The Sisters Montclair

by Cathy Holton

  There was a hiss of brakes and then the sharp blast of a whistle, and slowly, imperceptibly, the train began to move. On the front row an elderly couple sat shoulder to shoulder, swaying gently to the rocking of the train.

  She could not see Bill now, and she was anxious suddenly that he had gotten off the train, and would be left behind. As if sensing her distress, Sam looked up at her and smiled.

  Don’t worry, mommy. It will be all right.

  Gazing down into his sweet face she was overcome by a feeling of love so intense she could hardly breathe. Her heart swelled and thumped in her chest like a drum. She smiled tenderly, brushing his delicate cheek with her fingers.

  The train had begun to pick up speed, shifting and swaying. She could see Bill now, standing at the front with his back to her. She relaxed and turned to the window. The crowd was gone and the train was hurtling through sunlit fields beneath a deep blue sky. Mountains rose in the distance. The warm weight of Sam against her, the drowsy scent of his hair, awakened something in her and the dream shifted suddenly, in the way that dreams do, to another scene.

  She was at her grandmother’s house and she could see Roddy and Sawyer playing in the yard. She was hovering somewhere above them, unseen, and she could feel herself rising, being drawn away like a feather on a breeze. Her sons were no more than two small figures now, she could see the tops of their heads as they played in the grass, and she tried to call out to them as she rose but neither one could hear her. At the last minute Sawyer raised his blonde head and looked up at her and she knew that he’d been crying.

  And then suddenly she was back on the swaying train, hurtling toward some unknown destination. She felt an overwhelming sense of grief and panic at having left her two sons behind. She tried to call out to Bill, to tell him about the lost boys, but his back was to her, he was sturdily facing the front, and she knew he would not hear her. She put her head down and began to cry.

  Sam looked up at her with his bright blue eyes, smiling his angelic smile.

  “Mommy, don’t be sad,” he said in his sweet, sing-song voice.

  Mommy.

  Don’t be sad.

  Outside the window, the sky had darkened to a deep purple tinged with gold. Evening was coming on. Alice faced the front, realizing that the scene had changed again. She had the feeling that something cataclysmic was going to happen. The front of the car was flooded now with a bright light, growing ever brighter like the headlight of an oncoming train, and Alice wondered if they were going to collide. The girl at the front of the train was gone. The train lurched suddenly and the elderly gentleman took off his hat and set it on his lap, touching the old woman gently on the shoulder, and it was then that Alice, with a flutter of anxious surprise, recognized her father and mother.

  It was some kind of a strange virus, the doctor told them, something they’d been seeing a lot of out on the West coast and were just beginning to see down here. It was prevalent among certain groups, he said, avoiding their eyes, certain populations. Sam had probably been sick for some time but was just beginning to show the later stages of the disease.

  Alice and Bill had gone down to Atlanta to collect him and bring him home to Chattanooga. When she saw him that first time, Alice would not have recognized him. Her beautiful boy, gone. The man in the bed was pale and sweaty and his skin was covered in hideous lesions. His hair had fallen out in clumps so that the scalp showed through under the fluorescent lights, delicate and speckled as a robin’s egg.

  “Well, my boy, what have you done to yourself?” Bill said in a jovial voice, clasping Sam’s slendar hand in his own.

  He looked up at his father, his eyelids fluttering. “Hello, pops,” he said in a thin, hollow voice. He smiled and something of the old Sam surfaced, forcing itself into his haggard features.

  Alice leaned over and kissed him. “My darling,” she said.

  “Don’t cry, Mother.”

  His room mate of the past five years, Charles, stood up to greet them. “Mr. and Mrs. Whittington,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

  Alice wanted to say, “You can run along now. His mother has come.” She wanted to say, “Why are you here?”

  Bill still had hold of his hand, pumping foolishly. “We’ll have you out of here in no time, old sport,” he said.

  “Sure, pops.”

  His beautiful hands were lumpy and veined like the hands of an old man. “When they come to put in the IV the veins disappear,” Charles told them, his eyes bright with love and awe and something else. (Relief, Alice guessed. Relief that it was not him lying in that bed.) “It’s as if the vein senses the coming needle and hides itself away.”

  Sam was forty-two and he looked eighty. The shock of his appearance brought it home to Alice, all the words the doctor had said that she had taken in without understanding. No cure. Final stages. End of life plan.

  She would bargain with God.

  She searched and found a small chapel on the bottom floor. She was glad now that it was a Catholic hospital, glad for the chance to express this altered version of herself, a woman who could fall on her knees and pray sincerely and unselfconsciously for miracles. A woman who believed that miracles were possible.

  The chapel was empty. She slid into one of the pews, pulled down the kneeling bench, and knelt to pray. Please God, don’t take my child. I’ll do anything you say. I’ll become anyone you want. What could she offer? Her life for his. Her health, her wealth, her reputation. Not the other children, though. She snatched this thought away quickly. Bill? No, Bill must do his own bargaining.

  The stained glass window at the front shone weakly in the dim light. It showed Saint Jude in a field of lilies carrying a golden image of Christ on his chest. Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. She prayed to him. She prayed to The Virgin Mary. “You who know a mother’s pain at the loss of a son, spare me.”

  She promised rebuilt orphanages, foster children taken in and healed, mission trips to Africa. In the end the prayer took on an angry, wheedling tone.

  Not my son, not my son, so help me God, not my son.

  When he died, it was Bill who fell apart and Alice who made the arrangements. She moved through the hospital, bright-eyed, competent, insistent. No one observing her heightened color, her bossy instructiveness, her ever-ready wit would guess she was a grieving mother.

  They took him back to Chattanooga to bury him among his ancestors. The day was cold and wintry, the sky dark and overhanging. A perfect day for a funeral, she heard someone say, and that part of her that held itself aloof agreed. She felt as if the world was expanding around her and she was growing smaller, shrinking to the size of an atom. The minister’s voice was calm, forceful in its reassurances of God’s love and the promise of resurrection. She imagined herself floating away, rising up above the gathered crowd and the somber landscape, drifting high above the tree tops and the distant ridges of the mountains. Below her, the world seemed to be growing smaller, less relevant.

  In the end it was Bill who brought her back. His touch on her arm anchored her, brought her crashing down to earth. She felt hollowed out by grief, a mere husk, a loose assortment of skin and tissue held together by only the most fragile web of tendons. In the car he said in an anguished voice, “Oh Al, how will we bear it?” and it was then that she let herself go. They collapsed against one another, shaking and weak. Despite all the things that had gone wrong in their marriage, they had a history shared only by the two of them, and now that history included the death of a child.

  It was at that moment of terrible grief that she realized she had never loved him more, had never been more grateful for her choice.

  Arriving at Alice’s house on a hot August morning, Stella found that Elaine had unlocked the front door so that it stood open behind the glass storm door. As always now when she entered Alice’s house, walking quickly past the sunlit library, Stella thought of Anna Karenina and the faded scrap of paper nestled in its pages. She had yet to read the novel but she
had on several different occasions, taken out the translucent scrap to stare at it, feeling that odd prickling of her scalp each time.

  We forgive you.

  Forgive me.

  Who had written it? And why had Alice saved it all these years? There was no doubt that the sister, Laura, had died and that her death had caused some kind of rift in the family, something so deep that neither Alice nor Adeline would speak of her. But how had she died, and when? Stella had searched the web for information on Laura Montclair but the name was common enough for there to be many matches, and there was no way of knowing what her married name might have been. Without more information, an Internet search would be fruitless.

  She wondered if Charlotte might know. She wondered if Charlotte would tell her if she asked.

  Elaine was loading the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher when she walked in.

  “Hello.”

  Elaine glanced over her shoulder. Her hair was pulled into a thick braid that fell nearly to her waist. “Hello,” she said. She pulled out the half-filled upper rack and dropped in two coffee cups. “You know you’re not supposed to run this unless it’s full,” she said to Stella. “They don’t like us wasting water and electricity.”

  “Oh, I never use the dishwasher,” Stella said. “I wash everything by hand.”

  She went into the sunroom to put her purse and her backpack down on the table. When she came back into the kitchen, Elaine was writing something in the book.

  “How’d she sleep?” Stella asked.

  “She didn’t,” Elaine said, writing. “She was very restless. She kept waking up and asking me what that bright light in the hallway was.”

  Stella glanced over at the pile of towels that lay on the floor in front of the basement door. “Am I the only one who ever takes the laundry down?”

  “No one else likes going down there.”

  Stella stared at her blankly. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s creepy down there. And it smells funny.”

  “So you mean they’re afraid to go down?”

  Elaine pursed her lips and looked up from the book, giving her a long impassive stare. “I suppose so,” she said.

  “You told me before there were no ghosts.”

  “I said I’d never seen one.”

  “So you’re not afraid to take the laundry down then?”

  Elaine smiled serenely and shook her head. “Oh, I never go down to the basement alone,” she said.

  Alice was sitting up in bed when Stella walked in.

  “Good morning, Stella,” Alice said.

  “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes. Very well, thank you.” Alice had been to the beauty parlor the day before and her hair was neatly combed and styled. She cocked her head at the window, listening. “Has Elaine left?” she said.

  “Yes. She just clocked out.”

  “Good.” Alice’s face brightened for a moment and then fell. She seemed preoccupied, her lips moving slightly as she stared out the window. Looking at her, Stella wondered what Alice thought about at times like this. She was a mysterious, contradictory woman. She kept her secrets well and Stella knew a thing or two about keeping secrets, and admired her for it. Yet there were moments when Stella could not help but wonder, watching an expression of deep sadness and regret flicker across Alice’s face, if the effort it took to keep such secrets was truly worth the emotional damage.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Alice turned her head. “Yes.”

  “You feel okay this morning?”

  “Better than I’ve felt in some time.” Despite her preoccupied manner, her voice sounded firm and strident. She began to edge her legs toward the side of the bed, readying herself to stand. “I wonder if we might go into the library for a bit this morning.”

  “Sure,” Stella said, hurrying to move the walker closer.

  Alice rose slowly. She stood leaning on the bars of the walker, fixing Stella with a mild, deliberate expression. Her mouth trembled slightly. After a moment, she dipped her chin and dropped her shoulders as if a matter of great importance had been settled.

  “I have a story I’d like to tell you,” she said.

  “Good,” Stella said. “I love your stories.”

  “It’s about people you won’t know. They’ve been gone a long time.”

  “That’s all right.”

  Alice looked up, her eyes searching Stella’s face. “It’s something I’ve never told anyone.”

  Stella straightened, returning her gaze. Her heart began to thump furiously in her chest. She felt again that odd, fleeting uneasiness she sometimes felt when hurrying up the basement stairs. As if there might be something on her heels, something unpleasant and inescapable.

  Alice said, “I’m afraid it might be something of a – burden.”

  Stella steadied herself, forced her breathing to slow. She put her hand out and touched Alice on the arm.

  “You can tell me anything, Al,” she said.

  Sixteen

  Summer, 1935

  Every time she met Brendan Burke she told herself it would be the last time.

  In the beginning, she managed to keep herself detached, to look at the two of them from a distance, as if she was observing two compelling characters in a public place. He took her to out-of-the-way cafes and restaurants; she always met him at some prearranged spot, he never picked her up at the house. It was easy to make excuses to her parents, to tell them she was meeting friends for dinner or a movie. And in the beginning she still accepted dates with other young men, so it was not difficult keeping her mother off-guard.

  But as the summer wore on and she began meeting him more frequently, two or three times a week, she found it more and more difficult to accept dates with others. This should have been a warning to her. An omen. He was different from the other men she had dated, more contained, less willing to reveal himself through false politeness, and she found this quality attractive. He was moody and easily offended by a word or a glance, and whereas in the beginning this hadn’t bothered her, she now began to weigh her words carefully.

  To celebrate the fourth of July, they made arrangements to meet at the river for a picnic. The rest of her family was attending a neighborhood barbecue and Alice was to attend, too, but at the last minute she came downstairs in her dressing gown, complaining of a cold.

  “But I’ve told the McAfees you are coming,” her mother said in a disbelieving voice. She was wearing a wide brimmed hat that shaded her face. Adeline and Laura stood behind her, properly dressed and ready to go. It was the first time in weeks that Alice had seen Laura out of bed, and she looked pale and sickly, her face swollen from the medications the new doctor was prescribing.

  “A summer cold is the worst kind,” her father said, coming briskly into the entry hall where his family waited. He touched Alice on the forehead and then glanced at his wife. “If she’s unwell, she mustn’t come,” he said.

  “Why must I go if Alice doesn’t have to?” Laura said. She wore a shapeless flowered dress and a hat that hid most of her face beneath its brim.

  “Because you haven’t been out of the house in weeks and a little company will do you good,” her mother said, taking her shoulders and giving them a tight squeeze as if to put an end to any argument.

  Laura’s pale eyes settled for a moment on Alice’s face.

  Alice blew her nose loudly into a handkerchief.

  “Well, I don’t want to go to this boring old barbecue either,” Adeline said, raising her chin. She twirled the sash at her waist, staring at herself in the mirror.

  “And that’s enough out of you, too,” Mrs. Montclair said firmly, pushing Adeline ahead of her toward the door.

  “Best behavior,” Mr. Montclair said, wagging one finger in Adeline’s face. “Remember who you are.”

  It was his favorite admonition to his daughters when they left the house. Remember who you are, as if the family’s grand reputation rested entirely on their
narrow shoulders.

  Mrs. Montclair pulled on her white gloves, calling to Nell over one shoulder. Nell appeared in the doorway of the dining room.

  “Nell, bring Miss Alice a hot water bottle and some of that chamomile tea.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

  “Oh, mother, don’t make a fuss,” Alice said.

  “Back to bed,” her mother said, taking Alice’s chin in her gloved fingers and giving it a little shake.

  Adeline opened the front door and stepped out into the hot, humid day, Mr. Montclair following her to the sedan that sat idling in the circular drive.

  “Come along, darling,” Mrs. Montclair said to Laura, going ahead of her through the door.

  Laura stood gazing at her feet; and then suddenly she looked up, tilting her head so that her face was visible under the brim of her hat. Her gaze, direct, scornful, considered, caught Alice by surprise. Even in sickness, she was beautiful, her long neck rimmed by heavy waves of golden hair. Without another word, she turned and followed her mother out into the bright sunshine.

  Alice stood at the opened door staring after her. She had meant to tell Laura from the beginning that she was seeing Brendan. She had practiced a casual speech in her bedroom, but each time they were together, Laura had looked at her calmly, expectantly, and she had been unable to go on. And now it was too late; too much time had passed and such a confession would sound forced and cruel no matter how casually Alice tried to make it. The shock would be too great.

  Still, it would be better if she could confess her feelings to someone. It was hard to know this much happiness and not be able to express it. Lately, she had begun to feel a lingering resentment toward Laura, a feeling that her own happiness was being sacrificed to Laura’s childish whims.

  But now, noting Laura’s swollen ankles and her air of defiant resignation as she walked across the sunlit courtyard and climbed into the sedan behind her mother, Alice could not help but feel a fleeting sense of pity for her sister.

  She took the trolley and got off a few blocks from The Chattanooga Hotel. The trolley was crowded with 4th of July merrymakers on their way up to Point Park, and as she stepped off into the glaring sun several young men in Panama hats whistled and waved streamers at her. The heat was nearly unbearable as she set off toward the red brick hotel, and she wished now she had asked Brendan to meet her at the trolley stop. The town was strangely deserted after the parade, most of the shops closed and the awnings down. Ahead she could see the small, squat Blue Bird Café and behind it the parking lot where she had agreed to meet him.