Sisters (8 page)

Sophie remembered when her
own flow had begun. She felt obliged to tell her grandmother, had
gone looking for her, not because she wanted to tell her, but because
she thought she should. Deer Woman had been sewing a pair of
moccasins when Sophie found her. "The bleeding--it's begun for
me," she blurted out.

Deer Woman put her work
down. "My little Sophie--not so little now." She smiled a
melancholy smile. "With my tribe you would go to the 'hunagen'
now."

Sophie felt herself tighten
inside. Her grandmother meant well, but she was always talking about
things that had nothing to do with Sophie's life. And she had talked
about them fondly, when to Sophie they sounded queer and awful. "I
wouldn't go," she said.

"To the menstrual
lodge? But why?"

"They couldn't make me
go. Why should I be sent away like that?"

For a moment her
grandmother didn't say anything. Then, gently: "It isn't
punishment. It never was for me. It was something to look forward to.
Often there were babies there, and always friends and talk and
laughter..." Her voice trailed off as if she realized her words
were useless. After a moment she lifted her arms, waggling her
fingers, and Sophie walked over and let herself be drawn into her
grandmother's embrace. But inside she held herself rigid and aloof.
The world Deer Woman spoke of seemed alien and unattractive, and she
wanted no part of it.

"There!" Esther
announced. "I've got everyone I need in this one. Come see, Aunt
Sophie."

Sophie knelt on the floor
beside her and saw that Esther had arranged the pictures from the
mantelpiece into a family tree. At the top was a photograph of Joe
and Deer Woman in middle age, both of them looking uncomfortable in
the clothes they were wearing. Joe had on a dark jacket and dark
pants, a suit Sophie had never seen him in, though this old picture
had made it familiar to her. Deer woman was wearing a dress with tiny
buttons and lace ruching, holding herself awkwardly within its stiff
folds. She'd worn white women's clothing so rarely, she never had
learned to seem at ease in them.

Below the picture of Joe
and Deer Woman, Esther had placed a drawing of Sophie's mother and
father. Joe had told Sophie once that this drawing was a good
likeness. But Julia looked startled, Sophie thought, and the young
lieutenant's face seemed blurred. She picked it up to examine it and
realized that although it portrayed a younger generation, it was
older than the photograph of Joe and Deer Woman, perhaps as much as a
decade older. By the time the picture of Joe and Deer Woman had been
made, this blurry figure was in his grave and the surprised young
woman had run away.

"I do wish I had a
picture of Paul's father," Esther said. She was gesturing toward
a group of pictures, and Sophie saw that she had tried to set up a
family tree for the Bellavances too, but she had only two pictures to
work from, one of the Widow Bellavance, the other of Paul, Anna May,
and their five children, all grown and gone now.

"You do need Emile
Bellavance, don't you?" sophie said. "I'll ask Paul if he
doesn't have a picture of his father. Perhaps..." Sophie broke
off as she set the picture of her parents down and looked at the
photographs arranged below it. The picture of Helen--it had been
defaced! She picked it up and saw that someone had gone over all the
lines in its with ink, gone around the eyes, the irises, and even the
pupils, blacked in the lashes and brows; outlined the lips until the
face looked like a harlot's, or like a corpse on whom the undertaker
has too lavishly applied his art. "Esther, what's happened to
this picture?"

The girl looked up, seeming
unconcerned. "Oh, Sally did that. Every so long ago."

"No, just yesterday I
looked at it, and it was fine."

"You must have looked
at another picture. There's more than one of Mother on the
mantelshelf."

Sophie was sure this was
the picture she'd been looking at, but before she had time to resolve
the matter, Mrs. Syms appeared in the doorway to announce that the
reporter from the 'Clarion' had arrived. By the time the housekeeper
showed him in, Esther had put all the pictures back on the
mantelpiece and slipped through the door into the dining room.

The reporter seemed very
different from yesterday, Sophie thought. Could it just be that he
had taken off his hat? Although he was in his twenties, he was
balding, and having to reveal this fact make for the breach she
detected in his self-assurance? Or had he perhaps spoken with someone
about her? In any event, his annoying arrogance had tempered, and she
saw no harm in granting him an interview. "There were some
questions you wished to ask?" she said as soon as they were
seated.

Plainly he had not thought
the interview would happen so easily. He hurried to get a stubby
pencil out, not very successfully hiding his surprise. He riffled the
pages of his lined tablet, looking for a sheet to write on, and tried
to cover his unpreparedness with conversation. "Will you be in
Cheyenne long?"

"A few weeks, perhaps
a little more. I wanted to see my grandfather, who is ill, and I may
write one or two articles while I'm here. Perhaps one comparing
Cheyenne now to the way it was when I was here nine years ago."

He felt obliged to record
what she had said, and there was a silence while he wrote. "You
grew up in Wyoming?" he said finally.

"Yes, at Fort Martin."

"Which is named for
your grandfather."

"He founded it. He and
Emile Bellavance."

"And my editor says
you're the head of Dymond Publications now?" There was a trace
of awe in his voice, and Sophie took a certain satisfaction from it,
particularly when she recalled his attitude at the depot.

"That's correct."

"Well, how...I mean,
it is a long way from Fort Martin to New York City and Dymond
Publications. I'm not sure I understand how it happened. My editor
said something about Adah Menken?" His expression was
bewildered, and Sophie wondered what he had thought at the depot.
That she was the fashionable widow of a prominent man who dabbled in
her dead husband's business? A well-dressed dilettante from
Publisher's Row? And now that he knew that she was Dymond
Publications, it was more than he could take in to learn she had also
spent time with Adah. Indeed, it had been more than many people could
accept when the story had first come out. Her enemies had been
gleeful, of course, at the reports in the gossip rags; but her
friends had refused to believe it. She had handled both groups with a
cool statement of the facts, which she repeated now. "Yes, I was
with Adah Menken's troupe for a short time. I joined them in San
Francisco, where I had been in school, then traveled back East with
them."

"Were you an actress?"

"I had some small
parts."

"In 'Mazeppa' by any
chance?"

"Yes."

"So you saw her ride
that horse. I mean, not 'ride' exactly..."

"She was tied on its
back in a supine position." Whenever Adah's name came up, it was
followed by questions about the spectacular finale to 'Mazeppa': a
huge stallion galloping on a specially built ramp, a maiden tied to
its back, looking very frightened--and quite bare. "Actually, it
was a very brave thing, letting herself be tied to a horse that way.
And I never saw an audience--not a single one--that failed to give
her a standing ovation."

The reporter was leaning
forward, hoping she would say more. Sophie knew exactly what he
wanted her talk about. It was what everybody wanted to know. "I'd
like to add," she said, "that even though the character she
played was bound naked to a stallion as punishment, Mrs.

Menken was dressed in
flesh-colored tights and tunic for all her performances."

He was hanging onto her
words, a perfect example of that metaphor, but he managed to recover
himself sufficiently to write in his notebook. It took a very long
time to get it all down, and as he wrote, Sophie remembered how she
had come to know Adah. Sophie had been fifteen, a student at the
convent school, and the thought of running away had been in her mind
for months. One day as she walked along with a group of girls, she
was thinking how much she hated the school and its rules. They all
held hands, as the nuns required, so that they formed a chain with a
sister at the front end and another at the back. It was a humiliating
way to walk down a street, Sophie was thinking, when there, on the
windowless side of a wooden building, she saw a picture of a woman on
a horse. She stared at the 'Mazeppa' poster, thought of how well she
herself knew how to ride, and made one of those great leaps of logic
at which the young are adept: the 'Mazeppa' troupe would be her way
out of the convent school! She'd go to the woman on the poster, tell
her of her own skill with horses, and she'd be invited to join the
troupe! As the chain of girls pulled her along, Sophie was already
planning on how to get away from the convent so she could go to the
theater.

That very night she lay in
her narrow cubicle, pretending to be asleep. The cubicles were
partitioned off with muslin and lit from the inside so that the
sister at the end of the hall could see the girls without being seen
herself--if she were awake. That was the picky point. Sophie had
heard the sister slept, but did she really? Finally she stealed [sic]
herself to take the risk, slipped out of bed, and dressed. No one
objected. She parted the muslin curtain and crept out into the
darkness, past the sleeping nun. The window was open--the sisters'
zeal of fresh air approached their enthusiasm for the blessed
saints--and in a moment Sophie was over the sill and on her way to
the theater.

Once she got there, she had
no trouble finding Adah. She simply followed the noise to the crowded
dressing room and made her way to the center, where the tall, dark
actress stood. Adah shushed the men around her and listened to
Sophie's story. Then without pressing for details of Sophie's
background, or questioning whether she had the equestrian skill she
claimed, Adah turned to a short, bearded man near her and commanded
him to find Sophie a part in the play. Soon Sophie found herself
dressed as a page. It was she who brought Beauty Belle, the horse
Adah used in San Francisco, onstage.

Sophie wasn't aware then
how much Adah's mood depended on the situation at the moment. She
would not always be so outgoing and generous, but this happened at a
time of triumph for her. The entire troupe of 'Mazeppa' departed San
Francisco in glory, all of them in stagecoaches heading for St.
Louis. Their stop in Virginia City was another coup for Adah, with
the miners begging her for a single performance of 'Mazeppa' and
showering a fortune in silver on her.

In Virginia City, Adah
called Sophie into her room. "Sophie?" That was the way she
talked, with tiny question marks scattered through her husky speech.
"Sophie? You're beautiful, do you know that? Of course you do."

By now Sophie had heard of
the monumental rages of jealousy Adah was capable of, so she was wary
of the actress's words as well as flattered by them. But there was no
sign of anger as Adah continued, "There will be men in your
life, Sophie, many of them, probably. Enjoy them, Sophie, but don't
let yourself be trapped." She looked at the young girl
meaningfully. "Sophie? do you know what I'm saying?"

"I... I'm not sure."

Adah picked up the
lacquered box from the sofa table. Sophie thought it probably
contained cigarettes and Adah meant to have one. She was fond of
smoking. But she handed the box to Sophie. "This is for you."

Sophie opened it, thinking
she should thank Adah, but when she saw what was inside, she was
speechless. There were several small sponges, each in a silken net
with a string attached. There were packets marked "Preventive
Powders," and lined up in neat rows were several dozen condoms.

"There are all these
things, you know," Adah was saying. "But the sheaths are
really the best. Sometimes men don't like them." She stared into
space for a moment, seeming to remember something; then she gave a
small shrug. "But since it is they who get us with child, don't
you think they should cooperate?"

The young reporter's voice
jerked Sophie back to the present. "And then after you left Adah
Menken's troupe, you were married?"

"Yes, to Albert
Burroughs. He was an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution."
She watched carefully and saw that as he was supposed to, the young
man assumed from her words that Albert was dead. Well, that was one
secret she had managed to keep. She had learned long ago that
speaking of Albert in the past tense conveyed the idea that he was no
longer alive, and for years she had avoided further questions about
him. But she could not avoid thinking of him, of the kind, quiet man
who had given her so much: music, languages, a whole world of
philosophy and poetry she'd never even guessed at. He had taught her
to write, to dress, to set a table, to design a room. and how had she
repaid him? That was the question she always came up against. Could
she have done otherwise? Could she have been kinder?

"Then when was it you
married Philip Dymond?"

"In 1872," she
answered, and the interview went on routinely. She told how she had
worked with Philip, becoming editor first of "Dymond's Ladies'
Magazine," and then later of "Dymond's Illustrated News,"
how she had assumed control of all of the Dymond enterprises upon
Philip's death. Yes, she was very impressed with Cheyenne's growth,
and no, she didn't have tickets to the opera house yet, but she
certainly hoped to go. It took very little effort to respond to these
queries, and Sophie found her thoughts drifting away from the
interview, away from the present and back to the past. Albert was
there, a pale and quiet ghost, and Philip was there, vital, handsome,
his dark eyes alight.