“And is ‘Aunt Lora’ married?”
“No. There’s just her and me.”
“What happened on the lake?”
“—it happened in the boat, on the lake. Daddy was driving the boat, they said. He came for me too but — I don’t know if that was that time or some other time. I’ve been told, but I don’t know.”
Tears were streaming down Sybil’s face now; she could not maintain her composure. But she managed to keep from hiding her face in her hands. She could hear Mr. Starr’s quickened breath, and she could hear the rasping sound of the charcoal against the paper.
Mr. Starr said gently, “You must have been a little girl when — whatever it was — happened.”
“I wasn’t little to myself. I just was.”
“A long time ago, was it?”
“Yes. No. It’s always — there.”
“Always where, dear child?”
“Where I, I — see it.”
“See what?”
“I — don’t know.”
“Do you see your mommy? Was she a beautiful woman? — did she resemble you?”
“Leave me alone — I don’t know.”
Sybil began to cry. Mr. Starr, repentant, or wary, went immediately silent.
Someone — it must have been bicyclists — passed behind them, and Sybil was aware of being observed, no doubt quizzically: a girl leaning forward across a stone ledge, face wet with tears, and a middle-aged man on his haunches busily sketching her. An artist and his model. An amateur artist, an amateur model. But how strange, that the girl was crying! And the man so avidly recording her tears!
Sybil, eyes closed, felt herself indeed a conduit of emotion — she was emotion. She stood upon the ground but she floated free. Mr. Starr was close beside her, anchoring her, but she floated free. A veil was drawn aside, and she saw a face — Mommy’s face — a pretty heart-shaped face — something both affectionate and petulant in that face — how young Mommy was! — and her hair up, brown-blond lovely hair, tied back in a green silk scarf. Mommy hurried to the phone as it rang, Mommy lifted the receiver. Yes? yes? oh hello — for the phone was always ringing, and Mommy was always hurrying to answer it, and there was always that expectant note to her voice, that sound of hope, surprise— Oh, hello.
Sybil could no longer maintain her pose. She said, “Mr. Starr, I am through for the day, I am sorry.” And, as the startled man looked after her, she walked away. He began to call after her, to remind her that he hadn’t paid her, but, no, Sybil had had enough of modeling for the day. She broke into a run, she escaped.
8. A Long Time Ago...
A girl who’d married too young: was that it?
That heart-shaped face, the petulant pursed lips. The eyes widened in mock-surprise: Oh, Sybil, what have you done...?
Stooping to kiss little Sybil, little Sybil giggling with pleasure and excitement, lifting her chubby baby arms to be raised in Mommy’s and carried in to bed.
Oh honey, you’re too big for that now. Too heavy!
Perfume wafting from her hair, loose to her shoulders, pale golden-brown, wavy. A rope of pearls around her neck. A low-cut summer dress, a bright floral print, like wallpaper. Mommy!
And Daddy, where was Daddy?
He was gone, then he was back. He’d come to her, little Sybil, to take her in the boat, the motor was loud, whining, angry as a bee buzzing and darting around her head, so Sybil was crying, and someone came, and Daddy went away again. She’d heard the motor rising, then fading. The churning of the water she couldn’t see from where she stood, and it was night too, but she wasn’t crying and no one scolded.
She could remember Mommy’s face, though they never let her see it again. She couldn’t remember Daddy’s face.
Grandma said, You’ll be all right, poor little darling, you’ll be all right, and Aunt Lora too, hugging her tight, Forever now you’ll be all right, Aunt Lora promised. It was scary to see Aunt Lora crying: Aunt Lora never cried, did she?
Lifting little Sybil in her strong arms to carry her in to bed but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same again.
9. The Gift
Sybil is standing at the edge of the ocean.
The surf crashes and pounds about her... water streams up the sand, nearly wetting her feet. What a tumult of cries, hidden within the waves! She feels like laughing, for no reason. You know the reason: he has returned to you.
The beach is wide, clean, stark, as if swept with a giant broom. A landscape of dreamlike simplicity. Sybil has seen it numberless times but today its beauty strikes her as new. Your father: your father they told you was gone forever: he has returned to you. The sun is a winter sun, but warm, dazzling. Poised in the sky as if about to rapidly descend. Dark comes early because, after all, it is winter here, despite the warmth. The temperature will drop twenty degrees in a half-hour. He never died: he has been waiting for you all these years. And now he has returned.
Sybil begins to cry. Hiding her face, her burning face, in her hands. She stands flatfooted as a little girl and the surf breaks and splashes around her and now her shoes are wet, her feet, she’ll be shivering in the gathering chill. Oh, Sybil!
When Sybil turned, it was to see Mr. Starr sitting on the beach. He seemed to have lost his balance and fallen — his cane lay at his feet, he’d dropped the sketch pad, his sporty golfing cap sat crooked on his head. Sybil, concerned, asked what was wrong, — she prayed he hadn’t had a heart attack! — and Mr. Starr smiled weakly and told her quickly that he didn’t know, he’d become dizzy, felt the strength go out of his legs, and had had to sit. “I was overcome suddenly, I think, by your emotion! — whatever it was,” he said. He made no effort to get to his feet but sat there awkwardly, damp sand on his trousers and shoes. Now Sybil stood over him and he squinted up at her, and there passed between them a current of — was it understanding? sympathy? recognition?
Sybil laughed to dispel the moment and put out her hand for Mr. Starr to take, so that she could help him stand. He laughed too, though he was deeply moved, and embarrassed. “I’m afraid I make too much of things, don’t I?” he said. Sybil tugged at his hand (how big his hand was! how strong the fingers, closing about hers!) and, as he heaved himself to his feet, grunting, she felt the startling weight of him — an adult man, and heavy.
Mr. Starr was standing close to Sybil, not yet relinquishing her hand. He said, “The experiment was almost too successful, from my perspective! I’m almost afraid to try again.”
Sybil smiled uncertainly up at him. He was about the age her own father would have been — wasn’t he? It seemed to her that a younger face was pushing out through Mr. Starr’s coarse, sallow face. The hooklike quizzical scar on his forehead glistened oddly in the sun.
Sybil politely withdrew her hand from Mr. Starr’s and dropped her eyes. She was shivering — today, she had not been running at all, had come to meet Mr. Starr for purposes of modeling, in a blouse and skirt, as he’d requested. She was bare-legged and her feet, in sandals, were wet from the surf.
Sybil said, softly, as if she didn’t want to be heard, “I feel the same way, Mr. Starr.”
They climbed a flight of wooden steps to the top of the bluff, and there was Mr. Starr’s limousine, blackly gleaming, parked a short distance away. At this hour of the afternoon the park was well populated; there was a gay giggling bevy of high school girls strolling by, but Sybil took no notice. She was agitated, still; weak from crying, yet oddly strengthened, elated too. You know who he is. You always knew. She was keenly aware of Mr. Starr limping beside her, and impatient with his chatter. Why didn’t he speak directly to her, for once?