Sybil at Sixteen

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

  “Were things ever that good?” Sybil finally asked.

  Evvie nodded. “They were,” she said. “Not consistently, but at their best, things were wonderful.”

  “Until the accident,” Thea said. “That’s when everything changed.”

  “I think Sybil’s aware of that,” Evvie said. “Besides, it isn’t even true.”

  “It’s true enough,” Sybil said. It always came back to the accident. Four years before at Thanksgiving. The hit-and-run driver. No insurance to cover the costs of the operations and the physical therapy. Nick’s obsessive need for Sybil to walk again. The constant moves from one rehab place to another, each one promising more than it ultimately could deliver. Meg growing weary, weary of the moves, the false hopes, the endless exercises she worked Sybil through. Meg growing weary even of Nick, the man who had been dearer to her than life. And Nick, losing his obsessive drive to make money, to make deals, to start all over, full of promise, full of potential. All he cared about was Sybil, so all Sybil cared about was herself. She couldn’t let Nick down. She couldn’t let the destruction of her family be for nothing. She owed them her health. She owed them an uncrippled body, two strong legs gliding through the hallways. She owed them for the jobs they’d taken to work their way through college, for Claire’s elopement, and her giving up any thoughts of further education to earn money fast by modeling. She owed them for all those dreams of Nick’s that had been smashed that day by some unknown driver. She owed them for the house they’d had to sell, for the piano Meg had never gotten to own. They might never ask a thing of her, or they might ask the world of her, and it didn’t matter. Whatever she could offer would never be enough.

  “Oh, no,” Claire said. “Can you hear it?”

  “What?” Evvie asked.

  “Nicky’s playing with the radio,” Claire said. “Listen hard. You can hear him fiddling with the stations.”

  “This was so much easier when we still had the stereo,” Thea said. “Sybil, are you ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Sybil said. She got up carefully off the bed, and flexed her legs. They were stiff from sitting in one position for so long, but the pain was manageable. Thank God it was a sunny, dry day.

  “The birthday waltz,” Claire said. “I finally kicked Nicky in the shins when I was fourteen, and he stopped making me dance with him.”

  “I always loved our waltzes,” Thea said, getting up and stretching with an ease Sybil envied. “It was the only time I could pretend Nicky loved me best of all.”

  “We might as well get it over with,” Evvie said. “There’s no stopping Nicky once he gets his mind set on waltzing.”

  “If you’re not up to it, don’t do it,” Claire said.

  “I’m fine,” Sybil said sharply. Last year, she’d waltzed on crutches. The year before in a wheelchair. She’d manage fine this year, if they’d just leave her alone.

  The four sisters walked down the stairs, Sybil holding on to the banister and willing her legs to cooperate. Meg and Sam were seated in the living room, and Sybil noticed that Evvie walked immediately over to Sam. Thea and Claire moved to one side, and Nick strolled to Sybil’s side and took her gently by the arm.

  “You’re sixteen now,” he said. “Sixteen is a special age in this family.”

  Sybil nodded. She knew sixteen for her would never be the magical age it had been for Meg and Evvie. They had both fallen in love at sixteen. But that didn’t mean sixteen couldn’t be special for her, too. She had her family, she had her home. No wheelchair, no crutches. The world might not be perfect, but Sybil didn’t expect perfection, never really had. All she wanted was a decent chance, and that she finally had.

  The radio began a waltz, and Nick bowed his still-handsome head to Sybil, who smiled, secure in his love. It was their moment, their dance, and it was perfect.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Have some more pancakes, Thea.”

  “Megs, no, I couldn’t eat another biteful.”

  “I don’t know what’s become of you girls,” Meg declared. “It used to be you were each good for a half dozen or more pancakes. Now it’s three bites and you’re out.”

  “I don’t know what Thea’s excuse is,” Claire said. “I have to watch every calorie for professional reasons.”

  “My excuse is I’m full,” Thea declared. “Megs, your pancakes are as delicious as ever. I fantasize about them sometimes. Especially on Sunday mornings.”

  Meg Sebastian rubbed her hands across her apron and smiled. Sybil couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother so happy. She silently thanked Claire for treating Thea to the trip, and then she thanked Aunt Grace for the use of the house. It was the one semi-nice thing Aunt Grace had ever done.

  “Sybil, you can manage a few more, can’t you?” Meg asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Sybil replied. “Thanks, anyway.”

  “I wish Evvie and Sam had come for breakfast,” Meg said. “Sam at least has an appetite.”

  “You should have had sons,” Claire said, and she gave her mother a kiss. “Lumberjacks.”

  “Right,” Meg said. “Nicky would have loved that.”

  The girls laughed, and Sybil marveled once again at how right everything felt. It wasn’t as though this was the first time in years they’d been together. There had been Christmas after all, and Thea and Evvie had both gone to Oregon for Claire’s high-school graduation. But this was better. This was home.

  “When’s Clark coming over?” Claire asked.

  “Around two,” Meg replied. “I don’t suppose I can convince all of you to change your plans for tomorrow. He was looking forward so to having us all over for Easter dinner.”

  “Sorry, Megs,” Thea said. “I accepted the Hugheses’ invitation ages ago without really thinking.”

  “Clark’ll be just as happy not to have me over tomorrow,” Claire said. “There’s no love lost between us.”

  “That simply isn’t true,” Meg declared, but Claire merely smiled. Sybil, once again, tried to figure out what had happened at the elopement. Clark Bradford was a cousin of sorts to Scotty Hughes, as well as being Meg’s oldest friend. Scotty had been staying at Clark’s when he ran off with Claire. Knowing Clark, he’d been promoting a relationship between Scotty and Thea, just as a couple of years before he had promoted one between Evvie and Schyler. Evvie ended up with Sam, Scotty ended up, however temporarily, with Claire, and Claire, Sybil suspected, had her heart set on ending up with Schyler. Sybil grinned. Clark was never one for getting what he really wanted, but when confronted with Meg Winslow Sebastian and her four daughters, he really knew failure.

  “What’s so funny?” Claire asked her.

  “I was thinking about Sam,” Sybil said. “And how much he’d enjoy Easter dinner with Clark.”

  Even Meg laughed at the idea. “I suppose it’s for the best,” she said. “You and Claire at Evvie’s, and then Thea joining you there, while Nicky and I have dinner with Clark. We had to do something after all. It’s our first Easter since we moved to Boston. I just hate the idea of us not being together.”

  “You’ll still be stuck with us Monday and Tuesday,” Thea pointed out. “And Monday Evvie’s coming over for lunch all by herself. I don’t remember the last time I saw her without Sam.”

  “They are joined at the hip,” Claire said. “I thought they’d be past that stage by now.”

  “Sometimes you don’t get over it,” Meg said. “Now I want all of us to be very organized on Monday. We have a wedding to plan, and not that much time to do it in.”

  “Evvie and Sam,” Thea said.

  “Finally,” Claire said.

  “They wanted to wait until Evvie’s graduation,” Sybil said.

  “And they were right to,” Meg said. “Besides, it’s given Sam a chance to settle in at the paper. June is the perfect time for them to get married. They’ll have the summer to adjust before Evvie starts graduate school.”

  “Did you want to be a June brid
e?” Thea asked.

  Meg smiled. “I wanted to be an immediate bride,” she said. “I didn’t care what month or season just as long as it was soon. Which, of course, it wasn’t. Aunt Grace saw to that. And then, when Nicky and I finally did get married, it didn’t matter what time of year it was. It was just the two of us. I’m glad Evvie’s going to have something more formal, even if we can’t afford a big affair.”

  “Did I hear the word affair?” Nick asked, walking into the kitchen. “Who’s having one and do I approve?”

  “I was talking about weddings,” Meg said. Nick gave her a kiss, and stood with his arm around her shoulders.

  “We had a perfect one,” Nick said. “You were the most beautiful bride in the world, Daisy.”

  Sybil glanced at her sisters and saw they were as pleased as she was. Even Claire was smiling. There was so much love in Nick’s voice, especially when he used his pet name for Meg. Only he called her Daisy. It had been a long time since Sybil could remember seeing Nick so contented.

  “What are your plans for the day, Nicky?” Meg asked. “Don’t forget, Clark is coming around two.”

  “You had to remind me,” Nick said. “In that case, Sybil and I had better go for our walk right now.”

  “Oh, Nicky, do I have to?” Sybil asked. “Can’t we take the day off for once?”

  “It’s too nice a day to stay indoors,” Nick declared. “Come on, Sybil. Let’s stroll around the block a few times, and we’ll give Thea and Claire a chance to visit with Daisy.”

  “You can pick me up some milk,” Meg said. “And a dozen eggs. In case any of you develop an appetite.”

  “Good,” Nick said. “We now have motivation. Sybil, are you ready?”

  “I guess,” Sybil said. She followed Nick to the front hallway, got her cane from the closet, and walked outside with him. Nick was right. It was a beautiful April day. Ordinarily, she enjoyed the ritual of their daily walk. It had begun when one of her physical therapists had suggested walking as a way of strengthening her legs. That had been back in Oregon, well after Nick had stopped doing her exercises with her.

  At first he had insisted on doing them, wouldn’t even let Meg help, but it became obvious that he couldn’t handle the job. Sybil had cried easily in those days, and it hadn’t helped that Nick kept pushing her past her limits. She knew why he was doing it, and she never really got angry at him, but she kept crying, and after a while Nick started joining her, and they all realized they couldn’t keep on that way. So Meg had taken over the exercises and she’d proven to be very good at it. She wouldn’t let Sybil quit, but she didn’t push her past the point of exhaustion, either. Claire helped out, and in the beginning so did Thea, but it had mostly been Meg who did the grunt work.

  Which, of course, left Nick feeling useless. So when walks were suggested, he immediately volunteered. He and Sybil got into the habit of a daily walk, except when the weather was bad. It had been a long time, she realized. When their walks first began, she was still using a walker. Now she was down to a cane, and sometimes at the beginning of their walk, she didn’t even need that. But it came in handy when she tired out, which she almost always did.

  “It’s good having Thea and Claire home,” Nick said, as they began their stroll. “But I’m glad to have some time alone with you.”

  “Me, too,” Sybil said. Their walks had become a special time for both of them. “Don’t they look wonderful, though?”

  Nick nodded. “Thea seems happier than she’s been in a while,” he said. “Maybe she finally has Kip out of her system.”

  “I think she’s excited about becoming a doctor,” Sybil said. “It gives her a focus.”

  Nick grinned. “You know all about focus, don’t you,” he said. “You’re the queen of focus.”

  “I would have thought Claire was,” Sybil said. “I can’t get over how successful she is.”

  “She can’t get over it, either,” Nick said. “A little power is a dangerous thing for Claire.”

  “Why don’t you like her?” Sybil asked. She’d never been so direct with Nick before. But now she felt she could ask, maybe because Claire was home to protect her. Sybil had spent a lot of years being protected by Claire. It was a comfortable position.

  “I like Claire,” Nick said. “I certainly love her. Why? Has she been playing unloved child again?”

  “No,” Sybil said. “It’s just the tone you get in your voice when you talk about her. And you don’t seem to be comfortable looking at her, either. You haven’t been in a long time.” Since the elopement, she thought, but she wasn’t sure, since that had been a crazy time for her, and her perceptions might have been off.

  Nick paused for a moment, then took Sybil’s hand and put it in his. They continued to walk hand in hand. “You’ve always had a good eye for other people,” he declared. “I remember once, you couldn’t have been more than four, you asked me why Clark didn’t like me. I knew Clark had never said a negative word about me in front of any of you girls, and your sisters never seemed to realize just how much he didn’t care for me, so you figured it out on your own, just based on watching him and me together.”

  “What did you tell me?” Sybil asked.

  “I said I married Daisy and Clark loved her, too,” Nick replied. “The simple truth. You understood that. Actually, for a while after that, you were quite cold to Clark whenever we saw him. I’m not sure he noticed, though. Clark isn’t the most perceptive of men.”

  Sybil looked at the trees just beginning to bud. Soon they’d be green. Her first spring in Boston. She was eager to see how many flowers there would be, how warm it would get. Winter had been beautiful, but cold and icy, and ice in particular was her enemy. She’d taken three bad falls during the winter. One had left her immobile for close to a week. She tried to remember what it had been like just to be able to walk, no big deal, one easy step after another, but it had been too many years, too many crises ago. “You still haven’t answered about Claire,” she said.

  “Claire’s always wanted something from me that I can’t give her,” Nick replied. “She feels that just because she looks like me, she is like me.”

  “But she is,” Sybil declared. “Everybody knows that.”

  Nick laughed. “Everybody assumes that,” he said. “And in some ways, it’s true. Claire is like me at my worst. That’s not to say she’s bad. Just that she has all my character flaws. Just as you’re like me at my best. You have all the good I have to offer.”

  “Like what?” Sybil asked.

  “Like determination,” Nick replied. “Ambition. The willingness to work hard to change the conditions of your life.”

  Sybil thought about that. It was true Claire never expected to work. Things had a way of happening for her that she seemed to take for granted. Sybil took nothing for granted.

  “What about Evvie and Thea?” she asked. “Are they like you?”

  “More like Daisy,” Nick said. “Evvie has Daisy’s strengths, and Thea has her weaknesses.”

  “I never knew Megs had any weaknesses,” Sybil said.

  “You’re right,” Nick said. “Teach me to be too simplistic.”

  Sybil laughed. She thought about what Thea had said about the birthday waltzes. These walks for Sybil were the times when she knew Nick loved her best of all. She couldn’t imagine him talking this way to any of her sisters. Not that he didn’t love them. But he was never quite as open with them as he was with Sybil.

  “You said Claire expects things of you,” Sybil said. “But we all do. We all expect you to be a magician, to pull fortunes out of a hat. We expect you to make us feel beautiful and smart and important. We expect miracle cures from you.”

  “Then I must constantly be letting you down,” Nick said. “Why do you put up with me?”

  “You don’t let us down,” Sybil said. “Well, maybe Claire, but I have a feeling that she has higher expectations than the rest of us.”

  “Claire thinks if she acts the way I do, then I
’ll love her even more,” Nick said. “Only she doesn’t realize I don’t especially care for the way I act much of the time. I used to. I used to think I was quite extraordinary. Not when I was young. But after I met Daisy. I felt blessed then, as though I’d been covered in silver and gold, as though just the sound of my shoes on the pavement was music. And when you have an attitude like that, people smile on you, and the fates are kind, and you get what you want, and I did. I got Daisy. It took longer than it should have, but finally I won. And then we waited a while longer, until the fates were kind again, and we had Evvie, and then Thea, and Claire, and finally you. I couldn’t believe it. With each one of you girls, I’d go into your bedroom, and watch you sleeping, and marvel that not only did I have a family at last, but I had such an extraordinary one. I hope someday you have a taste of that kind of happiness. It can’t last forever, it’s too perfect, but it makes everything else endurable just to have known it for a while.”

  “Then what happened?” Sybil asked. She could remember when Meg would tell them the story of the day she and Nick first met. It was their favorite story, even Claire’s, when they were little.

  “Then reality set in,” Nick said. “My magic cloak got tattered. My shoes no longer made music. The fates grew bored with me, and rightly so. Sometimes I scored, sometimes I didn’t. Daisy kept loving me, and grew even more beautiful, and you girls grew up and became not just creatures for me to love, but individuals with your own needs and desires, and Evvie went off to Eastgate and came back with Sam, and then Thea fell in love with Kip, and Claire decided she could run the world very well on her own, and things were never quite the same.”

  “And I had my accident,” Sybil said.

  “Yes,” Nick said. “That happened also.”

  Sybil stared into the window of a well-kept brownstone. People on Beacon Hill knew how to maintain appearances. Nick used to be that way. No matter how his life might be going, he always shone. When had he lost that?