Sisters (6 page)

But Joe had awakened, and
Sophie wanted to see him. He was making a questioning noise, and
there was fright and confusion in his voice. She tried soothing him,
holding his hand, stroking his forehead, but her presence didn't seem
to five him comfort. Quite the contrary, his eyes would fix on her
and fill with dread, as though she were a specter come to haunt him.
After several minutes, Sophie realized it would be better if she left
him with the nurse.

She shut the door to Joe's
room behind her. "He doesn't know me," she said, sitting
next to Paul, who had waited for her in the hallway. "Or maybe
the noise and running confused him. How stupid of me to cause all
this excitement." She felt an utter fool, angry with herself for
upsetting Joe, Paul's mother. Of course that's who the old woman was.
"The Widow Bellavance"--that's how Sophie had known her at
Fort Martin. She couldn't really remember Paul's father. She had been
only three or four when he had been killed in the Denson massacre.
But she recalled his mother now, remembered a grim-visaged woman who
seemed to hate the entire world. Sophie had felt her malevolent gaze
before.

"You didn't know my
mother was living with us," Paul said. "We should have
warned you."

"The truth is, I
didn't even know she was in Cheyenne. Why didn't I see her either
time I was here before?"

"She was over on House
Street then, in a little place I bought her over there. She's never
been much for company or visiting. Liked to be by herself and was
fine until a couple of years ago. Then she started wandering, looking
in the neighbors' windows, so we brought her to live with us."

A small woman with brightly
hennaed hair came hurrying up the hall, smiling with astonished
cheerfulness. "Your mother's just fine, Paul. A little
overexcited, perhaps, and I think it would help if you'd go in and
see her. Besides, I'll take care of Sophie. We girls understand these
things better than you men do. Isn't that right, Sophie?"

As Paul stood, Sophie
forced herself to nod an answer, even though she knew that to Anna
May a response mattered little. She didn't pay heed to most of what
was said to her, and she seldom let what she did hear affect the
course of her chatter. It always amazed Sophie that Paul had chosen
Anna May for his wife. There was nothing evil about the woman, but
she was such a strain on the nerves. Was Paul's equanimity so great
that he was unaffected?

"You're just too thin,
that's what it is," Anna May was saying. "Just look at you.
I could put my hands around your waist, I'm sure. Have you been
dieting, Sophie? Your nerves will give out, don't you know, if you
don't take care of yourself properly. And you're laced too tight, I
imagine. That's not good for you either." The astonishing smile
flashed again. It reminded Sophie of an electric light, the way they
seem to glaringly overbright at first. "Why don't you let me
undo your laces a bit?" Anna May suggested.

"I'm really quite all
right, Anna May. And my laces are just fine, really."

Anna May drew nearer, and
in case she meant to have at the laces in spite of Sophie's protests,
Sophie got up quickly and went to freshen up.

Downstairs, when Sophie
entered the front parlor, she saw James sitting at the piano,
desultorily picking out a tune with his right hand, a glass of pale
amber liquid in his left. She started toward him, but Paul
interrupted her. "Is there anything I can get you?" he
asked anxiously.

She considered. "Not
just now, thank you."

Anna May came to where they
were standing and whispered to Paul. He listened, then looked at
Sophie. "You don't mind if mother has dinner with us, do you?
She's used to eating with us and she gets real confused if ever we
break her routine."

"Of course, I don't
mind. This is her home. Of course she should eat with us."

"She really doesn't
know what's going on around her most of the time," Anna May
said, as though Sophie needed further reassurances. "She won't
say a word."

"Anna May, please
bring her down. I feel quite embarrassed that you'd hesitate to do so
because of me."

It was Paul who went to
fetch his mother, and he escorted her into the small dining room. The
old woman kept her eyes down, apparently lost in an inner world of
her own. The only thing which seemed to catch her attention was the
food, and as soon as a plate of fresh oysters was set in front of
her, she began to gulp them ravenously.

"Isn't it lovely
having oysters?" Anna May gushed. "There's almost nothing
we can't get in Cheyenne now."

Sophie looked to where Anna
May was seated, thinking that she'd seen other cases of relentless
cheer, but surely this was one of the worst. Anna May returned her
gaze with another bright smile.

Sophie turned to James, who
was seated next to her. He had hardly spoken all evening. "Esther
gave me a tour of your home today," she said.

He had been moodily staring
into his wineglass and looked up abruptly. "Esther? How'd she
seem to you?"

"At times she was
fine, but at other times she was... quite troubled." She wanted
to give him some idea of what had happened, but this wasn't the
moment for details.

Anna May broke in, her
expression fiercely sympathetic now. "Why has she taken Helen's
death so much harder than Sally has, d'you suppose?"

James clenched his jaws so
that Sophie could see a pale ridge of muscle underneath his sunburned
skin. "Perhaps her age," he said curtly.

"Because she
understands what happened more than Sally does?" Sophie spoke
hurriedly, trying to forestall Anna May.

"Not more,
necessarily, but different, that's sure." He took a sip of wine.
"For one thing, she remembers Helen's intensity about her own
mother. Or about her own mother's absence, I suppose I should say."

"Julia, d'you mean?"
asked Anna May. "And how Helen wanted to find her?"

James nodded in a very
controlled way. "Helen's absolute commitment to finding Julia
said to Esther every day, day in and day out, that not having a
mother was a terrible thing. The most terrible thing. And then Helen
died." He finished off his wine, then refilled the glass.

"Why did Julia run
off?" Anna May asked, looking at Sophie now. "I never have
understood."

"Our father was
killed. Not long after the Army came to Fort Martin, there was an
explosion in the magazine, and he was killed. Helen and I were so
young, I think the burdens were just too great for Julia, and so she
ran away." Even as she spoke, Sophie thought how calm, how
objective her words sounded.

"Well," said Anna
May indignantly. "It seems unnatural to me, a mother leaving
her--"

"Anna May! Please have
Maria take away these oyster plates!" Paul interrupted in a
harsh voice, and Sophie looked at him in surprise. She had never
heard him snap at Anna May before. Her forced enthusiasms never
seemed to trouble him. But now Sophie saw his lips were set in a
hard, grim line, and an old memory tugged at her, something about
Paul... and her mother. That was it. She remembered bits of unguarded
conversation when she was growing up, hints that Paul had been in
love with her mother. It was easy to imagine how a romance might have
begun during the long winter months at the fort. But then what had
happened? If they'd been in love, why hadn't they stayed together?
Why had Julia married young Lieutenant Talbot?

Sophie happened to glance
at the Widow Bellavance, who was sitting across the table. The old
woman was staring at her again, exactly as she had in the doorway of
Joe's room. Her eyes were bright with... what was it? Hatred?
Resentment? And then suddenly, unexpectedly, the old woman spoke.

"Why have you come
here?" Her voice was cracked with age.

"She's visiting,
Mother," Paul said loudly.

"Why you come here?"
the old woman repeated querulously, still looking at Sophie. Then the
serving maid placed the entree in front of her, and the widow dropped
her eyes to her plate. She began to pull strings of crisp roasted
skin from the breast of the capon.

Disconcerted, Sophie turned
to James again. "How close do you think Helen came to finding
Julia?"

"It's difficult to
say. from time to time, she'd think she had found her, but it always
turned out to be nothing. I told her the detectives she hired might
be deliberately misleading her, giving her false information,
building her hopes so she'd keep looking."

"She used Pinkerton's,
didn't she? Is it proper to doubt a firm founded by a Scotsman?"

He looked at her sharply,
then smiled a tic of a smile when he saw she's been attempting a
joke. "Pinkerton's was fine. Expensive, but fine. She didn't
always use them, though. She'd use anyone who promised her to find
Julia."

Sophie's attention was
caught by a snuffling sound from across the table, where Anna May was
looking down at her plate, her lower lip trembling. Sophie felt sorry
for her, and at the same time exasperated. How could she be so
insensitive? First she had tactlessly provoked Paul's anger, and now
she would embarrass them all with her self-pitying response to it.
Sophie hoped she could distract her. "Anna May, James tells me
Helen was involved in temperance work. Have you been too?"

"Yes, I have,"
she answered, with a catch in her voice. She kept her eyes down.

Sophie gave a mental shrug
at the failed gambit; then another ploy occurred to her. "Have
you had a chance to meet Frances Willard?"

That was enough. "Oh
yes, I have," said Anna May. "She's the most wonderful
person. She came here to help us get our WCTU chapter organized.
'Womanliness first,' she told us. 'Whatever else may follow
afterward.'"

Although she was aching to
do it, Sophie restrained herself from commenting on the fact that
Miss Willard was being quoted at a table where wine was being served.
Instead she nodded and made a murmur or two, just enough to encourage
Anna May.

"She doesn't want
women to be like men, that's what's different, d'you see," Anna
May was going on. "She thinks we ladies have a special
contribution to make."

"Special? How's that?"

"A spiritual
contribution, a moral one. F'r instance, I remember what the polling
used to be like in Wyoming before women had the vote. Drunkards
everywhere, and fistfights and knife fights. But that's all changed
since we got the franchise."

"Anna May, that's not
because women are voting," James said. "The territory's
becoming more civilized. That's what accounts for most of the
change."

"I'm not good at
arguing these things. But I know if it was left to men, we'd never
get rid of these saloons or those... houses!"

"What houses do you
mean, Anna May?" James asked innocently. He had eaten very
little of his dinner. The plate in front of him was almost untouched.

"Like Ida Hilton's...
Oh, you know what houses I mean, James Stevenson. Anna May turned to
Sophie. "You really ought to speak to Miss Travers. She can
explain these things so beautifully."

"Miss Travers?"

"You know Miss
Travers, Sophie," Paul said. "Your old teacher from Fort
Martin."

"Amy Travers? She's
here?"

He nodded. "She's one
of our high-school teachers now."

"Oh, yes, she and
Helen were the most intimate friends," Anna May said. Her words
made Sophie remember how attached Helen had been to Miss Travers even
at Fort Martin. She had followed th young schoolteacher everywhere,
spent every moment she could with her, composed long notes to her.
"The two of them were so beautiful together, so pure, so
loving," Anna May was going on.

Abruptly James stood, threw
his napkin on the table, and announced he was going outside for a
moment. The others sat in silence while he left; then Paul spoke.

"Anna May, it only
makes the situation worse to talk about Amy Travers in front of him."

"He's just so wrong
not to welcome her help."

"They're his children.
We have no business interfering."

"Paul, what are you
talking about?" Sophie asked.

"Miss Travers has been
stopping at the Stevenson house in the late afternoons, early
evenings, since Helen died, and visiting with the children. She
thinks they need more of a woman's influence than they're getting.
James doesn't like her, though, doesn't like her stopping by. He
makes sure he's out of the house when she comes."

Sophie wondered if this
could be why James had so abruptly turned her over to Mrs. Syms when
she arrived. Had it been the time of day when Amy Travers usually
visited? But Sophie hadn't seen her, and why would the woman continue
to come if she wasn't wanted? And if Miss Travers didn't realize how
James felt, why didn't he make sure she understood?

Suddenly Sophie felt very
tired. "Mrs. Bellavance, Anna May, Paul," she said,
excusing herself. "It's been a very long day for me, and I'd
like to be getting back to the Stevensons'. I'll go up and say good
night to Joe, and perhaps by then James will have returned.

Joe was sleeping, so she
came back downstairs quickly. James was waiting in the entrance hall.
They made their farewells and got into the carriage he had brought.
As they drove the short way home, there were many things Sophie
wanted to say to him, but she wasn't sure how to begin. He seemed
oblivious to her presence, caught up in an inward maze of
contemplation.

But apparently he was aware
of her, for as they drew up in front of the house, he broke the
silence. "I've been most ungracious to you, Sophie," he
said, "leaving you at the dinner table, abandoning you as soon
as you arrived."

"It's true we haven't
had much opportunity to visit." As soon as the words were out,
she hated the way they sounded. So prim, straight-backed, and polite.