The Small Room (24 page)
Authors: May Sarton
“I don't know. It would seem the logical thing to stay.”
“People do not stay at Appleton to teach because it is logical,” Carryl Cope said coldly.
“Why do they?”
“Because a fire burns in their heads,” Carryl said with a snort. “Why else? It- would have been logical for me to go to Columbia, but I am here.”
Lucy got up and stood facing Carryl across the room. In this position, at least she felt less dominated.
“And why?” Carryl asked and answered her own question. “Because I felt challenged. Teaching women is a special kind of challenge. Most of the cards are stacked against one.”
“Yes,” Lucy said. “I have seen that. I do understand what you mean.” But she still held herself back.
“All this talk about the price of excellence has a grain of truth in it as well as a grain of salt, Lucy.”
Lucy forced herself to stand her ground, as if this were some sort of final examination she could not afford to fail. To fail what? To fail whom? My life, my self, she thought. “I was with Maria when she shouted Joy, Fulfillment against you all. I'm not sure I would find absolute joy and fulfillment in teaching.”
“Absolute joy?” Carryl hooted. “You
are
young,
Doctor
Winter! Partial joys, partial fulfillments, we are lucky to get them in this world.”
“Oh hell,” Lucy capitulated. “You know very well I love teaching here. But it's my whole life I can't imagine without ⦠without ⦔ She could not finish. But at least she could hold the tears back.
Carryl came right across the room and laid a hand on Lucy's shoulder and cocked her head. “Well, nobody wants you to dwindle into teaching as Millamant dwindled into marriage. Of course it's not to be your whole life, you silly fool!” She gave Lucy's cheek a tap and threw herself down in the red armchair. “People who are rooted in work are rooted in life,” she said, “you know that as well as I do. But that doesn't mean those roots never flower.”
“I want to belong somewhere, to be someone,” Lucy said, amazed at her own violence.
“You belong at Appleton if you want to. And you are certainly someone. Why do you suppose we've all talked to you the way we have? Of course, the trouble with women is that they're all of a piece. Just because that odious doctor doesn't want to marry you, you've forgotten who you are.”
“A little white house like Hallie's, a garden ⦔ Lucy laughed harshly.
“And a hundred Pippas and Jane Seamans to plague you and challenge you and make you grow up, willy nilly.”
“I can't see it yet, Carryl, but I'm on the way. Give me time,” Lucy said.
“I have time. You do not,” Carryl answered relentlessly. “Moments of decision pass like beauty itself ⦠and you are beautiful, you know, beautifully undecided, beautifully needed, beautifully yourself. I am drunk,” Carryl veered, “and it is time I took you back.”
Lucy was grateful that she had not said “home.” “You have been very kind.”
“I am very old.”
“No, very complete.”
“God forbid!”
“It is good about the Beveridges,” Lucy said, as she got into her coat.
“Yes.”
“Jane is going to be all right, Carryl.”
“Yes, I expect she will.”
“And Olive?”
“Olive is suffering. It is her climate. In another week she will begin to learn Russian or Chinese. Olive is alive.”
“And you ⦠and I?”
“You and I?” Carryl thrust her hands into the pockets of her old leather coat. A cigarette dangled from her mouth. She looked faintly raffish. “You and I? Well, we may not be all right, but we'll survive.”
“Yes,” Lucy smiled, “we'll survive.” Though all she felt at the moment was exhaustion, she said again, “We will survive, you and I,” and then she found herself kissing Carryl Cope like a very old friend. “If I stay,” she added, as they started down the stairs, “it will be for love.”
“All right,” Carryl laughed, “you win!”
“I think you have made me fall in love with a profession.”
“Because a fire burns in my head?”
“Because a fire burns in your head.”
A Biography of May Sarton
May Sarton (1912â1995) was born Eleanore Marie Sarton on May 3 in Wondelgem, Belgium, the only child of the science historian George Sarton and the English artist Mabel Eleanor Elwes. Barely two years later, Sarton's European childhood was interrupted by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the onset of the First World War.
Fleeing the advancing Germans, the family moved briefly to Ipswich, England, and then in 1915 to Boston, Massachusetts, where her father had accepted a position at Harvard University. Sarton's love for poetry was first kindled at the progressive Shady Hill School, a period she wrote about extensively in
I Knew a Phoenix
, published in 1959.
At the age of twelve, Sarton traveled to Belgium for a year to live with friends of the family and study at the Institut Belge de Culture Française. There, she met the school's founder, Marie Closset, who grew to be Sarton's close friend and mentor, and who was the inspiration for her first novel,
The Single Hound
(1938).
On returning to the States, Sarton graduated from Cambridge High and Latin School in 1929. Although she was awarded a scholarship to Vassar College, Sarton joined actress Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in New York instead, much to the dismay of her father. However, while learning the basics of theater, Sarton continued to develop her poems, and in 1930, when she was just eighteen, a series of her sonnets was published in
Poetry
magazine.
In 1931, Sarton returned to Europe and lived in Paris for a year while her parents were in Lebanon. In large part, Europe provided the backdrop for her encounters with the great thinkers of the age, including the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, the famed biologist Julian Huxley, and of course, Virginia Woolf. After Sarton's own theater company failed during the Great Depression, she turned her full attention to writing and published her first poetry collection, entitled
Encounter in April
, in 1937.
For the next decade, Sarton continued to write and publish novels and poetry. In 1945, she met Judy Matlack in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the two became partners for the next thirteen years, during which she would suffer the deaths of several loved ones: her mother in 1950, Marie Closset in 1952, and her father in 1956. Following this last loss, Sarton's relationship fell apart, and she moved to New Hampshire to start over. She was, however, to remain attached to Matlack for the rest of her life, and Matlack's death in 1983 affected her keenly.
Honey in the Hive
, published in 1988, is about their relationship.
While the 1950s were a time of great personal upheaval for Sarton, they were a time of success in equal measure. In 1956, her novel
Faithful Are the Wounds
was nominated for a National Book Award, followed by nominations in 1958 for
The Birth of a Grandfather
and a volume of poetry,
In Time Like Air
; some consider the latter to be one of Sarton's best books of poetry. In 1965, she published
Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
, which is frequently referred to as her coming-out novel. From then on, her work became a key point of reference in the fields of feminist and LGBT literature. Strongly opposed to being categorized as a lesbian writer, Sarton constantly strove to ensure that her portraits of humanity were relatable to a universal audience, regardless of readers' sexual identities.
In 1974, Sarton published her first children's book,
Punch's Secret
, followed by
A Walk Through the Woods
in 1976. During the seventies, Sarton was diagnosed with breast cancerâthe beginning of a long and arduous illness. However, she continued to work during this difficult period and received a spate of critical acclaim for her literary contributions.
In 1990, she suffered a severe stroke that reduced her concentration span and her ability to write, although she did continue to dictate her journals when she could. Sarton died of breast cancer on July 16, 1995. She is buried in Nelson, New Hampshire.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1961 by May Sarton
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8551-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
EBOOKS BY MAY SARTON
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
