The Sisters Montclair

by Cathy Holton

  Alice sat very still with her hands in her lap, staring straight ahead at the wall. “Bib me,” she said.

  Stella put the sandwich down and looked at her. “Sorry?”

  Alice pointed with one bony finger at a plastic baby bib folded on a corner of the desk. Stella got up and tied the bib carefully around Alice’s neck.

  “I don’t know whose idea this was,” Alice said. “I just do as I’m told.”

  They ate for awhile in silence. Stella quickly learned that Alice’s hearing, like her mind, seemed to come and go. It was best to simply wait and let Alice begin the conversation because asking questions irritated her. She was a good lip reader but she couldn’t read lips with Stella sitting beside her, and it frustrated her. At other times, Alice’s hearing would become suddenly acute, and she would hear the distant chiming of a clock or some whispered comment made by Stella.

  While she ate, Stella stared at a funny card of an old woman in a flowered dress and tennis shoes wielding a baseball bat displayed prominently on the shelf above them.

  Alice said, “My son, Roddy, gave that to me for my birthday.”

  “How many children do you have, Alice?”

  “Three.” She frowned, her face clouding slightly, and said, “Two.” She pointed at another photograph, higher up on the shelves, of an attractive middle-aged couple. “That’s Roddy and his wife, Hadley. She’s cut her hair since then. She looks better now.” Alice stared at the photograph a moment and then continued eating. “She’s a real talented sculptor. I’ve never known a sculptor before. She did a bust of Roddy and I walked into the dining room and thought, ‘Oh my God, she’s cut Roddy’s head off.’ It was that real. Now she’s got heads of Roddy all over the lawn.”

  “Does she sell her sculptures?”

  Alice turned slowly and stared at Stella. “Who would want a head of Roddy?”

  “No, I mean, does she do other people?”

  “No. Just Roddy.”

  After Alice finished her lunch, Stella fixed her a scoop of ice cream. She was still nervous around the old woman, afraid she might say the wrong thing or show her lack of refinement through some inadvertent word or action. She felt guarded around Alice, carefully weighing her words before speaking. It made her feel, at times, tongue-tied and stupid.

  When Stella sat down again, she pointed at a tarnished brass golf trophy in the glass case that read, Duffer’s Trophy. “Is that your husband’s?”

  Alice thought this was funny. She chuckled for a moment, her shoulders shaking. “Bill Whittington must be turning over in his grave,” she said. She spooned her ice cream, her lips moving slowly. “He was a golfing fanatic. We used to have to sit on the back row of Sunday services so he could sneak out early to get to the club. He didn’t believe women should play golf, and on the day I won the Duffer’s Trophy, he was furious. I and Louise Parramore had gone along with Bill and Baxter Parramore for a club couples’ tournament. It made Bill Whittington mad, the way Louise and I didn’t take it seriously, the way we sat in the back of the cart giggling. And when I won the Duffer’s Trophy and got up and made a pretty little speech, he was so embarrassed. On the way home, he said ‘Good God, Alice, it’s not a compliment to win the Duffer’s Trophy. It means you have no business being on a golf course.’ But I didn’t care. I put it right up on the front shelf where everyone could see it, right up beside his trophies. We had a cabinet filled with his golf trophies but I put most of them in the attic when he died.”

  Stella had a sudden image of Alice and Louise Parramore giggling in the back of the golf cart, while their husbands looked on in stern disapproval.

  She grinned. “Alice,” she said. “I bet you were something.”

  “Oh, I was something, all right.” Alice smiled serenely. She finished her ice cream and pushed the bowl away, bending her neck meekly, like a child.

  “De-bib me,” she said.

  After lunch, it was nap time. Alice lay down on the top coverlet of one of the twin beds with her tennis shoes on, and Stella wrapped her up like a mummy.

  “Night, night,” Alice said, and a few minutes later, she was breathing deeply.

  Stella wandered the quiet house. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but if she had, she would have expected them to reside in a house like this, filled with the prized possessions of people long dead. The oil portrait of the young woman in the foyer was Alice’s great-great-grandmother who had died at the age of twenty-eight giving birth to her sixth child. Alice had told her the story earlier that morning, as they began their exercise circuit.

  “My great-great-grandfather is supposed to have said, I killed her. I loved her too much. He was broken-hearted. Her name was Alice, too. I’m named for her, and as a girl the story of her death horrified me. Love seemed to me a mysterious and dangerous emotion. I used to stand in front of her portrait and vow never to fall in love. Never to marry.”

  “So what happened?” Stella said.

  Alice turned her head and let her blue eyes rest for a moment on Stella’s face.

  “Life,” she said. “Life happened.”

  Stella wandered slowly through the large living room, trying not to touch anything, her arms crossed behind her back. An old-fashioned sofa, low and wide with intricately carved feet, faced the fireplace which was flanked by two chintz-covered wingback chairs. An assortment of pillows covered the sofa’s back, framing a black velvet cushion that read, Queen of Everything. On all the tables and book cases scattered throughout the room there were silver-framed photographs of a dark-haired man with black-rimmed glasses. Bill Whittington, Stella guessed. He was dressed always in a suit, and there was a pompous, self-satisfied air about him that Stella didn’t like. He was a small man but you could see that he had been vain and fastidious about his appearance. Oddly, there were no photographs of Alice as a young woman. There were a few of her as a child, and one or two of her as a middle-aged woman, but nothing else. The room, with its many photographs of Bill Whittington covering the tables and shelves, seemed almost like a shrine.

  On the dining room sideboard there were more silver-framed photographs of children and grandchildren, some sporting Alice’s clear blue eyes and blonde hair. Others resembled her husband, with their dark hair and eyes and their broad lantern jaws. Stella, who had only seen one photograph of her grandmother as a girl, was amazed, looking at the Whittington clan, at the certain passing of genetic material from one generation to the next.

  On the far wall near the dining room windows was an oil portrait of a young woman in a blue evening gown. Her hair was blonde and she wore it pulled back in the style of Grace Kelly. She was strikingly beautiful, and her face was turned slightly to the side, so that she seemed to be gazing off into the distance with a mild, dreamy expression on her face, a slight smile curving her lips. Stella had noticed the portrait several times as she and Alice made their rounds this morning, but she had not walked close enough to see it clearly. It hung on the wall above a mahogany chest cluttered with silver serving pieces.

  Staring at the portrait Stella became gradually aware of the creaking of floorboards behind her, as if someone was walking along the hall. She turned and stared, and the creaking stopped. She stood for a moment listening intently, but heard nothing besides the distant whirring of the refrigerator.

  She turned back to the portrait. The young woman’s face seemed oddly familiar, and feeling a slight tremor, a cold touch at the nape of her neck, she thought, Now, who does she remind me of?

  She wandered into the sunroom and picked up the biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. “She was a Sweet Briar alum, too,” Alice had told her. “I never met her but I used to get fund raising letters from her all the time.” She sat down in a small upholstered chair. Sunlight fell in wide swaths across the tiled floor. After some time, drowsy with the heat and the soft sound of Alice’s breathing on the monitor, Stella closed her eyes. She folded her hands on the book nestled in her lap. How pleasant to live like this, removed completely from the c
ares of the world, shut up behind thick protective walls like a princess in an enchanted castle.

  After awhile, Stella dozed.

  She awoke gradually to the sound of whispering on the monitor. It had been continuing steadily, she realized, coming out of sleep into wakefulness. She had heard it in her dreams. It was a deep voice she heard now, low and hoarse and anguished.

  Laura. Oh my God, Laura.

  Stella sat up. The book slid out of her lap onto the floor with a loud clap. She was instantly awake, the hair on her arms rising. The voice she had heard was so tormented that she could feel it like a tremor along her spine.

  She leaned forward, listening intently. The only sound now was Alice’s soft breathing, followed a few minutes later by the noise of the bedsprings giving as she rolled over. The sudden, loud ringing of the bell made Stella jump.

  “Jesus,” she said.

  She got up quickly, walking down the long dark hallway, past the locked front door, to Alice’s bedroom. The elderly woman was sitting on the edge of her bed, her hands in her lap, her hair standing up behind her head like a dove’s wing. She looked confused, disturbed.

  “Alice, are you okay?”

  “I need to go to the bathroom, please.”

  She helped Alice to the bathroom and then got her settled again on the bed, her puzzle books spread around her. She seemed less confused now, more aware of her surroundings, yet there was a distance in her gaze, a slump of defeat in her shoulders.

  “Family Feud is on at four,” Alice said.

  Stella stopped in the doorway and looked at her.

  “You have to turn it on for me because I don’t know how to use the clicker.”

  “I can do that,” Stella said, wondering now if she had dreamed the voice on the monitor. With the sunlight streaming into the bedroom it seemed impossible that she had heard what she thought she heard.

  “But first we have to do our exercises.”

  “Yes,” Stella said. She stood in the doorway, hesitating.

  “And after that, you’ll need to check the mail.”

  “Okay.”

  “And get me my Ensure.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll ring when I’m ready to walk.”

  Stella went out. Halfway down the long hallway to the kitchen she stopped, her hand to her throat. The heavy front door, which she had passed just a short time before, stood wide open.

  The dream hovered at the edge of her consciousness, buzzing around her like a swarm of angry bees. The memory of it faded but the feelings it evoked did not. Alice sat on the edge of the bed, stunned, frozen. The dreams were becoming more insistent now, trying to tell her something, to wake her from her self-imposed slumber.

  Yesterday, she had seen Bill Whittington. He was standing in the doorway watching her with a severe expression as if to say, Look at you. Didn’t I say you would end this way?

  She drew herself up and turned her head and when she looked again, he was gone.

  And now the girl with the heart-shaped face was there, standing in the doorway and smiling her sad smile, and her face was so familiar it caused a stirring in Alice’s heart and a quickening of her breath, so much like the beloved’s face, and yet not her at all.

  Are you all right? the girl’s expression seemed to say.

  No, I am not all right, Alice thought. I will never be all right.

  Stella was surprised how tired she was at the end of that first day. The bell rang continuously. Alice could not close the blinds or change the channel on the TV or pick up a large book without assistance. Stella had brought her laptop but she hadn’t opened it, spending the entire day reading and dozing and listening for the sound of the bell, the strange creaking noises of the old house.

  After dinner she got Alice settled in her room with Wheel of Fortune blaring on the television, and she went back to the kitchen and washed the dishes and put them away in the cabinets. Alice had so few dishes and it seemed ridiculous to stack them in the cavernous dishwasher and so she washed everything by hand. The light was dying in the west and a rosy glow filled the kitchen. Stella stood at the sink feeling exhausted and sleepy. It was seven-thirty and the night caregiver would arrive at eight. She tried to remember what Janice had told her about getting Alice ready for bed.

  “It’s like taking care of a big old baby,” Alice said, as Stella helped her undress. She put her arms up so Stella could pull her dress over her head, but at the last minute she said impatiently, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Her head reappeared from the dress and she carefully pulled each sleeve off at the wrist. “There,” she said. “Now it’s right side out.” She sat on the edge of the bed in her slip and tennis shoes watching while Stella neatly folded the dress.

  “Would you like to wear a different dress tomorrow?” Stella asked.

  “No, I would not.”

  Alice pointed at the pink sweater that lay folded on the bed beside her. “Here, take this and hang it on the back of that chair.”

  Stella took the green dress and folded it neatly over a small chair in the corner. Then she took the pink sweater and arranged it carefully across the back.

  Behind her Alice said in a querulous voice, “Wait. What are you doing?”

  “You said to hang it on the back of the chair.”

  “Why do you have my sweater? Where did you get that?”

  “You were wearing it. You gave it to me to hang up.”

  “Sweaters belong in that closet over there.”

  “Okay. I’ll hang it in the closet then.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I was wearing it. Put it on the back of that chair.”

  Her tone was different than it had been earlier in the day, impatient, petulant. She was like a stranger sitting there, her eyes fixed suspiciously on Stella. Stella helped her take off her tennis shoes and Alice went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth. Stella pulled down the bed covers the way Janice had showed her. Alice came out of the bathroom, pushing the walker in front of her. She sat on the edge of the bed in her slip and socks with her hair standing up around her head in curly wisps. Stella laid Alice’s nightgown out on the bed beside her and then she began to smooth baby oil on Alice’s arms, shoulders, and legs. Her skin was mottled and purple with bruises and it soaked up the oil like old parchment.

  “Did you ever see such a mess?” Alice said, staring down at her helpless body.

  Stella, embarrassed, said, “Does this help with the dryness?” The old woman seemed to be coming in and out of awareness. Twice she looked at Stella as if she had no idea who she was and once she called her, Martha.

  “Put some of that in my hand,” Alice said, holding out one cupped hand twisted with arthritis. “So I can put it on my face.”

  Stella tried to tap some into her palm but the oil wouldn’t come. Alice sighed. Stella tried again. Alice made a low whistling sound, an obvious expression of disgust, and Stella felt her face warm.

  She gave a more vigorous squeeze and this time the oil spurted out of the bottle into Alice’s palm and ran down onto her slip.

  “Oh, Lord,” Alice said.

  Stella quickly capped the bottle and dabbed at Alice’s slip with a Kleenex. It was embarrassing and yet comical, too. She giggled nervously.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Alice watched her, gingerly applying the oil to her face. “I don’t know that you’re cut out to be a caregiver,” she said.

  “I’ll get it, Alice. I promise. I’m fairly intelligent.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Alice said serenely.

  Three

  The next morning Stella cornered Elaine in the kitchen before she clocked out.

  “I have to ask you something,” Stella said. “I hope you won’t think I’m crazy.”

  “You didn’t get her to change her dress.”

  “What? Oh, no, I asked her but she said no.”

  Elaine stared, her eyes blue and emotionless.

  Stella hesitated. “Have you ever h
eard footsteps in the hallway? Or had a strange feeling down in the basement?”

  Elaine gave Stella a long, inscrutable look. “Are you asking me if the house is haunted? Because I’ve been here three years and I’ve never seen or heard anything out of the ordinary.” She crossed her arms over her chest, considering. “There was an evening caregiver a few years ago who woke up in the middle of the night and swore she saw an Indian standing in her room. She left and never came back. And there was another one who said she saw a man wearing plaid pants watching her in the basement. But they’re the only ones I know of.”

  “I heard whispering on the monitor.”

  Elaine’s expression was mildly condescending and Stella wished now she hadn’t said anything. She was a psychology major and she’d taken enough classes to know that ghostly hallucinations are often projections of inner emotional turmoil. Given that definition, it was amazing that she didn’t see phantoms everywhere.

  Elaine gave a slight shrug. “Alice talks in her sleep. I’ve heard her.”

  “But this voice was low and very – husky. It didn’t sound like her.”

  “Her voice is fairly deep.” Elaine smirked suddenly and Stella understood why Alice didn’t like her.

  She said, “Did Alice have a daughter?”

  Elaine stopped smiling and shook her head. “No. Three sons. Although one is dead and we don’t ever talk about him. Sam, I think his name was. Her husband’s been dead a long time, too, and we don’t ever talk about him either.”

  “Okay, well, thanks. I feel a lot better knowing that you’ve never seen or heard anything weird.”

  “If there’s nothing else,” Elaine said, gathering her crochet and stuffing it into her sewing bag. “I guess I’ll clock out.” She picked up the phone and called in and Stella went over and wrote her name in the book and read through Elaine’s notes from the night before. Alice seemed restless, she had written. She didn’t sleep well. Once she got up without waiting for me and went into the bathroom and turned on the light. Very sarcastic this morning.