Sister Wolf

by Ann Arensberg

  For years Marit had had one recurring nightmare, which she dreamed at irregular, if longer, intervals. As she fought her way out of the dream, it seemed hours before she realized that her fists were hammering on her own patchwork quilt, which had crawled up over her head, that her elbows, jerking sideways uncontrollably, were striking the tightly tucked sheets of her cot-width bed, not the wooden sides of Luba’s lacquered footlocker. Marit knew from Luba’s story that Mrs. Iñiguez had kept a vigil, and had been mesmerized to sleep in her chair by the flickering of the candles which she had set on every surface and sill in the room. How could she, Marit, have been screaming for more than ten seconds before Mrs. Iñiguez had tripped the locks and saved her, keening and crying “Es un milagro [It is a miracle]”?

  After one of these dreams Marit slept badly and woke often. She never slept well, and she rarely slept through the night. When she woke, she could not go back to sleep until she made a patrol. Tonight she had waked up five times and done five patrols cellar to attic, making her rounds in a kind of stupor, like a wind-up night watchman. She did not have to carry a lantern or wield a flashlight; she kept all the lights burning downstairs and a burglar-tease lit in one of the attic storerooms. She hardly knew, anymore, if it was supernatural or human assault that she was patrolling against, and she no longer got down to look under the beds, although she stalked the floor-length velvet draperies in the living room, and had been known to lean her ear against them before giving them a cautionary jerk. Sometimes she grew bored and impatient, and longed to throw off the need to patrol. At other times she found things undone or amiss, which made her compulsive rounds imperative: tonight the front door was not on the chain, and the kitchen window had been latched on a vulnerable diagonal instead of being pushed down firmly in its groove.

  Marit had begun to patrol after her parents had died, when she was living alone. At first her rounds had a ritual quality, like superstition, an attempt to placate the gods or the fates or the shades, no different from sprinkling lamb’s blood on a local altar, or laying the first fruits of the harvest at a crossroads. Soon her ritual acts had hardened into the fixed behavior of phobia, as it was bound to, since Marit had been phobic from childhood onward in little ways. Phobia spreads through the psyche like a cold fog; it alters the cell structure. Lop off one of its heads, and up rears another: in Marit’s childhood gallery of phobias, praying mantises had given way to snail slime; hairs in food had been succeeded by amputees; Aztec sacrifice had been replaced by birds loose in rooms. Now phobia was a natural condition, a genetic fact like her gray-green eyes, square jaw, and spatulate fingertips. She found it easy enough to adjust to phobia. It simply meant that she lived at the ready, like a fighter for the sound of the bell. She had learned to think of life as a minefield.

  The mine that she was skirting this morning—an overcast morning with the light no stronger at ten o’clock than it had been at dawn—was the image of Gabriel retreating the night before. Every word out of her mouth had quickened his pace down the staircase and out the drive, and hastened his way home to his monklike room, where he might have taken the forgotten picture of Francesca out of his wallet and propped it against the lamp on his desk; or wedged it into the corner of the mirror; or made a note to have it enlarged and buy a frame for it. It occurred to Marit that jealousy had a boomerang effect: it could revive the cult of the rival. Her jealous scene had brought Francesca back to life.

  Marit was an apprentice to the effects of jealousy, but now she knew, without experience to teach her, that a jealous person must grind her teeth and wear a mask. Jealousy is an affliction to be hidden, repressed, covered up, and lied about, like a mysterious ulcerated sore that could be the beginning of leprosy. Otherwise the lover will shrink away, gathering his robes around him for fear of contamination, and withdraw from the afflicted person, for whom there is no cure except lifelong quarantine. Last night Marit had seen that fear of infection cross Gabriel’s face, a puzzled look, as if he could not identify the source of a fecal smell. She wanted to hate him for his fastidiousness and purity, for his work with the holy blind, whose affliction does not mar their physical surface. She wanted to condemn him to work in the dangerous wards of a madhouse, and watch the disintegration of his charity. The mad, in their rages, know that they are ugly and unlovable; still they want to be loved and redeemed. So does the jealous person. But their keepers or lovers are never equal to the task. They would requisition the equipment of animal tamers, if it were allowed, to handle their charges—thick quilted gloves, a pointed stick, and a buggy whip.

  A draught of jealousy is the quickest shrinking-potion in the emotional pharmacy. Marit felt evil and lowered, reduced to the status of a rabid gnome. Her gender was threatened; any moment she might start hopping and spitting. Or tear the telephone out of the wall, since it refused to ring. She had never waited for calls or letters from boys or men. She had never been one-down, in Dutch, or on the hook. Gabriel’s disfavor was hives, boils, splinters, and flea-bite; there was no salve for such a rash, except for murder.

  At eleven-thirty she started pinching back the house plants. She went through the coleus, the saxifrage, the eyelash begonia, and the wandering Jew. She had bitten her nails short and uneven, so that there was no deft, clean severing of the leaves, more a matter of squash and tear, leaving the stems bleeding green. Mounds of raped foliage lay around the four pots. She pruned plants like a plague of locusts, according to Lola. Marit eyed the pepper elder. She was not appeased, and one more runty plant would not appease her.

  At one o’clock a group of children from the Meyerling Community were coming to release the airlifted animals into the sanctuary. This was a sham adventure, like all the excursions that Henry Dufton planned for them. After inspecting the metal carriers to make sure that the air holes were placed far away from the handles, and that small fingers were safe from claws and darting fangs, Mr. Dufton had agreed to let the children carry the cages just inside the sanctuary, onto the wide strip of land that had been cleared to keep the animals from approaching the fence. Then three of the counselors would take the cages a short way into the woods, open the hatches, and set the trapped animals free. Miss Fellowes would stay behind with the children and give them a nature talk. Marit had heard one of her talks at a Meyerling parents’ weekend. Miss Fellowes reduced the creatures of the wild to toyshop scale: bears were “woolly”; hares were “downy” and “flop-eared”; and raccoons were always referred to as “little bandits.” If sight was ever restored to her blind listeners, Marit thought, they would have trouble telling a real animal from a stuffed one, and pay for their confusion with one or both of their new eyes.

  George Schulte had already delivered the animals in their cages. Marit had heard his truck while she was working on the house plants, and had watched him take down the box traps and line them up in even rows by the garage. The creatures inside the traps had not stirred. They were dopey from their ride in the truck and the helicopter, and from being loaded and unloaded so many times during the last few days. Marit wondered if the price of their rescue would be a shortened life span. She would be able to tell, since they were banded, except for the snake, and she had the list of band numbers for her records.

  Marit had arranged her day so that this outing did not require her participation, but it made claims on her attention all the same. She forced herself to ask the young blind for walks or picnics, or special events like this animal-releasing. She made plans with the Community on the telephone: the sanctuary key and map of safe open territory were in the mailbox; there were two bathrooms on the lower floor; there would be milk and soda in the refrigerator. These arrangements satisfied her debt to form and kindness, allowing her to leave the house and stay away until the children were gone.

  This afternoon Marit did not leave the house. She hid, instead, in the empty butler’s apartment over the garage, standing back from the window in order to prevent being seen and waved down. She hid to indulge her wary, angry pity, and made
herself watch to acquit her wretched weakness.

  She spied now on the docile covey assembled in the courtyard below, sixteen children dressed in their camp uniforms—Alpine walking shorts, high snake-boots, and crimson wind-jackets. They stood waiting for instructions from the counselors, wearing the corners of their mouths upturned like smiles. Those upbeamed mouths were as much a badge of blindness as white canes for city blind. Was it the sweet, wrenching smile of souls in grace, or a facial set molded by the habit and bond of dependency? Marit tried to see them, this time, as normal, boisterous children. She studied them carefully to see if anybody was pinching anybody else’s arm, or kicking the gravel, if one of the boys was sticking chewing gum in the hair of one of the girls, if any child talked too loud or tried to leave the group. They just waited, as passive as clay, turning their heads in the direction of the noise when a car door slammed, pressing closer together when Nikolai began to bark from his pen on the far side of the house.

  At the top of the driveway Marit could see the hood of the limousine that had brought them, one of a fleet of four—two black, and two liturgical maroon—that Bishop Meyerling had acquired during his term of office. When he died, the Bishop had left an endowment to keep up the fleet, with a provision in his will for a mechanic as curator. Four counselors were bringing blankets and lunch baskets up from the limousines. Marit knew Miss Fellowes, who ran the sports program during the school term and the camp during the summer. Miss Fellowes was an innovator; she had had the sides of the swimming pool padded in foam rubber, so that blind swimmers could have races without striking their heads at the end of a lap. With the help of two young men with whistles on loops around their necks, Miss Fellowes was standing pairs of children—boy-girl, boy-girl—at either side of the animal traps, telling them to lift the cages and balance them between them: “Steady, Beverly, it’s a skunk, you’ll be sorry!” “That’s a fox, John and Phyllis, a cunning fox!”

  The fourth counselor was down on her knees counting the contents of one of the picnic baskets. She pulled the kerchief off her head and wiped her brow with it, feeling the heat. Her hair was black and caplike and shiny. Marit recognized her as the woman who had come with Gabriel to the Airlift meeting, and she straightened up from her shrinking position at the window with a red jolt of dislike.

  Miss Fellowes was moving the group out now, using the bullhorn: “Single file, boys and girls, slow march! Short grass all the way; no cow-flops!” One girl, with breasts, and taller than the others, turned around to face Marit’s window directly. Marit fell back as if the gaze were a sniper’s bullet. The girl’s eyes looked like live eyes, with no whitish overcast, slanted like a tiger’s, with low-slung lids. She smiled up at the window, a live smile, with too much gum showing, holding her breasts high, precocious and aware of her body. Why is she posing? They are clairvoyant; she knows I’m here—Marit’s heart was beating as if she had been found out. She collected herself and inched forward to take a new look. It was the other one. It was the girl student she had seen at the fair taking a reading lesson with Gabriel by the tennis courts. It was Gabriel’s whole harem, except for the dead one, smug in her grave, who still worked Gabriel’s strings as expertly as she had in life. The inside of Marit’s head was fire and mayhem. She wanted revenge, but her enemy was bones and hair, bright hair that took so long to rot, that could outlast flesh and bone and winding-cloth.

  It took a tug on the arm by Miss Fellowes to get Gabriel’s student back in place by the weasel’s cage. “Get a wiggle on, Aimée! Pick up your feet now, boys and girls, we’re on a mission!”

  If it were Tuesday, Mrs. Paul Gilliam would be at home with her bridge club, and Lola would be on duty making Charleston Devils and watercress sandwiches for the ladies, because Tuesday was the cook’s half-day off. Since it was Thursday, Mrs. Gilliam was playing cards at the golf club. Lola might be at home in her suite, which had a separate driveway, or she might be down in Pittsfield. If she was not at home, Marit would have to go without her.

  Lola had a new flirt in Pittsfield, or nearby, but she refused to tell Marit what her name was. (“Either it’s the mayor’s wife or she’s not a consenting adult.” “I’m superstitious; I’m not going to tell you until I’ve got the case locked up.”) In organizing her love affairs, Lola was as discreet as any adulterer whose father-in-law is the president of the corporation. Lola found her women out of town, and never gave them her address or telephone number. She used Virginia Taft as her nom de guerre. (“Who the hell was Virginia Taft?” “She was my only failure; I’ll tell you the whole story when we’re old ladies.”)

  Lola worked underground, but the way she worked was risky. The girls she chose were young and virginal, because she liked to do the initiating. Nuns at convent schools like to spy out an early vocation for the same reason: an untainted girl is less likely to have regrets. Young converts, sapphic or religious, can also lapse early, as soon as they are out of their teens. Lola, unlike the Church, had usually finished with them by then. Young girls bored her, for any other than sexual purposes; they were apt to have thoughts and opinions, and want to air them. Lola was cautious about covering her tracks, and she made her choices carefully. She got no credit from Marit for discrimination, because Lola was class-conscious. There had been certain manicurists and certain waitresses, but the girls that Lola wanted most were the snub blonde ones, the ones with unformed noses and short upper lips, with long taut legs and little lines at the corners of their eyes from squinting across the tennis court in the noon sun. The way to these girls was through their tomboy hearts, and Lola had made a lot of time adjusting a stirrup, or teaching awkward fingers how to tie a bass fly.

  Marit pulled up in the jeep. She honked the horn once, then twice again, and jumped down, leaving the engine on and the door flapping open. She ran up the outside staircase and tried the door of Lola’s apartment. Lola was opening the door at the same time, and Marit tripped as she crossed the sill. Lola caught her by the elbow and laughed at her.

  “Hey there, honey doll, you sure have a head of steam up!”

  Marit checked herself before she spoke. When Lola talked Southern, it could mean that they were not alone. Then she saw Horty Waite sitting in the chair by the garden window. Horty had an embroidery frame on her lap. She waved at Marit and stitched her needle into the fabric to keep from dropping it.

  “I’ve been helping Mrs. Waite with a crewel pillow,” said Lola.

  “Oh, it’s all lumpy,” said Horty. “I’ll probably have to throw it on the heap pile.”

  Marit tried to catch Lola’s eye, but Lola had sense enough to look away and go over to Horty. She took the frame out of her hands and examined it.

  “It’s stretching out just fine, don’t you worry.”

  “Who is it for, Horty?” asked Marit. She was beginning to lose hope of getting Lola away.

  Horty lowered her eyes apologetically. “I’m going to put my heart in my throat and give it to Howard’s mother. Do you think I dare, Lola? She needlepoints hassocks for the National Cathedral.”

  Lola made comforting sounds and patted Horty’s hand. Marit had a low threshold for girlish dither, and she suspected Lola of egging Horty on. Marit and Lola had an understanding, if not a contract; they gave each other priority over other people. Marit expected Lola to know what was in her head as soon as she knew it; it was one of their private myths that they had a shared brain. Marit knew she was not good at self-inhibition; no one had ever said to her, after a crisis, “You had a fever of one hundred and four? A dying mother? A severed limb? I would never have known it.” Marit imagined herself now, seen from the outside, as a walking lightboard, with signals of pain, desperation, and anger winking on and off, fizzing and exploding. And Lola, who knew their agreement, who had helped to write it, was as bland and heedless as if Marit had stopped by to return a book. From what she was about to do Marit needed Lola’s protection; she needed opposition from Lola as much as she needed allegiance. She decided to raise her voice and
make her claim.

  She stood at the top of the steps that led down to the sunken living room.

  “We had a date to drive over to Matlock. I can’t be late. We can drop Horty at home on the way. You don’t mind, Horty, do you?”

  Matlock lay five miles northeast of Niles and fifteen miles below the Vermont border. Settled in 1712, it had been wiped out twice before the Revolution by Nipmuck Indians, but this was not the reason that it did not appear on most modern road maps. Matlock had been a mountain retreat for rich Bostonians during the eighteen-eighties; they had left behind several sprawling wooden hotels, and the little Norman chapel of All Souls. The drive from Niles to Matlock was a slow one, on winding back roads that sightseers and tourists rarely used. Marit was driving and Lola had her feet propped up on the dashboard. Every now and then she took a sideways look at Marit, who had covered her bloodshot eyes with wire-rimmed sunglasses.

  “I hear you talk about that fellow,” said Lola, breaking a long silence, “and I thank God I’m not the straight one.”

  “I thought you had a code,” said Marit. “I thought you only messed with baby girls.”

  “But Horty is so unhatched. I sometimes think she had those children in her sleep.”

  “Have you waked her up with a kiss yet?”

  “The idea just took me this afternoon. About the time you barged in, old lady.”

  “You’re a cad, Lola. What about Pittsfield?”

  “She’s cooking, honey, she’s cooking. I got a letter from her this morning: ‘Dearest V., What must you think of me?’ I’ll wait a week and then answer it.”

  “You’re pleased with yourself, aren’t you? She’s sweating and she’s off balance and you’re flexing your muscles.”

  “Watch the road!” Lola reached for the wheel. The jeep had swerved over onto the shoulder. “If you’re so wrought up, you shouldn’t be driving.”