Mary was pink-faced and happy with wine and companionship: “It was lovely to see Christina again, I haven’t seen her in years! And oh but it’s good to get out of the house! Such an oppressive house!”
“It is.”
Mary looked at her in some surprise. “For you too?”
“Yes.” What did she think, that luxury could make up for everything else?
Aldo then drove them to Ronnie’s old apartment near Copley Square to pick up the belongings she had been storing there. The neighborhood was vibrant and shabby, the broad avenue lined with old brownstones transformed into cheap shops with apartments above them. Mary was appalled. “You lived here?”
Ronnie girded herself for attack. “Yes.”
Mary peered out. “It looks frightening.”
“It’s not bad. It’s alive.”
Ronnie directed Aldo to her building.
“Here?” Mary cried, seeing the brownstone, the basement and first story given over to a tiny shop selling records and tapes, a travel agency, and a restaurant offering genuine Mexican tacos and enchiladas. Ronnie’s stomach was tight waiting for the comment; her hand was on the car door. “I’ll just run up. I won’t be a minute.”
Mary stared around as if she were in a foreign land. “You weren’t frightened living here?”
“No. Why?” Ronnie was bewildered. “I’ve lived in much worse places.”
Mary gazed at her. “May I come up with you?”
Ronnie stared back. “Why?”
“I could help you. You have things to carry down.”
“I’ll be glad to help her, Miss Upton,” Aldo said, turning in his seat. He called all the sisters Miss Upton except Ronnie, whom he called Ronnie.
“I can do it alone, there’s not that much. It’s all right,” Ronnie said, trying to escape.
“I’d like to see how you lived.”
“It’s just a grungy apartment.”
“I’ve never seen a grungy apartment.”
Ronnie shrugged. “If you like.”
Aldo jumped out to open the door for Mary, a service he did not feel obliged to offer Ronnie. Ronnie pulled her face down into her jacket, keeping it bowed. She hoped no one she knew would see her emerging from a limousine, see the chauffeur opening the door for an exquisitely dressed woman in a sable coat and white kid gloves.
“You’ll have to walk up three flights,” Ronnie warned, still hoping to dissuade her.
“I’m not an invalid yet,” Mary said, but she tottered on her high heels and was breathless by the second landing.
Linda answered the door, cried “Hi!” and hugged Ronnie, looked amazed at the woman Ronnie introduced as Mary Scott. “She drove me out here,” she said without further explanation. Mary studied the large bright room furnished with odd pieces in varied stages of disintegration—a couch with wooden arms, the stuffing poking out of one of its cushions, a shaky table, an old standing lamp with a fringed shade, a couple of nondescript armchairs, a broad table holding books and papers with the remains of a meal pushed to one side, and an unmade bed.
“So, sit down!” Linda cried. “Want a Coke or something?”
“Thanks. We can’t stay. They’re driving me back to Lincoln.”
“Oh.” The girl seemed really disappointed, as if she actually liked Ronnie. Mary peered down the hall leading off the front room.
“Well, I’ve got your stuff all together here,” Linda said, pointing to some plastic bags lined up against the wall.
“I really appreciate your keeping my stuff for me, Lin. How’s the new roomie working out?”
“Pretty good,” Linda said, nodding. “She pays her share on time and doesn’t steal food. Can’t ask much more,” she laughed.
“I wonder …,” Mary began. Both stopped and looked at her. “May I use your toilet?”
“Sure.” Linda led her through the room to the hall and pointed at a door.
Ronnie stood in shock. Mary using the toilet here? Mary the finicky, of the white rooms, the white food, the fastidious aversion to a whole host of contaminants? But her face revealed nothing as she chatted with Linda waiting for Mary to return.
Mary explored. She peered with fascination into a small dark kitchen with sink and stove from another age, as she entered the long narrow dark bathroom cluttered with the legion of toilet necessities of two young late-twentieth-century women. She of course would not sit upon that toilet or wash her hands in that sink; with her gloves on, she used her handkerchief to flush the unused toilet and run the tap. She crept out quietly trying to get a glimpse of the other room, its door partly closed. She pushed it lightly, to catch sight of a dim room furnished with a bed, a table that doubled as a desk, an old plush sofa, an armchair, and an assortment of old-fashioned but not antique lamps. Smaller and darker than the main room, it seemed to face an air shaft or alley.
“Thank you!” she announced, returning, and offered to help Ronnie carry some of her bags. Both women looked at her.
“It’s okay, I’ll make two trips,” Ronnie said.
“It’s okay, I’ll help her,” Linda said.
But Mary insisted, and was handed a light bag of clothes. Ronnie and Linda each grabbed four bags of clothes and books.
“I sort of hate to see your things go, Ron,” Linda said as they descended the stairs. “It’s like you’re really leaving, you know, for good. You know how it is around here, people disappear. I’m afraid I’ll never see you again. Promise you’ll stay in touch?”
“Promise. I’ll be coming in to use the library. I’ll call you, we can have coffee or lunch or something.”
“Great. Don’t forget now.” Linda kissed her good-bye, held her in an embrace while Aldo leapt out of the car, snatched the bag Mary was carrying and stowed it in the trunk, and helped Mary into the car. He stowed the rest of the bags as well, slammed the trunk lid, and got back into the car. Through her good-byes to Linda, Ronnie could sense his outrage that Mary had been pressed into service, and she got into the car with a sarcastic smile. Only then did Linda take in the car, the uniformed chauffeur, and her eyes popped. Ronnie waved good-bye, happy not to have to make any explanations.
“I’d of been glad to come up and help, Ronnie,” Aldo growled. “You didn’t have to ask Miss Upton.”
“Don’t be upset, Aldo,” Mary purred. “I insisted.” And she patted Ronnie’s hand. With her gloves on.
Alex, having a lonely tea in the sun room, glanced up at an exhilarated-looking Ronnie, loaded down with clothes and books and brown bags marked THE COOP, as she vanished into her room without offering an explanation. Good to get out of the house, Alex decided. It’s funny: home is so important to us, we sacrifice everything to buy a house or rent an apartment, to furnish it, fix it up just the way we want. Then we feel oppressed if we can’t get out of it.
Me too.
Mary too seemed more cheerful than usual, after a large lunch at the Ritz with an old friend, and some strange trip into the wilderness (isn’t that what she said?). Some joke or other that I didn’t get, that’s not unusual. Maybe she meant the polls: no, she couldn’t vote, she said. New York. David said last night that he was voting, so I shouldn’t feel too guilty about failing in my duty as a citizen this year. But the truth is, I don’t really want to vote this year. I’m not so sure David’s right about Reagan, I don’t like the way things are going, so many more women at the shelter. … Still, I wouldn’t want to cancel out his vote.
Maybe I should have gone with them today, but what would I do? Mary didn’t want me with her at the Ritz, and Ronnie was too busy to worry about me. I could have just walked around, I guess. I’ve never been to Boston.
Oh, why didn’t I go?
Nobody asked me.
By the time Elizabeth returned late Thursday afternoon, the sisters had been in residence in the house for a week, and had settled into habits as fixed as if they had lived there—together—all their lives. Everyone knew for instance that Ronnie would never be found in the ho
use proper except at meals, but would be outdoors or in her bedroom. Everyone knew that Alex was given to long periods of solitude, walks into town, bicycle rides through the countryside and—Mary insisted (having one day when Aldo drove her through town seen Alex emerge from St. Joseph’s)—visits to the Catholic church. Ronnie and Elizabeth received this shocking information with shrugs.
Elizabeth spent hours in the library either at her computer or lying on the couch reading some awful huge tome, a pencil stuck behind her ear, half-glasses perched on her nose, a pad at her hand. Why she had brought clothes back with her, Mary couldn’t conceive, since she seemed to have been influenced by Ronnie and now wore nothing but old corduroy pants and saggy cashmere sweaters with sneakers. Running shoes, Marty called them. Elizabeth’s slimness, it was true, invested these clothes with some kind of seedy elegance, but she was also given to early morning walks in the woods, on rainy days wearing an old poncho she had found in the mudroom. She rose at six and went to bed at eleven-thirty every day. Rigid as a post, Mary said.
Mary was the least fixed in her habits, the most restless. She read, lying in one chair or another, in whichever room was lighter and brighter—usually the sun room in the morning, the sitting room afternoons. Sometimes she scribbled in a notebook; Elizabeth laughed that Mary was writing love letters to herself. And one day she opened the great old Bosendorfer, which hadn’t been touched in years, played a scale lightly, exclaimed in horror, and demanded Elizabeth call a tuner. It was in such bad shape that the tuner was not able to bring it to concert pitch and Mary complained.
“Oh the princess and the pea!” Elizabeth said irritably. “You’d think you had perfect pitch.”
“I do,” said Mary.
Still, she sat down every afternoon and stumbled through scales and exercises, causing doors to slam throughout the house.
But she daily complained of boredom and several times over the following days had Aldo drive her into Boston. She had searched her address book for the names of old school chums or friends who lived in the area and met them for lunch, a visit to an art gallery or the Gardner Museum or the Museum of Fine Arts, or a matinee, while Aldo contentedly waited for her in the car, reading his newspaper, knowing she was doing the proper thing for a lady and was therefore safe.
Without discussion, the sisters also adopted a division of labor. Elizabeth took care of business—dealt with the groundsmen and Aldo, called repair people when something broke, and paid the bills. Mary dealt with Mrs. Browning, supervising the menu and the marketing, and on occasion, instead of merely having her telephone, accompanied the housekeeper in the car (driven by Aldo) to Donelan’s market or to Concord to make sure the items chosen were of the proper quality. But so much fish, chicken, turnip, potato, celeriac, and parsnip grew boring, and so much caviar (the only nonwhite food Mary favored) expensive, and Elizabeth assigned Alex to go along and supervise, with a side note to keep Mary within their budget. After protesting that after all, she allowed green food too, Mary only shrugged.
Alex spent most of her days outdoors, but after Teresa left at four, it was Alex who helped Mrs. Browning chop vegetables and clean salad greens, set the table. She helped clear the table after dinner and prepare the night’s leftovers for soup for the next day’s lunch. One Wednesday—Mrs. Browning’s day off—she baked a pie.
Only Ronnie did nothing or so Elizabeth thought until one day she looked out the study window and saw Ronnie outdoors with Aldo putting up snow fencing. She mentioned this to Mary, who said she’d noticed Ronnie raking leaves earlier in the month. It appeared she worked outdoors every day, had helped rake up the rotting fallen apples, cover the sensitive plants for winter, and turn the mulch pile. This knowledge filled Elizabeth with a deep contentment. It was, she thought, as if they were living in a little convent, each contributing in her own way, enjoying the days passing in near silence, solitude, apart from the world. Their work gave them a sense of peaceable order, harmony that offset their angry comings-together.
And every day at eleven, the four of them were ready when Aldo pulled up to the front door to take them to the hospital. Every day they stood together at Stephen’s bedside and gazed down at him, saying only “Hello, Father, how are you today?” Ronnie never said anything at all, and none of them ever touched him. Dr. Stamp always turned up to chat with them. After twenty minutes, they would leave.
Stephen had been in a coma for a week when the doctor met them without his usual smile, his sober look seeming to bear import. “After you visit your father, I’d like to speak to you,” he said, and when they came out, he led them to the lounge. He explained that they had done several CT scans since Stephen’s stroke to check on the dissolution of the hematoma and that there was some infarction of the brain.
Elizabeth lighted a cigarette. Mary batted her eyelids and tilted her head up to Dr. Stamp. “Could you explain that?” she asked like a sweet ignorant child.
“The brain tissue is damaged—has been destroyed. So that even if he does regain consciousness, the outlook is not … hopeful.”
“You mean Father will be an idiot!” Mary cried.
The doctor smiled benignly at her. “Not exactly … but he may not be able to speak or move. I just wanted to warn you that the outlook is somewhat pessimistic. The longer he remains in coma, the less hope … I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” Mary said.
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said, rising.
The others echoed her and left, no expression on their faces. Strange women, thought Dr. Stamp. Not what they seem, somehow. And why did they always bring that colored girl?
That day at lunch Mary announced she felt she had to repay her friends’ hospitality and wanted to invite them to Lincoln to tea. Alex was delighted, Elizabeth groaned, and Ronnie looked appalled until Mary added that Ronnie would be excused—which somehow did not make Ronnie any happier.
But, Mary added without taking a breath, before they came, the house had to be made presentable. She opened a beautiful leather binder, displaying a pad covered with lists, and whirled into action. First, she demanded Elizabeth call an upholsterer to recover the window seat cushion within ten days (which no one could do of course, so Mary made a trip to Boston to buy fabric and Teresa made the cover). She herself called a dry cleaner to clean and rehang the drapes in the downstairs rooms. This could be done in a week for a premium price. She told the servants to wash all the lace curtains in the house, upstairs and down, by hand (they were handmade after all, she argued) and stretch them in the old way. Mrs. Browning and Teresa were dismayed: there were only two stretchers and forty panels of lace. It would take much longer than a week, they argued, trembling. Mary insisted. She pressed Aldo into service to help the women wash all the windows in the house, polish all the wood floors, clean the crystal chandeliers, shine all the silver. But to do all this in a week was almost impossible: Teresa began to talk about quitting and by Tuesday, Mrs. Browning with heavy sighs gave them canned soup and sandwiches for lunch.
“This is ridiculous, Mary,” Elizabeth yelled. “You can’t drive these people this way! All this for a bunch of silly women who won’t even go upstairs?”
“It needs to be done!” Mary yelled back. “It hasn’t been done for years!” Glaring at Ronnie, whose mother’s fault this presumably was. “And they’re not silly! How dare you call them silly! Francine is married to the richest importer in Boston, they have one of the finest pop art collections in the country! All the museums woo them! Christina is …”
“DON’T tell me who these broads are married to,” Elizabeth cried, putting her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to know!”
Mary stared at her uncomprehendingly.
Ronnie leaned back with a malicious smile. “She seems to think that being married to a rich man is not a guarantee of nonsilliness,” she explained to Mary.
“Well then, I don’t know what is!” Mary exclaimed in outrage. “To marry and stay married to a rich man takes more skill
and cleverness than any other job I know!”
Ronnie burst out laughing; Alex smiled uncertainly; even Elizabeth grinned sidelong. When Mary let a small smile escape, all the sisters laughed out loud. It was edged with hysteria, but it was the first laugh they had ever shared.
“Mary,” Elizabeth said more kindly, “it’s just too much for the staff. It’s inhuman, what you’re asking.”
“Well, then hire some extra people!”
“I’d be glad to help if …,” Alex began tentatively, “if that’s all right with you. You seem to—people who live in houses like this seem to have strict rules about what you can and can’t do, but I’d be glad to help. To have something to do.”
“In fact, wasn’t that you up on the step stool the other day wiping a globe of the chandelier?” Ronnie smilingly betrayed her.
She flushed. “Well, Teresa and Brownie were struggling so with the curtains. …”
“Brownie?!!!” Mary cried.
“That’s her nickname,” she said innocently.
“One doesn’t call servants by nicknames, Alex,” Mary scolded, then considered, weighing her options. “Well. I guess it’s all right if you help,” she decided. “Why not. We’re living in a different age, aren’t we. I don’t know how to do these chores but I’ll try to help too.” She looked expectantly at Elizabeth.
“Don’t look at me. It’s your party.”
“And I’m not even invited,” Ronnie threw in, escaping from the lunch table.
“Well but Elizabeth, you have to get someone to help poor Browning. We can’t be having canned soup and sandwiches for lunch!” Mary concluded.
Fifteen days after his stroke, two weeks after their arrival in Lincoln, on the morning of the Friday before the tea party, Alex cried out that Father’s left eyelid was fluttering. They froze instantly, studying him. Nothing. Saturday, she said his left hand moved. Again, they froze and concentrated on the hand. Nothing. Mary rolled her eyes at Elizabeth.
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