A Reckoning

by May Sarton

  “Your great-grandmother gave it to me for my twenty-first birthday,” Laura said. “It’s lapis lazuli.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Ann said, “let me see. You shouldn’t have parted with it, Laura—you’re too generous.”

  “Thank you, Gramma,” Laurie said solemnly.

  “It doesn’t exactly go with jeans, but maybe you could wear it for dinner.” Ann suggested.

  “No,” said Laurie, “I’ll just keep it in my secret drawer, and I’ll take it out sometimes and feel it.”

  “I want to wear it,” said Charley. “I love it,” and he reached out to take it from his mother. “It’s a jewel.” He lay on his stomach reaching up toward his mother, full of mischievous avidity and delight.

  “No,” Laurie shouted. “He can’t wear it, Mummy, it’s mine!”

  “Listen, creeps, go into the study and look at TV for a half-hour while I get supper onto the table, then Brooks and Laura can have a few moments’ peace.”

  “Come on, Charley!” Laura pulled him up. And, surprisingly enough, they disappeared into the study together.

  “What do parents do who don’t allow TV?” Ann asked as she put the necklace back into its box and laid it on the mantelpiece.

  “They go quietly out of their minds,” Brooks answered, coming back with the bottle to refill their glasses.

  “I won’t be long,” Ann said, at the kitchen door. “Enjoy yourselves.”

  Alone with her son, who was standing at the mantelpiece, looking down at her with smiling approval, Laura felt suddenly shy.

  “It wasn’t the right present,” she said. “Laurie is too young, but I won’t live forever and maybe it’s time to …”

  “Nonsense, she loves it. Didn’t you see the way she handled it?” Then he came and sat down beside her on the sofa. Laura felt his eyes on her face though she was looking down. “You look fairly beat up by that bug you had. You’ve lost weight.”

  “And a very good thing, I was much too fat.”

  “What did Goodwin have to say? He’s a nice man, but I always have the feeling that he relies on God rather than on medicine. You look to me as though you needed some shots of B-12.”

  “I’m all right, Brooks, don’t badger me.”

  “Badgering, am I?”

  “A glass of champagne and being with you and Ann and the children is far better medicine than B-12 could possibly be,” Laura said. “Now tell me all the news.”

  “Well, I’m deep in local politics, you know. We’re meeting a lot of opposition to putting up a really good disposal unit like the one in Wellesley. It recycles cans, even glass, paper of course. But it’s expensive and taxes will go up. You can’t imagine how fierce people are when their pocketbooks are involved.”

  Laura sighed. Since Dr. Goodwin’s verdict she found it difficult to concentrate on future plans about almost anything. “You’re marvelous, Brooks. How do you ever find time?”

  “Conservation just seems to me the single most important thing I can do, I guess. I want there still to be an earth to support Laurie and Charley, and sometimes I really worry. I mean, time is running out. The ocean is polluted right out to the middle of the Atlantic.”

  Laura drank a swallow of champagne, and then out of nowhere had a terrible attack of coughing.

  “Get me a kleenex, Brooks,” she managed to whisper.

  He came back in a second with a box and laid it beside her, then put his arm around her and held her fast. She was simply torn to pieces by the cough.

  “This is no joke,” Brooks said. “That’s blood you just threw up.”

  “It’s nothing, just an infection.”

  “Jim Goodwin had better put his mind on this,” said Brooks. “Did he take X-rays?”

  At last the spasm stopped. Sweat was pouring down Laura’s face. She made a gesture with her hand that Brooks interpreted as a wish to be left alone, and he went in to Ann. She could hear them talking in low voices. Tell them now? It couldn’t be a worse time, but what would be a good time? Laura wished she could just go home to Grindle and Sasha and be left alone. And maybe that was the thing to do.

  Then Ann and Brooks came back together.

  “Dear, there’s plenty of time. The potatoes aren’t quite done. The children are watching a basketball game, glory be. So just take it easy, will you?” Ann sat down beside her this time and gently squeezed her hand. Laura did not want to be touched. She was afraid of weeping.

  “I’m working on quite an interesting first novel,” she managed to say, sitting up straight, though it was an effort.

  “No, Mother,” Brooks said with quiet authority. “We want to know what this is all about, and you’re not going to put us off.”

  “I won’t be any trouble,” Laura said. “A very kind woman is coming next week to help me out. I do feel curiously frail.”

  “That’s good news,” Brooks said, exchanging a look with Ann.

  “Good news that I feel frail?” Laura managed a smile.

  “Good news that you admit it. You’re not going to pull one of your mother’s heroic acts on us, are you? You’ve told me time and again what a strain that could be.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a long silence. In it Laura relinquished her right to die in her own way, and alone. It had been, she realized, a romantic impulse. Her children had some rights, she was beginning to see. Ann, especially, had been a very real comfort when Charles died. She owed them the truth.

  “It’s simply that I haven’t very long to live,” she said. “It’s cancer of both lungs, too far along to be operable.”

  “Mother!” Brooks rose and paced up and down. Then the shock turned into anger. “You mean, Jim Goodwin just told you that outright? Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “Because I asked him not to, and as for telling me, I’m rather proud that he felt he could.”

  “But what if he’s wrong?”

  “The X-rays are all too clear.”

  Ann was sitting very still, her hands clasped. Laura felt that she must find a way to help them bridge the abyss, and get back to normal, if that were possible. “Something very strange happened that day in Jim’s office. I felt exhilarated, as though I were entering some great mysterious adventure, and I wanted to have it all to myself, and not be taken over as Mamma took me over when I had TB. Can you understand?”

  “We’re here to do anything we can, mother. It’s not going to be easy.” Brooks looked bewildered, fumbling for the right thing to say.

  “I’ve got this woman coming next week. She’s experienced and seemed not at all afraid of the responsibility, and Jim is going to come and drain the lungs himself when the time comes when that will be necessary. He explained it all to me—and I want you two to back me up about dying at home.” One look at Brook’s face and Laura knew she must do something drastic right away. “The potatoes must be very well done. Let’s have dinner.”

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t go home? The coughing spell must have been exhausting,” Ann said, taking Laura’s hand in hers.

  “No,” Laura said, “I don’t want to go home. I want to live all I can. How can I tell you? It’s been an extraordinary time for me. I feel I can cut out all nonessentials without guilt. Laurie’s birthday party is essential, and I’m quite all right now. Go and get the children, Brooks, and I’ll help Ann take things in.”

  “You’re marvelous.” Ann gave her hand a squeeze.

  “No … oh no,” Laura murmured. “It’s not that.” Then breaking the spell in the only possible way, she got up and offered to ladle out the creamed chicken (Laurie’s favorite) but was sent instead to light the candles in the dining room. It’s a lovely room, she thought—the window greenhouse lit up to show cyclamen and geraniums and one white azalea in flower. Ann had put a brilliant scarlet primrose in a pot in the center of the table, which had been set with red napkins at each place on a damask cloth.

  “Sit down, Charley and Laurie,” Brooks said quietly.

  “I’m starv
ing,” Charley said, “can I have a roll right now?”

  “No.”

  “Red is the color when it’s so cold outside, isn’t it Laurie? Here, you sit by me,” and she reached out to touch Laurie’s dark hair just as Ann came in with two plates. “That primrose! How did you ever do it?”

  “Under lights in the cellar. You must take it home with you, Laura.”

  “Yum, creamed chicken. Don’t you love it?” Laurie said, diving right in as soon as she got her plate. “I’m so happy I’m about to burst,” she announced.

  “So am I,” Laura said. The candle flames were slightly blurred, and she saw the whole bright table, the flowers, in the way one sees through a window with raindrops streaming down, like an impressionist painting. After one of the fits of coughing, Laura had observed that the very weakness she felt made everything luminous and beautiful. Brooks had gray in his hair (unbelievable) but looked so handsome, so all there in his true self; Laura felt amazed that he was her son. When children finally grow up, they seem marvelous apparitions; how did one ever feel responsible for such a person? What had made Brooks was, finally, his passion for conservation, not his work, which was trivial by comparison. A real commitment, that is what had firmed him up, given him a new authority, she thought. And Ann, too, looked radiant in her ruffled white blouse, in spite of the dark circles round her gray eyes. Their marriage had come into its own at last, after some rough times when Ann had a full time job teaching. She had given that up when Charley came, and Laura knew it had not been easy. But there would be time, she thought—though when children are small, it is hard to believe.

  “What are you thinking, Gram?” She was suddenly aware that Charley had been watching her intently.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes,” he said, giving her a huge smile.

  “I was thinking how good life is in this house, and how beautiful you look, all four of you.”

  At this Brooks and Ann exchanged a look and burst into laughter. “You should have seen us almost any day last week,” Ann said. “It’s little short of a miracle that no one got murdered.”

  “More,” said Charley, holding up his plate.

  “More, please.”

  “Please,” he added grudgingly.

  “Tell me what’s happening at school, darling,” Laura said to Laurie.

  “She’s got a really good science teacher this year.” Brooks answered.

  “Let me tell, Daddy. Gram asked me!”

  “Yes, I did, and I really want to know what you think.”

  Now that she had the attention of everyone, Laurie was overcome by shyness.

  Laura tried to help her. “I seem to remember when I was about your age that we had Roman history. And that summer my father took us to see Hadrian’s wall. What a sense one gets there that Rome was a civilization! Beyond it, the wild land and the barbarians.”

  “We’re studying Indians,” Laurie said.

  “Awfully grim, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Laurie gravely. “It makes me sick. I mean, we broke our word—we massacred them. But the teacher is quite boring, so I don’t do as well. In science I got an A. We’re studying insects, bees and ants and beetles. You know there are millions of beetles, Gram? And we have ants in a glass thing in the window so we can watch them.”

  “It sounds fascinating.”

  Charley had got down from his chair and come to stand beside Laura, tugging at her hand.

  “What is it, Charley? Something on your mind?”

  “If you like, I’ll say a poem.”

  “That would be lovely, after we’ve had our dessert, maybe.”

  “Now,” said Charley

  “Don’t interrupt, Charley, it’s rude,” Laurie said rather smugly. After all, it was her day.

  This was too much for Charley, and he ran around Laurie’s chair screaming, “I hate you! You never let me do anything,” and began to hit his sister.

  Brooks quickly intervened and dragged Charley away into the kitchen where Ann was getting the cake ready, Laura supposed. Laurie began to cry.

  “I wouldn’t pay any attention to him,” Laura said gently. “He’s so little, and he wants some attention, that’s all.”

  “But he hurt my arm,” Laurie said. “It’s not fair.”

  “At his age everything is now. It’s very hard for him to realize that some day it will be his birthday, and he will be cock-of-the-walk. Run and get a kleenex and then we can go on talking. There’s lots more I want to hear.”

  So for a few moments Laura was alone at the table. For me, too, everything is now, she thought. She would never see these two children grown up. It felt so strange, as though she had been dropped down in a parachute into the center of life, shaken to the marrow by the sweetness, the intensity of it. This moment. “Are you all right, Mother?” Brooks laid a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up at him. “Perfectly all right. I’m having a wonderful time.”

  “What a lot of violence we learn to bury,” he said, sitting down in his place again. “I’m simply amazed at how much sheer rage there is in Charley; in Laurie too for that matter. Were we as bad as that, Ben and Daisy and I?”

  Now Ann signaled to blow out the table candles and when Brooks had done so, she came in with the cake with ten little candles lit and wavering as she crossed the room. “But where’s Laurie?”

  “I’m here,” Laurie ran in. “Oh!”

  Charley followed his mother, gave his grandmother a rather shy look, and sat in his chair. “It’s chocolate,” he said, “with white icing.”

  “Now darling, make your wish, take a deep breath, and blow.”

  “But I don’t know what to wish!” Laurie said.

  “Hurry,” Ann whispered.

  Laurie closed her eyes, then opened them, and blew, but she hadn’t quite the breath for the last candle. It flickered on.

  “You won’t get your wish! You won’t get it!” Charley shouted, filled with merriment at this pleasant thought.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Laurie said. “It was a stupid wish.”

  “Brooks, be an angel, and dish out the ice cream, will you? The plates are on the counter.”

  When at last they had all been served, Brooks reminded Laura that they had been interrupted just when he had asked her whether he and Daisy and Ben had been as violent as his own children.

  “Daisy used to have awful tantrums. I wonder whether it isn’t just frustration at being the youngest, always being told you can’t do this or that. My sister Daphne went through it, too. You and Ben didn’t fight, did you?”

  “Oh, yes, we did!” Brooks laughed. “We had the craziest fights. Sometimes Ben wouldn’t speak to me for a week. That was when I got up one night and deliberately shuffled his whole battle up into total disorder—all those troops mixed up—it had taken him days to get them in place.”

  “That was mean of you, Daddy,” Laurie said, delighted at this bad behavior.

  “What did he do then?” Charley asked, fascinated by the possibilities.

  “I told you, he wouldn’t speak to me for a week.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” Charley said, “that’s nothing.”

  “I felt awful—beyond the pale.” But Brooks’s mood had changed. He looked absently down at his plate, then took matches out of his pocket and lit the candles in their tall silver candlesticks again, did it very precisely.

  “Mother,” he said then, “would you like me to tell Daisy and Ben?”

  “Not now,” Ann warned.

  Over their coffee in the living room, with the children off to have their baths, Laura explained that she had told Aunt Minna.

  “I felt she would understand, but instead,” Laura laughed suddenly, “it made her very cross. I am doing something out of turn, I suppose.”

  “Aunt Minna reminds me of Charley,” Brooks said, laughing too. “She is so absolutely direct she can’t hide anything.” Then he frowned. “But, Mother, I must tell Ben and Daisy. Don’t yo
u owe something to your children, after all?”

  “I don’t feel I do,” Laura answered, suddenly upset and close to tears, because she felt isolated, too queer to be believable apparently.

  “Can you deprive them? I mean, Ben will want to come home. I’m sure he will.”

  “That’s just what I don’t want. Damn it, Brooks, it’s my death!”

  The tone was so violent that even Laura burst into laughter, and the laughter broke the tension.

  “Talk a little more about it,” Ann said. “How can you accept it? You are really extraordinary—I mean, after all, you’re not old.”

  Laura frowned. She really had not thought any of it out. She had been living on an instinct to be left alone that was as strong as an animal’s.

  “But I’ve had my life, I think. At any rate I would prefer not to follow Mamma’s example.”

  “Yes, that’s awful, of course,” Ann assented quickly.

  “But it’s more than not wanting something—it’s that I want to have this little space in which to reckon it all up. They say a drowning man sees his whole life go by in a flash—it’s something like that.”

  It was time, Laura sensed, to go home. She was floating like a person in a high fever.

  “Before I go home,” she said, “there is something that would be a real help later on, if someone could walk Grindle for me.”

  “Of course,” Ann said, clearly relieved to be given a function. “The children and I will love to do that.”

  Laura was on her feet now, a little shaky. She reached out to Brooks to find her balance.

  “Want me to drive you home?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll just go and say good night to the children.”

  The children met her at the foot of the stairs, flushed and still damp after their baths and in their pajamas.

  Laurie hugged Laura hard and said, “Thank you for my necklace, Gram!”

  Charley jumped up and down, singing, “Good night, Gram, good night, Gram!”

  And after all the good-bys, Laura was safe in her car and homeward bound.

  Chapter IX