The Sisters Montclair Read online

  “I know what I’m doing,” Alice said when she finally got a word in.

  “Well, I don’t want you to fall because I cannot lift you if you do!”

  “Nobody’s asking you to lift me,” Alice said in a voice heavy with sarcasm.

  “She’s pretty good at getting herself up,” Stella said. “She’s in good shape really.” Stella smiled encouragingly at Alice, who rose slowly with theatrical dignity.

  “Well, okay then, I’ll leave you to your phone call,” Dob said, turning and walking stiff-legged out of the room. He stopped in the doorway, looking back. The overhead lights reflected off his thick glasses, off his shiny speckled scalp beneath its thin covering of hair. “Don’t forget the hotdogs,” he said. “You can have one for lunch.”

  Alice didn’t hear him. She swiveled her head and said loudly to Stella, “What an ordeal. Thank goodness he’s gone.”

  Stella averted her eyes, sure that Dob had heard Alice. But he said nothing, and turning, walked out.

  “He’s a real character,” Stella said to Alice at lunch.

  “Who?”

  “Your cousin. Dob.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” Alice chewed slowly, moving her black-eyed peas around on her plate with a fork. She had decided she didn’t want a hotdog for lunch after all. “His father and my father were brothers. We grew up together on Signal Mountain. We lived on one side of my grandparents and Dob’s family lived on the other side. All three houses are still standing.” She turned to Stella. “Have you ever been up there?”

  “To Signal? A couple of times. I don’t know it very well.” Why would she know it? Only rich people lived up there, rich people who drove expensive foreign cars and played tennis all day. Not like Lookout though, with its old families and old money. Flashy and extravagant, Signal flaunted its money the way Lookout did not have to.

  “Great-grandfather Sawyer built a summer home up there. It was at the top of the W-road. Do you know it?” Her pale eyes settled curiously on Stella. Stella shook her head. The W-road was a narrow, winding road that ran up the back side of the mountain. A couple of treacherous switchbacks at the summit gave it its name. Stella had been up it a couple of times but she had never driven it; she would have been too nervous to drive it.

  “Half of his children were in Texas and half were in New York, and so he built the summer home as a half-way place where we could all gather. I can remember going with grandmother to open up the house. It had a bowling alley and my cousins and I all thought that was wonderful. The house is still standing. Sawyer took me up there and we drove by and the house and the property still look the same, only someone has painted it green. I don’t think great-grandfather Sawyer would have liked that. Alice Sawyer was his mother. She’s the one in the portrait in the foyer. She’s who I’m named for.”

  Her face took on a serene expression. She was obviously lost in her memories and Stella was quiet, allowing her to roam through the past undisturbed. Stella tried to imagine the large house surrounded by wide lawns and big trees, with a crowd of children dressed in white running around in bare feet. Like something out of an old movie, she thought. Cheaper by the Dozen or Little Women. Something about a large, happy family where children are encouraged and valued and spoiled. Stella had cousins but she’d never met them. She’d only seen her grandmother a couple of times. She was a large, slow-moving woman who lived in a trailer on the outskirts of Maynardsville. The last time they visited, she and Stella’s mother had gotten into a loud argument over a ceramic cookie jar that Stella’s mother had broken as a child.

  Alice stirred. She set her fork down and touched her napkin to her lips. “Dob’s always getting arrested when he drives through Atlanta. I don’t know why. It’s almost as if the police are looking for him, as if they know his car. He’s always on his cell phone driving on the expressway. You know how crazy Atlanta traffic is, people zipping by at eighty miles an hour. Last time he called me and we were talking and he said, ‘Damn, Alice, I’m fixing to get arrested,’ and then the phone went dead.”

  “What’d they get him for?”

  “I don’t know. Belligerence probably.”

  Stella laughed. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “He’s always had his own way of doing things. When he was a boy he went through some wild times, hopping freight cars and traveling around. His father got so tired of getting calls from little country jails telling him to come get Dob. He was a lawyer, like my father. They were brothers and law partners. Anyway, the last time Uncle Danforth got a phone call from some little country town sheriff, he said, Keep him for a few days. He wanted Dob to get a real taste of what being a jailbird was like. And after that he didn’t hop any more freight cars.”

  Stella had never spent any time in jail but she’d spent time in shelters. She wondered if Dob had fond memories of his days on the road. She’d noticed how old people tended to romanticize their youth; if you listened to old people talk it was as if nothing bad had ever happened to them.

  “What about you?” Alice turned her head and let her eyes settle on Stella. “What about your family? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Two brothers. Two little brothers.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t have any children do you?”

  “Good Lord, Alice, I’m only twenty-one!”

  Alice smirked and raised one eyebrow. “Well, I had my first at twenty-two. That was common in those days.”

  “And I’m not married either. I have no intention of ever getting married! Marriage is an archaic institution.”

  Alice went back to eating. She chewed silently, staring at the wall calendar that showed a mother rhesus monkey with a baby monkey glued to its back. “My sister married a Yankee,” she said finally.

  “Really?” It was all Stella could think to say. She was embarrassed by her outburst, her insistence that she would never marry. Sometimes things came spilling out when she least expected them.

  “Of course we did everything we could to stop her, but Adeline had a mind of her own. Despite our disappointment, my mother and I went to visit her in Cleveland, Ohio. It was cold. Snowy and cold. For some reason, my sister’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Marr, insisted on having a Welcome to Cleveland cocktail party for us. The first thing she said to my mother, after taking a good long look at my sister and I, was ‘Goodness, do they have the same father?’

  My mother’s expression never wavered. ‘Apparently,’ she said dryly.”

  Stella put her head back and laughed. Alice grinned, slanting her eyes up at her. “Mother did not suffer fools gladly,” she said.

  They ate for awhile in silence, each lost in her own thoughts. Stella had brought some of the leftover chili for lunch and she’d fixed Alice a plate of barbecue pork and black-eyed peas and collard greens.

  “But Adeline came back to Chattanooga?”

  Alice looked at her. “What?” she said.

  “Adeline. She moved back to Chattanooga.”

  “Oh yes, eventually. After Brooks died, she came back.”

  “Was Adeline the only one who ever left Chattanooga?” Stella asked.

  “No. Bill and I moved to Mobile during the War. He was stationed down there. They found out he was a good golfer and they’d send all the big brass down there to relax and recuperate and play golf with Bill Whittington. It was our only war time assignment.”

  “Well, at least he did his part.”

  Alice made a wry face. “I suppose you could say that. He had a fine time. I hated it. It was the kind of place where if you weren’t from Mobile, you weren’t anybody. Since I didn’t have too many friends, I decided to start a garden. ‘Grow some collard greens, Alice!’’ Bill Whittington said. ‘You’ll feel better about yourself.’ And so I did. I tended that garden all summer. I never was a gardener, you know, I never had a green thumb, but I threw myself into it. I had a big straw hat I used to wear to ward off sunstroke because it’s
hot as Hades in Mobile, Alabama. I’ve never worked so hard in all my life. When it came time to pick them, I went outside one morning, and they were all gone. Someone had snuck into my garden in the middle of the night and stolen all my collard greens.”

  The image of Alice in a straw hat was too much for her. Stella put her napkin over her mouth. She said, “Oh, no, that’s terrible!”

  Alice stared rigidly at the wall, her chin trembling slightly.

  “And that’s all I have to say about Mobile, Alabama,” she said.

  That afternoon during her nap Alice dreamed of collard greens, big, green heads like plump pillows lying around her feet. She was standing in a field of them, collard plants stretching in all directions as far as the eye could see. A storm was coming, she could see dark clouds gathering on the horizon, and she was afraid for the plants, afraid she would not be able to shelter them from the storm, to keep them from harm. There were so many of them and just one of her and she seemed to be rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to do anything except watch helplessly as the dark clouds rolled in. The plants were trembling and making mewling noises like kittens and when she looked down the collards had turned into baby heads, big, fat-cheeked, blue-eyed baby heads looking up at her, in alarm and expectation, all waiting anxiously for her to gather them up in her arms.

  Later, coming out of the dream into wakefulness, Alice remembered a morning at breakfast.

  It was during the war and they were living in Mobile. Bill was playing golf with a four-star general at nine and he was in a chipper mood. Alice sat at the breakfast table with the baby, Sawyer, on her lap, watching bleary-eyed as Sam played battleship with his Corn Flakes. In the kitchen behind them, the girl, Winnie, fried an egg for Roddy who had decided he wouldn’t have Corn Flakes after all this morning.

  “Well then, you’ll have no breakfast,” Alice said when he steadfastly refused his Corn Flakes. Roddy was a stubborn, opinionated child determined to have his own way, much like Adeline had been. He and Alice didn’t get on too well.

  “If the boy wants an egg, then let him have an egg,” Bill said from behind his raised newspaper. He sat at the end of the table like a king trying to keep order among his unruly subjects.

  “Winnie needs to wash the baby bottles,” Alice said.

  Bill let a corner of the paper drop so she could see his eyes, glinting behind his dark-framed glasses. “Well, she can wash the baby bottles after she makes the boy a fried egg.” He went back to reading his paper.

  He spoiled Roddy because he had “spunk” (which was what Bill called male temper tantrums); unlike Sam who was gentle and quiet. Roddy spent all day running over the neighborhood with other boys, but Sam stayed close to Alice, helping her with Sawyer, brushing her hair when she was tired, going through magazines and helping her pick recipes for Winnie to try for supper.

  In the kitchen, Winnie knocked a sauce pan off the counter and it clattered loudly on the floor. Alice sighed. Winnie was just a girl, she’d had no previous service experience, but it was impossible to find experienced help now that they’d all found factory jobs. The whole world seemed to be turning itself upside down because of this War. Alice didn’t know how things would ever go back to being the way they’d been before. The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Bill Whittington.

  Winnie came in carrying a plate with a fried egg, burnt and gelatinous, staring up at them like an eye. She set it down in front of Roddy, glancing nervously at Bill, and then turned and hurried back to the kitchen.

  “It’s burnt,” Roddy said.

  “It’s not burnt,” Alice said, shifting the baby on her lap. He had taken hold of the collar of her dressing gown and was staring at it with fixed fascination.

  “It’s burnt and I will not eat it.” Roddy pushed the plate away and folded his arms across his chest.

  “You will eat it,” Alice said.

  Bill put the paper down and picked up the plate. “Winnie,” he called briskly, and she stuck her head out of the kitchen and said nervously, “Yes, sir?”

  “Have you ever made a fried egg?”

  “Well, yes, sir.”

  “Here’s how it should look. It should be creamy white, with just a hint of golden color around the edges. And the yolk should be orange and when you stick a fork in it, it should burst and flow across the plate like Vesuvius. Do you understand, Winnie? Vesuvius?”

  “Yes, Mr. Whittington.”

  “Take this then and try again.” He waited for Winnie to take the plate and return to the kitchen, and then he leaned across the table and said in a low voice, “And that, Alice, is how you handle the help.”

  Marriage was every bit as dreadful as she’d imagined it would be. There were days when Alice could barely bring herself to get out of bed, when the noise and disorder and loneliness of her household became almost too great for her to bear. The house they were renting was a small cottage with only two bedrooms and a bath. There were no quarters for Winnie, she rode the bus everyday to work, and the boys shared a bunk bed in one room, while Alice, Bill, and the baby slept in another.

  Bill had refused to be quartered on the base but there were times when Alice wished she had insisted. (As if her insistence about anything ever did any good with Bill Whittington.) Surrounded by other army wives, she might have developed a few friendships. But stuck, as she was, in a neighborhood of older, grander homes she was an interloper in a town where everyone had known everyone else for generations (it was a lot like Chattanooga in that regard.) When Bill took her for drinks at the Officers’ Club, the other wives who lived on the base were cordial but unwelcoming. They assumed it was Alice who had refused to live on the base, as if she was too good for army housing, but in reality it was Bill Whittington who felt that way.

  She had known since her wedding night that her marriage was a mistake. She had been so nervous, afraid he would know that her air of inexperience was forced, nervous that she would give herself away through some inadvertent movement or sound. But she needn’t have worried. He had unwrapped her like a gift, as greedy and disillusioned as a boy on Christmas morning who has been given the one thing he wants above all else, and possessing it, is now unsure of its value. Afterwards, he got up, dressed himself in a pair of silk pajamas, and then taking off his glasses, fell promptly into a deep sleep. She waited until his breathing was slow and regular, and then she crawled out of bed and into the bathroom, staring in the mirror at her blotched face and wild hair until black tears began to streak her face.

  In the morning she rose and dressed herself carefully and went sightseeing with her new husband, walking hand in hand along the Battery, the low skyline of Old Charleston behind them. She became two Alices; the desperately unhappy, crying woman of the evenings, and the attractive, expensively dressed young wife of the daylight hours. Bill, after his initial infatuation with the physical act, settled down into the role of a genial but gruff older brother, taking Alice under his wing, instructing her in all the ways he found her lacking.

  And because she was still intimidated by him and felt guilty that she did not love him enough, she allowed this instruction.

  In the early days of their marriage, she played with the idea of ending her life. It was a taboo subject; she would never say the word “suicide”, but in the quiet hours of early dawn she would sometimes imagine the cold metal of a revolver against her tongue, a fleeting sense of weightlessness as she took flight from the Walnut Street Bridge. What, she wondered, would the moment of death be like? A sudden extinguishment of all thought and emotion? Or a gradual dawning of something else?

  But as the cold, hard light of early dawn crept into the room, she would put her wild nocturnal imaginings away. She wasn’t a coward. She would never do that to her parents, would never visit upon them the grief of having to explain a child’s desperate act to strangers, to hear the whispers, the pitying stares as they walked along the street. And when she felt the quickening of her first child deep in her belly, she banished su
ch thoughts forever. Her life would never again be her own. She had been raised to accept the yoke of sacrifice and personal responsibility, and as each succeeding child was born, she submitted gracefully. She derived pleasure from her role as mother, and despite the lonely hours and sleepless nights, a feeling of self-worth she had not felt before. Her children promised hope, a feeling that she might transform her life, and in so doing, leave the past behind her forever. Her children would be her salvation.

  Looking down into their sweet faces, she understood clearly now that her life would be one of atonement.

  Seven

  Josh and Macklin were sitting on the sofa playing Halo when Stella got home. She was tired; it was amazing how tiring a twelve hour shift could be, even one where you could read or nap a good part of the time.

  “Hey,” Macklin said as she walked in.

  “Take that, asshole,” Josh said, tapping his controller. Neither one looked at her. She threw her backpack down on a chair and walked into the kitchen.

  “Bring me a beer,” Josh shouted from the other room.

  “Me, too,” Macklin said.

  The kitchen was a mess, dirty dishes stacked in the sink, a jar of mayonnaise with the lid off sitting on the counter along with a packet of bologna and a nearly-empty sleeve of white bread. There was no dishwasher and Stella was accustomed to washing everything by hand. She washed dishes as she used them, but Josh didn’t, and on Wednesdays and Thursdays the sink filled quickly.

  She pulled three beers out of the refrigerator and went back in and sat down, setting the beers down on the coffee table next to an empty pizza box.

  “Was that dinner?” Stella said, looking at the pizza box.

  Josh kept his eyes on the game. “Yep,” he said.

  “Thanks for saving me a piece.”

  His eyes slid to her, then back to the game. “You weren’t here,” he said.