Laura felt caged at the very idea of Mrs. O’Brien, who was supposed to arrive at eleven. She had decided to stay in bed as late as possible. Comforting as Grindle and Sasha were, it was pleasant to be able to stretch her legs, now they were both out. She let herself float, sitting up with three pillows behind her so she could breathe, for she had wakened with a terrible fit of coughing and had thrown up some blood. All she could think of, of course, was Keats—Keats deprived of so much of his life. I have had my life, she reminded herself—for the sight of blood had been rather a shock—all of it, except old age. And though old age might be like Aunt Minna’s, rich and passionate and angry, it could just as well be her mother’s, a dwindling of intellect and spirit until there was nothing left but the needs of an infant. I’ll be well out of it, she thought, looking around her room: the Graves sea bird she and Charles had bought together for their twentieth wedding present to each other; the shelf of special books, poetry mostly, to the left of the mantel; the birch logs in the fireplace—one of these days I’ll have a fire up here, she thought. The last time she had done that was during an attack of flu years before. Charles had lit the fire then and had brought logs up. Would it be easier if he were here at her side during this last journey? And she reacted at once, no, no, thank God he isn’t! Charles could never deal with real illness. It made him cross and overprotective, which made Laura feel guilty.
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.