Sister Wolf (15 page)

She stood at the top of the steps that led down to the sunken living room.

“We had a date to drive over to Matlock. I can’t be late. We can drop Horty at home on the way. You don’t mind, Horty, do you?”

Matlock lay five miles northeast of Niles and fifteen miles below the Vermont border. Settled in 1712, it had been wiped out twice before the Revolution by Nipmuck Indians, but this was not the reason that it did not appear on
most
modern road maps. Matlock had been a mountain retreat for rich Bostonians during the eighteen-eighties; they had left behind several sprawling wooden hotels, and the little Norman chapel of All Souls. The drive from Niles to Matlock was a slow one, on winding back roads that sightseers and tourists rarely used. Marit was driving and Lola had her feet propped up on the dashboard. Every now and then she took a sideways look at Marit, who had covered her bloodshot eyes with wire-rimmed sunglasses.

“I hear you talk about that fellow,” said Lola, breaking a long silence, “and I thank God I’m not the straight one.”

“I thought you had a code,” said Marit. “I thought you only messed with baby girls.”

“But Horty is so unhatched. I sometimes think she had those children in her sleep.”

“Have you waked her up with a kiss yet?”

“The idea just took me this afternoon. About the time you barged in, old lady.”

“You’re a cad, Lola. What about Pittsfield?”

“She’s cooking, honey, she’s cooking. I got a letter from her this morning: ‘Dearest V., What must you think of me?’ I’ll wait a week and then answer it.”

“You’re pleased with yourself, aren’t you? She’s sweating and she’s off balance and you’re flexing your muscles.”

“Watch the road!” Lola reached for the wheel. The jeep had swerved over onto the shoulder. “If you’re so wrought up, you shouldn’t be driving.”

They passed a sign, Matlock two miles, lettered on a wooden arrow that pointed straight up at the sky. Lola sat forward, her feet planted flat on the floor, steering and braking along with Marit.

“Would it cost you a lot to obey the speed limit?”

“Get off me, Lola, or I’ll drive with my thumbs.”

“I am a gem. I jump when you say jump. I don’t even ask questions.”

“That’s right. Don’t ask questions.”

“Oh, no. You’ve turned me into a nanny. My role is to nag and scold. I want to know why you’re driving to Matlock like an ambulance. You’ve never been to Matlock in your life.”

“Not true. It’s the direct route to Bad Mountain.”

“You don’t ski. You hate to ski.”

“I used to ski. Luba made me learn skiing and tennis.”

“I’m waiting,” said Lola, “and I want a sensible answer.”

Marit pushed up her sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“You won’t get one from me. All the sense has flown out of my head.”

“Leeched out by that runt, no doubt.”

“He kept pushing my face in it, Lolly. I had to hear about her hands and her feet, and her adorable habits and her artwork. He kept saying how gifted she was. She was too fine to live. …”

“Well, I’m not,” snapped Lola. “I have a lot of good years in me yet. Stay in your lane or pull over and let me drive.”

Marit took off her glasses and dropped them in Lola’s lap.

“Wipe these off for me, please. I smudged them.”

“You don’t need them. It’s your eyes that are bleary. You need a new beau.”

“I’m not little and soft. I’m a lout. I’ve got biceps that show through my sleeves. You’ve known me three years. Have I even been sick for a day?”

Lola could not find an answer. Her stock of retorts was running out. Marit was talking to herself, or to someone inside her head.

“I looked at myself this morning. The red spots are back. The broken blood vessels. Luba’s skin doctor took them off with an electric needle. I spent my youth in that office. There was always something wrong. I had warts, I had spreading moles, I had cysts on my scalp. …”

“Marit Deym.” Lola slapped the seat. “I will give you to a count of ten to stop this raving.”

“Lola?” Marit’s voice was shaky. “Do you think that my eyes are set too wide apart?”

Lola reached behind Marit and pushed down the button that locked the door. She locked her own side with her elbow. When Marit had one of her electrical storms, as Lola had named them, Lola depended on feisty talk to bring her around, the kind of talk used with good results by coaches and trainers. Marit preferred a rough harangue to gentle treatment, since she thought that most girls were tender, meeching sissies. Her erratic driving troubled Lola less than hearing her compare herself to one of these weaker specimens, and come out losing. Lola decided to drop the role of master sergeant; she could not shame Marit out of her affliction. Any good sergeant has to change his tone of voice when one of his men has broken under fire.

The road was lined with a screen of foreign poplars. At the next right turn, the line of trees continued, broken fifty yards in by a high, arched iron gate. Marit went past the gate and drove across the road into a fallow field. She parked the jeep behind a stand of wild thorns, out of sight of the road. She jumped out of the jeep and headed for the gate without waiting for Lola.

The iron gate was hanging ajar. It had rusted open. Marit pulled it closed with both hands, as tightly as it could shut, scraping away a sill of earth that had mounded up at the bottom. In front of them stood the chapel, down a lane of boxwood. The box had grown into the lane, forcing them to walk sideways in some places. The chapel was hung with ivy, browned out from lack of pruning, hairy branches of ivy dangling loose and withering off. Inside, the chapel was dark, like a fortress, not a church, with slits, set high near the roof, instead of windows. The altar and the crucifix were shrouded. Three white paste florist’s vases stood at the base of the pulpit; one of the vases had toppled over and broken into large pieces.

Marit led the way down the center aisle, holding on to the backs of the pews. A large bird flapped over their heads, the noise of its wings magnified in that empty space. Startled, Marit covered her head and cried out, backing up a few steps and knocking into Lola, who was set on a forward course and pushed Marit onward. They ran out in a welter of sound, footsteps echoing on the tiles, bird squalling and flapping through the nave, and the broken doorknob turning with a fun-house creak.

They stopped running when they reached the little graveyard, which was surrounded by a low picket fence with slats missing, like empty spaces in a row of teeth. The fence was low enough to step over easily, but Lola balked. She waved at Marit, who did not see her. Marit was walking from stone to stone, bending down to look at the inscriptions, which were hard to read because the graveyard lay in dappled shade. The ground was uneven and damp, since the sun never dried it out, and the thin, flat stones all tilted at different angles. Most of the stones were slick with green moss, and some had sunk into the earth above the date line. Marit stepped on patches of ground-cover mint and chamomile as she walked, raising gusts of fragrance. There was no smell of death in the graveyard, just the charm of ruin.

One stone stood apart from the others and tilted less, set back in a corner by the fence, in full shadow, under the tallest cedars. Marit squatted down to read the engraving. The marble facing had started to crumble at the edges, but the words were deeply incised and caught the light:

A Heart Within Whose Sacred Cell

The Peaceful Virtues Loved to Dwell

Francesca Alba Hadley

(1932-1955)

Lola stayed outside the fence, keeping watch, rotating her head from Marit to the side door of the chapel and back to Marit, getting an ache in her neck and wishing that she had two heads. Lola was unconcerned about graveyards and mortality; she had spent the night in an empty plantation house that was believed to be haunted by astral cats. Lola was afraid of nothing that bit, crawled, moaned, hurled crockery, or rattled its chains, but she was afraid of Marit’s actions, and their meaning.

Marit’s mouth was moving; she was making fists and gesticulating, and Lola was too far away to hear the words that the gestures punctuated. Lola stepped back to watch the chapel, peering up and down the line of poplars. She brought her eyes back to Marit again. Marit was kicking a gravestone. Lola stepped over the fence, but still she hung back. Marit picked up a rock and threw it at the headstone. Chips of limestone sprayed over the ground.

Lola thought that she might have to subdue her, though Marit was stronger, and as tall as she was. There was danger in trying to subdue an excessive person. Lola had grappled with an epileptic once and had her hand bitten hard before she could find the tongue. Marit picked up a large stick and began to beat the headstone. The stick snapped in two. Marit hurled the broken pieces into the woods. She was unarmed now, but Lola felt no easier. She saw Marit place her hands on the stone, lifting and tugging, trying to dislodge it and yank it out of the earth. When the stone would not give, she pounded it with her fists, crying aloud from frustration or the pain in her hands.

Lola started forward. Marit might hurt herself badly. Then a shock of realization forced her back: “The picture. The dead girl in the picture in the wallet.” Lola grasped the fence-slats to hold herself steady. When the shock passed she felt cold and numb. Marit was down on her knees digging, doglike, sending earth from the grave flying back between her legs. Digging was tiring; the fit would wind down in time.

In this state of possession, rooting and digging and talking to herself, Marit was like a stranger to Lola—like those women on city buses who wear surgical masks and layers of woolen clothing in the summer. Lola moved to the back of the bus to avoid these women, or got off many blocks before her stop. She kept her distance now from her friend, whose back had been turned for the duration of the seizure, who might have been any casual mad person, inspiring a kind of queasy curiosity. Lola began to move to the edge of the fence, walking slowly, so that she could approach Marit from the side and startle her less. The digging had stopped, but Marit was still on her knees. Lola was nearly abreast of her.

Lola could not have made her heart cold enough to shut out what she saw. Her friend was smearing dirt across her face, rubbing the grave-dirt into her face and hair, taking a handful of dirt at a time and crumbling it between her hands, making it fine and powdery so that it would spread better. She spread it on her face in a circular motion, away from the center, as if she were applying foundation makeup in liquid form. The tears she was crying made the fine dirt wet and smoother to work with. While she smeared on the runny black paste, using only the tips of her fingers, she looked up at the sky, at the tops of the cedars swaying. She shook her head gently, in denial, and patted and smoothed and rubbed, not forgetting her neck or the section under her chin.

Lola went over and crouched down in front of her, sitting on her heels. There had been no need to worry about surprising her. Marit was not disturbed by her presence, or interrupted. She had blackened her face completely, except for her ears. Her changeable eyes had lost any tinge of gray; they were a queer light green in her boyish blackamoor’s face.

Lola reached out and took one of Marit’s muddy hands.

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked.

Marit met her eyes. She seemed to recognize her, because she held Lola’s hand more tightly.

“Is there a baptismal font in the chapel? We could wash you off there. I can’t take you down to the lake. You’d scare the children. I’ll take you back to my place and put you under the shower. Are you finished here? Have you done what you came to do?”

Marit pulled away and pointed at the headstone. She scooped up more dirt and pressed it into the carving, scooping and pressing with both hands, as if she thought she could erase the name and the inscription.

Lola spoke to herself, not to Marit. “I am not a good friend. I should not have let this happen.”

Lola looked at Marit. She was rubbing her eyes with her dirty fists. She was as tired as a child who has been kept up past its bedtime. Lola got up and pulled Marit to her feet. She led her out of the churchyard. Marit followed without protesting and did not look back. Lola helped her into the jeep. She found a traveling pillow and propped it behind Marit’s head. She was fast asleep before Lola could start the motor.

B
Y EIGHT O’CLOCK ON
Friday morning, Marit had been sleeping for fifteen hours—since five o’clock the afternoon before, when Lola had put her down on top of her own bed and covered her with a cotton quilt and a light blanket laid over it. Except for a brief visit to the main house to collect the weekend menus, which had to be typed, and to check the freshness of the flower arrangements in the living room, Lola had been sitting all night in the armchair across from the bed, drowsing at intervals or reading under the light of a standing lamp. She had muffled the lampshade by draping it with a slip and a nightgown, so that it cast a very dim glow and did not wake Marit.

Marit’s sleeping behavior did not seem to warrant a night watch. She lay flat on her back and shifted, twice, to each side. She did not pluck at the coverlet or murmur incoherencies; she did not toss or frown to indicate the throes of nightmare. She slept with her mouth open, but Lola knew that she had always done that—Luba had warned Marit that no one would marry her if they could see her that way.

Lola should have been reassured by Marit’s regular breathing, but it was the future that she was keeping watch over, not this present sleep. Lola loved Marit better than any sister, and when she looked ahead she saw no happiness for her.

“Gabriel is saner than you are, Gabriel is a professional sane person”: Marit had tossed this remark off lightly, as if her interest were in coining a phrase. It had not fallen lightly on Lola’s ears. Marit was like a wild creature, resistant to domestication and confinement. She had no more place in the coupled world than Lola did. It was the job of a husband to shear, quell, tame, leash, whittle, and pare down. Lola could not see Marit as a new draftee, lined up to enter the married ranks, getting her hair chopped off with her oddness, handed a suit of clothes which would blend her in with the others.