The Magnificent Spinster

by May Sarton

  “Sarah, we’ve got the right boys to go treasure-hunting … what do you think? Tomorrow maybe. I’m just dying to see if we can find it!”

  “It’s a piece of luck that Sonny and Christopher get on so well,” Sarah agreed. “And why not? Shall I suggest the plan when I go down after breakfast?” Then she added, “What is your thought, Jane? A massive expedition or a secret treasure hunt with only the boys?”

  “I hadn’t thought,” Jane said, eating a second piece of toast.

  “If we all go it will be a great public scramble,” Sarah said. “Why not just you and me and the boys, after all?”

  “Then we shall have great tales to tell when we get home, and I think we had better invite the English over for supper, and Dick and Esther if they feel they can leave Tony. But,” she stopped, remembering Frances, “it might be a little much for Frances, all the brouhaha … maybe we’d better wait for a big gathering until after she leaves; what do you think?”

  Annie chose to answer this by saying rather gloomily, “Miss Jane, you expect too much of yourself. Bad enough to climb that mountain at your age, and you had better do it this year, by the way. And what about my sail, Sarah?”

  “Annie, we’ll go today while they are out fishing. I know I promised, but things have been rather thick and fast lately,” Sarah said.

  “They always are,” said Annie. She had occasional black moods and today apparently was brewing one of them. “One of these days you’ll kill yourself if you don’t take care. You are not immortal, Miss Jane.”

  “I know,” Jane said, laughing happily, “that’s why every day seems such a gift. But I don’t feel old, Annie. Do I really seem on the brink of collapse?”

  “No, you don’t. And that’s the worst of it; the way you behave you might be fifty! And all these people come and expect the impossible! Half the time I go to the cookie jar and it’s empty. They eat you out of house and home.”

  “The island does seem to create huge appetites,” Jane said. But she was aware that Annie would be quite disappointed if no one sneaked in and stole a cookie. “After all, it’s you, not I, who is the great provider, Annie. And what about roast chicken for supper?”

  “I’ll need celery for the stuffing,” Annie said morosely.

  “And here’s Captain Fuller to take the order,” for Captain Fuller was pushing open the screen door just then. She sat down with a cup of coffee to go over the list with Sarah. Already the new day was gathering momentum. Frances and Erika would be down at any moment for their breakfast. “I’ll just run over to Edith’s and see how Esther and Tony are getting on. Do you suppose I could steal four blueberry muffins for them?” Jane asked.

  “You could but I’ll have to make another batch for Miss Frances and Miss Erika.”

  “I think maybe not,” Sarah murmured. “If we’re going sailing Annie will be pretty busy, you know, this morning.”

  “Never mind,” Jane said, “they’ll never know what they missed!” And off she went. Then she came back a moment later to ask Annie to tell Frances and Erika it looked like a fine day for a swim or just to sit in the sun by the pool and she would hope to see them there at twelve.

  She didn’t walk quite as fast as she used to, but that meant she noticed a lot of things she used to miss, Jane thought. The pyrola was in flower near a fallen log, such a magic sight, as it flowered after all the spring things like checkerberry were over, and she stopped to examine its tiny white spires, a little like lily of the valley, but not obscured by large leaves, each delicate frond standing upright. It had been a favorite of her mother’s, she remembered. Maybe on the way back she could pick one or two to place on the mantel.

  Edith’s house, a large one built to contain her large family, stood a little back from the steep ledges on that side of the island, with a roughly cut lawn in front of it. And there Jane found Esther lying in a deck chair reading.

  “Oh Aunt Reedy, you blessed person!” she cried out when she saw Jane approaching, and ran to meet her and be enfolded in a warm hug.

  “How is the patient?”

  “Ever so much better. Dick thinks we could take off maybe day after tomorrow. The doctor was very pleased. He said, ‘That son of yours is a resilient fellow.’”

  “Well, that’s great news.”

  “It’s been simply wonderful to be here,” Esther said. “Yesterday Tony lay out here in the sun and watched for the ospreys. He was so excited when they flew over I think it made him well, not an invalid any longer, but a bird watcher.” She looked at Jane shyly and then asked, “Could you sit down for a moment? Do you have time?”

  “All the time in the world, dearie,” Jane said, sitting down on a folding chair and stretching out her long legs. “Let’s seize the chance for a real talk. It seems ages since we’ve had one.”

  The tide was rising and they could hear the murmur of waves breaking on the rocks below.

  “Such a restful sound,” Esther said. “You never get the big surf, do you? That’s what I love about the island, the gentleness. Time seems to stand still.” Then she smiled, “Are you still sometimes a witch in your red cloak? When we were children we used to beg you to be a witch for us!”

  “I’ll try to remember to wear it before you go. Once I have it on becoming a witch appears to be irresistible.”

  “Mother still has hers. I guess all Vassar girls hang onto them, don’t they?”

  “How is your mother these days?” Jane asked. “I feel badly that I didn’t manage to drop in to see her more often last winter.” They were exact contemporaries, had been in the same class at Vassar and had made several trips to Europe together, but Snooks, as everyone called her, was gliding into senility. The idea of possibly losing one’s mind in old age was not something Jane could contemplate, and she dreaded a visit.

  “Oh Jane, she just isn’t there anymore.”

  “I wish I could understand what happens … what goes on in the mind. Snooks had such a brilliant, original mind. She was so vital.”

  Suddenly the tears Esther held back most of the time just could not be stopped. “Pay no attention,” she said, blowing her nose. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  “It’s awfully hard, dearie.… I know.”

  “Hard on all of us, but much worse for Daddy. I don’t know how long he can go on being a full-time nurse. That is what it amounts to, after all. Sometimes she is quite affectionate and grateful, you know. Then it’s bearable. But sometimes she gets cross and pretends she doesn’t know who he is.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t,” Jane ventured.

  “Daddy says the only time he has any peace is at night, when she’s asleep and he lies down beside her and holds her hand.”

  Jane was weeping herself. But she was not ashamed of tears; perhaps weeping with Esther was the best she could do. And for a second she reached over and held Esther’s hand in hers.

  When she let it go, she said, “Sometimes tears are the only answer one can make to tragedy like this. There’s no shaking it off, is there? There’s no easy, pious response.”

  “Dear, dear Aunt Reedy, what would we all do without you?”

  “You would do very well,” Jane smiled. “I’m not essential, you know.”

  “Maybe not, but you sure are a comfort. Just to know you are here and the island is here—how few people care the way you do, how few are quite simply always there.” Esther was all right now and happy that she could say something she had always felt but never quite dared put into words. “I’ll never forget that summer when I broke my leg, your reading The Wind in the Willows aloud and making paper dolls.”

  “Did I do that? I’ve forgotten that completely. But I do remember your laughing when I made noises like Toad’s car.”

  “Poop! Poop!—which reminds me that I had better go and see whether Tony feels like getting dressed this morning.”

  But before she got up to go, Jane talked over the treasure hunt plan and whether she could kidnap Sonny for the day. Esther w
as delighted, and so clearly longed to go along that Jane quickly agreed that it would give Dick a chance to do something for Tony, for Sonny, out fishing with his father, had been getting all the fun.

  Jane walked back slowly with a full heart. One of the moving things about a long life, she was thinking, was the chance to grow into real friendship with an adult whom one had known as a small child. She had known Esther, after all, since she was a red-faced infant in her cradle. She had been one of the first tiny babies Jane had ever held in her arms. And here she was, such a mature, devoted person, so aware, so quick to respond to other people’s needs—much of what she had become was surely due to her mother’s influence—and now living close to her father’s devotion. “Devotion,” Jane was thinking, is surely one of the most beautiful words in the language. And she wondered if it existed in just the same way in any other language. Dévouement had, she felt, a slightly pious note in it.

  When she got back Frances and Erika were still at breakfast and Jane sat down with them for a moment and talked about Snooks a little, for Frances had known her at Vassar, of course.

  “I wonder whether Harry could consider a nursing home. How long can he go on?” Frances asked.

  “I suppose it’s one of the hardest decisions anyone ever has to make,” Jane answered, leaning her cheek in her hand.

  “But at a certain point,” Erika said, “it just has to be faced. I see this all the time in my work. It sounds like Alzheimer’s disease, and if so, there is no hope.”

  “It’s downhill all the way, then,” Jane said.

  “The time comes when the person afflicted really does not know where they are, you see,” Erika said. “When the cost to the family or those nearest is simply too great.”

  “Devotion,” Jane murmured. “That’s what is so moving about Harry. Could they have someone live in and help, for instance?”

  “But Jane, it might go on for years and mean a night nurse eventually,” Frances said. “Can they afford that?”

  “I could help,” Jane said at once. For some reason she felt rather stubborn in the face of Erika’s experience and logic. Something in her rebelled against what she saw as depriving Harry of his determination to stick it out to the end. And suddenly she remembered something the philosopher who had founded the Warren School had told her when his Irish wife was, like Snooks, simply not there. “Ernest Hocking told me that he spent a half-hour every evening with Agnes when she was unable even to recognize him. He sat with her and held her hand and said a poem or a prayer … and he felt sure that we do not know, we simply can’t, whether or not something may penetrate the shield of senility. He felt he had to take the chance, that his voice alone might be a comfort. That, I think, is what Harry feels. He can’t bear to let Snooks be among strangers, you see.” She had flushed as she recounted this, and it was clear that she had not been persuaded.

  “Ach,” Erika said, “it’s hard.” Then she turned to Frances. “Jane is so generous, but I think too of all the deprived children we see, of the immense need for help with preschool and Head-start programs … has one the right, weighing it all, to give to someone who is not there at all, when there are so many needs?”

  “No one can do everything,” Frances said quietly, sensing that Jane was upset. “We all have to make choices.”

  Jane felt all churned up by the discussion, close to tears and close to anger at the same time. She could not rid herself of the image of Harry holding his wife’s hand through the night. Deprive him of that? But with her instinct to keep her balance she pulled herself together and smiled. “Sometimes the right thing just seems the impossible thing, you know. So I dangle on the horns of a dilemma—though it’s not up to me to make the decision, so …”

  “I’ve been too sharp, haven’t I?” Erika said. “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Jane said, “for heaven’s sake, Erika! I asked for advice. I needed to know, and if I can’t agree with the advice I expect it’s just the old mule in me. Mamma used to say, ‘Jane is stubborn as a mule’—but, oh dear me,” she added, “old age is no joke, is it?”

  “We are just not prepared,” Frances mused.

  “So I guess the real problem is that I don’t want to face it,” Jane admitted. “Snooks is my age.”

  “But, dear Jane,” Frances said gently, “you do not have Alzheimer’s! And really,” she went on half to herself, “one trouble with all the statistics and all the generalities is that old age is as singular an experience for each person as childhood is. I used to be amazed at Warren to see over and over again that in a class of twelve there was such a wide gap in learning ability, for instance.” Then she smiled at Jane. “You simply are not old at all, although, at over seventy, you really should be, you know!”

  “Incredible, what you manage to accomplish here all summer,” Erika said warmly. “Frances and I talk about it all the time.”

  “Well,” said Jane, getting up, “that reminds me that it’s nearly eleven and we had better get down to the little house and see how they are getting on down there.”

  Frances decided to stay, as she felt that the walk down to the pool and back would be enough exercise for her. It was hard for Jane to remember that this very thin, very tall person risked breaking an arm or leg if she should fall. Frances never complained about osteoporosis and refused to behave like an invalid, lifted up on her insatiable curiosity about and love of people of all ages, throwing herself wholeheartedly into any and all discussions, still inside herself, a flame of psychic energy encased in those fragile bones.

  On the walk down to the little house, Jane had a chance to talk a little with Erika about Frances. In fact, Erika was anxious to talk, and as soon as they were out of earshot she confided that she felt some plan should be made about how Frances could be helped to stay in her apartment in Cambridge.

  “She’s so alert and so on fire. I find it hard to keep in mind that she is over eighty, you know,” Jane answered. “Do you really believe she needs help?”

  “Nothing like a nurse yet,” Erika answered, “but perhaps someone to come in every day, do the food shopping, cook her dinner, and tidy up.”

  “Yes,” Jane said thoughtfully, “that could be managed without her feeling she was being taken over. I guess that’s what we all fear, to lose control of our own lives, isn’t it? Going to a nursing home is going to prison.”

  “I gather Frances is all right financially … she never talks about it.”

  “She was instrumental in setting up a foundation for one of the old supporters of her father’s settlement house in Chicago, is still a member of the board, and manages to get to the meetings. That foundation is at her back, and I and a half-dozen other people could be relied on, so money is not a problem.” Jane stopped as they came out of the rather dark tunnel on the path to where the bay opened out before them and the old elephant hills, in sharp outline against the blue sky.

  “Well, that is a relief,” Erika said. “I have been anxious about that. After all, the head of a private school does not retire on much to live on!”

  They shared an ironic laugh about that fact. And then Erika gave Jane a probing look. “I have an idea this is the last time she will be able to come here … hazard a fall.”

  “Oh.” Jane felt the shock and showed it. She had tears in her eyes.

  “It’s been such a good time, Jane. I hope you know that.”

  “Yes, but …” The sentence was never finished, but the reality was folded away in the back of her mind, like a letter she would have to reread and ponder. Frances never to come back to the island! That hurt.

  The next day was a gift from the gods, Jane felt, a perfectly calm blue sky, with just a little stir in the air, which might turn into a cool offshore breeze later on. Sonny and Christopher had arrived a half-hour early and were now playing parcheesi (all the games available were pretty old-fashioned, Jane realized, and Christopher had grumbled about this, but they were now thoroughly absorbed nevertheless). Esther and Sar
ah were busy making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and filling Thermoses with milk and coffee, and Jane went to pull a thin jacket from the hall closet. It was hard to define to herself why this expedition had taken on a powerful magic in her mind. Would they have even a chance of finding the secret place? She supposed that it was partly the knotting-together once more of the past and the present, the recapturing intact, if they succeeded, of a moment in past time. She invoked Eleanor as she thought about it, so full of humor and life that day, and now dead. And Cam, who had been at a loose end then. And Matthew, an awkward and unhappy little boy, married, a father, and working away in a bank!

  It was unbelievable how life had gone on for more than twenty years, how wars had been fought, children had grown up, but the three little gold pieces in a crack in the granite cliff had—it was possible that they had—remained intact, unchanged, as in a fairy tale, a treasure waiting to be found, a secret waiting to be told. And the secret was more than three gold pieces—but what was it? Jane asked herself.

  They were all four aware of Jane’s excitement, her eyes shining, her long stride so young still, as they finally made their way down to embark on West Wind, Sarah and Esther each with a knapsack, carrying their lunch, Sonny and Christopher running ahead in a race to the dock.

  “What a day!” Jane said. “The gods are kind.”

  “We are the luckiest people in the world,” Esther said. It seemed like some apotheosis of the island life, given them like a present after the awful anxiety about Tony, a special reward.

  On the way over the boys sat on the stern with their legs dangling down into the cabin. “Tell us what the treasure is, Aunt Reedy,” Christopher said. “Is it a real treasure or a joke, for instance?”

  “It’s a real treasure, I can promise you that. But I can’t promise that we’ll find it,” Jane said, and she looked at the two boys, Christopher so English with his pink cheeks and blue eyes, so sure of himself, and Sonny, a plump child with wide-apart brown eyes that always seemed to hold a shade of anxiety in them, and younger by a year, following Christopher’s lead. As Jane sat with an arm around Esther’s shoulders, contemplating them, she felt immensely happy. They were the right boys, she felt sure, for this adventure.