The Sisters Montclair

by Cathy Holton

  “It has updates on all the class members,” Charlie said, pointing. “There’s a memoriam to your brother.”

  Harry opened the book to another page and held it up to Alice. “Here’s another picture of Sam. We were on our way to the tennis courts.”

  They sat around making small talk for another ten minutes but Stella could see their hearts weren’t in it. Alice sat with the book open on her lap, staring out the French doors at the distant mountains. The storm had cleared and a weak sun shone sporadically from a veil of swiftly moving clouds.

  When it was time to go, Harry stood and leaned to hug Alice.

  “Goodbye, Little Mother,” he said.

  Alice looked up at him. Her light-colored eyes flickered over his chest and shoulders, came to rest stolidly on his face. “Who are you?” she said.

  “Al, that’s Harry Rosser,” Sawyer said loudly.

  Alice frowned, still looking up at him. “Little Harry Rosser?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I never would have recognized you,” Alice said.

  Sawyer showed them out. Stella walked over to Alice, who was staring down at the opened book on her lap as if she was seeing it for the first time. She seemed distracted, and Stella leaned over and touched her gently on the shoulder. A photograph of a handsome young man in tennis clothes stared up at them from Alice’s lap. Sam.

  “Alice, would you like to watch some TV out in the sunroom.”

  “That was Harry Rosser,” Alice said vaguely.

  “Yes, I know.”

  Alice stared down at the photograph, her thin neck bowed. Her hair stood up around her delicate scalp like cotton fluff. “He brought back so many memories,” she said. “They all came flooding back.” She glanced up at Stella and then down again, smiling in a queer, tight way. Her chin trembled and without any warning, she began to cry. Oily tears rolled down her cheeks and plopped onto the open book

  Stella didn’t know what to say. She had thought Alice was one of the lucky ones who got through life relatively untouched by suffering, but she could see now that this wasn’t true.

  She knelt beside Alice and, without a word, put her arms around her.

  Adeline called around five o’clock that afternoon and said she and Weesie were coming for a visit tomorrow. Stella and Alice were sitting in the sunroom reading when she called. Alice had recovered from her short crying jag and seemed herself again. Sawyer had come back in after the men left and teased her about breaking Harry and Charlie’s hearts and she had responded with a sly grin.

  “I told them you keep my checkbook,” she said. “And the starch seemed to go out of them.” She held up the spiral-bound book. “Here,” she said. “You can have it.”

  “Al, they brought it for you!”

  “I don’t want it,” she said.

  Adeline talked for awhile on the phone and Alice listened. Right before they hung up, Alice shouted into the mouthpiece, “Guess who was here today?”

  “Who?” Adeline said loudly. Alice had the volume turned up high and Stella could hear her clearly.

  “Little Harry Rosser. Do you remember him?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember Harry.”

  “Only he’s not so little anymore. He’s over six feet tall.”

  “Really?”

  “I didn’t even recognize him. He was talking about coming up to spend the night at my house and there being stars on the ceiling. I had no idea what he was talking about.”

  “In Sam’s room. Don’t you remember? We painted stars on the ceiling because he was so into the constellations.”

  “I don’t remember,” Alice said.

  “You’ll have to tell us all about Harry Rosser tomorrow. We’ll have a gossip fest.”

  “Well, I’ll save it for tomorrow then,” Alice said, and hung up.

  Thirteen

  On the way home that evening, Stella’s cell rang. It was Professor Dillard, her advisor.

  “I’m worried about you,” she said. “I heard from two of your professors today that you haven’t been coming to class.”

  “Yeah, I meant to talk to you about that. I’ve been sick.”

  “Sick? For three weeks?”

  Stella said nothing. She had been crazy to think she could put herself through college. She was so far behind, she’d never catch up. She’d never be able to pay off the school loans she had now, much less the ones she’d have to take out for grad school. Assuming she’d even be able to get into grad school, which seemed highly unlikely at this point.

  Professor Dillard sighed loudly and then began again more reasonably. “I’m worried about you getting into grad school. We’ve talked about this. Your grades are really important if you want to get into a top notch university and, honestly, with what I’m seeing this semester, I don’t think you can get in at all.”

  “I’ve been thinking about dropping out.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath, a pause. “Oh, Stella, no. You’ve worked so hard. You’ve come so far.”

  She steeled herself to the disappointment in Professor Dillard’s voice, the tone of strident sympathy and concern. Ridiculous that she should feel a swelling in her throat, a hint of impending tears.

  She took a long, deep breath and calmed herself. She said carefully, “I’ve been thinking about dropping out and working for awhile to save some money before going back.” It was true. She had been thinking about this for some time. She had thought she might pick up another shift or two with Alice, maybe find a waitressing job for the weekends.

  “If you drop out, you won’t go back,” Professor Dillard said flatly. “Besides, with this semester’s grades you might not be able to get back in anyway.”

  Stella passed the rock cave at the foot of the mountain where they had locked up the Cherokees before moving them west on the Trail of Tears. Dusk was falling and the sky was a deep purple. Bats flitted in the soft, warm air.

  “Okay, let’s try this.” Professor Dillard’s voice had taken on a bold, determined tone. “I’ll put in for a medical leave of absence for you for this semester. That way you’ll get to drop all your classes instead of having to take an F or incomplete.”

  “Will I get my tuition back?”

  “Unfortunately, no. It’s too late for that.”

  Stella was quiet, considering this. “Don’t I need a doctor’s note or something?”

  “No. You come see me and I’ll fill out a form saying you’ve been under a great deal of mental stress and anxiety.”

  “You mean, like a nervous breakdown?”

  “We’ll make it sound a little more convincing than that.” She was quiet for a moment and Stella, feeling her hesitation and knowing there was something else, stiffened. “But I’ll only do this, Stella, on one condition.”

  Stella stared at the distant rim of mountains. “And what condition would that be?” she said slowly.

  “That you agree to come in for counseling.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “You can see me, or I can refer you to one of my colleagues.”

  “I don’t need counseling. I’m fine.”

  “We’re going to address issues that should have been addressed a long time ago.”

  “There are no issues.”

  “Your arms for instance,” Professor Dillard said.

  Stella felt a sharp pain between her shoulder blades. As always, when cornered, she felt herself go limp, begin to drift.

  Professor Dillard said, “I’m going to take your silence as acquiescence.” She waited for Stella to protest, and when she didn’t, she said, “Friday morning at ten.”

  “I can’t. I have class.”

  “No, you don’t. Not anymore.”

  The pain had begun to throb, spreading out across her shoulders and down her arms. She could see the railroad tracks ahead and she slowed down. Her mouth felt dry, grainy.

  “We can do it at my house if you’d rather not show up at the counseling office at school. It would be m
ore private there.”

  Stella slowed at the crossing and looked both ways. She stared warily through the windshield, feeling the pain now beneath her breastbone, sharp and insistent. It swelled, pushing against her ribs. Her whole body was trembling. She wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like.

  “All right,” she said.

  “I’ll send you an email,” Dr. Dillard said, and hung up.

  What had she done?

  She left the tracks behind and thumped the accelerator, cruising steadily up the overpass that crossed the train yard. Ahead, the lights of downtown were coming on, gleaming against the velvety background of the evening sky. She passed a well-lit restaurant with its patrons illuminated behind a plate glass window. An old man in a motorized wheelchair trundled along the sidewalk.

  The pain had begun to throb in time with her heartbeat. It spread through her like a warm tide. She felt disconnected, lightheaded. It was if she was watching herself from a great distance, waiting to see how it would end. She had had this feeling before, in the bathroom as she did her careful work. Her secret work. She sensed sometimes as she watched the blade make its delicate cut, how close to death she was; a subtle pressure here, a deeper cut, and it would all be over. On her bleakest days, she knew she could do it.

  Oblivion; a terrible and wondrous thought.

  But what if she was wrong? What if the Buddhists had it right? What if there was no oblivion, no way out; only the wheel of Samsara, turning endlessly until she faced what she had to face, got it right finally? What if, by her desperate act, she was forced to wander aimlessly through the spirit world, trapped forever in a Purgatory of her own making?

  It was fear that kept her from taking the final step. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the consequences of her actions.

  Adeline and Weesie arrived around five o’clock the following afternoon for their visit with Alice. Alice and Stella were sitting in the sunroom watching Family Feud.

  “Oh, I love this show!” Weesie said, clapping her hands with a shy, tender smile. Despite her age, she had a girlish, coquettish manner.

  “There’s too much jumping up and down and screaming,” Alice said. She complained incessantly about Family Feud but it was one of the shows she insisted on watching, mainly so she could criticize the contestants’ dress. She pointed at the TV screen. “Look at her hair, hanging down around her face like that. It just looks terrible.” Alice wore a yellow knit dress and a purple cashmere sweater and a pair of tennis shoes. Her socks were yellow with white pom-poms.

  “Schempf?” Adeline said, reading the family name on the display board. “What kind of name is that?” She looked very tall and very elegant, dressed in a tailored gray pantsuit with heeled pumps.

  Stella went into the kitchen and poured them all glasses of ice water. When she came back in, they were gossiping about someone she didn’t know while the theme song from Family Feud blared in the background.

  Alice pointed at the TV and said, “Turn that off, will you?”

  Stella clicked it off and turned to leave.

  “You don’t have to go,” Alice said to Stella. “Sit down and join us.”

  Stella sat down. Adeline glanced at Weesie but said nothing. She turned to Alice and said, “So you saw Harry Rosser yesterday?”

  “I wouldn’t have known him,” Alice said. “He must be six foot six.”

  Adeline tapped one finger against the rim of her glass, looking down thoughtfully. “You know he made a pass at me once at a Smithson Christmas Tea. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old. I was bending over ladling punch into glasses and he came up behind me and said, Hey, Doll, how about a kiss?”

  “Oh Adeline,” Alice said.

  Weesie giggled.

  “I turned around and he was holding a sprig of mistletoe over his head and grinning like a Cheshire cat. He always was a fresh kid.”

  Alice gave her a disparaging look. “He was always very polite to me.”

  “Well, Al, of course he was. You practically paid his tuition. When he found out I was your sister, I thought he was going to be sick all over the Christmas cookies. The color went out of his face and he rushed out and didn’t come back.”

  “I don’t know about any of that,” Alice said doubtfully.

  “Well, Al, I’m telling you about it. It happened just like I said it did.”

  “You were always so vain. Maybe you just imagined it.”

  “I was vain?” Adeline said, looking at her sister coolly. “Look who’s talking.”

  The two began arguing in loud, strident voices.

  Weesie looked at Stella and smiled apologetically. “Do you go to college?” she asked politely. She wore a silk scarf knotted stylishly around her neck and a pair of white slacks and a pale pink sweater set. Her shoes were sensible flats.

  “Yes,” Stella said. Technically anyway.

  “And what do you study?”

  “Psychology.”

  Weesie’s carefully made up face registered her surprise. “Oh, how interesting!” she said, setting her glass down. “What will you do after college?”

  “Well, a lot will depend on whether or not I’m able to afford grad school. I’d like to work as a mental health counselor.”

  Adeline, who had tired of arguing with Alice, said, “I hope you’re not going to be one of those therapists who tells people all their problems are because of their childhoods.”

  “Most people’s problems are because of their childhoods,” Stella said.

  Adeline wasn’t having any of it. “I get so tired of hearing people whine about having bad parents. It’s ridiculous. I’m sure my kids whine about me to their therapists.”

  “I’m sure they do,” Alice said.

  Stella said to Weesie, “I’d like to work with young girls with self-esteem issues.”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” Weesie clapped her hands and flashed her tender smile. “You young girls are so lucky to be able to have such wonderful careers. I had five children and a husband. That was my career.”

  “It’s better to have a choice,” Stella agreed. She supposed that to these women she must seem like a young woman with unimaginable freedom. Here she was envying them their wealth and sheltered lives while they were, no doubt, envying her her youth and freedom to do as she pleased.

  Adeline waved one hand dismissively. “Oh, we had choices. You could be a secretary or a nurse or a teacher. Or, if you were really, really lucky, you could be a housewife. That was considered the pinnacle of success.” She sipped her water and set it down again, glancing at Alice. “Remember, Al, when you used to talk about running off to live in New York? How you used to brag you were never going to get married?”

  “No,” Alice said.

  “It used to drive Mother crazy.”

  “Well, that’s probably why I did it then.”

  “I can’t even imagine being a housewife back in the fifties and sixties,” Stella said. “It must have been really boring.” She looked around, giving them a reckless grin. “No offense,” she said.

  “None taken,” Weesie said, lifting her glass.

  “I mean, most of you had other women who watched your children and cleaned your houses, so what did you do all day?”

  “Oh you’d be surprised,” Adeline said.

  “There was always the charity work,” Weesie said. “There was a lot of that. And there were school committees, and ladies luncheons, and bridge groups. Our days were a lot busier than you think. And of course we had to keep our husbands happy. Wives were a lot more concerned in those days about keeping their husbands happy.”

  “I guess The Feminine Mystique ruined all that,” Stella said.

  “The what?” Weesie said.

  “Being a housewife was more exciting than you might think,” Adeline said. She looked at Alice. “Remember that time Boofie Lloyd outran the police on her way home from The Girls Cotillion board meeting?”

  Weesie giggled. “I had forgotten that,” she said.
>
  Stella looked from one to the other. “She outran the police?” she said.

  “It was meatloaf night,” Alice said, settling down to the story. She was always confident when a memory came back to her, clear and indisputable. “The maid’s day off and the only thing Boofie knew how to cook was meatloaf. Charles Lloyd was awfully partial to Boofie’s meatloaf and she knew he’d be angry to come home to a dark house with no supper made.”

  “She did make a good meat loaf,” Weesie said.

  “So she was in a big hurry coming home late and she was driving a little too fast,” Alice said.

  Adeline made a wry face. “And the cop was waiting for her there at the foot of Lookout.”

  “Did he have his lights on?” Stella said.

  “Oh, yes,” Alice said. “Boofie looked in the rearview mirror and she saw the flashing lights and she knew how mad Charles would be if she came home late and with a speeding ticket. So she just stomped on it.”

  “Stomped on what?” Weesie said.

  “The gas pedal.”

  “Oh.”

  Stella said doubtfully, “But how could you outrun the police coming up a mountain?”

  “You’d have to want to do it bad,” Adeline said.

  “What was she driving, a Maserati?” Stella said.

  “Buick Estate Wagon.”

  “Oh come on!”

  “You’d have to know Boofie,” Alice said.

  “She had one of the first electric door openers on the mountain. So as she came screeching around that last corner onto her street, she hit the button and the door went up and she pulled in and shut off the car. The door was almost down again when the cops went by with their sirens flashing.”

  They all chuckled, remembering. Stella looked from one to the other.

  “I remember when she got that garage door opener,” Adeline said. “She didn’t even want it but Charles made her take it.”

  “Good thing,” Alice said.

  Across the lawn a pair of squirrels chased each other along Sawyer’s steeply pitched roof.

  “Wow,” Stella said. “She sounds crazy.”

  “She was a character,” Alice said.

  “I liked her better when she was younger,” Adeline said. “She got to be a real complainer later on.”