Anne was the short, brown-haired sister to two tall blondes, a nervous, pitifully conscientious child who always seemed to be ironing or washing or going off somewhere with an armload of books. Her small mouth was a serious line. Her large gray eyes were blank and dewy. She often looked as though she was about to walk into a wall.
Since Anne was the oldest by five years, their mother made her responsible for the care of Virginia and Betty on weekends, when she went into Lexington to clean houses for rich people. Anne accepted the responsibility with zeal. She rose early to get them eggs and milk for breakfast, she laid the table with exquisite care, wreathing the plates with chains of clover. Virginia and Betty complained when she dragged them out of bed to eat; they made fun of her neat breakfast rituals. They refused to help her with the dishes.
Anne dated only scholarly boys. She spent earnest, desperate hours on the porch with them, talking about life and holding hands. She’d bound up the stairs afterward, her eyes hotly intent, her face soft and blushing with pleasure. Her sisters would tease her, sometimes until she cried.
At forty-eight, Anne had become plump, homely and assured. Her eyes had become shrouded with loose skin and she wore large beige glasses. Her eyebrows had gotten thick, but her pale skin was fine and youthful.
During the visit it was Anne who made charming, animated conversation with Jarold and Magdalen. It was she who laughed and made them laugh on the canoe trips and barbecues. Virginia sat darkly silent and meek, watching Anne with interest and some love. She knew Anne was being supportive. Anne had been told that Virginia had not recovered well from Charles’s death, and had come to bring lightness to the darkened house. She was determined to cheer Virginia, just as she’d been determined to mop the floor or make them eat their breakfast.
She had approached Lily with the same unshakable desire to rectify.
Lily’s presence in Virginia’s life began as a series of late-night phone calls and wild letters from Anne. The letters were full of triple exclamation points, crazy dashes or dots instead of periods, violently underlined words and huge swirling capital letters with tails fanning across several lines. “Lily is so withdrawn and depressed.” “Lily is making some very strange friends.” “Lily is hostile.” “I think she may be taking drugs …” “Think she needs help — George is resisting — may need recommendation of a counselor.”
Virginia imagined the brat confronting her gentle sister. Another spoiled, pretty daughter who fancied herself a gypsy princess, barefooted, spangled with bright beads, breasts arrogantly unbound, cavalier in love. Like Magdalen.
“I want to marry Brian in a gypsy wedding,” said Magdalen. “I want to have it on the ridge behind the house. Our friends will make a circle around us and chant. I’ll be wearing a gown of raw silk with a light veil. And we’ll have a feast.”
“Does Brian want to marry you?” asked Virginia dryly.
Magdalen was seventeen. She had just returned home after a year’s absence. She carried a fat green knapsack on her back. Her feet were filthy. “I’m coming home to clear my head out,” she said.
She ate huge breakfasts with eggs and bacon, baked a lot of banana bread and lay around the den playing with tarot cards. Family life went on around her brooding, cross-legged frame. Her long blond hair hung in her face. She flitted around with annoying grace, her jeans swishing the floor, humming songs about ladies on islands.
After six months she “decided” to marry Brian, and went to Vancouver to tell him about it.
Virginia was glad to see her go. But, even when she was gone, insistent ghosts of Magdalen were everywhere: Magdalen at thirteen, sharp elbows on the breakfast table, slouching in an overlong cashmere sweater, her sulky lips ghoulish with thick white lipstick—“Mom, don’t be stupid, everybody wears it”; twelve-year-old Magdalen, radiant and triumphant, clutching an English paper graded triple A; Magdalen in the principal’s office, her bony white legs locked at the ankle, her head primly cocked—“You’ve got a bright little girl, Mrs. Heathrow. She should be moved at least one year ahead, possibly two”; Magdalen lazily pushing the cart at the A&P, wearing yellow terry-cloth shorts and rubber sandals, her chin tilted and her green cat eyes cool as she noticed the stock boys staring at her; fifteen-year-old Magdalen, caught on the couch, her long limbs knotted up with those of a long-haired college freshman; Magdalen, silent at the dinner table, picking at her food, her fragile nostrils palpitating disdainfully; Magdalen acting like an idiot on drugs, clutching her mother’s legs and moaning, “Oh, David, David, please make love to me”; Magdalen in the psychiatrist’s office, her slow white fingers dropping cigarette ashes on the floor; Jarold, his mouth like a piece of barbed wire, dragging a howling Magdalen up the stairs by her hair while Charles and Daniel watched, embarrassed and stricken.
For years Magdalen had overshadowed two splendid boys and her sister, Camille. Camille sat still for years, quietly watching the gaudy spectacle of her older sister. Then Magdalen ran away and Camille emerged, a gracefully narrow-shouldered, long-legged girl who wore her light-brown hair in a high, dancing ponytail. She was full of energy. She liked to wear tailored blouses and skirts, but in home economics she made herself a green-and-yellow snakeskin jumpsuit, and paraded around the house in it. She delighted her mother with her comments: “When boys tell me I’m a prude, I say, ‘You’re absolutely right. I cultivate it.’” She was not particularly pretty, but her alert, candid gaze and visible intelligence made her more attractive than most pretty girls. When Virginia began to pay attention to Camille, she could not understand how she had allowed Magdalen to absorb her so completely. Still, there were ghosts.
Magdalen had been gone for over a year when Anne called. It was a late summer night. Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching Cool Hand Luke on TV. The room was softly dark, except for the wavering white TV light. The picture window was open. The cool night air was clouded with rustlings and insect noises. Virginia sat with her pink sweater loose around her shoulders, against Jarold’s arm. Their drinks glimmered before them on the coffee table. Virginia’s cigarette glowed in a metal ashtray. Their sparerib dinner had been lovely.
Charles called her to the phone, and she felt a thrill of duty. What had happened to Lily now? She took her drink and cigarettes and left the gentle darkness, padding down the hall and through the swing door into the kitchen. The light was bright and there was a peaceful smell of old food. She shooed Charles, who was eating a dish of lime sherbet at the counter, and sat on the high red stool under the phone, her elbows on her knees. “What is it, honey?”
Lily had just been released from a mental hospital. “All she does is lie around like a lump, eating butter sandwiches and drinking tea like a fiend. I don’t think she can go back to school here, now that she’s been expelled. We’ve already tried sending her away to school and that didn’t work either. I don’t know what to do.”
Magdalen was somewhere in Canada. Camille was away at college. Charles and Daniel were always outside playing. “Why doesn’t Lily come and go to school here?” she said. “I’m fresh out of girls, you know. Send her on out.”
She went back into the den forty minutes later. Jarold was hunched forward on the couch with the exasperated expression that he always had when he was watching liberals on TV. He was so intent on Cool Hand Luke that he didn’t ask about the telephone call. She cuddled against him silently.
She meant to tell him about Lily after the movie was over, but she didn’t. She planned to tell him for several days. Then she realized she was putting it off because she knew he would say no. So she decided not to tell him anything. All week, she fantasized about Lily, and what it would be like to have her there.