Sisters (7 page)

"I didn't intend to be
rude. It's..."

"It's Amy Travers,
isn't it?" Now she was being unnaturally direct, she thought
with chagrin.

But James didn't seem to
notice. "I try not to be in the house when she's there."

"I didn't see her this
afternoon."

"Perhaps she didn't
come. Occasionally she doesn't."

"You should tell her
to stop coming," Sophie said, unable to comprehend why he hadn't
confronted Miss Travers.

"Later, perhaps. For
now, I'll avoid the aggravation. Or at least try to. Whenever I see
Anna May, she insists on telling me what a pure, unselfish soul Amy
Travers is, and that's damnably annoying. But then, Anna May can be
annoying when she discusses the weather."

"Animated Anna May,
d'you mean?" Sophie gave a bright, exaggerated smile.

He laughed at her
imitation, assuaging the slight guilt she felt for having fallen into
it. "Ah, Sophie, you're a good tonic for me," he said. "I
must sound like the complete misogynist to you, though, what with my
complaints about Amy Travers and Anna May."

"I think I
understand." Their eyes met and she felt a powerful attraction
to him, a surge of feeling which surprised her. She hastened to
lighten the mood. "You should say one or two kind things about
women soon, however. Otherwise, given as I am to frights and starts,
you might set me to shrieking."

"You are all right
now." His statement was really a question.

"Of course. I'm fine.
Anna May's convinced it has to do with not eating, and much as I hate
to admit it, she's probably right. The train journey was so long that
by today I didn't feel like breakfast or lunch, and then seeing Joe
and encountering the Widow Bellavance like that..." she broke
off, not liking the line she was taking. She sounded fussy,
overconcerned with herself. "One of my competitors described me
once as 'a very strong lady,'" she told him as they walked
toward the house. "Stronger than befits a lady, I think he meant
to imply."

At that moment, James
stumbled, tripping over a large metal object on the sidewalk. "What
the devil!" It was the bicycle that Esther had been riding, but
something had happened to it. The front fender was bent, the front
wheel utterly misshapen."

"It looks like it's
been rammed against something."

"Repeatedly, I'd say.
And deliberately." He lifted the bicycle from the path and threw
it several feet into the darkness.

"Did Esther do it?"

"I can't imagine who
else."

"But she was so proud
of the bicycle, so proud you'd given it to her."

"That doesn't mean a
thing. One minute she'll be clinging around my neck, soft and loving,
and then she'll be holding too tight, as if she'd like to strangle
me."

"But why..."

"I have no idea."

"She loves you. That
was quite clear when I talked to her."

"She ahtes me, too."
His voice was coldly factual, and he nodded as he spoke, as if to
confirm the statement to himself.

"Has she always been
this way?"

"Toward me? No, just
since Helen's death. She's always been difficult, though. Tense and
complicated. So much like Helen, the two of them were always at one
another."

They walked on into the
hallway, and when they got inside, she reached up and touched his
shoulder. She meant to say something sympathetic. But before she had
a chance, he bent down and kissed her cheek. "I'm glad you're
here, Sophie."

As he went outside to see
to the horses and carriage, she could feel herself not quite lean in
the direction he had gone, but incline that way, and she was troubled
by how she felt. She couldn't let this happen. No, of course not. And
she wouldn't. The time was past when she had let her impulses rule
her life.

She stood in the hallway,
knowing that as tired as she was, she would not fall asleep easily.
And the last thing she wanted was to lie in bed tossing and turning.
There had been quite enough of that on the train. She considered a
moment, and then, instead of going directly into her room, went down
the hallway and slid open the heavy oak door to the library. She
turned on the lights and scanned the titles behind the leaded-glass
doors. She opened a case, selected a book, put it back, and leafed
through another. Finally she settled on a Shakespeare play, "A
Midsummer Night's Dream." She could lose herself in its festive
comedy, she thought, carrying the slim volume upstairs with her.

When she was ready for bed,
she arranged the pillows, made herself comfortable, and picked up the
book from the bedside table. It fell open somewhere near the middle.
She would have ignored it, would have turned to the front page and
begun reading the play, but her eye was caught by a line drawn in the
margin. It set off Helen's words to Hermia:

We, Hermia, like two
artificial gods.

Have with our needles
created both one flower,

Both on one sampler,
sitting on one cushion,

Both warbling of one song,
both in one key--

As if our hands, our sides,
voices and minds

Had been incorporated, as
we grew together

Like a double cherry,
seeming parted

But yet a union in
partition--

Two lovely berries molded
on one stem.

So, with two seeming
bodies, but one heart,

Two of the first, like
coats in heraldry,

Due but to one, and crowned
with one crest.

And will you rent our
ancient love asunder,

To join with men in
scorning your poor friend?

The same pen which had
marked the margin had underlined the last two lines.

She looked inside the
book's front cover and found an inscription in the same ink: "To
my Helena, my dearest lover. You are the joy of my life. If ever you
fail me through my fault or your own, I will forswear thenceforth all
human friendship. Thine always, A.T."

Helen and... Amy Travers?
No, it couldn't be, simply couldn't. But "...my dearest lover"?

No, it didn't bear thinking
about. She was making much more of the inscription than it deserved,
and perhaps it was little wonder after what she'd been witness to
today: James and the drunken cowboy, Esther on the window ledge and
stair landing, the Widow Bellavance in the doorway. She'd been
trained by the good citizens of Cheyenne to expect bizarre behavior
until now she was finding it even when it wasn't there.

Still, as she read through
the inscription once more, she experienced an unfamiliar sensation.
For just a moment she felt furtive, embarrassed almost, as though
she'd opened someone else's correspondence or read someone else's
intimate diary.

She let the book fall into
her lap, and by the time she thought of lifting it up again, she
noticed something wrong with the electric light in the room. It was
pale, had a weak, sickly quality--and then she realized that daylight
was coming through the window, dissipating the effect of the lamp.
And somewhere a meadowlark sang. It was morning, and she had slept
the night through, slept deeply, totally, beyond the reach of either
dreams or nightmares.

The window was open a
little way, a gentle breeze blew in, and she lay still, savoring the
feel of its June coolness on her arms and face. She heard the
meadowlark again and thought how lovely his song was--and how lonely,
too. It took on overtones of solitude and isolation from the vast
prairie quiet until he sounded as though he were the only bird in the
world.

Gradually the human noises
began. Somewhere in the house someone turned off a tap. A screen door
slammed, and a child's voice floated up from outside. A dog
barked--wasn't that Tom? Sally must have him outside, playing with
him.

There were footsteps on the
stairway, low voices in the hall, and Sophie decided to get up. When
she had dressed, she entered the hallway to find Esther waiting for
her. She was sure that's what the girl was doing, though Esther was
taking pains to make the encounter seem a coincidence.

"Aunt Sophie. Good
morning. Are you on your way down to breakfast too?"

As they started toward the
stairway together, Sophie thought of mentioning the bicycle, but
rejected the idea. It was James' place, not hers, to bring it up.
They passed the bedroom Sophie thought had been Helen's, the one she
had asked Esther about yesterday. "That was my mother's room,"
Esther said, tilting her head and looking up.

Sophie merely nodded. She
had the impression that the girl was testing her somehow by offering
the information so casually, and she didn't want to show her
surprise. Nor did she want to risk triggering another hysterical
outburst like yesterday's.

They walked on down to the
dining room, where an enormous breakfast was waiting in covered
dishes on the sideboard. There was crisp-fried pork, fat buckwheat
cakes, and sliced peaches glistening in their heavy juice. Sophie had
little appetite, but Esther kept pressing food upon her, food and
conversation.

"You don't have any
children, do you, Aunt Sophie?"

"No, that's right."

"I think I shan't
either."

"Oh, why is that?"

She shrugged. "It
hurts too much. I wasn't very old when Sally was born, but I remember
my mother screamed and screamed." She finished the last of her
buckwheat cakes. "Mmmmmm, these are good. You really ought to
have some."

Sophie glanced at her. Was
she trying to shock? Is that what she'd been doing yesterday when she
walked into the drawing room and in the most matter-of-fact voice
imaginable described horror stories in the newspapers? But she had
been tense then, keyed up. Now she seemed cool and unruffled as she
took three more buckwheat cakes and chatted on.

"But the baby that
really hurt was the one after Sally."

"The one that was born
dead."

"Mmmm-huh. Mother
screamed for a whole day and a whole night that time." She was
pouring thick maple syrup on to the buckwheat cakes, and she paused
for a moment to watch the bright golden eye of the butter melt into
the darker gold liquid. "I heard Miss Travers and Mother talking
about it. They said the doctor killed the baby. It was a boy."

"Killed him?"

"Mmmmm-huh, that's
what they said. Everybody knew there was terrible trouble because
Mother screamed for so long, but the doctor didn't know what to do.
He had all these sheets draped over her, but he didn't know what to
do. And so when the baby came out backward, the cord strangled him. I
thought Mother would never stop crying. For months and months she
cried. She cried after the miscarriages, too."

"I don't know about
those."

"Practically every
year she didn't have a baby, she had a miscarriage, almost regular as
everything. Until a couple years ago anyway." Seemingly
undisturbed by the information she had imparted, Esther ran her spoon
around her plate, licked maple syrup from it, and spoke again. "Over
on Van Lennen Street, there's a lady whose baby died when it was just
a few weeks old. She was so upset, she had the photographer come and
take pictures of it. But of course its eyes were closed, so she
painted them in. I've seen the picture. It's very strange."

"Oh, and another thing
that happened--this wasn't very long ago--was, they found a baby in a
privy vault downtown. Dead, of course. They still don't know who
threw it in there, but somebody who didn't want it, that's for sure."

"Esther, there are
some very nice, very wonderful things about having children, too."

"Oh, I know, I know. I
didn't mean to be unpleasant. I just thought you'd be interested. No,
I know there are nice things. Miss Travers tells me that too."
She looked at Sophie out of the corner of her eye, a fey smile on her
lips. "Of course, she's never had any children either."
Before Sophie could protest, "Esther went on, "No, I know
the nice things. Really I do." She was not smiling now. "I
remember a story my mother told me. She said when I was born there
were a few seconds when she first saw me that she didn't know who I
was, whether I was here, or she was me. It was like we were both each
other." She looked directly at Sophie, her eyes suspiciously
bright. "When I told Miss Travers that story, Sally laughed, and
so Miss Travers sent her from the room."

Sophie had trouble thinking
what to say. "Maybe Sally was jealous because it was your
story," she tried finally. But that was inadequate, ignoring the
most important part of Esther's confidence. "It's very precious
to you, isn't it, the memory of what your mother said."

Esther nodded, and one of
the tears which had been gathering along her lower lids slipped down
her face.

They had both finished, so
they got up and walked into the drawing room, Sophie with her arm
around Esther, her hand resting on the girl's shoulder. "I like
the way you've done your hair," she said. It was pulled back on
the sides and hung in loose curls down the back.

"Oh, do you really? I
saw it in 'Godey's'..." She stopped in mid-sentence and looked
up guiltily.

"I don't care if you
read 'Godey's,' Esther." When the girl still seemed unsure,
Sophie assumed an air of mock severity. "As long as you're
reading 'Dymond's Ladies' Magazine' too, of course." She ran her
hand down a curl and let it twine around her finger. Then she patted
Esther on the shoulder. "A reporter from the 'Clarion' will be
here soon, a young man I promised to see."

Esther gave a quick nod,
and while Sophie sat down, the girl went to the mantelpiece and began
rearranging things on it. Soon she moved to the floor, where she
began making a pattern with objects from the mantelpiece. She was
sitting with her legs bent in inverted V's, and when she leaned back
on her arms to consider her arrangement, Sophie saw that the front of
her dress strained slightly. Her breasts were growing, and Sophie
wondered if she had begun to menstruate yet. And if she had, would
she tell her about it? Would her odd matter-of-factness carry over to
her own coming of age?