The Sisters Montclair (7 page)

And because she knew this, and because the other girls knew it too, Alice was apprehensive this particular evening, feeling herself to be outgunned and outmaneuvered. She stood at the edge of the grand room with its mullioned windows overlooking the river, searching for Laura who had slipped away not long after they arrived. A crowd of senior girls and their Rats were dancing to “I’ve Got the World on a String.” Alice wore a black leotard and tights and ballet slippers and she had carefully painted whiskers on her face with a charcoal stick. Laura had dressed in a pink tutu with her long slender legs encased in white tights and her blonde hair lying loose around her shoulders and cascading down her back. She had refused to paint her face with whiskers, even at Mother’s insistence that, “all the other girls will be painted up and you will look like a fool.”

And now she was gone, she had disappeared into the crowd, and Alice had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The last thing Mother had said to her as they left the house was, “Don’t let her out of your sight.”

She made her way slowly around the room, adopting a false, casual manner, stopping to sample hors d’oeuvres and chat with several of the girls. Laura was not in the room. Alice was certain of that. The next logical place to look would be the kitchen where her sister could often be found sitting and chatting with the servants, and if she wasn’t there, chances were good she’d given Alice the slip, and had left the house for an assignation with some unknown beau.

Heat rose in her face at this thought, followed by a quick stab of anger at her sister, and at her mother for making her responsible for Laura’s actions. Always responsible for Laura. Always having to stop her from making some catastrophic mistake that would bring shame and despair down on the rest of them.

“Looking for someone?” Adele stood at the edge of a group of girls who were all staring at Alice.

Alice sipped her punch. “No,” she said.

“Because if you’re looking for your sister, I saw her disappear up the stairs with my brother not five minutes after you got here.”

Alice stared at her above the rim of her punch glass. She set the glass down carefully on a table. “Maybe you should have said something.”

“Why should I?”

“Because your brother is three years older than my sister.”

“What difference does that make? Your sister will go with anyone.”

For a moment Alice thought she might strike her. Her hand tingled with the imagined slap, the weight of her flesh against Adele’s rouged cheek. But then she saw the faces of the girls arrayed behind Adele, their expressions closed, accusing.

“My sister is a good girl,” Alice said serenely.

“She’s not,” Adele said.

“Everybody knows she’s not.”

“My mother says she’s boy crazy.”

“My mother says girls like her always end badly.”

“Your mothers are a bunch of jealous old biddies,” Alice said, turning away from them.

She could feel the weight of their eyes as she climbed the stairs. She walked slowly, deliberately, with no apparent concern. At the top of the stairs, out of view of the living room, she paused. She heard giggling at the end of the hallway, and she followed the sound to a closed door. Turning the knob, she put her shoulder against the door and shoved hard to open it.

Laura sat on the edge of the bed, naked from the waist up, her pink tutu bunched around her hips. Her lips were red and swollen and her hair rose like a cloud around her lovely face with its expression of guileless innocence.

“Sister,” she said sweetly.

Charlie Gaskins knelt in front for her. “G-get out!” he said.

Alice picked up a wooden globe and hurled it at him. She followed this with a copy of “Shakespeare’s Sonnets” and “The Divine Comedy” which caught him in the temple, causing him to cry out and hold his head in his hands. She crossed the room and took Laura by the arm and yanked her upright, pulling up the straps of her tutu. She pushed her sister ahead of her into the hallway. In the doorway, she turned and looked at Charlie.

“If you touch my sister again I’ll kill you.”

They went quickly down the backstairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door into the cool night air. Laura was crying softly. Her hair glowed in the moonlight.

“I like him,” she said.

“No, you don’t.”

“He’s nice.”

“No, he isn’t.” Alice took Laura by the shoulders and shook her. “He’s not nice,” she said. “And it’s the fact that you don’t see this that makes you so dangerous.”

“I’m sorry, Sister.”

She seemed so innocent, so completely bewildered by her crime that Alice couldn’t bear it. She let her go.

“Stop crying. Fix your hair.” She stroked Laura’s cheek, laying her fingers on the small birthmark on her neck.

Laura nuzzled her face against Alice’s hand. She sighed. “I feel sorry for him,” she said.

Alice took Laura’s hands and held them tightly. “Promise me you won’t see him again. Promise me you won’t be alone with him.”

“All right.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

Alice helped her fix her hair. She brushed the tears off Laura’s cheeks. “Don’t tell Mother.”

“I won’t,” Laura said. She took Alice’s hand in both her own. “You’re a good sister,” she said. “You look out for me.”

“I’ll always look out for you,” Alice said.

Stella wasn’t sure if she had offended Alice by asking too many questions at lunch. Or maybe it was her laughter when Alice mentioned that her sister had a “tender heart.” Adeline had the least tender heart of anyone Stella could imagine but sisters were often loyal to one another, and Alice might not take kindly to any criticism of Adeline, however slight.

Or maybe it was something else Stella had said or done that had caused Alice to sit quietly through the remainder of lunch, slowly eating her ice cream and staring at the wall. Alice seemed a very private person, the kind who set wide boundaries around herself, and Stella wondered now if she had trespassed those boundaries in some crucial, although unintentional, way.

Yet, whatever it was that had upset her during lunch seemed to pass. Alice seemed herself again as soon as they left the kitchen and walked down the wide hallway to the bedroom. As she lay down for her nap, she looked up at Stella with her cold pale eyes and said, “Night, night.”

Stella smiled. “Sweet dreams,” she said.

She went out into the sunroom to do her homework. Despite being behind in all of her classes, she couldn’t bring herself to open her backpack. Instead she sat staring drowsily out the long windows, wondering if she should just go ahead and chuck it all, drop out of school, quit fucking around and get a full-time job, something that would at least allow her to pay rent and maybe buy a good used car. She had lasted longer in school than anyone predicted; she had nothing to prove to anyone. Not even to herself.

She was so far behind now, she would probably never catch up and she was tired of the grind, the worry over money, the constant stress over trying to keep up. Last night Josh had come into the kitchen as she was packing her lunch for Alice’s and he had bitched her out about not contributing for groceries. Or anything else, for that matter. And really, she couldn’t blame him. She was nothing more than a kept woman, something she had always sworn she’d never be. She’d sworn she’d never become dependent on a man like her mother had been, and yet here she was, making the same mistakes Candy had made. How was that for family tradition?

No, it seemed dropping out was her only option. It was time to grow up, to step into the real world of forty-hour work weeks and groceries and bills stacked up on the kitchen table.

And yet
. She paused, considering.

To give up the dream now filled her with a sense of dejection. The truth of the matter was she could see herself counseling troubled girls. She could imagine herself making a difference in patients’ lives. Dr. Nightingale. It had a nice ring to it.

And besides, if she dropped out now, she would still have two years of school loans to pay off. A crushing, unforgivable debt and nothing to show for it.

She sighed and pulled her backpack toward her. She took out her
Psychology of Gender
textbook, and spent the next thirty minutes reading and making careful notes. She would send an email to Professor Dillard this evening explaining her absence from class today. She would ask Luke Morgan on Tuesday if she could copy his notes. This thought, so casually arrived at this morning, now roused a wave of unexpected nervousness. She put her pen down and rubbed her eyes, trying to imagine how she would ask him. After class? During class? Follow him out into the quad where the giggling sorority girls wouldn’t see her? She was so caught up trying to imagine how she would ambush him without appearing nervous or desperate that she only gradually became aware of whispering on the monitor.

Immediately, she stopped daydreaming and listened.

It was a low, repetitive sound. More like a murmur or a meditative chant. As she listened, Stella gradually became aware of individual words.

Oh Lord, no. No.

It was Alice’s voice. Low and anguished, but still Alice. Stella was relieved to realize this, and yet the suffering was so intense that Stella felt a catch in her throat, listening.

Oh Lord, Laura.

Stella closed her book.

Please. Oh Lord, please.

Stella shoved the book in her backpack. She got up and walked down the long, wide hallway to the bedroom but by the time she arrived, Alice was lying quietly on her back, sleeping peacefully.

She slept for a long time and after she awoke, Alice seemed groggy and confused. Twice she called Stella,
Mary Ann
, and as they walked through the living room on their afternoon walk, Alice stopped and looked at a collection of photographs on a long sofa table. She pointed to one silver frame and Stella picked it up so she could see it better.

“Who is that woman and those two children?” Alice said.

Stella looked at the photo. “Isn’t that your sister?”

Alice’s face clouded. She said, “My sister?”

“Adeline.”

She was quiet for a moment, staring. Then she made an impatient gesture with one hand. “Go put it in the bedroom and I’ll ask Sawyer when he comes if he knows who it is.” Alice sat down in a wingback chair near the fireplace and waited for Stella to do as she was told. When she came back, they continued their walk.

Alice said, “There was this girl in the neighborhood where we lived when I was raising my family. Do you know the house I’m speaking of? It was a big house over on Hammond.”

“So you didn’t raise your children in this house?”

Alice stopped and turned her head, giving her a disdainful look. “Of course not,” she snapped. “I had a big house and two servants over on Hammond Road. I didn’t move to this house until after Bill Whittington died. After the children were grown. I’ve lived in this house for ten years.” She shook her head. “Twenty years. Oh I don’t know. A long time.” She started walking again.

Behind her, Stella said gently, “So there was this girl in your neighborhood?”

“She was a homely little thing. Pitiful really, for a girl to look like that. The other girls weren’t very nice to her, I’m afraid.”

“They usually aren’t.”

“The family’s name was Shufflebottom.”

“Shufflebottom?”

Alice chuckled. “When I came home and told Bill Whittington he said, ‘
Alice, someone is pulling your leg.
’”

“I can see why he would think that.”

“But that was their name. The father liked to work in the yard. He was from up there in Yankee Land but despite this he made a good citizen, he sang in the choir and kept his yard nice.”

She stopped at the desk in the kitchen and picked up the glass of ice water Stella had waiting for her. She drank heavily and then set it down again.

“They make me drink a lot of water,” Alice said. “They say I have to hydrate.”

“Well, they say that’s good for you.”

“It’s ridiculous.
Hydrate.
Why don’t they just say,
Drink some water.
And why do you have this napkin resting on the top of my glass?”

“I was told to do it that way. I was told that was what you wanted.”

“Well, it’s not.”

“Okay,” Stella said. “No more napkins then.”

Alice shoved her walker out in front of her and they moved off into the dining room.

After a few minutes, Stella said, “So what happened to the Shufflebottom girl?”

“She was very smart in school. She went away to college and never came back. I don’t know where this story is going. I forgot what I was going to say.”

“So you never heard from her again? You don’t know what happened to her?”

“Oh, I know all right. Her mother wrote me a letter. That’s right, now I remember. I’m telling you this because I need to sit in the library after we exercise and write a letter to the poor little Shufflebottom girl’s mother.”

“Did something happen to the poor little Shufflebottom girl?”

Alice stopped and looked at her. “What number are we on?”

“Four.”

“So I can go through the door?”

“Yes.”

The door was a short cut from the butler’s pantry through the dining room that ended the walking for the day.

“Oh goody,” Alice said. She went through the dining room and into the living room and shuffled off toward the library.

“So what happened to the poor little Shufflebottom girl?” Stella asked, following her. She felt it was good to keep Alice on topic; she thought it might help to improve her memory.

“She grew up to work for that group of diplomats in New York that Roosevelt started.”

“The United Nations?”

“Yes. That one.”

“Wow. So her life was a success after all.”