They all sat erect, clinked glasses, repeated, “To us, sisters.”
Alex fell back in her seat with a broad smile on her face, kept smiling, didn’t for once speak. Ronnie, leaning forward holding her glass between her legs, looked at Elizabeth with a warm near-smile. Mary was gazing at the fireplace. She sipped her champagne, then set the glass down.
“Lizzie? When should I come down and visit you to go house hunting?”
“You’re going to come!” Elizabeth was stunned. “Really?”
Mary nodded. “Yes. I think it would be nice. I have lots of friends in Washington. And I could spend time with you instead of going to all these charity dos, of course they have them in Washington too, but it’s such a provincial town. … I wouldn’t be so driven to have lunch with X or Y, I think. I’d stay home and practice and write poetry and I wouldn’t be lonely because you’d come home for dinner at night. …”
“Well, I do travel a fair amount. …”
“Yes, well, I will too. …”
“But I’m home a lot too.”
“Yes, me too.”
“And I’d love your company.”
“Finally!” Mary grinned. “It’s taken forty years for you to say that!”
They all laughed.
“And it would be a new place, a neutral place for Marie-Laure. Maybe you’ll all come visit there when we need to talk to her together. I want to get her away from her New York friends, I don’t think they’re … healthy for her. She loves to ride and there are lots of horses in Virginia. She could come and stay and have two very different mothers. …”
“I’d like that,” Elizabeth said tremulously.
“Let’s toast that,” Alex urged, refilling their glasses.
“To Elizabeth and Mary in Virginia, with Marie-Laure,” she said with a delighted grin.
Again, they clinked glasses and repeated the words.
“To happiness ever after!” Alex cried.
The others turned and looked at her.
“No? We can’t toast that?”
“Not unless we’re blind fools.”
“Even in hope?”
They were silent, sober.
Ronnie cleared her throat. “Maybe we could say ‘To moments of happiness in every day.’ Or maybe we could say ‘To love and our continuing ability to feel it.’”
“To love,” they all said solemnly, clinked their glasses, and drank deep.
Aldo had spent nearly an hour fitting the many suitcases and packages into the trunk and front seat of the car and now the sisters crowded near the doorway of the house saying good-byes, embracing, kissing, holding each other. “Soon,” they said. “I love you,” they whispered. Then they walked out of the shelter of the portico and got into the car and Ronnie stood there, Mrs. Browning and Teresa behind her, waving them out of the driveway, watching as the car turned into the drive toward the road. The light was fading, and most of the snow had melted, showing again the dismal graybrown landscape of New England winter. She stood there shivering until the car turned on a curve and disappeared into the trees, then went in and closed the door. She stood for a moment leaning against the door.
The thought of living on here alone without them was unendurable.
But I need that two hundred dollars a week, not for long, just till I finish a first draft. What will that take, two more months? Three? Four? It’ll be spring then: will I want to work in the garden? No. Not here. Not his gardens. Let the house stand empty or maybe they’ll find a buyer who’ll turn it into a restaurant or a rest home or an inn. I want to be in Boston with my friends. Maybe I can find a place with a window box. Have my life. Momma left me all that money. Maybe for once I don’t have to be so careful. Maybe I’ll just go now.
Yes. Tomorrow I’ll go and look for a share in an apartment. Leave this house forever. My father’s mansion, my prison. Go, Ronnie.
About the Author
Marilyn French was a novelist and feminist. Her books include The Women’s Room, which has been translated into twenty languages; From Eve to Dawn, a History of Women in the World; A Season in Hell; Her Mother’s Daughter; Our Father; My Summer with George; and The Bleeding Heart. She died in 2009.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1994 by Belles-Lettres, Inc.
“Is That All There Is” by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Copyright © 1966, 1969 by Jerry Leiber Music and Mike Stoller Music. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“Daddy” and “The Applicant” from Ariel, by Sylvia Plath. Copyright © 1963 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc. and Faber and Faber Limited.
“Leda and the Swan” from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright 1928 by Macmillan Publishing Company, © renewed 1956 by Georgie Yeats. Reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing Company.
Cover design by Tracey Dunham
978-1-4804-4491-1
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