Being Mrs. Alcott

by Nancy Geary

  Grace had brought a House & Garden magazine to read, but it didn’t take long before a shuffling sound made her look up. Ambling toward her was Ferris, wearing navy sweats and leather bedroom slippers.

  Rising quickly, she ran to him and threw her arms around him. His body felt as though it might snap. His skin looked slightly yellow, and a shadow of facial hair covered his cheeks and chin. What had happened to him? It had been less than a month since they’d met for lunch on Newbury Street. She’d noticed his drinking. Had he had three or four martinis? But she hadn’t paid much attention. He’d seemed animated and energetic, attributing his ruddy complexion to a week in Florida photographing wildlife in the Everglades and regaling her with stories of a dalliance he’d had with the manager of a crocodile farm. She’d had no idea he was so sick.

  Then she’d gotten the call. He was hospitalized at Massachusetts General Hospital. He’d collapsed in the Public Garden and been admitted through the emergency room. The doctors diagnosed acute pancreatitis. He was lucky to have survived, but he could never drink again, nothing at all, not even nonalcoholic beer. So after his immediate medical condition was stabilized, he’d checked into McLean. It made more sense to go directly; he’d already been sober for twelve days before he walked through the doors of the ADATC.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. His voice was slightly hoarse.

  “Don’t thank me. I love you,” Grace replied. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

  He laughed. Then he linked his arm through hers. “There’s a visiting room this way. If we’re lucky, they might be serving juice and cookies. I’d forgotten how much I liked gingersnaps.”

  Together they walked to the end of the hall, made a left, and proceeded down a second corridor until they reached a vast room filled with furniture that had seen better days, blue-and-brown-plaid couches and chairs in makeshift seating arrangements. A television hung from the ceiling. Large windows provided an ample view of the parking lot as well as the emergency entrance to the building. The air smelled stale.

  In one corner sat a gray-haired woman, who stared blankly out the window. Her bathrobe had fallen open, and the black T-shirt underneath clung to the rolls in her belly. Beside her sat a heavyset blonde who had fashioned a bizarre hairstyle using a series of combs. Neither appeared to say a word. As they smoked, they passed an already full ashtray back and forth between them.

  Otherwise the room was empty.

  A table by the entrance held a stack of paper cups, a pitcher of apple juice, and a plate of vanilla wafers. Ferris appeared obviously disappointed with the selection. He poured himself a cup of juice and offered one to Grace. Then he pulled two chairs together in front of a window in the opposite corner.

  As Grace sat, she could see an ambulance pull into the turnaround. Its lights flashed, but the siren was off. One paramedic opened the back as the other wheeled a stretcher. She diverted her gaze, not wanting to see who was brought out, and reached for her brother’s hand. It was cold and clammy.

  “How’s Bain?” he asked.

  “Oh fine, we’re fine. No need to think about us. You’re the one who matters right now.” She didn’t want to sound anxious, but she was.

  “Is he writing anything?” Ferris persisted.

  “He’s at his desk every day. I’ve never seen such discipline.” That was only a partial lie; he did spend several hours every day bent over a notepad. But instead of creating great literature, or even something that fell short of that, he tracked expenses and calculated capital gains, real estate taxes, and depreciation. The American novel had been the lost dream he now refused to discuss. She hated to mislead her brother, but she couldn’t bring herself to confess the truth. “I can’t comment because I haven’t seen any of his work.”

  “Hummm,” Ferris murmured. “Glad to hear it. I’ve been wondering how things were going with him. It’s a bloody hard business . . . And what about you?”

  “Me?” She avoided his eyes. “It’s just like you, Ferris, to be concerned about everyone else when you’re here in a . . . a . . . hospital. Why don’t you tell me how you are?” She still clasped one of his hands in hers; the other palm she rested on his thigh as she leaned toward him. “What do the doctors say?”

  “I assume I’m better than ever. Nobody’s told me otherwise. Fact of the matter is that the so-called therapists and psychiatrists say little to nothing. I’m spending money I don’t have to sit around in small groups talking to myself and to the other nut jobs in here.”

  She was confused. “But . . . but aren’t you—”

  “That’s therapy. The shrink sits and listens, and probably thinks about the date he had last night with the night nurse from Ward B while the rest of us blather on about our problems.”

  It sounded strange and not particularly productive, but Grace had no experience with psychiatry.

  “The odd part is,” Ferris said, staring out the window, “I think it does help. The first group I went to made me feel as though I’d stepped into the Star Wars bar. I remember thinking, What am I possibly going to say to these weirdos? I asked myself why I would ever discuss my problems with total strangers, serious misfits who’d clearly had more than their fair share of problems already. What can these people possibly do to help me? And yet when I got there and listened to other people’s stories, to their traumas and sorrows, well . . . we’re not so different as we think.”

  “That’s wonderful,” she commented with artificial enthusiasm.

  “I haven’t stopped to think about what I was feeling in a very long time. Losing my health and my freedom has made me do that.”

  “And you’re not drinking?” She wanted some reassurance. She wanted some sense that this place was ensuring her brother’s physical safety.

  “Around here they ban shampoo if the alcohol content is more than two percent. So in answer to your question, there’s nothing for me to consume even if I wanted it.”

  “Which I can’t imagine you do, given all that’s happened.”

  “Oh, Grace, the eternal optimist. I love that about you.” He patted her hand.

  They sat together in silence. Ferris’s leg began to jiggle, and she watched his heel bounce up and down at an abnormally fast rate. After a moment, he seemed to notice it, too. “Perhaps we should walk. They won’t let me outside, but you can get plenty of exercise pacing these corridors. Believe me, I know. I’ve been wandering back and forth for the better part of the last four days.”

  Arm in arm, they strolled the halls. Ferris was frail and the pace was painfully slow, but she felt relieved. Her brother had been saved from his own destruction just in the nick of time. Now he was getting help.

  “How long do you expect to stay here?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure, exactly. No doubt my insurance will run out at some point and they’ll kick me out.”

  “You should come down to stay with us after that,” she said, realizing as she spoke that she didn’t know where she’d be, or whether there would be an extra room. But she couldn’t tell him that. She wanted everything on the outside to be just as it had always been. And the Chatham house was part of that normalcy. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

  Ferris smiled but said nothing. They covered a few more yards.

  “Do you really think that’s why you got sick? Because you didn’t allow yourself to feel?” she asked after a while.

  “I think I got caught up in the pace of my life, my day. Obviously, booze was a big part of that, but I never paused. I never asked myself, Ferris, what’s making you happy today, or unhappy? Why are you drinking? Instead I just kept going, never stopping, and drank myself numb so I didn’t feel. I expect you’re the same way. Not with alcohol but . . . I mean, we were raised not to acknowledge emotions. Look at Mother. She wouldn’t even admit she was dying.”

  Grace didn’t respond. She’d never viewed Eleanor’s decision to hide her illness from her children as a sign of weakness. Instead she’d interpreted it as a show of
selflessness, courage, and inner strength. She’d kept up appearances for the wedding, for Grace’s benefit.

  “It would have been much harder for our mother to have to face us all, talk about the fact that she was going to go, than to pretend life was normal until the very final moment. I’m coming to realize it’s a lot harder to be angry or hurt than it is to feel nothing. It means you have to come to terms with all the disappointments and wrongs and sorrows—all the feelings I’ve lived my whole life trying to avoid.”

  Grace was surprised. She’d assumed he was content with his lot in life, his independence, his more-than-interesting work. Disappointment and sorrow weren’t two words she’d ever have thought of in connection with her brother. Apparently she’d been naive.

  “We’re both dreamers, you and I. We were raised that way. Mom and Dad created the perfect house in the perfect society, a world of the mind—but not the heart. It was hard not to grow up thinking the rest of life would be similarly interesting and basically gentle. No one taught us to deal with passion, or even suggested there was such an emotion. And the flip side of that is everything that hurts.”

  “Oh, Ferris, I’m so sorry,” she said. She wasn’t sure she understood exactly what he meant, but she knew he was suffering.

  He stopped and turned to face her. “We don’t need to spend this time together talking about the past. I have six groups a day to help with that.”

  “Isn’t it better to talk to me instead of strangers?”

  “Not according to what they tell me in here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m your family.” She nudged him gently. “I want to help. I remember last Christmas dinner where you talked about the paths not taken. I should have realized it was your way of telling me that you were hurting. I’m so sorry.”

  “Please don’t apologize.” He smiled and she could see the grayness of his teeth. “You’ve never been anything but kind to me. You are a dear soul.”

  “But I’m only your sister, so I fear it doesn’t count.”

  He smiled again. Then, as if a snuffer had extinguished the last flame of found happiness, his expression flattened.

  “The problem I’ve had is that I wasn’t able to give up on the one path that I did want to take but couldn’t. The road was blocked, or maybe the pothole was too deep. But the forces stopping me were beyond my control.” He leaned against the wall, seeming exhausted. “Dear Grace, I don’t want you to think badly of me.” Dropping his gaze to the floor, he added, “Or your friend.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’d never think badly of you. Ferris, I love you, and I always will. No matter what. There’s nothing you could say or do to change that.”

  When he lifted his eyes, they were filled with tears. He spoke slowly. “I wanted to marry Prissy. I wanted to spend my life with her. But she wouldn’t have me.”

  Grace should have been shocked, but she wasn’t. Instead she felt a sharp pain in her side. She’d known all along. Every sign was there. She just hadn’t wanted to see it, hadn’t wanted the complications. She thought of the evening before at the beach; she’d known then that Prissy had a secret she couldn’t bring herself to share. But she hadn’t made the connection to Ferris.

  What a coward she’d been not to try to help them both. “What happened?”

  He slid down the wall, tucking his knees up as he went, until he rested on the linoleum. Grace looked around wondering whether anyone would object, but nurses, social workers, and case managers passed them without even a sideways glance. She kneeled beside him.

  “Prissy was so different, so strong. I think she liked the idea of me—the Boston Brahmin, the liberal, who lived in the world of the mind,” he said, self-mockingly. “For her, I was a lively distraction. But at the end of the day, she wants a man who comes home from a hard day of work with a pound of fresh fish for the grill and then fixes a clogged drain or cleans a gutter.” He snorted, and the sound startled Grace. “Maybe I’m selling Kody short. Maybe her husband is a great guy. And maybe the best thing about him is that he is simple and kind and predictable.”

  “You’re all those things.”

  He shook his head. “No, Grace. I may be to you, but that’s because we’re so alike. Who wants to find faults in himself? All of us fantasize about the exotic, and Prissy was that for me. When I first met her, I thought she seemed wonderfully coarse with a great, dry sense of humor, and self-confidence without the slightest pretense. I’d never met anyone like her. Then I realized it wasn’t a passing fancy. It sounds crazy but there was something very appealing about her bluntness. She wasn’t educated; she couldn’t debate the philosophical fine points of Nietzsche. She ate with her hands half the time. But she was alive and vital and knew what she wanted and that was very sexy. And so I hung on.”

  Grace knew exactly what he meant. How many times over the years had she admired Prissy for her directness, for her disregard of social mores, for her fierce independence?

  “How long have you been . . . ?”

  “There were times when we didn’t see each other for a month or more. But our involvement lasted thirty years, if you can believe it.”

  Since Sarah’s death. The anniversary was rapidly approaching.

  “Occasionally I’d rebel, go off and have some torrid moment with a woman I barely knew. Then it was even worse after that because Prissy never seemed to mind. She had no jealousy. She never got angry. I guess because she was married, she couldn’t get involved in what I did when I wasn’t with her. But for me it felt as though she didn’t care, as if what we had wasn’t particularly special, so she could take me or leave me. I was the broken-wheeled truck that the kid in the sandbox was happy to share so that he could keep the camouflage jeep all to himself.”

  “Did she know you wanted to marry her?”

  “Maybe it was just a fantasy. I’m not sure how it ever would have worked, the melding of her life and mine, but we’d talk about it, sometimes joking and sometimes serious. I was going to move into her small Cape and photograph shorebirds, or she was going to come to Boston and study oceanography, or sometimes we both dreamed of moving away someplace totally new—San Diego was high on the list for a while. And before I knew it, thirty years passed. It’s amazing to me how much a dream can sustain you if you need it to.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “You built something real in that time, Grace. My life’s been an illusion. You and Bain made a life together, raised a family, created a fabulous home for all of us to enjoy. You’ve been there for each other, always.”

  “It hasn’t been perfect.”

  “But it’s been permanent.”

  Was that the trade-off? She and Bain had a solid, enduring foundation. They shared a history, memories. But she, too, couldn’t remember the last time she’d paused to ask herself how she felt, and she doubted Bain had, either. As Ferris had found, it was easier to be numb.

  She turned her attention back to him. “Does Prissy know you’re here?”

  He was silent for several minutes. When he spoke, his voice was so soft that Grace strained to hear. “She does.”

  “What will happen when you leave?”

  “She doesn’t want to see me. She’s pleased I’m not drinking, though. Told me she couldn’t imagine me not three sheets to the wind, but she suspected I’d land on my feet. She knows I can always impose on you.”

  Grace coughed. Again she thought to tell him the house was for sale but couldn’t. It seemed too much to add to his burden. And, she reminded herself, he could sleep on a roll-away couch if she had nothing better to offer. “After thirty years that’s all she said?”

  “She needs to know whether she stayed in her marriage because of me or in spite of me. Now she wants to see if she can salvage a future with Kody. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they disappear. I don’t think she wants me to find her.”

  “Prissy’s not going to disappear,” Grace said, more to herself than her brother. She wanted to believe it, wante
d to believe that her best friend wouldn’t just leave without saying good-bye, especially given the pain she’d caused. But Grace realized how hollow her conviction was. Despite all the time they’d spent together, all the conversations they’d had, and all that Prissy had seen her through, the clammer had never once confessed her deep, romantic involvement with her brother.

  And then it hit her. Had the friendship been a ruse? Had Prissy maintained the relationship because it was useful? Ferris spent time in Grace’s home; it made it easy for them to see one another. Stringing Ferris along had been what mattered, and Grace facilitated that process. She’d assisted her friend with hurting her brother. And now Ferris had been discarded. She felt sick.

  “The last time we made love was on the beach in front of your house. It was her idea; she practically pinned me down.” He laughed at the recollection. “Even in being strong and assertive, she was incredibly feminine. Bain would chide me for being a convert to the feminist cause, but she taught me a lot about women and about how incredibly stupid stereotypes of weakness and strength are.”

  Grace leaned over and gently kissed his cheek. He sounded so wise, and yet appeared so fragile. She wondered why it took a near-death experience and isolation in a psychiatric hospital to bring out such self-awareness.

  “I remember that night looking up at the stars,” he continued. “I was holding Prissy in my arms, and feeling as though I wanted time to stop at that precise moment. Have you ever felt that? As if life is so good, so perfect, that you can’t bear for it to go on? If I had died then, I would have died with joy.”

  “There will be more joy, I know that.” Grace squeezed his hand.

  Ferris closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, tears ran down his cheeks.

  They sat together in silence until the nurse informed them that visiting hours were over, and Grace would have to leave.