Sisters (14 page)

*

Sophie was seated next to
the governor. He wore a mustache, parted his hair just slightly
off-center, and spoke with great energy. Francis Warren was not a
well-schooled man, Sophie knew, but he had a cleverness and
perseverance which had enabled him to attain eminence in Wyoming. And
a fortune, too. He had vast holdings in land, sheep, and cattle.

He fixed his clear eyes on
her. "I Understand you mean to write about Wyoming, Mrs.
Dymond."

How fast news travels,
Sophie thought, murmuring an affirmative.

"I suppose you'll want
to write about our women," Warren said. He ignored her look of
surprise. "I don't recall that Dymond's has ever said much about
Wyoming's being the first place in the world to give women the vote,
though that phenomenon has attracted interest from everywhere. I get
letters daily asking me to report on our experience with female
suffrage. Just today I had one from Germany."

Sophie was intrigued by
Warren's strategy, or what she suspected to be his strategy. No
ham-handed threats to keep her from writing about the cattle
industry. No, he was trying to distract her with another story, one
he thought would interest her more. "Actually, Governor,"
she said, "that's not what I intended at all. While I certainly
agree that women should be able to vote, I've never found my readers
much interested in the suffrage movement. And personally speaking,
well, I suppose I'm glad someone is doing it, but I'm not sure this
marching in the streets and sloganeering on street corners is
effective. It seems to generate as much opposition as support."

"But that's exactly
the point, Mrs. Dymond. That could be the point of your story.
Wyoming's women got the vote without ever organizing a movement. In
fact, I suspect that if they had made speeches and marched, it would
have backfired. We don't like that kind of thing out here. I'd say
your inclinations reflect how much you are a daughter of the West."
He smiled a thoroughly charming smile, and Sophie found herself
amazed by his cleverness, particularly when the thought occurred to
her that the evening might have been orchestrated. Were they trying a
two-pronged attack, with Rodman bullying her and the governor
charming her?

"You do have the
Women's Christian Temperance Union," Sophie said. "They
often work with suffragists."

Warren rolled his eyes to
the ceiling. "Yes, we do that the WCTU, but it a fairly new
thing, and lucky for the women it is. If the WCTU had been active
when the legislature was considering the vote for women, we might
still not have it here in Wyoming."

The governor's wife, a
full-bosomed woman with sympathetic eyes, was sitting on the other
side of him. Sophie saw her tug at his sleeve, and she knew why Mrs.
Warren was trying to interrupt: she remembered about Helen and the
WCTU. But Warren ignored his wife. "The thing is so... so
outlandish! The idea of the West being dry!" She swung his arm
around in a gesture meant to be exclamatory, but it took in the wine
and champagne glasses at each place, the black-suited waiters still
busy serving drinks. "Why would they even try for such a thing?"
Warren asked, consternation in his voice.

Sophie was glad that the
governor expected only a response and not an answer, because she
didn't know the answer yet. And even if she did understand it all,
would she be able to explain it to the impatient, clear-eyed man? "It
is a puzzle, isn't it?" she said.

*

Sophie and James left
before the dancing. She stood in the portico while he went to have
the carriage brought around, and as she was waiting, George Huber
approached.

"Mrs. Dymond, I wonder
if we haven't misunderstood one another," he said.

"I think I understand
you and Mr. Rodman quite well."

"You mustn't mind
Rodman. He has his strengths, but tact isn't one. We simply ask to be
treated fairly, that's all."

"I never for a moment
considered doing otherwise."

"I was naturally
concerned when you mentioned Mrs. Wilson. She does have quite an
unsavory reputation. Talking to people like that--"

"I'll talk to anyone,
Mr. Huber, whether he or she has a name to protect or not." He
had been leaning close to her, but he drew back as she continued,
"When I say I'll be objective, Mr. Huber, I mean exactly that.
I'll give the big cattle owners exactly the consideration they
deserve. No less than that. And no more."

She saw James and turned
around, but not before she noticed angry scarlet spots blossoming on
Huber's neck and cheek.

James stopped the carriage
in front of the Stevenson house. "Please go on around to the
carriage house," Sophie said. "I'll walk in with you from
there. You needn't take me up the front walk."

When he had pulled into the
carriage house, they both remained unmoving for a moment. In the
darkness she became acutely aware of his nearness, and even before
she looked at him, she knew he was watching her. She glanced up,
their eyes met, and he gave a short exhalation, more than a sigh, for
she could hear his voice in it. "Sophie," he said hoarsely,
"Sophie..." He reached for her and she moved toward him,
unthinking for the minute, knowing only that she wanted to me in his
arms. As he kissed her, she was aware of his hands, his arms, the
strength of his embrace, but at the same time her mind began to dart
wildly, skewing from one image to another. She saw Wilson lying in
the dusty street, Esther rocking on the ledge, Baby whispering
conspiratorily. She saw herself leaning over the red and yellow roses
at the Cheyenne Club, apprehending the ghost of Helen in their heavy
fragrance.

She broke away. "No,
James, no." She tried to explain. "Helen is so much in my
mind."

"She's dead, Sophie."

"It's a kind of guilt,
I suppose, a feeling I'm trying to supplant her, trying to replace my
own sister."

"I don't think of you
as Helen's sister."

"But I do, you see,
and that's the difficulty. I shouldn't mind following someone else in
your life, but Helen..." She searched his face for
understanding, but he responded with only a curt nod. She knew she'd
said enough, too much perhaps. Words wouldn't make up for pulling
away from his embrace; all words did was form loose feelings into
hard certainties. It had been an image of Helen that intervened, but
was guilt the feeling that thought of her sister inspired? As James
escorted her into the house and bid her a cool good night, she was
unsure if that was the right name for the vague anxiety she felt.

*

When she got to her room,
her thoughts were still on James, so it was several minutes before
she missed Tom. Usually he was asleep on her pillow when she
returned, but tonight he was nowhere to be seen, and she became
concerned. What if he had wandered away, lost himself out on the
prairie? He was a spirited animal who would grown aggressively at
much larger dogs, but he was completely unsuitable for the wild, a
creature whose breeding committed him totally to civilization. He
wouldn't last a night on the prairie.

She put on her robe,
decided to look for him first in the house. She hurried up the dark
back stairway to the third floor. Sally liked to play with Tom, and
perhaps she had taken the dog. Standing in the doorway of Sally's
room, she could see the child asleep on her back, her arms flung out
to the sides, the covers thrown off. But Sophie did not see Tom
anywhere. Then she noticed a bundle of blankets at the foot of the
stairs going to the tank room. Two eyes, pale blue, luminescent in
the half-light, stared at her from the bundle. "Esther?"
And then two more eyes peered out. They were Tom's.

Sophie tiptoed across the
room, stepping over toys.

"She won't waken,"
Esther said, nodding in Sally's direction. "Almost nothing will
waken her. That's why I come in here. When I can't sleep, if I come
in here and watch her, it makes me feel restful."

Sophie followed Esther's
eyes to the bed, where Sally say in an abandon of sleep, her
breathing quiet and deep. Even the pulse at the side of her neck
fluttered slowly. "Do you often have trouble sleeping?"
Sophie asked Esther.

"Sometimes I have
nightmares. You don't mind that I brought Tom up here, do you?"

"No, of course I
don't." Sophie moved the curled-up dog slightly so she could sit
down next to Esther. "I have nightmares sometimes too," she
said to the girl. "Different ones, but usually I'll be
frantically searching for something, running and looking, and then
I'll find it, but it turns all wrong and awful. A few days ago I
dreamed I found a place I was looking for, but there was an animal in
it, a horrible animal Joe and Deer Woman used to tell me about. It
was so frightening, it woke me up."

"I dream about my
mother," Esther said.

The simple statement jarred
Sophie, since Helen had been in her dream too. Could Esther have
known that? Sensed it somehow? No, of course not, Sophie thought,
looking down at the girl huddled with Tom in the blankets. This was
no sibyl, only a child, a tired, forlorn child.

"I think I dream about
my mother because I want to change the way things were with us,"
Esther said. "Like when she would be right and I would know it,
but I still didn't do what she said. Or when I'd be so angry with her
and she'd put her arms around me and I wouldn't hug her back. Or when
I would say things, hateful things." She paused a moment, then
looked up at Sophie. "Do you know what I mean?"

Sophie nodded. She knew it
would be useless to argue, to tell the girl she shouldn't feel as she
did.

"But when a person's
dead," the girl went on, "you can't change things. It's
over, ended. Even if it's wrong."

"Esther, everyone's
done things to cause feelings like that. It's not just you."

"Have you ever felt
this way? Like you want to change things, but you can't? It's like a
story that's all written, all finished, and you can't change the way
it ends."

The girl's blue eyes were
intense in their entreaty, and Sophie wanted to reassure her. "Yes,
I have. The first time I was married--"

"The first time?"

Sophie nodded. "Before
I was married to Philip Dymond, I was married to a man named Albert
Burroughs."

"I didn't know you
were married before. Is it a secret?"

"Not really. I don't
talk about it much, though."

"Don't you like to
remember it? Wasn't he nice to you?"

"He was a very nice
man, a good, kind person, and he came into my life when I very much
needed a friend." She leaned her head back against the wall.
"I'd been an actress, working for a woman named Adah, and she
was a very temperamental sort. Well, one day we were playing in
Baltimore--do you know where that is? Well, one day when we were
playing there, Adah got angry with me, jealous I think, because a man
she liked thought I was pretty. And so she wouldn't let me be an
actress any more. She had me running errands for her, cleaning up
after her, things like that, and I wasn't happy.

"That's when I met
Albert. He came backstage. He said he'd been coming to play every day
especially to see me, and when I wasn't in the play any more, he
worried about me. That's the sort of person he was, kind and
concerned.

"And he was
intelligent, an anthropologist--you know what that is?--but he knew
about everything. Not just about anthropology, but about poetry and
music and languages, and how to write stories. All the years we were
married, he was giving me things, too, trying to please me. He was my
teacher and my friend. My very good friend.

"And then one day he
began to get sick, not in his body, but in his mind somewhere. He
stopped talking to people, and then he stopped listening to them. He
wouldn't even notice them or pay attention to himself, to things like
eating and keeping clean. It was as though he decided not to live in
this world any more, but just to be in a tiny spot inside himself
somewhere."

"What happened to him?
What did you do?"

"When I couldn't take
care of him any more, I had to take him to a place where they could.
It was very hard to do. The doctors told me he wouldn't get any
better, not ever. I knew he'd be there the rest of his life, and it
was the way you described it; I wanted so much to be kind and loving
to him, to make up for everything I hadn't done before, to thank him
for everything he had done for me."

"You wanted to change
it all."

All? Sophie thought. All?
Yes, she'd wanted Albert sane and whole again. Of course she had. But
all? If she could have turned back the clock, would she have changed
her life to protect him? Sacrifice her happiness for his? However
much she might wish it otherwise, she knew the answer was no, and she
felt tired and disgusted with herself. This wasn't what she should
have told Esther.

"You can't change
what's already happened, can you?" the girl said.

"No."

"Oh, but I do want to.
I want to so much." She put her head down on Sophie's knee and
began to cry quietly. "One time I told her I wished she'd put
Great-Grandma's things away where people would never see them. At
school they were teasing me, and I was ashamed to be part Indian and
I wanted mother to hide that buffalo robe so nobody would ever see
it. I know I hurt her. I could see it in her eyes." The girl was
quiet as Sophie brushed a damp curl off her face; then she spoke
again. "If I could just change the day she died. If I could just
come straight in the house instead of playing on the porch, then I
could keep her from dying. And I could kiss her now and tell her I
love her." She took a deep, sharp breath. "Sometimes I
can't even think what she looked like. You know the picture on the
mantelshelf? I thought it'd help me remember if I drew over all the
lines."