A Reckoning (7 page)

The phone interrupted these ruminations. Laura was sure it would be Aunt Minna and for a second could not identify this rather strained and muffled voice. Then she got it. “Oh, it’s you, Harriet.”

Harriet Moors sounded as though she had been crying. She apologized for calling Laura at home, “but could I come and see you? I …”

“I’m still under the weather, still in bed as a matter of fact. Is it that important?”

The silence at the other end of the line was eloquent. “Could you come out late this afternoon?”

Laura had another fit of coughing as she was giving Harriet the directions. It was horrible to have this day already committed—she had planned to go over some papers and throw things away. But she felt suddenly so weak, she didn’t have the strength to dress and was only able to drag herself up because Grindle was barking to be let in. A spoonful of brandy in a second cup of coffee helped, and by the time Mrs. O’Brien arrived, Laura was lying on the sofa downstairs, dressed in slacks and a shirt and sweater.

The idea of Mrs. O’Brien had been repellent, but Laura found the actual person sitting opposite her in a wing chair quite endearing. Mary O’Brien was a tall, gaunt woman with a rather stern face that lit up when she smiled. She was very direct. Laura appreciated that.

“I shall have to have my weekends,” she said. “I have two still at home and I must keep things going for them, although Rose Marie is a good cook now and Jack does a lot of odd jobs round the house.”

“Of course,” Laura said, thinking with relief, I’ll have some solitude, after all. It seemed like a reprieve.

“How long do you expect you’ll need me?”

“I don’t know how long I have to live,” Laura said, looking Mrs. O’Brien straight in the eye. “It might be six months.”

“You’re very ill, Mrs. Spelman?”

“Not yet,” said Laura dryly “But Dr. Goodwin was very insistent that I have some help as soon as possible.”

Mrs. O’Brien nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of you. Of course I’m not a nurse, but I don’t mind carrying trays. Do you have a washing machine?”

And after that Laura showed Mary O’Brien her room and bath and the kitchen and where things were in general.

“It’s a big house for you all alone, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so. My husband died three years ago, you see, and the children are married or away. I’ve lived here so long I never think about it one way or another.” Because Laura liked Mary O’Brien, who appeared to take difficult things for granted, it was all settled with no fuss. In fact she felt quite euphoric when Mrs. O’Brien drove off, and went at once to the telephone to tell Aunt Minna the good news.

Of course the truth would come out when Mary O’Brien was around all day and all night, but at least it had become very clear to Laura that someone impersonal was what she needed, someone who would not be too involved. A strange relationship at best, it would require tact on both sides. But Laura to her own amazement trusted Mary O’Brien. She would, she sensed, be
practical,
and she had not winced or withdrawn when Laura made it quite clear what was involved, though she had not told Mrs. O’Brien what her illness was—that would come later—and she was grateful that Mrs. O’Brien had not asked.

Laura decided not to push herself, partly to be prepared for Harriet Moors, and partly because she wanted to listen to music—two Schubert quartets and a wonderful Octet in F Minor that she had not listened to for years. Everything important from now on would be going on inside her and would have, she realized, very little to do with other people or with anything she might feel she must “do.” Her sense of haste even a few days ago about sorting out papers, about things she should arrange about before she felt too ill, was rapidly sliding away. The only reality for the moment was in these transparent voices of two violins, a cello, a viola. By half-past five, after a long nap, Laura felt honed down to essentials. What would it be like to have to summon herself when Harriet Moors arrived? She was really in no way responsible for this girl, after all. Take it easy, Laura admonished herself, and let her talk. Then the doorbell rang.

“Be an angel and put another log on the fire, will you?” Laura asked when she had helped Harriet off with her sheepskin jacket. “I’ll get us a drink. What would you like? A martini perhaps?”

“A glass of wine if you have one.”

Of course! Laura had forgotten that martinis were out-of-date. Nevertheless she mixed one for herself, feeling rather jaunty as she did so. Her usual drink was scotch.

Looking across from the wing chair to Harriet on the sofa, Laura noted that her visitor’s hand shook as she took a sip of white wine.

“Well, Harriet, what’s on your mind?”

“Just …” Harriet swallowed. “I’ve decided that I can’t publish that novel.”

“You’ve got cold feet? I can understand that.”

“It’s going to make too many people unhappy—my friend is terrified now. She thinks she might lose her job if people knew.”

Laura deliberately looked into the fire, sorting things out in her own mind.

“You hadn’t really faced it, had you? I wonder then why you made the immense effort that must have gone into writing this novel.”

“I know. Why did I? I must be crazy!” There she sat, so young, so charming really, a very young person who had taken on the whole complex responsibility of public revelation without having measured the cost.

“But you believe in your work?”

“I don’t know anymore.” Harriet gave a strange little sigh. “Maybe writing it was just therapy.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“That’s what my friend says. She’s a teacher, and she’s older than I am.” Harriet clasped her hands to her chest and rocked with the pain of it. “If I publish this book it’s the end of us—that’s it: That’s why …”

“That’s tough.”

“I feel awfully confused. That’s why I wanted to see you. It’s very kind of you to let me come.” The round, troubled face broke into a smile. Laura could sense how much better Harriet felt at the moment because she had been able to come out with the matter. All very well, but what was Laura to say now?

“You seemed to understand. I mean, you talked about your son. And you felt my parents had been too harshly drawn. I thought maybe you could help. Is it just cowardice not to go ahead? Maybe if I destroy my book, I’m really destroying myself. I think of all these images, that one can’t close the door against life, and having a first novel accepted is certainly the opening of a door. If one closes that door, isn’t it fatal? But on the other hand if I close the door between Fern and me,” Harriet fixed her eyes solemnly on Laura, “what am I doing to her, and to myself?”

“I’m an editor, not a psychiatrist. You are asking me questions I can’t possibly answer.” Then Laura, seeing the dismay she had caused, added quickly, “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t understand. I think you’re in a horribly painful dilemma. I don’t know what to say about it. I can understand better, though, why you thought of an assumed name. Maybe that is the solution, after all.”

“Now it seems to me cowardly. Sooner or later I’ve got to face myself and not be ashamed. Besides, people find out.” And she murmured half to herself, “Even if I did use another name, Fern would be terrified.”

“It sounds to me as though Fern has some problems of her own. People pay a high price, I think, for leading a life they are not willing to live publicly.”

“But it hasn’t been possible. I mean, you lose your job. You are treated as a pariah. What I can’t stand is the whole sexual bit, the way people look at you. And you know all they are interested in is what you do in bed. It’s
horrible!”

“You are very good about that in your novel. The reader is aware that the relation between the two women is real, not a matter of experimenting or of mere sexual adventure, or whatever. One reason I felt that we would want to publish is that the time has come for works of art that will deal with all this naturally and without sensationalism. If I may say so, the classics in the field—I am thinking of
Nightwood—make
the homosexual unsavory to put it mildly.”

“So you really believe my book has
value.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Oh, dear …” Harriet sighed again. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, then took a swallow of wine.

Laura laughed. “Maybe it would have been more helpful to say the book was not very good, after all!”

“Then I could throw it away?” Harriet frowned. “I guess I couldn’t whatever you said or thought. I don’t think I’m a genius, but I know I have to write the way a fish has to swim.”

“I think you are a real writer. I’ve been in rather a crisis myself lately, but your book has stayed with me. I go back to it in my mind. That’s one test for me of whether a work of art is truly alive. Does it take on a life of its own in the reader’s imagination? The atmosphere—you are very good at creating psychological atmosphere. The choking reality of the parents’ house, you do that very well.”

“Oh, God, my parents!”

At that
cri de coeur,
Laura and Harriet burst into laughter. It was a shared laughter, and it had to do with how ludicrous and horrible life could be, at times beyond coping with.

Then Harriet got up and stood by the fireplace, obviously feeling at ease. “How lucky your son is to have you!”

“And his father,” Laura said. “My husband was amazingly wise in dealing with Ben—of course it helped that Brooks, our eldest, was all a father could wish.”

“Can’t people just be people? You say ‘dealing with’?”—

“Yes—well, it’s going to take a long time to get over our ideas of what ought to be. It’s the same thing with women. I was happily married, but when Charles died I became aware that other people really had thought of me as Charles’s wife. That’s why the job at Houghton Mifflin was such a help. There, at least, I was Laura Spelman, a person in my own right.”

“Was it hard—at first, I mean—hard to be a person all by yourself?”

“I felt cut in two. For months I really had no identity. Getting a meal was next to impossible, I lived on egg-nogs.” What am I doing, talking to this girl like this? Laura thought. Is that what one martini does now?

“Please go on …”

“Well, frankly, I think I’d better call it a day, Harriet.”

“Yes, of course. I know you’ve been ill—I shouldn’t have stayed so long.”

“It’s just, I do get rather weak in the knees.”

Grindle now emerged from the kitchen where Laura feared he had eaten the cat’s dinner, but at least he, eager to be caressed, barking his welcome to Harriet, made her departure easier than it might have been.

“We haven’t settled anything,” Laura said, helping Harriet on with her coat.

“No, but it’s been a great help to talk to you. I’ll have to go home now and think about it.”

“Don’t hesitate to call if you get into a tizzy.”

Laura nodded her head reassuringly.

“Good-by, Harriet, and good luck.”

Laura watched the girl walk slowly down the path. She waved, but Harriet started the engine and drove off without looking back.

“Where’s your cat?” Laura asked Grindle, who barked and wanted to go out. “Very well, out you go—and bring Sasha back with you if you can.”

She went back to her chair and the empty glass. It would not be a bad idea to put another log on the fire, but she did not have quite the energy to do it. She sat for a while looking into the crimson, dying flame. She sat there until the fire died and the chill forced her to do something about dinner. The aftereffect of Harriet’s visit was a huge emptiness that she did not know how to fill.

Chapter VIII

Next morning Laura woke at six out of a bad dream. She was being smothered under a quilt and couldn’t extricate herself. “Oh, Grindle,” she murmured, reaching out to find his soft ears, “oh …” She was afraid if she moved quickly she would have a coughing spell, but she had to sit up to breathe. And Grindle, whom she had waked out of a sound sleep, now of course wanted to go out. Sasha was sitting on the window sill. God knows the animals asked little enough, yet how long would she be able to take care of them? Then she remembered Mary O’Brien. It was a relief to know there would be someone soon. Meanwhile she got up, struggled into a dressing gown, and stumbled downstairs with Grindle trying to get past her.

“There,” she said, “out you go!”

So far, no coughing spell. She got some juice and went back to bed, sitting up now, with three pillows behind her. It was a gray dawn and the air had smelled of snow when she opened the door. She would just lie here for a while, she thought, and do what came most easily these days, drift off down the long, winding rivers of consciousness that always seemed to bring her finally to the house of their childhood summers by the sea. “I must go down once more,” she thought. But alone? The very image of the icy-cold, closed house made her shiver. Why isn’t it spring? This winter had been interminable, with unrelenting cold to sap energy and numb the senses. Would she be given one more spring? It would be good to live to see the leaves once more.

When the phone rang, she hesitated a second. Not answer? No, it might be Aunt Minna.

“Hello.”

“It’s Ann. Are you all right?”

“Why?”

“Your voice sounded so far away. Maybe I woke you.”

“I was awake. Good heavens, it’s after eight!”

“We want you to come over for supper tonight if you can. It’s Laurie’s birthday, you know.”

“I really am in a bad way … I’d clean forgotten. Of course I’ll come. What time?”

“Six? Are you feeling better, Laura? Did the doctor give you an antibiotic? I’ve been meaning to call, but we’ve all had colds. You know what that’s like—everyone home. Chaos!”

“Grindle is barking to get in—I forgot all about him. See you at six.” At least she hadn’t had to answer about her health, and in the happy confusion of a birthday supper for Laurie no one would notice. But what to give Laurie? Laura got out her jewel case and laid it on the bed. There was the diamond star, Charles’s present on their twenty-fifth anniversary, and the lapis lazuli necklace her mother had given her when she was twenty-one. Laura took it out, feeling the smooth stones slip through her fingers. There was an exquisite necklace of crystal balls, strung on a thin silver chain that Ella had given her as a wedding present. There was her grandmother’s engagement ring, a sapphire circled in brilliants—The thought of giving any of these away, even to Laurie, caused her a brief but acute pang. So she left the jewels there on her bed and went downstairs, for Grindle’s barks had become quite cross. She had left him out in the cold far too long.