“Here we are,” Laura murmured, as Daphne drew up in front of the long flight of steps to the front door. Here it was, the childhood fortress, the house of all the summers, green trim, weathered shingles, many-paned windows sparkling in the sun, standing there like an ark surrounded by its porches. “How the trees have grown, Daff!” For in the fifty or sixty years since they had been planted, Norway spruce and hemlock, arbor vitae had enclosed the space around it. By common accord they sat for a moment, after Daphne had turned off the ignition, just taking it in. The piles of snow made no difference. It all looked like itself.
Then Mrs. Eaton opened the door, hugging herself in an old gray sweater. “Well, you made it!”
Laura got out and went ahead. “We just had a yen to see the old place—and Daphne was up from New York. How are you? I’m afraid it was a nuisance shoveling the steps and all.”
“Not a bit. Silas did the shoveling. Brought in wood enough to last you a week!”
“Where is Silas?” Daphne asked, as she arrived carrying the picnic in a basket. “I want to see that boy.”
“Well, he had to go back to the store. The Rundletts are down in Florida, and Silas is tending the store for a while. It’s a change from lobstering, and he takes to it. Seems like he’d rather stay on shore these days, and I don’t blame him. Fishing’s not what it used to be.”
Laura had gone into the big living room and was sitting on the little bench, warming her hands at the fire and looking around at the Japanese prints on the wall, the white wicker furniture and its blue and white chintz cushions, the blue Chinese rug.
“Sit down, Mrs. Eaton,” Daphne was saying.
“I’d like to, but I have to get back to heat up some chowder for Silas. I would have brought you some, but of course the water is turned off, and I thought it might be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“It’s a lovely fire. Thank you,” Laura said.
“And thank Silas, if we don’t see him,” Daphne added.
“Don’t you worry about anything. I’ll come back tomorrow, roll up the rug again, and put the cushions away.”
Daphne went to the door with Mrs. Eaton and then pulled two chairs up close to the fire. “It’s cold,” she shivered. “We can’t stay long.”
They listened to the pick-up trundle down the road, and then Daphne opened the thermos and poured two martinis into paper cups.
“Listen,” Laura said before she took a swallow, “the sea.”
“Tide’s rising,” Daphne said. “You can hear it. Even on a calm day remember how there’s a little roar as the tide pulls the waves in?”
For a long moment they listened to the immemorial sound.
“What did we used to do first?” Laura asked.
“Race down to the shore and take off our sneakers and go in wading. Remember how cold the water was and how the stones hurt, and how hard it was to keep one’s footing!”
“Then we had to be sure everything was still there, the tree house, the old rowboat, the mossy dell, the lady slippers—in that small clearing among the firs. Oh, the smell of it all! The pine, the salt—”
“The wild roses. On some days when the wind came from the sea all you could smell was roses.” Daphne looked ten years younger, her cheeks flushed in the firelight. She looked happy, Laura thought.
“Aren’t you glad we came?”
“I am.” Daphne got up and stood back to the fire. “And now we must think of a toast. Pa always liked toasts.”
“And was very good at them.”
“What shall it be?” Daphne threw her head back, thinking.
“There’s only one possible toast today, in this house—to Sybille!”
But this brought Daphne sharply back from her dream.
“Why Sybille?” she asked, frowning and looking down at her drink. “Why Mamma?” she asked more gently.
“It’s her house, after all. She said we had to have one permanent place. And you have to admit, Daff, that was a true piece of wisdom. She insisted that we have family summers, don’t you remember?”
“I was too small. I don’t remember the house ever not being here.”
“I think I wanted so much to come back, because—” Laura hesitated to put so wild and deep an impulse into words, and suddenly she was crying.
“Laura, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing—Mamma—I thought perhaps—”
“Yes, I see,” Daphne broke in, as Laura blew her nose. “You thought perhaps if we came back here, we could solve the riddle once and for all.”
“I suppose so.”
“A beautiful mother and three beautiful daughters,” Daphne said, “it shouldn’t be a riddle at all.”
“All human relations are riddles,” Laura said. “And the same person may be a fury and an angel all at the same time. Here in this place we saw Mamma mostly as an angel, wouldn’t you agree? Remember our reading Shaw and Ibsen around the fire?”
“And Shakespeare—how I loved being Ariel!” Daphne said, sitting down again. “Of course you are right, L., to recapture the magic world. We were, until we began to grow up, actors in a supremely interesting play.” And she smiled one of her bittersweet smiles. “Family life was the soap opera in those days!”
The sisters exchanged a mischievous glance. “Summers,” Laura murmured, “messing around in boats—”
“Falling in love with the local boys. Can you believe that Silas is fifty or more? Do you suppose his red hair has turned gray?”
“Pa getting so nervous and cross before our yearly picnic on bird island, packing baskets of food into the motorboat, and once forgetting the beer! What a disaster! We got so thirsty before the day was over we nearly pooped.”
“I had lemonade. I was too young for beer.”
“You were lucky!”
Daphne put another log on the fire, took one look at her sister, and pulled a sandwich and stuffed egg out of the bag. “Here, darling, you’d better eat something before you vanish behind the looking glass, like Alice.”
“Thanks. I don’t feel much like eating.” It was quite impossible, Laura said to herself, to feel nauseated in these circumstances—no water. Was Brother Ass, her body, from now on going to intervene in any pleasure? “Give me a sip of coffee, Daff, will you?” She wiped the sweat off her face, and the hot coffee did go down. And for a moment she let herself sink into a kind of limbo, a state of non being, shutting off the valves into feeling or thinking. She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, Daphne was standing in the big window looking out to sea.
“Daff?”
“Are you all right?”
“I had a little nap. I feel better.”
“The sea is that extraordinary blue, Fra Angelico blue Mamma called it, and there’s a paler line just at the horizon.” Daphne came back and sat down, stretching out her hands to the fire. “I’ve been thinking.”
“I’ve been not-thinking,” said Laura. “I’m getting quite expert at that.”
“You are kinder to Mamma than I am, I wonder why.”
“I think of her as Sybille, not as Mamma. I think of her as herself, as she was when we were young—not now, of course. Maybe growing up is being able to think of one’s parents as people in their own right.”
“Perfect detachment? That’s impossible!” Daphne said, with something of her old violence, that sudden flame that used to leap up when she was angry or upset.
“No, not that exactly. But Sybille was a truly grand person, a hero to Cousin Hope, Daphne. We have to remember that. She made immense demands on herself, never was self-indulgent, had real guts when it came to fighting for anything she believed in, and did it all with such style, Noblesse oblige. Don’t you think she exemplified that?” Daphne did not answer, and Laura went on, possessed now by the quarry, not tired or ill, lifted up again on the stream of time, of life itself. “Grandeur is not perhaps something children want of their parents. Parents must be normal, comfortable, not extreme, so Sybille was disturbing as a mother, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. But we adored her. Have you forgotten how she looked when she came to kiss us good night, wearing her jewels, in that flowery Liberty silk or a white linen dress I always loved because there was something grecian about it, so plain and elegant? Is not great beauty—and you have to admit she had that—not a gift to one’s children, after all?”
“She certainly thought so.”
“But didn’t you?”
“No. It was like a shield between Mamma and me,” said Daphne in a cold voice.
“Yet of the three of us, you alone inherited it.”
“Like some enormous, very grand house in which I couldn’t live, if you must know.”
“You really hated being beautiful, didn’t you?”
“I felt inadequate. And then—it put me always in a false position. Mamma loved adoration because she never wanted to be near anyone, you see. I hated it because I felt it made a wall between me and other people.” She laughed. “It was like being perpetually overdressed. And what made it worse was that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. Oh, well, here we are, Laura, survivors of that great blaze—Mamma!” And Laura, as Daphne threw back her head and laughed, caught a faint glimpse of the beauty she had been at twenty.
“Yes, we were burned, but my children got the glow, and I’m glad of that. Daisy connected with Sybille, and Daisy is not apt to go overboard for anyone as you well know.” Thinking of Daisy, Laura sighed. “I suppose I am kinder in my thoughts toward Sybille because I am more aware than you can be, Daff, how damned difficult the whole mother-daughter thing is.”
“What is it that’s so difficult? Talk about it,” Daphne again sat on the little bench, stretching her long legs out.
“I wish I could. I only know that somehow Ben, especially Ben, but Brooks too, could take criticism for instance. And Daisy simply flew into a rage if I made the slightest critical remark, and still does, for that matter.”
“Of course that kind of thing was left to governesses in our day. I can’t remember Mamma being critical—only I always felt snubbed by her praise. That was it!” Daphne said clapping her hands. “I used to write poems—do you remember that?—and Mamma was always so kind, but in a way that made me go and tear the poem up. And then she read some great poem, you know, and I just shriveled.”
“Her standards were extremely high.”
“Oh, I admit that. That’s half the trouble. If you must know, it took me years to stop being an insufferable snob when it came to the arts. We were so damned superior.”
“But Sybille really wasn’t a snob. Look at the people she invited!”
“Yes, but they had to be special in some way. There was that rumpled poet at one time, but Mamma thought he was a genius. Genius was acceptable even if dirty and rude.”
“The odd thing is that although she had such taste, she really often ‘took up,’ if that is the phrase, with terrible duds. There was that philosopher with some crazy theory of the universe.” Laura smiled. “Yet there were real stars, too, Maggie Teyte, Edith Wharton, and after we moved back to Boston, the Whiteheads.”
Daphne lit a cigarette and smoked for a moment while Laura, suddenly hungry, ate a sandwich. The fire was dying down, and the room felt suddenly terribly cold.
“We are going to have to leave, Laura. It’s just too cold.”
“Put another log on the fire. I don’t care if I freeze. What does it matter? I want to stay just a little longer, Daff.” For Laura was still in pursuit of her quarry, still carried on the current of a strange excitement.
“Of course, darling, whatever you want. I’m glad we came,” she said, lifting another big log and throwing it onto the embers in a shower of sparks. “Aren’t you? It was a good idea of yours.”
“Yet coming here, back into the good years, back into what was, after all, a marvelous childhood, has not made you less relentless, has it?”
“Somehow, L., you had your real life—”
“And you have not had yours?” Laura frowned. She did not really want to contemplate her sister’s failure, if it had been that.
“Of course not. I was so busy trying not to be like Mamma that I suppose I have ended up being nothing at all.”
“But that’s not true. Your measure is still Mamma’s, that only some extraordinary gift, some heroic act, some larger-than-life-size accomplishment is what matters.”
Daphne gave her sister a frightened look.
“Since I’ve known that I haven’t long to live, it’s strange, but I think I’ve come to understand better what it’s all about, why we’re on earth.”
“Lucky woman!”
“Isn’t it simply to grow, to become more human—not achievement, not fame, nothing like that—and Daphne, you are such a great human being. You’re such a loving, warm person, and you had to break down a lot of walls to become that. I think you’re splendid,” Laura said.
“A splendid failure,” Daphne answered, but she looked shy, confused, exactly as she had as a child when someone praised her. “I guess it takes a long time to grow up.”
“Yes, and in a queer way Sybille never did. Because growing up means being able to look at oneself, and to understand oneself. She never did—and that, in the end,” said Laura with a kind of triumph, for she had perhaps reached the quarry at last, “is what made Sybille so destructive.”
“If only I could see her just once not in a noble role!” Daphne said, holding her head in her hands.
“Well, Jo,” Laura said quickly. “She was anything but noble in that role.”
“You mean about Alicia?”
“I think Sybille behaved really badly there, ruthlessly, and I think she did it because she couldn’t face the same thing in herself. There was a powerful undertow from the subconscious. Passionate love for a woman! That terrified her, so much that she acted ignobly for once—does that make you feel any better?” Laura asked with a smile.
Daphne didn’t answer. She was looking into the fire. The log she had put on was blazing now. But after a long moment, she stretched out her arms and yawned, then she got up and walked up and down, stopping for a moment to look out to sea again. “It’s clouding over.”
Laura waited. She felt that they were close to some ease, some opening out of the tight place where Sybille had loomed like a beautiful, malignant goddess. It was so terribly important that they do so, that she waited almost holding her breath for what Daphne would finally come to see and to utter—if anything.
“I have learned something in these last years, something I wish I had learned long ago.”
“What is that? Dear beautiful Daff, what is that?”
“I’ve learned to like women. Mamma didn’t like women, did she? I now have two or three real women friends. It’s a tremendous blessing, Laura. It’s opened up a whole new world for me. Do you suppose Jo has any real friends?”
“Oh, I don’t know—maybe.”
“Women have so much to give one another, and to learn from one another. I’ve never been active in the women’s movement, but I have to admit that the whole idea of a sisterhood has come about, and is beginning to happen, women helping one another, women being able to talk to one another, not as rivals. That seems quite new.”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that. What I see at my job is people, especially women, being less afraid to be honest with one another and with themselves.”
“It’s a far more open world than when we were young, L. At this stage in my life I am more nourished by women friends than even by David. For, let’s face it, with David I have really been for years a kind of psychiatric nurse, an ego-builder … it’s exhausting.”
“The balances are delicate, so delicate. In a way Papa played a feminine role in their marriage, didn’t he? He was the admiring, consoling one, the fervent audience for Sybille’s performances.”
“He was a romantic, at least about women.” Daphne looked across at Laura and suddenly laughed. “It’s been awfully good to talk, Laura.”
“I wanted this so much,” Laura murmured. “To be here in this house where we were happiest, the house of childhood, to come to some kind of reckoning that could include Mamma without resentment and without guilt.”
“We haven’t quite made it,” Daphne said. “But I have to admit that that when we walked in I felt as prickly as a porcupine. I didn’t want to think about childhood. I didn’t want to remember.”
“And now?”
“Oh, I suppose I’m a little closer to accepting Sybille, as you call her, to imagine at least that had I not been her daughter, I might have liked her. Who knows?”
“Just one more thing before we go. Why did Uncle Root commit suicide?”
“Don’t you remember?” Daphne asked, astonished. “Ma always said it had been a noble act. He was terribly in debt, and after his death his wife and children got life insurance.”
“All I remember was the awful strain of nobody weeping, and how you and Jo and I went down into the cellar and howled with rage because it all seemed so inhuman and crazy. He was such a lovable man! Do you remember that summer when he taught us to ride and Pa hired polo ponies for us?”
“That was the summer when we used to sneak out and slide down haystacks in the salt marsh—strictly forbidden of course.” Laura had gotten up now, and while they talked, Daphne scattered the logs and packed up the thermoses. Then she stood there for a moment, thinking. “Uncle Root threatened to shoot Mamma if she went on the stage—and he meant it. There was something awfully queer about all that.”
“Well, you said it, Daff. Family life was soap opera when we were young.”
All the way back in the car they were silent. Laura dozed.