The Sisters Montclair (28 page)

“Who says there’ll be a next time,” Alice said grimly.

As they came out into the bright sunshine, Stella said, “Well, he seems like a nice enough doctor.” Dark clouds rode the horizon and there was a smell of rain in the air.

“Yes, he’s pleasant enough. But that saucy little number he’s got working for him is something else.” In a high falsetto voice, Alice mimicked, “Why, Miz Whittington is that your good ear or your bad ear? Can you hear me? ‘Cause what I want you to do is put your chin down right here so I can check your eyes with this machine.”

“Why would I put my chin down there?” Alice said indignantly, stopping to look at Stella. She was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling. They were half-way up the ramp. “There’s no telling how many others have laid their chins down there.”

“Maybe they clean it in between patients.”

Alice shook her head and began to push her walker slowly up the incline. “I doubt it,” she said.

“Yeah. You’re probably right.”

They walked up the slope to the rusty car sitting forlornly in the middle of the empty lot. One of the hubcaps was gone and the passenger door had a long, jagged streak where the paint had been scraped off. Stella helped Alice inside and then shut the door, putting the walker in the back and going around to the driver’s door.

She slid in and fastened her seatbelt. “Shoot,” she said. “I forgot to get the ticket validated.”

“Oh for crying out loud, don’t go back in there,” Alice said sharply, opening her purse and taking out a few coins. “Let’s get out of here.”

Stella dropped the coins in the box and the parking barrier rose with a slow lurching motion. She pulled out into the sparse traffic, and then took a right, not realizing that she was taking a different route home. They passed the old baseball stadium on the left. Rows of tall Victorian houses, once prosperous but converted now into dilapidated apartments, rose on both sides of the street. Alice sat with her purse on her lap, staring out the window.

“Well, look at the bright side,” Stella said. “At least you don’t have to come back again for another year.”

“With any luck,” Alice said. “I’ll be dead.”

They drove down Central Avenue past the edge of campus and the Fortwood Historical District. Stella took a right on a side street, thinking it would lead them back to Third, the way they had come, but she realized almost immediately that she’d taken a wrong turn. She didn’t know this street at all.

“Do you know where we are, Alice? Because I don’t.”

“Oh Lord. Are you saying we’re lost?”

“No. I can turn around.” Stella pulled to the side of the narrow street so she’d have room to make a U-turn.

The neighborhood was run down, a series of overgrown vacant lots and big trees and rambling, unpainted houses that had been converted into apartments. Alice lifted her hand and pointed to a large brick house with a maze of fire escapes running down one side.

“Do you see that place? That was my great-grandmother Jordan’s house.”

“No, Alice. Really?” It took up nearly the whole block but was as sad and dilapidated as its neighbors.

“And there,” Alice said, pointing to a vacant lot across the street where a series of weed-choked brick steps ran up the slope from the sidewalk. “That’s the house where I was born. Or at least that’s where it used to stand.”

They sat with the car idling against the curb, staring up at the old steps.

“Are you sure?” Stella said.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“I thought you grew up on Signal Mountain.”

“My parents had a summer home on Signal Mountain. During the school year we lived downtown. And later, after I was grown, my father bought a house in Riverview. Ash Hill, it was called.”

“See,” Stella said. “Your mind is as clear as a bell.”

“It comes and goes,” Alice said.

Stella pulled away from the curb, driving slowly down the street. Now that Alice had recognized where they were, she saw no reason to turn around.

She said, “How old were you when you moved away from here?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I can’t remember that.”

A large, square house with a porte-cochère covered in trailing vines, stood on the corner.

“That’s where the Bakers used to live,” Alice said, beginning to show some enthusiasm. She put one hand up on the window glass. “They had a daughter my age. Sarah. When she moved here and started at Miss Fenimore’s School, all the boys thought she was so pretty. All the girls hated her.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Later, she became one of my best friends.” She tapped on the glass, pointing out a tall stone wall. The memories seemed to be coming fast and furiously now. “Do you see that stone wall? We used to sit there and wait for the ice man to come around. He had a mule that pulled a wagon with a big block of ice in the back packed in sawdust. If you wanted ice for your icebox, he’d stop at your house and chip off a block for you. We children used to follow him around because sometimes he’d chip off smaller pieces for us. It was a wonderful summer treat.”

“So you lived down here for awhile then?”

“Until we built the summer house on Signal.” She spread her fingers on the glass, leaving a faint imprint. “Mr. O’Leary was the vegetable man. He used to ride through the streets in his wagon and we’d run out and buy tomatoes and corn and okra.
Okrie
my little sister called it.”

She paused. Her hand slid down the glass and dropped into her lap.

“Your little sister?” Stella said. “Adeline?”

“No,” she said. “The other one.”

Stella slowed down and glanced at her. “You had another sister besides Adeline?”

Alice nodded her head. “Yes,” she said.

“What was her name?”

Alice turned her head and stared at her with a stubborn, affronted expression. “Why are you asking me that?” she said in a thin, querulous voice.

Stella, taken aback by her reaction, said, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I asked.”

“I don’t know either,” Alice said, turning again to the window.

They drove down the street until they reached the campus and then they turned left. Alice was silent for a long time. Later, as they started up the mountain, she said quietly, “Isn’t it the most ridiculous thing?”

Stella, lost in her own thoughts, said, “What? What’s ridiculous?”

“I can remember the name of Mr. O’Leary the vegetable man. But I cannot remember the name of my own dear sister.”

Driving toward the mountain, Alice felt herself awash in memories. Scenes from the past flashed through her mind like a magic lantern show, one fading into another and then materializing as something else. Watching them, Alice was filled with a sense of delight and vague but insistent foreboding.

She saw herself as a girl lying in the grass on a summer day, reading. She had brought a quilt to lie on, and a pillow, and a pitcher of ice cold lemonade. She spread the quilt in the shade of an oak tree, at the edge of a forsythia bush. Cicadas sang in the heat and from time to time, a warm breeze stirred the tops of the tall trees.

In those days the world had felt safe and full of wonder, both infinite and knowable. She had felt in her life a kind of divine presence, a shimmering state of grace that seemed to surround her like a shining light, guiding her, protecting her from harm.

But all of that had changed. She had changed. She no longer believed in fairy tales.

She had always been a person who lived inside her own head. Even now she knew that her visions of Bill Whittington were simply her own lonely imaginings. They weren’t real. She never told any of the caregivers about his visits; she didn’t want them to think she was crazy in addition to being senile. Crazy old Alice talking to herself in the dark like a Norse witch. She wouldn’t give Elaine the satisfaction of recording such a thing in the book.

Beside her the girl sat quietly, lost in her own thoughts. Her profile was strong and self-contained, but her arms and shoulders seemed frail; at the end of one sleeve a raw, ugly wound marked her wrist. She had grown so thin, insubstantial, as if she might be slowly fading away. The girl’s troubles pained her although Alice was unsure what they might be. The girl never complained; she was humorous and attentive, and yet there was some hidden sorrow that passed between the two of them, a connection that could not be explained, but was simply acknowledged and accepted.

Alice’s memories flowed around her like a warm current while she drifted lazily, letting herself be drawn along. A Christmas morning blizzard, swimming in the cool waters of Rainbow Lake, Sawyer’s sweet freckled face as she bent to wipe his nose.

A pale angelic face swam suddenly into view and she started in panic and kicked hard against the current, skimming away. Fear prickled her chest, a sense of being swept toward something she could not, would not face. She closed her eyes, willing it away, and then opened them again.

It had begun to rain, falling in soft patters against the roof and the hood of the car. The brightly-lit stores of Broad Street glistened in the rain. Above them the eastern brow of Lookout Mountain loomed, as proud and jutting as the prow of a great ship.

Alice opened her purse to search for a Kleenex. Growing old was not the peaceful letting-go she had once thought it would be.

On the long drive home Stella thought about Alice’s mysterious sister, the one whose name she could not, or would not, remember. There was something willful in Alice’s forgetting. Weighed down by her own secrets, Stella recognized furtiveness in others, the turning away of the eyes, the deliberate and artful misunderstanding of questions. For no reason other than her own unsatisfied curiosity, it occurred to her suddenly that the portrait of the lovely blonde woman in Alice’s dining room might be this forgotten sister. Someone whose life had taken on tragic meaning; someone Alice no longer wished to think about or acknowledge.

Laura.

She felt a cold prickle at the nape of her neck, an odd shiver of recognition. That was the name Alice had whispered on the monitor that first day, her voice hoarse with sorrow and regret. Stella remembered Adeline’s expression when she mentioned the experience, the way her face had changed and she had drawn herself up warily.
You must be mistaken.

Alice was quiet for most of the drive but by the time they returned home she seemed to have recovered some of her earlier talkative mood.

“We’ll do our exercises now and get them over with,” she said to Stella. “You be the counter.”

“I’ll be the counter.”

She followed Alice through the butler’s pantry as they began their loop, turning on lights so Alice could see. It had not occurred to Stella that the wealthy could suffer from despair and adversity. She had believed money to be a protection against tragedy and she was amazed now that she had ever been so naïve as to accept this. The rich, despite their advantages, were no different from the poor when it came to human suffering.

“On our way rejoicing,” Alice said, pushing the walker ahead of her. Her curly hair was parted in back and the pink scalp showed through, tender and fragile as an infant’s.

As they walked through the dining room, the eyes of the beautiful young woman seemed to follow them. Her lips curved in a sly, reticent smile. Looking at her, Stella felt again that strange feeling of recognition, as if something inside her might be swinging open, revealing itself. She hesitated, staring at the woman, wanting to ask Alice who she was, yet not wanting to hurt her, to bring back the painful past.

The wheels of the walker whined softly. As they crept past the living room coffee table, one of the waxy leaves of a tall white orchid dropped to the table.

It was just as likely that Alice would not remember the woman in the portrait at all, would have no idea who she was.

“Okay,” Stella said as they reentered the pantry and she began her counting of their laps. “That’s one.”

“Just begun,” Alice said, snagging one of the wheels of the walker on the door frame. She extricated herself, muttering, “Now who moved that door?” and went on.

They walked again through the kitchen and out into the dining room. Stella glanced at the portrait and then down at the carpet, following Alice’s slow, shuffling footsteps. “I saw on the calendar that someone named Harry Rosser is visiting you today at 3:00.”

“Who?” Alice said.

“Harry Rosser.”

“Oh, Harry Rosser.” Alice lifted the walker and put it down again on top of the faded Oriental carpet in the living room.

“Who’s he?” Stella said.

“He’s a boy I helped get through Smithson School. He lived with his grandmother, she was a schoolteacher, and she wanted him to have a good education. I guess that’s how I got involved.” Alice, slightly breathless, thrust the walker ahead of her. She shook her head slowly. “Little Harry Rosser,” she said.

“How long since you saw him?”

“Oh I don’t know. He was at Sam’s funeral. I don’t remember when that was.”

Sam.
The son who had died. The one who Alice never spoke of. They entered the foyer and walked down the long hall to the butler’s pantry.

“Okay, that’s two,” Stella said loudly.

“Woo hoo hoo,” Alice said.

She stopped in the kitchen at the desk where Stella had set a tall glass of ice water. Alice leaned and picked it up, her hand cupped and twisted with arthritis. Stella turned her head and stared out the kitchen window while she drank.

“Very good,” Alice said, setting the glass down carefully. “Very nice indeed.”

They walked on into the dining room. The sky was overcast and the light falling through the long windows was gray and oppressive.

“Well, that’s nice of him to come for a visit,” Stella said, wondering if she should turn on a few of the lamps for Alice. “Harry Rosser. Does he live here in town?”

“Oh I don’t know. No, I guess he doesn’t. I don’t know where he lives.”

Beyond the living room French doors, the valley was shrouded in low-lying clouds. The mountains rose like islands in a foamy sea. Alice picked up the walker and set it down on the Oriental rug. She was breathing heavily now.

As they reached the pantry again, Stella said, “Okay, that’s three.”