Sister Wolf Read online

  She could not keep her distance from the blind children, however, as much as she might want to. They knew their way through the terraces and the lemon arbors. They strayed in groups on the reachless lawns below, like the sheep that the Bishop had kept to mow the grass. Marit thought of deer when she thought of the Meyerling children, the fallow deer in the Dangerfield Zoo. The herd of five had been beaten with chains by an unknown vandal. Marit had driven to the zoo the day the newspaper story had appeared. Only two deer were left. Three were critically wounded in the sick bay. They were like fairy deer, quite defenseless in their pen, which had low sides and gave them no protection from their attacker. Perhaps their small size and helplessness had provoked his cruelty. They had fleet legs and light frames for outrunning predators, but they had nowhere to run in that tight, low pen. She had sat for hours on a bench across from their pen: their frailty made her feel tentative; they would have to be handled gently, for fear of bruising them. A person unbalanced or mad, watching them as she did, might experience that tentativeness as an itch crawling on his skin. His confusion might become frustration and turn into rage.

  The fallow deer were like the blind. But the pity the blind inspired in Marit made her hesitant and clumsy, so that she mistimed her instructions when she was guiding them. She would tell them to step up on the curb just too soon or too late. They would miss their footing, and turn on her when they stumbled.

  Marit pitied blind people, but she was also frightened of them. The deaf became fierce; they resisted their handicap. The blind had no choice but to surrender to their condition; they had to learn to live by a new set of rules entirely. Their submissiveness lent them an aspect of humility that she did not trust. The blind were set apart, like saints, but their saintliness was an accident, not a choice. Marit suspected that the blind had invented a secret code and language, that they met by themselves and laid plans for the undoing of the sighted world. She did not know where their meeting places might be, but she felt that if there were such places they should be found and rooted out with the same purpose that inspires those horticultural zealots who pour kerosene down into mole holes. If the blind were to gather in large numbers, their hidden rage would become their collective resource. Because they could not see, they had an edge on clairvoyance and telepathy. They would gather, focus their rage, and beam out its killing rays.

  It seemed to Marit that the blind had no spiritual guidance. They were only taught how to measure out space, how to learn the measurements of the material world so that they could “pass” for sighted. The very process of their rehabilitation taught them to dissemble. Their loss of sight could develop into extra-sightedness, but they were never told that this talent could be used for good or for evil.

  Marit had stopped in her tracks. Her head hung down and her arms hung at her sides. She was flicking her thumbnail inside the nail of her ring finger, making a regular sound like the timer on a homemade bomb. A voice up above, at the house, made her lift her head. Lola was striding down the hill to get her. She was as cross as two sticks.

  “You do this every year. You think you’re so brave, making yourself go, but I have to drag you. You should resign; they have plenty of trustees.”

  She advanced on Marit, who was standing fixed to the path. There were leaves in her hair. Lola fluffed up her hair and began to pick them out.

  “What’s this sticky mess on your cheek? You look as if you’ve been eating your grandmother.”

  “I have awful thoughts,” said Marit. “I hate my thoughts.”

  “If you cry, you’ll just get red eyes and look more like an animal. Now hustle on up to the house and get cleaned off.”

  Marit stood in front of her closet, riffling through the clothes hangers. She took out a pair of white flannel slacks that had belonged to Vlado. She had had his trousers cut down to her size, and all his silk shirts and blazers. The shirts had red coronets worked into the cuffs.

  “Are you trying to rile me?” asked Lola. She grabbed the white flannels away from Marit and threw them on the bed. “You can look like a girl this once. Get out the black floral.”

  “I will not wear stockings,” said Marit. “I will not be bound around the waist.”

  “You are a lady, and a trustee, and you’re going to act like one.”

  It was easier to give in to Lola than to make a fuss. Lola pulled off her clothes in swift strokes, like a nurse removing bandages. She dropped the full-skirted dress over Marit’s head and stuffed her arms into the sleeves. She pushed a garter belt and stockings into her hands, and walked her to the bathroom.

  “Wash your face, now, and fix your hair. Bend over to brush it the way I showed you. I want you to look all fresh and flouncy for your new beau.”

  Marit made Lola drive Luba’s old Continental to Meyerling. She sat as stiff as a doll in the passenger seat and looked straight ahead.

  “Are you cross with me, darlin’?” asked Lola. “Or do you have a stiff neck?”

  “I feel as if I’m made of glass. When I get dressed up, if a breeze blows a hair out of place, the whole image is broken.”

  “God made me a lady and you a tomboy,” Lola sighed. “I think he got us scrambled.”

  “You stick by me at the fair,” said Marit. “I don’t want you to leave my side.”

  “I’d like to be helpful, honey. Can’t you bear in mind that they’re only piss-and-vinegar kids?”

  “They make me feel doomed,” said Marit.

  Lola shook her head. She turned right at the Meyerling gate and followed the arrows that pointed toward the car park.

  It was a blue day, without clouds, and the light had a seaside glare. The crowd was large, and the women wore straw hats and white gloves, as if they had been invited to a garden party. Folding tables lined the wide gravel paths of the Bishop’s lemon garden, displaying the upper school’s art show, the middle school’s raised geological map of the Berkshire Mountains, and the clay ashtrays, lumpy pot holders, and pewter bowls made by the craft classes.

  Around the basin of the fountain at the center of the garden were a group of cages pinned with red and blue ribbons. Inside the cages crouched New Zealand white and red satin rabbits, which had won the ribbons at the last Hart County Fair. Marit forgot her nerves and kneeled down to look at the rabbits. A little boy came up beside her and offered her a scrap of lettuce. It dismayed and touched her that he had known where she was kneeling, that he had held out the lettuce at the level of her hand. He looked like an ordinary boy, rather fat and pug-nosed, the kind of boy whose shirttails are always straggling out of his pants.

  She pushed the leaf through the wire and twitched it at the rabbit. The rabbit jumped to the back of the cage and sat there shivering.

  “They scare easy,” said the little boy. “Raccoons would be a lot more fun.”

  Marit was startled by his response, but it made her smile.

  “Why do you keep them?” she asked.

  “Mr. Dufton says they’re safe for blind children because they’re gentle.”

  “They’re supposed to be gentle,” said Marit, “but you have scratches all over your arms.”

  “Oh, don’t tell him, please promise,” said the boy. “I told him I was scratched by blackberries. I’d rather have rabbits than nothing.”

  Marit took his fat hand in both of hers.

  “I promise,” she said. “All animals scratch sometimes. It’s because they can’t tell us what they want.”

  Until she saw the rabbit cages, Marit had kept a clawlike grip on Lola’s arm. Now she turned around and looked up and down the walks, but Lola was not at any of the display tables. There was always a feeding trough at the fair, so it would not be a chore to find her. Down on the lawn was a yellow tent with the children’s bakery banner drooping between two poles in front of it. The bakery was Mr. Dufton’s most publicized scheme; it had made his reputation as a therapist and a pedagogue. “These little folks must learn the useful arts,” he had confided to journalists; “they w
ill be leaving our haven for the bitter world of work.” There was no chance that these children of the rich would ever work for their living, but no one, reporters or trustees, had questioned his vocational program. During a lull in one board meeting, Marit had suggested that he expand the program to include auto mechanics and television repair. She had been reproached at length for her sarcasm, and quite rightly. The bakery was a success, and even made a profit. The children had learned to run it by themselves; every student, big or little, worked a daily shift. They made two kinds of cookies, peanut applesaucers and chocolate snickerdoodles, and a kind of hard oaten health bread that had to be cut with a carving knife. County grocery stores sent in a weekly order, and souvenir shops displayed the baked goods alongside pine-needle pillows and autumn leaves laminated in plastic.

  Marit left the chubby keeper standing guard over his prize rabbits, and walked down to the tent across the grass, instead of by the pathway. She poked her head into the tent, looked around, and caught Lola doing an amazing thing. Four adolescents manned the long table, a plank set on sawhorses. Besides the giant nut-studded cookies, they were selling ice cream and lemonade. Lola had bought a cup of vanilla, which she held in one hand. With her free hand, she was spooning out the ice cream and spreading it over the surface of a saucer-sized cookie which was clamped in her jaws. She could hardly greet Marit in that state, so she waved her spoon.

  “I ask and beg of you,” said Marit, laughing. “Here, give me the cup.”

  Lola bit off one section of iced cookie and munched it down.

  “It’s a good place for hogging,” she whispered. “None of them can see me.”

  They left the tent and continued down the lawn, heading for the tennis courts at the bottom of the slope. The tennis courts were likely to be deserted; only the teachers used them, and they were busy supervising the fair. Lola wanted to smoke a cigarette off by herself. She had a code about smoking. Indoors was acceptable, except between courses at a dinner party. Outdoors, in a public place, was incorrect. There was a special clause in the code for New York City: one never lit up on the flossy sections of Park Avenue.

  “You’re the girl nobody knows,” said Marit, who loved to devil her. “You’re nine-tenths underwater, like an iceberg. Who could guess that you like to kiss girls and eat like a pig? Would you like to keep our friendship a secret, too? Would that give you a charge?”

  “Be sweet,” said Lola, squeezing Marit’s waist. “It’s too nice a day to be told I’m a yellow coward.”

  “Pick up the pace,” said Marit, “and don’t look right or left. I’ve got Horty to starboard and I’m not sure whether she’s seen us.”

  “Where is she?” asked Lola.

  “More or less up by the tent.”

  “We might lose her,” said Lola, “except that I’m a magnet to Horty. She thinks I know all about Life.”

  “Oh, ho,” Marit teased her. “Is Horty an armchair sapphic?”

  Horty Waite was a matron of their age, who wanted to know them. Horty had the soul of a tag-along. She must have been the original wait-for-me child. Besides a growing number of streaky-blond sons and daughters, she bred bassets—brindle bassets—which were registered on the rolls of the Northeastern Kennel Club. Horty was floppy and mournful herself, from being left out of things. Poor Horty was usually pregnant, but even when she wasn’t, she wore two damp spots on her shirtfronts. This state of perpetual lactation was not attractive. It was Lola’s theory that she also nursed the bassets.

  Horty was a nice enough egg, not so much dim as simple. In any case, her brain had been wired wrong; there were odd short circuits and misfirings in the system. It was just as well that she never listened to what she was saying. If she had, Lola and Marit would have been deprived of a favorite pleasure. They had begun to keep lists of the curious dysphasic things that Horty said, but dysphasia is a pathological condition, and Horty’s scrambling of commonplace images was more of a gift, like being able to make a piece of chalk write on a blackboard by itself. “That whelp was covered with eczema from toe to foot.” “Muffet turned on me and I had to fight her off hoof, nail, and claw.” “I raised that bitch from a puppy; I can’t just give her the hatchet!” It wasn’t malice that inspired their collecting; it was pure delight. But every nugget of gold cost them two or three hours of dog talk, and today they did not feel like paying so steep a price.

  The lawn sloped down to a miniature bluff overlooking the courts. This steep bank was planted with yew trees, pruned flat across the tops, and grown so thickly together that their branches formed a kind of screen. Marit led the way around the yew screen and turned sideways to make the descent. All at once she dropped to the ground like a soldier under fire. On her elbows she crawled back behind the yews and hissed at Lola. She sat down and put her head between her knees, in the position that is believed to stave off a faint. Lola was stunned. She began to move toward the edge of the yews.

  “Get in here. They can see you,” Marit hissed.

  Lola looked down at the courts. A man was sitting on one of the benches, facing away from them. He had his arm around a girl, or woman, whose head was bowed.

  “I admire your discretion,” said Lola, “but I fail to see why you’re acting like an afflicted ape.”

  Marit was sitting with her arms over her ears, rocking and whimpering.

  “I feel sick,” she kept saying, “I feel sick. I’m going to be sick.”

  With her arms still wrapped around her head, she looked up at Lola. Her face was pinched and monkey-like, too, and her eyes were enormous.

  “Is he kissing her?” she begged. “Are they kissing? Look and see if they’re kissing!”

  Like a true friend, Lola entered into Marit’s mood. She forced a section of yew apart and made herself a peephole.

  “For what it’s worth,” said Lola, peering through it, “he’s patting her head.”

  “What else?” pleaded Marit. “Don’t stop watching. I have to know!”

  “No,” said Lola. She let the branches snap back and crouched down next to Marit. She shook her by the chin. Tears were streaming out of Marit’s eyes, which were Screwed tight shut.

  “Open your eyes,” ordered Lola, “and look at me. I want you to stop this. You’re having some kind of a fit. Anyone but me would think you were crazy.”

  “I feel killed,” whispered Marit. “I could kill him.”

  Lola pulled Marit into her arms and held her close.

  “Oh, honey, I am so sorry. I’m not very swift. You had me so rattled that I never made the connection.”

  All the breath went out of Marit. She nearly toppled Lola, who had to adjust her footing to support her.

  “I’m a dupe. I’m a dupe and a patsy. I want to die.”

  “That’s enough, now.” Lola made her sit up. She put her hands under Marit’s armpits and yanked her to her feet. With one arm around her, she made her walk a few steps in one direction. Then she turned her around and made her walk the opposite way. When Marit seemed to be standing on her own, she led her up to the yew screen. She opened the peephole again, and made Marit hold back the branches on her side.

  “You do the looking,” she said. Marit hung her head. “Be your own voyeur; I dare you. Now tell me exactly what you see.”

  Marit opened and closed her mouth, but no sound came out.

  “Stop impersonating a retard,” snapped Lola. “Tell me what they’re doing.”

  “Lola,” said Marit in a whisper, “she’s really young. She has her hair in pigtails. Lola? There’s a book on her lap. She has her hands on the pages.”

  “Braille,” confirmed Lola. “Where is he?”

  “He …” Marit’s voice began to falter.

  “Say ‘Gabriel,’” Lola directed, “if that’s who he is.”

  “Gabriel”—Marit paused, for the space of two beats, or three—“is on the bench. At the other end, with his arms folded. He is tapping his foot.”

  “That’s exciting,” said Lola. “I’m
just sweating from excitement. Have they got their clothes on?”

  “You lay off me,” said Marit, and aimed an elbow at Lola’s ribs. She pressed her lips together, trying not to smile, but the smile got the better of her. Her face was a regular mess. She had blackened her eyelashes and the Mascara was running down her cheeks and collecting in raccoon patches under her eyes.

  “I have to sit down again,” she said. “I’m all right, but I feel like I’ve been caught in a rockslide.”

  “You also look it,” said Lola, stepping up to the peephole. “I’ll take over here. I might take up spying as a hobby.”

  Marit lay back on the grass, with one hand on her chest and the other on her abdomen. She filled her lungs with air and let the breath out very slowly, until she could feel her belly caving in. She thought that ten deep, rolling breaths would make her calmer. Deep breathing had worked for Vlado in 1949, when he learned that the People’s Republic of Hungary had annexed the Deym lands and turned the castle into a reconditioning center for political prisoners. In order to sleep at night, Vlado had hired a Yoga master. The sessions were held behind the double sliding doors on the living-room floor. Marit, at age fifteen, had been eager to learn. She might have become more proficient in the discipline if Yogi Nebelsine’s elastic trunks had not been so brief or his head so domed, or the hair on his back so pubic and abundant.

  “Ho ho,” said Lola, startling Marit in mid-exhalation. “She may be young, but she’s choice. Full of tactile values. All that downy peach bloom; the French have a better word—duvet. My, I do love a swelling calf and a tapering ankle.”

  Lola had craned her neck partway through the branches. Marit had an urge to get up and push her all the way through.

  “Can’t you leave me be? Do you want to get me more stirred up?”