The Sisters Montclair

by Cathy Holton

  “Oh, one other thing,” Elaine said behind her, and Stella turned. “When she takes off that green dress tonight, take it and put it immediately in the clothes hamper. The thing is crawling with germs. I won’t have her wearing it again until it’s been washed.”

  Despite Elaine’s comments in the notebook, Alice seemed rather chipper and happy to see her.

  “You came back,” she said when Stella poked her head in the room.

  “Of course I came back. Are you used to people not coming back?”

  “Some don’t.”

  “Well, I’m not like that.”

  “I can see that you’re not.” She waved her hand at the newspaper lying on the other twin bed. “You’re welcome to read it, if you like.”

  “Thank you,” Stella said, picking up the paper. “Is there anything good to report?”

  “Just the usual death and destruction,” Alice said cheerfully.

  “Oh, good. I like reading about death and destruction.”

  She took the paper out to the sunroom and sat drinking a cup of coffee and staring at the sunny valley below. She shouldn’t be reading the paper at all; she should be working on a term paper due in her Psychology of Gender class. The class met on Tuesdays and Thursdays and now that Stella was sitting with Alice on Wednesdays and Thursdays, she would have to miss the Thursday morning session. At least temporarily, until she found some other kind of work. She stirred guiltily, remembering Alice’s comment this morning about her not coming back. Still, some things couldn’t be helped. She had told Charlotte specifically that she couldn’t work Thursday mornings because of her class and yet Charlotte had scheduled her anyway. Her professor was cool and Stella felt certain that once she had explained the situation, she’d be allowed to pick up notes from some other student. But who to ask? Stella kept to herself, she didn’t socialize with the other girls in her class, many of whom had started out together as freshmen, reinforcing their friendships through rush parties and trips to Destin. Stella had never had the time, or the money, for any of that. It was everything she could do just to keep up with her class work, given the number of hours she had to work.

  The reality was she couldn’t have done it without the help of Professor Dillard who was also her advisor. Professor Dillard had taken Stella under her wing and seen to it that she was allowed to take Psychology of Gender even though she hadn’t taken the prerequisite Women as Victims class. And she would make allowances, Stella felt certain, for her current situation, too.

  She had been lucky with teachers. Even during grade school back in Alabama, there’d always been at least one teacher each year who took an interest in her. She was smart and quietly attentive, and she made good grades all the way up until her junior year of high school when everything she knew, or thought she knew, came crashing down around her. Even then it had been Charlie Chesmore, her Honors English teacher, who had taken her aside and demanded to know if she was having trouble at home.

  Professor Dillard would make allowances for her for spending Thursdays with Alice Whittington, but she would expect Stella to find someone whose notes she could copy. And the only person Stella could even remotely imagine asking was Luke Morgan.

  He was the only male student in her Psychology of Gender class; the upper level psychology classes were filled primarily with women, and this made him a great favorite with both the professor and the other students.

  “Tell us what you think from a male perspective, Mr. Morgan,” Professor Dillard would say when explaining some controversy over cultural and psycho-biological influences. He’d been in Stella’s Serial Killers in History class in the fall, but he’d let his hair grow out over the Christmas holidays and now it fell in soft brown waves around his face. When asked a question, he would always pause thoughtfully before replying in a deep, melodic voice, and everyone in the class would turn their heads to listen.

  Last Tuesday he had answered one of Professor Dillard’s questions in a way that made the whole class laugh. Turning to look at him, Stella had found his eyes fixed intently on her. He was sitting a row behind her, they were separated by a group of giggling sorority girls, but he had stared at Stella in such a frank, steady manner that even the sorority girls had turned around to look at her. Stella quickly dipped her head, letting her hair drop around her face like a curtain.

  Afterwards, she sat quietly while the rest of the class filed out. He was not the sort she was usually attracted to; he seemed too clean-cut and sincere and his eyes were kind. She had the feeling, sitting there, that he would be waiting for her when she went out, and this thought caused a flutter of dread, but also nervous anticipation, in the pit of her stomach.

  She thought of the way he had stared at her, jaunty, appreciative, as if the comment he had made, and the laughter it caused, had been a gift for her. It was pleasant to picture him waiting, perhaps as nervous as she was, pretending to hunt for something in his backpack while listening for the sound of her footsteps.

  But when she finally gathered her courage and her backpack and walked out, hopeful and wary, the hallway was empty.

  That morning as they walked around the house, Alice told her a story about going on the train from Sweet Briar to New York during the nineteen-thirties.

  “You couldn’t tell me anything when I was young,” Alice said. “I thought I knew it all. I went to college at Sweet Briar. Have you ever heard of it? When I asked one of the other caregivers she said, Never heard of it.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Stella said firmly.

  “Do you go to college?”

  “Yes. UTC. I’m putting myself through.”

  “Very commendable,” Alice said.

  She slid the walker out in front of her in a steady, rhythmic manner. She was quiet for the next lap and Stella was afraid she’d forgotten about the story.

  “So you went up on the train from Sweet Briar?” she said, prompting Alice. She had come to enjoy Alice’s stories, the unpredictability of them, the humorous overtones, the glimpses of Alice as a young woman, strong and determined and fearless.

  “What?”

  “The train.”

  “What train?”

  “The one that you took from Sweet Briar to New York. You were telling me about a trip you made in the nineteen-thirties.”

  “Oh yes,” Alice said. “Anyway, I was going up on the train with my friend, Clarice, up to New York. Several of my school friends were from the city and I used to go up there a lot on the weekends. Oh, they were wild, those Yankee girls. It was shocking the things we could get up to without proper chaperones. Their parents mostly let us alone to do as we pleased and I wasn’t used to all that freedom. Anyway, we left Sweet Briar in the morning and by mid-afternoon I was hungry. But when we got to the dining car there weren’t any open tables. A porter came up to us and said, ‘That lady over there said you could share her table.’

  She seemed nice enough, but kept asking us all kinds of questions. I was a sociology major, you see, and I knew everything there was to know about everything. And I told her what I thought about the New Deal and the WPA and the CCC.

  When we got back to our berth, Clarice said, ‘Say, I know who that lady was.’ And she pulled out a magazine and sure enough we’d been talking to Eleanor Roosevelt. The president’s wife.

  I said, ‘I should have known from her teeth,’ and Clarice just laughed and laughed.”

  Stella stopped just inside the living room doorway. She stared at the slowly retreating Alice. “Are you telling me,” she said in a loud voice, hurrying to catch up. “Are you telling me you had lunch on the train with Eleanor Roosevelt?”

  Alice paused in front of the French doors, staring down at the steep wooded lot that sloped precariously toward the valley below. “When I got home, I told my father and my grandfather. My father was a lawyer and my grandfather owned a bank. And when I told them all the things I’d said to the First Lady about social security and union protection programs, my grandfather shook his head and
said to my father, “Law, Roderick, is this what comes of educating girls? Is all my money going to educate future socialists?”

  Stella stepped up beside her, still feeling the shock of her revelation. “Alice, do you know how incredible that is? You’re probably one of only a few people still living who can say they ever had lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt.” They stood looking at the hazy mountains and the distant, snaking glint of the river.

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Alice said.

  “You should write a book.”

  “No one would read it.”

  Alice turned, sliding the walker in front of her. Halfway across the living room she stopped again and pointed to a framed photograph that lay, face up, on the coffee table. It was of a group of school children, lined up in three neat rows in front of a bricked school building. The girls all wore their hair with bangs and two points that curved forward on their cheeks, and the boys wore their hair slicked back from their faces. They were all dressed in white, white dresses for the girls and white shirts and knickers for the boys. “Can you pick me out of that group of scallywags?” Alice said.

  Stella let go of the mental image of Eleanor Roosevelt and picked up the photograph. She held it up and studied it carefully. There were several girls who looked like what she imagined Alice must have looked, but one in particular, a tall girl with blonde hair and a stubborn, mischievous expression, caught her attention. She was standing on the back row with the boys, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “That one,” Stella said, pointing.

  Alice chuckled. “That’s right,” she said. “You’re the only one who’s ever guessed right the first time. That was at Miss Fenimore’s School. It was downtown by the river in those days. My mother was so displeased when she saw me standing with my arms crossed on my chest. That was considered very unladylike in those days.”

  “I thought you lived on Signal Mountain.”

  “Only in the summer. During the school year my father rented a house downtown so my sister and I could go to school at Miss Fenimore’s. Later, I went to Marymount Academy for Girls and I didn’t like that so much, shut up all day with only females. In those days, both Westover and Smithson were boys’ schools. Westover wasn’t coed like it is today, or I’d have wanted to go there. Of course my family were all Westover people but the Whittingtons were Smithson people. So when I married Bill, I had to become a Smithson person, too. My sons all went to Smithson.”

  “And your granddaughters went to Marymount?”

  Alice gave a long fluttering sigh. “That’s right,” she said.

  There were three prep schools in town; Marymount, Westover, and Smithson. Marymount was all girls, Smithson was all boys, and Westover was co-ed. The elite of Chattanooga sent their children to one of these three from sixth grade on; it was one of the ways of determining what social class you were from. When adult Chattanoogans met each other for the first time and asked, What school did you go to? they weren’t asking about college. Competition to get in was fierce, especially at Westover which only accepted fifty boys and fifty girls each year. The rivalry between Westover and Smithson was legendary, sustained by over one hundred years of fierce competition. Stella had had a girl who graduated from Marymount in one of her classes at the university, a thin, sweet girl who’d flunked out of Sarah Lawrence (I was homesick, she’d told Stella mournfully) after only one semester. She was congenial and well-educated and extremely naive, the kind of girl who could recite Sylvia Plath, but didn’t have a clue when a guy in class was hitting on her.

  Alice began to walk again and Stella put the photograph down carefully and followed her. Alice was almost to her bedroom when she stopped and turned her head. “My son Roddy’s writing a book.”

  “Oh really?” Stella said. “What about?’

  “The family. He won’t let anyone read it. Not until he’s finished.”

  “When will that be?”

  “He doesn’t know. He says the muse will tell him.”

  Something in her expression made Stella laugh. “I hope it’s not one of those Mommie Dearest books.”

  “It probably is,” Alice said, shoving the walker out in front of her. “It’s probably best that I not read it.”

  Later that morning Alice’s son, Sawyer, came by to get her grocery list which was kept on the refrigerator door. He was tall and blonde with a big booming voice and a jovial manner. He went back to Alice’s bedroom and Stella could hear them on the baby monitor.

  “Al, I’ve come for your grocery list,” he said.

  “Oh, hello,” Alice said. “Is it time to write bills?”

  “No, Al. That’s the first of the month.”

  “What?”

  “We write bills on the first of the month. Not today.”

  “Do you still have my checkbook?”

  “Yes. But we don’t write bills today.”

  “Oh. Not today? Okay then.”

  “I’ve come for your grocery list.”

  “Oh, you’ve come for my grocery list?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I don’t know what’s on it. They write down what they think I should eat. I just do as I’m told.”

  “Now, Al.”

  “I like that new one though. That new caregiver. She’s very smart.”

  “Is she? Well, that’s good.”

  “She has a tattoo.”

  “That’s nice.’

  “It’s the Sanskrit symbol for peace.”

  “Okay well, I’ve come for the list. I’m going to Wal-Mart.”

  “Okay then. I don’t have anything else to report.”

  “I’ll see you later.”

  “Make sure you put Rum Raisin ice cream on that list,” Alice called after him.

  She wouldn’t eat bread but Alice had a weakness for ice cream. The notebook said she wasn’t to be given any unless she’d eaten her lunch or dinner first. Stella made her a plate of chicken salad, coleslaw, and yellow squash with onions for lunch. She cut up some watermelon and put it in a small ramekin beside Alice’s plate.

  “Oh, doesn’t this look lovely?” Alice said, sitting down.

  Stella smiled, pleased, and sat down beside her. Alice folded her hands in her lap and sat staring straight ahead at the wall.

  “Is something wrong?” Stella said.

  “Bib me,” Alice said.

  “Oh, sorry. I keep forgetting.” Stella stood and unfolded the plastic bib and tied it around Alice’s neck. Half-way through tying it, she began to giggle.

  “There,” she said. “You’re bibbed.”

  “I’m bibbed,” Alice said. She slid her eyes up at Stella and snickered like an evil child.

  Stella sat down again and they bowed their heads, but Alice had trouble with the prayer, snorting several times so that Stella had to bite her lip to get through it.

  Afterwards, they unfolded their napkins on their laps and ate for awhile in silence.

  “Did you like school when you were a girl?” Stella asked, remembering the old photograph.

  Alice turned her head slowly, giving her a long look. Her eyes were pale blue, as faded as washed denim. “I liked Miss Fenimore’s School all right. I wasn’t so happy with Marymount.”

  “I wouldn’t like it either,” Stella said. “An all-girls school, I mean.”

  “You got used to it,” Alice said. “Weesie was there, and later, my sister.”

  Stella slowly chewed her peanut butter sandwich, looking down at her plate. She had broken the rules and helped herself to some grapes in Alice’s refrigerator. “I hear those are pretty expensive schools. I had a girl in one of my classes who had gone to Marymount.”

  “In those days, the tuition at Marymount was $100 a year. $50 if you had a sister who went there. Now, of course, it’s over $20,000. And I should know since I paid for all my grandchildren’s tuitions.”

  “Well, that was nice of you.”

  Alice chewed thoughtfully, her blue eyes fixed on the calendar
that hung on the wall in front of her. “At Marymount we used to have these Sugar and Spice Parties,” she said.

  “Sugar and Spice Party? What’s that?”

  “It’s where you sit down with a bunch of girls and everyone says something they like about you and something they don’t.”

  “That sounds cruel.”

  Alice snorted. “It could be. You had to have a strong temperament to get through it. I was pretty good at it but my sister used to go home in tears. She was always tender-hearted.”

  Stella snorted. She couldn’t imagine Adeline ever having a tender heart. She also couldn’t imagine attending a school that cost twenty thousand dollars a year. She had seen The Dead Poets Society, had secretly harbored a desire to go off to a boarding school where everyone wore uniforms and lived on a campus with soaring Gothic architecture. A place where being smart and scholarly was encouraged.

  She plucked absently at one of the grapes, pulling it off its stem. How different might her life have been if she’d had even a few of the advantages Alice’s grandchildren had had? If she could be certain of success in life, knowing that she could not fail?

  “I wasn’t really cut out for a girls’ school,” Alice said, following her own meandering train of thought. “I always liked playing with the boys. In those days girls were supposed to be sweet and dainty but I always liked climbing trees and riding bareback and playing football. I was what my Grandfather Jordan liked to call, a bearcat. Mother was always fussing at me about acting ladylike but I couldn’t seem to manage it.”

  She broke off, chewing slowly, her eyes fixed on the calendar above the desk.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Stella said. “When I was little, we moved around a lot. I was always the new kid in school. So I learned early on to go up to the bully on the playground the first day of school and just punch him in the face. We’d go down in a heap of flying fists, and I usually got the worst of it, of course, but it seemed to prevent any future problems. Everyone figured I was crazy enough to be left alone.”