“But you and Lewis, the others, are all doing it because you must, and she is doing it because she wants to. She wants to be alone! She looks for excuses to be alone, and she’s working on other things, not just the trip drawings. Make her let you in that room, let you see what else she’s been doing!”
Ben nodded slowly. “I’ll see her today,” he said.
After Miriam had gone, Ben studied the sketches again, and he smiled slightly. She certainly had captured them, he thought. Cruelly, coldly, and accurately. He folded the paper and put it in his leather pouch, and thought about Molly and the others.
He had lied about Thomas. He wasn’t back to normal, and might never be normal again. He had become almost totally dependent on his brothers. He refused to be separated from them even momentarily, and he slept with one or another of them every night. Jed was somewhat better, but he too showed a need for constant reassurance.
Lewis seemed virtually untouched by the voyage. He had stepped out of this life and back into it almost casually. Harvey was nervous, but less so than he had been a week ago, much less than when he first rejoined his brothers. Eventually he would be well.
And he, Ben. What about Ben? he asked himself mockingly. He was recovered, he decided.
He went to talk to Molly. She had a room in the hospital administration wing. He tapped lightly at the door, then opened it before she answered. They so seldom closed doors, rarely in the day, but it seemed natural for her to have closed her door, just as he felt it natural to close his when he was working. He stood for a moment looking at her. Had she slid something under the paper that lay on her drawing board? He couldn’t be certain. She sat with her back to the window, the board tilted before her.
“Hello, Ben.”
“Can you spare a few minutes?”
“Yes. Miriam sent you, didn’t she? I thought she would.”
“Your sisters are very concerned about you.”
She looked down at the table and touched a paper.
She was different, Ben thought. No one would ever mistake her for Miriam, or another of the sisters. He came around the table and looked at the drawing. Her sketch pad was open to a page filled with small, hastily done line drawings of buildings, ruined streets, hills of rubble. She was doing a full page of one section of Washington. For a moment he had a curious feeling of being there, seeing the devastation, the tragedy of a lost era; Molly had the power to put images from his mind onto paper. He turned and looked out the window at the hills, which were splashes of color now with the sun full on them.
Watching him, Molly thought: neither Thomas nor Jed would talk with her at all. Thomas shied away as if she carried plague, and Jed remembered other things, urgent things he had to do. Harvey talked too much, and said nothing. And Lewis was too busy.
But she could talk with Ben, she thought. They could relive the trip with each other, they could try to understand what had happened, for whatever had happened to her had happened to him. She could see it in his face, in the way he had turned so abruptly from her drawing. Something lay within him, ready to awaken, ready to whisper to him, if he would let it, just as it lay within her and changed the world she saw. It spoke to her, not in words, but in colors, in symbols that she didn’t understand, in dreams, in visions that passed fleetingly through her mind. She watched him where he stood, with the sun shining on him. Light fell on his arm in a way that made each hair gleam golden, a forest of golden trees on a brown plain. He shifted and the twilight on the plain turned the trees black.
“Little sister,” he began, and she smiled and shook her head.
“Don’t call me that,” she said. “Call me . . . whatever you want, but not that.” She had disturbed him; a frown came and went, leaving his face unreadable. “Molly,” she said. “Just call me Molly.”
But now he couldn’t think what it was he had started to say to her. The difference was in her expression, he thought suddenly. Physically she was identical to Miriam, to the other sisters, only the expression was changed. She looked more mature, harder? That wasn’t it, but he thought it was close to what he meant. Determined. Deeper.
“I want to see you on a regular basis for a while,” Ben said abruptly. He hadn’t started to say that at all, hadn’t even thought of it until he said it.
Molly nodded slowly.
Still he hesitated, puzzled about what else he might say.
“You should set the time,” Molly said gently.
“Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, immediately after lunch,” he said brusquely. He made a note in his book.
“Starting today? Or should I wait until Monday?”
She was mocking him, he thought angrily, and snapped his book shut. He wheeled about and strode to the door. “Today,” he said.
Her voice held him at the door. “Do you think I’m losing my mind, Ben? Miriam does.”
He stood with his hand on the knob, not looking at her. The question jolted him. He should reassure her, he knew, say something soothing, something about Miriam’s great concern, something. “Immediately after lunch,” he said harshly, and let himself out.
Molly retrieved the paper she had slid under the Washington drawing and studied it for a time with her eyes narrowed. It was the valley, distorted somewhat so that she could get in the old mill, the hospital, and the Sumner house, all lined up in a way that suggested relatedness. It wasn’t right, however, and she couldn’t decide what was wrong. There were faint marks where the people were to go in the drawing, a cluster of them at the mill, more at the entrance to the hospital, a group in the field behind the old house. She erased the marks and sketched in, very lightly, a single figure, a man, who stood in the field. She drew another figure, a woman, walking between the hospital and the house. It was the size of everything, she thought. The buildings, especially the mill, were so large, the figures so small, dwarfed by the things they had made. She thought of the skeletons she had seen in Washington; a body reduced to bones was smaller still. She would make her figures emaciated, almost skeletal, stark . . .
Suddenly she snatched up the paper, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into the wastecan. She buried her face in her arms.
They would have a “Ceremony for the Lost” for her, she thought distantly. The sisters would be comforted by the others, and the party would last until dawn as they all demonstrated their solidarity in the face of grievous loss. In the light of the rising sun the remaining sisters would join hands, forming a circle, and after that she would cease to exist for them. No longer would she torment them with her new strangeness, her apartness. No one had the right to bring unhappiness to the brothers or sisters, she thought. No one had the right to exist if such existence was a threat to the family. That was the law.
She joined her sisters for lunch in the cafeteria, and tried to share their gaiety as they talked of the coming-of-age party for the Julie sisters that night.
“Remember,” Meg said, laughing mischievously, “no matter how many offers we get, we refuse all bracelets. And whoever sees the Clark brothers first slips on a bracelet before he can stop her.” She laughed deep in her throat. Twice they had tried to get to the Clark brothers and twice other sisters had beaten them. Tonight they were separating, to take up posts along the path to the auditorium to lie in wait for the young Clark brothers, whose cheeks were still downy, who had crossed the threshold into adulthood only that autumn.
“They’ll all cry ‘Unfair!’ ” Miriam said, protesting feebly.
“I know,” Meg said, laughing again.
Melissa laughed with her and Martha smiled, looking at Molly. “I’m to be at the first hedge,” she said. “You wait by the path to the mill.” Her eyes sparkled. “I’ve got the bracelets all ready. They’re red, with six little silver bells tied in place. How he’ll jingle, whoever gets the bracelet!” The six bells meant all the sisters were inviting all the brothers.