A Reckoning

by May Sarton

  What then turned her three daughters into cynics? Laura wondered. Why couldn’t we ourselves ever quite believe in the golden legend? What turned us off?

  “I’m so glad you remember all that—it’s awfully good of you to come here now, so often, dear Cousin Hope.” Laura was appalled to hear in her own voice an exact replica of her mother’s intonation, just slightly condescending.

  No, not condescending; the tone of someone acting the appropriate response.

  “Well, I must go up now for a little visit. I hope I haven’t worn you out.”

  The butterfly was released, but the pin had penetrated. All Laura could think of was to get home to Grindle as quickly as possible, take him for a walk if she had the strength—and even if she hadn’t—get back to something simple, uncomplicated, that did not make her bones ache.

  Was it really much harder to be a woman than to be a man, Laura asked herself on the drive home, not for the first time. Neither her father nor Charles had ever caused the kind of emotional conflict that her mother had. Daphne would say, she supposed, that they were “real” and Sybille was not. What if she had been allowed to go on the stage? Was she simply born to a career that she had been denied? That hunger for greatness, for the heroic, for the beautiful gesture—the theater would have used all that to great effect—and Sybille herself off stage might then have allowed herself to be simpler and more human. Who knows?

  Of course she should have had three sons instead of three daughters. Laura had to admit that she herself had not found Daisy half as easy to bring up as Ben and Brooks—and why was that? What was the tension between daughters and mothers? Daisy had said it often enough, though without hostility: “I don’t want to be like you, mother, buried alive in suburbia. I want a chance to discover who I am first, then settle down somewhere if I have to. I don’t want to be caught.”

  At that Laura had smiled and said gently, “I was escaping from mother’s high-powered expectations and life. I wanted what you think of as an “ordinary life”—that was what I wanted, craved. I had a huge hunger and thirst for the everyday, for the normal if you like. And on the whole,” she remembered saying, “I have been happy.”

  She remembered saying it because Daisy had reacted unexpectedly with a flood of tears. “I don’t want to be happy,” she sobbed.

  “That’s good,” Laura said dryly, “for the chances are you won’t be!”

  Ever since she had seen Dr. Goodwin, Laura had been flooded with remembered conversations, and once such a flood began it was next to impossible to turn it off. But it was tiring. She drove the last miles too fast, concentrating on the car to shut out the dialogue. And there at last was the house—peace, safety.

  “Yes,” she said to Grindle, who was barking frantically and looking up at her with questioning ears, “yes, we’ll go for a walk!” She took her cane out of the umbrella stand and went out without even changing into warmer boots. The air felt unexpectedly mild. After days when the thermometer never climbed over twenty, thirty felt positively springlike. “Where’s your cat?” she asked Grindle. But he had rushed off to roll in the snow. Laura opened the front door and called, “Come, cat, we’re going for a walk!” Sasha trundled downstairs, then sat, washing her face for several seconds. “Maddening animal, come!” And at last she was at the open door, shaking her paws in anticipation of the icy path. Finally she came out and followed Laura twenty paces or so behind. Grindle trotted on ahead, full of his pleasures, darting into the drifts after a scent only he could possibly catch in this weather, humping himself back onto the road.

  “Look out, Grindle, or you’ll drown in the snow!”

  When they got back a half-hour later, Laura was tired, hungry, and aware that she had spent whatever vital energy she could expect to call on today. But she was able to swallow a peanut butter sandwich and to drink a glass of milk without feeling sick. That was better than yesterday. It was pure bliss to stretch out on the sofa then with a Haydn quartet pouring its vitality into her like wine.

  Pure life is what I want, she thought—trees, snow, sky, the animals, a glass of milk, and music—these together amounted to a taste of heaven on earth. It’s all I need now, she thought, smiling as she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter VI

  Laura did not relish having to see Dr. Goodwin, but his secretary had insisted on the telephone that there were things he felt it necessary to discuss. “There will be time enough for doctors later on,” Laura thought, “but of course he has me over a barrel because he knows so much that I don’t know.” Suddenly she remembered her father’s saying in his dry way, “Of course, when you see a doctor, you take your life into your hands.” But the awful thing was that one simply had to trust. Doubting Jim Goodwin would be like walking into quicksand. There had to be somebody to care for her crumbling body.

  She was tense, when she sat down opposite Jim Goodwin and saw that he was looking at a sheet of X-rays.

  “Well?” she asked, “what’s all this about?” She couldn’t keep the hostility out of her voice.

  Jim coughed. “I want you to arrange for someone to be in the house. It’s not a good idea to wait till you are feeling too weak to cope.”

  “Will that be soon? I feel remarkably well. Only, when I lie down, there is a sensation of stifling, but quite bearable so far. I hate the idea of a stranger hovering about.”

  “The alternative is the hospital, Mrs. Spelman.”

  Laura swallowed.

  “I’m sorry to be brutal about this, but you must understand that I am your physician.”

  “Meaning that I have given my life into your power—what is left of it.”

  “Meaning,” he said gently, “that I have some experience about such things. I want to help you all I can.”

  “Very well, I’ll try to find a housekeeper.”

  “We may be able to help. Miss Albright has a list of possible people—of course they may all be employed at the moment. What you need is a practical nurse. Then, I would be glad if you would agree to a few days in the hospital. I would like to have a consultation with a surgeon, to be quite sure, frankly, that surgery is impossible, as I believe it to be from the X-rays.”

  “No,” Laura said quietly. “I don’t want to be interrupted.”

  “Interrupted?”

  “Well,” she sat up straight, “I’m living just now. I’m learning in a queer way how to live, what is important, and what isn’t. I don’t want to be interrupted.”

  “You’re just like your mother,” Jim Goodwin said with a smile.

  “God forbid!”

  “She was a great woman, a great personality.”

  “Yes, she was.” For the first time Laura was close to tears. “I’m not a personality. I’m just trying to be human.”

  “Mrs. Spelman, would you like me to have a talk with your son Brooks?”

  Laura was startled. “Why Brooks?”

  “Someone in the family has to be alerted.”

  “Oh, not yet, please! I must have a little time. You’re making it all seem so near, so close—I’m not ready!” She was unashamedly weeping now. “All right, tell him, if you must.” She got up and blew her nose. “Tell him I want to die at home.” But then she sat down again and recovered herself. “On second thought, don’t tell Brooks. Aunt Minna knows. I went over there just after you told me what was what last week. You’ll be glad to hear that she too insisted I get someone to be with me in the house.”

  “Very well—but there will be decisions—”

  “I’ll tell Brooks myself when I feel the time has come when …” there was a pause. Then she smiled. “You see, I don’t want to abdicate until I have to. If you tell Brooks, it’s as though …”

  “It would have been only to spare you.”

  “I realize that. Thank you. But the real thing is this sense I have that I need a little time just to live, as long as I am able, not to be impinged on by other people’s feelings. Yes,” she said, looking him straight in the eye, “that’
s it. That’s the point—to be free of other people’s sense of doom, their fears, if you will.”

  “Very well, I won’t insist. There’s one other thing, however. Your lungs are filling up, and the time will come fairly soon, I fear, when we shall have to drain out the fluid, at regular intervals, so you can breathe more easily.”

  “Oh,” Laura said in a dull voice.

  “I’ll be glad to come and do it for you—after all, I live nearby.”

  “That’s awfully kind of you.”

  For the second time Laura’s eye filled with tears.

  “I’ll do everything I can, Mrs. Spelman.”

  “There’s really no hope, is there?”

  “There’s always hope,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “There are remissions, very mysterious because we really don’t know why. There are sometimes remissions of a month or more, although with a malignancy in the lung—in your case in both lungs—well, as I say, it would be foolish to be too sure of anything. I’ll tell you something. It’s surprising that you feel as well as you say that you do, so, you see, one never knows.”

  Before Laura left the office Miss Albright called several possible practical nurses. One was willing to come in ten days. Laura had begged for that interval so passionately that Jim Goodwin had agreed to it. Mary O’Brien was to come and see her in Concord the next day, and they would talk things over.

  “She’s a very sweet woman,” Miss Albright said, “a widow whose children are grown up. I’m sure you’ll like her.”

  Laura sighed, then said, “I’ll do my best.” She hurried away then, compelled by some inner need so urgent that she hardly took time to button her coat.

  Chapter VII

  Laura felt caged at the very idea of Mrs. O’Brien, who was supposed to arrive at eleven. She had decided to stay in bed as late as possible. Comforting as Grindle and Sasha were, it was pleasant to be able to stretch her legs, now they were both out. She let herself float, sitting up with three pillows behind her so she could breathe, for she had wakened with a terrible fit of coughing and had thrown up some blood. All she could think of, of course, was Keats—Keats deprived of so much of his life. I have had my life, she reminded herself—for the sight of blood had been rather a shock—all of it, except old age. And though old age might be like Aunt Minna’s, rich and passionate and angry, it could just as well be her mother’s, a dwindling of intellect and spirit until there was nothing left but the needs of an infant. I’ll be well out of it, she thought, looking around her room: the Graves sea bird she and Charles had bought together for their twentieth wedding present to each other; the shelf of special books, poetry mostly, to the left of the mantel; the birch logs in the fireplace—one of these days I’ll have a fire up here, she thought. The last time she had done that was during an attack of flu years before. Charles had lit the fire then and had brought logs up. Would it be easier if he were here at her side during this last journey? And she reacted at once, no, no, thank God he isn’t! Charles could never deal with real illness. It made him cross and overprotective, which made Laura feel guilty.

  The phone interrupted these ruminations. Laura was sure it would be Aunt Minna and for a second could not identify this rather strained and muffled voice. Then she got it. “Oh, it’s you, Harriet.”

  Harriet Moors sounded as though she had been crying. She apologized for calling Laura at home, “but could I come and see you? I …”

  “I’m still under the weather, still in bed as a matter of fact. Is it that important?”

  The silence at the other end of the line was eloquent. “Could you come out late this afternoon?”

  Laura had another fit of coughing as she was giving Harriet the directions. It was horrible to have this day already committed—she had planned to go over some papers and throw things away. But she felt suddenly so weak, she didn’t have the strength to dress and was only able to drag herself up because Grindle was barking to be let in. A spoonful of brandy in a second cup of coffee helped, and by the time Mrs. O’Brien arrived, Laura was lying on the sofa downstairs, dressed in slacks and a shirt and sweater.

  The idea of Mrs. O’Brien had been repellent, but Laura found the actual person sitting opposite her in a wing chair quite endearing. Mary O’Brien was a tall, gaunt woman with a rather stern face that lit up when she smiled. She was very direct. Laura appreciated that.

  “I shall have to have my weekends,” she said. “I have two still at home and I must keep things going for them, although Rose Marie is a good cook now and Jack does a lot of odd jobs round the house.”

  “Of course,” Laura said, thinking with relief, I’ll have some solitude, after all. It seemed like a reprieve.

  “How long do you expect you’ll need me?”

  “I don’t know how long I have to live,” Laura said, looking Mrs. O’Brien straight in the eye. “It might be six months.”

  “You’re very ill, Mrs. Spelman?”

  “Not yet,” said Laura dryly “But Dr. Goodwin was very insistent that I have some help as soon as possible.”

  Mrs. O’Brien nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of you. Of course I’m not a nurse, but I don’t mind carrying trays. Do you have a washing machine?”

  And after that Laura showed Mary O’Brien her room and bath and the kitchen and where things were in general.

  “It’s a big house for you all alone, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. My husband died three years ago, you see, and the children are married or away. I’ve lived here so long I never think about it one way or another.” Because Laura liked Mary O’Brien, who appeared to take difficult things for granted, it was all settled with no fuss. In fact she felt quite euphoric when Mrs. O’Brien drove off, and went at once to the telephone to tell Aunt Minna the good news.

  Of course the truth would come out when Mary O’Brien was around all day and all night, but at least it had become very clear to Laura that someone impersonal was what she needed, someone who would not be too involved. A strange relationship at best, it would require tact on both sides. But Laura to her own amazement trusted Mary O’Brien. She would, she sensed, be practical, and she had not winced or withdrawn when Laura made it quite clear what was involved, though she had not told Mrs. O’Brien what her illness was—that would come later—and she was grateful that Mrs. O’Brien had not asked.

  Laura decided not to push herself, partly to be prepared for Harriet Moors, and partly because she wanted to listen to music—two Schubert quartets and a wonderful Octet in F Minor that she had not listened to for years. Everything important from now on would be going on inside her and would have, she realized, very little to do with other people or with anything she might feel she must “do.” Her sense of haste even a few days ago about sorting out papers, about things she should arrange about before she felt too ill, was rapidly sliding away. The only reality for the moment was in these transparent voices of two violins, a cello, a viola. By half-past five, after a long nap, Laura felt honed down to essentials. What would it be like to have to summon herself when Harriet Moors arrived? She was really in no way responsible for this girl, after all. Take it easy, Laura admonished herself, and let her talk. Then the doorbell rang.

  “Be an angel and put another log on the fire, will you?” Laura asked when she had helped Harriet off with her sheepskin jacket. “I’ll get us a drink. What would you like? A martini perhaps?”

  “A glass of wine if you have one.”

  Of course! Laura had forgotten that martinis were out-of-date. Nevertheless she mixed one for herself, feeling rather jaunty as she did so. Her usual drink was scotch.

  Looking across from the wing chair to Harriet on the sofa, Laura noted that her visitor’s hand shook as she took a sip of white wine.

  “Well, Harriet, what’s on your mind?”

  “Just …” Harriet swallowed. “I’ve decided that I can’t publish that novel.”

  “You’ve got cold feet? I can understand that.”

  �
�It’s going to make too many people unhappy—my friend is terrified now. She thinks she might lose her job if people knew.”

  Laura deliberately looked into the fire, sorting things out in her own mind.

  “You hadn’t really faced it, had you? I wonder then why you made the immense effort that must have gone into writing this novel.”

  “I know. Why did I? I must be crazy!” There she sat, so young, so charming really, a very young person who had taken on the whole complex responsibility of public revelation without having measured the cost.

  “But you believe in your work?”

  “I don’t know anymore.” Harriet gave a strange little sigh. “Maybe writing it was just therapy.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “That’s what my friend says. She’s a teacher, and she’s older than I am.” Harriet clasped her hands to her chest and rocked with the pain of it. “If I publish this book it’s the end of us—that’s it: That’s why …”

  “That’s tough.”

  “I feel awfully confused. That’s why I wanted to see you. It’s very kind of you to let me come.” The round, troubled face broke into a smile. Laura could sense how much better Harriet felt at the moment because she had been able to come out with the matter. All very well, but what was Laura to say now?

  “You seemed to understand. I mean, you talked about your son. And you felt my parents had been too harshly drawn. I thought maybe you could help. Is it just cowardice not to go ahead? Maybe if I destroy my book, I’m really destroying myself. I think of all these images, that one can’t close the door against life, and having a first novel accepted is certainly the opening of a door. If one closes that door, isn’t it fatal? But on the other hand if I close the door between Fern and me,” Harriet fixed her eyes solemnly on Laura, “what am I doing to her, and to myself?”