by May Sarton
“That sounds lovely.”
“You’re white as a sheet.”
“I want to think about everything, but after a little while I feel too tired … too stupid.”
It was, she realized, much easier to lie comfortably and think about Daphne than to carry on a conversation, for then the flow of memory was stopped and short-circuited. But first, music. Laura got up and found a Haydn cello concerto. The strength, the virility of Haydn was what she craved. And what had she meant when she said their lives had been strange? Strange, she supposed, because they had been insignificant. Was it cruel and obtuse to think of Daphne’s as a failed life? Beauty, intelligence, superior sensitivity, finally put to use to work as a drudge in an animal hospital, and to support and bring aid and comfort to David who, it had to be admitted, was a great man in his way, one of the pioneers in heart surgery—but without any of the structure or social position of a marriage to support. The fact was that Daphne was still living the life of a young woman, not one nearing old age. And she had stayed amazingly young because she was still so vulnerable, so unprotected. If, as Yeats thought, “there’s more enterprise in going naked,” then one had to admire her.
Daisy did. Daisy felt that Daphne was a hero. “She hasn’t compromised, you see,” she had told Laura once. “She hasn’t let herself be caught. She’s absolutely authentic.”
“But she’s failed at everything!” Laura suddenly remembered the whole conversation and how astounded she had been by the passion in Daisy’s voice.
“Except at being a great human being, Mother,” Daisy had said with withering scorn.
“Jo’s never compromised,” Laura had gone on, and the scene had remained so vivid in her memory because that day she had persisted like a balky donkey in rousing her daughter’s anger and contempt. “Jo has done exactly what she wanted to do.”
“Aunt Jo may have done what she wanted, but—oh, can’t you see? What she wanted was to be safe, safe from any really deep human relationships, and to feel justified in fending off anything that might disturb her self-immolation in that college. She’s a workaholic if I ever saw one.”
“Some people might say she’s devoted and selfless.”
“Oh, my God, Mother! Some people won’t pay the price of being a woman, let’s face it. Jo’s just as limited in her way as a woman who lets herself be swallowed up by family life and becomes a drudge—except that that sort of woman is at least human. She is not.”
Laura remembered that she had felt ruffled and cross by the time her intransigent daughter left.
What was it then to be a woman? More complex and far more difficult, she was beginning to realize, than it is to be a man.
Daphne must have heard her sigh, for she came in and sat down. “And what was that sigh all about?”
“Daisy.” Laura waited a second, poised on the question whether it would be wise to open up that subject now. “I was remembering a wild argument we had not long ago about you and Jo. Daisy thinks you are a hero.”
“I fit in with her anarchic views, that’s all.”
Suddenly Laura got up, lifted up by an irresistible idea.
“Daff, would you drive me down to the house in Maine? We could go tomorrow—take a picnic—”
“But, Laura, it’s February! The driveway won’t even have been plowed.”
“Oh, yes, it’s kept plowed because of the risk of fire. And Mrs. Eaton down the road has the key and would light fires for us.”
“It’s possible, of course, and you know I’d do anything for you, Laura. I just wonder whether it could be worth what is bound to be exhausting for you.”
“I have to do what I can and not count the cost. It’s the last chance. Could you stay till Tuesday possibly?” Laura did not know quite why she felt such urgency, but the pull was as strong as the undertow in the cove. “The smell of salt and iodine—the gulls—oh, Daff! The sound of the sea.”
“Very well. But in that case you had better rest all afternoon and not say a word.”
“Angel!”
“I’ll stuff some eggs, and maybe there’s a can of deviled ham somewhere.”
“I think there may be. Look on the top shelf.” Laura felt weak with excitement. “A thermos of consommé—remember the old picnics?”
“Of course. A thermos of consomme and a thermos of martinis. We’ll do it, darling!”
“One last time.”
“But February, Laura! I think it’s an awful risk.”
“I’ll manage. Liquor helps.”
“I didn’t mean your health. I meant—”
“We’ll have to risk that.” And “that,” Laura knew, meant whatever memory had in store for them in a cold February house.
Chapter XI
“Here we are,” Laura murmured, as Daphne drew up in front of the long flight of steps to the front door. Here it was, the childhood fortress, the house of all the summers, green trim, weathered shingles, many-paned windows sparkling in the sun, standing there like an ark surrounded by its porches. “How the trees have grown, Daff!” For in the fifty or sixty years since they had been planted, Norway spruce and hemlock, arbor vitae had enclosed the space around it. By common accord they sat for a moment, after Daphne had turned off the ignition, just taking it in. The piles of snow made no difference. It all looked like itself.
Then Mrs. Eaton opened the door, hugging herself in an old gray sweater. “Well, you made it!”
Laura got out and went ahead. “We just had a yen to see the old place—and Daphne was up from New York. How are you? I’m afraid it was a nuisance shoveling the steps and all.”
“Not a bit. Silas did the shoveling. Brought in wood enough to last you a week!”
“Where is Silas?” Daphne asked, as she arrived carrying the picnic in a basket. “I want to see that boy.”
“Well, he had to go back to the store. The Rundletts are down in Florida, and Silas is tending the store for a while. It’s a change from lobstering, and he takes to it. Seems like he’d rather stay on shore these days, and I don’t blame him. Fishing’s not what it used to be.”
Laura had gone into the big living room and was sitting on the little bench, warming her hands at the fire and looking around at the Japanese prints on the wall, the white wicker furniture and its blue and white chintz cushions, the blue Chinese rug.
“Sit down, Mrs. Eaton,” Daphne was saying.
“I’d like to, but I have to get back to heat up some chowder for Silas. I would have brought you some, but of course the water is turned off, and I thought it might be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“It’s a lovely fire. Thank you,” Laura said.
“And thank Silas, if we don’t see him,” Daphne added.
“Don’t you worry about anything. I’ll come back tomorrow, roll up the rug again, and put the cushions away.”
Daphne went to the door with Mrs. Eaton and then pulled two chairs up close to the fire. “It’s cold,” she shivered. “We can’t stay long.”
They listened to the pick-up trundle down the road, and then Daphne opened the thermos and poured two martinis into paper cups.
“Listen,” Laura said before she took a swallow, “the sea.”
“Tide’s rising,” Daphne said. “You can hear it. Even on a calm day remember how there’s a little roar as the tide pulls the waves in?”
For a long moment they listened to the immemorial sound.
“What did we used to do first?” Laura asked.
“Race down to the shore and take off our sneakers and go in wading. Remember how cold the water was and how the stones hurt, and how hard it was to keep one’s footing!”
“Then we had to be sure everything was still there, the tree house, the old rowboat, the mossy dell, the lady slippers—in that small clearing among the firs. Oh, the smell of it all! The pine, the salt—”
“The wild roses. On some days when the wind came from the sea all you could smell was roses.” Daphne looked ten years younger, her cheeks fl
ushed in the firelight. She looked happy, Laura thought.
“Aren’t you glad we came?”
“I am.” Daphne got up and stood back to the fire. “And now we must think of a toast. Pa always liked toasts.”
“And was very good at them.”
“What shall it be?” Daphne threw her head back, thinking.
“There’s only one possible toast today, in this house—to Sybille!”
But this brought Daphne sharply back from her dream.
“Why Sybille?” she asked, frowning and looking down at her drink. “Why Mamma?” she asked more gently.
“It’s her house, after all. She said we had to have one permanent place. And you have to admit, Daff, that was a true piece of wisdom. She insisted that we have family summers, don’t you remember?”
“I was too small. I don’t remember the house ever not being here.”
“I think I wanted so much to come back, because—” Laura hesitated to put so wild and deep an impulse into words, and suddenly she was crying.
“Laura, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing—Mamma—I thought perhaps—”
“Yes, I see,” Daphne broke in, as Laura blew her nose. “You thought perhaps if we came back here, we could solve the riddle once and for all.”
“I suppose so.”
“A beautiful mother and three beautiful daughters,” Daphne said, “it shouldn’t be a riddle at all.”
“All human relations are riddles,” Laura said. “And the same person may be a fury and an angel all at the same time. Here in this place we saw Mamma mostly as an angel, wouldn’t you agree? Remember our reading Shaw and Ibsen around the fire?”
“And Shakespeare—how I loved being Ariel!” Daphne said, sitting down again. “Of course you are right, L., to recapture the magic world. We were, until we began to grow up, actors in a supremely interesting play.” And she smiled one of her bittersweet smiles. “Family life was the soap opera in those days!”
The sisters exchanged a mischievous glance. “Summers,” Laura murmured, “messing around in boats—”
“Falling in love with the local boys. Can you believe that Silas is fifty or more? Do you suppose his red hair has turned gray?”
“Pa getting so nervous and cross before our yearly picnic on bird island, packing baskets of food into the motorboat, and once forgetting the beer! What a disaster! We got so thirsty before the day was over we nearly pooped.”
“I had lemonade. I was too young for beer.”
“You were lucky!”
Daphne put another log on the fire, took one look at her sister, and pulled a sandwich and stuffed egg out of the bag. “Here, darling, you’d better eat something before you vanish behind the looking glass, like Alice.”
“Thanks. I don’t feel much like eating.” It was quite impossible, Laura said to herself, to feel nauseated in these circumstances—no water. Was Brother Ass, her body, from now on going to intervene in any pleasure? “Give me a sip of coffee, Daff, will you?” She wiped the sweat off her face, and the hot coffee did go down. And for a moment she let herself sink into a kind of limbo, a state of non being, shutting off the valves into feeling or thinking. She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, Daphne was standing in the big window looking out to sea.
“Daff?”
“Are you all right?”
“I had a little nap. I feel better.”
“The sea is that extraordinary blue, Fra Angelico blue Mamma called it, and there’s a paler line just at the horizon.” Daphne came back and sat down, stretching out her hands to the fire. “I’ve been thinking.”
“I’ve been not-thinking,” said Laura. “I’m getting quite expert at that.”
“You are kinder to Mamma than I am, I wonder why.”
“I think of her as Sybille, not as Mamma. I think of her as herself, as she was when we were young—not now, of course. Maybe growing up is being able to think of one’s parents as people in their own right.”
“Perfect detachment? That’s impossible!” Daphne said, with something of her old violence, that sudden flame that used to leap up when she was angry or upset.
“No, not that exactly. But Sybille was a truly grand person, a hero to Cousin Hope, Daphne. We have to remember that. She made immense demands on herself, never was self-indulgent, had real guts when it came to fighting for anything she believed in, and did it all with such style, Noblesse oblige. Don’t you think she exemplified that?” Daphne did not answer, and Laura went on, possessed now by the quarry, not tired or ill, lifted up again on the stream of time, of life itself. “Grandeur is not perhaps something children want of their parents. Parents must be normal, comfortable, not extreme, so Sybille was disturbing as a mother, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. But we adored her. Have you forgotten how she looked when she came to kiss us good night, wearing her jewels, in that flowery Liberty silk or a white linen dress I always loved because there was something grecian about it, so plain and elegant? Is not great beauty—and you have to admit she had that—not a gift to one’s children, after all?”
“She certainly thought so.”
“But didn’t you?”
“No. It was like a shield between Mamma and me,” said Daphne in a cold voice.
“Yet of the three of us, you alone inherited it.”
“Like some enormous, very grand house in which I couldn’t live, if you must know.”
“You really hated being beautiful, didn’t you?”
“I felt inadequate. And then—it put me always in a false position. Mamma loved adoration because she never wanted to be near anyone, you see. I hated it because I felt it made a wall between me and other people.” She laughed. “It was like being perpetually overdressed. And what made it worse was that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. Oh, well, here we are, Laura, survivors of that great blaze—Mamma!” And Laura, as Daphne threw back her head and laughed, caught a faint glimpse of the beauty she had been at twenty.
“Yes, we were burned, but my children got the glow, and I’m glad of that. Daisy connected with Sybille, and Daisy is not apt to go overboard for anyone as you well know.” Thinking of Daisy, Laura sighed. “I suppose I am kinder in my thoughts toward Sybille because I am more aware than you can be, Daff, how damned difficult the whole mother-daughter thing is.”
“What is it that’s so difficult? Talk about it,” Daphne again sat on the little bench, stretching her long legs out.
“I wish I could. I only know that somehow Ben, especially Ben, but Brooks too, could take criticism for instance. And Daisy simply flew into a rage if I made the slightest critical remark, and still does, for that matter.”
“Of course that kind of thing was left to governesses in our day. I can’t remember Mamma being critical—only I always felt snubbed by her praise. That was it!” Daphne said clapping her hands. “I used to write poems—do you remember that?—and Mamma was always so kind, but in a way that made me go and tear the poem up. And then she read some great poem, you know, and I just shriveled.”
“Her standards were extremely high.”
“Oh, I admit that. That’s half the trouble. If you must know, it took me years to stop being an insufferable snob when it came to the arts. We were so damned superior.”
“But Sybille really wasn’t a snob. Look at the people she invited!”
“Yes, but they had to be special in some way. There was that rumpled poet at one time, but Mamma thought he was a genius. Genius was acceptable even if dirty and rude.”
“The odd thing is that although she had such taste, she really often ‘took up,’ if that is the phrase, with terrible duds. There was that philosopher with some crazy theory of the universe.” Laura smiled. “Yet there were real stars, too, Maggie Teyte, Edith Wharton, and after we moved back to Boston, the Whiteheads.”
Daphne lit a cigarette and smoked for a moment while Laura, suddenly hungry, ate a sandwich. The fire was dying down, and the room felt
suddenly terribly cold.
“We are going to have to leave, Laura. It’s just too cold.”
“Put another log on the fire. I don’t care if I freeze. What does it matter? I want to stay just a little longer, Daff.” For Laura was still in pursuit of her quarry, still carried on the current of a strange excitement.
“Of course, darling, whatever you want. I’m glad we came,” she said, lifting another big log and throwing it onto the embers in a shower of sparks. “Aren’t you? It was a good idea of yours.”
“Yet coming here, back into the good years, back into what was, after all, a marvelous childhood, has not made you less relentless, has it?”
“Somehow, L., you had your real life—”
“And you have not had yours?” Laura frowned. She did not really want to contemplate her sister’s failure, if it had been that.
“Of course not. I was so busy trying not to be like Mamma that I suppose I have ended up being nothing at all.”
“But that’s not true. Your measure is still Mamma’s, that only some extraordinary gift, some heroic act, some larger-than-life-size accomplishment is what matters.”
Daphne gave her sister a frightened look.
“Since I’ve known that I haven’t long to live, it’s strange, but I think I’ve come to understand better what it’s all about, why we’re on earth.”
“Lucky woman!”
“Isn’t it simply to grow, to become more human—not achievement, not fame, nothing like that—and Daphne, you are such a great human being. You’re such a loving, warm person, and you had to break down a lot of walls to become that. I think you’re splendid,” Laura said.
“A splendid failure,” Daphne answered, but she looked shy, confused, exactly as she had as a child when someone praised her. “I guess it takes a long time to grow up.”
“Yes, and in a queer way Sybille never did. Because growing up means being able to look at oneself, and to understand oneself. She never did—and that, in the end,” said Laura with a kind of triumph, for she had perhaps reached the quarry at last, “is what made Sybille so destructive.”