Sybil (54 page)

"Blue as the sky, the sea. I always have," was Sybil's answer.

Ramon studied the painting thoughtfully. "It does create the impression of love," he admitted. Then, looking at drawings and paintings in which figures of children predominated, he observed, "You seldom draw grown-ups. Have you declared war on the adult world?"

Sybil laughed. "Not exactly," she teased. "But one of my recurrent motifs is a large house in which many brothers and sisters stand in a row. I suspect it's because I'm an only child."

"That's just about the first thing you've told me about your past," he replied. "After eight weeks I didn't even know that."

The remark made Sybil uneasy. Circumspect and careful to withhold the truth about herself, she had repressed her entire autobiography.

"All I really know about you," Ramon continued, "is that you are my age and that, like me, you have never married. For the same reasons, I suspect. Both of us have been busy with other things."

The uneasiness had become acute. Sybil changed the subject, saying, "I better get the casserole out of the oven."

At dinner, Ramon, a Roman Catholic, said grace. Sybil found her thoughts wandering to Nancy's strong anti-Catholic feeling and Mary's entrapment in an anti-Catholic church. Nancy's problem had been resolved, and Nancy herself had disappeared. Resolved, too, had been Mary's religious conflicts. Unless these things had happened, Sybil mused, Ramon would not be sitting at this table.

After grace, Ramon remarked, "I had a letter from my little niece this morning. Would you like to see it?"

"I can't read Spanish," Sybil replied, but she took the letter readily. "There are more pictures than words," she remarked, while examining it with delight. "Like me when I was six."

Although she had not met Ramon's niece, Sybil had grown fond of her and of her two brothers, of whom Ramon talked constantly. Sybil had come to think of them as Ramon's children because she knew that, after the death of their mother, Ramon's sister, and her husband in an automobile crash, Ramon had instituted adoption proceedings.

From the first, Ramon's strong family feeling had moved Sybil. As his story had unfolded, she had been deeply impressed, too, with the energy he had shown in realizing his rags-to-riches dream. Ramon, eldest of nine children, was the only one in the family to get an education. A scholarship saw him through a Catholic college in his native Bogotá. By working at night and studying during the day he had earned a degree from the Columbia University School of Business. An accountant now, he had secured a number of special assignments in first-class American hotels.

As Sybil returned his niece's letter to Ramon, he remarked, "You love children."

"As becomes a schoolteacher," Sybil temporized. "Even though it's been years since I've taught. I've been so involved with graduate work, you see." She felt uneasy at having allowed the threads of the past to become entwined with the present.

"You should have married," Ramon said. "You would make a wonderful mother."

The room was still. The many avowals of motherhood from Sybil's childhood flooded her thoughts. She heard herself saying to herself, "When I grow up, I'm going to have lots of children. They can play with each other. I'll be good to them. I'm going to let them do what they want to do. I won't hit them or tie them up or bury them in a wheat crib. I won't ..."

She remembered how she had pretended that she was a mother, how she had planned for each of her fifty-odd dolls and for her paper dolls as well. Then she suddenly realized that in these games of pretense never once had she considered actually bearing or delivering a child. Ramon's ready-made family coincided with her early fantasy.

As she served coffee, she thought: I could love these children, I, who probably can never have children of my own.

"I can still see the little girl in you," Ramon remarked. Yes, Sybil thought, that little girl, those little girls, were around long past their time.

The conversation turned to books, music, and religion. "I used to have a confused set of ideas about religion," Sybil commented. "I'm over that now." And she thought: how good it is that Nancy, with her strong anti-Catholic feeling, has disappeared. Nancy would never have accepted Ramon, a Catholic, or let me accept him. Now the difference of faiths did not separate Sybil from Ramon.

Ramon turned on the radio for the market news. A newscaster was talking about a psychiatrist's testimony in a murder case. "Complejos Americanos," Ramon said with irritation. "People with real troubles don't need what you Americans call a shrink. Latins and Europeans don't indulge in the silly luxury of psychiatry the way you Americans do."

Silence.

"Are you angry about something, cara? I didn't offend you?"

"Oh, no, Ramon." She looked at the brown hair, the dancing eyes. Complejos Americanos. American complexes? How little he understood. He could never understand the emotions that had complicated her existence.

Sybil arose from the table to kneel at the fireplace. "These October days can be chilling," she said as she lit a flame.

"Let me help you, cara," he replied, kneeling beside her.

She thought: I want him to make love to me. I want to have a baby of my own. If only I could. I'm scared. For eight weeks my fear has made him afraid. We've touched and kissed but that's all. I want more--I've got to have more.

Responding to her unspoken entreaty, Ramon caressed her. Her head moved against his chest. He embraced her tightly. "When I have an erection," he told her, "I measure. It's seven inches. Good?"

She smiled nervously and recalled that she used to think that love hurt, that when people loved you they hit you and put flashlights in you and bottles. Then she dismissed these thoughts as recollections belonging to the era before she had come to terms with the past.

"Cara, I want you," Ramon murmured passionately.

"No, Ramon," she replied with a quiver of still surging desire as she extricated herself from his embrace.

He moved back toward her and began gingerly to unzip her dress.

She shook her head, pulled up her zipper, and seated herself on the sofa.

"I love you, Sybil," he said.

"I love you, too, Ramon. And that's why my answer is no."

"But I don't understand," he protested. "I know you don't," she replied. "I'm afraid."

"Afraid of me, Sybil?" he asked, confounded. "I love you."

"I love you, too," she replied. "But I have reason to be afraid."

He looked at her in a manner that reflected both perplexity and tenderness. Anxious to advance his cause, he was also eager to protect Sybil against her fears. He quietly said, "Maybe it's not the right time." He put on his coat and walked to the door. "Tomorrow night," he said. "The opera. I'll call for you at six. We'll have dinner first, some place we haven't been before." He kissed her fingertips and was gone.

After the door had closed behind him, Sybil thought: what if he doesn't come back? What if he does?

The following Sunday morning Sybil and Ramon walked in Central Park. The solid rock they passed reaffirmed for Sybil her own solidity. The denuded trees reminded her of the leaves of herself that had fallen away. How many of the selves had merged was as hard to say as to count the leaves strewn in the pathway.

"Quiet today, mi amor," Ramon remarked.

"I was thinking of the fallen leaves," she replied, "and of the enduring rock."

"My little one is poetic," he answered. "I wrote poetry as a child," she replied.

Ramon next suggested that they take a drive in a horse and carriage. "After all," he teased, "I'm a visitor in your country."

As they were driving, Ramon drew out of his pocket a small box wrapped in white paper and tied with a blue bow. "I have something for you," he said as he opened the package. She gasped as he uncovered a diamond and ruby ring, which he placed on her finger. "It will not be a long engagement," he said. "We will marry at once. You will go to Bogotá with me for the children. Then we will return to the United States with our family. Are you happy?"

Torn by conflicting feelings, Sybil was silent. She wanted these children more, if possible, than she wanted Ramon himself. If she were their mother, she would be good to them, would undo all that had been done to her. All that had seemed beyond grasp was now on her finger, symbolized by Ramon's ring. "You say nothing," Ramon said urgently. "Why do you say nothing?"

For a time the only sound was that of the horses' hoofs. "We won't stay in Bogotá long," Ramon explained. "You won't get homesick."

Homesick for what? she wondered. She was ready to go now. She wanted to marry Ramon, wanted to help care for those children. "I must have your answer at once. We don't have much time, cara," Ramon pleaded. "The children can't wait. They need a mother."

Conflicting emotions rendered Sybil incapable of replying. To Ramon she seemed serious, abstracted. She opened her lips as if to speak, then closed them again.

"Are you all right?" Ramon asked anxiously.

Sybil became tremulous. She didn't want to seal her fate. "You must say yes," Ramon was insisting. "Yes has been in your eyes for many weeks."

Finally, in a low, broken voice, Sybil said, "I love you, Ramon. I want to marry you and help raise those children. But I cannot."

Baffled, he protested. "Why? There isn't anyone else to stand in the way."

Silence. She could not tell him that although there was no husband or lover to obstruct his path, there were people in the way. How he would mock her if she told him that she was a multiple personality. He was like the rest of the uncomprehending world. You could tell people about any other illness, even other mental illnesses, but this she had kept enshrouded from all but a very few.

"Your answer, cara?" Ramon was asking.

"Give me time, Ramon," Sybil pleaded. "Sybil, we do not have time. It must be now. These children must have a mother. I want that mother to be the woman I love."

Time, Sybil agonized. Time has always betrayed me. She asked only, "But why isn't there any time?"

"Don't you see?" he said. "I cannot have these children unless I have a wife. And I cannot bring them here to live unless that wife is an American."

The urgency of Ramon's petition suddenly became terrifyingly clear. He wanted a mother for these children, but he wanted an American without complexes. Who would rear these kids? Not Sybil alone but Peggy, Marcia, Vanessa, Mary, Mike, and Sid. Ramon would never understand.

"It has to be now," Ramon spluttered. The others were falling into place within her. She was getting well. But even though she had reached the threshold, she had not yet crossed it. The gift of time could rescue this love, but Ramon had given her an ultimatum: now or never.

"Marry me. You stay here. I'll go and bring the children," Ramon now offered.

"Ramon," Sybil replied desperately, "it's no use. I just can't marry you."

"For God's sakes, why?" he cried.

"I can't," she repeated.

Turning from him, she looked through the window, fighting her despair.

Then she returned the ring to the box and the box to Ramon.

"Woman of mystery," Ramon spluttered angrily. "Tell me the reason for the mystery, or I'll go away. You'll never see me again." At once his tone changed from anger to tenderness. "If it's something serious, something grave, you can tell me. I love you, Sybil. I will listen."

The "don't dare tell" of earlier days returned to plague her. But although she didn't dare tell, she was not running away from the truth about herself as she had in the past. She was indeed a woman of mystery to Ramon; the years of analysis, however, had made her no mystery to herself. Her unconscious stood clear, translucent, while that of most people was sealed in noncommunication. Her unconscious had paraded itself before her as perhaps no other human being's ever had.

"I will listen," Ramon insisted.

Ramon was so eager to reach her yet so incapable of understanding what it was he would reach. Ramon had not really penetrated, as she thought he had, the heavy veil of aloneness that hung between her and the world. The veil remained.

The carriage came to a halt. As Ramon helped Sybil out of the vehicle, she reveled in his touch.

Silence reigned during their taxi ride. Then Sybil and Ramon stood at the entrance of the old brownstone. "Will you reconsider?" he asked. His face bore the shadow of gloom.

"I wish I could," she answered.

How do I handle this? was her inner plea. In the past I didn't handle crises; I let the others act for me. But I'm not the same. Now I'm capable of facing my own problems. I'm also able to see the distinction between romance and reality. Ramon loves me--but with strings attached. I love him, and I want the children. But he is turning time into the old betraying enemy.

Ramon's lips and cheeks turned white. He relapsed into gloom. Then he seemed to withdraw. "I wish you no ill," he said vacantly, "and all good. But unless you change your mind and let me know that you have, we shall not meet again."

"Must we part this way, Ramon?" she asked. "The decision was yours, Sybil," he replied coldly. "But remember, it is also yours to undo."