had to be blue, she said. Of course, I saw at once how right she was—after all, there you were flat on your back. Your mother had to look beautiful for
you.
It never occurred to me that that beauty was a kind of gift, you see? That’s just a tiny episode—” (Yet, Laura knew, it must have hurt).

“I can’t tell you how much Sybille taught me! Why, without her, I should never have known anything really about how to live—her taste, so absolutely
perfect!”

“Yes, she made critics of us all and destroyed any impulse to create.” Why had she said it aloud? Laura saw the stricken look.

“Go on, Cousin Hope. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was in a black mood, and you are doing me good. Please go on.”

“She was so passionate about everything!”

“Like what?”

“Politics, my dear! I was totally ignorant about politics—your mother put me right about the Spanish civil war, I can tell you! And long before anyone I knew was very much concerned, she was warning us about Hitler.”

“My father may have had something to do with that,” Laura murmured. “After all, he was in a position to know.”

“Your father had to be discreet, I presume. But he never seemed to care quite as deeply. Sybille threw herself into everything. Even as an old woman (it
is
remarkable!) she became involved in getting blacks bused out to the suburbs! But you know all this, dear Laura. What you cannot know, perhaps, is what an extraodinary capacity she had for friendship. When Tommy … when we had to face the fact that Tommy would never grow up to be quite normal, Sybille used to come once or twice a week and read aloud to him. He loved that. She had such a beautiful voice! Who but Sybille would have found time? Laura, dear Laura, you mustn’t let what is happening now depress you. She was a great woman!”

What then turned her three daughters into cynics? Laura wondered. Why couldn’t we ourselves ever quite believe in the golden legend? What turned us off?

“I’m so glad you remember all that—it’s awfully good of you to come here now, so often,
dear
Cousin Hope.” Laura was appalled to hear in her own voice an exact replica of her mother’s intonation, just slightly condescending.

No, not condescending; the tone of someone
acting
the appropriate response.

“Well, I must go up now for a little visit. I hope I haven’t worn you out.”

The butterfly was released, but the pin had penetrated. All Laura could think of was to get home to Grindle as quickly as possible, take him for a walk if she had the strength—and even if she hadn’t—get back to something simple, uncomplicated, that did not make her bones ache.

Was it really much harder to be a woman than to be a man, Laura asked herself on the drive home, not for the first time. Neither her father nor Charles had ever caused the kind of emotional conflict that her mother had. Daphne would say, she supposed, that they were “real” and Sybille was not. What if she had been allowed to go on the stage? Was she simply born to a career that she had been denied? That hunger for greatness, for the heroic, for the beautiful gesture—the theater would have used all that to great effect—and Sybille herself off stage might then have allowed herself to be simpler and more human. Who knows?

Of course she should have had three sons instead of three daughters. Laura had to admit that she herself had not found Daisy half as easy to bring up as Ben and Brooks—and why was that? What was the tension between daughters and mothers? Daisy had said it often enough, though without hostility: “I don’t want to be like you, mother, buried alive in suburbia. I want a chance to discover who I am
first,
then settle down somewhere if I have to. I don’t want to be caught.”

At that Laura had smiled and said gently, “I was escaping from mother’s high-powered expectations and life. I wanted what you think of as an “ordinary life”—that was what I
wanted,
craved. I had a huge hunger and thirst for the everyday, for the normal if you like. And on the whole,” she remembered saying, “I have been happy.”

She remembered saying it because Daisy had reacted unexpectedly with a flood of tears. “I don’t want to be happy,” she sobbed.

“That’s good,” Laura said dryly, “for the chances are you won’t be!”

Ever since she had seen Dr. Goodwin, Laura had been flooded with remembered conversations, and once such a flood began it was next to impossible to turn it off. But it was tiring. She drove the last miles too fast, concentrating on the car to shut out the dialogue. And there at last was the house—peace, safety.

“Yes,” she said to Grindle, who was barking frantically and looking up at her with questioning ears, “yes, we’ll go for a walk!” She took her cane out of the umbrella stand and went out without even changing into warmer boots. The air felt unexpectedly mild. After days when the thermometer never climbed over twenty, thirty felt positively springlike. “Where’s your cat?” she asked Grindle. But he had rushed off to roll in the snow. Laura opened the front door and called, “Come, cat, we’re going for a walk!” Sasha trundled downstairs, then sat, washing her face for several seconds. “Maddening animal, come!” And at last she was at the open door, shaking her paws in anticipation of the icy path. Finally she came out and followed Laura twenty paces or so behind. Grindle trotted on ahead, full of his pleasures, darting into the drifts after a scent only he could possibly catch in this weather, humping himself back onto the road.

“Look out, Grindle, or you’ll drown in the snow!”

When they got back a half-hour later, Laura was tired, hungry, and aware that she had spent whatever vital energy she could expect to call on today. But she was able to swallow a peanut butter sandwich and to drink a glass of milk without feeling sick. That was better than yesterday. It was pure bliss to stretch out on the sofa then with a Haydn quartet pouring its vitality into her like wine.

Pure life is what I want, she thought—trees, snow, sky, the animals, a glass of milk, and music—these together amounted to a taste of heaven on earth. It’s all I need now, she thought, smiling as she drifted off to sleep.

Chapter VI

Laura did not relish having to see Dr. Goodwin, but his secretary had insisted on the telephone that there were things he felt it necessary to discuss. “There will be time enough for doctors later on,” Laura thought, “but of course he has me over a barrel because he knows so much that I don’t know.” Suddenly she remembered her father’s saying in his dry way, “Of course, when you see a doctor, you take your life into your hands.” But the awful thing was that one simply
had
to trust. Doubting Jim Goodwin would be like walking into quicksand. There had to be somebody to care for her crumbling body.

She was tense, when she sat down opposite Jim Goodwin and saw that he was looking at a sheet of X-rays.

“Well?” she asked, “what’s all this about?” She couldn’t keep the hostility out of her voice.

Jim coughed. “I want you to arrange for someone to be in the house. It’s not a good idea to wait till you are feeling too weak to cope.”

“Will that be soon? I feel remarkably well. Only, when I lie down, there is a sensation of stifling, but quite bearable so far. I hate the idea of a stranger hovering about.”

“The alternative is the hospital, Mrs. Spelman.”

Laura swallowed.

“I’m sorry to be brutal about this, but you must understand that I am your physician.”

“Meaning that I have given my life into your power—what is left of it.”

“Meaning,” he said gently, “that I have some experience about such things. I want to help you all I can.”

“Very well, I’ll try to find a housekeeper.”

“We may be able to help. Miss Albright has a list of possible people—of course they may all be employed at the moment. What you need is a practical nurse. Then, I would be glad if you would agree to a few days in the hospital. I would like to have a consultation with a surgeon, to be quite sure, frankly, that surgery is impossible, as I believe it to be from the X-rays.”

“No,” Laura said quietly. “I don’t want to be interrupted.”

“Interrupted?”

“Well,” she sat up straight, “I’m living just now. I’m learning in a queer way how to live, what is important, and what isn’t. I don’t want to be interrupted.”

“You’re just like your mother,” Jim Goodwin said with a smile.

“God forbid!”

“She was a great woman, a great personality.”

“Yes, she was.” For the first time Laura was close to tears. “I’m not a personality. I’m just trying to be human.”

“Mrs. Spelman, would you like me to have a talk with your son Brooks?”

Laura was startled. “Why Brooks?”

“Someone in the family has to be alerted.”

“Oh, not yet, please! I must have a little time. You’re making it all seem so near, so close—I’m not ready!” She was unashamedly weeping now. “All right, tell him, if you must.” She got up and blew her nose. “Tell him I want to die at home.” But then she sat down again and recovered herself. “On second thought, don’t tell Brooks. Aunt Minna knows. I went over there just after you told me what was what last week. You’ll be glad to hear that she too insisted I get someone to be with me in the house.”

“Very well—but there will be decisions—”

“I’ll tell Brooks myself when I feel the time has come when …” there was a pause. Then she smiled. “You see, I don’t want to abdicate until I have to. If you tell Brooks, it’s as though …”

“It would have been only to spare you.”

“I realize that. Thank you. But the real thing is this sense I have that I need a little time just to live, as long as I am able, not to be impinged on by other people’s feelings. Yes,” she said, looking him straight in the eye, “that’s it. That’s the point—to be free of other people’s sense of doom,
their
fears, if you will.”

“Very well, I won’t insist. There’s one other thing, however. Your lungs are filling up, and the time will come fairly soon, I fear, when we shall have to drain out the fluid, at regular intervals, so you can breathe more easily.”

“Oh,” Laura said in a dull voice.

“I’ll be glad to come and do it for you—after all, I live nearby.”

“That’s awfully kind of you.”

For the second time Laura’s eye filled with tears.

“I’ll do everything I can, Mrs. Spelman.”

“There’s really no hope, is there?”

“There’s always hope,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “There are remissions, very mysterious because we really don’t know why. There are sometimes remissions of a month or more, although with a malignancy in the lung—in your case in both lungs—well, as I say, it would be foolish to be too sure of anything. I’ll tell you something. It’s surprising that you feel as well as you say that you do, so, you see, one never knows.”

Before Laura left the office Miss Albright called several possible practical nurses. One was willing to come in ten days. Laura had begged for that interval so passionately that Jim Goodwin had agreed to it. Mary O’Brien was to come and see her in Concord the next day, and they would talk things over.

“She’s a very sweet woman,” Miss Albright said, “a widow whose children are grown up. I’m sure you’ll like her.”

Laura sighed, then said, “I’ll do my best.” She hurried away then, compelled by some inner need so urgent that she hardly took time to button her coat.

Chapter VII

Laura felt caged at the very idea of Mrs. O’Brien, who was supposed to arrive at eleven. She had decided to stay in bed as late as possible. Comforting as Grindle and Sasha were, it was pleasant to be able to stretch her legs, now they were both out. She let herself float, sitting up with three pillows behind her so she could breathe, for she had wakened with a terrible fit of coughing and had thrown up some blood. All she could think of, of course, was Keats—Keats deprived of so much of his life. I have had my life, she reminded herself—for the sight of blood had been rather a shock—all of it, except old age. And though old age might be like Aunt Minna’s, rich and passionate and angry, it could just as well be her mother’s, a dwindling of intellect and spirit until there was nothing left but the needs of an infant. I’ll be well out of it, she thought, looking around her room: the Graves sea bird she and Charles had bought together for their twentieth wedding present to each other; the shelf of special books, poetry mostly, to the left of the mantel; the birch logs in the fireplace—one of these days I’ll have a fire up here, she thought. The last time she had done that was during an attack of flu years before. Charles had lit the fire then and had brought logs up. Would it be easier if he were here at her side during this last journey? And she reacted at once, no, no, thank God he isn’t! Charles could never deal with real illness. It made him cross and overprotective, which made Laura feel guilty.