A Reckoning

by May Sarton

  The room had become a dark cave while Laura sat at her desk in the fading light. Now she turned on the lamp and pulled out a sheet of paper, determined to accomplish something before she went to bed. She wrote intently, stopping to think, then scribbling fast. There had always been this elan when she and Ella communicated, as though there would never be time to say it all.

  “Darling Snab,” she wrote, “it’s a cold winter here and I have strange news. You are the only person I am telling except Aunt Minna—and it may have been a mistake to tell her. I have cancer in both lungs, too advanced, the doctor thinks, to be operable. And in a way I am glad because it means, perhaps, that I can have my own death in my own way, not artifically prolonged by all the medical horrors. So far Dr. Goodwin has agreed not to try cobalt or chemotherapy.

  “Do you remember in Paris how impressed we were with Rilke’s feeling that death must be allowed to have its way, as an important part of a life? I feel that now with my whole being, and I know you will understand. This time I’m not going to be ‘taken over’ as mother took me over in Davos. I pray I’ll have the courage to stick to this to the end.

  “It’s good that Charles is not here to agonize. The children are. Can you understand, Snab, that I don’t want them around? Oh, how good it is to be able to write to you, say even what sounds awful, and know that it will be understood! Maybe only when one is young, without responsibilities except to oneself, or when one is dying, is one allowed to be ruthless? But is ‘ruthless’ the right word? What I mean is that only then is one allowed to shut out the nonessential. At the times when one is growing at great intensity and speed, one is allowed to look inward, one must look inward. Later on, life and all the web of human relations intangle the authentic inner person, don’t they? Entangle and nourish at the same time. We can’t live alone. But later on so much that ‘has to be done,’ gets in the way.

  “All this has made me go back to you, to what we experienced together in that miraculous year. I have been living over those Paris days all afternoon with a package of your letters before me, yet not able to read them. I don’t need to, it is all so vivid.

  “Would you like me to send them back? I can’t bring myself to destroy them. They are the record of an intensely satisfying experience, the record of growth. For years after Paris we wrote often, as though we could only fully understand what was happening—my illness, your marriage—in the light of each other’s eyes. And what was it really all about? In some strange way our friendship seems the most important thing that ever happened to me. Don’t laugh, dear Snab, when I say that the other most important thing seems to be dying. I want to do it well. It sounds crazy, but when I first heard I was lifted up on a wave of wild excitement, of joy.

  “I wish I could explain it, but I must lie down now for a while. I am not in pain, but I have awfully little energy, and my chest feels as though a huge pillow were on it, and stifling me. The hardest thing so far is to know that death is there alive inside me. I have had a few moments of bad panic partly because I have no idea how long dying will take, when I shall have to have help here, a thing I dread.

  “This is hard to say, Snab, darling Snab, but please don’t think of coming over. I feel too naked in a queer way to be able to take emotion. But I remember everything.”

  Laura stopped there, for she felt rather ill, and took a cup of soup up to bed, after letting Grindle out and Sasha in. She woke at nine, suddenly remembering that she had promised to call Aunt Minna back, turned on the light, and picked up the phone from the bed table.

  “I’m so sorry, dear, I went to sleep, just woke up and knew there was something I had forgotten. Please forgive.”

  Aunt Minna laughed. “I’ve been listening to the symphony, Mahler’s Fifth. Ozawa is transcendent, I must say. It’s taken me a lifetime to get to Mahler, but now I’m really with it.” She laughed again, at herself, for the slang expression. Evidently her mood had changed.

  “Go right back,” Laura said, “sorry I interrupted.”

  “And you, sleep well. Is Grindle there?”

  “Right here beside me.”

  “Good night, dear.”

  “Good night.”

  Infinitely comforting, that “good night.” And sleep among all the joys of life came to Laura like a walk through a gentle field, as she gave Grindle a last rub on his tummy and turned over. “The dead are not asleep” was her last conscious thought, “for sleep is in the domain of the living.”

  Chapter V

  The next day Laura felt better. She imagined that for some time there might be good days now and then. Drinking her coffee in bed, with Grindle’s eyes fixed on each mouthful, she said, “We might even have a walk, Grindle, who knows?” and gave him a corner of toast.

  What else would she do with a precious day? Not waste a drop of energy, enjoy every moment. Just now it was the rising sun, touching her bureau and turning the soft wood a deep rose, then making a cut-glass paper-weight sparkle. She did not feel like reading nor like getting up, and she lay there for a good half-hour before she got dressed. In the night she had dreamed of their summer house in Maine—the grassy field that ran down from the terrace to rocky shore; she had dreamed that they were all floating in the old rowboat, becalmed under a hot sun—the shimmer of the water, her father’s contented look under his floppy white duck hat, were still with her. Summers—the endless happy summers in Maine. Even when her father was hard at work in various consulates, they had always managed to come “home” for a month, except during the two years when Laura had been flat on her back with TB in Switzerland.

  Maine rather than the various houses all over Europe and, after Dwight Homaday’s retirement, on Beacon Hill in Boston, had meant home. If only I can live till spring, Laura thought, I’ll go down for a week. I’ll open the house. Maybe Daphne would come? Maybe we could have a family party, Brooks and Ann and the children. Who knows, maybe Ben could fly back, and Daisy be summoned—but even as Laura vaguely planned all this, she let it drop. It would not be possible; the very thought of the energy required made her quail. No, she would settle for going down herself alone, as soon as it got a little warmer. But what if? What if by that time she couldn’t? No plans were going to be possible at any given point in the future. And that was that. She must consider only the day before her. Not tomorrow; today.

  “Only the real connections—” it seemed years ago that she had determined to concentrate on these at the expense of all others.

  She dressed carefully in her best tweed suit, high black boots, for she had known somewhere deep down inside, ever since she had waked in the middle of her dream of a grassy field, that today she would go and see her mother in the nursing home. This had become harder and harder to do in the past year—was it lack of love, true love that overcomes all debilities and decay? Or was it that the contemplation of the ruin of such beauty and power as had been Sybille’s well into her eighties, seemed a betrayal? She had felt the last time that she should not see her mother like this, spilling tea on her housecoat, plucking at her clothes, that coming into the room was an invasion of privacy. Had her mother recognized her? In old age those sapphire eyes had paled, the magnificent throat was wrinkled as a turtle’s—had she imagined a quick, angry look when she first came in? Was this really the best way to use a “good day”? Laura asked herself on the hour’s drive to the “home” in Milton. Asking it, she realized that the decision had not been an act of will but simply the tug of the flesh itself—she had to go. This time at least, with a mortal illness taking possession, her mother could not exert, as she had in Switzerland, that absolute control, so imaginative, glowing, masterly, and terrible that Laura had imagined sometimes that she had been frozen like a flower in a glacier, entombed. And but for Charles and his warmth and conviction, would she ever have come to life, her own life (not her mother’s idea of her life) again?

  Arrived, after what had seemed a long journey, at the fourth floor, Laura greeted the head nurse.

  “How is
my mother, Mrs. Neal?”

  “She has stopped talking lately. It’s hard to tell.”

  “I haven’t been in for ages because I have had a low-grade virus and was afraid it might be contagious.” This time the lie was a real evasion, but Laura’s ambivalence toward her mother was certainly not Mrs. Neal’s business.

  “Does she ever mention me or my sisters?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Mrs. Neal said. “She’s not really conscious most of the time. Sings to herself—”

  “I’ll just go in, shall I?”

  Sybille was sitting in a wheelchair, her back to the door, when Laura walked in, after knocking to no audible response.

  “It’s Laura, Mother.”

  Very gently she turned the wheelchair to face the only other chair in the room and sat down, taking her mother’s two hands in hers. They were ice-cold. Laura noted that her mother had on a ruffled pale blue wrapper and blue bedroom slippers, and her hair had been carefully combed and done up with a blue ribbon round it. They did take good care of her. That was something to be grateful for.

  “Your hands are so cold, Mamma. Are you warm enough? Would you like a shawl round your shoulders? A hot-water bottle?”

  Sybille Hornaday had not lifted her head. She was looking down—Laura could not see her eyes—humming something like a long, made-up song. There was no answer to her questions, but Laura held the old hands in hers, hoping to transfuse at least a little physical warmth.

  “Why am I here?” The voice, even to the slight roughness in it, was so much like Sybille’s real self that Laura dropped her mother’s hands and wondered for a moment whether she had imagined the question, for already the humming had resumed.

  “Darling, you’re here because you need care. I’m at my job all day. You need nursing care.” But it was clear that the door that had opened a crack in anger had closed again. Sybille was no longer there but was somewhere deep down where the strange song went on and on, shutting out Laura and everything else in her incongruous surroundings.

  “I wanted to tell you that I’m dying, Mother.” She was not aware of her own tears till she felt one fall, cold and wet on her hand. “I wanted you to know.”

  Even a year or two ago such a statement would have elicited an immediate, even an overwhelming response—suggestions that she see another doctor, that she go to the Lahey clinic for a thorough testing, and, after these practical matters had been taken care of, a long, intimate talk about life and death and God and love. How much she had resented this power to move and persuade, “to take the heart out of the body,” as Daphne said bitterly. Yet today the absence of any response whatever came as a shock. She might as well have been a newborn babe howling at the chill air.

  “I may not be able to come back,” she heard herself say quite coldly and loudly. Then she got up and kissed Sybille on the cheek that was still soft as a rose petal, remembering how often as a child she had wanted to kiss her mother, glorious in evening dress with stars in her hair, and had not dared.

  “Thanks so much, dear,” her mother said, thinking no doubt that Laura was a nurse. Whatever the “tug of the flesh” had meant an hour ago—that old longing going back to infancy—Laura had to admit as she closed the door that there was no real connection, none at all. It had been absurd to imagine that what had never been said in sixty years could by some miracle be said now, because Laura was dying. She made appropriate remarks to the nurse standing at the door with a tray of medicines and fled to the elevator. At least for a few seconds she was safe in it, and she blew her nose.

  Then the door slid open silently, and she heard her name called.

  “Laura! Oh, I am glad to catch you!”

  “Cousin Hope!”

  There was no possible escape. Hope Fraser, dear old Hope, who had adored Sybille all her life, had already launched into speech. “Yes, I come twice a week to visit with your mother. I’m so glad to see you here, Laura. There’s so much to talk about. Couldn’t we go somewhere and have a cup of coffee? I know how busy you are. I haven’t wanted to call you, but …”

  “Where could we go?” Laura asked, feeling hunted. The nursing home was in a residential section.

  “Mrs. Fraser,” the girl at the desk called out to them, “you could sit in the waiting room. There’s no one there. I’ll ask one of the staff to bring you some coffee.”

  “Oh, that is kind of you. That would be so easy and comfortable, wouldn’t it, Laura?”

  Clearly Hope was well known here.

  Laura felt pinned down like a butterfly in a box. What could she possibly say to justify herself beside Cousin Hope’s devotion?

  “Dear Laura, do sit down. You look quite pale. I expect it was a shock to see your mother this time.”

  “You think there has been a change?”

  “She does seem to be getting farther and farther away from us, do you agree?”

  “You are awfully good to come so often.”

  “I don’t have a job. Adrian is working harder than ever now he has retired, don’t you know? He is writing a huge book. And of course we live nearby—it’s a long way for you to come.”

  Pure goodness shone out from Cousin Hope, and Laura felt more and more ashamed. Hope had always been one of those people who saw everyone in the best possible light, who seemed to live unaware that there were such things in human nature as bitterness, ambivalence, hatred, and above all self-hatred. “Hope is simply a natural-born, dyed-in-the-wool saint,” Sybille had once said. “I wonder why we find that irritating.” “Because it isn’t real,” Daphne had answered, “She’s too good to be true.” Laura, lost in these thoughts, realized that there was a hiatus in the rush of good feeling, and that she was expected to respond.

  “Oh, no—no, it’s not far, not really.”

  “I wish you could have a talk with the doctor about the drugs they are giving your mother.”

  “Drugs?”

  “I feel sure she is sedated. Couldn’t they allow her to be herself, Laura? I mean, even if she does get angry sometimes?”

  “Does she?”

  “At first she was very angry. She wouldn’t speak to me. I knew that meant she was very angry.”

  “I know,” Laura said almost inaudibly.

  “Of course it’s terribly hard for you to see your mother like this.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” Laura said absent-mindedly, as though she were speaking of someone else. The pinned-down butterfly felt completely detached.

  Mercifully, a nurse came in with two cups of coffee on a tray and interrupted this excruciating conversation for a moment. After she had left and Laura had taken a sip of the lukewarm coffee (Is this how it tastes on the fourth floor? she wondered. Her mother liked coffee hot and strong.), Cousin Hope said, “You are not feeling well, are you, Laura? Is anything the matter?”

  Startled back into full consciousness, Laura assured Hope that she was suffering from a low-grade virus and felt rather tired. Where to go from there? Take the plunge and talk about Sybille? It might be her last chance, and Hope deserved a little better than what Laura had been able to manage so far.

  “I wish we could talk a little about Mamma. I sometimes feel I never knew her really. You, perhaps, did.”

  “I did,” Cousin Hope’s eyes shone. “I think I knew Sybille very well.”

  “Warts and all?” Laura smiled for the first time.

  “No warts, dear Laura!” Hope visibly blushed. “What an idea! She was simply as far as I know a glorious woman, beautiful, brilliant, everything! She was so brave, you know—when you were ill—heroic I always thought, to shut herself up like that in that tiny village for two years, taking care of you.” Hope, totally unaware of Laura’s reaction, leaned forward confidentially. “I’ll tell you something. It’s really nothing, but it made a great impression on me. I’ve never forgotten it. Adrian and I were in London then, at the School of Economics, if you remember. I went to Harrod’s and bought your mother a beautiful camel’s-hair dressing gown fo
r Christmas.”

  “That was dear of you.”

  “No, as a matter of fact, it was all wrong. You see, it was brown, and Sybille returned it and explained that for your sake she must never look dreary. Brown is a dreary color. It had to be blue, she said. Of course, I saw at once how right she was—after all, there you were flat on your back. Your mother had to look beautiful for you. It never occurred to me that that beauty was a kind of gift, you see? That’s just a tiny episode—” (Yet, Laura knew, it must have hurt).

  “I can’t tell you how much Sybille taught me! Why, without her, I should never have known anything really about how to live—her taste, so absolutely perfect!”

  “Yes, she made critics of us all and destroyed any impulse to create.” Why had she said it aloud? Laura saw the stricken look.

  “Go on, Cousin Hope. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was in a black mood, and you are doing me good. Please go on.”

  “She was so passionate about everything!”

  “Like what?”

  “Politics, my dear! I was totally ignorant about politics—your mother put me right about the Spanish civil war, I can tell you! And long before anyone I knew was very much concerned, she was warning us about Hitler.”

  “My father may have had something to do with that,” Laura murmured. “After all, he was in a position to know.”

  “Your father had to be discreet, I presume. But he never seemed to care quite as deeply. Sybille threw herself into everything. Even as an old woman (it is remarkable!) she became involved in getting blacks bused out to the suburbs! But you know all this, dear Laura. What you cannot know, perhaps, is what an extraodinary capacity she had for friendship. When Tommy … when we had to face the fact that Tommy would never grow up to be quite normal, Sybille used to come once or twice a week and read aloud to him. He loved that. She had such a beautiful voice! Who but Sybille would have found time? Laura, dear Laura, you mustn’t let what is happening now depress you. She was a great woman!”