The Sisters Montclair (31 page)

Adeline waved one hand dismissively. “Oh, we had choices. You could be a secretary or a nurse or a teacher. Or, if you were really, really lucky, you could be a housewife. That was considered the pinnacle of success.” She sipped her water and set it down again, glancing at Alice. “Remember, Al, when you used to talk about running off to live in New York? How you used to brag you were never going to get married?”

“No,” Alice said.

“It used to drive Mother crazy.”

“Well, that’s probably why I did it then.”

“I can’t even imagine being a housewife back in the fifties and sixties,” Stella said. “It must have been really boring.” She looked around, giving them a reckless grin. “No offense,” she said.

“None taken,” Weesie said, lifting her glass.

“I mean, most of you had other women who watched your children and cleaned your houses, so what did you
do
all day?”

“Oh you’d be surprised,” Adeline said.

“There was always the charity work,” Weesie said. “There was a lot of that. And there were school committees, and ladies luncheons, and bridge groups. Our days were a lot busier than you think. And of course we had to keep our husbands happy. Wives were a lot more concerned in those days about keeping their husbands happy.”

“I guess
The Feminine Mystique
ruined all that,” Stella said.

“The what?” Weesie said.

“Being a housewife was more exciting than you might think,” Adeline said. She looked at Alice. “Remember that time Boofie Lloyd outran the police on her way home from The Girls Cotillion board meeting?”

Weesie giggled. “I had forgotten that,” she said.

Stella looked from one to the other. “She outran the police?” she said.

“It was meatloaf night,” Alice said, settling down to the story. She was always confident when a memory came back to her, clear and indisputable. “The maid’s day off and the only thing Boofie knew how to cook was meatloaf. Charles Lloyd was awfully partial to Boofie’s meatloaf and she knew he’d be angry to come home to a dark house with no supper made.”

“She did make a good meat loaf,” Weesie said.

“So she was in a big hurry coming home late and she was driving a little too fast,” Alice said.

Adeline made a wry face. “And the cop was waiting for her there at the foot of Lookout.”

“Did he have his lights on?” Stella said.

“Oh, yes,” Alice said. “Boofie looked in the rearview mirror and she saw the flashing lights and she knew how mad Charles would be if she came home late
and
with a speeding ticket. So she just stomped on it.”

“Stomped on what?” Weesie said.

“The gas pedal.”

“Oh.”

Stella said doubtfully, “But how could you outrun the police coming up a mountain?”

“You’d have to want to do it bad,” Adeline said.

“What was she driving, a Maserati?” Stella said.

“Buick Estate Wagon.”

“Oh come on!”

“You’d have to know Boofie,” Alice said.

“She had one of the first electric door openers on the mountain. So as she came screeching around that last corner onto her street, she hit the button and the door went up and she pulled in and shut off the car. The door was almost down again when the cops went by with their sirens flashing.”

They all chuckled, remembering. Stella looked from one to the other.

“I remember when she got that garage door opener,” Adeline said. “She didn’t even want it but Charles made her take it.”

“Good thing,” Alice said.

Across the lawn a pair of squirrels chased each other along Sawyer’s steeply pitched roof.

“Wow,” Stella said. “She sounds crazy.”

“She was a character,” Alice said.

“I liked her better when she was younger,” Adeline said. “She got to be a real complainer later on.”

Alice said to Stella, “She was one of those people who always had something wrong with her. Always complaining about some operation she was going to have.”

“It got so bad after awhile that even her daughter, Rose, didn’t like going over to see her. I’m going to die, she’d say. There’s something wrong with me and I’m going to die.”

They were all quiet for a moment and Stella waited patiently, looking around the room. “So what happened to her?”

“She died,” Alice said.

“Rose came in one morning and she was lying in her bed. Dead.”

No one said anything. Outside the long windows, the late afternoon sun fell through the arching branches of the trees, dappling the lawn with shade.

“So maybe there was something wrong with her after all,” Stella said.

Weesie sighed. Adeline shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe,” she said.

“You have to understand this went on for over thirty years,” Alice said to Stella. “She could have died from anything.”

Stella got up and began to collect the empty glasses.

“I think she did it out of spite,” Adeline said. “Because no one believed her and she wanted to prove them wrong.”

“Laura, see if there are any of those macaroons in the refrigerator,” Alice said.

“I’ll see what I can find.” Stella turned and walked out.

Weesie slowly swiveled her head. She stared at Adeline and then at Alice. “You called her Laura,” she said.

“Did I?”

“Yes,” Adeline said. “You did.”

“Who’s Laura?” Alice said mildly.

Alice was tired after they left and Stella made an early supper. They usually ate around six-thirty so Alice could watch
Wheel of Fortune
at seven, but tonight she looked so tired, Stella didn’t think she’d be able to stay awake until then.

They ate quietly, staring at the wall calendar marked with the caregivers’ schedules.

“That new girl, Rita, comes on Friday,” Alice said, finishing her barbecue pork.

“Is she nice?”

“Very nice. She has a granddaughter that she takes care of. Her son is divorced and he lives with her. He has the granddaughter and Rita is always taking her out and buying her prom dresses. I guess the girl expects that.”

“Girls can be expensive.”

“They always want you to buy them things,” Alice said, starting in on the rest of her coleslaw. “When I was a girl, if my mother wouldn’t buy it for me, I’d call grandmother.”

“And did that work for you?”

“Always.”

In the distance, a train whistle blew, deep and mournful. Stella had always hated the forlorn sound of a passing train; it depressed her, made her think of grief and loneliness and lost opportunities. Perhaps it was because her father had taken a train when he left her mother, bound for New Orleans. She pulled the crusts off the rest of her peanut butter sandwich and pushed them to the side of her plate.

Alice said, “When I first married Bill, he asked me did I want him to open up a charge account for me down at Louella’s. Have you ever heard of Louella’s?” She turned her head slowly, her opaque eyes resting on Stella.

“No.”

“Well, it’s gone now. But in my day it was where all the young wives went to shop. I’d never heard of a charge account but when he explained to me how it worked and asked me did I want one, I said,
Yes, please.
” She finished the last of her okra and stared at the wall, her jaw moving slowly. Stella got up and began to clear the dishes.

“What’s happened to Dob?” she said, trying to move Alice away from the melancholy memory of her dead husband. “We haven’t seen him for awhile.”

“He’s been up visiting his son in North Carolina. You know the son and his wife have seven children.”

“Seven?”

Alice chuckled. “That’s what I said. Anyway, he’s back so I expect we’ll hear from him shortly.”

Stella fixed Alice a scoop of mango ice cream and set it down in front of her.

“Oh, goody,” Alice said. “Mango.” She ate for awhile in silence, staring straight ahead and bringing the spoon slowly to her mouth. After awhile she stirred and said, “They’re having a birthday party tonight for Charles Gaskins. Dob’s going to that. He and Dob used to play together as boys.”

Stella rolled her paper placemat into a thin cone. “Is that the Charlie who used to throw rocks at you when you were a girl? The one with the stammer?”

“He used to hit me on the backside with his slingshot.”

“I’ll bet you were fond of him.”

“Oh yes,” Alice said, setting her spoon down. She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “I never much cared for him when we were younger. Funny thing, though. He grew up to be a war hero. Stormed a German machine gun nest on Omaha Beach, I think it was.”

“Really?”

“No one was more surprised than me.” She pushed her ice cream bowl away. “Still,” she said. “I guess you never know how people will turn out.”

After she put Alice to bed, Stella went into the library to wait for the night caregiver to arrive. It was a warm, balmy evening. Outside in the street, couples strolled in the gathering dusk with their dogs. Late spring had always been one of Stella’s favorite times of year. As a child she had counted down the days until the end of school, imagining herself splashing barefoot in the creek, riding her bicycle to the municipal pool, lying in the grassy shade beneath the branches of a spreading tree. Those were the summers Stella had imagined and yet the reality was always much different. They were always traveling in the summer, staying with family members or one of Candy’s friends in some hot, dusty town while Candy looked for work. Always striking out in search of a new life in a place where no one knew them.

Stella put her head against the back of the wingback chair and stared through the long windows. She didn’t want to think about her mother. She felt depressed enough remembering Professor Dillard’s phone call. And yet a huge weight had been lifted from her, too. She had been dreading final exams, knowing it was too late to bring her grades up. She had been contemplating dropping out and yet that option had seemed so final, so cowardly, the act of a desperate woman who would not, could not think clearly. Despite making it easier for her in the short term, the medical leave suggested by Professor Dillard did little to reassure her that things would turn out well. She had known for some time that they would not. She had the feeling a reckoning was coming; she would have to pay, sooner or later, for her mistakes. Everyone did.

Across the street, the gas lamps on the stuccoed gate posts of the white mansion came on, beginning to flicker. The lights were on in all the downstairs rooms of the house, glowing cheerfully in the gathering dusk.

Odd, how it had all begun to unravel this spring. She had been in control up until then; she had managed to keep it all tamped down. She had overheard one of her professors say to another,
She’s a strong-willed, determined girl. She’ll go far in life.
How easily people were fooled. Pretend you are in control and you can convince anyone. Even the cutting had seemed a small thing, restrained and disciplined. Fragile incisions made to release that which couldn’t be acknowledged, like holes in an earthen dam, letting just enough trickle out to keep the dam from bursting.

And now she had agreed, in a moment of desperation, to let Professor Dillard counsel her, to poke her fingers in among all the dark crevices where Stella had carefully hidden herself away. To breach those barricades she had so vigorously and painstakingly erected. The idea was excruciating. Humiliating and excruciating.

She closed her eyes. It occurred to Stella that her education in psychology had been less about uncovering the psychic wounds of others, and more about hiding her own. She thought of Alice’s comment,
You never know how people will turn out.
But that wasn’t exactly true. Who was it who had said,
Character is destiny?

What a dismal future awaited her, if that was true.

She opened her eyes, staring bleakly at the wall of books. On the top shelf a title caught her eye.
Anna Karenina
. She had never read Tolstoy. She rose and walked over to the bookshelves, and standing on a small step stool to reach the top shelf, she pulled the book toward her. It was a red leather-bound volume with gilt lettering. She opened it, inhaling the musty scent of old paper. An inscription in the front read,
To Alice from her sister, Laura. Summer of 1935
.

Stella stared at the inscription until her vision shimmered and went dark at the center. She held the book to her chest and stepped down, walking carefully across the room to the wingback chair. She opened the book on her lap, fanning the brittle pages with her fingers. The musty scent rose again, reminding her vaguely of something not altogether pleasant, but compelling, and lifting the book she set her face against an open page and breathed deeply. Two fragile, faded pieces of paper fluttered to her lap. The first was a yellowed newspaper clipping showing a photograph of three lovely girls dressed in flowing white gowns, their faces turned in profile. The caption read,
The Sisters Montclair as the Three Graces
. Stella recognized Alice and Adeline. The third, and most beautiful, must be Laura. The lost sister.

She picked up the other scrap and stared down at it, feeling a faint prickling along her scalp. Written in a childish scrawl so faded with age as to be nearly illegible were two lines.

We forgive you.

Please forgive me
.

There was a strange humming sound in her ears. Holding the translucent scrap up to the fading summer light, Stella noticed that her hand was trembling.