Sister Wolf

by Ann Arensberg

  They passed a sign, Matlock two miles, lettered on a wooden arrow that pointed straight up at the sky. Lola sat forward, her feet planted flat on the floor, steering and braking along with Marit.

  “Would it cost you a lot to obey the speed limit?”

  “Get off me, Lola, or I’ll drive with my thumbs.”

  “I am a gem. I jump when you say jump. I don’t even ask questions.”

  “That’s right. Don’t ask questions.”

  “Oh, no. You’ve turned me into a nanny. My role is to nag and scold. I want to know why you’re driving to Matlock like an ambulance. You’ve never been to Matlock in your life.”

  “Not true. It’s the direct route to Bad Mountain.”

  “You don’t ski. You hate to ski.”

  “I used to ski. Luba made me learn skiing and tennis.”

  “I’m waiting,” said Lola, “and I want a sensible answer.”

  Marit pushed up her sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

  “You won’t get one from me. All the sense has flown out of my head.”

  “Leeched out by that runt, no doubt.”

  “He kept pushing my face in it, Lolly. I had to hear about her hands and her feet, and her adorable habits and her artwork. He kept saying how gifted she was. She was too fine to live. …”

  “Well, I’m not,” snapped Lola. “I have a lot of good years in me yet. Stay in your lane or pull over and let me drive.”

  Marit took off her glasses and dropped them in Lola’s lap.

  “Wipe these off for me, please. I smudged them.”

  “You don’t need them. It’s your eyes that are bleary. You need a new beau.”

  “I’m not little and soft. I’m a lout. I’ve got biceps that show through my sleeves. You’ve known me three years. Have I even been sick for a day?”

  Lola could not find an answer. Her stock of retorts was running out. Marit was talking to herself, or to someone inside her head.

  “I looked at myself this morning. The red spots are back. The broken blood vessels. Luba’s skin doctor took them off with an electric needle. I spent my youth in that office. There was always something wrong. I had warts, I had spreading moles, I had cysts on my scalp. …”

  “Marit Deym.” Lola slapped the seat. “I will give you to a count of ten to stop this raving.”

  “Lola?” Marit’s voice was shaky. “Do you think that my eyes are set too wide apart?”

  Lola reached behind Marit and pushed down the button that locked the door. She locked her own side with her elbow. When Marit had one of her electrical storms, as Lola had named them, Lola depended on feisty talk to bring her around, the kind of talk used with good results by coaches and trainers. Marit preferred a rough harangue to gentle treatment, since she thought that most girls were tender, meeching sissies. Her erratic driving troubled Lola less than hearing her compare herself to one of these weaker specimens, and come out losing. Lola decided to drop the role of master sergeant; she could not shame Marit out of her affliction. Any good sergeant has to change his tone of voice when one of his men has broken under fire.

  The road was lined with a screen of foreign poplars. At the next right turn, the line of trees continued, broken fifty yards in by a high, arched iron gate. Marit went past the gate and drove across the road into a fallow field. She parked the jeep behind a stand of wild thorns, out of sight of the road. She jumped out of the jeep and headed for the gate without waiting for Lola.

  The iron gate was hanging ajar. It had rusted open. Marit pulled it closed with both hands, as tightly as it could shut, scraping away a sill of earth that had mounded up at the bottom. In front of them stood the chapel, down a lane of boxwood. The box had grown into the lane, forcing them to walk sideways in some places. The chapel was hung with ivy, browned out from lack of pruning, hairy branches of ivy dangling loose and withering off. Inside, the chapel was dark, like a fortress, not a church, with slits, set high near the roof, instead of windows. The altar and the crucifix were shrouded. Three white paste florist’s vases stood at the base of the pulpit; one of the vases had toppled over and broken into large pieces.

  Marit led the way down the center aisle, holding on to the backs of the pews. A large bird flapped over their heads, the noise of its wings magnified in that empty space. Startled, Marit covered her head and cried out, backing up a few steps and knocking into Lola, who was set on a forward course and pushed Marit onward. They ran out in a welter of sound, footsteps echoing on the tiles, bird squalling and flapping through the nave, and the broken doorknob turning with a fun-house creak.

  They stopped running when they reached the little graveyard, which was surrounded by a low picket fence with slats missing, like empty spaces in a row of teeth. The fence was low enough to step over easily, but Lola balked. She waved at Marit, who did not see her. Marit was walking from stone to stone, bending down to look at the inscriptions, which were hard to read because the graveyard lay in dappled shade. The ground was uneven and damp, since the sun never dried it out, and the thin, flat stones all tilted at different angles. Most of the stones were slick with green moss, and some had sunk into the earth above the date line. Marit stepped on patches of ground-cover mint and chamomile as she walked, raising gusts of fragrance. There was no smell of death in the graveyard, just the charm of ruin.

  One stone stood apart from the others and tilted less, set back in a corner by the fence, in full shadow, under the tallest cedars. Marit squatted down to read the engraving. The marble facing had started to crumble at the edges, but the words were deeply incised and caught the light:

  A Heart Within Whose Sacred Cell

  The Peaceful Virtues Loved to Dwell

  Francesca Alba Hadley

  (1932-1955)

  Lola stayed outside the fence, keeping watch, rotating her head from Marit to the side door of the chapel and back to Marit, getting an ache in her neck and wishing that she had two heads. Lola was unconcerned about graveyards and mortality; she had spent the night in an empty plantation house that was believed to be haunted by astral cats. Lola was afraid of nothing that bit, crawled, moaned, hurled crockery, or rattled its chains, but she was afraid of Marit’s actions, and their meaning.

  Marit’s mouth was moving; she was making fists and gesticulating, and Lola was too far away to hear the words that the gestures punctuated. Lola stepped back to watch the chapel, peering up and down the line of poplars. She brought her eyes back to Marit again. Marit was kicking a gravestone. Lola stepped over the fence, but still she hung back. Marit picked up a rock and threw it at the headstone. Chips of limestone sprayed over the ground.

  Lola thought that she might have to subdue her, though Marit was stronger, and as tall as she was. There was danger in trying to subdue an excessive person. Lola had grappled with an epileptic once and had her hand bitten hard before she could find the tongue. Marit picked up a large stick and began to beat the headstone. The stick snapped in two. Marit hurled the broken pieces into the woods. She was unarmed now, but Lola felt no easier. She saw Marit place her hands on the stone, lifting and tugging, trying to dislodge it and yank it out of the earth. When the stone would not give, she pounded it with her fists, crying aloud from frustration or the pain in her hands.

  Lola started forward. Marit might hurt herself badly. Then a shock of realization forced her back: “The picture. The dead girl in the picture in the wallet.” Lola grasped the fence-slats to hold herself steady. When the shock passed she felt cold and numb. Marit was down on her knees digging, doglike, sending earth from the grave flying back between her legs. Digging was tiring; the fit would wind down in time.

  In this state of possession, rooting and digging and talking to herself, Marit was like a stranger to Lola—like those women on city buses who wear surgical masks and layers of woolen clothing in the summer. Lola moved to the back of the bus to avoid these women, or got off many blocks before her stop. She kept her distance now from her friend, whose back had been turned for
the duration of the seizure, who might have been any casual mad person, inspiring a kind of queasy curiosity. Lola began to move to the edge of the fence, walking slowly, so that she could approach Marit from the side and startle her less. The digging had stopped, but Marit was still on her knees. Lola was nearly abreast of her.

  Lola could not have made her heart cold enough to shut out what she saw. Her friend was smearing dirt across her face, rubbing the grave-dirt into her face and hair, taking a handful of dirt at a time and crumbling it between her hands, making it fine and powdery so that it would spread better. She spread it on her face in a circular motion, away from the center, as if she were applying foundation makeup in liquid form. The tears she was crying made the fine dirt wet and smoother to work with. While she smeared on the runny black paste, using only the tips of her fingers, she looked up at the sky, at the tops of the cedars swaying. She shook her head gently, in denial, and patted and smoothed and rubbed, not forgetting her neck or the section under her chin.

  Lola went over and crouched down in front of her, sitting on her heels. There had been no need to worry about surprising her. Marit was not disturbed by her presence, or interrupted. She had blackened her face completely, except for her ears. Her changeable eyes had lost any tinge of gray; they were a queer light green in her boyish blackamoor’s face.

  Lola reached out and took one of Marit’s muddy hands.

  “What am I going to do with you?” she asked.

  Marit met her eyes. She seemed to recognize her, because she held Lola’s hand more tightly.

  “Is there a baptismal font in the chapel? We could wash you off there. I can’t take you down to the lake. You’d scare the children. I’ll take you back to my place and put you under the shower. Are you finished here? Have you done what you came to do?”

  Marit pulled away and pointed at the headstone. She scooped up more dirt and pressed it into the carving, scooping and pressing with both hands, as if she thought she could erase the name and the inscription.

  Lola spoke to herself, not to Marit. “I am not a good friend. I should not have let this happen.”

  Lola looked at Marit. She was rubbing her eyes with her dirty fists. She was as tired as a child who has been kept up past its bedtime. Lola got up and pulled Marit to her feet. She led her out of the churchyard. Marit followed without protesting and did not look back. Lola helped her into the jeep. She found a traveling pillow and propped it behind Marit’s head. She was fast asleep before Lola could start the motor.

  SEVEN

  BY EIGHT O’CLOCK ON Friday morning, Marit had been sleeping for fifteen hours—since five o’clock the afternoon before, when Lola had put her down on top of her own bed and covered her with a cotton quilt and a light blanket laid over it. Except for a brief visit to the main house to collect the weekend menus, which had to be typed, and to check the freshness of the flower arrangements in the living room, Lola had been sitting all night in the armchair across from the bed, drowsing at intervals or reading under the light of a standing lamp. She had muffled the lampshade by draping it with a slip and a nightgown, so that it cast a very dim glow and did not wake Marit.

  Marit’s sleeping behavior did not seem to warrant a night watch. She lay flat on her back and shifted, twice, to each side. She did not pluck at the coverlet or murmur incoherencies; she did not toss or frown to indicate the throes of nightmare. She slept with her mouth open, but Lola knew that she had always done that—Luba had warned Marit that no one would marry her if they could see her that way.

  Lola should have been reassured by Marit’s regular breathing, but it was the future that she was keeping watch over, not this present sleep. Lola loved Marit better than any sister, and when she looked ahead she saw no happiness for her.

  “Gabriel is saner than you are, Gabriel is a professional sane person”: Marit had tossed this remark off lightly, as if her interest were in coining a phrase. It had not fallen lightly on Lola’s ears. Marit was like a wild creature, resistant to domestication and confinement. She had no more place in the coupled world than Lola did. It was the job of a husband to shear, quell, tame, leash, whittle, and pare down. Lola could not see Marit as a new draftee, lined up to enter the married ranks, getting her hair chopped off with her oddness, handed a suit of clothes which would blend her in with the others.

  Love seemed to have opened up like a pit at Marit’s feet. It took some people that way the first time, but it portended no better for any times to come. Lola had watched the impact of love on the girls in her graduating class; love had carved out their innards, leaving them with a hole in the middle like a piece of modern sculpture. One day they were dense and intractable; the next, you could see right through them. There were rumors around of a love that enhanced and tonified, that had the strengthening effects of beef tea or a football training breakfast, but she had never seen a living example of it.

  Lola herself wanted sport and pleasure. Above all, she wanted no emotion that would invade her privacy. But her friend, who had pledged herself to important work, who was scratchy, impatient, and willful, who had all the traits of someone who should never live with anybody, had planted herself in the way of love like a young sapling trying to grow on a bluff swept by high winds. The sapling will bend, and eventually does break; it can never grow to its full height where it is situated.

  Lola could not rest imagining Marit’s future. Her legs ached and her back ached from sitting in the chair so long. It was seven-forty-five by the clock, and the sunlight had been strong for some time. She raised the blind to let the light wake Marit, and went into the kitchen to fix two breakfast trays. Marit liked breakfasts that reminded her of Paris, so Lola heated milk to pour with the coffee, sliced a flute of French bread baked by Mrs. Gilliam’s cook, and put apricot jam and sweet butter into little white pots. She was scooping coffee into the percolator basket when she heard the shuffling of socks on linoleum, and felt two arms twined around her waist. Marit was clinging to her and scratching her nose on her shoulder. A scoop of coffee went half in the basket and half on the counter.

  “Can’t we eat in here?” said Marit. “Trays in bed make me feel like an invalid.”

  Lola turned around and inspected Marit closely, lifting her chin and taking a good look at her fingernails.

  “Brush your teeth and throw cold water on your face. The coffee will be ready in two shakes.”

  Marit smiled at her. Lola never showed the wrong kind of sentiment. She never asked how you were, or repeated the question ten seconds later, after you had assured her sincerely that you were fine. Marit told her so.

  “Why should I ask?” said Lola, replacing the trays with placemats. “You’re as tough as the back end of a shooting gallery.”

  Marit sat down and dipped a spoon into the jam pot. “I thought I was. Apparently there’s a fault in my psyche. The St. Gabriel fault, don’t you know.”

  Lola frowned. This statement sounded like flippancy, or self-parade.

  “Since you want to use the analogy, why can’t you run for your life when you know the quake is coming?”

  “Because I can’t. I’m the earthquake and the victim. I also record the shocks.”

  Lola set down the percolator so hard that coffee splashed out of the spout.

  “I do not admire melodrama. Keep that fancy talk for your memoirs. The way you’re going, you’re not going to live to write them.”

  “It’s not fancy talk, Lolly.” Her head was bowed. “It’s how it feels.”

  Lola took her hand and squeezed it. She was frightened of any more tears.

  “I have no business to flare up like that. I haven’t got the sense God gave a chicken. A friend isn’t good for much if she refuses to listen.”

  “This friend is,” said Marit, whose eyes were blurry. “This friend makes café au lait and heats the French bread.”

  “I did get you cleaned up. I want credit for that. You’re very obedient when you’re torpid.” Lola poured the coffee and handed Marit
her cup. “I didn’t wash your hair; I just brushed it. I couldn’t have you going to sleep with a wet head.”

  Marit buttered her bread, dipped an end into her coffee, and held it there until it was properly soaked. Little globules of fat floated on top of the liquid.

  “I don’t like this,” Marit said. Lola looked up. “I don’t mean my breakfast. I don’t like to be in love if it makes me do strange things.”

  “Some people shouldn’t be in love,” said Lola. “I’m not sure most women shouldn’t.”

  “If I fall apart, what will happen to my animals? You know what people think. They think that someone like me only cares about animals because we feel as helpless as they are.”

  “Bears and wolves are not helpless, honey. They can kill a man.”

  “If it’s one to one, they can; but men hunt in gangs. Do you remember that newspaper headline? ‘SKIPPER SAVES DOG AS CREW DROWNS’?” Lola shook her head. “I read it to you at the time. You do remember. The captain kept his Labrador in the skiff and let three crewmen hang on to the lifeboat in frigid water. Two of them died. Gabriel wouldn’t understand that, but I understand it.”

  Marit was scraping the sides of the jam pot with her knife. Lola tilted her chair, reached over to the cabinet, and pulled out a new jar of marmalade.

  “You talk like Gabriel is your fate, or a curse.” She opened the jar. “Look how strong you are. You snapped right back. Look at your appetite. You’re making a fine old mess on my table; wipe the crumbs off your face.”

  “Gabriel is always right and I’m always wrong. I hate being wrong.”

  “Then end it.” Lola flourished her napkin. “Pull out. Cut it off. Say goodbye. Simple solutions never occur to you romantic people.”

  Marit’s face lit up as if she had found the penny in the Twelfth Night cake. A chunk of bread dropped into her coffee, hovered on the surface, and sank to the bottom of the cup.

  “I could. I am not a rabbit. I am going to do it.”

  “Write a letter.” Lola gave a wide grin, the leer of experience.