They drove back through the Dells, in Wisconsin, where Ned took them all for a boat ride. Cora sat at the front where the oars wouldn’t splash her. It frightened her to look deep into the clear water. Rising to leave the boat, one hand extended toward Madge, Cora became confused, the boat tilted, and she toppled, her arms flung wide, into weeds and shallow water. She was pulled from the lake like a drenched fowl, spread to dry in the sun. Her left hip seemed strained. The twisting fall had wrenched her back. Ned drove from the Dells to the farm without stopping, Cora propped bolt upright between him and Madge. Long after sundown they reached the farm, the pits scratched by the chickens visible in the car lights. The noise and commotion stirred up the hens, but did not disturb Emerson. Because of her lameness Cora was put on the cot off the kitchen, propped up by pillows. Ten days later she was still there, but able to move around with the support of a chair, gripping the back. It broke her lifelong habit of being first person up and down the stairs. When she was able to climb the steps if she cared to, she had grown accustomed to the cot off the kitchen, and to sleeping propped up. Emerson made no comment. As he had all his life, first thing in the morning he drank a dipper of water without skimming off the flies. What was left in the dipper he tossed through the screen, which caused it to rust.
More than five years after Orion’s death Sharon reexperienced her troubled sense of loss as suppressed feelings of guilt. She neither liked nor disliked her father. She felt detached from and indifferent to him. Perhaps she rather hoped it would be possible for her to overlook him. Like an infection that had failed to localize, her feelings of guilt had been slow to surface. When he came back from the war, however, it had shamed her to feel only pity for him. For Fayrene she felt a distressed compassion since she seemed doomed to complicate her misfortunes, but she was aware that her attitude toward Blanche had changed.
Sharon marveled at, rather than pitied, the gangly puppet-limbed child with elbows that appeared to bend inward at the slightest pressure, or when she clasped her hands behind her back. She was now trapped in a school with oafish boys and giggling girls, where she was moved from class to class, from desk to desk, to accommodate her ungainly figure, her still growing legs. She was leaner and more cranelike than Cora, with the matchless complexion her father thought to be unhealthy. Sharon could not help staring at the pearly lobes of her ears, the shell-like transparency of the wings of her nose. If a lighted candle could be placed in her mouth, would she glow with an inner light? Yet she seemed as at ease in her environment as she looked out of place. She could not learn fractions. She had no interest in civics or history. While these subjects were under discussion she made her childlike drawings of animals and birds. Her teacher, Miss Ringle, had been relieved to find she could entertain herself and not prove to be a problem.
At home Blanche was the darling of her father and the object of Caroline’s relentless taunting. She made beds, and sat for hours attentive to little Rosalene’s prattle. Was it any wonder that she was silent? Any impulse to speak was reserved for her father, who put his finger to her lips to spare her the trouble. Sharon sensed that it embarrassed him to confront a girl child who was taller than he was. He thought it enough, by way of communication, to blink his eyes in such a manner it led her to shyly lower the lids on her own. That’s what she had always done as a child, and she was still his child. Put out to Mrs. Ord, to learn piano, she had not progressed beyond “Chopsticks.” Was there possibly a problem with her hearing? What business was it of Sharon’s?
Sharon could no longer bear the thought, nor avoid it, that this girl child would soon appeal to some loutish youth stimulated by the seasonal fall of pollen, and be thick with child. The thought almost sickened her. In a family of girls one sacrifice (Fayrene’s) was enough. Before the cocoon of Blanche’s childhood had peeled away she would be locked into the trap that nature and man had set for her.
Hadn’t Madge repeatedly said that what Blanche needed the most was an older sister the likes of Sharon? (Rosalene had such a companion in Blanche, silent though she was.) With a directness that would appeal to Ned (she had to be tactful) she would write to Madge suggesting that Blanche might attend this school for girls in Waukegan, since there was simply nothing further for her in Norfork. She would spend her weekends with Sharon. The Briarcliffe School, which Lillian had attended, made allowances for young ladies who were unusual or gifted in the manner of Blanche. These things were on Sharon’s mind when she heard from Madge (such coincidences were not unusual between them) wondering if Blanche might pay her a visit (it was early July), since with school out, and all the girls at home, Caroline was almost too much for them, especially Blanche. Rosalene would fight her back and shriek at her, but Caroline couldn’t resist heckling a person like Blanche. Nor could Madge plan to go off to the Ozarks, or somewhere else, without them. All winter Ned had had his heart set on going to the Black Hills, where he hoped to do some fishing, but the girls would simply not allow him a moment to himself. Blanche would not be going on to the new junior high school but would help Fayrene with her newest baby. She was so patient with babies it was too bad she didn’t have one of her own.
If Madge had not closed with that remark Sharon might have done no more than think it over. Instead she wrote to say yes, yes she would be glad to, if the time could be arranged before her own vacation on the Cape in August, never dreaming that when that time came she would cunningly contrive, like a kidnapper, to take Blanche along with her, rather than spend the weeks at the sea without her, brooding on her exile and waste in Norfork.
Sharon was not inexperienced in the far reaches of friendship, and infatuation, but nothing had prepared her for the great pleasure she received from Blanche’s mute passive presence, her undemanding yet constant attention. Her beauty was certainly peculiar, as pronounced and unusual as something imagined (not at all lifelike), recalling the women seen in the paintings of the early Flemish and Dutch masters, so self-contained, so unrealistic they aroused no further expectations. To contemplate their appearance was more than enough.
Within a week of her arrival Sharon had begun her connivance to keep her. In this, the situation in Norfork played into her hands. From the Black Hills Madge wrote her to say what a great relief it was to be free of the haggling girls. Caroline herself had changed now that she received all of her father’s attention. As for Ned, not having a son, a tomboy like Caroline secretly pleased him. The two of them shot at bottles with an air gun. After a letter like this Sharon took the steps she had contemplated but feared to acknowledge. It was the declared purpose of the Briarcliffe School to accommodate the exceptional student, even when the student seemed markedly disadvantaged. The principal, Miss Holroyd, one of the founders of coeducation in England, had only to set her eyes on Blanche to exchange knowing glances with Sharon. Of course! Who would ever know what might flower on such a branch? Nor would it be hard, with so many to choose from (they came to Briarcliffe from all over the world), to find a suitable roommate. Sharon did not trust herself to write a letter, so she called Madge on the phone—pleading the need of a quick decision, to ensure her place in the school—closing the conversation with Blanche, herself, speaking softly but clearly to her father. Yes, she was happy. Yes, she looked forward to going to school. That in itself was so unusual no further discussion proved to be necessary. Blanche would come home for Christmas and spring vacation, but other, shorter holidays she would spend with Sharon, including most of her weekends. It all went so well Sharon overlooked the remarkable change in Blanche. How account for her assurance? Reflecting on this transformation, Sharon thought back to the private decisions of her own childhood, when she had felt her nature threatened, culminating in the moment she had filled her lungs and shrieked to the intruder seated in the buggy with Madge. A force she was born with. One that would go off when it was tapped.
Blanche’s roommate, a plump, thick-calfed girl named Shirley Caudwell, a hockey player from Charlottesville, Virginia, had the chronic cheerf
ul nature of fat children and loved to eat. She received food parcels from her family weekly, as if they feared she might starve. Tinned meats, preserved fruits, baked Southern hams, baskets of fruit given to voyagers on shipboard. She shared it with her classmates, but to Sharon’s dismay little of it clung to the limbs of Blanche. Eating so preoccupied Shirley that Blanche’s reserve went unnoticed. Two weeks after her arrival Blanche did seem to experience a brief spell of withdrawal, thought to be homesickness, but it was hard to distinguish in a girl like Blanche her normal retired nature from an abnormal reaction. The activities of the art department, under Mademoiselle Arnaud, a Belgian woman, so preoccupied Blanche that her day proved to be too short. She was slow. There was little or nothing said, however simple, that she did not have to have repeated. The projection of slides, the collecting of art prints, the mounting of prints on varicolored papers, the drawing of plaster-cast hands and heads, in charcoal, on papers of assorted colors and textures, all of this in a room lit up by a skylight under trees flaming with fall colors. Blanche wandered about in her bibbed green smock, her fingers ink-stained, her cheeks smeared with chalk dust, the marks of her sharp pointed teeth flaking the enamel from her drawing pencils. None of this long concealed from Mademoiselle Arnaud her unusual nature and remarkable beauty. Blanche was also content to sit for her portrait—something quite beyond the talents of the others—leaning forward, her chin resting on her hand, or comfortably slouched, her legs folded beneath her, the light falling in such a manner her skin was transparent as porcelain. That was quite beyond the students to capture, of course, but Mademoiselle Arnaud, who did watercolors, and knew exactly how to use the cream tones of the paper, in some of her quick sketches captured Blanche’s serene detachment. It was quite uncanny in a girl in her early teens. Equally arresting was to observe Blanche when she was shown these portraits of herself. Most girls, their emotions confused, would giggle, or feel embarrassed to shamelessly stare at their own likenesses, but Blanche would soberly ponder these images as if they were portraits of someone else. One was used as a frontispiece for the yearbook—a portrait to please most Briarcliffe parents—and Sharon often found Blanche shamelessly gazing at it, as if pondering its meaning. There seemed to be so little vanity in this recognition Sharon did not speak to her about it. It might have been another person, understood to bear her a close resemblance.
In addition to her art, surprising Sharon, she also proved adept at botany, where she became a specimen collector, the sill of her bedroom window jammed with bottles of bugs and growing seeds. Blanche pressed leaves well, made excellent pressings and rubbings, but persisted in her chronically bad spelling and reversal of the letter S. When this was pointed out she was very attentive, and could make the correction recommended. The following day she would revert to the one she liked. However puzzling, Miss Holroyd felt that time, not instruction, would correct it. One day she would simply see it as it was, and that would be that.
Life at Briarcliffe suited Blanche so well that she was reluctant to go home for Christmas, until Sharon mentioned Cora. Cora had given up writing to people, at least to Sharon, but she welcomed letters from Blanche. Sharon sent her a brief Christmas greeting but received no reply. On her return Blanche explained that a blizzard had kept them in Madge’s house and Ned’s new basement, where she played Parcheesi with her father and with the Ouija board with Caroline. Madge and Caroline had had colds. Fayrene and Avery had come over with a new baby, on New Year’s.
The cold she brought back from Norfork she gave to Sharon, chronically subject to bronchial infections. She was helpful to Sharon, the weekend she spent in bed, but found the time to compose a letter to her father. Sharon observed her: a tranquil study someone like Vermeer might have painted. Her head rested on her left arm, as if she were napping, while she scrawled the oval letters on a pad of paper. She was being a dutiful child, no more, but it piqued Sharon, lying there with her sniffles and cough while she wrote it. She sealed and went off with it without asking Sharon for a stamp.
The express ride on the North Side elevated brought her to Sharon on weekends, and the Lincoln Park Zoo, as the weather altered, was there just a short walk to the east. At the school she wore the green uniform of her classmates, with the bib at her front and the romperlike bloomers, but Sharon had been careful to outfit her in clothes that emphasized her adolescence. Knee-length stockings somewhat filled out her legs, and firmly attached her to low-heeled patent-leather oxfords, with straps. Her blue straw floater, with a pale yellow ribbon, held in place by an elastic chin strap, she wore tilted back on her head. Two long braids of hair hung free of her back as she walked, dangling ribbons to her waist. Not a girl, it seemed to Sharon, an idling male would molest. She always carried a sketch pad, a red pencil box, a blue purse she held by its strap, and often a paper bag with bread scraps for the pigeons and squirrels. It distressed Sharon to know that she also ate them herself, nibbling on them like cheese.
On weekends Blanche might receive several phone calls from Libby Pollitt, one of the day students, who lived at home in Evanston. Libby shared one of Blanche’s afternoon botany classes, and was an avid specimen collector. She called Blanche to tell her of the strange things she had found. “Might I speak to Miss Kibbee?” she would ask Sharon, usually breathing hard from the climb to her room. Blanche would sit cross-legged on the floor, beside the telephone stand, picking at bits of nap on the hallway rug. Libby’s monologue might go on for as long as forty minutes, with no audible comment from Blanche. Sharon had spoken with Libby’s mother, Gladys Pollitt, who had called to apologize for her daughter. Her other children were boys, and she found them quite a relief. On Mondays Libby would share with Blanche the specimens she had found on the weekend, which Blanche would bring home in a shoe box and store away in jelly jars with holes poked in the lids.
Sharon felt it would be a special pleasure to Blanche to have a friend of her own, who loved to talk to her, but after each of these calls she was noncommittal. Perhaps her apparent indifference was deceptive, since not once, to Sharon’s knowledge, did she forget to tend the seeds and creatures stored away in jars on her window sill. Sharon herself marveled to see the caterpillar become a butterfly, which Libby would then add to her butterfly collection. Nor did chloroforming the creature and piercing it with a pin disturb Blanche as it did Sharon. Blanche was free to grow anything she might care to, but Sharon drew the line about the pin piercing. Discussing this with Blanche, Sharon had been painfully aware of not closing the gap she sensed between them. The child listened, wetting the tip of her finger to pick up crumbs from the table, which she had learned from Cora.
Sharon regretted the commute on the north shore elevated until she found that Blanche was so thrilled by it she often rode it farther than necessary and had to ride back. The big express train went too fast for Sharon, so high above the streets, with no visible support, but Blanche seemed captivated by both trains and streetcars. On the Clark Street car, when they rode into the Loop, she had to go stand at the front of the car, directly behind the motorman. She liked the clang of the bell, the way the car seemed to rock and dip on the tracks. It was so easy for Sharon to keep an eye on Blanche, her head rising above those around her, that Sharon did not feel the customary apprehension of parents with teen-aged children. On Saturday or Sunday they might attend the matinee at the movie house on Sheridan Avenue. Of course, Blanche had gone to movies with her father, in Norfork, but her avidity for them, the way her eyes “drank them in” (no other words so well described her rapt, wide-eyed enchantment), both amused and disturbed Sharon. Where was she off to, at such moments? In the darkness of the theater, as in a séance, she was exposed and vulnerable in a way that Sharon had never experienced. Yet when she stepped from the lobby into the glare of the street, what she had seen passed from her like a shadow. She saw only movies acceptable to Sharon, so it was hard to judge what types she preferred. The flickering light from the screen revealed her rapt attention, the skin about her mouth gli
stening with the butter and salt of her popcorn. Eating was part of her absorption. Her sister Caroline drove Madge almost dotty recounting the details of her latest movie, but Blanche soaked them in in a manner that left no trace. If Sharon troubled to ask her, she might nod that she had liked what she had seen.
Returning from her spring vacation in Norfork, her nose sunburned from the day she had spent with Cora, Blanche brought with her the sheet music of “Lotus Land,” which Caroline had played for her on Cora’s player piano. Sharon thought it pretentious, sentimental music of the worst kind. Blanche simply adored it. Would Sharon play it for her? Would Sharon teach her to play it? Sharon did play it for her, attentive, during the pauses, to the way Blanche sat on the bench at her side, drinking it in through her eyes and parted lips.
Fortunately, for them both, she was soon back at the school and had other interests by the following weekend. But Sharon had been shaken. Was it possible that Blanche would come, in her own slow time, to everything that Sharon had assumed and hoped she had put behind her? The ease she had felt in her presence gradually diminished. Her habitual silences, once so comforting, now weighed on her. What was on her mind? Twice monthly, now, Blanche wrote to her father, who addressed his letters to her to the school. That piqued Sharon. What was he concealing from her? On her February birthday, to Sharon’s embarrassment, he sent her a large box of stale drugstore candy.
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