Free A Reckoning by May Sarton Page A

conquest taking off his coat in the hall, and deciding that whoever it was was far too ugly, not tall enough, or just plain too queer to be really the “great man” their mother searched for all her life as though for the holy grail.
    Poor Pa, Laura thought, but had he suffered? Sybille’s marriage had been wrapped in such a gauze of illusions and self-deception on her part that it was impossible to extricate the truth from the play. There was the privately published book of passionate love poems that Sybille had written Dwight when he was in the air force in World War I and they had been separated for two years. There was really no doubt in anyone’s mind that they loved each other. They flirted outrageously across the dinner table, walked up and down the terrace before dinner talking so intently that the gong had sometimes to be sounded twice before they heard it, and wrote immense letters when they were apart. Yet Sybille had left her husband for two years to nurse Laura, an act that appeared to Cousin Hope and to their friends in general one of absolute, self-immolating heroism, and to Laura herself an imprisonment not only by illness but by something she dreaded even to think about, a kind of complete possession by her mother, as though she were a small infant. And what had Pa really thought about this? He drove to Davos whenever he could get away for a day or two, bringing them every luxury he could imagine—elegant bed jackets for Laura, gold slippers for Sybille, marrons glacés, a case of champagne once. But he never seemed quite at ease in their intensely feminine world, or for that matter, in the concentrated atmosphere of illness, the gossip about doctors, the implacable routines. Laura suspected that however much he had looked forward to seeing them, he was rather glad to get away again and to go back to his own world of diplomats and economic crises, and the sub rosa attempts to help the intellectuals and radicals whom Mussolini was relentlessly imprisoning when they could not be silenced. Laura suspected that her father, with her mother’s complete accord, took some risks.
    But why had Sybille insisted on changing her whole life around this illness? That remained a mystery. Guilt, perhaps. Did she think she had neglected a beloved child? Or after the painful episode of Jo’s infatuation with Alicia, had she experienced a surge of over protectiveness? Must I always be critical of Sybille? Laura asked herself. If she turned to George Herbert now, it was because Sybille had read so much poetry aloud to her in those years, as well as Virginia Woolf, and, curiously enough, Trollope. She could hear at this instant her mother’s husky yet musical laugh. How they had laughed sometimes, laughed till tears streamed down their cheeks!
    Her mother’s taste and acuity, passions and dreams were stamped on her consciousness. There was no denying that. A great “personality” as Jim Goodwin had called her did this to her children. Laura’s own children, at least, had not had to fit themselves into a heroic mold.
    What she hoped she and Charles had done, what they had tried to do, was to create a safe, warm world in which their children could grow rather freely—but what parent ever succeeds? The very safety and usualness had created revolt.
    Laura, invaded as she was these days by memory and a need to reckon with everything before it was too late, found these ruminations tiring. It was really a good idea to be pulled out of them into the immediate present of little Laurie and a tenth birthday.
    She drove up to the brightly lit house that evening full of joy and expectation.
    Ann opened the door. “Come in, come in, dear Laura,” she said and kissed her. “It’s ages since we’ve seen you!”
    Laurie flung her arms around Laura’s waist and hugged her so hard Laura nearly lost her balance.
    “Happy birthday, my treasure! This is a happy day!”
    “Guess what?” Laurie said, pulling her into the living room