“Are you all right?” asked Alice.
Delphine stared at her a moment longer, and then wiped her face with her sleeve, and then patted the bed next to her.
“Come here,” she said, when Alice hesitated. And then she complied, walking slowly to the bed, sitting down next to her sister. She had not been so close to her, alone, since they were teenagers.
“I’m sorry, Delphine,” said Alice, and then—shamefully—she hiccuped.
“For what, dear?” said Delphine.
“They weren’t being very nice,” said Alice.
“Oh, that,” said Delphine. “I don’t care a groat about that.” She waved her hand as if shooing a fly. “People like them will seek a collective target almost automatically. People of our class, I mean. We were bred to do it. We’ve been doing it since birth.”
She paused.
“Well, some of us have, anyway,” she said.
Delphine reached for a glass of water on her nightstand. Drank from it. And then, as if reading Alice’s mind, she passed it to Alice, who took it into her hands and gratefully drained it.
“What were you crying about?” Alice said, when she’d finished.
“George,” said Delphine. “I’m always crying about George. He’s why I accepted this invitation. I thought being in this place would help me feel close to him.”
Alice nodded. Again, she hiccuped.
“Give me that,” said Delphine, and Alice handed her the glass, and Delphine stood and disappeared from the room for a moment, and then returned with more water.
“Drink it,” she said. “You’ll thank yourself in the morning.”
Alice did as she was instructed. She sometimes felt that her entire life was either following orders from those above her in station, or giving them to those below her. Only with her son did she have a connection that existed outside any hierarchy of authority. She loved him plainly, without condition or complexity. And she believed he loved her the same way.
“Is it working?” she said to Delphine, when she’d finished.
“Is what working?”
“Does being here make you feel closer to George?”
“No,” said Delphine, and laughed once. “Not really.”
Then she looked at Alice more intently than she’d ever been looked at in her life.
“Are you happy here, Bunny?”
Alice shifted. “Of course,” she said.
“I mean really happy. I know you love Bear, and he’s darling. Of course you would. But Peter? Does he treat you well?”
Alice nodded, silently. “Of course,” she said—more quietly this time.
Delphine sighed. “I’ve always felt guilty, you know,” she said. “In a way I feel I set you up with him. But I’ve worried since then that you’d be in over your head. George and I both thought he’d take care of you. Now, I’m not certain you’re a match.”
At this, Alice bristled. “What do you mean?”
“Only that he can be very inflexible, Bunny. And you’re such a dear. I hope you stand up to him, once in a while. I hope you’re getting what you want from this life, too.”
Don’t cry, Alice thought. To cry would be to fail some test her older sister was giving her. Don’t cry.
It was useless. Tears came to her eyes and spilled over.
“Oh, Alice,” said Delphine. She tried to take one of Alice’s hands in hers, but Alice snatched it away. She wanted to leave. She wanted to stand up and walk out of the room. She’d been wrong to feel sorry for Delphine—she remembered only now that her sister could be direct to the point of cruelty.
“Listen,” said Delphine. “The best part of being married to George Barlow for a decade was learning that it’s all right not to do everything that’s expected of you all of the time. This is a notion that has been positively liberating for me. The way we were raised—the way our parents raised us, I mean—it trained us to think it’s our job to be absolutely correct in everything that we do. But it isn’t, Bunny. Do you see? We can have our own thoughts, our own inner lives. We can do as we please, if we only learn not to care so much about what people think.”
Alice’s discomfort was increasing. A light had gone on in her sister’s eyes; she looked, to Alice, a tiny bit mad.
Still, her sister continued.
“The interesting thing about George,” she said, “was that he woke up to this fact long ago—the idea that one is free to do what one wishes in life, expectations be damned—and yet he never let this rupture his friendship with his old group. The people in there, I mean.” She tilted her head in the direction of the main room. “Since he died,” she said, “I’ve been trying to be more like him in that one regard: to be open to all kinds. Even them.”
More distant peals of laughter. Alice drank from her glass.
“Sometimes,” Delphine continued, “I find myself sort of studying them, instead of engaging with them as a friend would. As George always did. It’s a terrible tendency I have. Do you know,” she said, “that I’ve enrolled in the anthropology program at Barnard in the fall? It’s the only thing that’s keeping me alive. Thinking about finally getting my degree.”
Then Delphine turned to her. “Alice, do you ever think about going to college?”
“Oh,” said Alice. “No. No, I have Bear to take care of.”
“How old is he, though? Five? Won’t he be going to school in the fall?”
