Sisters (4 page)

She put the picture back on
the mantel and stood for a moment looking at it. When finally she
averted her gaze, her eyes fell on the newspaper the reporter had
given her at the depot. She had put it on a table, and it lay there
in the elegant room incongruously screaming out headlines of violence
and death: Belfast rioters were being buried, murderers arrested.
Lovers were killing themselves in suicide pacts, workers jumping to
their deaths from burning factories.

“Awful, isn’t
it?”

Startled, Sophie looked up
to see a girl of about eleven standing in the doorway. She knew it
was Esther. The girl was tall and very thin, and she had Helen’s
eyes. “Yes, it is, rather,” Sophie answered after a
moment. “Your newspaper does love a violent story.”

“Last year around
Christmas they had one about a mother who’d killed her
children.” The girl came on into the room walking quietly,
tensely, as though there was someone she was afraid she would waken.
“The mother buried them, but not deep enough, and so their
bodies were eaten by hogs.”

Sophie was stunned into
silence.

“Dymond’s
doesn’t go in for that sort of thing so much,” said the
girl.

“Not so much, no.”

They were both quiet, and
then the girl tilted her head. “Have you seen our house? Would
you like me to show you around?”

“Of course. Yes. That
would be very nice.”

“This is the drawing
room,” the girl said in her oddly tense and formal way. “The
fresco is my favorite thing in here. Judge Carey brought an Italian
artist out here to do his ceilings, and then everyone on Ferguson
Street hired him.”

Sophie followed her through
each of the first-floor rooms then up the back stairway to the third
floor, where the children slept. Esther’s room was extremely
neat, a complete contrast to Sally’s next door, where three
disheveled and startled-looking dolls were jammed in the bed, the
covers bunched up around them. A cube game lay scattered on the floor
along with two tops and a sizable collection of alphabet blocks. In
the corner, a yellow kite was hanging from ladderlike stairs going up
to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

Esther saw Sophie looking
at the steps and explained they led to the tank room.

“Tank room?”

“A big tank is up
there. It holds water for the house. You want to see it?”

“I don’t
think…”

“And there are big
windows, too. You can see everything from them.” Esther had
already untangled the kite and started up the rungs, so Sophie
followed. The girl pushed open the door at the top, scrambled on up,
then turned to help Sophie. The area they entered was really a large
attic, the size of an entire floor below, and while a huge copper
water tank dominated, there was an assortment of other things:
trunks, boxes, old furniture against the walls. Esther was struggling
to open the windows, and finally, with much clanking of the
counterweights, she got them up.

Almost all of Cheyenne was
visible. Sophie could see all the way to the depot, even make out red
stone piled near it, material for a new depot, Esther said. Leaning
out one of the windows, Sophie looked down at the fine homes which
lined Ferguson Street. Some were brick and stone; others solid brick;
others large, square, and wooden. How different Cheyenne was now from
nine years ago when she and Philip had stopped here on their way to
San Francisco.

So engrossed was she in her
thoughts, she failed to notice when Esther left her side. When she
did look around, Sophie saw the girl had not been content merely to
learn from the other window, but had climbed over the low sill and
was sitting on a narrow ledge outside. Just seeing her out there,
three floors above the ground, was a shock, and then Sophie realized
the girl was playing a game of some kind, a dangerous game. Grasping
the edge of the ledge, she would rock forward until she was just at
the point of equilibrium. She would hang there a long moment, then
rock back, then forward. My Lord, thought Sophie. She could kill
herself! If she should lean just an inch farther forward, her grasp
on the ledge wouldn’t keep her from plummeting to the ground.

“Esther?” She
spoke softly, not wanting to startle her, but at the sound of her
name, Esther turned abruptly, and Sophie gasped with fear she would
fall.

She teetered slightly, but
kept her balance, and she looked at Sophie with a dispassion which
rejected any possibility that she might have done otherwise. “Are
you ready to go back downstairs, then?” Her voice was
matter-of-fact, but as she climbed over the sill, she moved stiffly,
tensely.

Sophie followed her down
the ladder and down the stairway to the second floor, her heart
pounding from the start the girl had given her. She felt she should
speak to her, warn her how dangerous it was to rock on the ledge, but
something in Esther’s ramrod-straight back warned her off. Now
was the time for Sophie to keep to her own affairs, the girl’s
bearing seemed to say.

They entered a large
roomlike hall area on the second floor, and Esther pointed out the
guest suite. Across the hall was another set of rooms she identified
as her father’s. In between, Sophie glimpsed a room which
seemed in stark contrast to the rest of the house. She saw it only
fleetingly, but she had an impression of bare floors and white
everywhere. “And whose is that, Esther?”

Instead of answering, the
girl stared at her. Then she turned sharply and started down the wide
main staircase, the sound of her high laced shoes accompanying her
descent. There was no carpeting on these stairs. They were polished
oak and gleamed in the light coming through the tall windows
overlooking the stairwell.

After a moment, Sophie
followed, and watching the girl move, she knew that the tense spring
inside the child had just become more tightly coiled. But why? Had
she, Sophie, transgressed somehow in asking about the bedroom? Surely
she had displayed only polite curiosity.

Esther was waiting in the
large landing area, standing by a chair which had a buffalo robe
folded over the back of it. Sophie knew the robe. It had been Deer
Woman’s, and Sophie remembered how her grandmother had
treasured it. She walked over and touched the soft leather, ran her
fingers over the familiar quillwork. It was a striped pattern, the
reds, blues, and yellows soft and shiny with age.

“Mother planned this
area for herself,” Esther said. “She liked it here
because of the light. She motioned toward a mahogany secretary with
its writing surface down. “She wrote the letters here looking
for her mother.” She tilted her head and looked at Sophie as if
to ask if she knew about Helen’s letters, but before Sophie
could respond, Esther whirled around and pointed to a miniature
building against one wall. “See this dollhouse?” she
demanded, speaking rapidly now. “Paul Bellavance had it built
for me. I used to play with it here while mother worked at her desk.
And see this fan?” She pointed to a glass-enclosed object on
the wall, her words coming faster and faster. “This fan is from
Japan. And see this handkerchief in a frame? That’s Napoleon
worked in lace in the corner.”

Sophie watched her, alarmed
at her behavior. She was overexcited, almost manic. She needed
calming; Sophie knew that. But how to do it? And meanwhile, the words
tumbled on and on.

“And see this
carving? It’s ivory.”

Should she put her arms
around her? Try to calm her by touching her?

“And see this music
box? It plays ‘The Last Rose of the Summer.’”

Sophie reached out, but the
girl jerked backward. She stared at Sophie, silent for a moment, and
then the words started again. Only now they were slow and deliberate.

“And… see …
those … stairs?” With a long, thin finger, she pointed
down.

Sophie nodded, sure of what
was coming.

“Those are the stairs
my mother fell down. The ones she fell down and broke her neck.”
With the words came a rush of tears. They flooded the girl’s
face, which at first remained curiously impassive, then crumpled as
though someone had punctured a balloon inside her. She began to moan,
and the sound went on and on until Sophie had to do something,
anything. She reached out once more, and at her touch, Esther gave a
great heaving gasp. The girl looked around wild-eyed as though she
had forgot where she was; then her gaze came to rest on Sophie.

There was a moment of
hesitation when she seemed about to speak. But instead she twisted
away from Sophie’s hand and ran down the stairs, her shoes
clattering on the hard, polished oak.

By the time Sophie thought
about running after her, Esther was out of sight, and Sophie had no
idea where she had gone. Shaken, she walked back up the stairs to the
guest suite. Connie was there, taking dresses from a domed trunk and
hanging them in her wardrobe. Wanting to be alone, Sophie sent her to
find Tom.

When Connie had gone,
Sophie shut the door and leaned against it, her thoughts full of the
girl on the stairway. A picture of her, her finger pointing down the
steps, was etched on Sophie's mind. What was wrong with the child?
Surely this couldn't be a normal form of grief? If Helen had died
recently... But it had been almost a year.

By the time Connie came
back upstairs with Tom, Sophie was thinking more objectively, but she
still had trouble paying attention to what the maid was saying.

"It's for dinner,
ma'am. After you visit your grandfather. Mrs. Bellavance telephoned
and wants you to stay for dinner. She said to tell you Mr. Stevenson
would be there too."

"Yes, yes, that would
be fine."

"Do you want me to
call and accept for you?

At Sophie's nod, the girl
was off. When she came back in a few moments, she opened the
wardrobe. "How'd this one be, ma'am?" She pulled out a
cream-and-lavender dress. "It's sooo lovely."

"Fine, Connie. It will
be fine." With Connie's help, she changed, but she was scarcely
aware of it. Her thoughts were still on Esther.

"Ma'am?"

Connie was telling her she
could look in the mirror. Sophie glanced at her reflection, only
half-seeing it. "It looks nice, Connie."

"Shall I tell the
housekeeper you'd like a carriage?"

Sophie put on a glove,
forcing the material between the fingers down with a chopping motion
of her other hand. "I think I'll walk."

"Walk? But, ma'am,
your shoes. And by yourself?"

In the front hallway, Mrs.
Syms was also taken aback. "Mrs. Dymond, I can have a carriage
for you in a minute or two."

"I prefer to walk.
It's only a few blocks." When Mrs. Syms continued to bustle and
protest, Sophie repeated herself firmly. "Really, Mrs. Syms,
walking is what I prefer."

As she crossed the porch,
she saw that the prairie gophers were all packed up and moved away. A
line from Plutarch ran through her mind: "Boys throw stones at
frogs in sport, but the frogs die in earnest." Perhaps children
could kill so lightheartedly because they had no idea they would ever
die themselves. Perhaps it was unnatural for them to feel their
mortality, and if something happened to force it on them... well,
then they became morbid, like Esther. She thought of the girl rocking
back and forth on the ledge. Had she been trying to imagine what
death was like in order to rid it of its fearsome mystery? and on the
stairway landing when she had described Helen's dying, had she been
speaking the name of death in order to exorcise its terror? But
instead of driving them out, she seemed to have renewed their hold
upon her.

"Aunt Sophie?"

So intently was she
thinking of the girl, she at first thought she'd imagined her voice,
but when she turned, she saw it really was Esther. She was coming
through the dust pumping furiously on a bicycle. Because of the bar
running from beneath the seat to the handlebar post, she had her
skirts tucked up, but her hair streamed out behind. Running madly
after her was Sally, her loud voice echoing in the evening air,
"C'mon Esther! Wait up! Lemme have a chance, Esther!"

They passed Sophie, and at
the end of the block Esther braked sharply and jumped off the
bicycle. She waited for Sally, then helped the younger girl get on.
She was gentle with her, steadying the bicycle to keep her from
falling over, but there was an awkward quality to her movements, as
though each was planned, each the result of a very conscious
decision.

"Is your bicycle new?"
Sophie asked as she drew near. She thought it must be, because it was
the very latest kind, with the wheels the same size.

"Brand new. We had an
ordinary before, but with the big front wheel, it was impossible in
skirts, and Sally couldn't even begin to get on it."

Sophie was astounded at how
normal the girl's response seemed. If it hadn't been for their
earlier encounter, would be have remarked Esther's selfconscious
stiffness at all? "Who rode it then?" she asked.

"Nobody. But that
wasn't my father's fault."

Sophie hadn't been thinking
of James, so the girl's answer surprised her.

"What happened was, he
was at the Cheyenne Club one night, and he and some other men decided
to send for ordinaries. For a bicycle club. They were going to start
a bicycle club, except then my father never had the time. So Sally
and I tried to out, and when he saw it wouldn't work for us, he sent
for this one." She looked at Sophie, a defensive pride shining
in her eyes. "He got us the first one in town, and there's not
another like it yet!" With that, she reclaimed the bicycle from
Sally and got on it, rolling and tucking her skirt. "He's still
trying to get us a lady's model, one without this stupid bar."
Then she was hurtling up the street, Sally pounding furiously along
in her dusty wake: "Ah, c'mon, Esther, just one more turn. Just
gimme one more chance."