A Reckoning

by May Sarton

  “Yes, we will,” she breathed. “Thanks, Ben.”

  Laura did not wake again until the dawn. She felt rested, and when she turned toward Ben’s painting in the subdued light she was able to look at it for a long time, and not with just her eyes. She began to float with it, the colors merging, and to sense what was happening in it and in Ben’s mind while he painted it, not the shock, the explosion she had thought she saw when she was too exhausted to take it in. This was not motion, but the poise just before motion, a kind of perfection that could not stay, the moment before dissolution. If only the body were as simple as a flower, opening and fading in an hour or two. For the body it seemed such a long, intricate process by comparison, whole galaxies of molecules slowly transforming themselves into what? Going where?

  This time it was Mary who stood in the doorway, in her wrapper, her hair in two plaits.

  “Mary,” Laura said, “I’m afraid.”

  Without a word Mary came and sat on the bed and held Laura’s hand.

  “I don’t know how to let go,” Laura said. “I don’t know what is happening to me. I’m scared, scared,” she repeated, “scared of the dark.”

  “It’s all right,” Mary said. “The sun’s just rising.” It was not an answer, but in a way it was. For the moment the words held a true promise: whatever happened the sun would rise.

  “There now, I’m going to bring you a cup of tea.” Mary got up to go, but Laura tugged gently at her skirt.

  “Stay a little while,” she begged. “What time is it?”

  “It’s just after six,” Mary said, settling down again, this time rather formally, sitting up straight.

  I must only ask what can be given, Laura told herself, trying to read Mary’s face which seemed now gently withdrawn. Was she thinking? Praying perhaps?

  “Is your family getting on all right without you?” Laura asked.

  “Oh, yes! I went home for a day while you were in the hospital.” Mary gave a low chuckle, “Found the frigidaire filled up with TV dinners and beer. I guess they’ll survive!”

  “It’s awfully kind of you to stay.”

  “I wouldn’t leave you now,” Mary said firmly then added with a smile, “except to go and get dressed. I expect that son of yours will want an early breakfast.” And this time she did get up to go. “Shall I leave the door open?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “There’s a bell right there beside you if you need me.”

  Being home, Laura thought, was to hear friendly sounds again, a dog’s bark, someone clattering dishes in the kitchen, a bird singing, for just then she heard a robin and the twittering of goldfinches. And where was Sasha, she wondered? The cat had not been on her bed all night.

  For a few moments she could stay aware, then she felt herself sinking into a kind of nothingness, not asleep, not awake, taking shallow breaths, waiting in a strange calm for whatever would happen next. The panic of the early morning had seeped away into weakness, and she must have dozed, for there was Mary with a cup of tea on a tray.

  Mary held her up, and Laura held the cup in her two hands because she was too shaky to do it with one. She swallowed the tea greedily, aching for a little strength, just enough for one more day, she told herself. But that proved to be a mistake, and before she could stop its happening the tea was all over the bed. “Oh, Mary,” she groaned, “I’m sorry—such a mess!”

  “Now don’t you worry. I was going to change the sheets anyway. It’ll only take a minute.”

  Mary tactfully closed the door, then gathered Laura up into her arms like a baby and set her down gently on the chaise longue by the window. She fetched a face cloth from the bathroom and wiped Laura’s face.

  “That feels good,” Laura murmured. Tears slid down her cheek. She felt trapped like a baby who can’t control itself. She was now at the mercy of this cage of her body—for how long? The struggle was so awful that she was close to despair. How to let go? How to stay in this abject state?

  But after what seemed hours, she was back in her bed, safe, her eyes closed, and glad to be absolutely alone, glad even that Grindle had been put out.

  It would not be hard in the end to give everything up, even the faint sound of leaves in the light wind … everything.

  She woke to a light scratching at the door, then a gentle tap.

  “Sasha wants to come in, Mother.”

  “Oh, Ben, yes, let her in.”

  “May I come in too?”

  “Of course, dear.”

  “I’ll only stay a little while,” he said, bending to kiss her cheek.

  Sasha jumped onto the bed and proceeded to give her own face a very thorough wash, the paw going up and down and round the ears. Laura watched her with a smile. But the constant motion was enervating, and she was glad when the cat wound herself into a perfect round ball and lay purring against Laura’s thigh.

  “We don’t have to talk,” Ben said. He was sitting on the end of the chaise longue, his hands clasped round his knees, rocking himself slowly and not looking at Laura.

  “I am a little dim today,” Laura said, closing her eyes, wondering whether it would be possible to rest in Ben’s presence, whether he could bear the silence because—because—she couldn’t formulate why. Perhaps words kept the truth at bay, and the truth was hard. There was very little time left now.

  The silence grew and grew until it contained too much tension, and Laura murmured, “I wish you would talk to me, talk about yourself—we had so little time in the hospital.”

  “Oh, Mother, I can’t!” She heard the sob held back, a queer break in his voice. “I can’t,” he said, and she heard him running down the staris, running away from her dying. But could she have listened? She heard the front door open and close. Now Ben was safe outside with trees and grass and could fling himself down on the earth and weep. It was all right. It was the way things were. Only up to a point can the living help the dying. Laura closed herself in, just touching Sasha’s head for a moment, resting there as though all life for the moment had flowed into her fingertips against the soft fur, all life in that touch. And she remembered a poem—but whose?

  His kind velvet bonnet

  And on it

  My tears run.

  But she was not crying now. She was in an absurd state of tension and had a cramp in her foot.

  Later that morning Jim came to take her pulse, to hold her hand, to say that he and Brooks and Ann had cooked up a way to give her the spring “as I promised,” he said, smiling so eagerly at Laura that she had to respond.

  “How will you do that?” she asked.

  “We’re going to carry you downstairs and out onto a chaise in the garden. Then you can look up at the sky through the leaves. It’s a perfect day, not too hot, clear air.”

  “Jim—” she was going to say that she didn’t think she had the strength to move, but then she saw his face, lit up by his own hopes. Could she deny that hope? “It sounds impossible, but I know you keep your promises.”

  “I want you to see those red tulips.”

  “Aunt Minna will be coming to read to me.”

  “Mary can bring tea out to the garden.” Jim was holding her hand now. “I wish I hadn’t had to get you to the hospital.”

  Laura knew that he was trying to make up somehow for the hell he had put her through. He had invented this plan as a reward. “You were a trump about that.”

  “I was helpless,” Laura said with a smile. “Could I have said no?”

  “Probably not,” he gave her hand a squeeze and let it go. He was on his way, but suddenly Laura reached for his hand and pulled him back to sit on the bed. She did it violently, and Jim registered his surprise.

  “Wow, you’ve got a lot of strength in that hand,” he said, smiling at her.

  “At first all those weeks I wanted to be alone,” she said quickly—she was so afraid there was no time and he would leave—“now I need help, Jim. Ben came to sit beside me but he couldn’t stay—you know.”


  “Yes, perhaps he can’t. Would you like Ann to come and just be here for the rest of the day, until we take you down to the garden?”

  Laura frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “Aunt Minna, maybe?”

  “She’s so old—and afraid of death—I wonder whether I could ask that.”

  Jim gave a sigh. Laura read his troubled face. He would have liked to stay with her, she knew that. But of course he couldn’t. Other people needed him. Hundreds of sick people, frightened people. And now he looked at his watch.

  “Yes, you have to go,” Laura said.

  “I think Mary is the person you really need. I’ll send her up.” Jim stood there, looking down at her with his kind, aloof expression, and Laura closed her eyes. She felt abandoned, cold and abandoned.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  For the rest of the morning Mary sat on the chaise mending socks and a torn sweater of Laura’s and it was—Jim had been right after all—just what Laura needed. It was strange how supportive this busy silence of Mary’s was. Laura found herself floating—processions of people passed before her closed eyes, she saw her mother in a blue dress with a square lace collar, bending to kiss her good night in the hospital in Switzerland—a kiss on the forehead that Laura resented, but she no doubt, had been then, as now too frail for the strong, warm hug she had longed for. She saw her mother walking across a field in Maine with a bunch of wildflowers in her hands, her face rosy with the pleasure, scattering a diamond smile as she moved. Charles then came toward her, looking unexpectedly grand in tails—was there a wedding going on? Brooks and Ann maybe—yes, there they were now, fleeing down the road toward their new Buick, laughing and waving to the wedding guests assembled in the doorway. Then it was Ben, such a queer, elongated baby, reaching out toward a red toy on his crib with an eager starfish hand, clutching it then and sucking it as though color were something to eat.

  “Ben was such a funny little boy,” Laura said aloud. “He was passionate about flowers, used to pick the tulips off by their heads when he was two or three.”

  “He’s the eldest?” Mary asked.

  “Yes, Brooks came two years later—and finally Daisy. We did so want a little girl. Charles, my husband, did. It’s all gone like a dream—a whole life—” but it was said with no regret, for Laura was floating somewhere above it all, watching it go by. Even her anguish about her mother, the unresolved rage and conflict, was being diffused into this luminous bubble of memories which she could watch for an instant before it was dissolved. It was, after all, not going to be hard to let go.

  Yet it was at least in part Mary’s quiet presence, asking nothing, that made this all possible. Something about her hands moving in and out of a sock with the darning needle kept panic away. And even when Laura had her eyes closed, she felt Mary’s presence, a benign effluence that enveloped her and held her safe in its spell.

  So the morning slipped away, and then Laura slept. She was awakened by voices in the hall, Brooks and Ben whispering about something, Ann then saying, “But should we wake her?”

  “I’m awake,” Laura said, but they didn’t hear her, so she leaned over and rang the little bell Mary had left on the night table.

  “You go, Brooks,” she heard Ann say.

  And there he was in the doorway, hesitating, smiling, looking so much like Charles that for a second Laura thought it was Charles.

  “I’ve come to take you downstairs, Mother, for tea in the garden.”

  “Oh,” Laura breathed. “I don’t think I can.”

  “I’ll carry you,” Brooks said reassuringly. “And then you can lie outdoors for a while instead of in bed. Jim Goodwin told us he thought it would be a good change—under the trees.”

  “A tree house on the ground,” Laura smiled. But downstairs seemed a terribly long and perilous journey, and she didn’t really want to make the effort. They couldn’t know what an effort it would be, of course, nor how much she needed to stay safely in her own bed. They were so terribly strong and alive, how could they know?

  “Are you ready?” Brooks was saying. “I’m going to lift you up.”

  But Mary was there explaining that Laura would need a dressing gown. “You stay still,” she admonished Laura.

  “My blue one,” Laura said.

  The effort of getting her arms into it properly was so great that Laura sank back onto the bed, trembling.

  “Let her rest a minute,” Mary whispered. She was frowning and shaking her head, and for the first time Laura saw anxiety in Mary’s calm face.

  But Brooks did not see it, perhaps. Anyway he was determined to do what had been asked, and in a very few seconds he lifted Laura up in his arms, her head leaning over one shoulder, like a baby, she thought ironically. She had carried Brooks around on her hip not so long ago, and he had been heavy.

  “Am I too heavy, Brooks?”

  “Light as a feather,” he said cheerfully, managing the stairs on careful feet, quickly and easily.

  Ben held the door for them and Ann followed, and soon enough Laura was being set down on the chaise longue while Mary knelt down to slip her bedroom slippers on her feet. Brooks was not even out of breath, Laura noticed, but she herself was panting those hard, short breaths that sounded harshly in her chest, and hurt.

  “I’ll be all right in a minute,” she offered, for she found herself in a circle of anxious faces.

  “I think she should be left alone for a little while,” Ann whispered. “Mary will get the tea, and you just lie here and rest, Laura. Aunt Minna won’t be here for a half-hour—what Jim Goodwin wanted was for you to be able to look at the garden, those glorious red tulips.”

  “Oh, yes,” Laura said, turning her head toward the tulip bed. But she didn’t really want to see them. She wanted only to be back in her bed, in the shelter of walls. It’s all a mistake, she thought, Jim’s mistake. So she lay there, and after a while Grindle must have come out, for she heard a short, questioning bark at her side.

  “Hello, Grindle,” she murmured. And this time she was able to stroke his ears before he lay down.

  After a while she opened her eyes again. Look up at sky through the leaves, Jim had said. But looking up made her dizzy. What she could do was listen to a wood pigeon cooing; the monotonous, repeated, half-swallowed coo was soothing. Then she began to see the trees, one by one. The white birch Charles had planted for their twentieth wedding anniversary was covered with small, shining leaves. The ash too was in leaf, she saw, troublesome tree that shed and made a mess on the lawn. Charles had wanted to cut it down. Now it was outliving both of them, and Laura felt glad for the strength of the tree. Only she was not able to look at anything for long, and soon she closed her eyes, resting in the thought of trees, the cypresses of Italy leading the eye down long perspectives to a stone fountain or statue, the marvelous beech trees in that forest near Brussels where she had walked with Ella in the autumn through the endless choirs of immensely tall silver trunks, with a carpet of bronze leaves at their feet and the light trickling through. They had got lost and finally became quite frightened—“Ella, Ella!” Laura felt such an ache as the name came to her lips, they were dry with it, with the absence of Ella.

  Had Ella written lately? Laura could not remember. Mostly she let the letters lie unopened—Ella, where are you? So far away. Laura opened her eyes, feeling like a stranger in her own garden. But if she was a stranger here, where was home? And who was she herself now? The real panic was a loss of identity, for she seemed inextricably woven into her body’s weakness and discomfort, into her struggling sick lungs. What essence was there to be separated from her hand, her flesh, her bones? Laura lifted her hand, so thin it had become transparent. Is this I? This leaflike thing, falling away, falling away, this universe of molecules disintegrating, this miracle about to be transformed into nothingness.

  “Your aunt will be here in a moment,” Mary was saying as she carried the tea tray across the lawn, followed by Brooks with a table to set it on.

/>   “Oh, yes,” Laura murmured. She felt trapped suddenly and shook her head from side to side.

  “Are you all right, Mother?”

  “Oh, I suppose so,” she said irritably. “I’m awfully tired.”

  Brooks and Mary exchanged a glance.

  “I’ll be right here to take you up when you want to go. We thought you and Aunt Minna might have a little read out here.”

  It didn’t matter, one way or another, and Laura closed her eyes. People came and went, but nobody mattered anymore.

  “Well, dear,” Aunt Minna said in her bright, cool voice, “It’s good to see you out of doors on such a fine day!”

  Laura felt unable to respond. She opened her eyes and took in Aunt Minna, the dear wrinkled face, the bright eyes looking out so shyly, but she couldn’t speak. “Shall I pour our tea?”

  “Yes, dear.” Summoning the heavy word “dear” was difficult. I don’t want to feel anything, Laura thought. Trees, not people. Eventually this ordeal would be over, and she would be back in her bed again. Just hang on, she admonished herself. “Myself? Who is that?”

  “I didn’t catch what you said. I’m getting awfully deaf,” Aunt Minna said as she poured the tea. “What was that?”

  “Nothing,” Laura said.

  “Ben is here, Mary told me.”

  “Yes, he finished his painting and brought it.”

  Aunt Minna hesitated before offering Laura her cup, and for a second their eyes met. Laura’s were pleading, but she did not know for what, and Aunt Minna’s filled suddenly with tears.

  “Do you want your tea?” she asked then, quite matter-of-factly.

  “I don’t know.” Laura managed to sit up a little. “I’ll have a sip. Perhaps you could hold it for me? My hand shakes so.”

  “Of course, dear.” They were each grateful, Laura recognized, for some small gesture such as lifting a cup of tea, for now there are no disguises. I’m absolutely helpless and naked.

  Laura drank two sips and lay back.

  “Would you like me to read a little?”