A Reckoning

by May Sarton

  “It’s not a virus?” Aunt Minna asked, putting her own cup down.

  “No, it’s cancer of both lungs and it’s too far along for an operation to be of any use. Cobalt treatments, the maximum, might hold things up for a few months. I said no to that.” Laura spoke these words without lifting her eyes, spoke them rapidly and loudly.

  “My dear girl—”

  “Well, it’s a very strange feeling.”

  “You’re not going to let yourself die without a fight, are you? Cobalt can work miracles. Why did you say no to it?”

  The sharp attack was unexpected, and Laura reacted with anger. “It’s my death, Aunt Minna, and I shall have it my way, God damn it.” Then she added, “I should have said, God bless it. I believe that people should be allowed their real deaths.”

  “‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’” Aunt Minna had flushed with emotion, and her voice cracked a little as she repeated the famous line.

  “It’s too big—too important for romantic bluster.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.” There was a long pause. Aunt Minna took a swallow of tea, then, “You shouldn’t be mortally ill. I should be. It’s all wrong. It’s a mistake. You’re only sixty, Laura!”

  “Yes, but …”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know how to tell you, but when Dr. Goodwin explained things—he did it very well, by the way, I admired his courage and tact—I had a moment of extraordinary excitement. Death must be the other great adventure, the way through somewhere just as birth is. I felt terribly excited, and when I walked down Marlboro Street to my car, every brick and tree looked so beautiful, I could hardly bear it. The blue sky—”

  But Aunt Minna had withdrawn. Her eyes were closed. Laura was not sure whether she had heard.

  “The trouble is I can’t put it into words.”

  “Go on,” Aunt Minna murmured. But then she opened her eyes, very bright. “You can’t have experienced everything. I’m not ready to die. I don’t want to, not a bit. Every day something happens I wouldn’t have missed for anything.”

  Laura couldn’t help laughing at the intensity with which these words were spoken. “You’re marvelous, that’s all. And we don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

  “Oh, but we must. You appear to be on an express train into infinity—and there’s a great deal I have to say.”

  “I’m not going to tell the children for a while. I expect to go on working for a month or two, but,” Laura said quietly, “I also want just to be. Just to watch the light on the wall. Play music. Read the things I want to read. Cut out the nonessential.”

  “You’re talking about living, not dying.”

  “Am I?” Laura was startled. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “I feel the need for a strong drink,” Aunt Minna announced. “You might fetch the bottle of brandy on the second shelf in the pantry and bring two small glasses.”

  While Laura was in the kitchen, she became aware of having been the bearer of evil tidings to a very old woman. She had been thinking of herself, not of Aunt Minna, of the shock for her, and now she felt dismayed by what she had done. It was all very well to talk about having one’s own death, but the truth was that this was not possible, for one’s own death is inevitably a burden and a problem for everyone else. We can’t die alone.

  “Thanks, dear. Let’s sip a little brandy and talk sensibly. Of course you are absolutely heroically brave.”

  “No, no, I’m not. I just have to think of it as a journey, but out there in the kitchen I realized that it’s not a journey anyone can make alone—other people are involved. And that is awful.”

  “The first thing is to find someone who can live in, cook and so forth. Do it right away so she gets to know you before you are really ill.”

  “I don’t want anybody living in. Hovering about.” The very idea brought on panic.

  “If you’re going to do it your way, you’ve got to plan now.”

  “Oh, Aunt Minna, that’s just what you said when I decided to spend a winter in Paris … do you remember? That was forty years ago. You made me see I had to go to the Sorbonne, not just drift around in bookstores. You were right, of course.”

  “I don’t think Sybille ever quite got over my intervention.”

  “I’ve always wondered—was that what brought on the cool?”

  “Maybe. I went right to your father and persuaded him that you were intelligent enough to be trusted with your own life. Nowadays children run all over Europe with knapsacks, but forty years ago, trips to Europe by young girls were chaperoned. Really, it was quite astonishing that Dwight agreed.”

  “Mamma was terribly upset. We were on the brink of coming home from all those years of wandering about. She was afraid we would never settle down into tame old Boston. And really only Jo wanted to. She plunged into Radcliffe like a duck into water.” Laura sipped her brandy and looked into the fire. “What was it really about, you and Mamma?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There is so much I still have to try to understand. Shall I ever understand Mamma?”

  “Mothers and daughters—it’s not really a very easy relationship, is it?”

  “What was your mother like?”

  “Adorable, witty, neurotic I suppose … the most wholly alive person I’ve ever known.”

  “Then why do you say it wasn’t an easy relationship?”

  “I cared too much. Our father—whom you never knew—was a rigid, rather stupid man, and when I was a child I saw my mother as a caged bird. I felt the wings beating against the bars in myself—I overempathized. That is one of the hazards of being a daughter.”

  “Why a hazard?”

  “The child knows too much in some ways and too little in others—children really have an awfully hard time. You, Jo, and Daphne were no exception.”

  “We were lucky to have an aunt.” Laura began to feel very tired, but she couldn’t bear the idea of going home, not just yet. Here was warmth, the safe enclosure, love. She felt Aunt Minna’s presence to be as much a cordial as the brandy.

  “Sybille might have been a great actress,” Aunt Minna ruminated. “She had the carriage, the beauty—oh, yes, the glamour! The way she wore her clothes, the theatrical lilt of her voice. But people who act offstage are troubling, troubled people, I fear.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I know so.” Aunt Minna was nothing if not definite.

  “She was so beautiful,” Laura said in a faint voice.

  “You all three have it, too—those blue eyes. But luckily for you your good looks did not have the fatal glamour, the something larger than life, unattainable, like a goddess. You could be human.”

  “Yet I wonder whether we ever really were—or are. So much rage, so much energy went into revolt. It took us so long to grow up—and maybe Daphne never will.” Laura got up and went to the window. It was dark now, and what she saw was the roof reflected, and herself, looking as white and exhausted as she felt. “Here I am sixty and I still haven’t solved the riddle of Sybille, nor shall I ever.” She went and kissed Aunt Minna lightly. “And it’s time I drove home.”

  “We haven’t settled anything,” Aunt Minna said, sighing deeply. But she wasn’t going to give up. “Laura, you simply must look for a housekeeper. Promise?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  At the gate she turned back to wave and saw Aunt Minna peer out, unsmiling, give a brief wave, then turn away. It was bad to think of her alone now heating up some soup, having to bear the weight of what Laura had had to tell her. It was cold in the car, and Laura shivered. Home seemed eons away across the snow, but in the little cocoon, simply on her way, with nothing to do, nothing in her power to do, in the grip of a process over which she could have no control, except to let it take its course, Laura felt herself slipping down into some great current—and relaxed. Will could have no part to play here.

  Life had lately sometimes felt interminable, an interminable str
uggle—the excitement, even relief, she had experienced when Dr. Goodwin told her the truth of her condition stemmed perhaps from the fact that setting a limit gave her a sudden sense of freedom. She did not have to try so hard any longer. In a way she realized this was what she had felt during her pregnancies, that she could let life do it, for a change—and now she could let death do it. She was carrying death inside her as she had once carried life, as the little car she was driving was carrying her—home.

  Chapter III

  Laura was wakened out of a dream by Grindle’s soft, wet tongue licking her hand. It had been such a beautiful dream, she and Charles lying under pine trees somewhere, such a dream of warmth and communion, that she hated having to come back to the chilly morning. But Grindle was wide-awake and wanted to go out, so Laura got up, staggering, her eyes glued together, put on a wrapper, and went downstairs, the dog thumping down ahead of her.

  “Out you go, impatient animal!”

  The freezing air hit her like a blow. That pressure in her chest seemed to be settling in. I must get used to it and pay no attention, she thought, and no doubt hot coffee would help. She went back to bed then with a cup and let the day flow in. The gray light was gradually turning to amber on the walls as the sun rose above the trees. Because for the first time she sensed a touch of panic, Laura decided to go into the office and if possible see Harriet Moors. At present she felt strongly that she must be active, do whatever she could, keep the panic away. Not death but dying brought on the panic, the process now beginning its inexorable course inside her lungs. How did one deal with that? Was the whole of her being dying or only one part of it? And could she hold that part of her insulated against all the rest? Mind, heart, whatever she, the person, might be?

  For a time she imagined that she could. She went down to her desk, found Harriet Moors’ number, and called, for she seemed to remember that Miss Moors had a job, and she had better get to her before eight if so. Harriet Moors sounded rather frail and frightened at first but seemed delighted to accept a half-past eleven appointment at Houghton Mifflin.

  “What about your job?”

  “I can take an early lunch hour.”

  “I can have a sandwich sent in if that would help.”

  Laura did not have the courage to walk Grindle before she left. She was afraid that her little provision of energy would simply melt away in that cold air. After all, she had gone to see Jim Goodwin because she felt very queer and had been losing weight. The diagnosis certainly didn’t make her feel any better, physically, and she had to admit this morning that it was going to be difficult even to pretend to lead her own life pretty soon. So why take in a perfect stranger, why insist on seeing Harriet Moors? Laura thought about it as she drove into Boston, but why analyze? She had felt that this was an interesting novel with an important theme, one not touched on before. And she had felt involved, she didn’t know quite why—Ben, of course, and the fact that he had never discussed his private life with either her or Charles—they had all managed to avoid admitting the truth to one another.

  She felt quite strange when she finally reached the office and sat down in her chair by a window looking out on the Common. Had it been only four days since she had called Dr. Goodwin from here? She felt she was returning from a long journey; the familiar Common was suddenly a magic scene, one she had dreamed of—children skating on the frog pond, the elegant outlines of the elms against snow, one old man feeding pigeons from a bench even in this bitter cold.

  “How are you?” Dinah, the secretary she shared with Alan Price, looked in, her arms full of the day’s mail. She dumped a pile on the desk.

  “Rotten, I feel absurdly weak. You know these viruses, how they hang on.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “To take it easy for several weeks. So I’ll work at home as much as I can.” Laura found it simple to conceal the truth. It had not been a decision, but the casual tone felt right. Time enough to throw a monkey wrench into the works.

  “I’d be grateful if you would run through the mail, Dinah. I’m expecting that Harriet Moors in a few minutes. It will be a longish interview, I expect, and I’ll go home after it.”

  “You shouldn’t have come in, Laura. For heaven’s sake!”

  “Oh, well, that girl is nervous as a witch about her book.”

  Dinah shook her head. “And that’s ‘taking it easy’? Let me get you a cup of coffee, anyway.”

  Laura found even this modicum of attentive kindness hard to bear. She turned away quickly and took Harriet Moors’ novel out of her briefcase, along with the notes she had jotted down yesterday, some of which she found as usual quite illegible. But this should not, anyway, be a working interview. Laura had learned from experience that a young writer was far too nervous to take in very much at this stage. Later on she must arrange a luncheon with Alan or Sally, whoever could be asked to take over, if …

  There was a knock at the door, and Dinah came in with two cups of coffee and a young woman in a round fur hat, a thin, short coat, jeans, and high workman’s boots.

  “Miss Moors,” Dinah said.

  “Of course, come in. Sit down, Miss Moors.” During the amenities—Harriet Moors refused a cup of coffee—Laura observed the visitor closely. She had a round, pink face, wore glasses, and partly because of her Dutch-cut black hair, looked awfully young. Their eyes met; Laura too was being observed, she realized.

  “Well,” Laura smiled. “How old are you, Harriet? May I call you Harriet?”

  “I’m twenty-six.”

  Laura smiled again. “You look about sixteen, that’s why I asked. And this is, I take it, your first try at a novel?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s going to be a good book,” Laura took a quick swallow of coffee and set the cup down. Nothing tasted right today.

  “I can’t believe it.” Harriet flushed dark red, took out a kleenex, and wiped her glasses. “It’s been such a struggle, for two years nearly. Do you think it’s bad to be writing about something one is living at the same time? That was the hardest thing—it kept changing, because I changed.”

  “Here and there I was troubled by small inconsistencies, but they are easy to fix.”

  “If it ever comes out, it will have to be under an assumed name,” Harriet said, frowning now, for she was suddenly confronted, Laura sensed, by having given so much of herself away.

  Laura glanced out at the Common, fiddled with a pencil. “That’s something you will have to decide.” Why pull any punches? “But if you are going to be a serious writer, I think you have to accept that you must be absolutely honest—hiding behind another name seems like an evasion.”

  “But my parents—they would never forgive me.”

  “I know. That’s every writer’s problem. It can be excruciating.”

  “I’m not sure I have the courage to come out, Mrs. Spelman.” Harriet was sweating profusely and again wiped off her glasses.

  “Maybe you underrate your readers.”

  “You weren’t shocked?” Harriet asked intensely.

  “Why should I be?”

  “I mean, after all—”

  “After all, I’m a hundred years old?” At this they both laughed.

  “No, but—well, how would you feel if one of your children—”

  “My oldest son, a painter, is a homosexual.” It occurred to Laura as she spoke the word that she had never said this outright to anyone before.

  “Did he tell you so?”

  “We’ve never talked about it, but from the time he was in prep school he always wrote me about great friends he had, lyrical letters about the meaning of love, philosophical letters about passion not lasting.”

  “Amazing.”

  “That he wrote like that to me, or that we have left it unanalyzed between us?”

  “I don’t know.” Harriet looked confused.

  “Well, one of the things that troubles me a little about your book is that the parents seem rather too obtuse, like carica
tures.”

  “But my parents are like that!”

  “Are they really? I felt sometimes, as I read, that you had overdone their reaction. Now and then I rebelled. Come, come, I wanted to say, can’t you try to see their dilemma, and their pain, give them a break? For fictional purposes at least, it would make your book more convincing, less of a battle simply between generations—and after all, your parents must be quite young by my standards, in their late forties?”

  “My mother is forty-eight and my father fifty-two. They’re not intellectuals, Mrs. Spelman. My father has a grocery business, my mother never went to college, and they just don’t know anything about all this. I might as well have told them I had leprosy!”

  “Yes—I see it is going to take a lot of courage to publish this book. But why did you tell them, then? Do you mind my asking you that?” For Harriet blushed and shook her head at the question.

  “Let’s get back to the book as fiction. As I said before, I feel it’s an important theme and that it will be publishable, but I also feel that it still needs some work, some thinking about. The parents don’t come through as complex enough human beings to be quite believable. Perhaps there could be more tension between them?”

  “Yes,” Harriet nodded. “How do you know all this anyway?”

  “I’ve lived a long time, and I’m part of a large family, a large, eccentric family, I suppose one might say. My elder sister, for instance, has never fallen in love with a man and can’t admit even to herself that she has many times been infatuated by women. My mother is responsible for that—she broke up an early love affair rather brutally.”

  “A love affair with a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “So she was like my parents!”

  “Not at all. My mother always understood—or so she imagined. She persuaded Jo that the person involved was an exploiter, that was all.”

  “And Jo let herself be persuaded?”

  “Jo was thoroughly frightened. It was all long ago, in Europe.”

  “My book is now, and in the U.S.A.,” Harriet said quite aggressively. “I’m not sure I want to make changes.”